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| IWSG |
Wowzers! Two consecutive months in which have I graced my presence in your IWSG world!
So without further ado, I welcome one and all to the Father Nature's Corner's Version 2.017 of the IWSG blog hop, because you just know that on the 1st Wednesday of every month is when every single writer worth the computer they use to churn out fantastically high quality verbiage comes together to commiserate, to challenge and to toot their highly polished Flugelhorn to the high heavens.
Today, I will both toot my own horn and offer my two cents to the question of the month.
Tooting my own horn:
I am near the end of a very long journey that started way back in October 2015 when I decided to rewrite an earlier slushie novel. This actually came about when I was rewriting a previously self-published novella through a company we will not name and suddenly remembered that I wrote a prequel to that book two years prior.
I'd chipped away on it throughout the past fourteen months, but I accelerated the process about two months ago, and now I stand about three pages away from completion. It's funny, but it's been an extremely long time since I got this passionate about a writing project. Normally, I get passionate about a story, then when it's done, it gets put on a shelf for future use (about two years minimum between completion and publication. This time, the goal is to get this out sometime this year, perhaps as early as this summer. I'll keep everyone post on my progress in the coming weeks.
Question! Of! The! Month!
"What writing rule do you wish you'd never heard?"
I have to confess that until l started drifting around the blog world in 2008, I hadn't heard word one of these wonderful writing rules. 'Course, it does help that I also have never participated in a writer's group, took a writing workshop or took a creative writing class {that last one is still on my bucket list}. Which makes paying attention to these wonderful writing rules pretty much a non-issue.
Personally, I'm from the school of common sense, in that if it doesn't sound right to me as a reader, then I'm pretty sure it wouldn't sound right to me writing it. But that isn't to say that I haven't had my issues with butting my head against those rules when a thoughtful well-respected writer points them out to me. I've learned over the years to downsize {i.e my descriptive scenes}, downsize again {i.e. info dumps}, pump it up {character descriptions}, severely tweak it {i.e. cliches}, and the ever popular show & tell {as opposed to dog & pony}.
I still have a lot to learn about these wonderful rules, but again, common sense rules my writing kingdom. Shouldn't it rule yours?
(c) 2017 BOOKS BY G.B. MILLER. All Rights Reserved.
My personal vendetta is against the Oxford comma, except when one is truly needed. In fact, I have sworn death to as many commas as possible, Oxford or not.
ReplyDeleteI admit to going hog wild on commas myself, although my new punctuation obsession is now "?!"
DeleteNo dog and pony? Bummer.
ReplyDeleteCool you are really excited about that story. By the end, I'm starting to get sick of mine.
Happy 2017!
Fortunately I haven't hit that particular bump yet. I'll probably hit the bump once I finish and move on to completely the first round of note taking.
DeleteI never took a creative writing class. I've participated in a workshop or two. I certainly have made use of writing groups over the years though. Critique groups are very helpful to me.
ReplyDeleteI thought about searching for a critique or writing group, but I think they're very hard to find here in CT. Most of the articles I've read about writers usually don't mention writing/critique groups, just the occasion reader/teacher/colleague.
DeleteCongratulations on your project! It's always a good feeling as something you've been working on for a long time nears completion. Best of luck!
ReplyDeleteThankee.
DeleteI went to school with Nun teachers n writing courses in n out of college. The nay-sayers do your creativity in sometimes, so it's just as well, the only good thing about creative writing courses I took was getting used to doing excercises off the top of your head. Some of those can be great fun too.
ReplyDeleteYay! You found a good old story that was fun. Maybe a best seller too?!
Oh, I had a lot of nay-sayers early on. In fact, in the acknowledgments for my first book, I actually told them off.
DeleteI got quite a few slushies that would be fun to re-write, if only I could remember what some of the plot lines were.
Rules were made to be broken right?
ReplyDeleteAnd well done for on cranking out a new story, sounds like you are really into this one too!
Well, yes. But if you don't know them to begin, then you really can't break them.
DeleteI am very much into this one. Right now, the issue is trying to find the proper ending w/o veering off into something that is completely out of the norm for the story.
I only took a part of one creative writing course and certainly should have stayed.
ReplyDeleteThat's still on my bucket list. However, I have get everything to sync properly before I can do it (aka, money/time).
DeleteCongratulations once again! There is a dearth of common sense these days, among writers and humans in general.
ReplyDeleteSo very, very true. And thanks.
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