My Way of Saying...

I was in unfamiliar territory when I decided I would write a cover letter to accompany a short story I was submitting to a literary magazine. Finding little guidance after a Google search, I turned to the blogging community and asked for help. I was overwhelmed with the number of writers who came to my aid and offered their advice, experience, and support!

As a small gesture of my gratitude, I'm passing awards on to each and every person who posted a comment yesterday. If you find a name you don't recognize, please follow the link to their blog and say hello. I hope you follow them, too! :)

I want to thank Annika at A Swede Abroad for the Sweet Blog Award! Her beauty is evident in her writing, pics, and eye-catching blog background. She's saying good-bye to a loved one so please send some love her way!

The Meaning :
Sweet Blog Award is an award for blog which you think is so friendly and make you enjoy to visit it often.

So now there's two things:
1. I give this award to ten people
2. The people I give this award to need to make a post about the award(include the picture & the person that gave it to you!)

I'm passing this award to the following people who came back twice to offer their opinions on the second letter as well as the first. It meant the world to me to get hear your impressions and, in some instances, to exchange emails with you!

Valerie @ Something to Write About

Lisa K. @ Writing on Thin Ice

Lisa Gibson @ Random Thoughts to String Together

B. Miller @ B. Miller Fiction

Wendy @ On' n' On' n 'On - Because a Writer Always has Something to Say

Portia Sisco

Matthew @ The Quintessentially Questionable Query Experiment

Shelley @ Stories in the Ordinary

Anne @ Piedmont Writer

Thank you to Jen at Unedited for the Soulmates Award!

The rules:

1. Choose five followers/commenters that 'get' you
2. Write something fake (preferably not too mean) about them
3. Link to them, and link back to this post to comment your receipt of the award

The five of my awesome commenters from yesterday receiving the Soulmates award are:

Roland @ Writing in the Crosshairs, who went on ancestry.com and traced his family tree back to Edgar Allen Poe.

Lindsay @ Unicorn Ramblings, who once achieved so much leg-pumping momentum she got the swing to go over the top crossbar in a perfect 360 degree arc.

Shannon McMahon, who loves cheese fondu so much, she's been known to serve it for breakfast featuring chunks of Canadian bacon and her favorite, biscuits of Shredded Wheat.

Aubrie @ Flutey Words, who can burp the entire alphabet, backwards!

Sarah Jayne @ Writing in the Wilderness, who is the base guitarist in a newly formed garage band called The Bomb.

And, thank you to Ellen at Pink Tea and Paper and Amalia @ Good to Begin Well, Better to End Well for the Beautiful Blogger Award! I'm supposed to give this away to 15 fellow bloggers and list 7 things about myself, for your entertainment. I'm feeling goofy so hang on! Here goes:

1. My preferred Oreo is quadruple-stuffed: Open two double stuff Oreos, toss out the tops and sandwich the two halves with cream. Ta-DA! Quadruple-Stuff!

2. My husband proposed to me while I was sitting on the toilet (lid down, pants up!) and he was in the shower. Thus proving the old adage incorrect, that a bad proposal signals a bad marriage.

3. I'm practically ambidextrous...of course, the only thing I can't do with both my right and left hands is WRITE.

4. I make hubby and the kids hook their dirty socks together before putting them in the hamper or I refuse to wash them. (I grew up in a family of 7, and my mother's solution to pairing socks was to not do it. Instead, all clean socks went into a laundry basket in the hall closet. I'm maimed for life by nightmares of ploughing through that damn basket every day, settling on two socks that were at least the right color and thickness...)

5. I never throw away used tin foil. If it can't be wiped clean and reused, it goes in the recycle bin.

6. I put a plant on my desk yesterday because someone (*waves to Summer*) said,

"One tree neutralises the carbon dioxide emissions of your blog."

7. I never open my eyes underwater, even though I haven't worn contact lenses since my Lasik surgery seven years ago.

I'm passing along this award to more of yesterday's commenters. Thank you for the incredible support you showered me with!!

Justine Dell

Summer @ ...And This Time, Concentrate

Chrisi Goddard @ A Torch in the Tempest

Tracy @ Forever Endeavor

Sarah @ Falen Formulates Fiction

The Alliterative Allomorph

Southpaw @ Scribbles and Splashes

Jaydee Morgan

Alex J. Cavanaugh

Nicole Hadaway @ All Things Smart and Scary

Al @ Publish or Perish

Cherie @ Surrounded by Books

Lastly, and by no means leastly, a huge thank you to my sweet friend Anne at Piedmont Writer for the Awesomesauce Award! What a great title!!

This one goes to the remaining bloggers who took time out of their day to offer me the guidance I needed. Your support lifted me up!!

Kristen @ Disobedient Writer

Talli Roland

Lola @ Sharp Pen/Dull Sword

Natalie Bahm

Linsday @ Adventures in Writing

Jemi Fraser @ Just Jemi

Stina @ Seeing Creative

Susan Fields

Hannah @ Musings of a Palindrome

Medeia Sharif

DL Hammons @ Cruising Altitude

Again, my heartfelt thank you to all these talented, generous writers for helping a girl out when she asked. You all rock!!

I hope these lists help visitors meet someone new today!

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?