Writing Blogger Challenge – Day 1

Posted on July 20, 2013 by Vikki Thompson

I must admit, I’ve been thinking my blog is/was a little stale recently. So this morning when I was reading blogs and having a major catch up I noticed that one of my favourite bloggers, Hunter Emkay is hosting a Writing Blogger Challenge which will run for 10 days. Ok, well that sounds interesting.

So I’ve signed up 🙂 (you know me, I like to be stretched lol).

So today is Day 1 of the challenge and the prompt is…

Introduce your latest writing project with an elevator pitch or maximum 250 words.

Now you all know everything about two of my novels (Still & Tangled) but I have a 3rd one lol. During Nano last year I decided to write, or rather, try to write a Mills and Boon novel *sniggers* I managed it, but, in just under 22,000 words, which is well short of the 50,000 that is required. So it will need some major editing, I need to add more angst, and add two sex scenes *blush*

So here is my 250 word pitch for Sorrento Sunrise

Kate works for a travel magazine and when her boss asks her to visit a hotel in Sorrento to interview the owner, little does she know that the sexy, dark Italian will become more than just another assignment.

After a hellish journey and mistaking him for a bellboy, Damiano initially thinks that Kate is a typical arrogant journalist, but he soon changes his mind as they get to know each other intimately on the hotels private beach and over the course of her stay.

Damiano asks Kate to meet him in the bar on her last night where he is planning to ask her to stay on, but when Kate arrives she see’s him with another woman and flees back to England.

Damiano tries to contact Kate but she refuses to speak to him or respond to his e mails, having now researched him online and discovering the string of Italian models he’s been photographed with over the last few years. Already having arrangements to visit London Damiano goes to Kates house with a huge bouquet of roses but as he gets out of the taxi he see’s her hugging a man who is holding a toddler.

Angry, and thinking he has been lied to he continues with his business in London, the purchase of a new hotel and decides to get on with his life, trying to forget about Kate.

Several months pass and Kate is given an assignment to attend a new London hotel opening. She is shocked and embarrassed when the owner gets up on a podium to make a speech and it is Damiano. Their eyes meet and Damiano realises that he can’t get on with his life unless Kate explains herself. Having traditional family values he is shocked that she could have been the way she was in Sorrento knowing her husband and child were waiting at home.

After a small “scene” at the party Damiano finally manages to drag Kate to his office and demands an explanation. Kate is shocked and after explaining that the child is hers but she is a widow and that the man was her brother Damiano feels an idiot. But Kate doesn’t let him off the hook easily. She demands to know who the woman was that she saw him draped all over in the bar. Damiano explains that she was his cousin.

Ha ha ha….that’s 394 words and I haven’t even told you how it ends! But it is a Mills and Boon, so I’m sure you know lol

Oh well, I think I’m gunna need to work on that.

Any guesses as to how it ends? 😉

Monday Interview with Vikki Thompson

Posted on May 27, 2013 by Vikki Thompson

My guest post on The Write Romantics blog where I talk about the Romantic Novelists Association’s New Writers Scheme 🙂

thewriteromantics

Vikki Thompson lives in Kent with her husband, 3 adult children (who refuse to leave home) and 2 cats. She blogs, (or should that be rambles?) at The View Outside (http://www.the.view.outside.com) and spends her time fantasising about being the next EL James but isn’t too keen on having to write Erotica to achieve that (unless Robert Downey Jnr is available for research). She enjoys writing courses and workshops and can be found yearly at Swanwick (http://www.swanwickwritersschool.co.uk)

We know that, like us, you are a member of the NWS but we wondered if you could tell us a bit about how you came to join, how long you have been a member, the genre you write in and what inspired you to start writing?

I heard about the New Writers Scheme early last year, so was determined to try to get a place for 2013. So this is my first year…

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Book Launch – Human Remains by Elizabeth Haynes

Posted on January 30, 2013 by Vikki Thompson

A bonus post for you this week because I just had to tell you what I was up to last night!

Me, The Hubster and our daughter attended the book launch for friend, my Co Nano ML and talented writer Elizabeth Haynes 3rd book, Human Remains.

Elizabeth is a huge inspiration to all aspiring authors, having used Nanowrimo to kick start her writing career.

It was lovely to see so many of the Kent Wrimo’s at the launch party and of course, hubby insisted that he had to have his own copy of the book!

I’m looking forward to the read if Keith B Walters review is anything to go by! (Lovely to meet you last night Keith!).

So this morning I’m feeling slightly worse for wear (too much Champagne!) so if you could all keep it down today it would be much appreciated 😉 I’m off out in a sec for a writing session with a fellow Wrimo….which begs a question that came up last night….. Can you write while you’re drunk?

Do you write whilst you’re under the influence? Can you? Hemingway said “Write drunk; edit sober.” And look at how successful he was 😉 I’ll let you know if writing with a hangover is a good or bad thing later lol

After NaNoWriMo – Editing Part 2

Posted on December 2, 2012 by Vikki Thompson

Part 2 of the guest post by Bridget Whelan which I’ll be making much use of this month 😉

After NaNoWriMo
Three bite-size guides to editing and revising your NaNoWriMo novel.

PART Two

Put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it – Collette

Five ways of editing that first rough draft

1) Cut and cut again. Be brutal. You thought you’d written 50,000 words of your NaNoWriMo novel? The harsh truth is that you probably need to ditch 20,000 of those words. You’ve got a copy of the original so you can chuck everything away knowing you have the freedom to change your mind. In fact, keep a copy of every major revision. It gives you confidence knowing that nothing is lost, and that every major change can be undone. The reality is that once paragraphs, pages and chapters have been deleted you’ll wonder how they ever had a home in your manuscript.

2) Remember that adjectives don’t get lonely: they do not have to travel around in pairs – the kind and pleasant man; the warm, dry day. Every time you see two together ask yourself which one you really, really need. Or if you need any.

3) Take a long, hard look at any descriptive passages, especially the ones you like the best. Samuel Johnson said that if he you ever come across a sentence he had written that struck him as being particularly elegant and finely crafted then he knew he had to cut it. It was probably written for his own enjoyment rather than because it helped the reader to understand what was going on.

4) Have you started in the right place? Classic advice is to start a story in MEDIAS RES – in the middle – in other words dive in. Have you chosen to start your NaNoWriMo novel a long time before the big event occurs? Why? If the answer is because it’s a good introduction or it sets the stage, then cut. Sometimes we write a beginning more for ourselves than the reader. We are working our way into the story, getting a feel for the characters and their take on the world. You might need that introduction to get you started, the reader doesn’t. So, write it if it helps you to launch a story and cut it out at the editing stage – which is now.

4) Show don’t tell is the command burnt into the heart of every creative writing student, but sometimes it’s ok to tell. The reader can’t live through every moment. Use dialogue to dramatise the big scenes, or the moments where important elements of character are revealed. It is not for the ordinary do-you-want-a-cup-of-tea exchanges (or boring small talk at parties unless it propels the narrative in some way.)
5) Don’t introduce all the characters at once. Do it one at a time with a little physical description or back story so we can remember them. (For example: Cara tucked a strand of her sand coloured behind her ear and swore softly, her previous career as an advertising writer meant she knew how to make words work for her.) Ask yourself if you have to give a name to all the minor characters. Remember that a name may be the least interesting thing about them. They could appear as their job or the function they carry out in the story. For example: the teacher said…. the neighbour smiled…

Courtesy of Carlos Porto freedigitalphotos

Coming up in PART THREE six tips that will help you get your NaNoWriMo novel ready for a reader. But if you want to read that post, you’ll have to pop over to Bridget’s blog tomorrow 😉

Please leave a comment for Bridget with your thoughts and opinions, or pop over to Bridget’s Blog to say Hi

NaNoWriMo. Winner. 53130 Words. (magdalenavandenberg.com)
The Reason I Finished NaNoWriMo Early (maasmith.com)
NaNoWriMo Day Twenty-Seven (lefuzzysocks.wordpress.com)
Day 23 of NaNoWriMo (clairevioletthropeexpress.wordpress.com)
#NaNoWriMo:The mission is simple. We are not. (chazzwrites.com)
Participating in NaNoWriMo? (ctwesting.com)
A Gentle Agent’s Guide to the End of NaNoWriMo (heydeadguy.typepad.com)

After NaNoWrimo – Editing Part 1

Posted on December 1, 2012 by Vikki Thompson

So how we all feeling this morning? Any Wrimo’s take it to the wire last night? We had one lady on the Kent FaceBook group who finally hit the 50k at just before 11.30pm (UK time). I couldn’t go to bed before she’d finished and validated.

So that’s it, my official ML duties are over! Awwwww, it’s been fun, but now this is where the real work starts. We have our 50,000 words, so now what? The theme this month on the old blog will be editing, and to start us off, a guest post by Bridget Whelan who teaches Creative Writing. I think this will be very handy 😉

After NaNoWriMo
Three bite-size guides to editing and revising your NaNoWriMo novel.

PART ONE

Write drunk, edit sober – Ernest Hemingway

The relief is wonderful. Nanowrimo is over, done and dusted for another year. You have so much freedom and so much time to do other things. Some of you may even have a NanNoWriMo certificate to prove you took the challenge and won and – as long as you didn’t write your name over and over again – you should be proud of yourself. Very proud.
Of course, some of us didn’t mange 50,000 words, but as long as you have more words written now than you did on November 1st you’ve made an important step in your development as a writer. And you know that yourself until a small steely voice sounds in your head and says, it’s all rubbish. And the bits that aren’t rubbish have been done before.
That’s the voice that stops you writing. That’s the voice that NaNoWriMo silences with a frenzy of activity. That’s the voice of an editor. It’s a mean-spirited companion, dismissive of hard work and effort. It won’t offer any rewards for sticking with it, reaching goals and staying up late. All it cares about is what’s on the page and when you come to look at what you’ve written during NaNoWriMo, that’s all you should be care about too. Even when it means blood on the floor.

Three things to do before you pick up a red pen or press delete

1) Rest and Recover. You wrote in a fever. You need the story to settle in your mind and you also need to create some distance if you’re going to listen to that editor’s voice. How long? At least two weeks.
2) Read. Anything except your NaNoWriMo novel. Read poetry for the language. Read cheap trashy novels you hate to learn what not to do. Read cheap trashy novels you love to learn how they captured you. Read action novels for pace and crime fiction for suspense. Read horror and speculative fiction for imagination and fairy tales for permission to push the boundaries (A brother and sister abandoned by their parents and enslaved by a female cannibal? Did you go as wild during NaNoWriMo as Hansel and Gretel?)
3) Watch the video of Kurt Vonnegut describing how to plot a best seller. It will have you laughing and thinking.

Four things to do when you read your NaNoWriMo novel again

1) Breath deeply. Dive in. If you can, try to read all the way through in one sitting. Ignore your emotions: horror, embarrassment, mild pleasure, surprise. Read with a pen in your hand and summarise every chapter (or five thousands words if it isn’t broken down into chapters yet). No one will see these notes so they can be as clunky as you like. Stick to about 100 words for each summary – these are working notes and shouldn’t take up too much of your writing time
2) Imagine you are being interviewed on radio. How would you describe your main character? What does your main character want? No waffle: be specific. The radio audience won’t like vague phrases about rites of passage or someone finding themselves.
3) Even if you have written The End in big bold letters and drawn a line underneath it, consider possible alternative ways of resolving the issues in your NaNoWriMo novel.
4) Ask yourself if you want to spend a lot of time living with this story and the people who inhabit it. Vikki described herself as being haunted by the story she was trying to tell in first Nanowrimo writing. That’s a very good place for a writer to be.

Coming up in PART TWO (tomorrow) five ways of editing that first rough draft.

A great article Bridget, I will definitely be following your advice 🙂

Please leave a comment for Bridget with your thoughts and opinions, or pop over to Bridget’s Blog to say Hi

NaNoWriMo Tip #25: A Little Encouragement (writingishardwork.com)
NaNoWriMo Tip #27: We’re So Proud of You! (writingishardwork.com)

NaNoWriMo – The Last Day

Posted on November 30, 2012 by Vikki Thompson

Today is the last day of Nano (so should that be YAY or SOB ? lol) So if you haven’t hit the 50,000 words by now you have approximately 22 hours (in the UK from the time this post went live) to pull your finger out and write!

It’s been a funny old month for me. Full of highs and lows. My first year as an official ML has been great fun. Elizabeth asked me a couple of days ago if I’d do it again next year, of course I would! 🙂

I’ve met a few Wrimo’s I didn’t know before who have now become FaceBook friends and learnt that I can write 9,000 words in a day. I went on a writing retreat (which was fantastic) and discovered that Mills & Boon books are much harder to write than you think they’ll be. I also learnt that my netbook cannot be trusted and have decided that he will retire from service before next year 😉

So what’s next? What do we now do with all those words? You have to edit *shudders* 😉

The lovely Bridget Whelan who teaches Creative Writing, has written a series of 3 blog posts for me, all about editing. See me, I never really know where to start when it comes to editing, so I’m hoping Bridget can sort me out. You’ll find part 1 and part 2 here over the next couple of days and then part 3 will be posted to Bridget’s blog, but I’ll give you the link 😉

So all that remains is for me to say CONGRATULATIONS! it doesn’t matter if you only wrote 10 words or 75,000 (yes, I do know someone who wrote that much and she has a baby and toddler!). Everyone who takes part in Nano and wrote something is a winner as far as I’m concerned.

So now it’s time to Party!

Courtesy of Simon Howden freedigitalphotos.net

Do try to get to a TGIO Party if you can. We have ours tomorrow, I’m looking forward to it 🙂

Me? I finished up with just over 55,000 words which is more than 2011 but less than 2010…..and the less said about those 65,000 words the better 😉

The Reason I Finished NaNoWriMo Early (maasmith.com)
Some NaNoWriMo Surprises (orestn.wordpress.com)
NaNoWriMo Tip #26: Don’t Beat Yourself Up (writingishardwork.com)
The NaNoWriMo Bucket (orestn.wordpress.com)

Today’s The Day People

Posted on November 25, 2012 by Vikki Thompson

Sorry for the lateness of today’s blog pst (and yesterday’s) but I’ve not been at home, back now though 😉

So today the Nanowrimo Verification system kicks in. Yep, that means that all of you who have reached the 50K mark can now upload your words and have them verified, and be officially classed a winner 🙂

I’ve just done mine, so I am officially a winner!

I feel a little bit guilty though, I didn’t do Nano this year the way it should be done. Some of you already know, but for those of you who don’t I ended up finishing my Mills & Boon experiment at 20,000 words. I briefly thought about giving up, but I wanted to complete the challenge. So the next 30,000 words were short stories.

But I tell you what….it ~~was~~ is probably the most enjoyable Nano I’ve participated in. To the point where I’m considering, next year, to do a short story a day for November. I guess it goes back to me being an ideas person. I love creating characters, creating crap to throw at them, and then, I kinda get bored. But I don’t consider myself a good short story writer. My endings suck lol. I can come up with the scenarios, the characters, but then I don’t know how to resolve the story, in a satisfying manner. I don’t resort to “and then he/she woke up” as a final line, but I’ve been tempted lol.

So congratulations to all the Nano winners, it’s been a blast! And those of you who haven’t finished yet,GO FOR IT you have 5 days!

So now that we have all these extra words that we didn’t have last month What’s the plan? What will you be doing with your Nano Words? Me, I’ll be fiddling with Sorrento Sunrise and trying to find 30,000 words to pad it out with lol 😉

It’s Donation Day!

Posted on November 14, 2012 by Vikki Thompson

Today is Nanowrimo Donation Day 🙂

Not sure what that means?

Ok, well, if you’re taking part in Nano, and changing your word count on your profile, visiting the forums, chatting to your fellow buddies, and going to Write Ins, then really, you should be donating 🙂

Look at that pretty little halo that looks beautiful on your Nano profile picture 🙂

Ok, I’m not going to bang on about it, bully you or withhold my blog posts until I see the stats on the Nano homepage go up. But what I will say is this…..Nano is free! You get all that support, sense of community, word counter and winners certificate for nowt, nada, nuffin! I think it’s sad to see that as of yesterday only 5.254% of people taking part have donated. I know times are tough, I really do….but, a quid, a dollar, a euro? Someone gave me 70p the other day and I thanked her….because every single penny helps 🙂

Visit the Nano site today as they’ll be running special deals and offering prizes all day long. So if you were thinking about donating, today would be a good day to do it. Failing that, you can give me or Elizabeth 50p to put in our tin (the Kent Wrimo’s amongst you).

Ok, lecture over people….but it is something I feel very strongly about. After all….we’d all moan next year if the site wasn’t there anymore wouldn’t we? 😉

so how are my fellow Wrimo’s getting on? Tell me your word counts….. Mine is 26,875 (but I haven’t had today’s writing session yet).

Writing Retreat Day 3 – Going Home

Posted on November 11, 2012 by Vikki Thompson

Our 3rd and final day came and went all too quickly! My word count total now stands at 22,647 which is kind of disappointing, because I’d hoped to reach the 25,000, but, I’m still ahead on what I should be for the 11th of the month.

We gave out some prizes this morning, for word counts and by the time we had left, collectively, as a group, we had written just under 100,000 words! One of us hit the 50,000 at 10 to 11 last night. Amazing! Congratulations go to Richard for being the first “winner” in our region 🙂

A huge thank you to Elizabeth for setting it all up, to Trevor the smoking night security guy for keeping me company outside in the darkness, and to West Dean College for having us. A beautiful location for a writing retreat and OMFG!!!!! Dali’s Lobster Telephone!!!! Who knew that was there 🙂

Sunrise this morning.

The entrance hall.

Small staircase.

I will now spend the evening unpacking and sorting out next weeks to do list. I did manage to spend yesterday afternoon editing my Faber piece that I’ll be submitting, so I guess I’ll be working on that tomorrow, plus trying to keep up with the Nano word count….wish me luck! 😉

Writing Retreat Day 2

Posted on November 10, 2012 by Vikki Thompson

An early start this morning, as breakfast was at 8…..but I found myself outside at 7.45 having my first cigarette of the day with the security guard. A lovely man who told me all about the wildlife on the estate….seee, I’m learning stuff too! Lol

It’s now 3pm and I’ve just crossed the 20,000 threshold. 20,172 to be exact! Sorrento Sunrise still stands at just over 18,000 and the new words are on a couple of short stories using my writing prompts that I do every day. I’m kind of looking at this years Nano as being a disaster, but I guess it isn’t really. I’m still gunna hit the 50,000, but I’ll probably have lots of unfinished stuff lol. And there was me saying I didn’t want to be one of those writers who had a drawer full of unfinished manuscripts! Whoops! 😉

So what excuse do I have? Well, apart from the fact that the “T” has rubbed off my netbook key (this is it’s 3rd Nano), none what so ever! I don’t regret going for the Mills & Boon….the object of the exercise was to see if I could write one. Perhaps the answer to that question is…..I can’t *snigger*

I had a wander around the grounds today….wow!

And this is the view from my bedroom window.