Tag: Writing

Remember when I wrote that really long sentence?

Remember when I wrote that 106-word sentence? I wrote another one! Even longer! This week, as part of the class I’m taking (called masterful sentences, oddly enough) we mimicked Hemingway and his +400 word sentence, which you can see here. (Scroll down to #3. I’m not going to post it here-dude, that’s longer than most of my blog entries.).

So part of the assignment was to write a 400 – 500 word sentence-and have it make sense. I did the first part at least. I wrote a 490-word monstrosity.

In the process, I think I broke Microsoft Word.

Writing wrong yet again

So I’m taking this writing class called Masterful Sentences which is about … wait for it … sentence structure. Yeah, you didn’t see that coming.

Anyway, as part of this week’s assignment, I have a choice between “offering corrections to phrase and clauses wherever you see you can improve it” on A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens or diagramming several sentences from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce.

That’s sort of like the choice between a chocolate chip cookie and chewing on some crushed glass.

Personally, I don’t think Dickens needs “improving,” and I gave Joyce the old college try. Then I ran back to Dickens, asked for forgiveness, and was extremely proud of myself that I didn’t substitute “Dude, check it!” for “Mind!” in the second paragraph of the story.

Geek Girl Update

While Darcy slipped off the front page, you can see a few excerpts from her interview over at Geek Girl’s Guide.

Dude, that’s one really long sentence

Ha. The magical, mystical, way-too-long sentence. It was part of an assignment where we were given a laundry list of short sentences (He wore a shirt. The shirt was frayed.) about an individual that we had to work into a single sentence.

I don’t feel right about sharing the entire list, but there were sixteen items to work into the sentence. Most of my classmates managed to do that in far fewer words than I did.

Still, I think I had more fun. So here it is, in all it’s 106-word, longwinded glory.

The man stood, gnarled, emaciated fingers clutching a sign held high above his head, the frayed cuffs of his shirt poked from the sleeves of his suit coat jacket, its material shiny with wear, the stubble on his jaw cast his mouth in shadow, but his forehead shone with sweat, while the sign’s letters, a single word–PEACE–appeared penned by someone very young or someone very old, and on all those hot afternoons that August, he held the sign high, only lowering it when the traffic thinned, the rush of blood to his hands making the skin pink and–for a moment–like a child’s.

Words, 106 of them

I just wrote a 106-word sentence. No, I’m not kidding, and no, it’s not going in my YA novel either.

I’m taking a class called masterful sentences, and let me tell you, it’s exhausting to write a 106-word sentence. And as a bonus, Word doesn’t even think it’s a sentence fragment. Of course, we all know how good Word is at grammar. Hey, you, over there! Stop snickering.

The geek girl’s guide to creating a collage

Since a couple of people have asked, I decided to do a quick rundown of how to create a collage using Microsoft PowerPoint. It’s not fancy; it’s not really artistic (but then neither am I–fancy or artistic).

I’m using PowerPoint 2007 at the moment. If you have an earlier version, the directions may differ slightly.

  1. Open PowerPoint. You can use the default slide that appears as your starting point.
  2. Delete the title and subtitle text boxes.
  3. Right click on the slide.
  4. Select Format Background.
  5. Select Picture or texture fill.

From here, you can select one of the texture fills that come with PowerPoint or select your own wallpaper or image file as the background. For one collage I made, I used an actual photo of swimming pool water.

To continue:

  1. If the background is too dark, adjust to transparency to lighten it.
  2. Select Insert –>Picture to add images* to your collage.
  3. Once it’s complete, save the collage as its own image. Select Save As … and in the Save as type: field, select an image file type, such as JPEG.

You’ll receive message asking if you want to save only the current slide or all the slides in the presentation. Select current slide.

Now you have a wondrous image file of your collage that you can post on your blog or use as your desktop wallpaper as inspiration.

*I use royalty-free stock photography for many of my images. One of my favorite places to search is istockphoto.com. Dollar downloads: doesn’t get much better than that.

Now all I have to do is write the book

So, I was cruising around Amazon the other day, looking for YA books and other things to add to my wish list when I came across Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dark Side.

I have to tell you, I was totally excited. I thought, hey maybe we should contact the author about doing a little cross-promotion. Now, you’re probably wondering why I’d think that about a vampire book. Well, at first glance, I didn’t see a vampire book. I saw this:

Jessica’s Guide to Dating on the Dork Side

Sad, but true. Although I still think that would fit into the Geek Girl milieu. (Bet you didn’t know there was a Geek Girl milieu; I didn’t either until I wrote that sentence.)

So. No cross-promo op there. (Still, it sounds like a fun book and the cover is gorgeous.)

That being said, I’m mulling over Dating of the Dork Side as an idea. So, I totally have dibs on it.

But it got me thinking about funny (and long) titles for books that may or may not exist (yet). The other title I came up with was:

I Suck: Memoir of a Teenage Vampire (or How I Took a Bite out of the Varsity Football Team, Bled the Student Council Dry, and Got the Girl)

I have dibs on this on this as well. I’m totally writing it someday. After I finish that Millionaire Boss’s Amnesic Virgin’s Secret Baby book I’m planning to write.

Anyone else have a title? Extra points if you can include, in no particular order: zombies, secret babies, vampires, secret vampire babies, memory loss, memory loss involving werewolves, zombie cheerleaders, vampiric millionaire bosses.

Five questions you might ask my agent

If, you know, you were curious about her move from one agency to another. They were curious over at the Guide to Literary Agents editor’s blog:

Five Questions

Go on and have a read. I’ll be here when you get back. Well, actually, I probably won’t be; I’ll be eating my peanut butter and raspberry preserves sandwich for lunch. But you know what I mean.

Getting schooled: a writer prepares (for the worst)

Despite all his talk about writing from the unconscious, Butler believes a writer should prepare before sitting down to write a novel.

So, does he want you to outline?

Nooooooo.

Brainstorm, do character sheets?

Nooooooo.

Plot boards, Excel spreadsheets, synopses?

Nooooooo.

He wants you to dreamstorm your novel. Yes. You’ve heard it here first. (Well, unless you’ve read Butler’s book, in which case, you heard it there first.)

It goes something like this:

  • Dreamstorm a scene from something sensual, by making a list of words, having some sort of sense impression attached to it with the briefest identifier of that scene. Do this for a whole bunch of scenes. It doesn’t matter at this point if two scenes contradict each other.
  • After eight to twelve weeks (yes, really), Butler suggests the next stage is to write a phrase identifying the scene on a 3 X 5 card.
  • Then orchestrate the scenes, embracing the randomness in creating the sequence, but looking for continuity. (No, I don’t know what this means.)
  • Look for the first good scene, the best point of attack, to begin the flow of sensual moments. (This, however, makes more sense.)

Butler believes in the natural sequence. (I don’t know if this is like natural selection or not.)

Actually, what he means is the scenes will eventually fall into an order that works for the story. You start with the best point of attack, Then select a few more follow-up scenes to write. after you write those scenes, you look at the remaining ones. You may need to rearrange or dreamstorm new scenes based on what you’ve written.

He doesn’t like the idea of writing out of order. If you start writing a scene without any previous context, he believes you’ll lose the unconscious aspect of it. You end up creating ideas as to why the scene is happening rather than dreamstorming them.

At some point you type: The End.

In all seriousness, I am all over the index card idea. You can do anything with index cards. Miss B can create a whole cityscape with inhabitants and pets with index cards. The very least I can do is write a novel.