Tag: writers

Friday Morning FYI – 1/6/2017

Ron Delaney Jr4 Comments

Welcome (back!) to your Friday Morning FYI (late for old times’ sake) – my chance to share observations/wisdom/rants in short, easily consumed form.

Hi all! I know it’s been a while (three months-ish to be ish-y), but I’m back with all new Friday Morning FYIs. I think I’ll start us up with a writing observation, since writing has been one the things with which I’ve been so occupied.

Writing what, you ask? Great question! That leads us to this week’s FYI:

I’ve always been of the opinion multi-tasking is dumb, especially in writing. How can you put out good creative content when bouncing back and forth between what are usually separate ideas (stories) involving different characters and settings? Well, apparently I was wrong – to an extent.

While working on my novel, I’ve banged out a few pretty darn good short stories recently (hopefully good news to announce on that front soon), and found taking a break from the wide, deep story in my novel to play with some fun short stuff was not only not a hindrance to the novel’s progress, but nice mental relief. Of course novels and SSs are very different, and I wouldn’t recommend continuously hammering away at both simultaneously, but every now and then seems fine. Live and learn, or some such 🙂

Hope you all had a blessed holiday season and great new year.

 

Thanks for reading,

{RDj}

The Villains Guide to Winning #NaNoWriMo Part 2: Electric Boogaloo

Ron Delaney Jr1 Comment

Welcome home, villains!

So the silly season is once again upon us, that time of year where all sanity and reason abandon those writers possessed of the notion that committing fifty-thousand words in a single month is a good idea. What folly, to bleed upon their keyboards through November, as if their souls ache for torture like that willfully sought by those sinners hurling themselves into Dante’s sixth circle of Hell, intent on the corruption of that sacred process of creation known as writing.

But if ya gotta, ya gotta, I guess.

Last year, I wrote a piece offering suggestions on how one might make novelist torture porn National Novel Writing Month easier on themselves. If you didn’t read that post, the villainous premise is simple enough:

#NaNoWriMo is not about writing a good book, it’s about getting 50K words into your document. Winning is all that matters, and you do that not by being a good, honest writer, but by hitting your daily word count, plain and simple.

I shared some villainous tips (as in things other suckers writers won’t think “honest” or “scrupulous” or “fair”) on how to get your daily word count swole, but surely you didn’t think I gave away all the dark secrets in that single post, did you? If so, surprise, fools! Here are some additional rules for cheating winning NaNoWriMo.

Embrace the dark side, kids. We have better toys.

Continue reading “The Villains Guide to Winning #NaNoWriMo Part 2: Electric Boogaloo” →

Friday Morning FYI – 9/23/2016

Ron Delaney JrLeave a comment

Welcome to your Friday Morning FYI (wow! a week late edition) – my chance to share observations/wisdom/rants in short, easily consumed form.

In addition to day job work and working on a novel and various short stories, I’ve decided to get a yoga trainer certification. Being all healthy and stuff, you know. In outlining a one hour class, I encountered a similar issue to one with which many writers struggle : flow. The beginning of the session is easy to construct, as is the end, but the middle… that friggin’ middle… is tough. Let’s make that this week’s (yes, fine, LAST week’s) FYI:

We all know the phrase “Life imitates art,” but no one ever said “Living life is like making art”. Not that I’ve seen, anyway, but it’s true. Things we do are like other things we do, but more often than not we don’t see the similarities, the connections, the bond. If you do something well, pay attention to what you did and how you did it, and that goes double for something you did poorly. Recognizing those patterns may pay off in another aspect of your life.

 

Thanks for reading,

{RDj}

Friday Morning FYI – 9/9/2016

Ron Delaney Jr2 Comments

Welcome to your Friday Morning FYI (busy busy busy weekend edition) – my chance to share observations/wisdom/rants in short, easily consumed form.

On Saturday, I received a rejection for a short story that went far into the selection process, and of which I’m quite proud. Not the biggest deal in the world as it was my first short story submission ever, and I figure I get to keep all the fun characters and use them in more stories (stay tuned), but for writers any rejection can be very disheartening.

Jump to Sunday where I spent six hours in yoga trainer training (no, not for research). In the late session, we were shown Crow, but before trying it, the trainer showed us how to roll in case we found ourselves falling forward. He went into the posture, tucked his head, leaned forward, rolled, and wound up in a sitting position. “Just roll,” he said to a room full of people who had obviously never (or not recently) done that, and shrugged. “That’s it, just roll.” As ideas/realizations normally do, ‘Just roll’ struck me like a bee sting, because that’s what I do with my writing rejections. That leads us to this week’s FYI :

Every rejection, in writing and in life, can feel like a knife to the gut, but they’re not. They’re part of the learning/growing process, like all failures. Understand and accept that not everyone will love or even like everything you write, and that’s normal. Keep going until you find the right words for the right story for the right audience. Until then, just roll.

 

Thanks for reading,

{RDj}

Friday Morning FYI – 8/19/2016

Ron Delaney JrLeave a comment

Welcome to your Friday Morning FYI (holy-crap-how-is-it-Tuesday-already? edition) – my chance to share observations/wisdom/rants in short, easily consumed form.

Now I’m really pushing how late I can post something labeled with a day of the week from which we’re four days removed. *shrug*

This morning, I noticed the lady standing to my left on the Path was reading a printed manuscript. How do I know it was a manuscript? As someone who’s taken the time to learn proper formatting for submissions, I know MS formatting, and recognized the upper-right header (book title, page number, author name). Curious, I pointed to the page and asked if it was hers? She smiled, answered ‘no’, and said she worked for a publisher. I then told her I write, and asked if the MS was any good. “It’s high fantasy, which isn’t my thing, but it’s very well written.” I apologized for bothering her, to which she replied ‘No problem,’ and we went back to doing our own things. That thirty second exchange leads us to this week’s FYI:

To seize opportunities, preparedness is key. The more you know, the better equipped you’ll be to talk to someone, provide advice or answers, etc. Knowing how to format a manuscript is important when submitting your work to agents and publishers,  but it also allowed me to recognize someone working in an industry I’m trying to break into. Nothing came of it because I’m not a pushy lout, and she and I will most-likely never see each other again, but what if after I’d told her I write she’d asked what genre and the conversation continued? Stuff like that is rare, but anything can happen.

Learning how your industry works is the best way to be ready when important moments arise. At the very least, you’ll know you’re doing everything right.

 

Thanks for reading,

{RDj}

PS – No, I’m not saying writers should ride the trains all day looking for anyone holding a printed page and attempt to land a publishing contract. Normal human decency always applies.