Book Proposal – Week 2

It was 2 weeks today that I sent my book proposal for I Survived! to Seal Press. No mail yet about it *sigh* Back to finishing the second draft!

Moving In….

Well I have both of my writing blogs mashed into one here. I love WordPress and working with it. You may see the theme change until I settle on something.

Book Proposal

It has been awhile since I have updated. I haven’t been doing any exciting writing ventures lately. I took on another site at BellaOnline.com Women’s Lit http://womenslit.bellaonline.com I am loving it so far. I have been in contact with lots of publicists so that may play in may favor eventually. I did send my first book proposal this week, It is for the book I did during my first NaNoWriMo in 2004. We will see what happens!

Help me decide which plot to take on this year!!!!!

lcsdove.livejournal.com/260236.html

Breaking Down the Query Letter

Posted by Chuck (not my Chuck)

I talk to a lot of writers about how to compose a good query letter.  Make no mistake – it’s no easy task, and it will take a lot of work.  But what I can tell you right off the bat is that a good query has a distinct structure, and I can show you it right here below.

Think of a query as a three-part monster, broken down into three paragraphs. At the top of the page, you will have your contact info, as well as the mailing address info for the agency and the date.  After that, you have your three paragraphs:

For more: http://www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog/Breaking+Down+The+Query+Letter.aspx
 

Using Parallelism in Your Writing

October 22, 2008
by  Bonnie Trenga

The Sentence Sleuth says you need to balance all the elements of your sentences.

I don’t know about you, but I was glued to the Olympics this year. And I’m not embarrassed to announce that I watched many hours of gymnastics, synchronized diving and synchronized swimming. You have to admire the athletes’ amazing precision, excellent balancing and graceful landings.

If only writers were as precise, balanced and graceful as these medal winners. If they were, readers could happily wend their way down a logical, parallel path, enjoying elegant sentences whose parts match each other. Parallel elements have the same weight and are often the same part of speech. Noun, noun, noun. Check. Adjective, adjective, adjective. Yep. Verb, verb, verb. Parallelism is all about equality; parallelism creates a nice rhythm in your sentence; unparallelism, bad. Adjective, adjective, verb. Yikes. Noun, adjective, adjective. Insert sour-faced judge here.

For more: http://writersdigest.com/article/using-parallelism-in-your-writing/

NaNoWriMo Update

Yes, I am writing this year. Yay! I guess lol Who else is in?

NaNoWriMo’s Chris Baty shares five tips for writing your book in a month.

http://www.writersdigest.com/article/november-is-national-novel-writing-month/

Special Announcement

Everyone please give me a round of applause! I FINISHED THE FIRST DRAFT OF MY FIRST NOVEL!!!!!! *bows* Yes I am very proud of myself. I typed like a mad woman for 3 days almost non-stop, pumped out 15,000 words and I finished last night!!!!!!! I am taking a few days off from writing and will begin the revision process!

NaNo Meter

wordcount widgets

I have to finish this novel now. I promised my Aunt Nancy she would be the first to read my manuscript and help edit the first draft. She passed away today on Thanksgiving. So when I edit it when I am finished, I know she will be there looking over my shoulder and guiding me to make it better.

Dictionary: Impossible!

Here is a game to play to get those creative juices flowing as we approach the end of NaNoWriMo for 2007!

Let’s play Dictionary: Impossible.

Writers, your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to take out your dictionary and flip through it, then stop on any page at random. Write down the first word you see. Repeat until you have a list of ten words.

subculture
cemetery
excessive
steamroller
nag
cocktail
impute
underproof
borough
nonage

Level 1: Create at least three novel titles using only the words on your list (a, an, the, and other simple words can be added for style.) You have five minutes to complete this level.

Borough Cemetery
An Underproof Cocktail
The Nag
Excessive Nonage
Steamroller Subculture

Level 2: Create a story premise for the titles you’ve created from your list. If you get caught on this level, PBW will disavow any knowledge of you.

Borough Cemetery: Citizens of a fortified medieval city discover the victims of a strange plague won’t stay in their graves.

An Underproof Cocktail: Farmer Bubba’s miracle cherries were supposed to soak up the alcohol from the youngsters’ drinks, not turn the teens into killer zombies.

The Nag: She knew he loved her; all he needed was a little half-hourly reminder to show it.

Excessive Nonage: How many times could one demi-goddess cheerleader turn sweet sixteen?

Steamroller Subculture: Homeboy heavy equipment operators battle a demon road crew paving the way to hell.

Level 3: Write an opening line for the title/story premises you’ve created. Should you decide to continue on with the mission, you have exactly thirty minutes to complete this level.

Borough Cemetery

The Baron would have blamed it all on the gravediggers, but theirs were the first bodies left in pieces outside the city’s gates.

An Underproof Cocktail

Seein’ pictures of that college fella usin’ clay teabags to soak up poison outta bad drinkin’ water were what gave me the original idear.

The Nag

She’d left him her phone number, written on his bathroom mirror in red lipstick along with a kiss-print and CALL ME LATER.

Excessive Nonage

“Diana Hunter made the squad?” Heather, who had not, turned purple under her crystal roseblush. “She only moved to town like two minutes ago.”

Steamroller Subculture

Bodeen climbed down from the barricade truck and walked over to inspect the surveyor’s mangled, bloodstained tripod. “Somebody let Julio back up the dozer again?”

Level 4: Write the story to go with one of your opening lines, premises and titles. You may take as much time as you need, but remember that any idea may self-destruct in as little as ten seconds.

Level 5: Write the stories to go with all of them, and you win Dictionary: Impossible.