Writing 101: Learn How to Type

It struck me today while I was working with my eyes closed that, in all the many Writing 101 topics I've posted, I've been neglecting perhaps the most important of all: proper typing. If you don't know how to do it and you're hunting and pecking your way across the keyboard, you've got to stop. Don't write another word. Before you ever create a book, or even think about creating a book, you need to learn how to type -- the right way. 

Getting Back to Basics

Everybody's got their own way of doing things, and it's important for every writer to develop their own writing style and their own habits. You need to feel comfortable when you're writing. All of this is very true. But it's also true that, no matter what, you'd better be typing the right way whenever you're writing. You might have your own system that works for you, and that's great...but you still need to learn the proper, tried-and-true method of typing.

Why? Carpal tunnel, for one, and that's just the beginning. If you're not typing the right way, you could be doing yourself severe wrist damage. The longer you type improperly, the bigger the problem is going to get. It is possible to do permanent damage, the type of damage that can make it all but impossible for you to type in the future. This is not a joke. You can also be doing damage to your back if you're siting strangely at your keyboard. You may end up with hunched-in shoulders and a sloped back if you keep it up for a few decades. 

Maybe the way you type won't cause these problems, what do I know? Maybe your wrists are well-supported, your posture's great and your fingers are flying across the keyboard. You still need to learn how to type properly. Improper typing is going to lead to more mistakes, and it's going to make it more difficult for you to keep writing without looking at your hands. If you can't type your books with your eyes closed, it's time to re-learn how to type. And yes, it is possible to write books with your eyes closed. I know because I do it all the time. 

Proper Typing

It's incredibly easy to learn proper typing, and all you have to invest is time. You can find ten free exercises online that help you master the basics, very in-depth text-based lessons that will walk you through learning how to type and really good interactive lessons that virtually teach you how to type step-by-step. When you're all done learning, take a typing test to see how well you've mastered all your lessons.

When you know how to type properly, you won't have to look at the keyboard or at your hands. You won't have to worry about doing damage to yourself. You can simply write your books, and that's what it's all about.

Winning Look

The Deck of Lies Diva Challenge is over, and a winning outfit for Rain has been picked!

Diva crystalstone32 designed this stylish number to win herself a free copy of Justice (Deck of Lies, #1). Thanks to everyone who played the Diva Challenge at Fashion Fantasy Game. All of the outfits looked great. 

For everyone who didn't win the giveaway, you still have a chance to grab a free copy of the book. Look to the left of the blog to find a link to a new giveaway, and sign up for your chance to win!

Writing 101: Conscious vs. Conscience

When I went to type the title of this post, I misspelled both words. Conscious and conscience are both hard to spell all the time, and that's not even their biggest problem. They sound alike and they have similar meanings -- but they're different enough to make it a terrible writing faux pas if you put one where the other ought to be. There are a few tricks to keeping them straight, so you don't have to pull up reference material every time you want to use one or the other. 

Conscious

The word conscious can be used in a lot of ways, which only adds fuel to the fire of writing confusion. In the main, it really means aware. You can be conscious of the fact that you're reading a blog, you can be conscious of your surroundings, you can feel conscious guilt.

But you also have a conscience. 

Conscience

It's that inner voice that tells you something is wrong. When you feel bad about something you've done, it's your conscience making you feel bad. It causes guilt, and regret, and all those other feelings. That's the main thing you need to remember about conscience -- it creates feelings. Conscious, by contrast, is awareness. 

To make matters even more confusing, the word conscientiousness exists. Clearly an extension of conscience, it means something like listening to your conscience. It's usually used when someone is doing something with great care: She wrote her blog posts with conscientiousness.

Sorting Them Out

Conscious and suspicious both end with the same suffix, and if you break them down to basic meaning they are closely related. To be suspicious is to be especially aware of someone's questionable behavior, yes? You have to be awake and aware to be in that mindset. I use tricks like this to link certain words in my mind; then, I can remember that you have to be awake to be conscious.

Your conscience can keep you awake at night. It's got the word science in it, and naturally this makes one think of crickets. This leads naturally into Jiminy Cricket, who is (wait for it) a conscience for Pinocchio! 

Really that's not a very easy trick even if you are very familiar with the story. Here's a better one: science is the opposite of feeling (since feelings can't really be gauged on a machine), so add con to science and you have conscience, feeling. Conscience is also longer than conscious, letter-wise, so you can always try to remember that the longer words go together. Conscience = feeling, conscious = awake, long long, short short.

It's easy to mix up even the simplest words, and I do it all the time. Every writer does, because the fingers are often faster than the brain. You're going to make mistakes when you write, so don't worry about that. Always go back over your work, and catch all the errors in the editing. Don't stop yourself while you're writing to worry over grammar problems, because you should be making mistakes when you write. Sometimes, mistakes actually help you create something even better. But if you don't go back and edit, I won't feel sorry when your conscience bothers you!

Writing 101: Pacing

Everyone has their own ideas about what makes writing "good" or "bad," but if your pacing is off there isn't going to be much of a competition between the two. Pacing is incredibly important...yet it goes ignored by many indie authors. If your characters make the decision to take a trip, buy the ticket and board the plane all in one paragraph, you really need to learn more about pacing in your writing. 

What Is It? 

Okay, so what is pacing? Every book has a pace, and usually it falls somewhere between two extremes: fast and slow. You can tell the difference when you read, even if you don't think about it consciously. Some books feel like a quick read -- you start them and them finish them and don't even know where the last 6 hours went. Other books that may take the same amount of reading time feel like they're dragggggging by; you look at the clock every hour, wondering how it's possible that five or six haven't passed since the last time check. That's pacing. In some books, events come hot and fast right on top of each other. In others, you may read many pages or chapters before anything new develops. 

Ideally, you want to establish a perfect pace in every book: not too fast and not too slow. The problems with a slow pace are obvious: readers are going to be bored, they're going to be aware of the time that's passing and they may grow tired enough to stop reading and give up on the book altogether. 

 Slow Reading

A slow pace makes lots of books absolutely intolerable to certain readers, while others may like the more serene feeling.

 In the main, you want to avoid writing a pace that's just too slow. Read your book and look for clues like over-writing and extreme length, which are often indicative of a very slow pace. Always remember that each and every scene ought to serve a purpose: it advances the plot and/or it offers the reader information the reader needs to know. If you're writing a bunch of scenes that do neither, your pace is too slow. Things need to happen. They don't have to happen in every single paragraph, but they should be happening every few pages. Otherwise, the reader will feel bored and won't feel a whole lot of motivation to keep reading your story. 

A very slow pace makes the book drag, and drag, and drag...is that how you want people to describe your book? Does that sound like something you want to read?

 Fast Reading

Carrie hung up the phone and bought the train ticket online. She threw a change of clothes into a bag, left her apartment and went to the train station to board the train to Connecticut. When she stepped off the train two hours later, she was home. 

Readers have to have some time to process what's going on in your book. If events are coming right on top of each other, readers are going to have trouble absorbing everything in the story, keeping track of characters and remembering events in their proper order. It comes across as bad writing, and there's a good reason for that. When the pace of your book is super-fast, you're not leaving much room for descriptive writing. You're not even leaving much room for readers to breathe. No one can absorb information if it's coming at them every single second. You shouldn't be lobbing your words at readers like bullets.

Pacing

Pacing that's too fast is every bit as problematic as pacing that's too slow, and that's why writers have to learn how to stay within a happy medium between the two. The best way to do this is to vary your writing. Toss a couple of pitches that are quick and unexpected, then ease off a little and take your time with the next pieces of information. Change between fast and slow pacing to keep the reader engaged and in suspense. Being consistent is good...being too consistent is boring. Speed it up and slow it down to create a good pace overall in your writing, and re-read your words to make sure you aren't mixing up your pace too much. 

Pacing is an art that every author has to master, and even very successful writers struggle with it constantly. Keep working at your craft and be mindful of your pace, and you'll find yourself getting better and better all the time.

From the Trenches: Mother Nature's Son

Some of the world's greatest writers never become famous in their own lifetimes. One of America's best never made much money with his writing, and by the time he died only two of his books were in print...because he paid for them himself. 

Henry David Thoreau, who was born David Henry, paid to have 1,000 copies of his book A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers printed...less than 300 sold. He built himself a shack in the woods after being schooled at Harvard, and many of his contemporaries thought he was quite odd. Maybe they weren't wrong -- but he was still a brilliant writer.

It just took a long time for anyone to realize it. 

Into the Woods

He was born in Concord, Massachusetts and went to Harvard in 1833 to study science, philosophy, math, rhetoric and the classics. But as an adult, Thoreau decided he wanted to escape the polished atmosphere of city living...and all the rest of society. 

In his own words, Thoreau went out into the woods "to live deliberately." He built a shack on a friend's land out by Walden Pond, to learn what he couldn't learn in college...and to write. He was told in 1845 to "build yourself a hut" and then to begin "the grand process of devouring yourself alive" by Ellery Channing. Thoreau followed the advice and just two months later, he was in the woods.

Here he wrote A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, but couldn't find a publisher. It was Thoreau's friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who suggested that Thoreau self-publish. He did, but very few copies of the book sold. He left Walden Pond in 1847 and worked to pay off various debts he'd earned. For years, he worked on his second book, Walden, which talked about his adventured in the woods. 

Today, it is considered to be a very important book. It's studied, and re-studied, and cited as a fantastic work of literary art. Back then...well, opinions were slightly different.

Publishers and critics weren't really interested in Henry David Thoreau. He wrote for himself instead, keeping journals and writing essays to the very last day of his life. Bedridden with ill health for weeks, Thoreau wrote frantically until the very end. His only fans were a few close friends who believed in his writing. They were the only ones who did.

Friends like Ellery Channing and Harrison Blake helped to publish some of Thoreau's very prolific writings after his death. The first were published in 1906, and slowly began to grow in popularity. It wasn't until the 1920s that literary critics began to discover him, and his talent. Today, the international Thoreau Society is dedicated to honoring and spreading awareness about his vast writings, in particular his famous Walden.

Henry David Thoreau wrote in the writing trenches when no one really considered him a writer...and he kept on writing, even after he failed at it commercially. He died with very little money, but he did have a circle of friends who believed in his genius. They were right, and because they kept trying everyone now knows the name Henry David Thoreau. He waited a lifetime to share his books, and never benefited from his patience. But the rest of the world did, and I'm pretty sure he would be pretty happy with that.

Books on Film: Flowers in the Attic

When a book is very popular among a large group of readers, filmmakers generally like to take special care with the film adaptation. They consult the author of the work, they read the book themselves, they pay homage to the original material. This isn't what happened when Flowers in the Attic was transformed from a YA horror book that struck a strong note with teen girls...into 93 minutes of on-screen swill that you can't ever get back. Cringe if you like, but that description really isn't harsh enough for one of the worst book-to-film adaptations in the known world.

The Book

Full disclosure: I'm a little biased. Flowers in the Attic is actually a very special book to me, as it inspired me to become a writer (the jury's still out on whether or not I am). It was written before I was born and published in 1979 by V. C. Andrews, known to friends and family as Virginia. The book was her first and it was an almost immediate success, spawning three sequels, one prequel and a wildly successful novel-writing career that continues decades after V. C. Andrews's death. It's sold over 40 million copies worldwide.

Most of them have been read by teen girls. The main protagonist is a teen girl herself, Cathy Dollanganger, and she's got a pretty charmed life. The story opens with a brief sketch of Cathy's life. She lives in Pennsylvania with her older brother Christopher and her parents, Chris and Corrine. A pair of twins are born when Cathy is 7, two blonde cherubs named Cory and Carrie. The whole family is blonde, and so beautiful they're known for perfection among their friends and neighbors. 

Of which they have many. All of these loved ones have gathered for a birthday party in the first chapter of the book, waiting on father Chris. He works through the week as a salesman, and comes home every Friday to big fanfare. This Friday, he's supposed to have even more than the usual weekend fun -- a big surprise party with a gorgeous wife, pretty kids and lots of friends, to boot. 

It's not meant to be. Chris is killed in a traffic accident, and the police arrive at the party instead of the expected father. Cathy's perfect world falls to pieces in the aftermath of her father's death. It seems her mother has never had a job and probably can't even spell the word job, so Corrine feels that her only choice is to return home to Virginia, and her parents.

It's the first time anyone has heard any mention of any grandparents. Before you know it, the family of five is whisked away into the Blue Ridge Mountains with only four suitcases between them. To a gigantic mansion they're led in the dead of night, and spirited up a back staircase of the house into a tiny, over-stuffed room all the way at the top.

Here the four children will remain for the next three years. They are told, in the beginning, that they must stay hidden for one night only. Corrine fell out of favor with her parents some time ago, you see, and now she must make amends. She must get her father, an old curmudgeon who's richer than most countries, to accept her. Once he accepts his daughter, she'll tell him that there are also four grandchildren he must learn to accept. 

Sounds reasonable, right? Only soon Corrine stops visiting as often, leaving her four children with only her mother, their grandmother, to tend them. She comes once a day with a picnic basket of food for them, and to quiz them to see if they're reading the Bible. Olivia the grandmother wears nothing but gray, and her heart is black. She reveals quite soon the reason Corrine fell out of favor with her family: Chris was actually her half-uncle, and their relationship was incestuous. This is a terrible sin in the eyes of the Lord. Olivia Foxworth and her husband, Malcolm, are extremely righteous people.

And sin is unforgivable. 

Cathy, Chris, Cory and Carrie have only one bedroom, one bathroom and the mansion's massive attic to share. The dusty, neglected space becomes their playground, and they decorate it with paper flowers and pictures they draw over the long, long months that follow. They cannot attend school, or go outdoors, or ever open the door to the rest of the mansion that's kept locked at all times. They can only recite Bible verses at the demand of their grandmother, and wait for their mother to arrive...and attempt to grow up in this hopeless fashion. 

Cathy is 12, and Chris 14, when they are shut away inside (this makes the twins 5). In the three years that pass, their teenage hormones awaken and their bodies change (as bodies are wont to do). And inevitably, incest develops. When Cory dies, Cathy and Chris start putting the pieces together.

They have been getting sick, and now Cory is gone. Carrie, once vivacious, now barely speaks or eats. All are thin, pale and weak. They devise a way to sneak out of the room, and start learning a little more about the house that surrounds them. They learn that their mother has no intention of ever letting them out, because if it is ever discovered that she had children with her first husband she cannot inherit the many millions that could be hers.

And the grandfather? He's already dead, and the promise of release that was dangled before the children is never going to manifest. In fact, a bit of investigation reveals the reason they're all sick: they're slowly being poisoned to death with arsenic. It's already been successful for one out of four. So they start to steal into the mansion and steal from their mother, who is planning on marrying a young and handsome lawyer. Corrine is going to continue her life and enjoy all the money while her young children wither and die.

Cathy and Chris aren't going to let that happen. They store up their cache of money and endure humiliation and abuse at the hands of the grandmother before at last, they make good on their escape. Looking back at the mansion, Cathy vows to get her revenge on the grandmother, on the house itself...and most of all, on her mother Corrine Foxworth.

That's not at all what happens in the film version.

The Film

Neither the critics nor the fans liked the film version of Flowers in the Attic, which came to theaters in 1987. When it did, Louise Fletcher was the biggest name associated with the flick. She's famous for being mean, having previously played chilling screen villain Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. The film also starred Kristy Swanson in the role of Cathy, who at the time was a relatively unknown child actress.

Because of the horror element of the book, famed director Wes Craven was on tap to direct the film (if only), and he came up with a completed draft of a screenplay. But the producers shied away from Craven's inclusion of the incest which was so much a part of the book, so they chose a man named Jeffrey Bloom to write and direct instead.

V. C. Andrews demanded, and won, final script approval...but even this would not be enough to save this truly horrific film adaptation. She turned down 5 scripts before approving Bloom's, but it was further edited and ripped apart by producers and the two studios involved in making the movie. Later, Bloom talked about the contentious atmosphere in the discussion room, and the producers' insistence that certain important elements from the book be omitted from the film.

The author herself appears in the movie, though her cameo role isn't credited. You'll find her near the end of the movie, posing as a maid who's scrubbing the windows in Foxworth Hall.

Kristy Swanson has said that an adaptation of the book's sequel, Petals on the Wind, was also planned but never filmed. She even got a script for it, but found it to be such a "sexfest" that she "didn't know if it should be done."

How bad is the film version of Flowers in the Attic? Bloom eventually stormed off the set, fed up with the many changes to the book's nature, and the final scenes were shot under someone else's direction. Victoria Tennant, who played Corrine, also reportedly stormed off the set in anger after her final scene was filmed. According to urban movie rumor, however, there is some hope on the horizon: another adaptation is in the works. Rumor has it that a new screenplay will be written by the Andrews ghost writer, Andrew Neiderman, so a much better version of this classic book could still come to fruition.

What Got Adapted?

It's difficult to list every single thing that got changed when the book Flowers in the Attic became a film, and if I do I'll just become enraged, but I will hit some main points. In the film, the children were locked up for about a year, which is just a silly change. Why make it? Probably because the main actors in the flick were children, and they can't age on cue. The incest between Cathy and Chris was eliminated, and that ended up making Louise Fletcher look ridiculous as Olivia Foxworth.

It's not her fault. Fletcher wasn't put in gray outfits for her turn as Olivia, which just plain doesn't make sense, and most of her scenes she's screaming and looking wild-eyed for no real reason. This isn't in keeping with the character, though Fletcher worked quite hard at the role. Reportedly, she called V. C. Andrews over the phone to discuss Olivia's character with her, and stayed in character the entire time she was filming so she could maintain the proper distance from the children and the rest of the cast.

The children's ages were changed on film as well, probably because the timing of the events was also changed. Cathy and Chris are 14 and 17 when they are locked up, which is wrong, and Corrine is already marrying Bart Winslow on the day they escape. This is also wrong. Corrine married Bart while the children were locked up, and by the time they escaped the couple had already moved away from the mansion.

This is what leads up to the end scene of the film, which is so abominably bad the writer/director decided to walk away from the project altogether. He refused to film it, the producers insisted, and he walked instead. Unfortunately, they also shot the ending without him. In a scene that's almost silly in its over-the-top drama, Cathy confronts her mother in the middle of Foxworth Hall while Corrine is being married. Shouting "eat the cookie, Mother!" Cathy chases after Corrine...who winds up falling out of a window and being hung by her own wedding dress. That's when actress Victoria Tennant also stormed off the set, and that's how the movie ends...laughably. Instead of cold revenge, Cathy expresses crazy anger, and it completely ruins the entire movie (as if the other changes didn't do that already).

Throughout the film, there is also little to no mention of ballet, Cathy's dream and driving inspiration, Chris's desire to be a doctor, or Cory's beloved pet mouse and penchant for musical talent. Jeffrey Bloom did film some scenes depicting the incest in the book, but these scenes were cut from the final version. In his planned original ending, the children escape the mansion in secrecy and never confront Corrine -- which is much closer to the ending of the book.

Seriously, it's not a good movie (and I like a lot of movies). Even if it wasn't associated with the book, this wouldn't be a very good movie. But it is, and that makes it even worse, so please don't watch it. You should read the book, which is brilliant, and my summary absolutely does not do it justice so don't let that stop you.

Justice Keeps Intriguing Readers

"I  would recommend this to everyone who likes to be shocked and intrigued."

Justice has been reviewed at Books for YA!, and I couldn't be more pleased. Go and read the whole thing, and don't forget that you can win the book free. Look to the left of the blog to sign up for one or both of my giveaways, and get your own copy of Justice.

Writng a Bestseller Doesn't Require Instant Success

Every author probably dreams about becoming an overnight success the moment they put the first word on the first page of the manuscript. The dream is reinforced by books like Twilight and the Harry Potter books -- which were practically household names before they even hit the shelves. But some books are a bit slower in the bestseller race...and that doesn't necessarily mean they've lost. 

It's much easier if your book becomes a bestseller in 20 minutes, instead of 20 years...but would you really be disappointed if decades later something you wrote became one of the most famous books of all time? That's what happened to children's author Margaret Wise Brown, who wrote a book way, way back in 1947 that you've probably heard a thousand times. 

It's called Goodnight Moon, and it's one of the best-loved and best-known bedtime stories ever written. It's also a bestseller, but it didn't gain that title for many, many years after its initial publication. Though published in '47, Goodnight Moon was not a bestselling book in the '40s. Or in the 1950s. Nor was it a bestseller in the '60s or even the '70s. Margaret Wise Brown had to wait a long, long time before her little book cracked the big list.

In 1953, Goodnight Moon was selling around 1500 copies a year (which even in 1953 was way short of setting the literary world on fire). By 1970, it had started selling around 20,000 copies a year. When New Year's Day dawned on January 1, 1990, more than 4 million copies of the book had been sold. More recent estimates put the book's sales right around 16 million total.

Maragaret Wise Brown lit a small spark with her children's book, rather than a roaring fire. But slowly, the flame began to grow and spread. Today, Goodnight Moon is read by and read to many millions of children all over the world. It wasn't an instant hit with readers, but slowly they began to discover this wonderful bedtime story.

Everyone wants to write the next Twilight...but it wouldn't be the worst thing if maybe you wrote the next Goodnight Moon instead, would it?