Fixed Bugs:
Just discovered this gem this morning: Critique Match, an "an online platform that connects writers, beta readers, and freelance editors."
Obviously this site is immediately going into my favorite links list! Hopefully it'll prove to be a useful site to you, too.
Background is everything. I'm not talking about a character's history, though yes, that is important to flesh out if not for your readers than for yourself as the author. No, the background I am referring to is the background with which your characters interact. The floors they walk on, the halls they navigate, the roads they wander down late into the misty night as crickets chirp and the stars wink overhead.
Without background you have floating bodies in a vacuum; a void, and thus you have nothing to root your reader. They won't care what your character sounds like, how they move, or how they interact and react. It might keep them intrigued for a hot minute, certainly, but what does any of it matter without a landscape?
Readers must know where your character is positioned, how they're moving through their world, or what feelings arise as they stand in a bustling coffee shop surrounded by the clashing scents of hazelnut mochas and lemongrass teas as their voice gets drowned out by harried customers and the deafening sound of steam wands foaming oat milk. But it's not only for our reader's benefits, mind you. It's for us, too. Without having the answers to these questions, do we really know anything about the characters we're birthing?
Some will argue and say I'm too focused on detail, that this is why my stories are too long. And I will not disagree with that. I've even written a Facebook post on the very subject, to which a good friend of mine responded "Embrace it!" (Actually she wrote quite a bit more than that, but such was the gist of her incredibly passionate and encouraging response.)
In honor of embracing detail, I'm even going to go one step and beyond and say it's not just about the background scenery you've placed your character, it's about their clothing choices. The way they wear their hair. Why they choose to wear—or not wear—the make up that they do. Though as I've learned from Ann Copeland, once you have written these details, it's not enough to say it once and move on. You have to implement it into your story every now and again. Preferably in the way your character and background work interchangeably together.
Based of a real experience I had back in August, I was in a park—not quite a dog park but certainly a park where everyone brought their dogs nonetheless—having a family picnic when along came a girl dressed in a red, glitter-ridden ballgown for a quinceanera, accompanied by her half-dozen or so male escorts dressed as if they were princes, roses in their mouths. This group was out of place. They were also there for a photo shoot. As they walked from place to place looking for the ideal photo spot, the girl's dress needed to be lifted at its poofed out hems to avoid dragging along the dry brush under foot or getting snagged on the rough bark of the closely surrounding trees.
We see here the scenery, the character's dress, and the way it forces her to interact with her surroundings. It also shows us how important this event is to her.
My only exception to these rules comes in the form of minor characters.
When it comes to minor characters with whom the readers have no purpose connecting with, I will not spend time nor waste precious word counts describing them. Especially not in massive detail.
In short, I never describe characters that won't affect the story in some shape in form. That said, their presence—however minor—must still affect the scene in which they're placed. They must have some form of interaction with the people around them. Which is why I'll likely make note of what this minor character is doing, or specify an intriguing detail about their appearances, especially if it's in character for the narrator to notice such things. But make no mistake, these details are written as but a blip on the page. Anything else would be a waste.
Then why write what they're doing at all? You might ask. Why even add them in the first place?
My only four reasons for adding minor characters is that they...
1. Provide an introductory set up for the primary protagonist/main character (PP/MC). Let's look at an elitist—or at least judgmental—protagonist as she stares in abhorrence at the purple leggings under a green frilly tutu of her waitress in the bar, grateful she'd never have to work a job that would force her to wear that.
2. Are capable of forming the basis for a plot. A character so minor is taking up the park bench on which your character wishes to sit, so they opt for a view of the sunset on the river from the grass. We can learn about the character's feelings—Is it a better view anyway and they're happy? Do they even give it a second thought? But perhaps they actually wind up meeting someone else who's unhappy with the circumstance of the preoccupied bench and form a connection which then forms the entire basis for the rest of the story
3. Bring to light our primary character's idiosyncrasies. A minor character is drinking from a fountain in such a disgusting manner your main protagonist changes their mind, ducks out of the line they've been impatiently waiting in for several minutes to quench their thirst, and casually opts for a water bottle instead. Unless there are no nearby water bottles. Will they forget their thirst, improvise, or cave and drink begrudgingly from that same fountain?
4. Add a drop of realism and relational ability. Even if the minor characters scattered here and there might add nothing to the plot and are never be seen or heard from again, they add just enough realism, just enough resistance to end your primary character's too-easy-flowing forward-moving inertia, readers will feel as if they're in a real location, viewing a real person, and ideally might even find themselves relating as a result.
Everything I've read, learned, and seen in publishing requests has told me to aim for a word count of 125,000 or less, and not to exceed that limit. For some this is an easy task. For me this is the most difficult thing I've ever struggled with in my life. I've never just been able to write short stories. Doing so makes me feel claustrophobic; like I'm getting stuffed into a 3x3 cell with electrified bars.
Being so close to done with all the suggested edits of my book that I'm currently trying to get published, I thought for a hot minute there I finally managed to achieve a word count of 121,000. Until I realized I also needed to change the ending. In doing so I nearly doubled my word count. My first solution to this problem was to keep erasing the ending trying to find a quick solution to keep my word count in its recommended range, but ten times over—I kid you not—returned to the ending I knew "just worked".
With my ending in the final stages of being written, I keep getting discouraged to stop, to rework the whole book (again!), or even scrap the whole thing. None of which I'm going to do, which is why I'm officially taking a new and daring approach: I'm not going to worry about my word count right now. I'm going to strictly focus on getting my ending completed, and then I'll go back, examine the areas I feel like could be eliminated. I think I also do what I did with the first version of my book and find beta readers as well as editors outside of myself to see if they have any feedback to offer.
I also have a backup plan for if my word count is still too high for publishers to accept: I'll go the self-publishing route. A daunting and daring task as it means I'll be in charge of all my personal marketing details, I'll be my own agent, and book creator, but it'll be worth it if I can get my book successfully out there.
For anyone struggling with achieving a word-count goal in the final stages of their manuscript—whether you have too many words or too few—I encourage you to ignore that goal and instead focus on the most important goal: getting it done. Once it's done, then you can go back and search for areas where you can add or subtract.
I appreciate those who have recently informed me about the broken links located at the top of this page that have been encountered as of late, the details of which can be found at the bottom of this post. Apparently these buttons and their subsequent links have been giving an error notice every time they've been clicked. I greatly apologize for the inconvenience this has caused anyone. Fortunately these issues have all been fixed and will now appropriately link all interested parties to the proper locations.
As much as I try to keep up with all the minute details featured on this page, there are unfortunately little things that do occasionally fall under the radar. So please don't hesitate to point these issues out when they arise. After all, convivence and availability is what I aim for.
Thank you dear readers and subscribers for helping me achieve those goals 💖✍
The weather has cooled, the air is smog, ozone, and pollution free once again, and I can finally work outside which has revived my creativity streak.
But there was something else that really did it for me. I was talking to my IFS therapist the other day about my writer's block not long after my last post and she had a very unique idea. But in order to explain the idea and why it worked, I first feel I must explain what IFS is:
According to IFS breakthrough systemic family therapist, Richard C. Shwartz, he says on his IFS Institute website and in his book, "Internal Family Systems [IFS] is a powerfully transformative, evidence-based model of psychotherapy that proposes that individuals' subpersonalities interact and change in many of the same ways as do families and other human groups." Therefore nearly every aspect of an individual is treated as a "part" including but not limited to our thoughts and feelings, even certain aspects of our physical selves, and then give these parts a voice allowing them to tell us why they exist, how they were formed, etc.
So when I told my own therapist about my writer's block she suggested we treat it as one of these parts by going into it and writing down everything that comes to mind as I sit with it and focus on it. What came up was a list of worries and judgments sometimes stemming from my own core self, while others came from externalized voices—things that very destructive people were telling me—that I then internalized and that then grew until it became a weight I was carrying around with me.
Therefore I'm now recommending everyone do this*—it might seem strange, but talk to your writer's block without judgment, as if it were a stranger worth getting to know, and ask what it wants, why it's there, and what factors are making it run rampant. Then write down everything that comes to mind that might be contributing to your writer's block existing.
For me, it took a few hours after writing it all out for the block to lift, but once it did, I finally got going! And keep in mind you might have to revisit this practice because the reason it's there might not always be the same as new stuff could easily come up. Still, if it helps it lift, this unique practice could very well be worth it!
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*Disclaimer: Please note that I am not a therapist myself in any form. Though this practice came directly from my own clinically and professionally trained and licensed therapist, proceed with caution when practicing this yourself.
I went on another blogging and overall writing hiatus this last year due to extreme health issues, after which I had to find myself again after enduring something so incredibly traumatic. It's been a whirlwind of a ride, and I keep finding myself at odds with my writing due to chronic writer's block as a result. I'm not sure how to get myself out of it, because none of my typical tactics are working. So I keep finding new projects to throw myself into.
I started Celebrate Nature, a 100% organic, cruelty free, and vegan line of various products for a healthy home & body. I've really been diving into my fellowship I created back in 2018. Despite the writer's block, I'm also in the process of creating an autobiography. Something I've tried over and over again to do, but it's so hard to write about my trauma in a non-fictional setting. To say it's difficult is a serious misnomer and understatement. I've also been sending out my finished sci-fi manuscript to publishing houses. I've gotten incredible feedback, but no hits yet. Although some of the feedback has suggested I make a few plot changes, hence the current writer's block I'm now battling because even though they're right, I'm struggling to figure out how to direct the book to where I know it needs to go vs. where I want it to go.
I'd get out of my head if I could, but the normal routes of how I used to do that are currently unavailable to me. So it's a bit frustrating. But no, I'm not giving up. If there's anything I'm not, it's a quitter. I just have to find new routes, and hopefully get back my creative brain in the process 💖🌷
