On The Chain Gang #9 – Writing In 2009

 

My LINK in the Blog Chain

 

THE BLOG CHAIN is comprised of a group of fiction writers from Query Tracker and Rally Storm. We thought it would be fun and insightful to acquire differing ideas and opinions on a particular writing topic.

 

My previous Link in the Blog Chain was on the topic of Novel Notes.

 

Happy New Year! Many people take this season to reflect on things past, look forward to the future, and some go as far as making resolutions or goals. Since it is my turn to choose the topic for this link in the Blog Chain, I thought we could take inspiration from these traditions.

I have several questions – answer them all or pick and choose, as you’d like. I think we could learn a lot about each other and our writing in the process.

 

This Round’s Topic is:

What writing related things have you done in the past?

What WIPs are you working on now?

Do you have anything brewing for the future?

Are you setting any writing goals or resolutions for 2009?

My mother was an avid book lover who enjoyed reading aloud to my sister and me. She gave it her all using different voices, facial expressions, and sometimes-even actions to engage us in the story. Always riveted, we begged for more. She encouraged us to use our imaginations and creativity.

The pure joy she exhibited with these pursuits drew me to storytelling and writing. I would make up stories about anything, and make believe was my favorite type of play. In high school and college, I wrote for the newspapers. While that was all right, it wasn’t as much fun as twisting a plot, creating the conflict, and discovering the character quirks of something new and exciting bubbling in my own imagination.

When my children started bringing spelling words home from school, I helped them study by making up ridiculous and funny sentences (using those spelling words), to build a story with each one. Believe me — creating a story off the top of my head as I read the spelling list took some major thinking at times. But it is a great memory that we share, and they always did well on their spelling tests…bonus! Life is never dull around our house as any of us can just break into song or random accent, taking off on some tangent into craziness.

Being open to spontaneous ideas is an advantage for a writer. It was on one such tangent, while walking in the park with my kids and my niece, that the inspiration for THE GATEKEEPER’S CHARGE started to take form. Suddenly bombarded with voices, faces, and places, I couldn’t wait to get inside the library (at the park) to write things down. It was exhilarating. Now I know that the rush of getting the first words of a story down on paper is only equaled (or perhaps beaten) by typing the words, The End. Check out my About… page to see my favorite quote on the first words of a story.

THE GATEKEEPER’S CHARGE is my first project and my only completed novel… well, completed in the sense that any writer’s work is ever finished. A writer can always find things to tweak, edit, and add, in hopes of improving the story.

NaNoWriMo 2008 brought me my work in progress, TIME’S UP FOR FATHER TIME. This cozy culinary mystery has a little over 50k words written, and I am dying to get back to work on it.

Recently my brain started swirling with story ideas for something I am calling, OCEAN. Of course, the ocean will play a major role in the story, but the puzzle pieces seem to be coming from fairy tales, modern day times, and more. My best guess is that it will end up in the Urban Fantasy genre. I don’t want to go into details at this stage. Right now I am only writing ideas… random thoughts, chaotic and messy. But I am excited about this project, and it’s thrilling to watch it grow and take shape.

As far as goals or resolutions, I have set some for the New Year. Here they are in random order.

Look at the sidebar to the right. You can see I have employed Word Counters to provide a little accountability.

To take part in the Tuesday Night Writers Group that my local NaNo buddies and I have started.

Write / revise / edit for a minimum of two hours a day, five days a week. And this does not include blogging (or writers’ forums) time.

To blog on a regular basis. You can never get too much writing practice.

Do research and develop OCEAN.

Finish TIME’S UP FOR FATHER TIME.

Sign with a Literary Agent for THE GATEKEEPER’S CHARGE.

Get published!!!

Follow the Chain to Elana’s blog. Meet me back here in about two weeks for a wrap up, but there is always something going on around this blog, so make it a regular stop on your daily blog routine! Mary Lindsey was the first to post in the Jingle Bells Chain we just finished if you would like to read that from the beginning.

The BLOG CHAIN GANG members are listed in the sidebar to the right.

 

Happy New Year 2009! Let’s WRITE!

 

I love hearing from you, so leave me a COMMENT.

 

 

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~ by bloggingexperiments on January 2, 2009.