Insecure Writers Want to Know: Are there times of the year when you feel more productive with your writing? Why?

            It’s probably the time issue, but I feel more productive in my writing in the winter months AFTER the holidays. Having a large family, I’m usually up to my eyebrows with family obligations, preparing meals for an extended gathering—although I’m not sure this will happen this Christmas. It didn’t happen for Thanksgiving, due to an increase in coronavirus cases in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. We had a quiet Thanksgiving, but we still used the good china, silverware, and wine glasses.  

            For me, productive writing happens without constant interruptions from family or friends. Beautiful weather can be a problem for me, too. I love the outdoors. When beautiful weather hits—and snow counts as beautiful weather in my book—I need to get outside. My new writing room has large windows onto a wooded lot. Yep! It’s a problem. I’ve faced my desk toward the wall to help a little. I use the opportunity to “go outside and play” as a reward for a good writing day, or for a chance to think things through if I’m having problems moving forward in my writing. 

I’d like to switch gears here at Adventures in Writing and tell you about a wonderful writer you may know. Liesbet Collaert has had the most extraordinary life. She’s sailed the world on Irie, a beautiful sailboat, and continues her adventures on land, camping all over North America in her camper van Zesty. 

 

Her new travel memoir, Plunge: One Woman's Pursuit of a Life Less Ordinary, launched recently in eBook and paperback and is already the #1 new release in sailing on Amazon. The global link to order Plunge is HERE. I’ve purchased a copy a few days ago and am enjoying her adventures so. 

Here’s the enticing book blurb for Liesbet’s book: 

Tropical waters turn tumultuous in this travel memoir as a free-spirited woman jumps headfirst into a sailing adventure with a new man and his two dogs.

Join Liesbet as she faces a decision that sends her into a whirlwind of love, loss, and living in the moment. When she swaps life as she knows it for an uncertain future on a sailboat, she succumbs to seasickness and a growing desire to be alone.

Guided by impulsiveness and the joys of an alternative lifestyle, she must navigate personal storms, trouble with US immigration, adverse weather conditions, and doubts about her newfound love.

Does Liesbet find happiness? Will the dogs outlast the man? Or is this just another reality check on a dream to live at sea?  

 

You can keep up with Liesbet’s present adventures at her blog Roaming About, where she shares excellent photos and the good, bad, and difficult about living life in a camper travelling from campsite to campsite. I’ve learned lots, and I’ve camped across the United States and up into Canada with five children in a pop-up camper. You can read of my adventures at Camping with Five Kids. 

            You can connect with Liesbet on twitter and facebook and follow her Amazon author page. 

Writers helping writers! That’s what Insecure Writers Support Group does. I’ll be interested to see how you’ve tackled this month’s question. It’s great having a topic to share our thoughts on each month. I am extremely thankful for all of you for being my sounding board and advisors in this writing and publishing journey. 

Thanks so much for visiting! Please follow Adventures in Writing if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in your comment so I can be sure to do the same for you.  

This post was written for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. We post on the first Wednesday of every month.  To join us, or learn more about the group, click HERE.  

 

Insecure Writers Want to Know: Why Do I Write What I Write?

Albert Camus is right that many essays and stories are used to “keep civilization from destroying itself.” Documenting past atrocities is important to keep civilization from repeating the same mistakes. I think science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres can depict the downfall of civilization, too, by showing what would happen if mankind became too aggressive or too obsessive or too cruel. 

By the same token, Flannery O’Conner and many writers “write to discover what [they] know.” Of course the writers then need to revise what they have written to be sure they make a point.

I feel F. Scott Fitzgerald sums up the question of why we write what we write best:

“You don’t write because you want to say something; you write because you’ve got something to say.”

I would like to add to his quote:

That “something” you have to say, needs to matter to the world—both the real world and the world of your story.

Why do I write what I write? I like to create stories to give people courage; courage to stand up for themselves, courage to attempt something difficult, and courage to finally believe in themselves. The theme of courage can be demonstrated in any genre, fiction or nonfiction.

To show courage through story, fiction or memoir, a writer needs to offer readers a fully fleshed out character. Someone the reader can connect to and care about. In my YA fiction, the protagonist is always the underdog, the one who needs to believe in himself enough to stand up to a bully or accept a new situation she can’t change. My protagonists need to accept the challenges that come with every new situation. They need to come to grips with their past to be able to live their present.

In my college memoir, Victoria needs to accept the challenges she can’t change; waiting to begin college until after having a family, and find the courage needed to face a classroom filled with students half her age and deal with her own struggles to learn. She needs to stand up for herself, both in the classroom and at the college, day after day, year after year, until she receives her degree.

With a courage theme, I’m still trying to come up with a title for my college memoir. Would you kindly offer your input on these two suggestions? They state what the story’s about, but I think they’re too long. Any suggestions to tighten them up? 

Power to Believe in Yourself: One Mother’s Journey Through College

Or

The Power to Believe: From Community College to the Ivy League – [The Story Behind] A Mother’s Journey 

Thank you for any assistance you may offer on the title of my college memoir. I’ll be interested to see how you’ve tackled this month’s question. It’s great having a topic to share our thoughts on each month. I am extremely thankful for all of you for being my sounding board and advisors in this writing and publishing journey. 

Thanks so much for visiting! Please follow Adventures in Writing if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in your comment so I can be sure to do the same for you.

This post was written for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. We post on the first Wednesday of every month.  To join us, or learn more about the group, click HERE.  

Truth in Story for Memoir or Fiction #AuthorToolboxBlogHop

Life is messy. Very messy. Things don’t make sense. Sometimes we can’t figure out why someone does something. As humans, we want reasons for actions. We want order. And we want resolution to life stories.

Enter - the value of truth in memoir or fiction.  

Our job as writers of memoir or fiction is to find the orderliness in story; the reasons for actions; and of course, the resolutions found at the end of the tale we tell. Make no mistake. This is difficult work. Especially for memoir.

Memoir needs to be true. Absolutely. No question there. If you change the setting [where things happen], you are writing fiction. If you change the timeline of events [what happened first, etc.], you are writing fiction. Dialogue needs to be something that the real person would normally say. Don’t worry about exactly what the person said on October 15, 2004. You will drive yourself crazy.

Memoir is your truth, your belief of what really happened in a scene. I’ve read that it is okay change people’s names, but you need to place a disclaimer in the front matter of the book to say the names have been changed. Has anyone received different advice on using real names of NON-famous people? Please share what you know here at Adventures in Writing.

Fiction, on the other hand, can be based on a true incident or real facts and real people, but the writer doesn’t need to stick to the facts as she would in memoir. Think of historical fiction here or real murders or kidnappings. Many great story ideas come from factual events. A writer begins with fact and then fictionalizes what happens, what the characters think, why they behave the way they do. Sometimes I get tied up in the facts; like the fact that a rip current has never happened in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, that I know of, yet that’s where I placed my most recent story sold to Cricket Magazine where a rip current was the major action in the story.   

But if we get back to that “messy life” and truth that I started the post with, the biggest job of the writer is to write a story that seems truer than life, whether it’s memoir or fiction. People read to discover the reasons for actions. And except for some literary stories, readers want closure at the end of the tale. They want resolution because life doesn’t always offer that resolution.

This is extremely difficult in memoir because, like me, you may not exactly know the reasons—and feelings—for every event you include in the memoir. How many times can I say I felt insecure; felt like an imposter or worried that I’d fail and that would be the end of my college career. Too many, according to my editor. And I agree with her. Of course, that leaves me staring at the computer screen and the scene I’m working on to discover “what else” Victoria could have been feeling at the time. It’s about going deeper into the emotion of the scene and not just relying on the surface emotion – insecure, imposter, worry. This is what writers need to do in memoir as well as fiction.

I hope you’ve found some insight in what I’ve written. Please offer insight of your own. It would be truly appreciated. Please ask any questions about my college memoir in the comments section of Adventures in Writing. Thanks so much!

And thank you for visiting Adventures in Writing. Please follow my blog if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in the comment so I can be sure to do the same for you. To continue hopping through more amazing blogs or to join our Author Toolbox blog hop, click here. 

Insecure Writers Want to Know: What does the term Working Writer mean to you?

            I’m not sure if I’m blending two different terms here. Am I a working writer? Absolutely! I am forever writing and creating new short stories for market and blog posts and writing presentations and editing fellow writers and revising my college memoir and trying to keep up with social media. I so admire all of you who can keep up with the image of what I think a working writer does. Bravo! 

            But if we interpret working writer to mean a successful writer, I am probably not the true working writer. I’m certainly not making enough money through my story sales and presentations and editing to pay the bills. That’s where the day job comes in, or in my case, my part time position as a substitute teacher—which is non-existent at the moment because of Covid-19 and the need for online schooling.  

When I think of the term working writer, I think of writers in their home offices, pitching ideas to agents and editors. I picture someone actually waiting to read what I create next. Many of you have a faithful audience who can’t wait for your next installment of stories or articles or blog posts. To me, that’s the mark of a true working writer. 

I’m more of the hopeful writer. I write constantly. I brainstorm scenes, inner dialogue, character motivation, and insight. And then I pray, hoping some publisher will be interested in my creation, will care about what I have to say to the world. I strive to create a following, people and readers who care about what Victoria Marie has to say through story or memoir or poetry. My values are family-centric. My YA stories deal with teens trying to help others understand them and their hopes and dreams. 

That being said, I realize I need to go out and find my audience, my followers; people who are eager to see what Victoria Marie creates with words. I look to you all, my faithful blog readers, as a source to help me explore the thick forest of publication and social media. I absorb your posts and newsletters, gleaning how you became published and successful writers; how you found the time to keep up with social media and still write your stories. 

I’ll be interested to see how you’ve tackled this month’s question. It’s great having a topic to share our thoughts on each month. I am extremely thankful for all of you for being my sounding board and advisors in this writing and publishing journey.

Thanks so much for visiting! Please follow Adventures in Writing if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in your comment so I can be sure to do the same for you.

This post was written for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. We post on the first Wednesday of every month.  To join us, or learn more about the group, click HERE.  

A Frozen Crimes Blog Hop with Chrys Fey

Writers helping writers. This is how life should be. We should help each other when we can. It is a privilege to help Chrys Fey with her new book launch and blog hop. 

Frozen Crimes Blog Hop Prompt: Whom would you want to be stuck with during a blizzard, and what would you do? 

Oooo! A blizzard. Yep! It’s true. I love snow. As long as I don’t have to drive in it. 

We must have all the needed amenities of course:

a warm fire

running water

plenty of delicious food prepared by an expert chef

dark chocolate. 

Okay, so maybe chocolate isn’t considered a “needed” amenity for you, but it sure is for me. 

Now we’re not permitted to use family, so whom should I be stuck inside with during a blizzard? 

I’m always looking for peace and quiet and uninterrupted writing time with my family of seven always around. 

Maybe I should be stuck inside with Jennie Nash of Author Accelerator. But in order to have her undivided attention, the internet must be down. She is an extremely successful Book Coach and I want her to focus on me and my college memoir. She’s from Santa Barbara, so she probably wouldn’t like to go out in the snow anyway. We’d have that expert chef and plenty of chocolate to keep our energy up. And someone to keep the fire going. A fresh pot of hot tea and some scones. Hmm … this sounds good to me. What do you think?      

Hop around to the other participants to read their answers: FrozenCrimes Blog Hop   

When disasters strike around every corner, is it possible to have a happily-ever-after?

 

 

BLURB: Beth and Donovan are expecting their first child. Life couldn’t get any better…until a stalker makes his presence known. This person sends disturbing messages and unsettling items, but it isn’t long before his menacing goes too far.

Hoping for a peaceful Christmas, Donovan takes Beth to Michigan. Days into their trip, a winter storm named Nemesis moves in with the goal of burying the state. Snowdrifts surround their house, and the temperature drops below freezing.

Except, the storm isn’t the only nemesis they must face. Everyone’s lives are at stake—especially that of their unborn child. Will they survive, or will they become a frozen crime?

BUY LINKS: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / iTunes

 

EXCERPT:

The crunch of the shovel pounding into the snow and ice filled his ears. It was all he could hear. The rest of the street was silent beneath its wintry blanket. Breathing was difficult with the icy air clogging his lungs. His nose burned. His throat was dry and on fire. But he ignored it, focusing on his task.

Crack, crack, crack.

He jabbed the shovel into a hunk of snow. On the third hit, it shattered into several pieces. He scooped them up and flung them to the side. He surveyed what remained. There was one big ball in the middle of the path that needed to be dealt with next. He moved over to it and struck it. That one impact had it severing in two. He was about to hit it again when something crashed into the back of his head.

Explosions of white light danced over his vision. Pain enveloped his skull.

The shovel slipped from his fingers. Blackness cloaked his mind, coaxing him into its depths.

Beth. Her name was a whisper in his head, as if his thoughts were being sucked into a wormhole.

His legs collapsed under his weight.

Cold. It seeped into him, consuming him. And then his consciousness fled down that same void that ate his thoughts.

 

***HUGE DISASTER CRIMES GIVEAWAY*** 

 

 

Prizes: 4 eBooks (Disaster Crimes 1-4: Hurricane Crimes, Seismic Crimes, Tsunami Crimes, Flaming Crimes) + Girl Boss Magnets (4), Inflatable Cup Holder (1), Adventure Fuel To-Go Cups (2), Anchor Fashion Scarf (1), Mermaid Nail Clippers (2), Citrus and Sea Salt Scented Candle (1), Snowflake Handmade Bookmark (1), Insulated Cooler Bag (1)

 

Eligibility: International

Number of Winners: One

Giveaway Ends: October 30, 2020 12:00am EST

LINK: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/76132e0221/?

 

***FREE EXCLUSIVE EBOOK***

 

 

To get the exclusive prequel to the Disaster Crimes series, sign up for Chrys’ newsletter. By signing up, you agree to receive Chrys Fey’s newsletter. After you confirm subscription, you will receive an email (so check your inbox and spam folder) with directions on where to snag your eBook copy of THE CRIME BEFORE THE STORM.

Click here to sign up and get The Crime Before the Storm FREE!

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Chrys Fey is author of the Disaster Crimes Series, a unique concept that blends disasters, crimes, and romance. She runs the Insecure Writer’s Support Group Book Club on Goodreads and edits for Dancing Lemur Press. https://www.chrysfey.com

Author Links:

Website / Blog / Goodreads / Facebook / Twitter / Amazon 

Imposter Syndrome in Fiction or Memoir #AuthorToolboxBlogHop

Imposter Syndrome. Is it real or not? I’d love to hear your take on this topic. However, for this #AuthorToolboxBlogHop post, I’d like to focus on making it real for your story. An author’s job is to make his or her story world and characters real to the reader, whether fiction or memoir. 

Let’s begin with a definition. Dictionary.com defines Imposter Syndrome as:

anxiety or self-doubt that results from persistently undervaluing one’s competence and active role in achieving success, while falsely attributing one's accomplishments to luck or other external forces. 

I don’t know about you, but in some instances, this defines me. Inferiority grabbed ahold of me and hung on with both hands for most of my college journey—especially at the University of Pennsylvania. I couldn’t get past the fact that I lacked the foundation the other students received to prepare for the Ivy League. I felt I got lucky receiving the Phi Theta Kappa scholarship to attend Penn. This brings on the feeling of being a “fake” IL student; the “oh-my-gosh what if they find out I’m not as smart as the other students” feeling. This is what I’m getting as part of the Imposter Syndrome. 

I’ve talked about Character Arcs and the need for progression of the character in the story before in an Author Toolbox post. You can read it here. 

To make our characters believable with whatever syndrome we want to give them, we need to look closely at the character as a whole person. We need to know what goes on in his life, on the outside, yes, but also what it means to him on the inside, why he feels so strongly about what is happening. Again, it’s the why of the story. Why does what happens on the outside of the character, the plot, matter to the character personally? Story is about how what happens in the plot affects one specific person—our protagonist. 

We can give our protagonist all sorts of disorders and problems. But we need to thoroughly understand both the disorder and the inner problem and how they manifest in this particular character. Many real people feel inferior to other highly accomplished people. I believe Imposter Syndrome is alive and kicking. I am a highly insecure writer; hence my connection to Insecure Writers Support Group, a great group to find support and security by the way. 

I hope these few suggestions help you to understand the need to know your protagonist intimately to create a character the reader will truly care about, whether it's fiction or memoir.

Please ask any questions about my college memoir and share any insight you may have about the use of Imposter Syndrome in writing your story in the comments section of Adventures in Writing. Thanks so much! 

And thank you for visiting Adventures in Writing. Please follow my blog if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in the comment so I can be sure to do the same for you. To continue hopping through more amazing blogs or to join our Author Toolbox blog hop, click here. 

Insecure Writers Want to Know: If you could choose one author to be your beta partner, who would it be? Why?

            First, I’d like to thank you, my fellow Insecure Writers, for your patience while we moved. In that short space of time, we moved our oldest daughter in with her sister and her family. My husband and I packed up our home of 36 years, sold it, and moved three hours away. And finally, we moved my 96-year-old mother-in-law into a nursing home. Sheesh! I’ll be going through boxes forever looking for what I need at the moment. You can read a short post with photos about our moving adventure at http://campingwithfivekids.blogspot.com.  

            Now let me think…the perfect beta partner for me, if I could choose anyone, would have to be the writing teacher and author Beth Kephart.  Kephart has the ability to look at themes and characters from many angles. She sees the story beneath the plot. This is a gift for any writer.        

            Kephart is a memoirist as well as a YA writer and poet, and it never ceases to amaze me how she can uncover such deep emotional truths in life through story, in both fiction and memoir. 

            I write both YA fiction and memoir and would love to hear her feedback on whether I have reached the inner core of the story I’m trying to visualize for the reader. However, being that highly insecure writer that I am, I’m not sure if I’m brave enough to hear it. Of course this is why writers need to be brave in order to improve their writing. We must learn from each other. Share ideas and methods. Choose the ones that will work for us to make our stories the best they can be. And then we need to be brave enough to let the stories go and send them out into the world for others to judge whether we have accomplished our goal of creating a great story. 

I’ll be interested to see how you’ve tackled this month’s question. It’s great having a topic to share our thoughts on each month. I am extremely thankful for all of you for being my sounding board and advisors in this writing and publishing journey. 

Thanks so much for visiting! Please follow Adventures in Writing if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in your comment so I can be sure to do the same for you.

This post was written for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. We post on the first Wednesday of every month.  To join us, or learn more about the group, click HERE.   

Let the Story Unfold #AuthorToolboxBlogHop

            Writers should not unload all the information about their characters in one place in their stories. Readers do not want to see a who’s who bio for every character lumped together in the story. By the same token, writers should not pile on all the facts of their story world at the beginning of their novels or memoirs either. You know; world history, how devices are used, why things happen, and why it matters to the world at large. Besides being info-dumps, these methods take away the pleasure of reading a story. 

Let the story unfold naturally. Don’t answer all the reader’s questions on the first page or even the first chapter of a novel or memoir. Let the reader care about a person first. The story needs to unfold slowly as Jennie Nash of Author Accelerator tells her coaching clients. Once the reader connects with a character, then the writer can explain how the story world affects this person or family. We are creating a character arc. Characters, especially the protagonist, should change by the end of the story.

But where do you place the important material in the story?

The writer shares the information about his or her characters or the story at large at the time when those characters would be thinking about how things work in their world or thinking about their past because it affects the story present, the forward movement in the story. Many writers know this, but it’s very difficult to do.

At one point in my college memoir, the character of Victoria must face her fear of what opportunity might bring if she wins two prestigious college awards.

In allowing this story section to unfold slowly, Victoria discovers that what she’s afraid of are how her feelings toward her family might change if she is awarded an opportunity to study away from home. This was a dream of Victoria’s when she was younger. Now she feels she might blame her family, as if it could be their fault she can’t study just anywhere. She worries about what regret could do to her psyche. Regret from missed opportunities can be ugly. It makes people bitter. And Victoria does not want to be bitter—especially toward her family.

This forces Victoria to face the fact that she could never leave her family for semesters at a time; never leave her husband with all the work of raising five children and helping their special needs daughter with her education. Realizing her family comes first, Victoria decides to apply for the awards, knowing she would only accept an opportunity that she could use.

This is part of the character arc of Victoria. She will be forever changed from this point in the memoir story. She will not sacrifice her family life to live a college dream of studying away from home. She will find another way to complete her college education with no regret.

Please ask any questions about my college memoir and share any insight you may have in the comments section of Adventures in Writing about how you allow your story to unfold naturally. Thanks so much!

Please note:

I will not be posting on Adventures in Writing in July or August 2020. I am moving and have much to do, especially since I’m still trying to move forward on writing projects. Don’t know if I’ll be able to keep writing during this time, though. Thank you for your understanding.

And thank you for visiting Adventures in Writing. Please follow my blog if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in the comment so I can be sure to do the same for you. To continue hopping through more amazing blogs or to join our Author Toolbox blog hop, click here. 

Insecure Writers Want to Know: Writers have secrets. Share one or two of your own. Something readers would never know from your work.

Oooo, secrets! Let me think. Something readers would never know from my work. I don’t know if this counts as a secret, but I’m afraid of edges. As in falling off of. Mountain edges. Jumping off cliff edges. Canyons. Water fall edges. Even diving boards count here. Or maybe it’s that I’m afraid one of my five children would fall off said edges because they’re being…well…children. You know. Fooling around when we are close to edges; pushing and shoving each other. 

Gosh! I worried about this each time we set up camp at national or state parks. We’ve camped in deserts, on mountaintops, by canyons, and water falls. Our children insisted the campgrounds have pools, and with those pools came diving boards. And with diving boards came the children’s favorite phrase: “Watch this, Mom!”

I think I closed my eyes each time. But don’t tell the kids. They still think I saw everything.

We were camping at Arches National Park, when I finally succumbed to this fear of edges with my children. I stopped our family hiking expedition completely. I wouldn’t allow the children to go any farther along the narrow orange sandstone arch we needed to cross on this trail. I turned us around. They were not happy.

I also have a terrible fear of wild animal encounters too—especially snakes because you don’t notice them right off. Not until they make a noise or strike! I’ve literally had too many encounters with wildlife in my adventures camping with five children. Out of the seven people in my family, I’m always the one who finds the snakes—and they are always ready to strike. I follow our last child on the trail. And my family is not quiet when we hike, which is why the snake is usually ready to strike by the time I reach him. Of course, I still would rather find them than my children.

So no matter how many YA adventure stories I write where my teenaged protagonists confront wild animals or tumble down cliff sides or mountains, I am terrified until I finish my first draft of the story. I need to be sure I can logically get the teen out of danger before I can revise—or sleep. My protagonists are my children, too!

Please note:

I will not be posting on Adventures in Writing in July or August 2020. I am moving and have much to do, especially since I’m still trying to move forward on writing projects. Don't know if I'll be able to keep writing during this time, though. Thank you for your understanding.

I’ll be interested to see how you’ve tackled this month’s question. It’s great having a topic to share our thoughts on each month. I am extremely thankful for all of you for being my sounding board and advisors in this writing and publishing journey.

Thanks so much for visiting! Please follow Adventures in Writing if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in your comment so I can be sure to do the same for you.

This post was written for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. We post on the first Wednesday of every month.  To join us, or learn more about the group, click HERE.  

Tell Me a Story: The Voice of Narrators in Memoir #AuthorToolboxBlogHop

When writing gurus talk about voice in a story, they are referring to the narrator’s voice, the protagonist’s voice, the person telling the story. And many times this has a lot to do with the author voice as well. We tend to infuse our narrators with wit, poignancy, or anything needed to tell our stories, whether fiction or memoir.  

There is so much to know about the different narrators in story; omniscient, limited, first person, etc. For this post, I’d like to concentrate on the voice of the narrator in memoir.

There are two kinds of narrators in memoir and the author needs to decide where she is standing when she is telling her story. The importance in memoir is “what the narrator knows and when she knows it.”

According to Jennie Nash of Author Accelerator, there are two narrators in memoir:

the writer, the person who lived the experience

and

the writer, the person who is telling the experience.

In story, it is who knows what, and when they know it. In memoir, there is the narrator at the beginning of the story arc and narrator at end of the story arc. In most stories, the character needs to grow and change no place more so than in memoir.

In my case, the narrator at the end of the story arc is the Victoria after her experience of attending college and graduating. What did she get out of it? Was it worth taking time away from the family to obtain that diploma?

But to tell this college story, I needed to choose:

Was I going to tell the memoir story as a narrator standing in the present time looking back on my college experience? Was I going to tell my college story as a narrator with the experience of having gone through college?

Or

Was I going to tell the story as an unknowing narrator actually going through the college experience for the first time?

Nash explains that a narrator in memoir who knows what she knows presently, after her experience, looking back is a more powerful narrator for the story.

So as memoir writers, we have to know:  who in the story knows what, and when they know it. In memoir you have:

The Narrator – unknowing before the experience or knowing after the experience

The Character in the memoir story

AND

The real Person who lived the memoir story.

Three different selves the memoir writer has to master. This is the difficult part of memoir story. If you don’t know the roles those three different selves are playing, you’ll struggle. And believe me; I struggled tremendously with this understanding. I still do.

As a writer of fiction, you have:

The narrator and

The character

NOT the person who lived the tale. This doesn’t come into play in fiction. But you still need to decide who in your story knows what information and when do they know it?

This is not an easy concept to understand. I hope I’m making sense here for you. It's ONE narrator then in my college memoir. I needed to choose how to tell the story; whether I was looking at the experience at the time of attending college as an unknowing narrator

or

if I was telling the story in the present time, after attending college with all the knowledge and insight gained since, looking back at my experiences.

            I chose to tell my college story as a knowing narrator after my college experience looking back on my experiences. I still have my character Victoria going through the experiences. I still have the real person Victoria who actually lived the college experiences; how she felt, what she did, how she coped. But my narrator is an experienced narrator who can infuse the manuscript [story] with knowledge gained from college and life experiences.

I’d like to thank Jennie Nash of Author Accelerator for helping me to understand the different narrators and character selves in memoir.

Please ask any questions about my college memoir and share any insight you may have in the comments section of Adventures in Writing about the voice of the narrator in your story. Thanks so much!

And thank you for visiting Adventures in Writing. Please follow my blog if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in the comment so I can be sure to do the same for you. To continue hopping through more amazing blogs or to join our Author Toolbox blog hop, click here. 

Insecure Writers Want to Know: Do You Have Any Rituals to Help You Get into the Writing Zone?

Rituals to help me get into the writing zone? I don’t know if these are rituals, per se. But chocolate and a fresh hot pot of tea go a long way to help me write. Now if they could only give me the structure of the story and the words, I’d be good. To find those, I usually need to go for a walk in the woods. By myself! That’s the hard part. Especially now with everybody home.   

            And even when I’m in the zone, hammering away at a YA short story, hoping with all my heart this story might bring in another published clip, Cricket Magazine cuts me down with a form rejection email. Each time I think it will get easier to take, but for me, rejection still stings.

            So another walk ensues to talk to the Lord about why I try so hard and seem to get nowhere. It’s better than yelling at my family. It’s not their fault no one’s waiting for my stories. But I always come crawling back to my computer to begin again. That’s the courage we writers need to find again and again. And it’s not easy to find!

          

A hot pot of tea and chocolates!

  But if we’re lucky, we get a yes for publication. I have a Cricket story coming out in the June 2020 issue, if they can get the magazine out with this pandemic. Sometimes we may receive positive feedback from editors or critique partners about our stories. This truly helps to build our confidences as writers. At least it does for me.

            My college memoir editor told me I’ve found my voice in the story. When we speak of voice in story, we are talking about the character’s voice, which shares much with its author—even in fiction. I’ll talk more about voice and narrator in my Author Toolbox post later this month. But for now, I wanted to mention what my editor shared with me. She explained that my memoir character’s voice is how I would normally speak, especially the wry wit part.

As a highly insecure writer, I needed my editor to confirm--and she did--that my memoir story held:

tension,

obstacles,

questioning of what I was doing,

wondering if I'll succeed.

But it needed to be interesting, and what makes it interesting, the editor says, is hearing me tell it in my own way—in my voice, with all the funny parts with family and classes that made the editor smile and root for me.

You see, I thought for a book-length project [this is my first], I needed to fully paint a scene, to delve deeply into the why of the story, to stress over the needed tension, and worry that I’ve solved my problems too early. But my editor let me know it is all there. Not perfect, but it is there. As I continue to revise, I hope to be ready for beta readers by fall 2020. I’ll keep you posted! Let me know if you are interested in beta reading for me. This is a short memoir. I’ll be lucky if it is 60,000 words. Please contact me with your email address.

As for now, I’ll be interested to see how you’ve tackled this month’s question. It’s great having a topic to share our thoughts on each month. I am extremely thankful for all of you for being my sounding board and advisors in this writing and publishing journey.

Thanks so much for visiting! Please follow Adventures in Writing if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in your comment so I can be sure to do the same for you.

This post was written for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. We post on the first Wednesday of every month.  To join us, or learn more about the group, click HERE.  

How to Get the Reader to Care About Your Protagonist #AuthorToolboxBlogHop

Getting the reader to care about your protagonist is important to the success of your novel or memoir. Yes, the action of the story is important, but if the reader doesn’t care what happens to your protagonist, the story falls flat.  

People care about people or any thinking creature you create. But they need a reason to care. Lots of things can happen in a story. We as writers need to make the story personal by telling the tale of one specific person. The reader needs to see how what happens in the story affects one particular character. Make the story specific to someone the reader cares about.

But how do we do that?  How do we get someone who doesn’t know our characters the way we do, care about what happens to them? Now I’m not saying that I have all the answers. Wouldn’t that be nice? I wouldn’t need to struggle to get my own stories down on paper if this were simple.

Let’s start by asking a few questions.

Who was this protagonist before the inciting incident, before the story present? There’s a broad question. Rein it in and try and think of answers, or scenes, that relate to your story situation or problem, both internal and external. What type of family or friend relationships did she have? Were these relationships important to her? Why?

Think about your protagonist’s profession before the story began. Why did she choose that profession? What were her beliefs at that time? Why did these things matter to her?

Whatever the internal problem is in the story, how did the protagonist come to deal with that problem? What happened in the first place to make her believe in this internal problem?

And most importantly, how did those around the protagonist feed that internal problem?

If we look at my college memoir, how did Victoria go from having trouble in third grade to not going to college?

Think in scenes or summary:

Victoria struggled throughout elementary school.

Victoria did better in middle school and wanted to sign up for college prep in high school.

Victoria’s father didn’t think she was capable of college work just because she was on the honor roll by middle school.

Victoria took secretarial courses in high school to be a secretary like Mom and friends.

Victoria’s siblings did not go to college either.

How did Victoria meet her husband? Where did she work after high school? Did she consider going to college after getting married?

No. She still believed she was that girl her father claimed was “not college material.”

How about after having a few children? Did she consider college then?

Nope! She was knee deep in babies and running the home to consider college.

Didn’t Victoria struggle with her inferiority before attending college as an adult?

All the time. She saw herself in her learning-disabled first born. Victoria struggled to help her daughter with her education and therefore her younger children as well. But she felt totally inferior to those college-educated people in the public education system.

There are more questions to ask to explain to the reader who Victoria was; how she got that way; and why it matters in her life. When I started writing my manuscript, I didn’t believe these questions were pertinent to my college journey, my memoir story. But they are!

As a writer, you are looking for personal information about your character to answer these questions. Readers are inquisitive. They want to know what makes your protagonist tick. Why she believes and acts the way she does in the story present. Good things, bad things. The reader wants to cheer for your protagonist as the story moves forward. We want readers to care what happens to her. Win or lose. Readers want to care about someone specific.

Please ask any questions about my college memoir and share any insight you may have in the comments section of Adventures in Writing about how you get readers to care about your characters. Thanks so much!

And thank you for visiting Adventures in Writing. Please follow my blog if you haven’t already and connect with me online. Leave your blog link in the comment so I can be sure to do the same for you. To continue hopping through more amazing blogs or to join our Author Toolbox blog hop, click here.