Out and Around the Web
I’ve been featured on several Websites over the past few weeks and wanted to share some of the links with you. I know I’ve been, uh, rather absent from my blog over the last several months, but I have the best intentions to start being more consistent in my posting here. So, as a start to that, some fresh reading:
Watch Over Me is She Reads (www.shereads.org) March book club pick. If you leave a comment or sign up for the She Reads newsletter, you’ll have a chance to not only win a copy of Watch Over Me, but also a beautiful handmade pottery vase (if you’ve read the novel, you know one of the main characters is a potter).
If you don’t know about She Reads, check it out. From its website:
She Reads exists to honor Christ by connecting readers with novels that:
- inspire through excellent writing
- explore deep issues of faith
- initiate change in the reader’s life
Each quarter, the She Reads book club will offer three current titles as featured selections. Readers have vast differences in taste and for this reason diverse genres and authors will be chosen, with a total of twelve books per year.
Why should I join She Reads?
Readers who join She Reads receive a number of benefits, including:
- Connection with other readers on the She Reads blog who are passionate about great fiction and uplifting stories.
- Information via the She Reads newsletter that will keep readers up to date on their favorite authors, and books, with a few surprises thrown in for fun.
- Reviews of newly released titles written by a variety of readers, writers, and industry professionals.
- Options to create a She Reads book club or bring an existing club under the She Reads umbrella.
- Relationships developed within the intimate setting of a regular book club meeting.
- Fun planned study guides with activities and interesting facts developed specifically for the She Reads book club.
- Online Community for those who can’t participate in a monthly meeting (or don’t live near an existing club), via the She Reads blog and Facebook group.
- Pre-selected novels they can trust and appreciate – an important aspect in today’s economy where every buying decision requires a second thought.
- Access to authors they love through print interviews, meet and greets, conference calls, etc. Each selected author will participate in two conference calls with the first 100 guests (per call) who sign up. This will be a free service and a chance for readers to have their questions answered by the authors themselves!
- Free books from time to time via contests, giveaways, and publisher promotions.
Who is running this thing anyway?
On a large scale, She Reads is an offshoot of Proverbs 31 Ministries, helping bring God’s peace, perspective, and purpose to today’s busy woman. As an organization, Proverbs provides leadership and technical support.
On a daily basis, She Reads is run by Marybeth Whalen (Director) and Ariel Lawhon (Assistant Director), pictured below.
Keep checking back all through the month of March, as there will be other goodies – recipes, interviews, etc. – posted regarding Watch Over Me and my writing.
Speaking of Proverbs 31 Ministries, yesterday it featured a devotion I wrote. Encouragement For Today, the daily online devotional ministry of Proverbs 31, “reaches approximately over 300,000 people all over the world every day at no charge through email. These inspirational messages written by our team of speakers and writers draw women (and men) into the powerful and relevant truth of God’s Word.” You can sign up to receive Encouragement For Today through email.
The devotion I wrote, “Too Many Eyes,” focuses on who we were made to be in Christ, and how God has created each one of with unique gifts and talents (and quirkiness!) that fit exactly into His plans for us and those around us.
On Valentine’s Day, She Reads posted the story of how two fiction authors “just happened” to fall in love and get married. Well, one of those authors happens to be me. The other is my wonderful husband of almost 5 months, Chris Coppernoll. I know, some of you are saying, “I didn’t even know there was a wedding!” There just didn’t seem a way to announce it without fanfare – and those who know me in real life know I’m not much for fanfare. But, it *is* a great story, if anyone is interested.
If you want to learn more about Chris’ latest novel, Screen Play, She Reads also featured it in its Worth Reading section.
And the Title of Book Three Is…
…The Air We Breathe.
Many of you know about the, uh, arduous task of titling Home Another Way. Watch Over Me came a little easier (even though I loved my working title – Things Found in the Morning – but no one else did). But this process was so simple, I was quite shocked. My working title had been The Air I Breathe – which I didn’t love, but it was okay. I submitted it with about four other ideas to Bethany House Publishers, and a few days later received an email telling me The Air We Breathe had been approved. A slight tweak, but very close to the original. Maybe I’m just getting better at knowing the market.
All three titles have some relationship to songs.
I already have a working title (and synopsis) for book four (and the title has nothing to do with a song, as far as I know). As soon as I finish up The Air We Breathe, my agent and I will begin the proposal process all over again.
Write or Die
Yes, you read that correctly. Yesterday, via a Facebook post, I found this wonderfully inventive and – dare I say it – helpful application that does what no other gimmick, program, or self-imposed consequence has been able to do. That is, get me to *just* write.
I am a ruminator. I like to think, to pick at my words, to poke through the rubble and find perfection. That takes a loooong time. It also, often, causes me to “freeze up” as I’m writing. Yes, there are times when I’m literally unable to type a single word. However, Write or Die has given me a kick in the pants as book three’s deadline approaches, apparently feeding my need for outside pressure. (I have always performed best in the 11th hour, so to speak. I won’t mention how I used to start my 40+ page lab reports at midnight the day they were due, skip all my other classes, and work on pure adrenaline for 16 hours straight, printing the report out minutes before it was due and dashing into my class at the last moment.)
From Dr. Wicked’s Write or Die site:
The idea is to instill in the would-be writer with a fear of not writing. We do this by employing principles taught in Introduction to Psychology. Anyone remember Operant Conditioning and Negative Reinforcement?
Negative Reinforcement “strengthens a behavior because a negative condition is stopped or avoided as a consequence of the behavior.”
Consequences:
- Gentle Mode: A certain amount of time after you stop writing, a box will pop up, gently reminding you to continue writing.
- Normal Mode: If you persistently avoid writing, you will be played a most unpleasant sound. The sound will stop if and only if you continue to write.
- Kamikaze Mode: Keep Writing or Your Work Will Unwrite Itself
These consequences will persist until your preset conditions have been met (that is, your time is up or you’ve written you word count goal or both).
I set it for Kamikaze mode with an “evil” grace period. Imagine my horror when, the first time I used the application, it started EATING my words because I stopped typing for a few seconds.
Write or Die claims to put the “Prod in Productivity.” Why it works for me, I don’t know. But I plan to keep using it.
Online Writers’ Conference, Part I – Dialogue
I apologizing for being so scarce here lately. I’ve been running around to writers’ conferences from Oregon to Philadelphia, teaching classes on scenes, pacing, and characters. So, I’ve decided to share parts of my lessons with everyone, in hopes that my readers – especially those unable to attend a conference – might be helped a little. We’ll start with some dialogue tips.
The number one way your characters – and as such, your readers – learn new information that propels the plot along is through dialogue. Dialogue can make or break a novel. Have you ever read a book and just cringed at some of what the characters say? Dialogue needs to be realistic, relevant, revealing, and resonant.
Realistic – to both your audience and your characters. Obviously, you’re not going to include every mundane conversation that people have in real life. But, there has to be realism in the interaction between characters. Who here is a mom? Do you always speak kindly to your children? Who here is married? Do you and your spouse ever snip at each other? Flirt with one another? These are real life things. Also, dialogue needs to be realistic to your characters – having your protagonist say something that makes the reader stop and think, “I could never have pictured that coming out of so-and-so’s mouth,” only serves to pull the reader out of the story. As writers, we want to keep them within the world of the novel as much as possible.
Relevant – is there are reason your characters are saying these things now? If Sam and Bob have been talking about cars, and suddenly Sam says, “Oh, this steering wheel cover reminds me of the dress Jane wore last week to work. Have you seen her lately?” well, that’s just wrong. Dialogue needs to flow naturally from one topic to another. Readers want to see the connections.
Revealing – every sentence should give your reader a deeper understanding of the characters and story. Some rules I try to stick with in order to do this are:
- No saying things that have already been said. I read a book once when one character said something like, “This is Judy. I work with her.” And then, half a page later, Tom asks Judy, “So, how do you know Bill?” Well, the reader learned that two paragraphs ago. Not good.
- No saying things that both characters and the reader already know. This is just rehashing and doesn’t server to move the story along. That means, no recounting events that already took place.
- No saying things that don’t in some way advance the plot or characterization.
Resonant – is there something memorable about the dialogue? Will it stick with your reader?
The Labored Work of Genius
My agent sent this to me today, because he knows me.
From Ravi Zacharias’ ministry:
An important manuscript long thought lost was rediscovered hiding in a Pennsylvania seminary on a forgotten archival shelf. The recovered manuscript was a working score for a piano version of Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Grosse Fuge,” which means “grand fugue.” Apparently, grand is an understatement. The work is known as a monument of classical music and described by historians as a “symphonic poem” or a “leviathan”–an achievement on the scale of the finale of his Ninth Symphony. The work is one of the last pieces Beethoven composed, during the period when he was completely deaf. The markings throughout the manuscript are in the composer’s own hand.
In fact, such markings are a particular trademark of Beethoven, who was known for near obsessive editing. Unlike Mozart, who typically produced large scores in nearly finished form, Beethoven’s mind was so full of ideas that it was never made up. Never satisfied, he honed his ideas brutally.
A look at the recovered score portrays exactly that. Groups of measures throughout the 80-page manuscript are furiously canceled out with cross-marks. Remnants of red sealing wax, used to adhere long corrections to an already scuffed up page, remain like scars. There are smudges where he rubbed away ink while it was still wet and abrasions where he erased notes with a needle. Dated changes and omissions are scattered throughout the score, many of these markings dating to the final months before his death in 1827.
I believe there is something encouraging about the labored work of a genius. Beethoven wrestled notes onto the page. For him composing music was a messy, physical process. Ink was splattered, wax burned, erasers wore holes in the paper. What started as a clean page became a muddled, textured mess of a masterpiece ever in progress.
Someone has called Beethoven’s masterpieces works of “three-dimensional” art. There is a texture and a character to his manuscripts that display an artist who went beyond merely writing the notes, but stretched himself, and the page itself, to make a symphony.
Not that I’m comparing myself to Beethoven, or declaring genius. But I comforted in his struggle, knowing my own. Sometimes the act of creating is messy and difficult and, well, not enjoyable. Sometimes our Christian walk is the same.
