Gaiman's Winter Wonderland

Click on the link to see the pictures from Neil Gaiman's journal. I'm so envious of his house (I assume it is his home) and the enchanted winter fairyland upon which it sits. It's like something out of Narnia, or some other snow and ice forest kingdom, complete with magical snow wolf.

His house is georgeous, too. I don't know if he lives in England, but the house is very English-counryside Gothic. In fact, it looks like it was once a church; notice the foreground snow-covered tree branch: it's grasping something that looks suspiciously like a steeple.


Neil Gaiman journal post and pics.

Building Characters

I've picked up many helpful tips and advice from the Writing World website. This article stresses the importance of making your characters not only believable, but making the character be someone the reader can relate to.

It seems so obvious, and it's a bit of a daunting task to create dimensional, living, breathing characters, but the most-loved and memorable characters are those we all can relate to in some way. I try to keep another tip in mind, from Stephen King's "On Writing": Show, don't tell. If the antagonist is a psychotic, delusional liar who thinks she's done nothing wrong, don't just say that; show the reader by having the antagonist kidnap and torture the protagonist, or maybe she could make up a despicable rumor about the main character because the little voice in her head told her to. By whatever actions or behavior of the mad woman, this will reveal her instability.

Here's an excerpt from the article on Writing World. It's specifically talking about horror characters, but I think it's useful advice for any genre.

If you want your characters to "breathe", give them real emotions, even if they're not exactly acceptable. Let them screw up or think an unkind thought about how fat Uncle Randolph is getting since he retired. The reader needs to empathize with the subjects.

Believe it or not, your main character should have the least description. Why? Because you want the reader to imagine themselves in the same situation, even if they are a different nationality, have different hair or eye colors, or even if they are the opposite sex. Constantly stressing the hero's blue eyes, blonde hair and bulging muscles reminds a raven-haired female that she doesn't fit into the story.

The best characters are those that linger in our memories like old friends long after we've turned the last page. By using some or all of these techniques, you can create a charming cast of characters with charisma, no matter if they are ghosts, vampires or shape shifters.

Link to full article by Shaunna Privratsky, Writing World website.

Christmas Books

I am fully stocked with books to read for the winter;don't you love getting books as gifts?

One of my Christmas gifts from my husband was "The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging". I wish I could have had this book a couple of years ago, when I first started blogging. I started reading it right away, and I'm almost done with it. I highly recommend it for anyone who has a blog; it's full of priceless information and tips on attracting and keeping visitors to your site, and how to tweak it to reach your specific audience.

A popular local blogger, Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit had a mention in the book; click on the link to take a peek at his blog, it's very cool.

Speaking of Christmas books, I bought my sister the wildly popular book "Twilight" by Stephanie Meyer. I flipped through it at the store, and I had to remind myself that this was a gift for someone else; I wanted to keep it and devour it in one sitting. Anyway, my sister was thrilled with it, and I hope she'll let me read it when she's done. I was totally swayed by all the media attention the book and the movie have been getting: a total victim of the relentless publicity churned out by the PR machine. But, it looks like a good read.

Welcome

This blog will be a record, or journal, if you will, about writing (obviously). I picked the title "Whither the Writer" for a couple of reasons: first, well, all the other titles I came up with were taken, and second I thought it fitting for me and my writing; it's an ongoing, burgeoning process, and I hope it will go someplace, with lots of published works.

I am a budding writer, as yet unpublished, but I think that will change soon. My main area of interest is fiction writing; I have started working on a book: a very rough beginning of what I believe will be pretty cool book. I'm also cranking out some short stories, and they just need some polishing and editing before I send them out to try to be sold.

In addition to sharing my own trials and tribulations as a fledgling writer, I want to hear other writer's rants and raves and war stories.

I will also be talking about books and other authors, and in general the all encompassing world of writing and writers.

Rejection

Been cranking out some short stories, and I have begun to work on a book. The book is roughly coming along, but for now I have been sticking to short stories. This helps me to sort of start small, and get the hang of organizing and pulling together not only the story, but developing characters.

I've sent out one story to several places, and it's been rejected by every single one. So I revised and rewrote some parts, but it kept getting rejected. I soon learned that if the e-mail or letter began thus:"Thank you for sending us blah, blah story, but..." the news was not going to be good, and I might as well stop reading right then. I started brooding: wondering if maybe I was just untalented, and not cut out to be a writer.

But as I looked over the story, it became clear to me why it was rejected, and I thought, no wonder it was not accepted. So I revised it again and sent it out to a couple more places, and the rejections began to get more encouraging. The editor would complement it, and tell me they are passing, but ask me to send more submissions in the future. One editor said she enjoyed it, but it didn't fit with their needs right now, and to not let it discourage me from trying to publish it elsewhere.

So for now I have put that particular short story aside to work on other stories, and on my book idea. I can tell I'm developing and getting better, and it feels great.

All those previous rejection letters will only make the first acceptance letter all the more sweet!