Are you the Type?

Fiction is a lie, and good fiction is the truth inside the lie.
Stephen King
***

I’m not the obsessive type. Sure I log into facebook to eavesdrop on my friends conversations, to post and play games, connect with people, spread the Word of the Lord and maybe it is quite an obsession but as for my writing? There is no obsessing there!

I’ve been reading/writing since I can remember and when I was a kid, I think I was obsessed with getting books, hanging out at the library, reading anything and everything I could get my hands on. Nowadays I’m more selective in what I read.

Just so you know, I won’t read anything that compromises my beliefs. Sure I can discern fiction from non-fiction, romance from science fiction, but does my mind decipher what is right and what is wrong. Well, I like to think it does. But books on demons and devil worship will not be on my bookshelf anytime soon.

As for my writing, I draw a line there too and this can become a hindrance in writing. As a writer we need to cross boundaries, we need to leap without looking below us to see where it is we’ll fall. We need to write and sometimes we need to write things we as individual human beings would never touch in a million years!

Take Stephen King for example. Sure he’s creepy and a little kooky but I would have him no other way. He is willing to go into the depths of hell just for make believe purposes and bring us a spellbinding story that wraps us so tight around his every word that we forget we’re reading fiction. We go into the zone! ha ha.

I’ve written a spiritual novel, wrote a short story ghost story, and my stories all tend to have a spiritual flair to them. All of the Light source mind you, the light being God and all his mysteries unraveling like a woven blanket. You know the kind, where you pull one string and it tends to let loose the entire blanket? That is what writing a story is all about, unraveling mysteries one word at a time.

Where do I get the inspiration for this type of writing? I was an avid Unsolved Mysteries fan. I always seek the unknown, read a lot of non-fiction in hopes that I will grasp the mystery and be able to shed light on the subject. But as for my ghost stories? Awww come on, they’re just fiction. *wink*

I like to think of myself as the fun and carefree throw-caution-to-the-wind type. So that is what I try to pull off in my writing. Instead of obsessing over the perfect sentence, correct word or phrase, I’ll just let my long blond tresses down and run naked through the cornfields and let my writing flow like the wind of time. Things change, people change but one thing that will never change, my love of writing!

godspeed...

Free Writing Course!

F2K is a six-week online FREE writing course.

A free writing workshop will be coming to the Internet near you very soon. Writers Village University and the honorable R.J. Hembree are bringing the six-week course to you. I say honorable because he has given to the writing community more than they can ever imagine.
Through his University I have seen people come and go, stay and never want to leave. If you are committed to the writing craft, you’ll stay and eventually find yourself down a winding path to publishing.

Writer’s Village has spawned a lot of writer’s who have had their stories worked on in a workshop and the stories went on to become published novels. Short Stories have found their way into the magazines and other online venues making the Village a hidden success story.

To the left where you’ll see my "My Friends" links, click on these to see some of the success stories coming out of WVU. Many of these authors who are currently in WVU have gone onto become a published author but they remain dedicated members so they can help new budding writers find success in the craft of writing.

Don’t be intimidated because they are ‘published’. Remember they were where you are now. They too were undecided where the writing life was going to take them and here they are ready to aid and assist the newcomer.

You do not need to be a member of Writer’s Village University to take this FREE course. It is FREE! No strings attached!

You WILL learn:
Week 1 Character introduction
Week 2 Activating the senses
Week 3 POV (point of view)
Week 4 conflict
Week 5 characterization
Week 6 plot/theme

Watch my blog closely as I announce its arrival. If you’re interested in writing, not sure if you want to be a writer, or if you just want to have some FUN writing, you might want to give this course a try. Experienced mentors are on hand to guide you along the way and the best thing is, it’s FREE!

Are you game?

Internal Editor

My internal editor is always busy.

For me, when I use my MS Word, it is always showing up red squiggly lines that are calling for me to take a look at. I want so much to fix all of those little red squiggly lines, but I’m telling you, for now leave them alone.

When we are writing, and we’re on roll if we hesitate because we see something that needs fixing, we are more than likely going to lose the flow of words and possibly lose sight of the story!
You can go in to the tools, scroll to find options and don’t allow the ‘checking’ of your work. Or you can turn the internal editor off in your mind! Tell yourself that you will not check and re-check until you are completely done so that you can get a good amount of work accomplished in your day. That means tons of writing, whether good, bad or grammatically incorrect!

This doesn’t mean that you can become lazy in your short stories or articles or even your writing prompts. No, for those you WILL need to do a spell check BEFORE you post them so that your peers are seeing your very best work.

Now remember that your spell check does not know the difference between by and buy so you will need to be diligent in reading your own work when your done. Sure the red squiggly lines will show up fixing something like "werd" when you mean "word" but it can not read the writer’s mind. (Don’t we wish?)

Why hasn’t Mister Gates come up with a mind reading device? Why hasn’t the government for that matter? Well I’m glad no one has as of yet because we Americans are lazy enough in letting a microwave cook for us, a clothes dryer dry for us, and now we want a perfect word processor? NO!

This internal editor is normal. Even in my younger years of writing with a pen and paper (I must be old!) I always wanted to use an eraser and fix my error. Then they created pens WITH erasers, and then we were treated to the luxurious white-out for type-written material. All that this did was make us lazy in our writing habits.

What I am saying is, TURN IT OFF! There is no need to fix your work as you are writing because only YOU are going to see it. Let the flow run like a river. Allow your muse to take over the keyboard and keep typing without looking at the screen! That’s an order!

Glance up occasionally to make sure your getting down what you intended, but please don’t go back and fix typographical errors!!! You'll lose site of the natural flow of things.

Be the writer that you know you can be. Treat the art with respect and it will reward YOU with respect in return!

Now stop reading and get back to writing!!!