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Writing Wednesday: Prompt

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WW Prompt

Here’s today’s Writing Wednesday Prompt:

Set a timer for 5 minutes and write without stopping about the following topic:
The next great adventure (for you, your character, your pet, or anyone!)

If you write something from this prompt, by all means let me know! Feel free to share what you wrote, if you want!

**If you’re looking for more like this, you might want to check out the story seeds posts I wrote for NaNoPrep a few years ago. They are not specific to NaNoWriMo, and each contains a list of several different types of prompts or ways to generate story ideas. You can find them here: Story Seeds 1, Story Seeds 2, Story Seeds 3, Story Seeds 4**

Weekly Writing Update: March 2

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

I was pretty productive this week, adding a total of 5676 new words to “Outcast,” (book #2), as well as doing a little revision to make some freewriting from the past fit into the book.

When I started working on this step, I was hoping to add at least 10,000 more words to this book, if not 15,000. At current count, I’ve added 12,750!! I have a few more scenes to write or adapt, so I think I may just hit or pass 15k, which will bring the book up to a total word count of 70k. This is so much more acceptable to me as a follow-up to a book with 105k words. And early feedback says the scenes are generally good additions, too, not just filler. So far, I’ve been filling in a gap of time that the couple of people who’ve read the book have wished to see more of.

After I finish writing new scenes, I’ll go back and fix up the new stuff based on that early feedback, and then I’ll have to lay out the scenes and find a new flow for them. Then there will be further revision stages after that, but my biggest concern about this book was that I wouldn’t be able to adequately expand it to a higher word count. Now my biggest concern is how long it will take to get through the revision and be ready to publish it.

While I work on continuing the series, if you’re interested in reading where it all starts, Pithea is available on Amazon as both an e-book and paperback (it’s also on Kindle Unlimited).

Weekly Writing Update: March 1

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

I wrote more new scenes for “Outcast,” (book #2) this week, a total of 3945 words. I took a couple of nights completely off, due to early mornings for work, but overall, I’m really glad with the progress I made.

I’ve been trying out a way to stay focused for the writing, using tricks I’ve learned from NaNoWriMo. I’ll write for 10 minutes without stopping and without over-thinking my words, and then take a break, which usually means reading a book for 10 minutes. If I don’t write in sprints, the words I can get written in 10 minutes would take at least 30, most likely more, because I’d be stopping too often to edit as I go, or to look something up that I’m just certain needs to be looked up RIGHT NOW. The progress is much smoother this way.

While I work on continuing the series, if you’re interested in reading where it all starts, Pithea is available on Amazon as both an e-book and paperback (it’s also on Kindle Unlimited).

Writing Wednesday: Prompt

/ Kristi / Leave a comment
WW Prompt

Here’s today’s Writing Wednesday Prompt:

It was a poetical retribution for the crime.

(Today’s prompt is a paraphrase of a line from the book Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery.)

**If you’re looking for more like this, you might want to check out the story seeds posts I wrote for NaNoPrep a few years ago. They are not specific to NaNoWriMo, and each contains a list of several different types of prompts or ways to generate story ideas. You can find them here: Story Seeds 1, Story Seeds 2, Story Seeds 3, Story Seeds 4**

Weekly Writing Update: February Week 4

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This week I got to do some writing for “Outcast,” (book #2), rather than revising, which is always more fun for me. I didn’t have as many nights to work on it as I’d like, which I’m really hoping will be better this week, but it was still nice to do some actual writing. So far, I’ve only written 2 scenes, and didn’t even finish either of them. In total, I wrote about 1500 words last week. Not exactly NaNoWriMo pace. I need apply the methods of NaNoWriMo and write in concentrated sprints, I think. I’ll try that this week.

While I work on continuing the series, if you’re interested in reading where it all starts, Pithea is available on Amazon as both an e-book and paperback (it’s also on Kindle Unlimited).

Self-Publishing Spotlight: His Name Was Zach

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Do you like…

  • …unconventional family relationships?
  • …stories that are driven by the characters and relationships?
  • …post-apocalyptic stories?
  • …ex-military main characters?
  • …witty teenage characters?
  • …zombies?

If you answered yes to 1 or more of these questions, consider checking out His Name Was Zach.

Synopsis from Goodreads:
One day at a time, that is how Zach lives. It has been two years since The Crisis, the day when people contracted a mysterious disease that renders the host a flesh-eating feral. Both Zach and his daughter Abby are doing all they can to survive in this world where most creatures, living or undead, want to kill them. Moving from one oasis of solace to another, they journey in search of a true home. A place where they can finally live together in peace. But out in the Wild, friends are few, psychotic enemies abound, and Zach and Abby will be forced to confront demons from their pasts. Will their familial bond hold long enough to reach safety? Or will they lose themselves to the surrounding madness?

About Peter Martuneac: Husband, father of two, Boilermaker alum, and former United States Marine. Ever since reading The Lord of the Rings at a young age, Peter has wanted to be a writer. His Name Was Zach is his debut novel, followed by the short story prequel “Abby: Alone”. A second novel is in the works, entitled Her Name Was Abby.

Peter’s writings tend to share a theme that focuses on PTSD and the different ways people cope with trauma, some healthy and others not. He also writes about redemption, and not being chained to your former self.

His Name Was Zach was self-published by Peter Martuneac in April of 2019. It’s available on Kindle (and is currently on Kindle Unlimited) and as a paperback. You can read reviews on Goodreads or Amazon, as well as on the author’s blog. Or see my review here.

Writing Wednesday: Prompt

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

WW Prompt

Here’s today’s Writing Wednesday Prompt:

Include all of the following words in a scene:
silence
stop
argument
antidote
watch

bonus: pineapple

If you write something from this prompt, let me know! Feel free to share what you wrote, if you want!

**If you’re looking for more like this, you might want to check out the story seeds posts I wrote for NaNoPrep a few years ago. They are not specific to NaNoWriMo, and each contains a list of several different types of prompts or ways to generate story ideas. You can find them here: Story Seeds 1, Story Seeds 2, Story Seeds 3, Story Seeds 4**

Weekly Writing Update: February Week 3

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

My primary goal this week was to brainstorm new scenes to add to “Outcast,” book #2 in my series, based on early feedback. There are 2 main areas of the story that I’m going to add more to in some way, and one of those areas is one I’ve focused on in freewriting a lot over the last few years. So I have several scenes in mind that would work well in this story, with some revision.

While searching for some of these scenes, past-me reached out and slapped present-me in the face. I do my best to keep my writing practice all in one place. I may write it in various different notebooks at first, but I try to make sure I type everything into the computer and keep it all in sub-folders of one main folder. But apparently I still fail at this sometimes. So I went looking through some of my notebooks for one scene I remembered writing (it wasn’t easy, because I have so many currently active ones, any one of which I may decide at the time is the best place for writing practice). When I found it, I also found something else…something revolutionary.

Apparently back in September, during the early part of the current draft of “Outcast,” knowing that I needed more words, I used my Writer Emergency Pack to try to generate some new ideas. I wrote ideas using two different cards, but had forgotten all about them. When I recently found what I’d written 5 months ago, I got really excited. The truth is, most of what I wrote wouldn’t generate a lot more words, but I already have enough new scenes in mind for that. I think. But these were some ideas that would strengthen certain parts of the story, and the series as a whole!

So with some new ideas, I knew that what was coming next was not going to be easy. I had to figure out how to fit all this new stuff in to an existing draft.  I had a really rough time wrapping my brain around how best to do that, and kept getting to my evening writing time late. So I put it off. I did very little for my writing for most of the week. Not nothing, just very little, and not what needed to be done.

So today, when some plans fell through, I found myself with a few hours of free time this afternoon/evening. And I decided that the best way to proceed was to break the story down to its basic parts (scenes) and just dig into it. And though normally I am able to do something like that on Scrivener, it just didn’t seem helpful today. So I made a spreadsheet with scene headers and printed them out, cut them apart, color-coded them based on the story arc they were for, and wrote out new ideas on other pieces of paper. And I spread them out over the table and moved them around until they made some sense.

scene break-down

I also remembered how much easier it can be to sort out the scenes in this story when I group them more by story arc, so that’s how I did it. I can’t really decide on the new order of scenes until the new scenes are written anyway, so this is good for now. I now have a new outline. After updating my Scrivener file for this story to reflect what I did with the papers, it’s going to be time to start writing new scenes (yay!!).

While I work on continuing the series, if you’re interested in reading where it all starts, Pithea is available on Amazon as both an e-book and paperback (it’s also on Kindle Unlimited).

Self-Publishing Spotlight

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For once, I am going to explain something new I’m doing on my blog succinctly. I hope. Let’s see.

Since self-publishing a few books myself, I’ve been more aware of books that others have published themselves. I have also discovered a desire to read more self-published books, to support other authors who have gone this route like myself. It’s not easy out there for us.

Of course, it’s not that easy to find self-published book. There may be a database for it somewhere, but I haven’t discovered it. And even if I did, just like with traditionally published books, I am going to prefer to read certain genres, and if at all possible, avoid books that just won’t be a good fit for me for some reason.

I currently have 3 books on my TBR that I know were self-published, and 1 that I read recently. And in doing a little digging for this post, I realized that a series I’m currently in the middle of was most likely self-published. (Books that are published under an imprint created by the author are also self-published, but can be trickier to spot.) My plan is to make special posts about these books after I’ve read and reviewed them to highlight the book and the author.

Now and then, I will also post something I’ve learned about self-publishing, or a suggestion, trick, etc. I’ve picked up. Goodness knows I am not an expert, and am especially weak in one key area–marketing. But I also know that some people don’t even get to the point of needing marketing, or assume they’ll have to shell out a lot of money for every step along the way. In some small way, maybe my experience on this road will be able to help someone else. This will not be a weekly series, but an on as-able basis. Come back next Saturday for my first post in this series (besides this introductory post).

Four (possibly 5) books/series does not make for the most effective series of posts though. If you who are reading this know of self-published books that you would recommend, please let me know! Whether you published it, your friend, relative, neighbor, or if it’s simply a self-published book you’ve read. Obviously, we may not have the same taste in genres. My most commonly read genres are Christian or non-Christian of mystery & thriller, romance, historical, young adult, and speculative fiction. I do reserve the right to decide not to read the book you recommend if I can tell the genre is very far from what I normally read, I think I’ll have an issue with some of the content, or for some other reason that I think it just won’t be a good fit.

If you have a recommendation for me, please use my Contact Me form to tell me about it.

 

Weekly Writing Update: February Week 2

/ Kristi / Leave a comment

It was not the best week I’ve had, in regards to writing work. I took a few too many nights off, telling myself that I have plenty of time to do the work. And I got some critiques that concerned me a little. I haven’t built up that thick skin I’ve been told I need yet. I’m working on it, though, and I pushed past the negative feelings faster this time. My first reaction was to decide that this area of weakness that I already knew I had made my writing bad. And that it was going to take even more work than I expected to get book #2 (“Outcast”) ready to go.

But with a little bit of time and thinking, I remembered my decision to fully trust God with this whole endeavor. That doesn’t mean I’m not still going to try to strengthen this area of my writing, but it means I don’t have to let it cause a lot of stress or, most importantly, depression that would lead me to not want to work on my writing.

So last week, while waiting for a couple of people to read “Outcast,” I worked enough on book #3 (Pursuit of Power) to reaffirm that it’s a huge mess. I’ve done some preliminary work on it, and will get back to it later.

For now, I have had enough early feedback on “Outcast” to go back to it and start outlining new scenes to add to the existing story, after which I’ll be spending some time writing (which I enjoy way more than revising, so it should be fun).

While I work on continuing the series, if you’re interested in reading where it all starts, Pithea is available on Amazon as both an e-book and paperback (it’s also on Kindle Unlimited).