A THOUGHT FOR THURSDAY

Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose
by
John Singer Sargent

A thought for Thursday... and any other day you like:

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see. 

             John Burroughs

DONALD MAASS WRITING TIPS FOR WRITERS OF THE 21^st CENTURY NOVEL:

2 What does your category of novel excel at?  Embrace that…then outdo it. 

                  #21stCenturyTuesday

PARANORMAL

My genre excels at adding the jam in the doughnut: the unexpected, the sweet, and the challenge.

WHICH CATEGORY OF NOVEL ARE YOU WRITING, AND WHAT DOES THAT CATEGORY EXCEL AT?

CHALLENGE - A to Z CHALLENGED

Each post for the A to Z Challenge is the challenge I set for myself.

C is for
CHALLENGES

FOR THE KNIGHT, de MOREVILLE,
ARCHERY IS A CHALLEGE

C is for the Challenges a character must face and try to overcome. Although, it is the struggle rather than the success that make the concept strong.

HAL LONGLEAT AND THE TROUBLE WITH TRUTH

Hal gripped the ladder, and he dug his fingers into the space between the blocks of stone. He held his breath. What could the knight do that was better than Lord Courtney’s shot? “Please,” Hal whispered, even though he had no idea what he was hoping for. “Please.” He shook his head. 

Could YOU have been gifted with the ability to identify and eliminate weak and brittle phrases from your work? To the uninitiated, these interlopers look like quality imagery.

CLICHÉ RAIDERS: REWRITE!

•           calm before the storm

•           card up his sleeve

•           cat among the pigeons, put the

•           centre of the universe

•           chalk and cheese, as different as

•           champing at the bit

•           chorus of approval/dispproval

•           cold light of day, in the

•           crack of dawn

•           crisis of confidence

•           cross that bridge when we come to it, we’ll

FOR C, I CHOSE CHALLENGES. WHAT IS THE SUBJECT OF YOUR C POST?

MEASURING UP FOR MARCH - WITH A HALFNANO

THINKING SMART

I've been teaching, part-time, for two months now. Planning, preparing, teaching, assessing and evaluating is sponging up a lot of my writing time.

It didn’t take long before I realised I had begun to think in a teacher-ly way: SMART targets are, again, an important part of my life.

The foundation of all teaching is identifying an appropriate learning goal – a SMART goal

Specific

Measurable

Attainable

Realistic

Time Bound

Once I started to plan using SMART targets they quickly seeped into my writing plan too. 

My specific goal is to write more.

This goal is no stranger to most writers. Most of us want to write more, to complete the draft of the wip and to balance all the other demands too. 

Write more? The trouble is... this goal is not specific. It is not measurable. When I wanted to go full-out and write at NANO speed, I suspected that target might not be attainable or realistic.

I needed to find a way to challenge myself, to quantify how much writing was More. I worked out what my output was over a five day period. It varied so I looked for an average. I wasn’t happy with the sluggish climb. 

I wanted something that would be encouragingly more rather than discouragingly unachievable.

 As a SMART target, I want to write more becomes:

I want to write 1,500 words a day, for five days per week, for the next month - that's like a HALFNANO :D

ARE YOU HAPPY WITH THE WAY YOUR WORD COUNT IS RISING? 

JOIN ME ON MEASURING UP IN MARCH - THE HALFNANO

HAL LONGLEAT AND THE TROUBLE WITH TRUTH

When everyone else crowded forward, to get a better view, Hal hid in the shadows by the stable door. He chewed on a grubby fingernail. He rubbed the top of the short nail against a tooth. It scraped and clicked and filled his head with noise.