amanda-writing-blog

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Be the off-the-wall comedic character you wish to see in the world.

why is it not common knowledge that tolkien and c s lewis once went to a non-costume party dressed as polar bears

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I Wrote a Novel, Now What? Congratulations—You’re Only Halfway Done!

We hope you’ve had a chance to catch up on sleep and are now starting to reread and revise your NaNo novels. Writing a draft is only half the battle, so today author Laura VanArendonk Baugh shares some questions to ask yourself when you’re revising:

If they’d asked me, it would be called NaDraWriMo: National Draft Writing Month.

Don’t get me wrong—writing 50,000 words in a month is a big accomplishment, and I’m not taking anything away from that. But it’s not accurate to think of it as a finished novel just yet. 

Fortunately, we have the next eleven months for revisions! Revision is not a luxury; it’s an essential part of finishing a novel.

“When I say writing, O believe me, it is rewriting that I have chiefly in mind.”

–Robert Louis Stevenson

But without the communal adrenaline of NaNoWriMo—and let’s be honest, it’s far less thrilling to post “I removed a weak subplot” than to update that purple bar—it can be hard to maintain that promise to revise. Rewriting is also very different than writing, so it can be hard to know how to even start.

Here is how I do it:

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Check out my work in Anomaly 25′s “I(,) Object” Folio

My science fiction short story, “An Artificial Address,” is now available in the “I(,) Object” folio of Anomaly Issue 25. 

Link: http://anmly.org/ap25/i-object/amanda-gillespie

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Anyone writing poetry, check this out!

Join the Button family and get your book published! Now accepting manuscripts until January 5th! Full Info and Guidelines, HERE!

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4 Tips to Un-Fry Your Brain and Polish Your Novel

November is finally over, and now that you’ve had a chance to catch up on some much-needed sleep, you might be planning the next steps in the life of your novel. Today, author and Municipal Liaison E.A. Comiskey shares her advice for polishing the draft you wrote in November:

I hope you are wildly proud of yourself! You took a chance on a wild journey this November, and even if you didn’t end up exactly where you expected, I have no doubt you made some remarkable progress. 

So, now what? Here are a few suggestions for next steps:

1. Step away from your novel.

First of all, step away. Fifty thousand words in thirty days is enough to fry the most seasoned writer’s brain. You’re done. You’re no longer seeing clearly. Walk away for a little while. Go introduce yourself to those people in your living room. I’ll bet they’ve missed you! Breathe in some fresh air. Stretch your muscles. Do some Christmas shopping. Read a book. Any book except the one you just wrote. 

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YALL.

CALL YOUR REPS!

https://twitter.com/TheBoneHeadClan/status/940369097052827654

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Join EveryLibrary and Mozilla in the Fight for Net Neutrality

Join EveryLibrary and Mozilla in the Fight for Net Neutrality

In case you haven’t heard, the open Internet’s founding principle is under attack. Policymakers in the U.S. are considering rules that would erase “Net Neutrality,” the principle that all data on the Internet should be treated equally. If these rule changes go through, many fear it will create a “two-tier” Internet, where monopolies are able to charge huge fees for special “fast lanes” while…

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We have just days. The FCC is about to vote to end net neutrality—breaking the fundamental principle of the open Internet—and only an avalanche of calls to Congress can stop it. So until the December 14th vote, “Break the Internet” on your site, with your profile picture, on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, LinkedIn, reddit, Tumblr, Youtube or in whatever wild creative way you can to get your audience to contact Congress. That’s how we win. Are you in?

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Check out my work in Anomaly 25′s “I(,) Object” Folio

My science fiction short story, “An Artificial Address,” is now available in the “I(,) Object” folio of Anomaly Issue 25. 

Link: http://anmly.org/ap25/i-object/amanda-gillespie

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The Umbrella

The Umbrella by A.R. Gillespie

Seven strangers huddled atop a picnic table under an umbrella in the rain. As the water poured down harder, pounding insistently atop the sealed canvas like a thousand knocking visitors at the door after dark, the strangers huddled closer, foregoing social conventions regarding personal space for fear that the rain might touch their skin. The myriad missiles missed their shivering targets, instead bursting on impact with the muddy-looking cobblestone of the courtyard, walled in by buildings and walkways of a bleaker, duller gray than the angry clouds above.

Ah, alas that they had not been loitering under the walkway rather than at the picnic table under the open sky, when the rain had started to fall. Then, they might have scampered to shelter. It was too late for that now, for if they left the umbrella, the rain would touch their skin. And then, and then … Well, who would dare to think about it?

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Writing Challenge

So, @ash-writes and I decided to do a 20 minute word war, in which we had to respond to one another’s prompts. We gave each other a premise plus two specific quotes that had to be used. For either quote that we failed to use in the time limit, 50 words would be taken off our total count for comparison purposes. @ash-writes gave me the following:

You just moved into a house, and the previous owner warns you not to paint the walls. The entire house is painted white. You go against her warning, and start painting a wall ______. That’s when you realize that the paint on the wall must stay wet otherwise _______________________ will happen.

Lines to use:

“Did the dog send you?”

“AND THE CHORUS SWELLS!!”

(Sound familiar, anybody?)

Anyway, here’s what I had after 20 minutes:

Cracks in the Wall, by A.R. Gillespie Melissa stared at the wall, a smudge of teal paint on her cheek, another sticking out of her short choppy hair. It was better not to describe the state of her overalls, dear reader. The important thing to know is that paint should have had nothing to do with the wall. The previous owner had cautioned her about that. A weird, weird caution. Maybe the old man had some kind of sentimental attachment to asylum-white walls, and hated the thought that his old home might have a dash of color to it. In any case, it was Melissa’s house now, so what of it?

But a strange thing was happening now. The moment that the paint dried on a part of the wall she had touched over already, cracks started to form. Some peculiarity about the lighting in the house, the way the shadows danced from the trees swaying in the open window, made it look like the cracks in the wall ran … well, deeper than a single coat of paint, certainly. Was the paint the problem? She’d gotten it pretty cheap. But it had seemed fine in the test application to an old bit of birch from her father’s woodworking shed, so that hardly seemed to be the issue. Could it be interacting with the white paint somehow? Could the old man have cursed it with his cataract-coated gaze? Before she could contemplate the matter further, the doorbell rang.

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Sci Fi Addendum:

DUE TO TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES,

THOSE AMONG OUR STAFF WHO ARE ROBOTS

ARE UNABLE TO RUN THE PROGRAM FOR DEALING WITH IRRATIONAL HUMAN RUDENESS

AND MAY ALSO REACT UNPREDICTABLY WHEN

ABUSED OR UNDER PRESSURE.

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I have a thought about ‘kill your darlings.’ There seems to be a general notion out there in the ether that the phrase means, ‘Hunt down every sentence or image you really love and cut it down like a pernicious weed.’  That, my dears, is bullshit. In my opinion, what it really means is, ‘If you’re rewriting a whole scene just so that a paragraph or conversation you’re in love with will work, and it still kind of doesn’t, maybe it doesn’t really belong in this story and you should print it out and put it in a lovely, decorative folder labelled DARLINGS to read on those days when you hate every sentence you’re writing.’

Delia Sherman, American fantasy writer (via sathinfection)

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Some excellent advice for a really daunting task. I’m going to start trying the note card technique tomorrow and see how it works out.

To the edit-mobile!

6 Steps for Editing Your Novel

We’re getting ready for Camp NaNoWriMo this July! This month, we’re talking to Wrimos who are using the Camp format to work on non-novel projects. Today, participant Lana Alam shares some of her tips for diving into editing work this summer:

If you have ever won NaNo, you probably have a pile of at least 50,000 words sitting in a folder on a computer collecting ‘dust’. Many of us finish a writing project with a huge sense of accomplishment–and then promptly forget about our work in progress. 

The business of editing a rough draft is often a daunting one. This is in part because we go back and read through our novels right away. Our response is often a resounding: “Oh dear” (or something a little more colorful). When you reach this stage, here are six steps that can help you keep editing:

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