I bought a book today featuring essays from many famous writers. It’s called The Time to Write or something like that.

I love reading blogs from other writers but sometimes curling up with a non-fiction book is just what I need in order to resource myself.

How do I find the time to write? I’d love to say that I have such discipline that, no fail, I’m up at 5 am and write my 1000 words daily. That’s the plan but it doesn’t always work.

I try though, I try hard. I try half of that which means that for the last 5 months I’ve gotten up at 6 or earlier everyday. I’ve written, yes, anywhere between 500 and 1500 words. But sometimes, I’ve brainstormed and sometimes, when I was so drained from the stress of life, I just wrote in my journal.

The discipline of waking up an hour before everybody is there. I don’t succeed everyday but I do go forward.

I noticed that during the holiday I wrote about 7000 words in 2 weeks. I could not write at all during the day, but I squeezed writing in that one hour alone in the morning.

I try so hard to be perfect and set my goals so high that I’m always bind to fail but sometimes I can look back and say that good enough is not bad, it’s not bad at all.

500 words today and a good constructive time planning the third and last act of Ancient Secrets. I hate writing in the dark, not knowing what next, so now that I know what I want to happen and the motive behind my characters’ actions, I feel much better. I now know I have a novel.

Passion gothic by =Senderosolvidados on deviantART

I attended my RWA chapter writer meeting yesterday and listened to a great workshop by author Alexis Morgan.

I am very inspired by Alexis because even though she has many books out and writes 3 series a year, she still takes the time to learn. She reads books on writing, attends workshops and if she can’t, she gets the CDs from the conferences.

What a great role model she is.

When I look at my huge list of goals for 2009, I see that I had a section for honing my craft and did very little of what I had planned. I wanted to study debut books, study my favorite authors, do some writing prompts from a writing group I belong to and also try the exercises at the end of John Gardner’s book The Art of Fiction.

Now that I sold and know a bit more about what I want to write and now that I’m focusing on writing my series, I’m looking at how I can learn, because I really feel I know very little.

I notice that I am both a craft book and online classes junky so I decided to keep doing that. I also decided to follow James Scott Bell’s suggestion and copying some scenes from my favorite writers in a notebook, just to study them. I like Robert B. Parker’s dialog, Sherilyn Kenyon’s love scenes and Philip Pullman’s decriptions for example . I know I’m terrible at first chapter so I decided to go through my huge pile of thelatest paranormal romances to see how they do it, see what the elements are and if there are similarities between each books.

I just cannot read paranormal right now when I’m writing but maybe just reading the first chapters will be okay.

And who know, I may actually be brave enough to attempt a Gardner exercise.

I think this week shall be a good one to set a schedule for writing and fitting everything in, including working on a college class I’m taking and studying for a science exam.

Have I mentionned yet that I don’t watch T.V.? I couldn’t possibly find the time even if I had one.

Sadly no writing today. I miscalculated my little one waking up time and when I’m not the only one awake in the house there is no point even trying to write.

So only 6000 words this holidays but it’s still much more than last year. It’s a process, trying to build habits for life, not a race that I’ll quit after a month.

Leaving you with a little Steampunk art.

Blessed Be

Revel – Antique Tones by ~cambler on deviantART

I don’t know why it’s so hard to write those scenes in Ancient Secrets where my heroine encounters the dark mage and villain Theuron Keir.

I like Theuron. He is both fun and intense to write. And when he meets with Lily, my heroine from Ancient Whispers, he is so new, dangerous amd attractive to her that the scenes almost write themselves.

But not so with my new heroine Ruby. She’s not as fascinated by him because she knows about magic and has started to control powers of her own. And where Lily could sexually be attracted to him, Ruby, who is plagued by nightmares through most of the story and who is exhausted, seeks him out more for solace.

It’s very hard to write. Nevertheless, after working (writing, brainstorming) on the same scene for 5 days, I finished it today at about 2,200 words.

I can’t say it’s great but I’m slowly getting into what their interaction should be. It does take me a while to get there. And at the end of this first draft, I should be able to go back and fix everything that needs to be fixed.

I was reading Ray Bradbury’s book on writing last night and, as he advises, I’m trying real hard just to put down whatever come to mind just for the fun of it.

I’m so afraid this sequel won’t sell that it paralizes me and I forget to have fun. But I’m working on it. Writing something, anything, everyday.

Finished Georgette Heyer’s Frederica yesterday. What a great way to entertain myself with light reading. I do like the witty tone of her Regency romance.

Leaving here with my inspiration for Ancient Secrets. It fits my sorcerers so well. Nine Inch Nails, what else!
(Warning the clip is missing The Frail)

Blessed Be.

I originally posted this blog as an mcslist at Love Conquers, the blog of the American Title V finalists. Since the blog is now close and people have asked me about psychic distance in the last few months, I decided to repost it here:

You can see the original post and comments here.

I am quite a geek in the way I become a fan of musicians, films and other famous people. For example, I am currently quite obsessed with musician Trent Reznor and Nine Inch Nails, the Lara Croft movies and author Caitlin R. Keirnan.

John Gardner (1933-1982)

In my quest for learning more about writing, I became a a huge fan (in a obsessive way) of John Gardner and his two crafts book, The Art of Fiction and On becoming a Novelist. I just love his take-no-prisoner approach and how he urge the writer to write daily and focus on constantly improving his writing , on not be satisfied with the mediocre. One of the concept I learned from him is the different ways Point of View (POV) can be used.

Yes, we have 1st and 3rd person POV (and in some strange instance 2nd person) but we have also various psychic distance within one POV. Most people are so into the very close POV, that they are telling us we cannot write in an omniscient POV, that we are bound to fail if we do and that modern commercial fiction must be strickly written in 1st and 3rd very close POV. I dare you to pick a Julia Quinn novel and start reading with POV in mind. What is it?

Hard to tell. Probably 3rd, but also close to omniscient in the very beginning. She usually quickly shift effortlessly to a close 3rd POV and we don’t even notice. That is because she is a modern master at playing with psychic distance, first telling us generally about the heroine, then slowly getting into her head. Then going back and forth (closer and further in psychic distance) during the story.

I would love to be able to do that, but so far, I have been very cautious and stayed with the very safe close 3rd POV. But I hope I can learn. For my list today, I leave you with John Gardner’s example of various psychic distance in writing, where at first we are very far psychologically from the character’s mind then go deeper and deeper into his mind.

1. In was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped out of a doorway.
2. Henry J. Warburton had never much cared for snowstorms.
3. Henry hated snowstorms.
4. God how he hated these damn snowstorms.
5. Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul…

(The Art of Fiction , John Garner)

I’m reading an excellent book for writers called The Art of War for Writers by James Scott Bell.

I love his Plot and Structure book and this new one is the perfect pick me up when I feel all alone doing my thing and just need to get both a kick in the back side and being told all will be fine.

Somewhere in the book, Bell suggests to write a simple list of things to remember when the writing feels flat. A little list of how to make that scene more better (as my son would say).

He suggest to post that list somewhere near our writing space.
So here is my own list:

Make it sexy

Make it spooky

Make it both

Make it cool

Make me cry

There…. my writing the way I like it.

Added 500 words yesterday and 1400 today! Getting there!!

Blessed Be

Winter Mists by ~DeheartedNature on deviantART