It was very busy with travel, a writers retreat, parties, friends and canning! And, a new writing project that I am LOVING!

Okay, I love all of them, but I *think* I found my niche.

As you might have seen in a  few past posts, I love cartomancy (the art of reading a regular deck of playing cards)

I am working on an e-book for writers on how to use cartomancy to help with your stories. I’ve  also been writing short stories (one was accepted and will be published soon!) and one thing led to another….wala, this new project.

I’m working on a series of linked short stories that all have this in common:

1– There is a cartomancer in the cast of characters (it’s an urban fantasy–all set in the same town with the same cast)

2- Each story’s theme is taken from the card I draw on it.

3- Each character is derived from a card draw on them.

I am having a blast with this project and as well, , working on the ebook.

Which brings me to this conclusion–I’m finding I don’t have time for the Meet n Greets. This is something I LOVED doing , but it took a lot of time to and to build it as I had intended to would take even more time.

So, I’m in a re-vamp-the-blog mode…to make it more of my “author’s site” to talk now and then about my projects and to have as my online business card, and of course, I will continue with my cartomancy blog over at Cartomancy For Creatives.

So, for now, I’m going to de-clutter, rearrange and redecorate in here to represent who I am as a writer and get back to some basic blogging.

I want you all to know that I LOVED getting to know you better and enjoyed all the interaction. I’m hoping that we can all continue to follow one another and I know we’ll continue to support our writing endeavors!

You ALL ROCK!!!

HAPPY WRITING!! <3

The new challenge was to do a Facebook status story—an on-going story told in blocks of less than 500 characters via a Facebook status. I know there are writers who’ve done it on twitter ( I can’t even  imagine having the character count be only 120 characters!)

But a fabulous writer friend started hers a few months back and the idea has been in the back of my mind for a while (and I’ll admit, I wanted to see how she did hers and I’m enjoying each Wed & Sunday when I can read her next installment!!)

I’ve had the short story bug for the last few months and I wanted to extract some characters from my first novel (that is now in a drawer) and play with them in some short stories.

So I decide to give this status story form a try. I found the form to be not only challenging, but a unique way to see a story—which is in chunks, so that each post is intriguing enough on its own

It’s like the Six Sentence Sunday blogging project where you post six sentences from your WIP. A lot of those bloggers are posting six sentences consecutively…so, that their entire novel is posted (eventually)

But with this, at least to me, it’s not about taking a novel and extracting less than 500 characters in sequence to post. It’s about seeing the whole story in blocks and making each block as interesting as possible.

Maybe this intrigues me the same way Flash Fiction does—that you are telling a snippet of a story with as few words as possible.

So, I asked both Jeannine and Jess about their experience with it.

1. Ladies, this idea is much like the popular web-fiction where you post chapters once or twice a week on a website and readers can read along, leave comments and interact with the story. Yet, it is very different due to the limit of less than 500 characters a post. When you started doing this, what did you find to be the most challenging?

Jeannine: When I started this, it was a limit of 420 characters per post, which was probably the most challenging.  Fitting the story into segments that make sense on their own as “status bites” was also something I had to work with.

Jess: Attempting to make each 500 character story into a self-contained unit, like a complete flash fiction piece with beginning-middle-end. Now I’m focusing more on making each piece as satisfying as possible, but they can’t always stand alone. (I don’t think most of them do!)

2. Do you think that in reducing a story to blocks like is done with this, that it has helped you see your writing in a new way? Do you play more with sentence structures in order to utilize the words best?

Jeannine: I find it’s easier to write a story that flows one line into another, but to make it fit within the constraints of the “status” and then flow into the next – that required some new thinking.  The whole thought behind the FB Status Story challenge was to force me to tell the story in as few words as possible – so word choice and sentence structure are integral.  Sometimes I’ll have it just how I want it, think it works perfectly and then I put it in my character counter and see I’m over limit – then I have to edit out any un-necessary words or see if there’s a better (aka shorter) word choice I can use to get under the count and still make it work.

Jess: I don’t spend as much time with sentence structure, though the order of words does play a part. This experiment has more so taught me the value of a word. It’s an even more extreme version of the limitations imposed by a 100 page screenplay. These Status Stories are basically 100 words or less and are not forgiving of a habit of filler words. I’m asking myself, “Do I really need this word? Is there a better, preferably shorter, one I can use instead? Or can I cut it entirely without losing what I’m trying to convey?” A

3. Are you creating the story as you go or do you know the entire story and how it will end?

Jeannine: It’s funny because when I wrote the first few “snippets” I actually thought the story would go a completely different way than it is.  When I go back and look at my notes, I see a place six weeks or so in where I had actually written an ending for the story, but a new ending popped into my head just before posting that section, so I kept going.  Carly wasn’t ready to go away yet, so I made myself sit down and figure out what was going to happen, so I didn’t just ramble on for a year and not get anywhere. 

I had to make a plot outline that now helps to guide me from point to point.  But I just know the major plot points, not how she gets to each – like now, she’s met this new person, Paula and she’s standing in front of a bar, when all she wanted was a diner to get a burger.  When I wrote down the plot point introducing Paula, I had intended for it to be a diner – but when I started writing out the segments, it turned into a bar and it’s become the perfect set-up for the trouble that Carly was going to get into at this point of the story.

Jess: I know the BIG plot points that are coming up. So I’m pretty much filling in the blanks between those major points. It’s actually driving me crazy trying to get to the first one because I want to write it soooooooo bad!

4. What made you decide to do this? What do you hope to get out of it as a writer?

Jeannine: Ha!  I blame you for this!  We kept talking about word counts and how it can limit a story, and then you were talking about Web Fiction.  I had seen a FB page of “status stories” – where it’s Flash Flash Fiction – a whole story in less than 500 characters.  Not quite up to THAT severe a limitation challenge, I let all the notions roll around in my head for a little while and came up with this notion of “FB Status Stories,” kind of combining all the concepts.  I wanted to tell a full (short) story, but in units that would fit in a status box and stand on their own if read out of context.

A lot of people have asked me to post some of my writing – either on FB, on a blog, or some where where they could read it, and I figured this would be as good as any.  In a future story, I hope to make it more interactive – letting the readers decide/suggest what would happen to the MC  next.

As a writer, I saw it as a new way to challenge myself.  It makes me think more about all the structural elements in writing than if I just sat down and wrote a regular short story.  Plus, I’ve had a lot of fun doing it – even if you may hear me muttering under my breath about being “frickin’ five characters over!”

Jess: I’ve been enjoying Jeannine’s status stories and wanted to give it a go myself! I’m looking at this experiment as writing practice of several kinds: becoming more selective in word choice and using each word better, in putting together a complete story with all the mini-stories put together, writing every day, and just having FUN.

5. Ladies, have either of you had any “aha” moments or specific challenges with this?

Jeannine: Aha moments?  Other than just the regular writing ones of – “Character did what???” and such?  That maybe I should have set a “time limit” on myself for how many weeks/months it would take to post the story.  Other than that, because I’ve been working on it in between other pieces, trying not to repeat myself and trying not to contradict myself has been a challenge.  Oh, and remembering where I was in posting!  But then I started highlighting my document to mark the paragraph as I post it and it really helped me.  (One time, I actually skipped three whole segments because I was on the road and lost my place!  But it was good, I was able to restructure and work around it.  I think it did confuse some people though – if not, then I guess I really didn’t need those paragraphs, did I?)

Jess: I’m enjoying writing these stories because they’re liberating in a way. They’re not a monumental novel project and they’re not a short story for a competition. They’re just writing for the sake of writing. I can write one or more per day and have the satisfaction of knowing I’ve written that day.

My biggest challenge now? Dialogue. Dialogue eats up some serious space! I mean, most screenplays are probably 80-90% dialogue. I’ve found myself avoiding it in these status stories as much as possible. Again, it’s another challenge to make the most of what the characters are saying in the tiniest amount of space. I think this whole idea can only help improve my writing. Time shall tell!

Thank you ladies! You can read their Facebook status stories on their Facebook Pages here: Jeannine Wynne and Jess W. Jacob.

Mine is n a Facebook profile, so you’ll need to request to be a friend:  Ash Joie Lee

We are each posting on Wednesday & Sunday.

I am happy to be back home, at my desk, on my desktop surrounded by all my things and furry critters once again!

The vacation did lead me to a chapter that is taking my novel in a new direction (or rather one I hadn’t planned on) and it raises the stakes very nicely, thank you. So, that was good.

I kept wanting to do a flash fiction piece, set there, as it’s a place that I have in my past WIP as well as the  current one. But I’m finding that flash fiction is just not my strong suit– let me rephrase that–I suck at Flash Fiction!

I tried. I had an idea, had two characters, knew the situation– but it just didn’t work. I wanted to experiment with style.  As an artist, I know how to experiment: with color, with different mediums, with a new technique…but not with words.

Do you experiment? Do you try new styles or  new genres?  It is always good to try something new and to stretch the writing voice, but I found myself saying, I’m just not a flash fiction writer!

Have you found a groove you are happy in and know it’s your  thing?  Or, are you still searching for that groove?

Please share your experiences with experimenting!

I’d like to share 5 reasons why my vacations inspire my writing and I’d love to hear what you think—do they inspire yours?  How?

1. Car Talk– Even if I am going somewhere alone, I talk to myself in the car. It’s a great time to sort my thoughts out (aloud) on scenes or plot. And when traveling with my hubby, we end up having very interesting conversations that lead to “you know what would make a good story?” Yesterday, on the way here, hubby and I started talking about demons, mythology and the Church. As a paranormal writer, I speculated on things and came up with several story ideas and new thoughts I could use. My last trip was with my girlfriends (all writers) and we went on two ghost tours and talked the whole week about a story with 4 friends traveling!

2. New “Word Traps” This comes from Priscilla Long’s, The Writer’s Portable Mentor, and in the chapter, “Working with Words,” she says writers need to “make like Adam and put a name to it.”  Language that entices the reader is not accidental; neither is it tortured and twisted and wrung.

When a writer begins a new work, fiction or non-fiction, chapter or essay or scene, a word trap provides the means to deepen and augment the work. In Priscilla Long’s words, a word trap “is to collect words and phrases in a list that pertains to the piece you are currently working on….The words are out there. Time to bring them in.”

I learned to utilize this from McKenna in her Style workshops. She loves word traps because conventional received diction (i.e., words from television, newspapers, cereal boxes) are the language of belief rather than the language of sensory recorded experience.  And it’s the sensory our readers respond to. (If they want conventional diction, they’ll read cereal boxes, yes?)

I’m in Beaufort, where my hero and heroine have an intense scene on the beach. So while here and at the beach, I plan to gather some/thoughts/phrases words for beach.

3. Books—We like to rent cottages or cabins for our vacations and what do most places have? A bookcase. Full of unusual books. I’m sitting here looking at the bookcase in our cottage and I see the books: Basic Physics, The Mariners Dictionary and Handbook of Industrial Metrology! You never know when rummaging through a different type of book can give you that bit of fodder to use! Or, stop in a small bookstore (let’s help support them!) that has a lot of local interest books and browse!

4. New sensory and sights. This goes along with the word trap idea, but when in a new place, even if it’s a place you return to time and again, we have new sensory experiences. It smells different here, I see different fauna, the food is different, the weather is different, the locals are different. Different can pull us out of our usual way of describing something. We all see a sunset each day, but when it feels different, we can write about it differently.

5. Writer’s Groups.  I’m adding in this one because as I was sitting here typing this post, hubby walked in after a trip to the grocery store and said: “I found something for you to do tomorrow.” He folded up the local newspaper and handed it to me. The Beaufort writers are meeting tomorrow. He suggested that I go. Now, I’m assuming it’s a free-for-all-writers meeting, but it is always inspiring to meet new writers from other areas to see what they talk about! Plus, since we come here a lot, I use Beaufort in stories and it would be great to have a local contact for expert “place information”!

I know there are a LOT more than 5 reasons, so please share yours! Go visit the commentors blogs, have a great week and I hope you’ll hop over to my Paisley Goddess blog where I’ll be sharing more about Beaufort while here.

Image by: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Happy Monday Writers!

As writers we come across it all the time—the sometimes scary “reality” that we have to do all we can to promote ourselves.

We’re told: we need a website, or we should blog, use Facebook, Twitter, and now Google+ ?

It can be overwhelming and very time consuming.

I’ve read article after article on this topic and I’m still navigating my way around trying to see what works best and what I can handle time-wise.

What do you use?   How is it working for you?  Have you discovered a good way to promote yourself, get your name out there and/or build a following?

Do you have any questions or confusions about any of it?

I’d love to hear your thoughts and venues on the subject and if anyone has any questions, hopefully someone can point you in the right direction!

Please share!