Category: Archives

THE NAKED NOVELIST

September 15, 2012 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as conferences, Craft, creativity, novelist, published, unpublished

Recently, I spoke at a conference in Massachusetts. My presentation was an hour long. For the other 47 hours I was there I mentored aspiring novelists. On the flight home, I wondered why I had bonded with so many of these amazingly talented, bright and interesting people in a way I never had at conferences before. It was because we shared something. In this brave new world of publishing, we all came naked to the table.

Obviously, I am not being literal. In some ways, a Lady Godiva moment would be preferable to that of the Emperorâ€™s New Clothes. Sitting down with an agent, editor or published author to bare your creative soul is incredibly daunting. The new writer faces rejection of their vision, their dream, and their talent.

Because I started writing on a dare, because I had not dreamed of being a novelist all my life, I didnâ€™t feel that creative vulnerability early in my career. It was only later, after I had published, after I flexed my writer’s voice, after I had touched someone who read my words, after I had seen books with my name covering a wall in a bookstore, when I saw my book on the USA Today best seller list that I craved what those writers did. It was also then that I was stripped bare in front of agents and editors who seemed to accept me as easily as they dismissed me; who thrilled at my successes and went on to someone else when there was a brighter star on the horizon. Because I was a businesswoman before I was a writer, I understood that publishing was a business, agents and editors had bottom lines and that fate, luck and fashion sometimes separated the bestseller from everyone else. It doesnâ€™t make the journey any easier to understand that.

Still, I could not complain. I was making a living as a writer. I was grateful and happy. Then things changed again. I became an indie author: self-published, creatively naked as a jaybird, down the chute after being up the ladder, back to square one.

No great publishing house lays claim to my work, there is no editor validating my vision, no sales force singing my praises to booksellers who will pile my books in a pyramid on a table. There is, in fact, no book to hold or sign. There are only the words I have written and saved to a file, a cover made of pixels and the upload to Amazon and Nook and Smashwords. Now, it’s me and the reader. I am a click away from praise or complaint. I have come naked to the table and I gotta say it is chilly in the chair.

I hope the writers I spoke with at the conference learned something from me. Hereâ€™s what I learned from them:

Published or not, we are brothers and sisters under the skin
Be courageous and present your work with pride
If you are asked for an opinion, give it knowing you have a responsibility to be honest
Our passion for the written word will keep us warm
Help a writer when you can, good things will return to you

So, a salute to the writers I met in Massachusetts. You were an incredibly creative and courageous group. My wish is that you will all be clothed in publication glory sooner than later.

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RWA 2012: Dr. Debra Holland: Creating Fighting or Self-Defense Scenes by Jina Bacarr VIDEO

September 11, 2012 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as 2012, Anaheim, Debra Holland, fighting, heroine, karate, Montana, RWA, self-defense, sky, spies, spy, video, wild

Have you ever wandered down a dark street late at night, your high heels clicking loudly on the cobblestones, when you hear a second pair of footsteps behind you?

Is someone following you?

Heart thudding in your chest, you stop.

He stops.

Your pulse racesâ€¦the hair on the back of your neck stands up.

Heâ€™s right behind you.

What do you do?

Run or fight?

If you havenâ€™t experienced this scenario, I bet your heroine has.

“From my experience in the field, I know each fight is different and this enemy has his own agenda. Rape? Robbery? Could be, but I doubt it. They don’t operate this way when they want a woman. They act friendly, use pretty talk to pick up a girl, then knock her off her feet before she knows what’s happening to her.

I pull back, walk toward the rue de la Huchette, one step at a time, like all this is happening in slo-mo. As if the whole scene is a video game and someone else is at the controls, pressing the attack buttons and toggling my polygonal form to do what they want and I have no choice. Enemy contact. Kill’em. Kill’em. These words zap through my brain like a subliminal message from command center.

Keep going back. Left foot, right. My eyes scope out the environment. Stone buildings, windows shuttered. No escape. No one to hear the ruckus, the screams. The punks know that. They talk, egging each other on to see who’ll make the first move. Closer, closer they come, like maggots ready to feast on a warm corpse.

Not mine, you punks.”

I wrote from my first-hand experience when I constructed that scene. A similar incident had happened to me on that same street in Paris and I was lucky enough to get away. But I never forgot that fear pulsating through my veins. The icy chill that goes through you when you make that split decision that can determine whether or not youâ€™re going to survive. Pulling up the emotions I felt that night helped me write the emotions of my heroine.

This scene went through my mind when I attended Dr. Debra Hollandâ€™s Workshop: Creating Fighting or Self-Defense Scenes at the RWA Anaheim 2012 Conference. Dr. Debra presented an outstanding workshop showing how to protect yourself as a woman and also how to put your heroine through her paces. She gave members from the audience the opportunity to experience what it feels like firsthand to be attacked by a stranger.

Hereâ€™s a video I put together from the workshop:

Dr. Debra Holland — www.drdebraholland.com — teaches a karate class at the American Martial Arts Academy located at1027 N. Harbor Blvd, Fullerton, CA 714 871-3898.

Check out their website for more information: www.KarateOC.com

AMAA has been teaching Womenâ€™s Self-Defense Classes for more than thirty years.

Correction:

The gentlemen from the Academy who assisted Dr. Debra are: Steve Hopple and Adam Rigsby.

A special thank you to fellow OCC/RWA member Rob Preece for his assistance in presenting the workshop.

WILD MONTANA SKY on Amazon

And thank you to Sarah Andre — www.sarahandre.com — who volunteered to experience her heroineâ€™s fight scene up close and personal.

I highly recommend Dr. Debra Hollandâ€™s workshop.

Thank you, Dr. Debra!

Jina
www.JinaBacarr.com

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What Are My Options?

September 9, 2012 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz

One of the big questions in every area of life is – what are my options? How do I want my hamburger cooked, what do I want on my pizza, how do I like my coffee – the smaller questions. What will I do for a living, how can I make ends meet until the work brings in the money, which of several directions should I take to get there – the bigger questions. (Why am I here, what is God’s plan for me, where will I go when I die – the most important questions, but not directly related to writing. 🙂 )

In writing, I’ve asked myself if I want to write fiction or nonfiction, business articles or romances, romantic comedies or superhero books with a romantic thread. While I like each of these ideas and many more, I have learned in life that you have to focus first to get started in any new endeavor. You can spread yourself thinner later. So I published a few nonfiction pieces, then focused on romance.

I went to Christian writers conferences in the early years because those were the writer friends I was hanging around. I got close enough that I was getting phone calls from an editorial assistant at Tyndale House, but I was writing just enough out of step that we could never quite get my work to run along on their track. Things never worked out.

A friend introduced me to her agent and soon I had representation. Surely my big break! It seemed the right thing to do was to continue with the romantic comedies (called chick lit at that moment, but shhh, don’t say that phrase any more). My agent and I talked about different things I could try when chick lit died. I chose not to pursue an opportunity with a Christian publisher who pays tiny advances. I was too insecure to try writing YA when my agent suggested it. I could see I had options, and – right or wrong – I made the best choices I could.

After four and a half years, I talked to my agent and decided to walk away. I was trying to do what I felt she wanted me to do, but my creativity was drying up by trying so hard. I needed a break. I’d been thinking about going to grad school for years, so when the opportunity came up, I took it. It was so beyond different from what I expected, not challenging at all, that I complained for a long time about what a waste of time it was.

But over the last couple of months, I remembered that I do have options. I can choose to live with disappointment over my grad school work, or focus on what I learned from it. For instance, I learned that I can write YA! I got some extraordinary feedback on a YA story I wrote. More excellent feedback on a spiritual dystopia/urban fantasy I wrote for my final project. And after flying to last year’s RWA National Conference the morning after my last class, and hearing a couple more editors tell me they weren’t sure they could sell my work, I knew I had another option.

I came home from that conference and decided, as an experiment, I was going to self-publish Little Miss Lovesick, the book my agent almost sold to two houses before chick lit died. When the process went a bit smoother than I expected, I considered my options again. I could keep trying to write and pitch my work to the current establishment, or I could start my own business again. The idea of running my own publishing company got my endorphins dancing.

One option that worked out for me was choosing to get involved in two self-published anthologies. The first one, Romancing the Pages, will come out in September as an ebook – see the lovely cover here. My superhero short story “Hero in Disguise” is one of nineteen short stories I hope you enjoy. In a few months, another anthology will be published with a dozen or so short stories written by my friends in my Sydney writer’s group. Another group of stories I think you’ll enjoy. My “Rescue at Loon Lake” is a fun little precursor to my novel Love at the Fluff and Fold.

It’s been a heck of a year. Several moves, several deaths, more months of unemployment than paid work between John and me, a lot of trials and testing. Career-wise, the worst part for me has been not being able to follow-through on my goals, my commitments to myself that I made end of last year. I’d planned to get Little Miss Lovesick into print by Christmas, finish and self-publish Love at the Fluff and Fold digitally and in print by March, and have the next book out in September.

Due to the weight of life this year, I’ve thought about sending my work to other publishers, let them do some of the work in return for some of the monetary rewards. I know I have options. Maybe giving myself a little break would help. It’s an awful lot of work to do all of the publishing work yourself. Several wise men in the Bible have said to count the costs before you start building so you don’t wind up broke, half-finished, and a laughingstock. I think I know the costs of continuing down my current path, and I’m willing to pay them.

I’ll continue to try to keep my options in mind at least once a year so I can adjust my course as necessary. It’s a good writing routine to have. In fact, because I love teaching and miss doing it more, I’m going to offer my Goal Setting and Time Management for Writers class again in January. We’ll start bright and early on the first Monday in January and get our ducks in a row for the coming year. I’ll remind you again when you can start signing up.

Whatever is going on in your life and your writing career, remember that you have options. Some will be better than others, but rarely is “I had no choice” true. What are some of your options?

Kitty Bucholtz decided to combine her undergraduate degree in business, her years of experience in accounting and finance, and her graduate degree in creative writing to become a writer-turned-independent-publisher. Her first novel, Little Miss Lovesick, was released in September 2011 as an ebook and will be available soon in print format. Kitty has also written magazine articles, devotionals, and worked as a magazine editor. She is the co-founder of Routines for Writers where she blogs every Monday. Her next novel, Love at the Fluff N Fold, will be released in late 2012.

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September Online Class

August 26, 2012 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as Carol Hughes, George Lucas, Nora Roberts, Online Class, Stephen King, Stephen Spielberg, Story Structure

“Deep Story Structure & Techniques” with Carol Hughes

September 10 â€“ October 7, 2012

Enrollment Information at http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclassSept12.html

COST: $20 for OCCRWA members, $30 for non-members
If you have specific questions, email occrwaonlineclass@yahoo.com

ABOUT THE CLASS:

What does Nora Roberts, Stephen King, George Lucas (STAR WARS), Stephen Spielberg (E.T.) and all of those other blockbuster creators know about writing that makes them the mega stars that they are?

Learn about the 18 scenes that every story contains, no matter its length or genre. Find out how to identify your characterâ€™s mental gender and what impact that has upon readers. Discover how your characterâ€™s arc drives your story and how your story drives your characterâ€™s arc. Learn the four throughlines of every story and how to weave them together.

Every successful story contains characters who come alive for the reader. Every successful story is built on a solid, easy-to-master, story structure that works every single time. Every successful story lives on in the hearts and minds of readers because their authors have mastered the simple secrets needed to turn them into writing super stars. And you can, too.

ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:

Writer/director/producer Carol Hughes has been a driving force behind some of Hollywoodâ€™s most financially successful media franchises. Carol was the studiosâ€™ â€œgo to personâ€ when it came to helping her fellow writers turn their uncut diamonds of rough stories into some of Hollywoodâ€™s most memorable and financially successful projects. Over the years, her projects generated in excess of $1 billion in profits for both the studios and the leading Networks.

Now she enjoys writing and working with her fellow novelists by sharing the powerful secret writing techniques and tricks behind some of Hollywood most successful films and television series that had made her a much sought after story development consultant and writer for so many years.

Enrollment Information:

http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclassSept12.html

COST: $20 for OCCRWA members, $30 for non-members

Coming in October 2012: Conquering National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) with Alison Diem

Challenge yourself. This course is designed to help both new and veteran participants understand the NaNoWriMo program and use it to push their careers forward.

Check out our full list of workshop at http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclasses.html

Want to be notified personally two weeks before each class? Be sure you’re signed up for our Online Class Notices Yahoo Group! Sign up at the bottom of http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclasses.html or send a blank email to OCCRWAOnlineClassNotices-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

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One More Olympic Observation

August 19, 2012 by A Slice of Orange in category Archives tagged as Dedication, Mona Karel, Observations, Olympics, Sacrifice

Monica Stoner
Member at Large

Feel like youâ€™ve had enough Olympics to last at least four years? Had your fill of water cooler discussions about quarter point deductions or spiking the ball? Really tired of references to Olympic goals and ideals, relating to writing? Yeah, me too.
But bear with me, because this one has stuck better than any landing. Actually, itâ€™s not about the Olympics specifically. Itâ€™s a commercial.
Surely you saw this commercial, seems like it played at every break. A variety of athletes worked out, and the voice over listed everything they had not done in preparation for the Olympics: no dessert for two years, hadnâ€™t seen the latest movie, and what I really remember was “havenâ€™t read that book everyoneâ€™s talking about.” I donâ€™t know about you, but not being able to read seems like cruel and unusual punishment to me.
Obviously not to someone who has a goal in sight and a deadline to meet. Their goal is to be bigger, stronger, faster, better than anyone else in their sport, and to be at their peak at the Olympic Games. To achieve that goal, theyâ€™re willing to forego what most of us think of as our inalienable rights: Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of the ultimate fried food.
Arenâ€™t we fortunate we only have to give up some of our time to write more? Granted those who donâ€™t work out regularly add inches to their body as well as words to the page. But the analogy is still valid.
Sacrifices need to be made in pursuit of any goal worth achieving. We canâ€™t go to every midnight movie or every holiday sale and sometimes weâ€™re going to miss that neat town event, because weâ€™re chasing dreams and building characters. We try to maintain a good social life but the fact is time we might be spending with our real friends needs to be spent with the friends we create.
Is it worth the effort and sacrifice? After all, only a very small percentage of those who qualify for the Olympics stand on the medal podium. And those people represent a minuscule number of those who tried out and failed, or who didnâ€™t even make the trials. Of the many writers hunched over their keyboards instead of spending a lazy afternoon in the malls, how many will see their names attached to a published book, whether digital or in print?
Well, a lot more than those who gave up their dreams to do something else. And that is the real lesson of the Olympics.