First Sentence of a Novel...

Remember the "first pages" exercises we do?

Here is a blogger that has a Friday meme where anybody who wants to posts the first sentence of the novel they are reading, and their thoughts about it.

As a reader you might find it fun and interesting to follow along or even join in. [Go ahead, do it! Start a blog if you need to!]

As a writer, you will learn.

Rose City Reader--Book Beginnings on Fridays

And if you're wondering, the first sentence of the book I'm currently reading is:

First the colors.

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak.

My reaction? The entire first page is compelling, the second person pov, the layout and composition. I'm reading it on a Kindle but want to see it in print, to see how it looks. The first page grabs me. I'm not sure about the sentence alone, but it does intrigue.

 

What about you? Anybody? Nobody has chatted back recently. Let me know what's going on!

And we knew her when....

Remember when I asked you to go congratulate Gwenda for her first book sale? She has a cover now. And a contest to win an advance reading copy of her book.

I've known Gwenda for a very long time, and this is so wonderful.

Follow the link and read more about her book!

More advice on YA

So many of you are writing for Young Adult markets these days I wanted to share a link to Steven Piziks' Book View Cafe post on teens and texting. He's the father of teenagers and writes YA fiction, which gives his advice a double-whammy of weight on this subject.

Snippet: 
Whether we adults think this is a bad idea or not DOESN’T MATTER.  The teens themselves like it that way.  If you thinks it’s dreadful, that’s fine, but KEEP IT OUT OF YOUR WRITING.  You’ll alienate your teen readers, who’ll feel like you’re lecturing them about the evils of texting.

Steve's most recent book, The Doomsday Vault: A Novel of the Clockwork Empire.  

I also want to take this opportunity to apologize to those who were signed up for the Blueprinting class. My scheduling issues caught me by surprise, and I am very sorry not to be able to teach further this  spring.  I had looked forward to it.

See you in the autumn, I hope!

I have been attacked by a casserole!

A casserole that can't spell. [The casserole went back and corrected the spelling of my name, so at least the casserole edits!]

At least, I think that's what happened. I may be a bit inclined to hyperbole....

I Hate Patricia Borroughs!

 

Morning Pages and Journals

My friend Diane has a terrific blog entry about the benefits of morning pages, dream journals, and other diaries. Her summation of the MPs is particularly strong, because they've certainly served this purpose for me in the past:

The “morning pages” journal is my way to vomit out all of the angst, upset, rage, etc, etc that I’m feeling. The fabulous thing about doing this is that once you’ve done it, your brain records “Okay, she has shared her feelings on this matter!” and your desire to tell each and every person in creation about That Annoying Person or Incredible Realization #190 you just have basically goes down to zero. You get it out, you’re done with it.

I think I’d forgotten how bloody fabulous and mind-clearing that particular use of journals can be.

While Diane went on to analyze various ways of journaling from paper to computer to iPhone, it made me want to go check out the origin of Morning Pages again, and I discovered that the book that started it all is now available in many variations. The Artist's Way Starter Kit looks amazingly inviting:

But I have an aversion to pouring out my thoughts in a book that may as well be labeled, "Herein Lies Private Thoughts!" (or, you know, "Journal" or  "Diary" or such).

I see it's also available in a beautiful deckle-edged hardcover which is truly tempting to me, since my old copy is battered, and I think this book is a keeper:

There are workbooks and other side-items, some no longer available as new, but still out there. I haven't worked my way through this in many years, and it's kind of tempting to do it again.

I also bought The Vein of Gold: A Journey to Your Creative Heart, the sequel, years ago and never read it.  And now I find that there are even more books by Julia Cameron that I haven't read.

Have you read any of them? What did you think?

Read, read, read. Write, write, write.

Those are the two most important things for a writer to do.

While writing edges out reading for obvious reasons, the fact is, you still need to be reading, and you especially need to read that which you are writing.  Writing Young Adult? You'd better be reading Young Adult, and keeping up with what's new and hot.

The same with romance, mystery, or literary fiction. It's all the same in that you should read what's out there, read what's good, read what's bad, and read what's current.

I was surprised and pleased today to stumble across a page on Amazon that I hadn't noticed before:

Shop Amazon Books - Featured Debut Fiction

Fiction by new authors.  First published novels.

Go. Explore. See what's out there and figure out how it impacts what you're writing. Don't panic if your passion takes you in a different direction because I truly believe passion can't be trumped for the most part. But let your turn in a different direction be deliberate, not because you didn't know.

Get after it!

"Where do your ideas come from?"

There is not always an easy answer, because it's not something that I can always pin down.

This time, however, I can. I wrote about it here.

Remember how I said an emotional hook will take a reader some place they never wanted to go?

It happens to writers, too. Because of all the places on the planet, I would not have chosen to write about  the Trans Pecos.

But I did.

See ya over at planetpooks for the rest of the story.