Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, Oct 12-18, 2014

/ Melanie Marttila / 4 Comments

Lots of writerly tools for your kit. NaNoWriMo prep, Scrivener tricks, and moar!

Catherine Ryan Howard gives us a sneak peek of Self-Printed: The Sane Person’s Guide to Self-Publishing, 3rd Edition. See why Roz Morris thinks of this book as one of her go to references 🙂

Speaking of Roz, here’s here next installment in the novels aren’t movies series: How to write great description in prose.

K.M. Weiland answers the most frequently asked question to come out of her character arcs series of posts: How do you write a character arc over a series?

We all know what a protagonist and an antagonist are (or we should), but what’s a contagonist? Katie answers that question and describes how best to use one in your novel in her weekly vlog.

Becca Puglisi posts eleven novelist-tested (writer’s) blockbusters on Writers Helping Writers.

Janice Hardy continues the NaNoWriMo prep from last week with her post on planning the middle of your novel.

And the third in Janice’s series, planning the end of your novel. Fiction University.

Jami Gold shares her thoughts on NaNo prep as well. Are you ready to start drafting?

Chuck Wendig posts about what you need to know about guns to write them right.

How to create a character sketch using Scrivener, from Matt Herron for The Write Practice.

In related news, Sherry D. Ramsey shows us how to create a submission tracker in Scrivener.

Nina Munteanu explores archetypes in the second part of her hero’s journey series.

See you on Thursday 🙂

Tipsday

Sundog snippet: Writerly events and an update on the construction

/ Melanie Marttila / 3 Comments

Kim FahnerOn Thursday, I went to see my friend Kim Fahner read her poetry at the Open Studio Showcase. Along with Kim were all three of Sudbury’s Poet Laureates, past and present (Roger Nash, Daniel Aubin, and Tom Leduc). Richard Van Camp was MC and storyteller for the evening.

A couple of people signed up for the open mic and added some much needed estrogen to the line up 🙂

The theme of the evening was Identity.

Today, I took a trip out to our Chapter’s to visit with Mat Del Papa and Lisa Coleman-Brown, who were selling and signing copies of Creepy Capreol. While there, I met with fellow Sudbury Writers’ Guild members Renny De Groot, Scott Overton, and Irene Golas.

Mat and Lisa

I an odd turn of events, a gentleman asked the table to watch his collie, fittingly named Lassie, while he dodged over to Kelsey’s for lunch.

. . .

In destruction construction news, the blasting is over, the rubble is cleared, and they’ve torn up all the old paving on our driveway.

SatOct18b

I think they need to move the storm drain and reconstruct the curb before they get the retaining wall started. The hold up with the driveway appears to be the mass of clay around the water shut off valves, which must, of course, be excavated and replaced with proper fill (otherwise, they’ll just have to redo things next year when the frost heaves all that clay again).

Nu is doing well. Phil and I are getting used to the VetPen, but I won’t have further news until Nu has her next glucose curve on the 30th.

And that’s all the news that’s fit to print, people.

See you all on Tipsday!

Sundog snippet

WWC 2014, Day 2: Have pen, will travel, with Jacqueline Guest

/ Melanie Marttila

You can find out more about Jacqueline at her web site.Jacqueline Guest

 

When I was young, two books saved my life: A Child’s Book of Bible Ethics, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

Don’t give up. If you have the passion to write, revise, edit, and make your novels perfect, you will get published.

As a writer, I have adventures. I travel and meet a lot of interesting people. You have to be flexible to make this happen, though.

I went to Inuvik and when I arrived, this weird dude picks me up—on a snow machine. He’s a man of few words. He takes me back to his place for the night. His place is full of hunting gear. (Mel’s note: This story was much more detailed and entertaining in Jacqueline’s telling. I only recorded the highlights.)

I found out later that he was a fixture of the community. People started dropping by, the elders and other villagers, and everyone told him their stories. I learned so much and met most of the community that way.

One of my books, Wild Ride, was written about the spring bear hunt, or rather against it. The ability to raise awareness is the power of the pen.

Another of my books features the Rocky Mountain Rally. I research everything I write, and experience what I can first hand.

Experience equals content.

The Writers’ Union of Canada and other writers’ organizations keep lists of where presenters have been and where they’re wanted. Do your research and find out where you can go to gain your experience.

What is unique about your book? This is your selling point.

History can give you what you need, but you can’t change it.

There’s also a need for what are called “hi-lo” books. It stands for high interest, low vocabulary and is intended to attract reluctant readers or those with learning disabilities who find it difficult to read.

Books become our touchstones, our points of connection with one another.

What if we are all connected?

Put out positive energy. You reap what you sow.

 

Tomorrow: I’ll have a Sundog snippet for you including a couple of writerly events around town and a brief update on the construction.

Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, Oct 5-11, 2014

/ Melanie Marttila

Psychology is back in the mix with a pile of interesting TED Talks.

What happened to #BringBackOurGirls? World Post.

How sleep patterns have changed over the years and why we might want to change back. Collective Evolution.

Andrew Solomon: Depression, the secret we all share. TED Talk.

JD Schramm on the silence surrounding suicide. TED Talk.

Eleanor Longden shares her journey from schizophrenia back to mental health. TED Talk.

Elyn Saks on her struggle with schizophrenia and what is taught her about seeing the mentally ill with compassion and clarity. TED Talk.

Vsauce answers the question, why are we morbidly curious? Three’s actually a fair amount of science and psychology backing this one up.

 

And as a follow up, here is Ask a Mortician, on the topic of necrophelia. It’s quite tastefully done, really.

 

Looks like climate change is escalating: 35,000 walrus gather in Alaska. National Geographic.

Remember Rikki Tikki Tavi? The Smithsonian Channel shared this video of the real thing:

 

i09 asks, are we over thinking the dangers of artificial intelligence?

David Brin on the spirit of exploration: comets, Pluto, Titan, and Mars. Contrary Brin.

Jackie Chan’s best story ever? Getting thrashed by Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon.

 

The Pentatonix cover Clean Bandit’s Rather Be:

 

Get thoughty with it, my friends 🙂

Thoughty Thursday

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, Oct 5-11, 2014

/ Melanie Marttila

TED talks have invaded this week. Don’t think I’m hearing an argument, though 🙂

K.M. Weiland continues her most common writing mistakes series with repetitive dialogue. She shows you how to recognize it and how to fix it. Post and podcast.

NaNo prep from Janice Hardy’s Fiction University: Planning your novel.

Julia Munroe Martin explores the topic of gender bias on Writer Unboxed.

Nina Munteanu begins her exploration of the Hero’s Journey.

Songs that shape our writing. Veronica Sicoe. Have you seen this post yet, Roz Morris? 😀

No, I don’t want to read your self-published book. Ron Charles of the Washington Post summarizes Roger Sutton’s position on why Horn Book Magazine won’t be reviewing any self-published books.

Talking Writing: Rich writers vs. the critics—and me, by Anna Coppola. My favourite bit: “. . . I hate that. Book sales and dollar signs convey nothing about what literature is or how it changes the lives of those who read. Yet, the industry’s tacit acceptance that financial success is the only thing that matters has created a whole lot of confusion about art. Meanwhile, out-of-touch critics are no help, as they rail against the kind of writing that gets people to buy books.”

Elizabeth Gilbert on the ugly truth about following your passion. The Huffington Post’s GPS for the Soul.

Joni Mitchell on therapy and the creative mind. Brainpickings.

Mac Barnett: Why a good book is like a secret door? TED Talk.

 

Lisa Bu: How books can open you mind. TED Talk.

 

Anne Curzan: What makes a word “real”? TED Talk.

 

The three books you need to read in every major genre. LitReactor.

Things you may not have known about The Princess Bride. Zimbio.

48 things you may not have known about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. BuzzFeed.

Troll, by Shane Koyczan, from his CD and graphic novel Silence is a song I know all the words to:

 

Can we auto-correct humanity?

 

Jamila Lyiscott: Three ways to speak English. TED Talk.

 

Hope you enjoyed this week’s Writerly Goodness round up 😉

Tipsday

Caturday quickie: Things and stuff are happening

/ Melanie Marttila / 6 Comments

So.

On Monday, Union Gas retrenched the gas line, as promised. Plus, we got a lovely new meter out of it. We’d just had our meter upgraded last year, but this one’s even nicer 😉

Tuesday passed without much activity, but a huge chunk of a cliff fell onto Regent Street the week previous and we figured the crew was occupied elsewhere. A jumbo (rock drill) appeared in the driveway, however.

Wednesday, the foreman dropped by to talk to my mom (she lives right beside us). He was going to talk to Phil and me after work.

By the time we got home, the front steps had been relocated beside the house, and our rosebushes and honeysuckle torn out.

TheyHadToMoveTheStairs

My steps are beside themselves 😛

The foreman came by, as promised, and advised that they would be drilling holes in the rock to prepare for blasting on Friday. We took him down to see the piece of the rock that was in our basement, and he advised us to take down anything fragile or valuable. While his aim was not to damage anything, they would be blasting.

They were drilling tonnes of holes and packing smaller amounts of explosive into each to break up the rock, but not carry the damage to the foundation.

DrillingTheHoles

Thursday was Nuala’s next glucose curve. We dropped her off and discovered that while she looks to be in much better physical shape, she’d actually lost a half kilogram from last week. We think she’s rebuilding muscle.

When we went back to pick Nuala up at 6:30, we learned that she’d been a clinic dog for the day. After two hours in the kennel, she wouldn’t stop pawing at the bars. The vet, remembering her Houdini of last week, said, “She’s not staying in there. Might as well let her out.”

Nu spent most of the day in the vet’s office, or wandering the back room.

Her sugars were still too high, so we were advised to up her insulin dose by another unit and come back in three weeks for another curve.

We’re using the VetPen now and it’s supposed to be better with respect to ensuring a consistent dosage of insulin, but we still feel more confident in our ability to draw a proper syringe. Maybe it will just take a little getting used to.

NusLookingBetter

The drilling was done on Thursday evening.

On Friday, I was home sick, but the blasting started, as scheduled.

The City Engineer came by and I signed off on the plans. He explained that there might be further delays as the person completing their retaining walls was behind by a few weeks. The plans for a full height retaining wall with railing are still going forward, however.

They’re even selecting a railing colour to harmonize with our house, either in a sand, or dark brown.

Our driveway will be fully repaved, with proper substrate, and the two water shut-off pipes will be repaired.

The foreman came by before every blast and asked if I wouldn’t be more comfortable outside the house. I assured him I would be fine. And I was, but the actual shockwave from the blast was something else. I felt the whole house do the wave 🙂

SatMorning3

So this is how things look now. As you can see, the rock is all nicely broken up and they left the blast mats in place to keep things more or less tidy until they come back to clear things out on Tuesday.

SatMorning2

And that’s where we are.

Phil and I are going to enjoy our Thanksgiving long weekend.

Tonight is Doctor Who night 🙂

Caturday Quickies

WWC 2014, day 2: An hour with Mark Leslie

/ Melanie Marttila

Mark is a writer, editor and bookseller who was born and grew up in the Greater Sudbury Region, spent many years in Ottawa and currently lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

Find him online at markleslie.com.

mark-leslie

 

I ended up in publishing because I’ve always loved writing. I’ve always wanted to be a writer. When I was a kid, I told stories with my Fischer Price people.

I got a job in a university books store and I noticed that the new edition of a textbook was being developed before the current one was even on the shelves. Students were getting outdated information. Sometimes the changes were subtle and I realized it was a big money grab. I decided to do something about this abuse of students.

I talked the bookstore into investing in an Espresso Book Machine and we entered into an agreement with McGraw-Hill Ryerson and Nelson publishers. A professor would choose the chapters he felt were pertinent to the class he was teaching and the publisher would provide a .pdf of the chapters. These were printed and sold in store.

The custom edition of the material would be 50-60% cheaper for students. The publisher made more. The store made more. Free digital copies were made available if sales of the print edition were reasonable and everyone still profited.

I tried it out for fiction. Amazon ships in 24 hours, but with the Espresso, I could print on site in 15 minutes.

I learned that if you put authors first, you can both make money.

A textbook that cost $86 could be printed for $25 on the Espresso and we could ship it wherever the client wanted. Later, we uploaded it to Kobo and the ebook is still selling everywhere for $10.

I became a consultant for On-Demand Books and then joined Kobo. When Kobo wanted to put out a writer-centric platform, I wanted a part of that action. Kobo Writing Life came into being. It was less money, but I was passionate about books and authors.

Kobo Writing Life was built for writers. We’re in the top five in every territory. We sell more units than Random House in Canada.

As the platform grew, I gained staff. My team nurtures authors.

Q: How does Kobo Writing Life make self-publishing easier?

Authors used to have to go through the same process as a publisher to get their books on Kobo. Now you can do it overnight.

This raises an important question: you can put your book up overnight, but should you? Many authors rush into self-publishing before they’re really ready. Make sure you’re putting your absolute best work out there.

Q: I was in Adrienne Kerr’s session and she mentioned Booknet. Can you speak to that?

The average author can’t access Booknet. Until we can more of the key players on board, it won’t happen.

Q: If I’m an indie publisher or author, why should I bother with Kobo?

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. The more ways your readers can get hold of your books, the better. It’s not Kobo only, but Kobo and.

 

As ever, my notes cannot reflect the full experience. I can’t write that fast (!) And, Mark, if I’ve gotten anything wrong, please let me know and I’ll fix ‘er up post-hasty.

Up next: a Caturday quickie on the developments (construction and dog-wise) of the week.

Next weekend: Jacqueline Guest: Have Pen, Will Travel.

In the meantime, Happy Thanksgiving to all my Canadian readers, and we’ll see you on Tipsday with the Writerly Goodness of the week.

Thoughty Thursday: Things that made me go hmmmm on the interwebz, Sept 28-Oct 4, 2014

/ Melanie Marttila

Some facts and some fun. Just what you were waiting for!

Valerie Strauss of The Washington Post asks the question, is homework an unnecessary evil? I can tell you, I rarely did mine, even in high school. If you’re heading for university, all you really need to learn is independent study skills and effective note taking (IMHO).

Fashion through the ages, from Viral Spell.

Looking for some information on exoplanets? This great series of graphics (artists’ renderings) from Space.com includes information (off to the right) with a read more link. Could one of these planets be the setting of your next science fiction story?

Fabulous information from Popular Mechanics on how we might actually build a space colony.

National Geographic features pictures of Palmyra Atoll. It’s the world’s largest marine reserve.

More of the National Geographic’s 2014 Photo Contest featured in The Atlantic’s In focus column.

This guy can really toot his own horn 😉 The CBC reports on a Laurier student who covers Outkast’s Hey ya! on his French horn using his Mac to loop tracks.

John Scalzi share this Mary Lambert video last week and I fell in love. Seriously. I think this might be my new anthem 🙂

Now this was useful 🙂 45 essential dog care hacks, from Lifehack.

Discovery shares pictures of kissable animals. Some of these choices might be questionable.

We’ve seen dog shaming pictures a-plenty. Well, here’s some cat shaming pictures from Pet Stuff Web that beg the question, are these cats really shamed?

Itty bitty piggies!

Thanks for coming along for the ride.

See you Saturday with more WWC2014!

Thoughty Thursday

Tipsday: Writerly Goodness found on the interwebz, Sept 28-Oct 4, 2014

/ Melanie Marttila

I think this week was taken over by Roz Morris and Diana Gabaldon 🙂

Novels aren’t movie scripts: how to write great dialogue in prose, by Roz Morris.

Roz has been busy with Peter Snell of Barton’s Bookshop recording Masterclass radio shows for Surrey Hills Community Radio. Now they’ve made them available as podcasts, too. You’ll miss out on the musical selections, but Roz is always careful to offer the artist and song title so you can have a listen on your own.

Plus, Roz offers excellent advice for NaNoWriMo prep on Writers & Artists.

Ruth Harris has fourteen (writer’s) block busters for you on Anne R. Allen’s blog.

What if your character has no arc? K.M. Weiland discusses the differences between a flat arc and no character arc and whether or not it’s possible, let alone permissible, to write a novel about a character without an arc.

Agent Sarah Negovetich’s Hey, Sarah! In which she discusses how she works with self published authors.

 

Last week, I featured Chris Winkle’s post on Mythcreants about the heroine’s journey. Having read Maureen Murdock (both The Heroine’s Journey and The Hero’s Daughter), I was naturally interested. Now Chris has supplemented that with this post about villains who follow the heroine’s journey. Effective examples of how the heroine’s journey can be used in your novel.

Banned books week was two weeks ago, but I found this Huffington Post article interesting in retrospect: banned books by the numbers.

Maureen Ryan wrote this thoughtful article for The Huffington Post about Outlander’s wedding episode and what it means for the female viewer. Is television’s sexual revolution finally coming of age? I get to watch this tonight because the Canadian affiliate started the series two weeks late (probably by agreement). #ohcruelfate

Visit Scotland has an exclusive three part interview with Diana Gabaldon about her inspiration for the Outlander series of books and its resulting television series on Starz.

i09’s Charlie Jane Anders offers this list of ten characters that totally wasted their immortality.

Hop you enjoy these offerings, my writerly friends.

See you Thursday!

Tipsday

Sundog snippet: Chaotic life is chaotic

/ Melanie Marttila / 6 Comments

I will try to keep this a snippet, but there’s a lot happening these days.

Work

The uncertainty continues.

My former manager is continuing in her acting position as senior manager until December 31. In the meantime, one acting manager has yielded to another, this time, a colleague, talented and deserving.

Two other friends from the consultant pool have been appointed to training coordinator, the position I held as an acting consultant for sixteen months. One of my friends will be handling coordination for my business line and the other for another business line. I’m very happy for them. The position will teach them a lot.

The new training is well underway. I delivered the Sudbury session the second and third weeks in September. Then I mentored a couple of acting advisors on our team to help them learn the way we monitor our new agents, post-training.

I’ll be doing a little more mentoring, and taking on the supervision of an agent returning to work.

Then I’ll be getting ready for the next round of training in November. After that, I’m not really sure what’s going to happen.

I got my projects from the summer done, but beyond that, I don’t know if anything more will come of them.

With all the major players in acting roles, we can’t really do more than react.

Phil’s got his own burden at work, but it’s not my story to tell, so I’ll have to leave it at that.

Usually, when things are going well for me at work, they go poorly for him, and vice versa. Now we both seem to be in a bit of a jam.

Home

The city engineer stopped by my mom’s last week. Apparently, Union Gas will be by to bury the gas line properly again on Monday.

The Gas Line

Then, the rock will be blasted out. As you can see, the blasting mats are already in place.

The Blasting Mats

Then, they’ll be tearing up the driveway and repaving and, I suppose, getting the retaining wall up.

The engineer is supposed to be coming by with the work order for Phil to sign off on. He says he has a lovely railing for the top of the retaining wall.

You know about Nuala’s troubles from last week’s post. She’s making headway, but after the first glucose curve, the vet increased her dosage of insulin. Her sugars were too high. We’re in a holding pattern there until this Thursday, when we’ll take Nu in for her next glucose curve.

Phil and I are growing accustomed to our new schedule, but between that, the gloomy weather we’ve been having, and work uncertainty, we’re both exhausted.

At least, I’ll have my normal salary to look forward to for the next six months or so. We have some hefty vet bills to pay off.

Creatively

As you may have guessed from my Next Chapter post, I’m trying to focus my energies on my writing. It’s what keeps me sane.

Unfortunately, trying to cram everything in tends to wear me out. I know this, and still, I do it.

When a writing friend came to town last month, I’d intended to meet her. She was reading at my mom’s church on the Sunday and then at the Public Library on the Thursday.

On Sunday, I was feeling poorly and decided not to go. I’m not big into church these days anyway. The week of her visit was also one of two weeks of training I was delivering. When Thursday arrived, I got home from work and essentially collapsed. It wasn’t until after nine that I realized I had missed her presentation.

More recently, I wanted to get out to the launch of an art show another friend was having, but events conspired against me and I couldn’t get away.

It really is true that life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.

Otherwise

I have a number of friends going through tough times.

They say news, whether bad or good, is supposed to come in threes, but it’s been far more than that, and since I’m such a hermit these days, I often don’t know what’s happened until after the fact.

I can only give them my moral support in most situations and wish them well.

I sincerely hope all of this misfortune comes to an end soon and that life resumes a better balance for everyone.

And that’s where I’ll leave you, with my very best wishes for a speedy recovery, a soothing of grief, a securing of contentment, if not happiness, and a world of ease to all your troubles. This, too, shall pass.

The warmest of hugs to you all.

Sundog snippet