Writer's of the Future: Honorable Mention

I finally heard back from Writer's of the Future. I'd entered the contest for the 1st quarter of 2014.

My short story, Finding Home won an honorable mention. That's good news, and bad news. Yeah, I wanted to win, but I'm mostly seeing this as a huge positive.  After all, I learned that depending on the number of "good stories," 5-15% of the stories receive Honorable Mention.   So, my writing is moving in the right direction.

This is also incentive to enter a stronger story the next quarter, and to keep working on my craft.

Writing! Yay!

Best Rejection

Ah, the life of a writer. I'm elated and dejected all in the same time. To paraphrase Walt Whitman, "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. No I don't."

My novella was declined, but with a note that it would be reconsidered if it were longer. They liked the story and concept. Essentially, I have a rewrite request and an invitation to resubmit.

Guess what I'll be doing for the foreseeable future?

Character Development Game

Photo by shutterhacks

Have you played the "I never" game?" If not, here's how it's done.

You get in a group of 2 or more people. You take turns saying, "I've never..." and fill in the blank.

For instance, "I've never written a New York Times Bestselling Novel." If you find yourself in a group with Stephen King, Mary Higgins Clark and James Patterson, this is a good statement to start out with.

Anyone is the group that has done the thing that you've never done, has to raise their hand. Or, if you're in college, they have to take a drink. You'll find several ways to figure out who wins the game.

Here's the point. If you're looking for creative ways to create characters, and to learn more about them, have them play this game. Make a list of what each character has and has not done. Better yet, write the scene out, and have them take a drink for each thing they've done. That way you learn their voices AND you know what they're like drunk.

As a bonus, to get you started, I've never...

• Gone backwards in time and killed my own grandfather
• Cut my tongue with a steak knife
• Bitten a vampire
• Enjoyed making small talk with barbers
• Jumped out of a tree to see if my latent super powers have activated yet
• Taken candy from a baby
• Accidentally electrocuted myself
• Purposefully electrocuted myself
• Seen a ghost. Wait. I meant a werewolf ghost.

The Write kind of Puns

Sometimes I amuse myself on Twitter so much, I have to share the results here. Today, it was all about writing puns and jokes:

#WritingJokes

• I read about a troll living under an overpass. There was no overpass though. The book was abridged.
  
  
  
• Reading high-fantasy can be hobbit forming.
  
• Thinking of writing a romance novel. The leads will rendezvous privately in an unexpected plot tryst.
  
• I couldn't see my character's motivation in my first draft. That's why I needed to do a revision.
  
• Thought I had a great story idea: a mermaid who lived in a pond. Turns out the plot was a bit shallow.
  
• I read a story about an 8 foot tall man who meets a real giant. Talk about a tall tale!
  
• Her poetry was so horrible, the judge made her read it out loud to herself. After all, the punishment should fit the rhyme.
  
• Did you hear about the two writers on their honeymoon? They spent a lot of time in metaphorplay.
  
• I'm writing my next novel in my friend's basement. He has the best cellar.
  
• The writer was convicted of plagiarism. His sentence was to hand write "War and Peace." Talk about Carpal Punishment!
  
• I'm always freezing at my writing desk. Probably because there's so many drafts.
  
• I bet Charles Dickens had an interesting spice rack in his kitchen. He had the best of thymes and the worst of thymes.
  
• My first short story was about a woman who maintained a small garden. Too bad it didn't have much of a plot.
  
• When I write longhand, I get #writers cramp. It's a bad case of authoritis.
  
• Did you hear about the backwards #poet? She wrote inverse.

Writer's Digest April Fool's Headline Contest

Hope I'm doing this right. Here's my entry for the April Fool's Contest by Brian Klems.

"A Third Person Arrested in the Dangling Modifier Case." #AprilFools4Writers @BrianKlems http://bit.ly/1jUbnq1 

Yep. That's three puns in 140 characters, making up one headline. Enjoy.