The Blood-Red Pencil: Great writing advice!!

The Blood-Red Pencil

Thanks to my good friend, aobibliophile at aobibliosphere, I have discovered

this absolutely WONDERFUL blog

that provides advice to writers, as well as editing services

and other very cool stuff!! 

The name chosen for this blog is not only rather poetic,

but very appropriate, too, since one of the skills

writers need to learn is how to cut material

they may actually love, but may not be working for their

story or novel.

(Besides, it also reminds me of vampires...lol.)

So this blog is very aptly named

The Blood-Red Pencil!!

Following are two excerpts from an article posted by Maryann Miller, at

this terrific blog. 

It was originally published

on yet another blog I will also be checking out,

that of Christine Fonseca,

who is a school psychologist, as well as a YA and nonfiction author.

Here are the excerpts:

:•    Set small, attainable goals.

Most writers I know set very lofty goals that are hard to achieve (I will finish this novel in 30 days). Or they set goals that take a very long time and involve things not in our control (I will find and agent and sell a book within xx years). These types of goals can backfire unless you also set small goals that you can achieve pretty quickly. It’s all about building momentum when you are carefully backing away from the cliff. Set goals that enable you to feel success quickly.

•    Face your fears.

Writing is an interesting thing. It has the power to unlock some of your deepest darkest yuck that lurks inside - or maybe that’s just me. Regardless, pursuing your dreams in this business will require you to face some of your doubts and fears sooner or later. So, you need to be prepared. Personally, I think the only way to deal with the scary stuff is to walk straight through it. You have lots of supporters to help you on this path. Grab their hands, close your eyes, and move forward – no matter how hard it feels at times.

The complete article can be found

here.

What's the lure of the fantastic?

There are many reading genres, but certain people will gravitate toward fantasy and science fiction time and time again, to the exclusion of all others.  I count myself among them, with the only exception of the romance genre, which is also one of my favorites.  I especially enjoy reading paranormal romances like The Twilight Saga and the Night World series.  In fact, I prefer such books to ordinary romance novels, although I do read those, as well.

So what is it about fantasy and science fiction that so appeals to many people, although not all?  Is it merely the curiosity factor?  Is it the wish to escape?  But escape from what?

It’s both of these things, and much more.  It’s the desire to tap into the deepest recesses of our minds, where symbols thrive, living in a world of their own, a world that our waking, rational minds find to be weird, incomprehensible.  Fantasy and science fiction, and paranormal romance as well, access this world that lies beyond consciousness.  It is the world of archetypes, those eternal realities first described by Carl Jung as the denizens of what he termed “the collective unconscious”.  He differentiated this level of the mind from the personal unconscious, which is that belonging to the individual person.  The collective unconscious is the heritage of the entire human race. 

I believe we long to experience this level of the mind.  However, since our waking consciousness finds it nearly impossible to communicate with it, we rely on symbols, mythology, fairy tales, and stories of alien worlds.  We even yearn to experience, at least vicariously, all the strange, wonderful adventures that are impossible to find in our waking reality. 

Why do we want to live in the world of the collective unconscious?  Perhaps because we feel the need to compensate somehow for the monotony of so-called ‘reality’, with its daily, boring routines – the morning commute, the gossip at the office, the bills in the mail…  For those still in school, there’s the piles of homework, being bullied by classmates, not being asked to go to the prom….  There has to be more to life than these things!  

So it is that we dream, each and every night, and enter that alien unconscious world.  So it is that we seek it when awake, through the works of such authors as J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, J.K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyer, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Ursula K. LeGuin, L.J. Smith, and so many others that transport us into strange alternate realities, thus helping us to live as heroes and heroines, rather than ordinary people.  So it is that we become part of a world deep within us, while at the same time, part of the very cosmos itself.

In the Dreamtime...

It all started with a dream…

Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, as most of us fans know by now, got started with a dream.  She clearly saw Edward and Bella in a sunlit meadow.  She heard them discussing the problems inherent to their unique relationship.  

It’s all in the dream.  It’s the theater of the subconscious.  

Creativity lives and breathes here, in the subconscious mind, which is free, limitless, and full of symbols that sometimes interact in very strange ways.  The writer, the artist, is the person who allows these symbols to emerge, to take control, even, with no concern for the dictates of the conscious mind.  One lets go, one goes with the flow, allowing oneself to be carried by the stream of images, words, feelings, music – whatever it is that moves the artist.  One lets go.  This is the most important point.  One ignores the critic, the censor.  One allows characters, words, pictures, or whatever it is, to emerge.  Unfettered.  Flowing.  Incandescent. Glowing.  Sparkling. 

How very difficult this is at times!  ‘Reality’ intrudes.  Routines, rules, and regulations must be followed.  One must get to work on time.  Bills have to be paid.  Babies cry for their bottles, and husbands for their dinner.  (Even those of us women who don’t have kids, like me, still have the husbands to deal with.  But mine is very sweetly content to eat out most of the time, or we buy microwave dinners. ) 

There are all kinds of inane, trivial, inconsequential things that can mess up one’s creative juices.  So one has to set aside whatever time one can, in order to allow the subconscious to possess one’s body, so that it can dance, and flow, and give forth inspiration, and thus comes the book, the painting, the movie, the piano concerto, or the elegant, swan-like movements of a ballet choreography….

It all begins with the dream.  It all begins with allowing the dream to live, taking the place of this mundane ‘reality’ we think is real.  The secret is that it’s not.  What we know as 'reality' is made up of the consensus of the majority.  It’s the paradigm created by the majority.  So we believe in it, and live by it. 

Art and creativity are not the consensus of the majority.  They are the special preserve of those who are willing to break away from the majority, by allowing the subconscious mind free play.

More and more, I want to free myself from this oppressive thing we humans call ‘reality’.  More and more, I want to simply allow my subconscious mind to have its way with me.  This is what it’s doing right now.  I have stepped aside, and the words are thus free to flow from within, with no restraint, no obligations to be anything but what they are.

It’s a little like receiving dictation.  I’m dictating to myself, except that I am not consciously attempting to control the words that are coming out.  

It all started with the dream…  It always does.

I want to dream and dream and dream and dance in the light of my dreams which will then become my new reality….

Transcription complete.

A writer's work is never done....

I am definitely exhausted at the moment.  It’s now 6:15 PM here in Miami.  I’ve been at it since I got up, at exactly 1:08 PM… Oh, yeah, I like to pull my late nights on weekends, and then get up late, too.  Not that I go out clubbing or anything.  My late nights are spent on reading, mostly, or browsing on the Internet.  I try to combine both. 

Since Friday, I’ve been obsessively busy with this one Twilight-inspired story, “It Happened That Night”.  I originally posted it on fanfiction.net, a couple of years ago.  It was the last story I posted on that site, and I had not been back since.  I guess I got hung up on whether or not I got a lot of reviews.   I know I shouldn’t be, but when I see that any of my stories is not getting reviews, well, I can’t help but feel bad…

Suddenly, out of the blue, my subconscious mind decided to tinker with it again. And tinker I did!!  I’ve only stopped now.  I think the story is finally the way I want it to be.  It does feel complete now.

I wrote an entirely new section for it, and revised and revised and revised it until I had it just ‘right’.  Then I went back into the older section of the story, and revised some parts of it, as well.  

I deleted my original story from ff.net, and posted the new and improved version, with the title “Saturday Night in Port Angeles”.  I hoped no one would remember the previous story, but I couldn't risk it.  With a new title, it would surely stand a chance to be read, I thought.

I’m very much a perfectionist when it comes to writing.  And I’ve always heard it said, by writers with many books in their resumes, that one should do a lot of revising. One should be willing to toss out the most incredibly beautiful sentences, if they’re not contributing anything meaningful to the story, not advancing the plot, or telling the reader anything about a  character that they didn’t already know.

This is why writing is so time-consuming, and downright hard work.  This is also what makes it such a daunting undertaking.  But you know what?  The more you do it, the more passionate you get about it.  The more you lose your fear of the writing process itself.  

When you first put fingers to the keyboard ( occasionally I do put pen to paper, as I did before my computer geek husband got me a laptop), you feel stiff, unsure, even intimidated.  The important thing, though, is to start.  Once you get going, sometimes you can’t seem to stop!  (Like now, for instance, lol.)

So you start writing, timidly at first, and then, you’re suddenly on a roll, and the words just seem to write themselves on the page, and before you know it, you look up, and the sun is setting, or your spouse asks you a question which you answer with a moronic ‘huh?’

It’s now 6:38 PM, and I am calling it quits for today, “today” being the operative word, of course.  Lol!