Tag Archives: writing

Merry Christmas, wreaths, garlands, swags

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Do you make your own Christmas wreaths and garlands? I went out to cut branches for my Christmas swags for either side of the door, and came back with the following –

  • red cedar (you can tell by the colour of the stems and bark)
  • balsam fir, with the delightful light green tips to the branches
  • fir, with fuzzier needle formation
  • salal, which gives great berries but stays green all year
  • hawthorne, for the beautiful red berries
  • broom, which is a weed, but adds a lovely straight sweeping component

This is what I came up with for my front door. What do you do for your Christmas greenery? Merry Christmas everyone!

 

Liebster Award for blogging

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https://jbiggarblog.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/liebsteraward-roses-tag.png

I have been nominated for the Leibster Award, it’s all about finding new blogs to visit and enjoy.

I am thrilled to have been nominated for this award by Jacquie Biggar, blogger and author extraordinaire. You can check out her blog at www.jacquiebiggar.com. I’ve followed her blog since she first began posting to it, and I love to keep current on what she’s writing. I always learn something as well as get entertained when I visit there.

She asked me a few questions that I’ll do my best to answer 🙂

1 – What is the most rewarding thing about blogging?

I have a lot of fun with it. I started my blog for my writing and my books, but I also love gardening, travel and a ton of other stuff. I can talk about whatever I want!

2- What is your favorite book and why?

I have a lot of favourite books, but one that comes to mind often is ‘Cryptonomicon’ by Neal Stephenson. This book has a lot going for it – indescribably nerdy characters, story in the present and the past, story in the future, real war encounters and fantasy war encounters, history and imagination. I have really enjoyed reading it each time.

3- If you could be any literary character, who would you be and why?

Not sure. One character who intrigues me, Winston Churchill, is perhaps not seen as a literary character, but I have several books on him that might put the lie to that. Here are some of his comments – Too often the strong silent man is silent because he does not know what to say, and is reputed strong only because he has remained silent – or this one – Of this I am quite sure, that if we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find we have lost the future. Lots of wisdom in those words.

4- Where is your favorite place to write?

I really like peace and quiet. I sometimes take everything into the living room, but if there are others in the house I might take my laptop upstairs to the spare bedroom. If there is still too much going on, I take it to the office.

5- What’s your ideal vacation?

I have to leave to have a vacation. Too many phone calls, drops ins and demands. We love to go to Tofino, on the west coast of Vancouver Island even for a few days. There is nothing to do but walk on that wonderful beach, chase the storms and relax. My husband swims, (shudder) I do not. 🙂

6- If you could give any advice to a novice blogger, what would it be?

Don’t be too demanding on yourself. The advice others will give you probably includes blog at least three times a week, research your audience and speak to their interests, make sure you have them sign up for a newsletter, organize giveaways to encourage commitment. Those things are all true. But how much fun will you have? Why not write about what you love, things that interest you? When you write about what you love, that shines through the words. Then your followers will be those who are interested in the same things, and will be people you’d like to interact with.

7- Who inspires you and why?

Those who act on their convictions. There are always opportunities to be open hearted or willing to listen, but we don’t always respond the way we could. As the kids say – what would Jesus do?

8- What do you do to blow off steam?

I ride my bike. I don’t always ride it very fast, but I love to ride it. I was going down one of the trails here in Victoria the other day and a couple were walking their dog ahead of me. I called out, ‘coming through.’ They startled and the young man grabbed his girl’s arm to pull her out of the way as if a train were coming. As I drew even with them, I said, ‘I may not be fast, but I’m still riding through.’ We had a laugh together about that.

9- If you could choose anyone (real or imagined) to have dinner with, who would it be and why?

I would have dinner with General Paulo Regiment from ‘The Last War: Book One, Khandarken Rising’. This is the first book of a series of mine coming out this month and I’ve been really thrilled with the characters. Regiment fought with the Emperor at the beginning of the Last War, but ended up on the side of the freedom fighters by the finish of the long fight. I’d want to know how he decided to switch sides, and what led him to that decision. You might think I should know this, having written the books, but that would involve a whole other set of books dealing with the prequel – kind of like Star Wars.

10- What’s your favorite food?

Watermelon. Hazelnuts. Almond Roca (is that a food?). Flattened chicken. I can’t have just one favourite, right?

I hope you enjoyed getting to know a little more about me, and thank you Jacquie Biggar for the great questions. 🙂

I have a few favorite blogs that I follow all the time, including Jacquie Biggar at https://jbiggarblog.wordpress.com/

I’m nominating the following bloggers for this wonderful award:

LizAnn Carson at http://lizanncarson.com/

Donna Hole at http://dolorah.blogspot.ca/

Alice Valdal http://www.alicevaldal.com/

Kathleen Lawless http://www.kathleenlawless.com/contemporary_books.html

Reggi Allder http://reggiallder.com/

Marlene Moss http://marlenemoss.blogspot.ca/

Susan Swiderski at http://susan-swiderski.blogspot.ca/

Here are the rules:

  1. Once you are nominated, make a post thanking and linking the person who nominated you.
  2. Include the Liebster award sticker in the post.
  3. Nominate up to 10 other bloggers who you think are worthy of this award.
  4. Let them know they have been nominated by commenting on one of their posts.
  5. Answer the ten questions asked to you by the person who nominated you.
  6. Think of ten questions you would like your nominees to answer.
  7. Lastly, copy these rules in the post.

My questions for you are as follows –

  1. I know you’re a writer (you do a blog), what’s your favourite thing to write?
  2. Do you like surprises? Tell us about the last one you remember.
  3. How old were you when you started writing?
  4. Do you love writing or hate it, and why.
  5. What would be your dream job?
  6. What was your favourite childhood story?
  7. Where in the world do you consider home?
  8. What is your favourite book, favourite movie?
  9. What is your greatest pleasure in life?
  10. Name your favourite food.

Writing Contests – a headache?

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I just received the results for my book entry by email from a romance writer’s contest that shall remain nameless. I wanted to share the feedback on my work, because I am still scratching my head over it. I have found over time that people either really like my writing or they definitely don’t. So with that as a preamble, here are the results. Total score is out of 100 points.

Judge no. 1 –

Overall, your story has potential, I can envision the journey your hero is going to take, but I’m not certain of your heroine, and there is some revision needed.  TOTAL SCORE: 56

Judge no. 2 –

Wow – an excellent fight sequence. Very good. This entry is almost at Very Good. It just needs to show the suspense/mystery sooner in the book. The descriptions and world-building were very good. Dialogue between the secondary characters at the work-yard was excellent. TOTAL SCORE: 89

 Judge no. 3

Great job!(said 3 times) I really feel I know what’s driving the hero and heroine. Wonderful job with the balance of dialogue and the follow works great. Great job on showing the different personalities of the back ground players. Found them likeable and have a feeling the hero and heroine are going to be fun to read.Very Good! I would like to read more of this story. TOTAL SCORE: 98

 Now, what should I take from this? Well, first of all, out comes the grain of salt. I think it proves my point – the reader either really likes my work, or they don’t. I think the second point would be, two out of three isn’t bad. Two of the judges liked what they saw.

Perhaps I’ll just hang my hopes on what Judge no 3 had to say and keep writing. What do you think?

 

Editing your writing

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Is editing your own work all that difficult? I think it is. Once I’ve finished writing a piece and gone over it four or five times, my eye starts to skip even obvious errors. I’ve been working on an MS where an auto correct function took most contractions and spelled them with a quotation mark instead of an apostrophe – i.e. don”t instead of don’t.

For some reason, once that occurred the spell check wouldn’t pick them up. So I went through the piece manually changing them. Then I sent the pages to my pad to read it again and discovered I’d missed a bunch. See? It’s not that easy to do your own editing.

I’ve tried to work out a system once a piece is finished –

  • Run spell check
  • Run list of overused words
  • Read through on computer and edit
  • Send to pad to read and make notes of obvious errors
  • Final read through
  • I consider reading it out loud, printing it and reading it on paper
  • Then I start looking for other eyes on the MS because I’m bound to have missed something.

Joan DeMartin wrote a good piece on Lipsticking website about self editing. You can read it here –

http://www.lipsticking.com/2014/07/channeling-your-inner-editor.html

How do you edit? All suggestions welcome!

Romantic Suspense – why I write

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Let me tell you a little about me, Sylvie Grayson, and why I write!

What am I currently working on?

My current work is a story called Suspended Animation, where an ambitious young hockey player is reluctantly dragged home because of a crisis, to discover his father is too ill to run the family trucking business, and it’s about to go under from a load of debt.

At the same time a young woman has loaned her money to be invested in a trucking business but when her fortunes plummet, she needs it back. Her only option is to approach the business owner. The scene when these two, the hockey player and the young woman, meet really tickled me because they are polar opposites and the air crackles with tension.

How does my contemporary romantic suspense differ from others in the genre?

My heroes are busy guys who are trying their best to make a go of their careers. They aren’t perfect but they work hard and play hard, knowing life can throw them a curve unexpectedly, and it always does.

My heroines are smart, usually independent minded women who like to do things their way and have a plan for their lives. When these two meet up, the sparks fly, especially if they are already driving on a collision course. Then I mix in a bit of intrigue and suspense in the shape of a bad character or two, some unforeseen events to up the ante and make things really interesting.

I try to stay away from the classic scenarios – big businessmen who enter into shady deals to make a lot of money, or high flyer politicians who work for their own interests to gain wealth or influence. I feel those have been overdone, and it’s time to look for more interesting and inventive plots.

Why do I write what I do?

I have a varied and out-of-the ordinary background and I think that comes through in what I write. My father was a story teller, played the accordion and mouth organ, and loved to sing ballads. My mother was a painter, a writer and a respected poet. So I come by the wish to tell stories honestly. I also have a background in business, entertainment, travel, start-up companies, you name it. So I like to write about those things.

Life is never easy, I don’t know anyone who has sailed through without a hitch. So when I begin to throw the hitch into the mix, the leak in the lifeboat, or the thief in the scenario, it just gets more interesting and exciting. The suspense in ‘romantic suspense’ gives the love story a special impact.

How does my writing process work?

I’ve written about five or six books now, and the process has evolved. Because I also have a job, I write when I can find the uninterrupted time to do so. I usually start with an idea about the characters and the situation they’re in. As I mull it over in my mind, their personalities evolve and I start to see why they are doing what they do, and how their goals are at cross purposes. Then I work on getting them together.

When I write, I usually know where I’m going with the story. But the story can surprise me, and take me in a different direction then I planned. I find the characters come alive and soon have a mind of their own. It takes some special handling as the book evolves to stay on course but allow the hero and heroine a voice in their own story. It’s what I love to do.

Do you write? What’s your process? Drop me a line and let me know how it works for you. J