Editor: Colleen Green
Contact: colleen_grn@yahoo.com
Birthday of the Month
November 13, 2020
Happy 90th birthday to Ruth Ann Peck!
Happy birthday to Ruth Ann Peck. She’s an amazing lady who has been our devoted and inspiring friend, leader and author. We are blessed to have you in our lives and cherish the moments we share.
Books By Ruth Kibler Peck
Rowing Through The Night by Ruth Kibler Peck
Unknown Horizons: The Lewis and Clark Expedition by Ted Brusaw and Ruth Kibler Peck
Poverty, Puberty, & Patriotism: A Dayton Girl Grows up During WWII is available at Xlibris.com and Amazon.com.
Women Who Shaped America by Wright Writers of Dayton
Event of the Month
National Novel Writing Month
National Novel Writing Month is an annual Internet-based creative writing project that takes place during the month of November. Participants attempt to write a 50,000-word manuscript between November 1 and November 30.
The focus is on the quantity of words rather than quality. It is an extremely rough draft of a story that is meant to be polished until it shines at a later time after November is over.
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Novel_Writing_Month
Author Colleen Green’s View of National Writing Month (Wright Writer of Dayton member)
The positive aspect of NaNoWriMo is you can join a community online to help motivate and inspire you to keep writing on a consistent basis. By tracking your words with the group you are held responsible to try to reach the end goal of 50,000 words. It works best if you already have done the preliminary work of having either a rough outline of where you are going with the story along with some characters fleshed out so you can write their unique voice (the way they talk that reflects their personality) easily and consistently.
The negative aspect is 50,000 words is a steep goal. If you work full time like I do, it’s nearly impossible which is why I haven’t attempted it yet. You’re also seeing numbers from fellow writers on their website with advantages you may not have along side your numbers that you’ve written so far. A retired woman who has eight hours a week day verses my two hours at the max per week day already has an advantage over me. Time is time and minutes add up. It’s not an excuse it’s math. Yes, I can hit it hard on the weekends when the retired woman may be busy with grandchildren but the time difference would be near impossible to make up. So here’s my proposal to those who can’t make a living out of being an author…yet. Set your sights a little lower and track your own numbers. You can still join the community and get inspired, but maybe set your goal number of words for the month of November lower, and if you excel more than that, great! If I did participate, I’d simply look at it this way, if I reached 30,000 words, it would be beyond amazing. It would certainly be pushing myself harder than usual by a long shot. It’s about 1,000 words a day. Much more doable for someone like me. And it’s possible I might even do a little better than that sometimes.
So, what is NaNoWriMo?
NaNoWriMo is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides tools, structure, community, and encouragement to help people find their voices, achieve creative goals, and build new worlds — on and off the page.
Source for info is from this website below. Click for more information if you are interested in participating.
Remember that it’s not just in November that you can track your own progress. You can do it each month and see how you progress.
Book of the Month
The Dialogue Thesaurus:
A Fiction Writer’s Sourcebook of Dialogue Tags and Phrases
This book is a helpful reference for writers on the subject of dialogue and action tags, adverbs and internal dialogue. These sections are broken down by categories such as emotions, physical state, dynamic and manner. This is a smart way to do it since writers are often looking for words that fit one of these topics. For example, my character is pandering in his manner he speaks and acts, and I need to convey that by showing it. The book lists pandering as a manner. A reader can go to that section. Instead of just using “said”, one could use words like accommodatingly as in she asked accommodatingly. Part four of this book has an excellent list dealing with body language and movement. Often in writing our emotions are displayed through the way we carry ourselves and move about the room. This book includes a wonderful list of helpful phrases that is broken down by body part. For example, it has under the category Arms: Hands/Palms “his hands thrust into the pockets of his (. . .)”. Can’t you feel the character’s angst with the verb thrust? I sure can. At the beginning of the book you will find a guide explaining how to look up what you are searching for. Listed below are the situations you may need fixed. (I’m paraphrasing.)
- I’m sick of using ‘he said’ and ‘she said’. I’m looking for variety.
- I want to use adverbs to add spark to my dialogue.
- I need to show what the character is feeling because the dialogue isn’t clear on the tone of their emotion.
- I want to show the character’s actions to help the reader see the scene in their mind.
Pick up your copy and click on the link here. https://tinyurl.com/y2zotg87
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