Science Fiction & Fantasy author
Well, Christmas is here, so enjoy your time with family and friends. Soak it all in. Bits of it will foster your writing, and all of it will grow your relationship with family. So I hope you haven’t been hanging out on the internet reading this blog and my prompt yesterday (for if you had then you would have noticed I was late in posting my writing prompt, too busy soaking in the family).
Every writer knows that the only way to get that book, story, poem, etc., done is to write. We also know that the only way to improve is to get feedback, honest, no holds barred feedback. I teach creative writing, and I tell my new students every year that I will be considerate but honest. They will know what the strengths were in the piece as much as where growth is occurring and where it is needed. Every writer needs this and for some, like myself, it is hard to come by.
I am a teacher, and since I want my students focusing on what I am teaching them and not on me, I don’t advertise that I am a indie writer. I have told only a couple people in my family and just one friend. I know they’ll keep my writing activities secret. But where does that leave me for feedback: well in a very limited space. I have become friends with several writers, and those connections has been helpful because they know what I mean when I say tell me everything so I can get better. They want honest feedback from me, and I want the same from them. And it has been worth any uncomfortable feeling I might get from seeing the flaws pointed out in what I thought was a pretty thorough job (repeated numerous times)at line and context editing. I grow as a writer each time they supply feedback and each time I give feedback. It would have taken me years of personal distance to be able to give that kind of critique myself. I don’t want to imagine waiting five years to be able to look at my own work with the necessary distance and increased knowledge in editing, drafting, plotting, etc. needed to actually see what needs to be improved. That’s five years of embarrassment of having my work out there that I would get all in one fell swoop that could have been avoided by getting straight feedback from another writer or a professional editor when the work was “finished.”
So sure a writer writes, but a WRITER GETS FEEDBACK is even more important. I published my first book with minimal feedback (those two family members). It wasn’t long before I had a nagging feeling that perhaps I had overlooked aspects of the story or not edited as well as I thought (even an English teacher needs an editor, nobody can look at their own work without bias, certainly not after reading it one hundred times). So I took it off publication, sent it to a writer friend (she sent me hers as well) and we traded feedback. I am still working on it and hope by Christmas to have it back published again.
All this post really is saying is writers need feedback.
I have posted about many of the books I consider useful. So this post is sort of a gathering of those posts in one place. Now you don’t have to search about for them.
Grammar and revision:
Eats, Shoots and Leaves
A Writer’s Reference
Spell Friendly Dictionaries
Creative inspiration:
A Writer’s Book of Days
Lu Chi’s Wen Fu
Lu Chi’s Wen Fu 2
The Worst Case Scenario
Good books to read:
The Catcher in the Rye
Tale of Two Cities
You’ve Got to Read This
You’ve Got To Read This is an anthology supplying short stories that are the favorite reads of some of the finest writers of the 20th century. Every writer should be reading, especially the most exemplary works of well-written prose. “Goodbye, My Brother” by John Cheever is one of my favorites due to the family dynamics it portrays with simple, straightforward narration, and it is introduced by Allan Gurganus.
This book, though not a recent publication, is a great start for the writers looking to learn by reading. The short introductions given by the author that selected each piece adds to the reading of each work. Not only do I get to read a great short story, but I also get to understood what drew the accomplished writer to be moved by the work and name it as one of his or her favorites.
So track down this text and sit down for that occasional short read that you can examine both for the writing skill itself as well as for what an establish writer might find worthwhile in it.
As said in Lu Chi’s Wen Fu, “When cutting an axe handle with an axe,
surely the model is at hand.”
I have spoken before about backing up one’s computer regularly (post Back up Your Computer). I have four of a seven book series drafted on my computer, so not doing an occasional back up would be downright silly of me. However, for convenience sake, I also keep my documents on an external hard drive. The drive that is inside my computer case only holds my programs. But the external drive has my documents. My father, who was an electrical engineer and computer builder in his retirement, felt this was essential to increase security, so I have been in the habit for a long time of keeping these two items separate in case of a computer virus or crash. (In the early days of computer ownership, I had to partition my hard drive to create this kind of separateness. I like an external drive much better for the reasons I mention below.)
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| Internal drive in external case |
Well, that habit paid off recently when my all-in-one computer’s monitor began to fail. Sure my files are saved, but if I can’t see them, what good are they? I can’t even run a back up or open them up and print them if the monitor won’t display. When my daughter’s computer suffered this same problem a couple years back, I had to open the computer up, pull the hard drive and insert it into an external drive case. Sure this is no big deal (though it took me some time I didn’t have handy to pull the drive, order the drive case and get them together), but when my computer began to falter, all I had to do was unplug the external drive full of my work and plug it into my laptop. Bingo, complete access to all my work, which, of course, is also backed up on my WD storage drive.
I suppose one could say I am a bit over cautious, but I’ll get the last laugh later.
Another advantage: you know that silly question about what do you grab if your house is on fire? Well, chances are I can grab an external drive faster than I can carry out a computer or even a laptop.
I am fully aware that the most popular word processing program out there is Microsoft Word, but my loyalty goes to Corel WordPerfect. I like the way the program is laid out and some features just simply don’t exist in the same way in Word. Reveal codes, for example: I love being able to look at each code spelled out and easy to read and delete as I please or not (a simple toggle switch). I can change formats without finding myself suddenly back in a particular format when I was certain I had changed from outline to word processing or from columns to no column.
The two programs did become very similar over the years (though my favorite features never left WP); however, the version I have now in WP is far different from the new Word which I am still figuring out. I have used both for nearly the same length of time: close to thirty years. But when I work in WP (which I do for everything personal and most especially for my fiction writing), I just sit easy. If I am not familiar with some feature, I can figure it out because I understand WP’s logic. This is not the same with Word, which, though I said I have been using it for years at work, still makes me stumble about.
Recently, my WP began freezing every time I saved my work. I would write a thousand words, go to save and find myself in permanent freeze and no access to all I had written. Heartbreaking, as it happened repeatedly, though I did get smart and save after each page, so I could at least see what I had written and could hand copy it. After a few days I switched my files over to Word so I could work on my book, but I wasn’t happy about it. I assumed it was an update to my computer operating software (Vista) that brought about the problem and since my version of WP was at least ten years old, I thought it was time to up grade. I ordered WordPerfect X5 and couldn’t wait for it to arrive. Now I am not so sure I had the source of the problem correct as the new version suffered from the same problem.
So there were a few days that I was quite frustrated. I tried looking for updates, I researched on the web finding the problem actually began back in 2006, though it did not hit me until this past September. I found suggested solutions, but none worked. Then, a few days ago, I decided to try again. I experimented and used “save as” instead of the icon for “save.” It worked just fine. And two days ago an update came through for WP X5. Now I am back to saving using the icon without freezing. Now that is a quick fix. I love WordPerfect.