All posts by NewEngland_Muse

I'm a traditionally and self published author. I write in the genre of children and YA at the moment but working my way up to adults. I'm a sports loving, photo taking gal who loves to sing/dance to my own enjoyment. I love to laugh even at myself. I am also owned by 8 birds and 2 hamsters, and yes they know it. :)
NaNoWriMo 2012, Writing frenzy

NaNoWriMo 2012

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Last year I decided a week before NaNoWriMo that I would be participating. Can we all yell big mistake? Not that I was trying this writing frenzy for the first time but that I was very unprepared. I did win and am quite proud of that. But this year the decision was made to be more prepared.

I would wake up at 5am to write my 1667-2000 daily words that is needed to get the 50k done in time. That almost landed me in the hospital with my illnesses acting up. This year while I still get up early as a norm will just do half and leave the rest for later.  I still tried to keep up with this blog not wanting it to dwindle to a halt after all the work I had done on it. This year I have recruited some guest bloggers for the month. I thought I would have to beg people to do this. What I found was a group of people willing to help me during this time frame. It is a win for the both of us. For me it keeps my blog alive and for them it brings their name out to a new audience. The kindness of these people makes me smile.

I wrote every thing by hand. That is my method of writing my books and short stories, pen and paper. But what I ended up with at the end of the month was a novel that needed to be typed up. Not doing that this year, I will try to type this first hand and see where it takes me.  Last year the only idea I had on the novel was a one paragraph synopsis. This year I have envision the entire book in my head and have made notes.

On the side I review books from BookSneeze and from authors who contact me. This year there will be no review. I will read the books that are in the queue for me to read but the reviews will wait until December. Meetings has been set up for members of my writing group and myself to have time to work on NaNo. The buddy system does help for people who are doing this alongside me get what I am trying to do.  What is nice is people have understood when I told them the reasons why I am doing all of this.

I really want to have back to back wins on this so I will be pushing myself. Will I be able to get the magical 50k words in one month I am not sure. But I surely will give it a good try.

Boxed In, Creative Writing, POV

POV

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How comfortable are you in using different POVs for your characters and books? Do you stray outside the box and try different aspects? Or rather do you stick to the norm? I have taken three creative writing class, two under the same instructor. I firmly believe there is always something out there for me to learn to improve me as a person and a writer.

One particular class the instructor challenged us to change our POV. We were to check our stories that we had written and try writing from a person we had not thought to do before. He gave us an example. We were to think of a children’s story but to write it from someone’s else viewpoint. I chose the “The Three Little Pigs” and in it I wrote through the wolf’s eyes. It did not end with a happily ever after. But just doing that one story opened my eyes to new avenues that I had never thought of before. And by keeping myself in a box I was leaving a lot of potential amazing stories unwritten due to my mind being closed to this facet of writing.

At the time one of the novels I was working on was based on my war with my back yard squirrels. Taking a note from that WIP I wrote a collection of short stories with each one having a different POV from the characters of my novel.  I had so much fun exploring this and what came out of it was a comedy that I did no know existed inside of me. I am grateful for Mr. Wynn for bringing this up in class. Since then I have written a few short stories and another novel. But now when they are done I rewrite them giving them a different spin.

The potential has increased on what I can write about. So again I ask are you comfortable using different POVs in your stories or do you like to stay inside the box?

Bloggers, NaNoWriMo, Writers

Guest Bloggers/Writers Needed

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Guest bloggers are needed for the month of November. NaNoWriMo is around the corner and I am going for back to back wins. With that comes some reorganization of my social medias and how they are updated. So this means I am looking for writers of any kind who might want to showcase a post on this website.

I am looking for four maybe five to fill up the month with me. This is a win for both of us. It will help showcase someone’s work on this blog hence reaching a different audience. For me it prevents my blog from coming to a slow grind due to the November madness.

Guest posts should not be more than 500 words. It can be about your books, you as an author or a subject matter that can be silly and fun. Obviously nothing distasteful will be placed up here, it is my blog.

If anyone is interested just contact me and we can go from there.