Category Archives: Merry Go Round Blog Tour

Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour: Work/Life Balance

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Balance by roguerider via www.deviantart.com

Balance by roguerider via www.deviantart.com

Writing can be all consuming. I get a story in my head and I want to start writing and keep on writing. But, I can’t write all the time. If I did, where would my ideas come from? So it’s important to get up away from the computer and interact with other human beings.

During the day, my hubby and I tend to do our own thing, though we generally go shopping together. He’ll do household maintenance, go hiking with friends, or play around in the garage. I’ll work on my garden or work on my volunteer stuff or do crafty things. I generally write in the afternoon. In the evening, we watch favorite TV shows.

Other interactions, we go hiking on Tuesday with the local hiking club. Exercise is important for people who sit in front of the computer for hours a day. Monthly I have Bunko, serve on the home owner’s association board, volunteer for the fair, volunteer for project management, and daily we walk the dog, meet with friends, and have fun in general. All of these things help me stay grounded and provide fodder for story ideas.

Fortunately I’m retired so I don’t have to try and write around a demanding work schedule. I’m not sure if I could have done any writing with the job I’d held so I’m glad I don’t have to try. Also, my daughter is a grown woman, so I don’t have to try and write while a baby is demanding attention. Though, I remember doing college homework with her as a toddler. Much fun.

My husband and I also like to travel, especially car camping. Travel to new locations, camping in a tent, meeting new people is a joy and recharges those writing batteries. I’ve had many an idea for a story from new locations I’ve explored. The only problem is that writing while travelling can be difficult. I’m more interested in seeing new things or staring into a camp fire than writing.

So that’s my work/life balance. A little of this, a little of that and a dash of writing.

 

The Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour is sponsored by the website Forward Motion (http://www.fmwriters.com). The tour is you, the reader, travelling the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. There are all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s always something new and different to enjoy. If you want to get to know the nearly twenty other writers check out the rest of the tour at http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com!  Up next: Jean Schara!

Merry Go Round Blog Tour: April – What are Three of My Favorite Blogs?

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Owl Using Computer by RedPigeon via www.deviantart.com

Owl Using Computer by RedPigeon via www.deviantart.com

I go to quite a few blogs every morning. Picking three favorites is pretty tough. One I have delivered to my email inbox is Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s blog, http://www.kristinekathrynrusch.com/ . I especially love her business articles. As a new writer I need all the help I can get and she writes easy to understand articles on how to go about making writing a business. She’s also a most excellent author and I love getting her free short stories on Monday morning. Associated with her blog is her husband, Dean Weasly Smith’s, blog. http://www.deanwesleysmith.com I haven’t subscribed to his blog, but Kristine references articles on his blog and I go over there to get more fantastic writing and writing business advice.

Another blog for writers is http://www.davidfarland.net/. Dave Farland posts a Daily Kick In The Pants article on writing. Every day I get useful advice on how to write better. As a successful writer himself as well as a BYU professor teaching writing, I take his advice very seriously.

But it’s not all writing. As a diagnosed celiac sufferer, I follow peveteaux on Gluten Is My Bitch http://glutenismybitch.wordpress.com. A mother of two children, she’s also a celiac sufferer. Along with a humorous post about what’s going on in her life, she provides a gluten free recipe. I’ve tried some of them and they’re fantastic. I’ve managed to sneak four blogs into this post, hope you don’t mind. But don’t forget there are also all of the blogs on The Merry Go Round blog tour to sample as well. I hope you check them out.

The Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour is sponsored by the website Forward Motion (http://www.fmwriters.com). The tour is you, the reader, travelling the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. There are all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s always something new and different to enjoy. If you want to get to know the nearly twenty other writers check out the rest of the tour at http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com! Up next: Jean Schara!

Merry Go Round Blog Tour: What Makes Me A Unique Writer?

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Picture “Unique” by Mazyono from www.deviantart.com

The prompt for the month asks what makes me a unique writer. Hmm. Any answer I give could come off sounding flippant. I’m a unique person, of course. No one has my exact background. No one has read the same list of books. No one has had my experiences with family, job, travel, or children.

What makes me a unique writer is that my experiences provide areas of overlap with many people. If I say I was in the United States Air Force that gives me a common background with a lot of people who can say the same thing. We have that shared experience. The same is true with child birth, or hiking and backpacking, or with driving a car. Not everyone will have done those things but enough have that similar experience to know what I mean when I talk about them.

Having those unique experiences allows me to write about them and to use them to extrapolate the skills and feelings from them to experiences I haven’t had. I’ve never been shot but I have broken bones, been burned, gone through childbirth, so I know what pain feels like. I can describe pain and a character’s reaction to it because I’ve felt pain.

Then there are the technical skills, how I put my sentences together, what words I use, and the cadence of my prose. That’s called voice. As someone once told me and you’ve probably experienced for yourself, you can tell by reading a paragraph or two if a piece of work is by your favorite author. You can spot his or her voice in the writing. Prose by Robert Heinlein will sound very different than prose by James Patterson.

So back to the question, what makes me a unique writer? I suppose it’s the sum of my life and how I chose to use it to write my stories.

The Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour is sponsored by the website Forward Motion (http://www.fmwriters.com). The tour is you, the reader, travelling the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. There are all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s always something new and different to enjoy. If you want to get to know the nearly twenty other writers check out the rest of the tour at http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com!  Up next: Jean Schara!

Merry Go Round Blog Tour: January – Deleted Material

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Deleted material, hmm, let me think. Do I delete material from my drafts? Absolutely. I’ve deleted whole chapters, sections, paragraphs, sentences, words. If the material isn’t leading the story anywhere, there’s no point in it being in the story. Out it goes.

It’s kind of like pruning your fruit trees or rose bushes. I have a hard time with that. I hate to cut away perfectly fine growth. The problem is, if I don’t prune, the rose bush or fruit tree gets tangled branches, and that leads to poor flower or fruit production. Can’t have that.

So too with my books. The chapter or section may have great writing but if the piece doesn’t move the story forward, there’s no point in it being there. I may be able to use the deleted material for a flash fiction that supports the story. The deleted piece could be edited to become a wholly different story. I may never use that bit of writing again.

But you just wasted a lot of time and energy! Maybe. But every bit of writing I do, whether I use it or not, makes me a better writer. So really, it isn’t wasted. Don’t we do this every day in our lives? We cut away time wasting activities, we declutter closets and shelves. We delete those things that no longer make us happy or productive.

What do you delete?

The Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour is sponsored by the website Forward Motion (http://www.fmwriters.com). The tour is you, the reader, travelling the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. There are all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s always something new and different to enjoy. If you want to get to know the nearly twenty other writers check out the rest of the tour at http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com!  Up next: Jean Schara!

A Year in Review 2013

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It feels like 2013 has been a wild ride, as far as my writing is concerned. I’ve taken several writing classes this year and I can tell my story telling has improved considerably. I’ve settled into blogging twice per week, on Monday and Friday. That rhythm works for me and I don’t feel like I’m spamming my followers. So here’s how I did.

As far as I can tell I wrote a Flash Fiction Friday story every week and updated my Blog and Facebook Fan page (both titled ConniesRandomThoughts) weekly.  I added a monthly blog post for the Forward Motion site called Merry-Go-Round blog. My post is the 18th of every month. I missed one of those as well.

I started the Y2N class (2 Year Novel) with Lazette Gifford and kept up the weekly lessons until November when the National Novel Writing Month and then the holidays knocked me off track. I’m behind about 8 lessons right now so it’s still possible for me to catch up.

I outlined short stories for May Story A Day challenge. The challenge for this year was to write ten short stories. I managed six last year. I finished the May Story a Day challenge with 12 stories. Not every one of them was a gem but I’ve set them aside to fix them up and publish them. On short stories, I’ve been writing them all year in addition to the Flash Fictions and novels.

In addition, I began revising my November 2012 NaNo story, TriPoint Station. I had to rename it: Gulliver Station, Hard Choices and began outlining the first book in the series, Gulliver Station: A New Start, in Scrivener. The series continues with The Challenge, drafted in July and Revolution, drafted in November.

I struggled with Scrivener. I’m still a beginner and am pretty sure I’m not using a fraction of the tools available to me in the program.  Other programs I’ve learned this year are Gimp and SketchUp. The last two I use to make my own book covers. Thank goodness my husband loves to take pictures. His pictures are used on my covers.

I also wrote, How To Design an ebook Cover. That became my Vision submission for August. My submission in December to Vision was, Gerunds, the -ing words. Funny story. The Gerund article came about through a short story critique. One critiquer mentioned that I used too many gerunds. High School English class was a long time ago. The research I did to fix that problem became the article. Thanks to the critique, my writing is now stronger.

My goal for 2013 was to publish 4 books.  I epublished, A Trio of Animal Tales in January. Recall revision was finished in February! I decided to self publish. I published it May 27th. I continued to revise stories for a collection I called Halloween Tales and wrote a fifth one so there would be 5 stories in the book. Release was the 30th of September.  I released Christmas Tales November 17th. It was a little stressful, releasing a book in the middle of NaNo but I managed to get it done.

My story After The Storm was rejected by Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show magazine so I submitted it to Asmiov’s Science Fiction and Fantasy magazine, where it was rejected also.  I entered a Scribophile contest with Generation Bug and was not selected as the winner but I had enough confidence in the story to enter it in the Writers of the World contest for the 3rd quarter. I did not win. I sent Where the Brown Things Are to WotF (World of the Future: a science fiction magazine that has a quarterly contest to select the best stories for the mag.) I wasn’t supposed to find out until January if I won but they worked fast and I found out I was not accepted in December. Sigh. I’ll try and write something to submit in January. I submitted a story, The Reunion, to a contest held by the Southwest Authors. I found out in October that I did not win that one either. I still haven’t heard back from the Tucson Festival of Books (The Reunion) or the Arizona ONE-BOOKAZ Goes Digital eBook Writing Competitions  (Generation Bug) on my submissions. I’m going to cross my fingers. I also have Someone Else is Living Here out to the Writer’s Digest Short Short Story Competition. I’ll hear from them in February 2014.

On a positive note, I submitted a short story, Dogs and Cats, to the Forward Motion site, http://www.fmwriters.com/zoomfm/, for their 2013 Anthology, Cats Eyes. The story was accepted and came out in September. https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/books/book-detail-page?ie=UTF8&bookASIN=1493638475&index=default

My story, Just Add Copper, was submitted to the How To Think Sideways Anthology, The Adventure of Creation, and accepted in June. The anthology was published in mid-August. Some great short stories in various genre’s by some great authors. http://www.amazon.com/Adventure-Creation-Foreword-Sideways-Anthology/dp/3956810007/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1378051491&sr=1-1&keywords=The+Adventure+of+Creation

I participated in the April Camp NaNo and wrote the first draft of Gulliver Station: A New Start. I’ve signed up on a different site, http://julnowrimo.com/ for my July efforts. Several of my Forward Motion friends love the site so I thought I’d try it out for the next book in the Gulliver series. The big news in November, was of course, National Novel Writing Month (NaNo for short). I drafted out the last of the Gulliver Station series, Revolution.

I signed up for and completed a Holly Lisle Flash Fiction course. That generated 5 flash fiction stories for May Story a Day. Lazette Gifford’s SciFi Class was not announced, so that goal was deleted. I  listened to a webinar with Guy Kawasaki, hosted by CreateSpace. The seminar, How to Sell More Books with Social Media ran 1hour and 13 minutes. It’s on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=135KGCLqC6Q The third class of the year was, Mugging the Muse by Holly Lisle, https://howtothinksideways.com/. I learned a lot about myself and how to write better. If you’re a new writer or an experienced author, check out her courses. Some are even free! The fourth class was on marketing for my books. I looked at some free training video’s by Jeff Walker, recommended by Holly Lisle. I was not able to take his course. But, based on the free information he published, Holly put together an author-centric, free, self-monitored course on marketing. Which resulted in a Holly Lisle class she calls, The Ugly Baby Workshop, a marketing type course. One of the items in that challenge is to release a book. My Christmas book was that project. The course is about how to do a new product launch, so the book and the below domain name are part of that launch.

I joined the July promotion on Smashwords.com with my book, Recall. It was a month long promotion, free to download. It was downloaded a lot, which was encouraging. The hope was they’ll like the book enough to come back and buy one of my other books. At the end of December, I haven’t seen that happen. Something to consider for 2014.

Using the Guy Kawasaki information from July, I began a marketing campaign to post regularly, twice per day on Twitter (@ConnieCockrell) and Google+. That’s been going well. I find something fun or interesting or cute or about my book(s) or someone else’s book coming out and post. In December I began making a late night post, 9 or 10pm that may reach the Asian market. Who knows if getting my name out there will generate sales, but a Google+ and a tweet only take a minute or two. I’ll see over the next few months if anyone from the Asian region begins following my blog or Facebook page.

Based on the marketing classes I took some steps to improve my professional presence. I took the plunge and bought a domain name and set up my own publishing house: 2ndWindPress.com.  What was exciting was filling out the on-line form. It asked for my organization and my position. I, with more than a bit of a thrill, typed in 2ndWindPress and Publisher. I know, I’m easily entertained, but my heart actually beat faster.

I went to the local Chamber of Commerce and got my Doing Business As (DBA) form. How did this affect me? I have a nifty logo and publishing house name to add to the spine of my books. It sets me up as a professional. It confirms that I’m serious about my writing and getting my books published.

I made quite a few changes to my blog as part of my new marketing plans. I changed the background color from boring gray to a more festive Autumn color. I added some new links to friend’s blogs and a sign up for a newsletter for my fans. Followers get first dibs on any promotions, book announcements, and other information. They can go to the button on the right side of the blog or go to my Newsletter tab to sign up. To make that happen I had to sign up for Mail Chimp.  I also updated my Google+ page and my Twitter account. If you aren’t a follower or friend on those sites I’m looking to build my communities there as well.

Late in November I took on a Chuck Wendig challenge on his blog, www.terribleminds.com. Participants write a 200 word section of a story each week. The first week you create your own 200 word beginning and post it. The next week one or more participants pick a beginning not their own and add another 200 words. By the end of week 5, each participant will have worked on 5 different stories in 200 word increments, making a 1000 word finished story. I participated each week. I posted each story on my blog in the Friday Flash Fiction spot. I plan on going back to the Chuck Wendig site and find the completed stories I contributed to and post them on my blog in January.

This has been a long post. I’m actually surprised at the number of classes I’ve taken (5) and stories and books written and released. (1 novel and 3 collections published and over 96 stories and novels written). It’s been a full and fruitful year. I hope yours was too.

I wish you all a very happy, productive New Year!

Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter where you’ll get first dibs on any promotions, book announcements, and other information. Go to the button on the right side of the blog or go to my Newsletter tab to sign up. http://conniesrandomthoughts.us7.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c24bb15bdf9245512f722298&id=0a097feea0

I have an in depth interview on my Smashwords Author page. You can read it here: https://www.smashwords.com/interview/conniecockrell  Don’t see information about me you’d like to know? Leave me your question in my comments and I’ll try to answer it.

Links to Christmas Tales and which will lead you to my author page on each site where my other published work is available:

Apple: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/christmas-tales/id761282885?mt=11Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/christmas-tales-3

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Tales-Connie-Cockrell/dp/1494200570/ref=la_B009O6199C_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385963121&sr=1-4

Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/christmas-tales-connie-cockrell/1117497310?ean=9781494200572

Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/christmas-tales-3

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/379010

Merry Go Round Blog Tour: Favorites

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The Down the Street Art Gallery, December 2013

The Down the Street Art Gallery, December 2013    Photo by Randy Cockrell

Right off the top, Christmas is my favorite holiday. I decorate the outside and the inside of the house. I bake cookies, my favorite is called Mexican Wedding Cakes, and make candy. My favorites there are toffee, peppermint patties, and chocolate truffles. Yummy.

Pasta is a big favorite of mine. Saturday is designated Spaghetti Night at my house. I make the red sauce from scratch and cook it all afternoon. That is unless I make Spaghetti Carbonara. That is a big favorite but all of that egg, cream, cheese, and bacon make it a health hazard. So I keep that dinner offering to about four times a year.

I have a favorite genre too. That’s SciFi for sure. Fantasy runs a very close second. The ability of a book or a series to transport me to another world is the best feeling ever. I know it’s a good book or series when I reach the end and I’m flipping those last pages looking for more. The story will stick with me for days, and I wish I were in that world for real.

I like this time of year. It’s a time for reflection on what’s happened over the course of the year. Did I meet the goals I set? Have I made progress in my endeavors? Even better, it’s a time to plan for the future. What can I change to reach my goals in the new year? Should I set different goals for myself? Should I ease up a little and make more time for smelling the roses?

How about you? What are your favorite things? What are you proud of from this year’s activities? What do you plan on doing differently next year?

The Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour is sponsored by the website Forward Motion (http://www.fmwriters.com). The tour is you, the reader, travelling the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. There are all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s always something new and different to enjoy. If you want to get to know the nearly twenty other writers check out the rest of the tour at http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com!  Up next: Jean Schara!

Before Christmas Chaos

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It’s been crazy at my house, as I’m suspecting it’s been crazy at yours.  December is a month full of expectations. Some of my own expectations have been met, but not exactly as I envisioned. First, let me say, I make my own greeting cards. Christmas cards especially. This year, I just could not get it together. My idea for this year’s cards started well and went downhill in a hurry. I still have the snowflake cutouts, but it will take a long time and an exacto knife to make them come out right. Back-up plan, use the Christmas cards I’ve been stashing for years. I had just enough. Whew.

Next, making candy. When I was first diagnosed with Celiac my life went upside down. What? No Queen Anne Chocolate Covered Cordials? Pretty much any candy on the market at that time was totally forbidden. Too filled with gluten for me to eat. I started making my own, candy that is. Truffles, peanut butter cups, peppermint patties and toffee. For awhile I made chocolate covered cherries but you need a mold for that and the off the shelf molds at the candy stores broke on me so often that I just gave up. It doesn’t matter. I get my candy fix at Christmas and it’s delicious. So, I managed to get my candy making done and boxed up with other gifts and sent to recipients not only on time but early. The project manager part of me loves that.

Outside of the house is decorated, inside is decorated, gifts mailed, gifts under the tree. So what’s to stress about? My hubby’s birthday is the 21st. The house needs to be cleaned and the back yard does too. Part of the celebration is a fire in the fire pit. Yay! Worse, that was my idea. Sigh. Luckily we have a stretch of nice weather starting today and I’ll be able to get those square foot garden beds cleaned up and the back yard looking good for Saturday’s festivities.

So, I’ve got a lot to do this week. That includes writing, of course. On the 18th my turn at December’s Merry Go Round Blog tour comes up. I have a Chuck Wendig challenge, number four of five to complete, and on Friday, there will be a Friday Flash Fiction. I’m behind on my 2 Year Novel Course. I’m hoping after the 21st, I’ll have time to catch up on that. I’m also slaving away on my novel, A New Start. This is the first of my four novel series about Gulliver Station, a SciFi series about a space station. I’m working toward an end of January release for the first book. Stay tuned. Will I make it?

If you’re still looking for a Christmas gift, check out my Christmas Tales. Links are below. In each of those markets you can find my other books as well. Hope you enjoy.

Links:

Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter where you’ll get first dibs on any promotions, book announcements, and other information. Go to the button on the right side of the blog or go to my Newsletter tab to sign up. http://conniesrandomthoughts.us7.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=8c24bb15bdf9245512f722298&id=0a097feea0

I have an in depth interview on my Smashwords Author page. You can read it here: https://www.smashwords.com/interview/conniecockrell  Don’t see information about me you’d like to know? Leave me your question in my comments and I’ll try to answer it.

Christmas Tales released November 17th! I’m pretty excited about it. You can buy at: Apple (iTunes), Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Amazon or Smashwords today!

Links:

Apple: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/christmas-tales/id761282885?mt=11Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/christmas-tales-3

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Christmas-Tales-Connie-Cockrell/dp/1494200570/ref=la_B009O6199C_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1385963121&sr=1-4

Barnes and Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/christmas-tales-connie-cockrell/1117497310?ean=9781494200572

Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/christmas-tales-3

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/379010

Merry Go Round Blog Tour: November 2013 – Looking Back

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Looking back. We all start to do that this time of year.

The year isn’t quite over for me yet. It’s National Novel Writing Month, after all. (see www.nanowrimo.org for more information and how to get in on the fun.) I also have a Christmas collection to get out by the end of November too.

Aside from that, 2013 has been a whirlwind for me. If you’re really interested in getting the exact details, go though my blog and pick out the posts where I talk about how I’ve met my goals by the month. Here’s the link to the first goal report of the year, it looks like I didn’t do one for January 2013: http://wp.me/p2AyuM-1o. I don’t want to talk about that here.

So I set goals for 2013. So what? Like most people, I get caught up in the minutia of getting through the day or at most, the week. The end of the year is for looking back at the big picture. What have I accomplished with my time and effort?

I’ve learned a lot about writing. Anyone who looks at my January flash fiction Friday stories and the ones in November, can tell that. There’s a lot to know about putting words on paper so that a reader will become engaged in the story. I think I picked up a little. There’s so much more to learn about the craft.

I learned about marketing and the publishing business as a whole. Am I an expert? By no means. But at least now I have a dim glimmer of what’s going on and how to navigate around the whole process. I’ve begun to treat what I’m doing as a business instead of a hobby. And no, it doesn’t take the fun out of it. It makes it easier for readers to find me and enjoy what I’m writing for them. What is the fun of keeping my writing to myself? I want others to enjoy it too.

Best of all, I’ve made friends; writing friends that I’ve actually gone to meet in person. What a treat. It’s like an atomic level convention. How cool is that!

The Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour is sponsored by the website Forward Motion (http://www.fmwriters.com). The tour is you, the reader, travelling the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. There are all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s always something new and different to enjoy. If you want to get to know the nearly twenty other writers check out the rest of the tour at http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com!  Up next: Jean Schara!

MGR Tour: Inspiration

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Inspiration is a funny thing. There are a lot of connotations to the word, inspire.

I could be talking to someone and say “You inspire me.” That person lives their life in a way that makes me want to do the same. They’re generous, or they’ve overcome extreme hardship in their life but it hasn’t made them angry or bitter.

Then there’s the way a writer thinks about inspiration. That’s the flow of ideas, concepts, tiny bits of what if. An example. A few months ago a blogger put up a picture of a bench that he’d taken. In the background was an old abandoned factory. Weeds were evident around and between the bench and the factory. He posted the picture, one he’d taken himself, as a writing prompt. I’ve been saving that post and a few days ago I pulled that picture out and wrote a Halloween type flash fiction story to that prompt. You could say I was inspired.

In interviews I hear reporters ask the interviewee, usually an author or artist, “So what inspires you?” I hope no one ever asks me that question because to be honest, I don’t know how to answer. “Nothing? Everything? The sun, the moon, the stars? A bench sitting in front of an abandoned building?”

As to writing books, I think my favorite is whatever one I’m currently studying. Each time I pick one up, a particular aspect of the advice pops front and center. Some tidbit is relevant to me in my particular point of ability. What is it that’s most important to me in my writing right this moment. As I grow as an author, that relevance is going to shift. Right now advice about how to write a full, rich paragraph that gets into the charater’s situation using showing not telling. That’s what I’m working on now so other aspects of good writing aren’t catching my eye. Oh yes, they’re all important, but my brain can only absorb so much at once. So, for the moment, showing not telling is my focus.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines inspiration as a sudden, brilliant or timely idea. In the Forward Motion group, we call those plot bunnies: story ideas that pop into our heads in the middle of mundane conversations, while doing housework, standing in line at the supermarket or mowing the lawn.

As to who is my inspiration, it’s my mom, my husband, my daughter. Where would I be without them?

The Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour is sponsored by the website Forward Motion (http://www.fmwriters.com). The tour is you, the reader, travelling the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. There are all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s always something new and different to enjoy. If you want to get to know the nearly twenty other writers check out the rest of the tour at http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com!  Up next: Jean Schara!

Merry Go Round Blog Tour – Research

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Research, investigations, searching. It’s all part and parcel of being a writer. Even if it’s nothing more than going to some baby name sites to pick a character’s name.

I like doing research. It’s fun to learn how something works, or where a thing comes from, or how something was made. History too. It’s fascinating to me to look at the background of a country. I’m working on a novel now that had me look up the history of Demre, Turkey, Vikings and ancient religions. What a hoot!

Of course, I loved going to the library and doing research when I was in school too. There’s something very restful about being in a library. Now of course, I can do my investigating from my computer desk with a cup of tea in hand. And, get more information. We’re no longer limited to what’s on the shelves at our local library. The bad part is the ease of research now means that it’s easy to get distracted by the linked information. I often have to remember what I’m actually looking for and get back on track.

So how do you research?

The Merry-Go-Round Blog Tour is sponsored by the website Forward Motion (http://www.fmwriters.com). The tour is you, the reader, travelling the world from author’s blog to author’s blog. There are all sorts of writers at all stages in their writing career, so there’s always something new and different to enjoy. If you want to get to know the nearly thirty other writers check out the rest of the tour at http://merrygoroundtour.blogspot.com!  Up next: Jean Schara!