Tag Archives: Romance

Six Sentence Sunday 8th July

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Oooooo, my first one! 🙂

Soooo, as you know, I haven’t exactly got a WIP at the moment, although I am currently working on a pocket novel for Sally Quilford’s Pocket Novel Course.

So I’ll give you six sentences from that 🙂

“Oh for heavens sake Danny, what is the matter with you? Can’t I even have a coffee in peace?”

Kate and Francesca watched open mouthed along with the rest of the customers as Harry stood up. His chair scraping violently against the floor.

He made his way to the sugar stand and grabbed a handful of serviettes. Rushing back to his table his eyes met Kate’s.

It’s a romance, can you tell? Lol 😉

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A Writers Holiday

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I’m off to Wales for a week in July. A Writing Holiday that I’ve heard is great.

The Summer Writers Holiday at Caerleon has had some great reviews from fellow writers, so I thought I’d give it a go 🙂

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Photo by The Writers Holiday
So this is where you’ll find me come the 22nd of July. Really looking forward to it! 🙂

The courses I’ve decided to do while I’m there are:

A Complete Introduction To Romance Writing with Kate Walker as I’m reading one of Kate’s books at the moment, and I’m also enrolled on the Romance course I started last week. I’d love to be able to write good quality romance 🙂

Stretching Your Writing Muscles with Elizabeth Hawksley which I thought sounded rather interesting. The course is described as:
All writers need to loosen their writing ligaments a little to explore different ways of writing and find new ways of tackling their own writing. This course aims to do just that. we’ll look at what makes for bad writing – with examples! We’ll look at how writers tackle those big emotional moments; at how not to cop out when the going gets tough; at different ways of getting under the skin of a character; what pitch and stress can do for your writing and so on. This is a taught course and as well as discussion and looking at short extracts from published writers, the class will have a go for themselves in various exercises. That sounds right up my street! Lol

There are also guest speakers and other small talks and courses….WOW 🙂

I will no doubt adopt the roving reporter cap while I’m there, boring you all senseless with my daily commentary *snigger*

Have you ever been on a “writing holiday”? If so, what did you think? if not, would you consider it? You know how nosey I am 😉

By the way….there are still places available if you want to join me 🙂

Pitching The WIP

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This week I’ve been scribbling in my notebook how to pitch my novel. If I’m talking to an agent or publisher (which could very well happen in the not too distant future) I need to be able to say exactly what my novel is all about.

So here’s what I’ve come up with……

I’ve just finished my novel, called But Not Forgotten. It’s the story of 2 brothers who fall in love with the same woman and how the elder brother frames the younger brother for murder, well, so you think. It starts with a suicide and contains corruption, black mail, romance and emotional conflict. A kind of modern day family saga where the action takes place in 2010, but the characters are responding to the events that took place in 1984

Hmmm, now what about genre, that terrifying word. Would you know what genre my book was from that description? Lol….I really need to sort that one out lol

There’s a classic love triangle, albeit that one party is dead, and it also confronts issues around a young woman suddenly discovering that the man she thought was her father, is, in fact her uncle.

Hmmmm, leave out the dead bit? Does that give the impression it’s a ghost story?

It’s told from multi viewpoints, which gives the reader an insight into what is going on inside the 3 main characters heads.

Do they need to know that? I was thinking along the lines that it’s my unique selling point, but, that just sounds confusing doesn’t it

The guy who was the villain at the start, appears to be the hero at the end, but that depends on how you perceive the ending.

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So what genre is it? Lol Does your WIP straddle more than one genre?

I spoke about the whole Genre thing here back in December, and it seems that I’m not the only one struggling……

The Write Inspiration

Show, Don’t Tell

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*sighs deeply and raises hand* Ok, I admit it, I’m a teller, there, I said it 😦

There are lots of things I need to improve with my writing, but, unfortunately the Show Don’t Tell thingy is really taking a while to sink in. It’s especially annoying when you read successful authors work and you think, ‘ere, ‘ang on….. How comes Anne Tyler gets away with it? (sorry Anne, if you’re reading this, which i know you’re probably not, but you were the only example that sprung to mind as I recently read one of your books and annoyed the hell out of my husband for constantly complaining about your ‘telling’ lol).

I’m sure Ms Tyler wouldn’t really mind me using her for an example…..how many books has she had published now?

Anyway, I know what I should be doing, it’s just that when I write I completely forget. I get so carried away in the story that I end up tell tell tell tell tell 🙂

Was good to see a Show Don’t Tell article on the Writing Forward site a few days ago. I loved the examples. It’s easy enough isn’t it?

Before I started writing I didn’t even notice the difference between Showing and Telling when I read a book. A good story is a good story isn’t it?

Do you naturally ‘Show’ or do you battle with ‘Telling’ too?

Came across this photo on FaceBook….. exactly! 😉

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I’ve spent the last 2 days editing a 2500 word romance short story which will be my final assignment for my course. It will be going off tomorrow!!!!!!! I’ve submitted it to a competition , so that brings my ‘Out There’s’ up to 15 *grins stupidly* It’s so addictive! It’s like just after getting your first tattoo and then wanting another one lol 😉

Yesterday’s prompt, about the eve of a funeral….was upsetting 😦 I actually cried whilst I was writing it lol. The thought of people I love dying scares the hell out of me, it’s my Achilles heel if you know what I mean. I wrote a story about a woman’s husband dying of a heart attack and the fact that she placed his mobile phone in his coffin so that she could always hear his voice on his voice mail and be able to text him. God…even just writing that has set me off blabbing again *and breath* lol

*pulls herself together*

Tomorrows prompt is the world before you were born and I’m thinking of writing a piece that’s sort of memoir, well, I wasn’t actually there, but, you know what I mean, a true story, about my parents 🙂

Having a writing session with a friend today, to work on our Horoscope home work…should be good! 🙂

Trawling The Net

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I have spent much of the last 24 hours trawling the Internet…….nooooo, I wasn’t procrastinating? (or was I? Lol). I was researching all the short story comps and possible places to submit work to.

A huge thanks to the Womag Writers Blog and Helen Yendall who have both been a wealth of information 🙂

I have discovered there are 18 competitions ending in March. I’ve got myself a folder. Done some ‘calendar’ type sheets and now, I’m ready to go LMAO 😉

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Now, if I stop eating, don’t shower, survive on cat naps (no actual sleeping) and only leave the dining room table for loo breaks and the occasional cup of coffee I might, just, be able to enter them all *snigger*

Seriously, I can enter at least a couple can’t I?

Actually…..I managed to enter 1 last night. The Writers Bureau have a monthly comp and this months was “50 Word Love Story” I can’t post my entry on here, and rest assured, I will be screaming from the rooftops if it actually gets anywhere lol 😉

Yesterday’s prompt about the crosswind inspired a story about a guy losing his toupee (thanks Danny) and a romance is about to blossom between Mr Toupee and the woman who tried to rescue it. What a sweet story to tell the grand children “I met your grandad as I was trying to rescue his toupee from the wheels of a bus” lol. Today’s prompt is it was a daydream which sounds like great fun. I love daydreaming 🙂

Auditioning Words

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I came across this quote yesterday (thanks to Judy Reeves):

“Writing is not a visual art. It is a symphony, not an oil painting. It is the shattering, not the glass. It is the ringing, not the bell. The words you write make sounds, and when the sounds satisfy the readers ear, your writing works.” Gary Provost

……and that’s why it’s so important to read your work out loud to yourself 😉

The Thesaurus must surely be the most powerful writers tool (apart from paper and a pen). I have one as an app I use on my iPad. Bloody handy I must say……why say red if you can say crimson? Why say walked if you can say shuffled?

Good writing (IMO) is all about the image you create for your reader, to draw them in.

Sooooo, I’m creating a list of words that excite me…..wish me luck 😉

Today’s prompt was about someone reading a poem. I’m beginning to get increasingly concerned that because my stories are so dark, I’ll never have anything to submit to the women’s magazine market. So today I thought I’d try me hand at a bit of romance. It went quite well, I’m kinda pleased, and it was prompted by Sally Quilford’s recent blog post.

So perhaps I can actually write something a little more lighthearted 😉

Today’s prompt is write about bad blood lol….oh dear, it looks like I’m back to the dark side 😉