All posts by Jordan

Reading

TBR Tuesday: Reads in progress

#TackleTBR! The Tackle your TBR Read-a-thon is underway, and I’ve joined in! I haven’t . . . you know . . . finished anything yet, but here’s what’s in progress.

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A Way Back to You by Emily Gray Clawson

For two and a half years, Annabelle, a young widow with three small children, has been stuck in the past. Numbed by grief and overwhelmed by the responsibility of raising her three small children alone, she agrees to let them spend the weekend with a friend while she tries to get some much-needed rest at her parents’ home. But the next morning, Annabelle is suddenly sixteen again—and it just happens to be the worst day of her teenage years.

As she relives the drama of high school life, Annabelle realizes that her future husband, Mitch, has just returned from a mission and is living on the other side of town. While getting Mitch’s attention is more complicated than she imagined, Annabelle discovers that she is stronger than she has been willing to admit, and there just might be a future for her after all.

Emily is a good friend—a critique partner, in fact—but we didn’t meet until this book was already sitting in the slush at her publisher. Soon after, she got her acceptance, and after a whirlwind editorial “romance,” she was on the shelves!

I’m in the acknowledgments (woot!) but this is actually the first time I’ve read this story. I’m only a few chapters in, but I’m totally captivated! I can’t wait to read more!

And on my electronic TBR:


Pivot Point by Kasie West

Addison Coleman’s life is one big “What if?” As a Searcher, a special type of clairvoyant, whenever Addie is faced with a choice, she is able to look into the future and see both outcomes. So when her parents tell her they are getting a divorce and she has to pick who she wants to live with, a Search has never been more important.

In one future Addie is living with her mom in the life she’s always known and is being pursued by the most popular guy in school. In the other she is the new girl in school, where she falls for a cute, quiet artist. Then Addie finds herself drawn into a murder investigation, and her fate takes a darker turn. With so much to lose in either future, Addie must decide which reality she’s willing to live through . . . and who she’s willing to live without.

I keep setting this one down, but I think about it (and have even dreamed about it!) when I can’t read it. I’m about halfway through the book, and I think I see where some of the plotlines are going (and if they don’t go this cool way, I might be disappointed :\ ). I’m enjoying this one, too, with its fresh idea and fun execution!

What are you reading now?

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Works, Writing Life

My first finished novel (sort of)

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This entry is part 2 of 13 in the series All my novels

I’d always dreamed of writing novels—not in the “Yes, someday we’ll have enough money to retire early and/or work until the day we die” way that 90% of people do, just wishing they’d written a novel, but in the “Yes, of course, that’s going to happen within 5-10 years, I’ve already got it in the plan” way.

The plan got a jumpstart when my oldest (and then only) child was about 18 months old. I was so, so, so bored much of the time, despite a nice work-from-home position in search engine marketing. But it took a vivid dream to get me writing what would become my first finished novel . . . sort of.

I grabbed a leftover multi-subject spiral bound notebook and a pen and started writing.

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The book stats

Title: Uhhh . . . Never titled it. The file name was always just “Nick and Kate.”
Genre: Historical romance (set in the US in the 1920s)
Inspiration: a dream
Writing dates: September – October 2007. Four weeks. Writing longhand, that was pretty impressive.
Length: ~43,000 words—that’s the “sort of.” As I soon discovered, technically this isn’t long enough to qualify as a novel. But I still count it.
Elevator pitch: Kate is an average small-town girl with above average aspirations. Meeting rich and worldly Nick wasn’t part of her plan, but she’s ready to try anything—if they can both leave behind the scars of the Great War.

What I learned from writing this book

This book taught me the passion and rapture of drafting! I stood at my kitchen counter while my son was playing (in the next room, but in sight), and lost myself in the story until I couldn’t write anymore.

I was able to carry the story through to the end for the first time. Woot! I also realized how much I enjoy dialogue—natural dialogue comes very easily for me, and I can spot unnatural dialogue pretty well. (Natural, however, != good all the time…)

Webster's 1956 DictionaryMost importantly, this book proved to me that I can do this! I can write a whole story, start to finish. I’d started a few stories and would-be novels, but always ran out of steam or passion or ideas. For the first time, I was able to get through the whole thing.

I shared this book with two people, ever. They were both very positive and encouraging, but another important thing I learned: novels are long. Without the drive to expand this story with significant subplots, I decided to shelve it. Next time, I vowed, I would get to a “real” novel length.

How about you? What was your first novel about? Come share!

Photo credits: spiral notebook—Damon Grosso; dictionary—AJ Marx via Flickr/CC

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Writing Life, Works, News & Contests

August accountability, September goals!

It’s the first Friday of the month! I’m reporting on my goals for August and setting new ones for September. Come join in!

August accountability

I spent the first third of the month on vacation with my family, the next third recovering/unpacking/preparing for school, and the last third sending my kids back to school!

My second child started school this year, and she loves it so far.

  • Send the sequel to I, Spy out to my usual beta readers, plus probably a few more & incorporate their feedback—on the last day of the month, I got this DONE! I had to rip the novel apart, and I hope I sewed it back together okay. Within hours of sending it, I opened it to a random page and found a continuity error. Oy.
  • Prep the sequel to I, Spy to send to editor (and do it!)—Um, no. This month!
  • Start something new! My optimistic goal: 12,000 words on something new. Should be doable….?— AHAHAHAHAHAHA. Ha. HA.
  • Read, read, read! Still working on that digital TBR, but the physical one is calling to me, too.—Moved most of this to this month, but I did read 🙂 .
  • Unpack: tackle the garage, landing place for most of the stuff we brought over in the month after we “officially” moved.—We’ve made some serious headway here. But by “we” I mean “my beloved husband.”

September goals

With the baby down for an afternoon nap, my third child sometimes doesn’t know what to do with herself! I’m hoping to convince her to take the occasional nap (she needs it even more than I need her to do it). We’re still getting into a routine, but I’m hoping things will settle down a bit and I can get some serious work done—fast.

I’m going to break out all that I hope to accomplish this month. Because I’m crazy like that.

  • Sequel: Deep edit, incorporate beta feedback, read aloud, send to editor.
  • Finish back cover copy and get cover for sequel.
  • Finish Character Arcs & send to betas.
  • Set up a big promotion for I, Spy
  • Run Promenade booth
  • Critique
  • Start something new (and SHORT)?

How . . . ? Can anybody loan me a couple extra hours a day?

What’s up for you this month?

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Technique

New writing series: Subplots!

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This entry is part 1 of 7 in the series Subplots

I asked you what you wanted, and the #1 writing series choice was subplots! So today I’m kicking off our next writing series!

subplots series. Photo by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

A subplot is a part of a story that shows some sort of progress, growth or change, but isn’t the main plot of a story. A few examples of subplots include:

  • Jenny’s life (especially away from Forrest) in Forrest Gump
  • Ron & Hermoine’s romance in the Harry Potter series (one of dozens of subplots!)
  • Tom’s affair with Myrtle in The Great Gatsby
  • Katniss’s “romance” with Peeta and somewhat Gale in The Hunger Games
  • The plot of individual, single episodes of Burn Notice and other serial TV shows

None of these stories constitute the main plot of their stories: Forrest Gump’s life, Harry Potter’s battle against Voldemort, Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy, surviving the Hunger Games, getting back Michael’s life as a spy, etc. And yet they’re still vital to the story (in varying degrees) because they influence the main plot.

Subplots can be really tricky! You have to show enough of them to understand what’s going on, you have to make sure they’re intertwined with and thus vital to the story, and yet somehow you need to balance them so they don’t overwhelm or contradict the main action of the story.

No wonder we want to learn how to do them well!

Coming up in the series:

  • Types of subplots
  • Balancing the subplot and the main plot
  • How to know when the subplot should go
  • How to make a subplot vital to the story

Previous posts on subplots: Elizabeth S. Craig’s secret sauce: subplots

Other writing series:


Learn the best way to outline your next successful novel with the free PDF of The Plot Thickens (mwahahaha)		 Free Deep POV guide
Really get into your characters’ heads for voice that pops with the free PDF Guide to Deep POV

Creating conflict: Draw your readers in and keep them reading: proven tools & techniques—no gimmicks!To get the free PDF, just share the automatic message via one of these social networks, using the buttons below:
Why pay with a Tweet, Facebook or G+?

Photo by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory via Flickr & CC

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Reading

TBR Tuesday: How do you review a (sort of) “bad” book?

A lot of elements go into a book: the characters, the plot, the writing style, the voice, the grammar. Getting them all perfect—or even just really, really good—is tough! Writers know that better than most readers, because we (hopefully) have worked very hard at getting all of those elements juuuuust right in our own works.

ok stars

After my most recent reading kick (though all those books were quite good), I’ve been thinking about this. Minor mistakes, or things that just aren’t my personal taste are kind of easy to compartmentalize. But how do you review a book that gets some of those major elements great, but one or two are executed only “fair” (or worse)?

Let’s discuss.

Is one element more important than the others?

I listed five of the biggest elements of a book above: characters, plot, writing style, voice and grammar. Assuming none of them is bad enough to make you stop reading, do any of these elements bother you more than the others when executed badly?

For me, I’m most inclined to forgive minor punctuation errors. Though I try to avoid them myself at all costs, and though I know the rules, I don’t freak out over things I consider minor slips—using commas with interrupted dialogue when inappropriate, for example.

I can still enjoy a book that doesn’t have perfectly executed characters, or one that has a kind of bland voice. Writing style can get on my nerves sometimes. A bad plot? Bugs me after the fact, usually.

Does review = endorsement?

Another issue I find, especially as I’ve entered the publishing arena, is worrying about putting my name on a review—especially a book I review on my blog. I seldom write negative reviews—I typically don’t review books I don’t enjoy (and I try not to read them in the first place 😉 )—but what about a book with good characters or plot or voice, but poor mechanics?

Is giving the book a positive review an endorsement of every element of the book? Do you worry about someone buying the book based on your recommendation, and then being disappointed in your grasp of grammar/whatever? Do you feel compelled to make a note of particular elements—especially mechanics—when writing a review? Or is that maybe just appeasing your own pride, saying “I’m better than X author”?

I don’t know. I hope not the last, but sometimes it feels like it.

What do you think? How do you review?

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Writing Life

The long road of publishing

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This entry is part 1 of 13 in the series All my novels

It’s September! It’s a special month for my writing, because September marks the anniversary of my “return” to writing. Six years ago this month, I started writing for publication, after a long drought.

SAMSUNGOf course, when I came back to writing, the first thing I did was write. This is very important, and probably the best first step for most people 😉 . I didn’t research the industry or the publication process or anything. But I know a little bit about setting goals, and I decided to put a deadline on writing. If I didn’t have a book published in five years, I said, I would stop pursuing publication. I put it on a Post-It note and stuck it on a pen holder on the desk: September 2012. (Recreation at right.)

Yep, five years. It happens for people—lots of people—but I didn’t know to take into account publication calendars of up to two years (sometimes more), plus all the time searching for an agent. Plus, of course, the time it would take getting really, really good at writing.

Or the number of novels it would take. I wrote six novels before #3 was accepted for publication. Incidentally, had all gone according to the original plan, that book would have come out last month—11 months after my original, naive deadline. things going according to plan never makes a very good story(But things going according to plan never makes a very good story, right?)

As I’ve finally gotten novel #10 looking something like I wanted it to originally, I want to look back at all those novels: the “drawer” novels, the “totally will come back to” novels, the “waiting in the wings” novels. Because I have to challenge myself with every novel, I’ve learned something new and different with each one. Starting next week, I’m going to look back at these books!

What have you learned from your novels? How many have you written? Do you ever wish you hadn’t written one of them?

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Mechanics, Technique

Fix-it Friday: Overstuffed sentences

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Line-editing is now part of editing my book Fix-It Fridays!

fifWay back in our Secret Sauce Series, we talked about overstuffed sentences—sentences where we’re trying too hard to appear writerly, putting too much information, being entirely too clever, and just generally confounding our readers.

Once upon a time, I must have held a subconscious belief that a “real” writer made their sentences work two and three times as hard. That’s probably true in a way—each action of a story, each scene and maybe each sentence can accomplish more than one thing.

But instead, I took that to mean that the more complex a sentence, the better. But that’s simply not the case. Yes, sentences should work hard for us as writers and serve several purposes. But there’s a limit to how much you can pack into a sentence or paragraph and still be intelligible to readers.

Here are a couple such overweighted sentences from my own works:

#1 (the passage that taught me this lesson!)

How must the buildings that were so familiar she hardly noticed them look to Father O’Leary? Three years ago, she compared the Gothic chapel, its stone façade flanked by blazing maples in a carpet of lawn, to her parents’ church in city center. At the time, St. Adelaide seemed a suburban oasis; three weeks ago she was disabused of that notion.

“I’m sure it’ll get to feelin’ like home soon enough,” she murmured.

And #2

I slip onto the back porch, but the door latch I’m expecting to hear behind me doesn’t come by the time I reach the stairs.

And #3

Those fears and feelings, raw and vulnerable, echoing through me, must be why I finally have to pull back to wipe away my tears.

Next time (Sept 13 27!), I’ll share how I fixed them—but first, what would you do? Come share!

Photo by HomeSpot HQ

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News & Contests

Upcoming Event!

I’ve got an event coming up next week! Each Thursday night July – September, the city of Pleasant Grove, Utah, holds an outdoor fair called the Pleasant Grove Promenade.

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On September 5 and September 12, I’ll be there to sell I, Spy! Best of all, I’ve collaborated with several other authors to offer a variety of books. It’s our own mini book store!

September 5 & 12, 5-9 PM
PG Promenade
Pleasant Grove Downtown Park

Want in? Drop me an email if you can get me the books in time: jordan at jordanmccollum dot com.

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!