Tuesday, August 26, 2014

5 things that calm me when my WIP makes me tear my hair out

Writing is hard work. Between untangling plot lines, building entire worlds, making sure you stay within the rules of that world, developing characters, smoothing out dialogue, fixing grammar, choosing where not to fix grammar, and all the other wonderful tasks that come with turning words into stories, it can get a bit overwhelming. Sometimes, you just need to stop worrying and chill out.

Here are the five things that work for me:

5. Trashy entertainment



When I'm writing, I don't want any Oscar-worthy documentaries or prize-winning pieces of literature or anything else of quality. My brain is too spent to process any of that. Give me Katy Perry songs, or books intended for children, or America's Next Top Model. Attractive people fighting over stupid things? Yes, please. Brain... off.

4. Things that smell nice



There's a reason so many stress relief products involve scents. Smell is the most evocative of the senses, so a whiff of something fresh can transport you to a faraway meadow where there are no troubles...

3. Comfort food


Yum. One bite of something sugary or fatty or salty - or all three - send the mind into happy-land.

2. Cats


Both in real life and on the Internet. Something about those little bundles of fuzz is just so comforting.

1. Booze


Ever wonder why so many writers are alcoholics? Booze does wonders for quieting that incessant little red pen in your head.*

*Please don't become an alcoholic.

Saturday, August 23, 2014

Getting into Character - Writing about teenagers in 2014


One of the most frequent questions I get about writing young adult books is how I get into the mindset of a teenager. Some people find it strange that a forty something year old woman can accurately capture the thoughts and feelings of a modern teen. After all, when I was a teen, the internet was still just a figment of Al Gore’s imagination. Back then, when we wanted to call our friends, we used the rotary dial phone on the wall in the kitchen. If we wanted privacy, we pulled the handset into the hall closet and shut the door.
Still, as a teacher and a mother, I have an advantage. I get to live and work with twenty first century teenagers every day.  And because I am a word person, I love to examine their current slang. Mind you, I don’t use much of it in my books because I don’t want to be overly stylistic. That would make my books go out of style pretty quick. However, I still love to reflect on trends, and I find slang to be very amusing. So shared here, just for the readers of Zigzag Timeline, five interesting and mildly confusing teen slang terms.
1.     Turn up
This means to party. Or to get ready to party. Or to be excited to party. Here it is in a sentence.
Britney is having a party this weekend because her parents are going to New York. Turn up!
2.     Mad
This one is used in place of the word very. It has nothing to do with ones emotional state or sanity. Here it is used in a sentence.
That boy’s got mad skills on the basketball court. He’s going to the NBA.
3.     Doe
This one is hard and I’m sure if I tried to use it, I would do it all wrong. But I think it means something similar to the word though. Mostly, it’s added just for emphasis I think.
Sentence: Oh, this bike, doe.
4.     Turnt
All I can think of when I hear this one is turnips, but supposedly it means getting rowdy or having fun.
Sentence: We are going to get turnt at that pep rally!
5.     YASSSS
This just means yes but with ten times the excitement of an average yes. Like when a fangirl is going to a concert with her favorite band.
Sentence: Headed to One Direction! YASSSSS!

Despite my research and my daily exposure to teenagers, I still find that tapping into my own teenage years and remembering the emotions, the fears, and the triumphs I went through is the best way to write about teenagers. Trends and technological advances will constantly change, but the universal human experience of coming of age is mostly the same. Exploring your talents, having your heart broken, facing your failures and enjoying successes all shape who we become as adults. And for me, I love that I get to relive that time in my life through my stories.

To learn more about me and my writing, please check me out online at Melissamacvicar.com or on facebook and twitter at Melissa MacVicar-Author and @melissamacvicar
http://melissamacvicar.com/

https://twitter.com/MelissaMacVicar

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Melissa-MacVicar/137762893067929?ref=hl





Ever Lost (Secret Affinity, #2)

New town, new school, new ghost.

 Jade has a dedicated boyfriend, an overprotective mom, and a full scholarship. Uprooted from Nantucket, Jade is installed off-island at her dad’s new house so she can attend snobby Layton Academy. Leaving Charlie behind is sheer torment, but living with her father has plenty of dangerous distraction—in the form of a terrifying spirit haunting her new school. Hottie classmate Mateo Fernandez can’t see the ghost, but he knows its story. He’d like to know hers, too, but Jade still misses Charlie, even though distance seems to be changing him.

With support from Mateo and the mysterious Noemie, Jade commits to helping the agonized spirit cross over. As she delves into the ghost’s past, the disturbing secrets Jade learns draw her into a deadly confrontation with a desperate man. If she can’t play his demented game, the spirit’s harrowing fate could become her own.



Links:







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Tuesday, August 19, 2014

I'm a terrible procrastinator

Anyone who's looked at my Twitter feed recently has probably seen my many #amwriting tweets about how desperate I am to finish Windborn. This is because I've been slacking on it for ages (partly because the ideas weren't fully baked and I needed time to develop them, and partly because... I was just being lazy). Writers, as I'm sure you know, are terrible procrastinators. There have even been semi-academic articles about this and why that might be.

That article I linked to claims that writers procrastinate because as long as the book is an idea and not a reality, the author can believe that it is in fact the BEST THING EVER. No one can deny it, since it doesn't exist yet. For all anyone knows, that story idea kicking around in Joe Wannabe's head is the Great American Novel, with writing that makes The Great Gatsby look like a fourth grade homework assignment and a plot that will suck you into its black hole of awesomeness.

They might have a point. I always like my ideas better when they're just visions. I can run around thinking "It's going to be so awesome and dramatic and you're going to love it and the setting will make you want to go there and OMG you will laugh and cry and want to marry it!!!" But once it's down on paper, reality kicks in and reminds me that, no, I'm not a Wonderful Word Wizard. Just another human being, trying to capture the magnificence of another world with a net woven of thoughts. (That sentence sounded a lot more profound in my head two minutes ago).

Of course, there's also the constant fretting about whether what I'm doing is good enough. I didn't have this issue with my first book, Artificial Absolutes, because I was writing in a blissful vacuum, free from all the little red pens of the world. But now that I've worked with editors and read a million and one articles about How to Write a Book, every sentence feels like a misstep. Especially everyone has different ideas about the Rules (don't use adverbs! show don't tell! don't bury your dialogue! use active verbs!) and sometimes they clash. It's enough to drive a person batty. I remember learning about an old Japanese notion from my days studying the shakuhachi: that the mind of a beginner is pure. Boy, was that true. How can I do anything when I keep second-guessing myself?

Enough with the excuses. And enough with using blogging as an excuse. Time to get some words down!

#amwriting
#inaminute
#hashtagsarefunevenwhentheymakenosense




Thursday, August 14, 2014

Brave New Girls is officially funded!

Good news, everyone! Actually, that's an understatement. Great news! Awesome news! Terrific news!

Ah whatever, you get the picture...

I'm jumping around over here with a stupid grin on my face, because not only did the Brave New Girls crowdfunding campaign, which closed yesterday, raise enough cash to ensure we can publish a quality book, but we exceeded our goal! Including offline donations, we raised more than 125% of what we originally set out for!

For those of you just tuning in, Brave New Girls is a young adult sci-fi anthology I'm indie publishing with fellow sci-fi writer Paige Daniels (author of the Non-Compliance trilogy). The theme is teen girls in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math), and our goal is to encourage more young ladies to enter these fields. Right now, there is a dearth of stories starring tech-savvy heroines, and we believe that if more girls saw themselves portrayed as programmers, scientists, engineers, and the like, more may explore those careers (currently, women make up only 26% of STEM professionals). All profits from sales of the anthology will be donated to a scholarship fund through the Society of Women Engineers.

The funds raised will go through the costs of publishing - editing, proofreading, formatting, some marketing ... and we can even afford illustrations! It's been a truly exciting 45 days or so, and I couldn't be more thrilled.

Huge, HUGE thanks to all our awesome donors (in no particular order):

Lucy Xia, Hacker Extraordinaire
Zoe Harris, Hacker Extraordinaire
Andrew Weintraub, Hacker Extraordinaire
Anonymous
Anonymous Interstellar Pilot
Linda van der Pal, Hacker Extraordinaire
Samir Tamer, Hacker Extraordinaire
Anonymous
Anonymous Hacker Extraordinaire
Feifang Hu, Starship Captain
Huibin Zhou, Starship Captain
Anonymous Interstellar Pilot
Anonymous
Zheng Ke, Hacker Extraordinaire
Dacheng Xiu, Starship Captain
Clifford Lam, Hacker Extraordinaire
Anonymous
Anonymous
Yang Feng, Starship Captain
Anonymous
Anonymous Interstellar Pilot
Huixia Judy Wang, Hacker Extraordinaire
Anonymous
Anonymous
Dean Lombardo, Hacker Extraordinaire
Jelena Bradic, Hacker Extraordinaire
Anonymous
Anonymous
Jian-Lun Xu, Starship Captain
Ahmet Emre Barut, Interstellar Pilot
Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous Interstellar Pilot
Byeong Uk Park, Starship Captain
Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous
Xu Han, Starship Captain
Yue Niu, Starship Captain
Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous Fleet Commander
Anonymous
Anonymous
Ying Lu, Hacker Extraordinaire
Anupama Pattabiraman, Hacker Extraordinaire
Emily Conrad, Starship Captain
Chintan Mehta, Hacker Extraordinaire
Anonymous
Anonymous
Wolfgang Goerlich, Hacker Extraordinaire
Julianne Grasso, Hacker Extraordinaire
Fengshan Liu, Hacker Extraordinaire
Anonymous
Anonymous
Ryan Smith, Hacker Extraordinaire
Daniel Jiang, Hacker Extraordinaire
Anonymous
Anonymous
Supriya Hobbs, Virtual Reality Netizen
Lalithra Fernando, Hacker Extraordinaire
Anonymous Fleet Commander
Anonymous
Will Gallego, Hacker Extraordinaire
Nikki Thean, Starship Captain
David Harten Watson, Interstellar Pilot
Ziwei Zhu, Starship Captain
Lori Lum, Hacker Extraordinaire
Anonymous Alien Benefactor
Anonymous
Kate Moretti, Interstellar Pilot
Gail Ebey, Hacker Extraordinaire
Ruston Van Lue, Interstellar Pilot
Anonymous
Sabrina Longcore, Interstellar Pilot
Julie Montgomery, Interstellar Pilot
Elizabeth Corrigan, Hacker Extraordinaire
Stephen Kozeniewski, Virtual Reality Netizen
Anonymous Fleet Commander
Ross Harrison, Interstellar Pilot
Eyal Mozes, Starship Captain
Mom and Dad Daniels, Fleet Commanders
Dad Fan, Alien Benefactor

Monday, August 11, 2014

COVER REVEAL: Catching a Man / Elizabeth Corrigan

Cover reveal time! For the 1950s-style fantasy mystery, Catching a Man by Elizabeth Corrigan, author of the well-received Earthbound Angels series. Catching a Man is the first book in her new series, Valeriel Investigations. To see the cover, play the puzzle below if that's your thing, or, if you're a puzzle dunderhead like I am, scroll down (there's also a raffle at the end of this post, so keep going)...



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Ta da! Ain't it a beauty? Love the classic film noir font. Book description below the image... This is gonna be a good one! Trust me, I was one of the lucky beta readers. Couldn't put it down, and I mean that. I got annoyed every time I had to stop to do dumb things like eat or go to work.


CATCHING A MAN
A Valeriel Investigations Novel

Kadin Stone's life is finally going according to plan. She's starting her new job as a homicide detective's aide at one of the premier criminal investigation companies in Valeriel City, the capital of a 1950’s-style kingdom. Kadin is certain her new position will introduce her to any number of eligible men, so she'll finally be able to get married and stop burdening the brother who insists on supporting her.

On Kadin’s first day, the royal family calls in her team to investigate the murder of gossip-rag cover girl Queen Callista. Kadin’s superiors think it’s an open and shut case. The queen’s jilted lover Duke Baurus DeValeriel had motive, means, and opportunity, but Kadin can’t help but spot holes in their theory.

After checking into a few leads of her own, Kadin inadvertently ends up in the confidence of Duke Baurus. When she tries to share what she knows with the rest of the team, she finds them unwilling to listen to the opinion of a girl who they know is only after a ring on her finger. In order to see justice served, Kadin finds herself doing the last thing she expected when she started working for a homicide detective—solve a murder!



ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elizabeth Corrigan has degrees in English and psychology and has spent several years working as a data analyst in various branches of the healthcare industry. When she’s not hard at work on her next novel, Elizabeth enjoys singing, reading teen vampire novels, and playing RPGs as medieval versions of her characters. She once made herself a birthday cake with five layers and two different kinds of chocolate frosting and is pathologically afraid of bees. She lives in Maryland with two cats and a purple Smart Car.




Twitter: @ercorrigan

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