Author: Rose Sparrowking

Another Writing Seminar

~ Rose Sparrowking ~ 1 Comment

Signed up today for another writing seminar, that I’m especially looking forward to:  How Hundreds of Writers Have Leveled Up Their Craft More in 6 weeks Than 6 Years of Trying (and Failing) on Their Own with Tim Grahl from Story Grid.

I’m currently listening to the Writing Made Easy podcast where Savannah Gilbo interviews Tim Grahl about his newest fiction book and he said something that really spoke to me: ” But once I started writing the book, my goal was to just make each scene as good as it possibly can be, and he [Shawn Coyne] did do a line by line edit and amped up parts of the book as well, but for the most part it’s what I wrote and I think more than anything, people don’t understand how important that one skill is is like can you write a scene that is so compelling that people turn the page and read the next scene and, based on everything I see coming across my desk, most people can’t do that.” (Italics are mine.)

Savannah highlights this powerful quote at the beginning of the podcast: “One thing that drives me crazy about writing is that in almost every other art form we separate performance and practice as two separate activities, and in writing we just smush them together. So it’s like I’m going to learn how to write while I write something I want to publish. That’s like saying I’m going to learn how to play the guitar while playing a concert. Like that doesn’t make any sense. I wish more writers would stop trying to produce their work in progress and just become really good at the skill of scene writing.” (Italics are mine.)

So the goal for this year is to finish the damn book. The goal for next year is to practice writing compelling scenes. I’d love to take the 12 week course that Story Grid is offering but I can’t even imagine what the cost would be, especially since they’re offering a $250 discount if you do whatever. Plus you have to apply to take the course. Hopefully this free seminar will have some good information for me to start with!

Writing News: NaNoWriMo update, Getting Organized and 2 Free Seminars

~ Rose Sparrowking ~ 1 Comment

Disclosure: The links provided in this post are for informational purposes only. I am not affiliated with any of the products or services mentioned, nor do I receive any compensation for sharing these resources. My goal is simply to provide you with valuable information to explore at your discretion. (This paragraph was produced in conjunction with Claude.AI. All other paragraphs were written strictly by myself.)

NaNoWriMo 2024

TLDR: I’m not officially doing NaNo this year.

I really miss the old NaNoWriMo, specifically the community that came together for the month of November in the forums. I miss the forums! That’s really why I dropped out last year beyond the fact that my local community never got together in person. And the NaNo organization basically imploded, there’s that.

I’ve been looking for a new writing community. I tried to start one locally at my library but I’d get one person at a time and I’d spend the entire two hours talking to them so it wouldn’t be awkward. But it was and I didn’t get much writing done. I’ve looked for an established local group but haven’t found anything so far.

I’d be willing to join a writing Discord but I’m not very good with Discord yet and I haven’t found a group that I’m interested in. Any suggestions are appreciated!

But I do want to do a November challenge, like NaNo, so I’ll be doing it on my own. 50,000 words on my romance novel, which won’t finish the novel but should be close.

My goal is to finish the novel by the end of the year. Just finish. It doesn’t have to be fabulous, earthshattering. Just done.

I am using this word count tracker. I may put up a widget with my word count.

Wish me luck!

Organizing a Novel

Holy shit, I’ve got so much stuff for this romance novel. Word docs, Scrivener files, text files, stuff on Novelcrafter, some AI generated ideas on Claude and ChatGPT. Many, many versions of the opening scene. Cover images. Character images. SO. MUCH. SHIT.

It’s all got to come together, in one place. I’ve owned Scrivener for years so I tried stuffing it all in there. I know so many writers love Scrivener but I find it overwhelming. It’s just too much. I had the same issue with Novelcrafter. So many bells and whistles. Too, too much.

I like Microsoft Word. Maybe it’s because I’ve used it for a long time and am familiar with it. (I always shop at the same grocery store, despite being close to several. I know where everything is in my store!) I know where everything is in Word. I know it’s a quick Google search if I need help with something. Word just works for me and I’m committed to making my life easier where I can.

But it is not good at organizing all the stuff you need to write a novel.

This week has been about collecting all the info from all the different places its stored. On my computer, in Scrivener, Novelcrafter and AI sites. I hope I’ve remembered them all! I’ve set up a simple file system: the overall folder for the project containing an IDEAS doc, a CHARACTER folder, a MASTER doc, a RESEARCH doc, an IMAGES folder, a PLOT IDEAS doc. That’s all in no particular order.

The PLOT IDEAS doc has scenes I’ve written out, multitudes of the same scene, group together by setting and time of occurrence in the story.

The IDEAS doc… I should change it’s name probably, but it has any notes or free-writes or middle-of-the-night epiphanies that I’ve jotted down.

I will be adding a word count spreadsheet and, perhaps, a scene spreadsheet that details each scene I’ve written. I think the rest is self explanatory.

I plan to write each scene in a separate doc and compile the story in the end into the MASTER. Or maybe Scrivener at that point or Atticus. I know Word has trouble handling large documents. I don’t know at once size it craps out at, so research needed.

My daughter has also played with Fictionary, so that’s worth a look.

I’m exploring like it’s the Wild West so who knows if I’ll strike gold, but I’ll keep you updated.

Unlocking Creativity & Productivity (All While Keeping Your True Voice) with Joseph Michael

October 17, 2024. This may be the same AI seminar I’ve already done but AI isn’t going away and I’m always looking to gain more knowledge of it. Free but upselling will occur, and that’s fair. I can say no easy enough.

Escape the Plot Forest 2024 from Daniel David Wallace

October 19-23, 2024. “Improve your plotting and storytelling techniques inside this supportive writing community.” I find myself getting stuck plotting out novels. The romance story I’m working on is hung up because I don’t really knows what happens after the meet-cute. I’m hoping for some sparks during this summit. Again, it’s free for a short time and then you have to pay to keep all the sessions. I tend to review each session quickly for golden nuggets so the time limit doesn’t worry me. I do like that there’s a Discord group. I wonder if it will continue after the summit is over.

Recent Reads

~ Rose Sparrowking

Shutter by Ramona Emerson

This is my new fav! I’m on the list to get her second book from the library. So many good storytellers coming out of the southwest. Rita can see and hear ghosts and acknowledging this is a big taboo in Navajo culture. And potentially dangerous for Rita. But the dead want her help and as a forensic photographer, she’s in a position to do just that.

At times I did stop reading as the descriptions of the crimes were so gruesome and disturbing. I also was pretty sure who the murderer was.

But that was balanced out by the loving relationship between Rita and her grandmother and Rita’s growth as a photographer.

Ramona also ties in the terrible history of the Navajo peoples perpetrated by white people and their continuing hardships. I was aware of some of this and it is heartbreaking to read about it in such a personal manner.

Murder-mystery, ghosts, Navajo culture, photography and more–I’m looking forward to the next book!

The Golden Tresses of the Dead by Alan Bradley

Another murder mystery! I’ve loved Flavia de Luce since The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie came out. This is the tenth novel in the series. I love her spunk. I love her relationship with her sisters. I love Dogger. But I think I love Gladys best! That Flavia treat her bicycle as a person just tickles a girlish part of me.

Oh no! There’s someone’s finger in Feely’s wedding cake! Who will figure this out? Flavia’s new investigative business with Dogger is on their first case.

These are such a fun read. I admit to skimming a lot of the chemistry. That might be Flavia’s love, but I study chemistry in high school and college and that was enough for me!

I’ve got the next book in the series on the top of the TBR pile just waiting to go!

Book Review: The Life Impossible by Matt Haig

~ Rose Sparrowking

The Life Impossible by Matt Haig

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Beautifully written. Emotionally evocative. I empathized with Grace Winters closely and enjoyed watching her become the person she was by the end of the story. How she learned to live.

Life. Death. Grief. Guilt. Love. Flaws. History. Dancing. Ibiza. Miracles. Alien life. The ocean. Murder mystery. Friendship. Corporate greed. Environmental protection and destruction. Protests. Hippies. Mathematics. Astrophysics. Scuba diving. Marine biology. Family. Psychic powers. Orange juice. And so much more in this novel.

I wasn’t all that invested in the beginning of the novel. It took time to grow on me, but the voice engaged me. I noted some passages that captured my attention in the first quarter of the novel, but I stopped doing that as I became more involved in the story.

Favorite quotes:
“‘I feel like I have a life inside me that needs to be lived and I am not living it.” P12

“There are two kinds of ghosts that torment you when a young person dies. The ghost of who they were, and the ghost of who they could have been.” P19

“When you had a childhood surrounded by saints it was easy to feel like a sinner. A teacher once told me if prayers aren’t reaching God, it was because they had been blocked by your own sin.” p71

There were many more quotable moments, but I was too busy reading by then.

La Prescencia threw me for a long time. It felt so weird, but by the end, I understood the necessity of something so extraordinary. We are so familiar with our day-to-day lives that we need something outside ourselves to show us truth. To show us the miracles all around us that we take for granted.

Live your life. Truly live. What does that mean? I think that’s different for everyone. I know I go around in a haze of doing one thing after another, one day after another, and it’s when I slow down and look around that I remember how wonderful and crazy it is to be alive.

“Where there is life, there is possibility.” P39




View all my reviews

Links List

~ Rose Sparrowking

Venting Doesn’t Reduce Anger, But Something Else Does, Study Finds. Smashing shit in a rage room isn’t going to help you to let it go.

ProWritingAid is offering a free Fantasy Writers’ Week Summit, April 22-26. I’m attending! “Discover the secrets for writing, editing, and publishing a spell-binding fantasy novel at this free online summit.” Yep, they’re going to try to sell you stuff but I always come away with some gold nuggets.

The 3 Best Writing Tips I’ve Gotten From Masters, and the 4 Best Writing Tips I’ve Given.

Links List: Romance Writers’ Week and Why Do We Even Read?

~ Rose Sparrowking

Prowritingaid is hosting Romance Writers’ Week starting February 12, 2024. I rarely watch the sessions live, but go through them quickly afterward. You’ve got like a week or so to review the sessions before access is cut off (unless, of course, you fork over more money!). There are usually some good tidbits along with the usual sales pitches. It’s free.

Why Do We Even Read?: “The purpose of literature is, of course, to open up new worlds and introduce information and experiences. This is what libraries do and why libraries are a monumental resource and a cornerstone of democracy. They offer a whole world to their communities that does not change based on an algorithm. It’s based on providing tools, skills, and resources that benefit as many people as possible outside capitalism, which drives data collection and the resulting feeds curated for a user rather than curated by a user.”

The Lens of Life

~ Rose Sparrowking

Like most Americans, I took the SAT exam in high school. Twice. This was the mid 1980s and I had done respectably well on the first round, not record-setting but fine, and the second round I did about the same. My scores were decent, and I got into all the colleges I applied for.

I appreciate the irony of being a writer now and avoiding any college application that involved an essay. Sorry, BU. (Boston University)

Also amusing to me, my daughter got her Master’s from BU.

And strange to me, this is the first time I’ve ever typed that I’m a writer. Not a wannabe writer. Aspiring writer. Novice writer. Just a writer.

Back to the SATs.

I don’t know how much they change the exam from year to year, but I’m sure it’s similar between one year and the next. I didn’t specifically study for the exams. Which is weird, thinking about it now since I normally crammed the night before for exams. I didn’t take any SAT classes. Did they have those in the 80s? I don’t remember my teachers discussing strategies for the exam. The exams, my preparation and my scores were the same.

Yet both experiences were vastly different.

It must have been Spring of Junior year, 1984. My friend and I were getting a ride together, and we wanted to go out to breakfast before going to school. We both had part time jobs and wanted to treat ourselves. My father was the designated driver that morning. He didn’t really ever drive any of the kids around or do anything with the kids if he could avoid it and he wasn’t pleased about picking us up. He didn’t want to have stop somewhere and get us. If he had to be up and driving, he just want us to all get in the car together and go. We were only going to Burger King. It was an easy walk from my house and he’d be driving that way to take us to school. He wasn’t going out of his way, but he was still irritated.

My friend lived a short walk away, so we met up and walked down Main Street, ten or fifteen minutes, looking forward to a special breakfast. Most breakfasts at home were cereal and milk and it was a treat to go out to eat at anytime, even fast food. We arrived only to find Burger King was closed at 6:00a.m. on a Saturday morning. Disappointed, we knew there was no time to walk back to the house to get food. And suddenly there was my father, honking for us to get in the wagon and he was not about to go to a drive-thru somewhere else to get us a bite to eat.

So I took those SATs miserable. My father was irritated with me. I was up earlier than I needed to be, with no reward for my sacrifice, which any teen will tell you that getting up early on a Saturday morning is a huge sacrifice. I was hungry and thirsty and out of luck.

Definitely a learning experience.

Senior year, I took the SAT’s again. I don’t know why because I had acceptances and had committed to a school. But I was told to take them again, probably by the guidance counselor, and being a good rule follower, I did.

This SAT experience was so very different. First, I had a school lined up, so the pressure was off to begin with. (Why, oh why, did I have to sit that second exam?) I didn’t get up any earlier than necessary. I ate breakfast at home. I didn’t meet up with my friend. (We weren’t friends anymore.) My mother drove me to school and I’m sure we chatted the entire ride. She was probably thrilled about getting out of the house without the baby and looking forward to some time alone on the drive back home. (My third brother was a little over a year old at that point and my first sister would arrive in a few months.)

I remember it being a sunny day and I choose a place in the cafeteria near the windows and far away from the main doors. I had a table to myself, because no one walked to the other end of the cafeteria.

I plopped my hobo bag on the seat next to me, got out my number 2 pencils and then the best part, I brought out a big bag of M&M’s and covered it with my purse. And this little thing, this minor act of defiance, made me happy for the entire exam.

Did I really get away with munching on M&M’s during SAT’s? I don’t know. No one said anything to me. I’m sure the teachers monitoring the exam didn’t bother with me. I never caused trouble. Never. I’m sure they ignored me the entire time. But I thought I got away with something.

I nibbled my booty of forbidden candy, enjoyed the sun on my back and completely colored in my little circles with number 2 pencil. And I was happy.

One year, miserable SAT. Next year, happy SAT.

I’m not sure why this memory popped into my consciousness today. I’ve been reading Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and changes in perception is a theme in the story. My SATs is one of the most obvious examples in my life of how my thinking changed my perception of an event.

So I guess there’s a lesson or moral in this story. If you’re going to do it, you may as well enjoy it? Take a minor risk, it’s fun? Is the way you think about something more important that the thing itself? The way you think about your life is how you experience it?

Perhaps it’s something that we need to figure out for ourselves. How we want to perceive our life. That the lens is just as important as the events. That life is going to happen, so you may as well make the best of it.

I hope you all are making the best of your life.

Happy November 1st

~ Rose Sparrowking

Happy First Day of NaNoWriMo! Woo hoo!

First, if you’re going to do timed sprints, you should actually start the timer. Hahaha! I was writing and writing and waiting for the timer to go off so I could get up and stretch and use the bathroom but it never happened. I finally tabbed over to see how much time was left, and, yup, never started it.

I got a good start on my word count!

I’m using this word count tracker: NaNoWriMo Wordcount Worksheet (https://justinmclachlan.gumroad.com/l/nanowrimotracker)

Since my husband works from home (and is teaching a seminar today), I’ve got my noise-cancelling headphones on with the Piano Guys playing. I find lyrics distracting when I’m writing. Also, I just like the Piano Guys!

I’ve got two goals for November:

  1. Write daily
  2. Walk daily

I’ve got a lot going on this month, NaNo, Thanksgiving, a charity event, cleaning to prep for Thanksgiving but I’m most concerned about my health. I was sick in September and then had COVID in October. I haven’t exercised at all in two months, except for walking in Florence on our recent trip. So I’m getting myself back in the habit of moving, starting slowly with a daily walk. By the new year, I’ll be ready to ramp it up, provided I stay healthy. Fingers-crossed.

Daily walk:  20 minutes at a local park

Writing: Word count today: 1717

Science Fiction Writers’ Week with ProWritingAid

~ Rose Sparrowking

Sci-Fi Writers’ week was September 11-14 and while I watched many of the sessions, these were the only two that inspired me to take notes. There was another session that I wanted to watch, but there was a problem with the wrong video being posted and I never went back to see if they fixed it. And now I’ve lost the link, so that’s poor planning on my part.

I have signed up for another webinar, How to Structure Your Plot and Finally Start Your Novel with Katja Kaine, on September 26th and I’ve bookmarked the link this time. Live and learn! I’m looking forward to this because plotting is a struggle for me. I can develop characters and setting and dream up a few scenes but getting a well structured plot has eluded me so far. I usually end up pantsing it, which doesn’t lead to a cohesive plot and requires a lot of editing.

Onto the webinar session reviews:

The first session I watched was by Joe Nicoletti of AI for Authors, talking about how to use ChatGPT as a writer. I knew very little going in, so this one was very informative, even though he only scratched the surface of what’s out there. His main point was learning to develop the best prompt for AI to get the results you want. Think of what expert you need the AI to be, who the audience is, what tone of voice, what writing style and what the context is for your prompt. Get specific. Then ask follow up questions and drill down. Don’t know what to ask? Ask the AI what you should be asking. He got ChatGPT to generate some awesome ideas and characters, even an alien language with pronunciation, with his prompt and follow ups. He was so enthused by what he was demonstrating, that the ProWritingAid monitor had to cut in and tell him he only had 2 minutes left in his time slot. Haha! Definitely going to be playing with this and looking to learn more.

Next session I watched in replay was a talk by the author Lauren Buekes. Loved this one, as she’s very encouraging but also down to earth. She acknowledged that creating is hard, but it’s so worthwhile. “Art is the fire we light against the darkness.” And to just finish: “Finish the damn book. Nothing else matters. Stop second-guessing yourself and write through to the end. You don’t know what you have until you’ve finished it. You don’t know how to fix it until it’s all down on the page.” Also, something on AI: “There is a subconscious magic in process and I think this is what AI is never going to be able to do. There is the subconscious thing that happens as you’re typing and the words change and the characters run away with you and do something different and it’s not magic and you’re not possessed. It is your brain. It’s the wonder of your brain and it’s the wonder of thinking about things and actually writing it and the process is the writing and that’s why it’s so important to finish.” If you can hear her speak, I’d would encourage you to take advantage!

I’m looking forward to more webinars with ProWritingAid and let me know if there are other webinars (preferably free!) happening out there that you’d recommend.

It Only Takes One

~ Rose Sparrowking

Someone posted this image to Facebook today:

Ugh! How do you let something go? This one asshole is ruining my day… because I’m letting them.

It’s the first time I’ve had to block someone on the NaNo forums. I imagine that it’s some 13 year boy pranking people online. It was that infantile and obvious. I get a chat message and I’m suspicious because I don’t know this person and there’s nothing in their profile. I ask what they’re doing for NaNo and they reply they didn’t know and were really there to connect to people. A red flag, but nothing in the conversation is crossing a line. They keep complaining about being tired and I keep sidestepping the issue until finally I ask, because I know that’s what they want. And, yes, their genitals are the reason they are so tired.

Double ugh! Boys! Whatever the age! This is why I’m writing about a female only society for NaNo and the disruption of men when they arrive.

And FFS, I know it’s not all men!

So, the situation has been on my mind all day and I wish I could go into my head and erase the entire thing.

I need to learn some techniques in how to let things go!