Second Cry for Help of the Day

Thank you to all the wonderful commenters on today's first post (below). Taking into account your suggestions, I revised my cover letter and submitted a story to a second literary magazine: Crazyhorse.

I'm sorry for being so shamelessly self-centered today! I promise to visit all your blogs later this afternoon and evening...

But I wanted to post my second letter, and (*blush*) ask again for feedback. If this is your first visit to my blog today (Welcome!!), please scroll down so you can compare the following version with the original below. If you've returned (*hugs!*), you're an absolute BFF and I look forward to hearing your reaction to the second letter.

Here goes:

Dear Crazyhorse Editors,


Thank you for the opportunity to submit my work to your literary magazine. I have attached a PDF file of "Homage," my currently unpublished short story of 1,990 words, for your consideration. It’s the story of a young maimed soldier, home from the war in Iraq and struggling with the alienation he feels from his own country, who answers a call to heroism on domestic soil.

My work is featured in the fourth issue of The Writer's Bump E-Zine , and my short story "Mariposa" was accepted for print publication in the Writer's Bump Anthology Volume One (Copyright 2009 by Richard Lee).

I'm a former Peace Corps volunteer who, having lived on three continents, has many stories to tell.


Sincerely,

Nicole Ducleroir

Email: http://www.heftynicki@writing.com
Website: http://nicoleducleroir.blogspot.com

Looking forward to any comments/advice :)

Thanks for putting up with my cover letter mania today!

Cry For Help, From One Needing Direction

I have read excellent advice from many, many blogging authors about the fine art of query letter writing. I'm working through my first MS and not at that stage of the game, yet. I have entered a couple literary contests, each requiring only that I fill out their questionnaire and attach a file with my story. However, today I submitted a short to a literary magazine.

Paradigm magazine only accepts online submissions, so it occurred to me I should include a cover letter in my email. I wanted to put my best foot forward in introducing myself, but outside a few resources found through a quick Web search, I had no idea what I was doing.

I'm going to be brave and include a copy of my letter here. Please read through it and offer your advice on what I did right and what I should have done/done better. If you have submitted short fiction to literary magazines, I'd be especially interested to hear whether you felt your cover letter helped or hindered your success.

(For some reason, I'm more nervous about this than posting my Tuesday Teasers!)

Okay, enough stalling...here it goes:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dear Paradigm Editors,


Thank you for the opportunity to submit my work to your online quarterly. I have attached "Homage," my currently unpublished short story of 1,990 words, for your consideration.

My work is featured in the fourth issue of The Writer's Bump E-Zine, and my short story "Mariposa" was accepted for print publication in the Writer's Bump Anthology Volume One (Copyright 2009 by Richard Lee). In addition, I have won numerous Writing.com sponsored contests for my short stories and poetry.

I'm a college graduate and former Peace Corps volunteer. I've lived in Africa and Europe, and currently reside in Georgia, USA with my husband and two children.


Sincerely,

Nicole Ducleroir

Email: http://www.heftynicki@writing.com
Website: http://nicoleducleroir.blogspot.com

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What do you think? Too dry? Not enough personal information? Too much? Ugh...! Help!

Stop Shouting at Me!!!!

I just finished judging a short story contest for teen writers on Writing.com. The project is going on hiatus until the fall, since the weeks between Spring Break and end-of-term exams are busy enough for kids and typically lead to poor turnout. I designed the contest as a platform for teens to showcase their work, and I offer in-depth critiques of every entry, in the mentoring spirit of helping young writers hone their fledgling crafts.

The payoff is I develop a deeper sense of my own craft, as I include in my reviews discussions on basic elements of storytelling and grammar.

One thing I see time and again in teen writing is the overuse of the exclamation point. This powerful little punctuation mark raises the tension of a sentence. Used too often, readers will feel like they're shouting the story. Exclamation points are a lot like Habanero sauce: A couple drops can bring out the flavor of the food, too much will overpower the diner's palette and ruin the dish.

I advise writers of these do's and don'ts of exclamation point usage:

Do use an exclamation point in dialog, when the speaker is extremely angry, shocked, frightened, or joyful. Always use it with dialog tags like "he shouted" or "she shrieked." However, if the speaker hasn't raised his or her voice, don't use an exclamation point.

Do use an exclamation point in non-question sentences that begin with "What" or "How":

What an idiot I was!

How gorgeous was that wedding!

Do use an exclamation point, if you wish, after an onomatopoeia:

The sudden screech! of the back door hinges startled me from my reverie.

Don't use an exclamation point in any other situation in formal writing. (I always qualify to my teen contest entrants that this is my own personal rule. Some writers will argue that there must be other times an exclamatory sentence pops up in formal writing. My answer is sure, you could use them, but if you aren't picky and careful to use them sparingly, you risk giving your writing a parochial, unpolished sound.)

Don't use more than one exclamation point in a row. Seriously, don't do it. Not in dialog. Not if something totally freaky and heart-stopping happens in your novel. Don't.Use.More.Than.One. Ever!

Now, anyone who's received a comment by me on their blog knows that I'm an exclamation point abuser in real life. Emails, blog comments, FaceBook and Twitter are perfect places to let loose your crazy, hilarious, fun-loving, over-the-top, exclamation point-needing voice. Show the love! Shout out loud!! Go for it and express yourself! So that, when you sit down to write your novel, you have all those compulsions for exclamation points out of your system. Your prose will sound refined and dynamic without them, because of the natural strength of your talent and through the creativity in your word choices.

What's your take on exclamation point usage? Do you agree? Have anything to add?

Wild and Free

I woke up this morning with an urgent need to write. Come on, I said to my muse, we have to keep working on the character charts. She crossed her arms high across her chest, sending bony shoulders up near her ears. Her little eyebrows furrowed and rose petal lips shot forward in a pout. I felt my resolve waiver. Well, I proposed, we could open that spreadsheet and continue plugging in the outline scenes. What do you say? My muse stomped her foot, hard. I sighed. What do you do when your muse is a petulant child who just wants to play?

I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to give in to her. What the hell? I'm not her parent, after all. Today I say, outline smoutline. Ya! shouts my muse. Spring is here. Too bad for you, Snowflake Method! Me and the writer chick are gonna have some fun. Ignore the schedule. Break some rules. See what we can get away with!

I hope you're embracing your inner petulant child today. Set your muse free! Write with wild abandon, I dare you. (Okay, Muse. That's quite enough. Save it for the book.)

Anyone else feeling wild and free today?

Photography copyrighted to Da Photo Guy

This Side Up

"[The writer] has to be the kind of [wo]man who turns the world upside down and says, lookit, it looks different, doesn't it?"

-- Morris West

For me, what separates an author from the pack of writers at the top of creativity's bell-shape curve is the ability to ignore obvious descriptors. Truly gifted and conscientious writers, instead, find a way to turn a description on its head, giving the reader a fresh vantage point from where a thing becomes dynamic and emotionally enmeshed with the narration.

For example, a writer could have her narrator complain, "I was sick to death of being constantly bombarded with sensational stories by New York City newspapers." The narrator's feelings are clear, and 'bombarded' is certainly a strong, high impact verb that carries a lot of emotional bang for its buck. But now consider how Sylvia Plath handled the same thought in the opening paragraph of "The Bell Jar":

"...and that's all there was to read about in the papers -- goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me on every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway."

Plath turned the idea on its side, describing the headlines and the places where the papers were sold, using modifiers that painted for the reader the emotional portrait of the narrator's feelings. In essence, her descriptions invited the reader to participate in the scene.

I love this quote by Patrick F. McManus: "Write out of the reader's imagination as well as your own. Supply the significant details and let the reader's imagination do the rest. Make the reader a co-author of the story."

Do you think about your readers as co-authors of your story? Does doing so inspire you?

You can't quit, you're FIRED!

The characters I cast in my novel aren't who I thought they were. I don't know why I'm so surprised. Anytime I meet someone for the first time, the new acquaintance smiles a lot, flatters me with complimentary politeness, chooses her words carefully. I do the same thing. It's only through subsequent meetings, time spent hanging out together, that guarded moments give way to natural reactions, and the façade begins to crumble.

In the time I've hung out with my characters this week, they have begun to shown me their authentic selves. I learned the antagonist has a lifelong fascination for electroshock weaponry. And here, I thought fire was his thing. Another character informed me I had it all wrong, that he never wanted to marry his fiancée. One character up and altogether quit the project! And an Asian dude I'd pegged from the start as a wicked man turned out to be a student and a young fellow of incredible honor. It's a shame what's going to happen to him. However, it was only when he revealed himself to me that the big climactic scene -- the one I just couldn't figure out for weeks and weeks and weeks -- finally played out in my mind. Maybe I'll make it up to him by mentioning him in the book's dedication blurb...

So, I made my first self-imposed deadline: Step Six of the Snowflake Method is complete, on time today, April 3.

The steps in this method of plotting a novel are extremely well designed. For example, in Step Five I wrote a one-page narration of each major character and a half-page narration of each minor character. The exercise was to write in first person from the POV of that character, letting him or her explain his or her role in the book (relationship to other characters, goals, motivations, etc.) Then this week, in Step Six, I expanded the one-page plot synopsis of the novel I wrote for Step Four to a four-page synopsis. Today I begin Step Seven which shifts focus back to the characters and asks me to create detailed character charts for each character. It's brilliant, because I know so much more about the characters after working through Step Six, including how wrong some of my original interpretations of the characters were. I'm excited to dive into this exercise and fully flesh these people out.

Snowflake Method author Randy Ingermanson says in Step Seven notes: "You will probably go back and revise steps (1-6) as your characters become "real" to you and begin making petulant demands on the story. This is good -- great fiction is character-driven. Take as much time as you need to do this, because you're just saving time downstream."

Blogger Jana Hutcheson @ All I'm Saying... wrote a wonderful post last Wednesday about interviewing characters as a technique for figuring out what makes them tick. She included several excellent website links with character interview questionnaires to use. Check it out by clicking HERE. [Jana is new to Blogger this year. While you're there, why not sign on as a follower? (*smile*)]

How do you get to know your characters? Have you ever interviewed them? Have your ever had a character quit your novel?

Contest Announcements!

It's a gorgeous day here in the Altanta area, and I'm spending it outside with hubby and the kids. We were up ridiculously early, for a "day off," to merged with the lighter-than-normal rush hour traffic and arrived at the French Embassy in Buckhead by 8:45 a.m. The three "Frenchies" in the family now have their updated passports for our trip to France in June. Now back home, they have zipped over to a gardening shop to buy a truckload of top soil, and I have a minute to dash off a quick blog post.

Here are some great contests you don't want to miss out on!

Tawna Fenske's @ Don't Pet Me, I'm Writing is a talented writer with THREE romantic comedies scheduled for release beginning in August 2011. Her blog posts are informative, inspirational, and often hilarious! Help her celebrate reaching 100 followers in only two months by joining her give-away. The prize is too good to pass up!! (*wink*)

The fabulous Roxy @ A Woman's Write is celebrating 200 followers with her Blogging Buddies Give-Away Contest. Way to go, Roxy!

Christine Danek at Christine's Journey has surpassed 100 followers and is having a give-away contest with fab prize. (I hope I win this one!!) Visit her today :)

Christina Farley @ Chocolate for Inspiration is giving away some AWESOME prizes, all of which are from the country setting of her WiP: Korea! Help her celebrate surpassing her 100 followers milestone by visiting her and entering the contest today!

Shannon Messenger @ Ramblings of a Wannabe Scribe has an agent!! Way to go, Shannon! Living the dream, how exciting! To celebrate, she's hosting a fantastic contest and giving away SIX books, each SIGNED BY THE AUTHOR! Visit Shannon and sign up today :)

Karen Akins @ Novels During Naptime has also surpassed the 100 followers mark. Her celebratory give-away features gorgeous writing supplies and a bead bracelet that matches one she has. I want to be bracelet twins with Karen, don't you?

Noelle Nolan @ A life Rewritten is giving away an Amazon gift card as soon as she reaches 100 followers. Let's get her there quickly! Visit her today and sign up to follow. You'll be making a wonderful new friend and supporting a published author and her platform!

There you have it, some fantastic contests to enter, all of which end in the next week or two (check my sidebar for deadlines).

And, if you know of other contests I can enter and promote, leave me the blogger's URL in a comment. I'll let them know you sent me!

Happy Easter Weekend, everyone!