Make today Extordinary and a life changing book

To those of you who are new to this blog. Welcome. You will notice that Blush aka Linda has been carrying us for quite a while. We love her posts and would like to invite you to visit some of the archived posts. Someday I might even do my top ten from last year. There were some good ones.
So what is new this week? Well, if you were at LTUE last weekend then no doubt you have heard James A Owen's keynote address about "The Power of Choice." It was fabulous. Meeting James and having dinner with him and our awesome writing group was even cooler as I was able to discover that he is one of the most genuine people I have ever met. He cares about his readers and he is a crafty marketing guru. Most of all he doesn't sweat the small stuff.

This week on his blog he has made his book "Drawing Out the Dragons..." available on ebook for free for five days. He said to share the link with someone we love. I must say that I would like to share it with everyone I know. My 10 year old read it and he said, "It changed my perspective on the world." He has been drawing dragons every day since.
Here is the link. Go and download the book and read it with your family this weekend.

CLICK HERE!

Post Highjacking in progress!! Sorry, Debbie.

Hey there Inkers and followers,

I highjacked today's post because I finished, "Clockwork Prince" by Cassandra Clare last night and the ending left me needing to vent.


So here I am venting: I hate that book 3 is not out and I want to slap at least three of her main characters!!!
[SPOILER ALERT-although I will not be specific you will glean spoilers from this rant. Especially if you are unfamiliar with Cassandra Clare and her tactics when it comes to romance and therefore unprepared for the tempest.]

I know that the romantic tension of the story needs to carry through 3 maybe even 4 books, but really does the heroine have to make the stupid, sappy choice with the secondary sypathetic guy while the REAL HERO is on his way to profess his love for her? It's annoyingly short sighted of her and after a book and a half I am mad at all of them. The sappy guy for being so nice and vulnerable and likeable, the Hero for taking so long to overcome his issues, and especially the heroine for choosing the lesser of man at precisely the wrong moment. (Granted, there is hope that she can change that decision with only minor bloodshed and mayhem.)

I know that it isn't a new tale of wo for a romance to take this turn. I can see that there is hope for book 3 (if I can just wait to see what happens, which at this point is unlikely.) BUT really, I feel like I've been toyed with by Ms. Clare's machinations. I know who the real hero is and I know that he is more noble, strong, true, sexy, and awesome than the other guy. WHY oh WHY must the girl in the story be such a dunce? I wanted to throw the book. I hoped that somehow it would not go exactly the direction I saw it going--like watching a train on a collision course with a truck and hoping that it will somehow magically stop in time, only to witness the horrifying train wreck you knew was coming. (Don't get me wrong I have faith that she will pull this twisted mess apart in book three and I'll leave the story relieved and happy. I liked the City of Bones series.)

So here is what went right: The author managed to evoke high emotion in me as a reader. She left a window of hope and a lead into book 3. She made her characters so real that I wanted to slap them sometimes and kiss them other times, and she gave the reader a nominal happy ending with some secondary characters as a breadcrumb.

However, even though I usually enjoy a good romance, even if its formulaic, the forces behind Clare's romances are frustrating to me. The worst part is that I can't put my finger on the exact reason it annoys me so much.
End of rant.

What books drive you crazy, the good and the bad?

Recycling the Hunks

New teen staralicious Thomas McDonell brother to author Nick Mcdonell just debuted in "Prom" by Disney. Does he remind you of anyone?



Like this fellow Mr. Johnny Depp in Don Juan DeMarco. Maybe its just me =)




There is a point to this little display. I'm struggling to pinpoint my hero! I've started a new project and I have a dastardly villain, a spunky heroine with red low lights in her hair that match her fiery personality, a pseudo hero (beautiful and flawed), but the elusive Pimpernel of the plot it still hiding. I can't seem to find him. So I'm going to spend some more time reading about my favorite heroes and see if I can channel a younger sexier version of an old favorite.
Hey, if Disney can do it, why can't I?

Olympic Dreaming

What do writers and Olympic gymnasts have in common? The impossible dream? The hours of dedication and sacrifice? Or maybe just the twisting and bending. Gymnasts bend, flip, and twist their bodies, while writers bend, flip and twist their minds.
Recently, while slowed down by illness I got sucked into a TV Series about elite gymnasts preparing for the Olympics in 2012. The fictional account of the struggles of 4 teenage girls to reach the goal of being on the medal stand at the Olympics struck a cord in my mind that was buried deep. I dreamt about the Olympics and couldn't get the stories out of my mind. And then during one episode where all looked lost for one of the girls her mother said something that put it all into perspective. While talking about the sacrifices everyone had made to support the gymnast in her dream, Mom said (something to the effect of), "You can't ask if its all worth it, because you're here and for better or worse you have to go for it. It's who you are."

Writing a novel, editing, honing, selling, and publishing can feel like an Olymic dream sometimes. Few succeed, but the pay off in the end is worth it and the journey is worth it.
Gymnastics is an individual sport in the end, but almost anyone who has walked the beam will tell you that it takes a team to win. Writing is also an individual art that requires a team of spotters, supporters, believers and dreamers to win.
No one could ask for a better or more inspiring team of all-stars than the Inkers. We dream big, and train hard and work late and never, ever give up.

So what's your dream? Are we dreaming big enough for the talent we have? Are your dreams Olympic size? If we're going to put in the blood, sweat, and tears, we might as well reach for the Gold.

From Dress to Fin and Back Again

I've been watching H2O Just Add Water on netflix with my kids. In the show three Australian teen girls get transformed into mermaids. Its cute and the mythology is fun. They have super powers all related to water and life is hard on the Gold Coast of Australia if you instantly grow a tale when water touches you.



Here is what the transformation looks like:


So the thing is that their clothes morph with them and when they dry their clothes, including whatever shoes they are wearing, morph back to normal. Is clothing optional when it comes to transformation magic? I have a shapeshifter in my latest story (not a mermaid) and I'm trying to figure out the clothing issue.


Should clothes morph with the magic, such as in the mermaid story or should it rip up and fall off like the shapeshifters in Stephenie Meyers' stories?

What do you all think? Dress to fin or fin to skin? Both scenarios present obstacles and advantages.

Passive Voice agression

While I was preparing to post today, I was stuck by the idea of writing about passive voice. Recently I was able to read several samples of writing. It was fun. It was enlightening and they were full of passive voice. The tone of the works were varied and the content was very different, but the sentences were so often in passive form that I was pulling my hair out over some of the paragraphs.
In fact, while writing this post, I was fighting with the urge to scream.

Not claiming to be an expert on active voice or passive voice, I am merely going to pose a few questions and give some examples from when our group studied passive voice vs active voice.

How many of you noticed that the first paragraph of the post is completely passive? How many of you are bugged by it? When is passive voice a good idea? When is it lazy writing?

Some teacher out there can explain how the verb 'Be' makes a sentence passive etc. I'm just going to say, if you do a word search for "was" in your manuscript and find 8 uses in one paragraph, hopefully you did it on purpose and not by accident. If it was an accident, then changes are easy to make.

It was a dark and stormy night. (passive)
Dark thunderclouds rolled across the sky. (active)

I was alone in the room. (passive)
They left me alone in the room. (active)

Times to use passive according to our guru on grammar:
1) When you are describing ongoing movement or action. (ie: I was curling my hair, when the phone rang.)
2) To break up an intense scene or stream of action: (I can't make up a good example cause I keep trying to fix the passive.)

So when do you think its okay to use passive voice? Is there a difference from 3rd person to 1st person? Does it vary by genre?

Writing as punishment...oh no you don't.

My nine year old son announced that he had to write a four page report on animals. While pulling out details of the assignment, I realized that something was a little off. Next came the confession from my dear son:
DS: "Well, its actually a punishment."
Me:"What are you being punished for?"
DS: "Yesterday, when our class went to the carpet, Teacher said if you get your name on the board (for being disruptive)you have to write a report on animals. I asked if I could just write the report and she didn't say anything. So I did just enough bad things to get my name on the board and now I get to write the report!"

He is indeed my child. His love of knowledge and need to share in this case made him get himself in trouble. What does a mother do? I told him to get researching and make sure the report was as good as he could make it.
I plan to call his teacher today and ask her not to encourage his delinquency.

What would you do to be able to write? Would you be disruptive?

The Seventh Inning Stretch

The "Pitch it to us" has closed. As of five hours ago really. So we will now deliberate and pronounce the winner on Monday!! Good luck to all those who entered. You are brave and wise. To have a professional editor look over and coach you on pitching is not something you get everyday and you have seen the value in sharing your work. Kudos to you!! The pitches are great and we are going to have a tough time picking a favorite, but we will find a way. If Steven Tyler and J-Lo can pick winners then we can too!

Stay tuned and enjoy the weekend posts while we deliberate.

Time to get in the Game

I have a feeling that many of you fabulous friends are in the warm up area perfecting your pitching. Just remember that you have until 5 pm on Thursday to get in the game!

Go HERE to throw us a fast ball, curve ball, or cotton ball. We look forward to them all.
It is so fun to see what everyone is working on. For those who may fear too much exposure for your story, I just want to say, 'fear not' this elevator pitch should be the line you give everyone who asks what you're writing.

Here is a little scenario:
Let's say two fabulous aspiring authors are at a conference. Writer 1 (aka Bard) and Writer 2 (aka Mouse) run smack into a New York editor (aka Thor). Thor benevolently grants them each 20 seconds of his precious time to tell him what they are working on.

Mouse: "Squee! I'm working on a history of spark plugs. (Forgets to mention that in the story the spark plugs have become self actualized and taken over the planet.)
Thor: So it's non-fiction how nice.

Bard: "In my YA urban fantasy, Cassie is kidnapped by demonic zombie nuns and imprisoned in the catacombs of Rome."
Thor: "I've been looking for a good zombie nun story. Go ahead and send it over and put the conference in the subject line."

Practice makes perfect. Go ahead and Pitch it to us!

Contest: Pitch it to us!

We are all gearing up for our pitch sessions at LDS Storymakers and wanted to share the fun with our writer friends. So we here at INKING CAP are holding our 1st ever contest!!

Step up to the Pitching mound and throw us a fast ball. The Inkers want to hear your best elevator pitch. The more the merrier so don't be shy, send this contest to all of your friends. It's a great way to prepare for a meeting with an agent or editor or future queries.

The contest goes something like this:
Step 1: Become a follower.
Step 2: In the comments leave your elevator pitch (30 seconds or less to read out loud. For tips on writing a good pitch check out Kristen Nelson's workshop.)
Step 3: The Inkers will review all of the pitches and pick our favorite 3.

1st Place
An exclusive, highly coveted invitation to attend our April writer's group meeting (tentatively planned for April 26th. Lots of treats involved). You will get to practice your full pitch with all of us, including Sir-Kirk-a-lot!(He's a Senior Editor in case you didn't know. We have 3 professionals in the fields of publishing, PR, and writing and 3 genius critiquers in our group, for those who don't know us personally.) If you live out of state or too far away to join us, we will work out a conference call or google video feed. Ask Inker Arlene from Reno how well that works out. (She's still with us after 2 1/2 years.)
Also if you choose, we will review your first 10 pages. (Not all Inkers may be available for critiquing and feedback depending on scheduling, but we will give you at least 3 reviews.)

2nd Place
You win a review of your first 5 pages. (If we pick your pitch, then it must be a story we want to know more about so we'll critique it and give you our best feedback.)

3rd Place
Wins a first page review and critique.


It's all for fun. You have until 5:00 PM on Thursday, March 31,2011 (MST)to submit your pitch and get in the running.


Winners will be announced on Monday, April 4th!!

Phineas and Ferb and Writing lessons

My children have discovered Phineas and Ferb, a wacky fun witty cartoon with quirky characters and fine writing. I get glimpses of the show as they are watching on Netflix. So the other day I was reading(I should have been writing), when I caught just part of a scene played out on the show between the bad guy, Dr. Doofenschmirtz,
and his arch nemesis the lovable and capable, Perry the Platypus.

In this scene, Perry is captured on the new hover barge built by Doofenschmirtz (never get tired of that wacky name btw). Perry is captured and in true villain fashion Doofenschmirtz is gloating. Here is how it went:
Doofenschmirtz: "Ah yes my new hover barge has more hidden traps than...(snap fingers)...(Um,snap again)...what has a lot of hidden traps?" Dr. Doofenschmirtz looks off into the sky unable to finish the metaphor. "Wow and I felt so confident when I started that sentence...okay anyway..."

How often have I felt like a total Doofenschmirtz while writing? Thinking I had a great line that either fizzled or in some cases died suddenly and inexplicably mid breath?
About five minutes into the action of getting caught in his own traps the Dr. says, "A golf course has lots of traps. That's what I should have said before."

If I'm lucky the metaphor, or description or perfect witty dialogue will come to me when I least expect it and the pressure is off. Sometimes however I have to just say, 'Okay, anyway' and get on with the evil plot and come back later.

Have you ever felt like Doofenschmirtz?

Link up! Let us find you.

Welcome to all the fun people we met at LTUE!! Its great to have Alaina with us. We've been brainstorming some fun new things for our group. The first is a contest for all of our friends. We'll announce the details soon.

So if you want us to come find you in the blog-o-sphere post a link to your blog in the comments and we'll come check out what you're up to. We'll also let you know when we post the contest.

The Not So Grand Opening

"It was a dark and stormy night. The wind howled like a pack of dogs and the rain pelted the windsheild of the racing car. Darkness shrouded the forest in mystery and...yeah I stopped reading at the first 'was'!

Whoever decided to teach children to write fiction by starting with a prompt like "It was a dark and stormy night" should be drowned in their own ink.

Nathan Bransford, former literary agent and current author and guru, posted a blog contest this week offering tantalizing prizes for a great opening paragraph. Over a 1,500 paragraphs appeared in his comments. HERE is the blog post.

Of the 500 or more that I read there were probably 8 of them that stood out. It is an excellent exercise in being a literary agent and seeing what comes into the inbox everyday. Check out the openings and see if you can spot the ones worthy of being finalists.

Also note the similarity in the threads on the market right now. Are you writing a ghost book? Is your main character dead? Hmmm.

Good manners aren't dead, they're living at the Ritz

“Good morning, Madam, how may I be of service?” How long has it been since someone called you Madam or Sir? How long has it been since someone assisting you at a bank or other business made you feel like the most important person they met all day?
In an age of instant messages, texts and tweets with no salutations, it is easy to lose track of our common courtesy. I’m as guilty of this as anyone, but I recently had a reminder of the power of good manners.

In a recent business class, our instructor had a fascinating amount of information on how the Ritz Carlton Hotels all over the world train their staff, including the small trifold paper carried by staff members reminding them of the rules. A warm greeting, assistance with a smile, and a fond farewell are all required.
Employees at the hotel are required to address everyone as “Madam or Sir” and have sample phrases such as, “It would be my pleasure to assist you.” The impression is that whether you are the Princess of Genovia or a businessman attending a convention or Joe Plumber, as soon as you step through their door, you become royalty in the world of the Ritz.
Manners and mannerisms can cast a character so quickly. As I work on my current project, I'm trying to remember the quiet courtesy of the Korean people. It is a challenge in my current fast paced, fast tracked communication world. But its important to the feel of the story to pay attention to the manners of the people.

How do good or bad manners play into your characters or stories?

Pressure!!

This is the setting for my new WIP (work in progress) I've committed to meeting with an agent and pitching this book in 3.5 months. 1/2 the time it usually takes me to write a novel. I'm not counting the 6.5 months I've spent outlining and plotting and hoping that I could like the story enough to write it because until January 4th when inspiration finally struck and the whole thing became clear. I hadn't seriously started writing.

Pressure. If capturing the awesome beauty of South Korea were not enough pressure to put on myself, I've added this seemingly impossible deadline.

What pressure do you put on yourself when you write? I know we're feeling it. What's your pressure?

Success

How do we measure success? What does it say about us?

After spending more than half the night waiting for things to come together so that I can meet with one of my favorite agents of all time, success this morning is just getting my computer to work and getting everything arranged.

My oldest son is in a production of "A Christmas Carol" directed by our very own Rose (DJ) and I'm helping back stage. Yesterday was opening night. Success was getting all the way through the play without any major hiccups. The K-6 graders sang beautifully, the lead actor slowed down so you could actually understand his lines, and of course my son was fabulous as he belted his 3 lines as well. SUCCESS!
These are little successes but if I don't count them then I feel like I might always be waiting for success and never achieving it.

What successes have you had recently? Found that perfect gift? Overcome a challenge? Managed to fit in that work out? Tell us about it.

Spillin' the beans about the Inkers

Many of you know that we bloggers here on Inking Cap are a writing group. We are friends and neighbors...even if one neighbor lives 9 hours away.
What you may not know (and certainly I will be watching my back for telling you this), we are also a lethal ninja force against self-doubt and the angst of writing.
Inspiration from within the group will sneak in at that moment when you think you can't take one more bad sentence and it will pick you up and kick you back in gear.

The ninja force has been collectively at work in the last month to defeat the evil of lethargy. Someone and I honestly can't remember who, although I have a vague inkling that it was the Ninja Master, (You'll have to guess which one of us that is because that secret is above your security clearance.) said, "Why don't we actually write at our meetings. Since we are all so busy let's just take a little time at the very beginning of the meeting and work on something to share."

We did 15 minute writing exercises for our first 6 months or so as a group and since last month was our 2nd anniversary!! That was a while ago. Then we morphed our schedule to discuss life, the universe, each other, our writing, and many things in between, mostly how we were all having trouble finding time to finish our projects. With the 2nd anniversary came a new and brilliant evolution in our group. WE took 1 hour of our group meeting and semi-silently wrote individually then we shared our new projects while they were raw and fresh and exciting.
It was transcendent.

I wanted to share a little about what we are doing because we have found something that is working for us and its new and fresh and exciting. With this new inspiration we have also decided to double our meetings per month. I know groups who meet once a week and some who meet like we did once a month. Whatever works for you is best. We of the ninja Inkers mostly live by the live and let live strategy of writing.

What's working for you? If you have things you love about your writing group, your pta, your ninja squad, whatever, please tell us about it. Who knows where the next great idea for evolution will come from?

Stop the invisible cows!

This photo has very little to do with my story but it made me laugh.

So I drove by a stop sign today that I have driven by several times before...and by several I mean almost weekly for 4 years, so about 200 times. And if you caught that I drove by without stopping that's because the sign is not on the road I drive on. It's next to the road at what should be an intersection. The only problem is I just noticed today that there is no intersecting road.

In my digital distraction, child screaming, radio tuning drives by in the past, I've assumed it was a dirt road intersecting with the main road and hence a stop sign on the edge of this field.
NO ROAD, folks.

I was driving with my two youngest children 7 and 4 today when I saw it.
I said, "Hey there's no road there. Just a stop sign."
Daughter: "Maybe it's for the invisible road, with the invisible cars."
Me: "I hope they watch where they're going cause I can't see them."
Son: "No, Mom. It's for the cows. The invisible ones."
Daughter to son: "Stop acting like you know everything."
Me: "If there invisible, why isn't the stop sign invisible too?"
Silence in the back seat for 10 seconds...bliss.

So does anyone out there want to tell me why a stop sign would be out in a field with no road leading to it? Feel free to be creative. As you may have guessed, the rest of the drive home I was distracted with stories of spacial rifts and invisible cattle-flying.

Ka-Ching!

Writing is something that gives me great personal satisfaction. I love to see a completed sentence, paragraph, page, work - a hard copy of something that once only existed in my brain.

My dream is to be able to do what I love and make a living at it. Although my current job involves a lot of writing and provides that outlet for me to some degree, it is not fiction writing. That is where the dream begins.

On days when I am really indulging in fantasy, I try to put myself into the shoes of authors who not only make a living at it, but have hit the jackpot, either financially or with name recognition and legacy. It seems wrong to make crazy amounts of money for doing something you love so much, but I wouldn't turn it down.

My musings led me one day to research the best-selling authors of all time. Wikipedia provided such a list. Of course, it is not comprehensive, nor, being Wikipedia, necessarily fully accurate. But I found it very interesting. Here is the link.

A couple of reactions: Glad to see Willie Shakespeare on top, as it should be

Holy crap Barbara Cartland! Now I really feel like a slacker. She must have written a book a month.

I also found this article about Dean Koontz. I like him enough after reading this to try one of his books again or his autobiography.

It seems like a lot of successful authors are not as flashy as those who succeed in other areas of the arts, especially actors and singers. Although J.K. did buy that castle...

Pressure!

As I mentioned earlier this week I witnessed and IronMan Race last weekend. Here is what I learned about storytelling at the Finish Line.
Pressure applied in appropriate places makes the story richer. Take a thirty-something mother of 4, who has trained and overcome injury and struggled with inner demons of doubt, and have her decide to swim, bike and run in an Ironman Triathlon.

The 2 mile swim, 112 mile bike ride and 26.2 mile run are individually difficult. Combine them all on one day. Then lets make the swim an open water event with wind and reeds and other natural challenges. Let's set the bike route up one of the steepest hills in Ironman history, and lest we forget the run lets make it a 13 mile circuit that has to be repeated with inclines and ravines to test her.

That's not even the pressure.

Add 2,000 other competitors to get in the way, especially during the swim. And the piece de resistance...elimination time limits, 5 of them.
Now we have the recipe for a really great hero's journey. Will she fight her way through the sea of bodies clamoring to get through the water at the same time she is? YES she makes it, after throwing a few underwater elbows in order to breath. Will she make the first bike check point in time? YES she makes it. But then a recent back injury begins to cause pain with 40 miles still left in the bike and a looming 2nd deadline. Will she make it before the deadline?

Barely. (Shwoo, we were getting really worried.) Now if she can make it through the bike then the Marathon is cake, right? Yep lap one she makes in plenty of time. Looks strong, we are relaxing she will finish...but then on lap 2 at the final turn around she is later and later and later. The man with the broken shoulder who is walking the course wrapped in gauze with blood showing under the bandages has already gone by and our friend is still out there.
The sun goes down and the temperature drops. And then we can't wait any more. We begin to walk backward along the course, hoping that she is the next runner we see, nope. What about the next?

YES. She makes it over the crest of the hill and she's limping, her knee is swelling, but she is walking faster than any normal person would. She smiles...she is going to make it. Back at the finish line with thousands of cheering people all waiting for their runners to appear out of the dark. What is the earliest we can expect to see her? 5 more minutes 10? Wait is that her? YES she is walking but she is fast! And then the announcer proclaims her an IRONMAN and after 140.6 miles and over 15 hours of exertion, she crosses the finish and is caught in the arms of her twin sister.

Without the weighty responsibilities of motherhood to slow her training, the other competitors to get in the way, the time limits to keep her going this is just a story of a woman who is a little crazy. BUT with the pressure we have an inspirational hero. So the story is all about the pressure and the glory is far sweeter. Way to go, Lizz.