Wednesday Post: Where Liz Expands on Her Video Blog Entry

Every Wednesday, I take over the One a Day WriYe video channel on Youtube with the Wednesdays with Liz video blog or vlog for short.  Considering this week's subject on advice for writers, I thought I'd expand a bit with a few more questions here.  My vlog can be found here and you can go further into the channel to see some videos from other WriYers.  The following questions are taken from Pub Hub: Words with Writers.  The questions were randomly chosen by the power of the roll of a d20 (a die with 20 sides) with three taken from the great interview questions and three taken from the crazy ones that nobody ever asks.  They are not in order by number but how the die rolled.  So, let's get started.

17. Do you have a favorite conference to attend?  What is it?
The easiest and best question for me to answer.  Then again, I've only ever really attended one conference but I love it.  That conference is the Iowa Summer Writing Festival.  I've gone for the past three years, two week long sessions and one weekend, but I've always come away like I've learned something new.  I've had wonderful teachers who have encouraged me and I do feel it's one of the reasons why I've really been continuing writing on Mystery of the Dark for as long as I have.  I highly recommend it, even if you go for a weekend, because you will come away feeling like a writer.  I think that's the best thing about a conference, even though I've only been to the one.

12. Are you a plotter or a pantser?
Both.  See, I have these nice multi-page outlines that give me the sense of where I'm going.  It's like a map so I know how to get from point A to point B and so on.  It's nice and gives me a sense of direction so I can keep an eye on the plot.  However, that doesn't mean that I stay on that path.  There are side trips, depending on what I write in any given chapter.  Taking Mystery of the Dark for an example, I've redone the outline for the third draft... five, six times now?  Sometimes a chapter doesn't take the shape of what I have in the outline, so it gets shaken up.  In getting shaken up, plot sometimes changes, even if it's just in a little way, so I have to go back and make sure that I resolve whatever happened.  So, plotter in having a plan, pantser in sometimes not sticking to it.  I believe rolling with the plot punches is what makes a good writer.  Being inflexible is not going to make a novel.

20. What are you working on now?  What's your next project?
Right now, of course, I'm working on book one of Mystery of the Dark.  I feel I will be working on this project forever and ever but that's how it is at the moment.  My next project, which starts on Sunday, is a romance / chick lit story called Desiring an Umbrella.  It follows Amelia through her journey in London as a personal assistant to the public face of a posh company who also happens to be blind.  There's romance and plot twists and all that good stuff thrown in.  I really can't wait to start it because I really love the characters.

Alright, silly questions start now.

13. What secret talents do you have?
Despite being blind, I can drive and park perfectly within the lines on the first try.  I can type without looking down at the keyboard (well, it's out of my field of vision while looking at the screen).  I can remember book plots up to five books, although I want to try with six, and I can leave a book alone for years and remember what was happening when I pick it up to read it.  I also have a nice singing voice.

18. Do you have any scars?  What are they from?
I have a scar on my nose from when I was five and had chicken pox.  This is why they tell you not to scratch when you have it.  Other than that, I don't really have any scars?  Kind of nice that way.

1. Do you write naked?
Nope.  We're just going to leave it at that.

Random Progress Post: Writing Outside of Your Genre

Subtitle: Where Liz rants about writing detective fiction and how she's worried she's doing it wrong.  Well there's more than one subtitle to this but that's what I'm going with for the moment.  On the WriYe website, there's a challenge called genre stretch.  It's very much like what you're thinking, where you get a genre that is possibly outside of your comfort zone and you write in it.  It's related to breaking out of your box, but it's more of a month to month challenge vs a yearly challenge.  It can be anywhere from a short story to novel length.  I'm working on making mine into just being a short story, even though it's being slow going.

This month's genre stretch is crime fiction.  Crime fiction can be anything from a detective story to legal drama.  Some authors of crime fiction are James Patterson, John Grisham, Mo Hayder, and Agatha Christie to name a few.  If you've ever watched an episode of Law and Order, that's straight up and down crime fiction with the police and lawyers working together.  Another aspect of crime fiction is the movie Usual Suspects where the point of view comes from the criminal who was at the scene of a crime / worked with the suspects of the crime.  I won't say more, other than you should go watch it and bow down to Kevin Spacey's performance.  For older crime fiction movies, Alfred Hitchcock did a lot such as Vertigo, Rear Window, and Dial M for Murder to name some.  He's got a lot.  For myself, I love crime thriller, considering I've devoured three of James Patterson's Women's Murder Club this month (that post is coming this week around Thursday/Friday), and that I will watch Law and Order repeats (has to have Jerry Orbach and Sam Waterston in it).

So that's the background of crime fiction.  You cannot throw a stone in our society and not find some type of crime fiction.  Now, you'd think that with all of this in society and how much I love crime fiction, that it would be ever so easy to write it.  Haha, no.  I'm learning that quickly that there is no short cut to writing crime fiction.  Also, no matter how much I've watched, I'm second guessing myself on what I'm writing.  Well, the words itself.  The plot overall is wonderful, if reminding me of L&O, but I'll take what I can get.  Basically, a veterinarian was killed in her clinic and they have to figure out who did the murder.  And, of course, there's the red herring suspects and then the real murderer.  See?  Feels L&O-ery but I'll take what I can get.  I do plan to have it done by the end of the month - four days, four sections, ta-da - and have it up sometime mid-February or start of March so people can read it.

Poetry

I'm going to try something out, don't know how long it'll continue, but I'll try to keep it up.  Some background first.

Around 2005/2006, I took some creative writing classes and found that I really liked poetry.  I like poetry enough to consider becoming a full time poet instead of writing novels.  However, novels won out but I love the way that poetry makes us feel.  There's music in the words of poetry, considering that is our music in the end, and I like writing it.  With that short background, every Tuesday (until I forget) is going to be Poetry Corner or Poet Tuesday or something catchy.  I'll come up with an official title later.  For now, have some poetry.


Winter
At the start, it is just
A whisper against bare trees
Their skeleton arms reaching up
To skies of purple light.
It is easy to sleep then
With the whisper lulling again
Windows, kissing them softly.
As it passes, the light dies until
A long night with a long vigil
The fires burning bright while
The faithful dance in celebration.
It is harder to sleep then
Whispers turning into screaming rattles
Where every small bump turns into nightmares.
And it passes with
A new day, each colder than the one before.
The cold breaks
The south wind blows
It is easier to sleep again
With new buds popping out of snow
With the promise of rebirth
At the start, it is just.