Monday, January 31, 2011

Another Farce

Finished my 2nd farce, ULTIMATE GLAMOUR. 5 women, 3 men. A hotel room, 2 ladies in the "personal entertainment industry," a bellhop in the pool, a Girl Scout leader, a disguised bakery investor, a philandering corporate exec. a suspicious wife, a mousy secretary with an eidetic memory, and a nice guy caught up in the middle. I'm looking for theatres to give it a shakedown performance. Spread the word.

Yes, I'm still working on the narrative play, SLEEPER, but that's on the back burner while I finish other projects---the Minnesota Writers' Alliance newsletter for one.

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Always getting better.

I'm going through a novel I finished two years ago, NICE GIRLS DON'T BITE. Good news is that I've gotten better at writing and can immediately spot and kick out the over-writing. Bad news? Although it was re-written many times back then, it still has spots of over-writing. Really good news? It still hangs together as a campy funny story.

I ask myself what writer fault is the most certain indication of amateurishness. I don't think it's grammar, spelling and the like. Those are merely indications of lack of education. Over-writing is certainly one of the top nominees, including its twin sibling, data dump. Perhaps lack of variety in sentence structure. And, oh my aunt Tilly, let's not forget unnecessary dialogue tags!

Friday, January 28, 2011

e-books

All right! ---I probably sound like such a weinie at times, but... I just discovered that one could pay people to configure a book for Kindle, etc. Whew! I read the Amazon instructions and was boggled. AND.... pay a really good professional to design the cover. Life is good!

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Appearances

We checked out Trader Joe's, the new "different" grocery store yesterday. Interesting reactions. My hubby saw nothing different than what we can get at the usual supermarket; I noticed many different choices. However, both of us agreed that much of the... um... ambiance... came from same old product but very different packaging. Which makes me think of what the experts say about having the "right" book cover.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Fourth Tuesday

I had a good time at the writers' Fourth Tuesday meeting last night. Fourth Tuesday is an informal writers' meeting established by Michael Kalmbach, facilitator of the Rochester Library Writers Group. It meets in various coffee houses and is open to any writer. There is no structure, just whatever comes up. My husband is starting to call it, "Rochester's answer to the Algonquin Club." It's amazing how many fertile "word drops" (as one of our group says) can happen in what is ostensibly an informal conversation.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

E-books

More and more I am intrigued by e-book publishing. A friend is urging me to get with it and get NICE GIRLS DON'T BITE launched as an e-book. Well, I'm studying how to do it. Although Amazon's instructions are step-by-step clear, they are still sometimes daunting to a user. Hypothetical example: "Next, save your text in FLUB.dub format." And I'm sunk. What's a FLUB.dub format and how do I do it? I'm afraid of getting halfway through a launch, screwing up, and having a half-book out for people to laugh at.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Where I'm At

Hello, Blog.

I've been gone for some time. Maybe my first re-entry should be a clarification of where my writing has taken me.

NICE GIRLS DON'T BITE (campy paranormal mystery novel, has been making the rounds of begging for an agent.) DEATHBLOW (police procedural novel, has been making the rounds of begging for an agent.) MURDER BY ACCIDENT (farce play script, is looking for a few theatres to give a shakedown performance, four community theatres are reading it.) ULTIMATE GLAMOUR (farce play script, in process of its third polishing.) SLEEPER (a three-woman narrative horror play script, one-third written.)

I switched to writing plays a) because that's where my degrees and training are and b) I was getting grumpy about taking a year to write a novel and having no success getting an agent, let alone seeing it published. A play can be written in a much shorter time, and one deals directly with producing and publishing venues--not with an agent first.