Tag: Mandy Webster

Write Your Novel this Summer Challenge

Summer Writing Challenge Check-in: Week 5 | I just don’t know how to say no

Mandy Webster
my new kitten lulu la gata
This is my new baby kitty. Her name is Lulu La Gata. (La Gata is Spanish for “the cat.)

I should consider changing my Friday Writing Challenge Check-in series to “This Week’s Excuse for Not Writing.” Seriously, people, if I keep this up, I’m going to have to stop calling myself a writer. Maybe I should change my title to “blogger” since I can at least manage that.

Anyway, last Friday I headed out to Illinois for a huge family campout (huge as in somewhere around 60 to 70 family members showed up.) Of course, I brought my notebooks. Of course, I was too busy camping and visiting with family to write in them.

We camped until Sunday morning, then went to my parents’ house for a couple of days. Then I made a stop at my sister’s house a couple of hours north of my parents. I was planning to come home Wednesday, but she begged me to stay another day since she was off Wednesday and we could actually hang out and see each other. Once school starts, I’ll hardly get to see any of my family at all until next summer, so I couldn’t say no. Continue reading “Summer Writing Challenge Check-in: Week 5 | I just don’t know how to say no” →

Novel Writing

Narrowing my focus: Choosing a niche and a time frame for my story

Mandy Webster
Novels in a Polish bookstore
How do you decide which shelf your book will finally end up on at your local book store? | Novels in a Polish bookstore (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Since I began writing my current novel almost one full year ago, I have often struggled with determining which genre my story falls into. My thesis adviser pushed me (a lot!) in the direction of Young Adult (YA,) but it just never felt right to me. Although my protagonist is seventeen years old at the outset of the novel, the story will unfold over the course of several years and will include a failed marriage and other “adult” themes that rule out the possibility of selling this novel to a YA audience.

Another element I am struggling with is my time line. Exactly how many years should my protagonist be married to her jerk husband before she escapes? I need her to stick it out for at least a few years. But then, how do I write her through those years and get to the next big event without boring my reader?

This morning, I was reading a blog post by David Fernandez of DLFWriting titled, Becoming a Storyteller: New Adult, or, Wizards and Vampires and Sex! Oh My! that gave me one of those Aha! moments where everything suddenly becomes so clear. In this post, Fernandez discusses the growth of New Adult (NA) fiction, which is aimed at the previously ignored age group of 18 – 25 year olds. Continue reading “Narrowing my focus: Choosing a niche and a time frame for my story” →

Novel Writing

Studying the four-part story structure

Mandy Webster
William Faulkner's Underwood Universal Portabl...
I wonder if someone will one day turn my crappy apartment into a shrine to my writing? | William Faulkner’s Underwood Universal Portable sits in his office at Rowan Oak, which is now maintained by the University of Mississippi in Oxford as a museum. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The second half of my novel is shaping up to be the toughest to figure out. The first half seemed to flow straight out of my subconscious mind and onto the page without much thought or effort on my part. Which is strange, considering I had no idea where I was going with my story at the time.

Now that I know where I want to go, I can’t seem to figure out how to get there. A recent Writer’s Digest blog post titled, How to Structure a Killer Novel Ending got me thinking about my story’s structure again.

In the early stages of writing my novel, I considered my overall structure many times and in various forms. It’s something I might not have done if not for the fact that I was taking an advanced novel writing course and was forced to do so by my professor. I am glad she did though, because that intense examination of structure really helped me get my story moving. Continue reading “Studying the four-part story structure” →

Memoir, Write Your Novel this Summer Challenge

Summer Writing Challenge Check-in: Week 4

Mandy Webster
word count work in progress
This is the actual word count for my work in progress.

I haven’t added many words to my novel this week, as I have spent much of this writing week engaged in weaving. It’s all because of this one very important character who suddenly popped up around page 150. I think he is important enough that he needs to show up sooner. So, I’ve been reading my way through my first 150 pages looking for opportunities to include him in the action.

On one hand, I think this could be a second draft activity, as it is keeping me from writing forward in my story. On the other hand, this character is important enough to the overall story that I think I need to spend some time getting to know him and seeing how he interacts with my protagonist. Thus, the time spent weaving him in. Continue reading “Summer Writing Challenge Check-in: Week 4” →

Character Building, Memoir

Character building: I just got a BRILLIANT idea (I think)

Mandy Webster
mother memory book
This is one of two memory books I am filling out for my sons. Each books asks tons of questions about the mother’s life.

I’ve always been obsessed with these memory books that are designed for parents and grandparents to fill out and leave for their progeny to remember them by. When I was a teen, I bought grandmother versions for each of my grandmas. Both of my grandmas totally filled their books out and left me all sorts of memories of them that I will treasure forever. I am lucky enough to still have my maternal grandmother, but my paternal grandmother has been gone for seven years now. I feel so close to her when I can open her book and read her handwriting.

I bought the parent versions for each of my parents a long time ago, but I don’t know if they’ve ever started to answer the questions inside. Maybe they’re still too young to worry much about whether or not they’ll be remembered when they’re gone. Continue reading “Character building: I just got a BRILLIANT idea (I think)” →

Random Rants, Random Writing Rants

And this is why I should vary my headlines

Mandy Webster
Photo of newspaper headlines about polio vacci...
Perhaps I could put a bit more thought into my blog post headlines. | Photo of newspaper headlines about polio vaccine tests (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Random thought:

I just noticed my last two blog posts both ran with headlines that began with the words, “This is why…”

Should I write a whole series of “This is why” blog posts so it appears that I did it on purpose? Continue reading “And this is why I should vary my headlines” →

Book Reviews, Reading

This is why I don’t buy books

Mandy Webster
Portrait of a Byzantine empress, possibly Theo...
Portrait of a Byzantine empress, possibly Theodora. 6th century a.D. In the Museum of Ancient Art in the Castello sforzesco in Milan, Italy. Picture by Giovanni Dall’Orto, january 6 2007. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I love books as much as the next writer. But I’m poor, so I typically opt to borrow them from the library rather than purchasing them. The book I bought at Barnes & Noble the other day reminded me why I shouldn’t bother purchasing books at all.

I picked up a historical novel about the Byzantine empress, Theodora that looked like it might be a good read. I do think it could have been an intriguing story, but the writing was terrible. (I’m not going to tell you the name of the novel because I don’t really believe in writing bad reviews. I’d like to be a published author someday and know I’d rather do without internet trolls raving on about how horrible my work is.)

Although the author is a historian who seems to know her facts, her novel is an excellent example of how poor writing can take a true story and render it completely unbelievable. Her attempt to create language that is authentic to the time is feeble at best. The constant use of clichés and modern colloquialisms kept dragging me out of the story as I had to continually remind myself what time period I was reading about.   Continue reading “This is why I don’t buy books” →

Employment

This is why I can’t find a job.

Mandy Webster
Feet in the forest
My feet feel right at home in the forest.

When I was a kid, I wanted to do everything when I grew up.  I wanted to be a writer, of course, but I also wanted to be an airplane pilot. And a race car driver. A Peace Corp volunteer, a detective, a horse jockey, and of course, a nun.

So now I’m (supposedly) an adult, I have finished graduate school, and writing jobs are hard to come by. I keep widening and broadening my search only to realize that I want to do a ton of really cool shit that I am completely unqualified for.

For example: why didn’t I go to school for forestry management? That job sounds awesome. I am so jealous of the people who get to manage the forest for a living. It is so unfair. I want to work full time in the middle of a national forest. I want to drive a bulldozer and plant trees. But I can’t because I didn’t go to school for that. Continue reading “This is why I can’t find a job.” →

Memoir

I write what I read

Mandy Webster
let's pretend this never happened by jenny lawson
This is me taking a break from reading at the beach.

Do you ever find yourself urged to write in the same genre you happen to be reading at the moment? I got the idea for my current WIP while reading a fantasy novel. Since then, I have been on a quest to devour every novel I can find that is even remotely related to what I am writing in an effort to keep the writing pump primed.

If I stray too far beyond the sphere of what I am writing, it throws me off. For example, if I take a break to read some poetry, I find myself writing poetry instead of novel scenes. Now that I’m reading a memoir, guess what? I’ve decided to write a memoir.

The Bloggess, otherwise known as Jenny Lawson, writes one of the funniest blogs I have ever read in my entire life. I can always count on her to make me laugh out loud, literally, when I’m feeling my worst. For example, this post here. I didn’t just LOL. I totally snorted. Read it, I dare you. Continue reading “I write what I read” →

Write Your Novel this Summer Challenge

Summer Writing Challenge Check-in: Week 3 (I wrote something. I actually wrote something!)

Mandy Webster
The writing life - a stack of notebooks
My current stack of notebooks includes a pretty fairy journal. Follow me on Instagram for more pretty pictures.

We are now three full weeks into the Write Your Novel this Summer writing challenge, and I can finally report that I have written something! This week, I finally managed to break through my writer’s block and am gaining some momentum. Here’s a quick look at what I have accomplished: