Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Inspire me

Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival,’ where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.



This Week's Topic:
 
Share some image(s) that inspire your WIP
 
I like to collect images of my main characters so i can see them easily in my head. And I like to have other fragments that inspire a mood or an aspect of the character.
 


But I think this image and those like them on the news fill my mind the most with this WIP. My brother-in-law and his young family live in Japan and we worried for them greatly, still do considering radiation issues.

What about you? Any inspirational piccies? Relatives living in scary places?
 
 
 

Thursday, June 30, 2011

Too late

So i wrote a great (ok... that could be a stretch but, ya know it's my recounting) post for Road Trip Wednesday. It was about my fave book of the month. Only, now (here in Aussie) it's July thanks to blogger locking me out for 2 days at random.

So, the book I was planning to rave about was 'on the jellicoe road' by Melina Marchetta. loved it, loved it, loved it.

In my great, lost post I also explained how the Aussie RWA do a June Challenge a bit like NaNo and i signed up for 40k... which left little time for reading. But if i don't read i wilt... so i made time. I also managed 40008 words on the WIP and i still love it.

Happy me!

Nearly school hols here. What do you have coming up? Has blogger picked on you lately?
=)

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Come on up and take a guess...

Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival,’ where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.

This Week's Topic:
I give you an off-the-cuff blurb of a book, any genre, and you guys try to guess the book.

 
Ok here goes... um....

An eleven year old orphan learns he's a wizard and discovers he is the key to finally defeating super-bad-nasty guy who was believed vanquished.

=)
Too easy? What about...

A girl volunteers for a reality TV fight to the death in an arena to save her sister.

Anyone know these? Interesting to note that these are both pretty simple, maybe I need to look for that in the WIP.


Wednesday, June 1, 2011

In the name of...

Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival,’ where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.



This Week's Topic:

What is the strangest/weirdest thing you've ever researched?


I've looked up a range of stuff... hmmm... the strangest...

So far the one that got me the strangest look when someone walked in was my research into home made tattoos. Combine it with the fact i've been wanting a tattoo myself and hubby thought i'd taken cheap to a new level. I hurried to reassure him.

Other interesting and hopefully useful stuff includes antique shops in San Fransisco, number of people on a spaceship, how to engage students and psychology of slavery. It does kind of fit together.

Kind of.

What's the strangest thing you've researched for a WIP?

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Inspiration

Road Trip Wednesday is a ‘Blog Carnival,’ where YA Highway's contributors post a weekly writing- or reading-related question and answer it on our own blogs. You can hop from destination to destination and get everybody's unique take on the topic.


This Week's Topic:
Who in your life has most inspired your writing?


There are two ways an inspiring person can impact my writing:

1) All round inspirer
This person is generally inspiring, making me want to be better in life in general. I have a lot of these great people around me. My hubby, the kids in their fresh take on the world, my women - my sisters and mother in law and closest friends (inside and outside the writing world) - who all manage in some way to rise above the day to day to be special, strong, inspirational.

2) Writing specific
This is for those teachers who believed in me, those brilliant authors who've left me striving to match them (no matter how short i feel), and my CPs/beta readers who literally get into the dirt and help me dig something out of the mess i write.

Of course, many people have a foot in both halls of fame.

But none more so than my mother.

Despite her death ten years ago, she still inspires me. Firstly as a woman who raised her family with such strength, who was the kind of person who, the moment you saw her, you wanted to be her friend. And then as my best cheerleader. I CAN be whatever i want to be. As long as i work hard enough. She believed I could do anything.

And then there was the way she raised me to be a reader. More than that, a devourer of stories. One of my earliest memories is snuggling close while she read to herself (after her stories to me), i couldn't wait to be able to enter the world on my own.

Then, of course, there's the moment. I was about thirteen. She read a story I'd written. And she cried. She felt it. And I will never forget.

Who inspires you?

Monday, May 16, 2011

Letting go

I have been revising my story after leaving it sit for over a month. I'd done edits as I went and had some feedback from my CPs, but something about it was bothering me and I knew I needed space to see what it was.



Space included a trip to the magnificent Flinders Ranges
and an amazing hot air balloon ride over the mountains at sunrise.


The space worked... kind of. I wasn't fulfilling the promise of the start because I'd rushed my ending. I managed to tweak a few things, completely change something else and now I think it's the better.

But I want to *know*...

How do you know when the story is done and it's time to let it go into the world (more CPs, beta readers, agent etc)?

=)

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Scar stories

Each week, YA Highway hosts Road Trip Wednesday, a blog carnival in which contributors discuss a topic on their blogs and invite readers to do the same.
 
This Week's Topic:
 
What is the story of your best scar?
 
Scars are like memories written in blood. I have a few... not too many which maybe tells its own story of cautiousness.
 
One brings back my childhood and the family across the road... who later moved around the corner but never really from my life. They had big dogs my whole early childhood. Obedient, well-behaved, good and maybe kinda scary German Shepherds. When I was about 11 they got, of all things, a toy poodle. The thing couldn't have been much bigger than a man's boot. Turned out the thing had brain damage that transformed it into a red-eyed fiend (maybe the eyes were my imagination) and it would leap out at random and attack. One day it got my hand and i was shaking but the thing was like a cartoon, swinging back and forth in the air, not letting go of the webbing between my fingers. It had to be put down not long after. The small mark reminds me not to judge a dog by its size. Ouch!
 
What do your scars tell you?