Goin's On's

This week I am over at Unicorn Bell posting about how we write culture into our stories.

Which sounds way more snobby then it really will be.

Mainly I'll be discussing the background noise that goes into the writing of a book. The 'stuff' the reader doesn't notice, but will if it's wrong.

I'll also be discussing the interesting phenomenon that happens along with this when readers bring their Own culture to your story. When they assume they know what the 'rules' are. But don't. I read a very quick snippet of an article on this in Writers Digest (I think) about how readers will Assume your world is male dominated, unless otherwise specified. How your readers will assume a pregnant woman has a husband, unless otherwise specified. How your readers will assume all sorts of things. It was rather interesting. And frustrating. And explained the old way of doing 'info dumps' at the beginning of fantasy and sci-fi books. Problem is. We don't do that now. So how do we get the rules of our worlds across without boring the pants off our readers?

Head over to Unicorn Bell! :) This is what we'll be exploring this week! Politics! Art! Religion! Weapons! All sorts of fun stuff.

Meanwhile...

WRiTE CLUB is still going on! Don't forget to head over there and vote! Vote! Vote!

Oh Summer!

This is my week over at Unicorn Bell...so hop on over there and check me out! I may even come up with a theme between now and tomorrow!  Oi...

Crazyness and Chaos!

Let's see. I have Family Lallapaloozarama Weekends Three weekends in a row. The first one was this past weekend. Awesome time was had by all, but now we're back to the grind. Until Friday. Then I head North. To the County. The Northern wilds of Maine. To the land of the Moose and Potato. Wow. I'm capitalizing a whole lot tonight. Things are very important. Apparently.

I'm also teaching a great class every Wednesday night for the next 6 nights. It's all about learning how to cook healthy foods, from scratch, on a budget. Awesome! Oh wait. 5 nights. Had the first one last week. It was good. My only problem is that I'm better with the one on one. Not so much the groups. Plus it was the First Class! *insert Carmina Burana music here*. It went kinda like this....

So! Who here has used a knife?
*Crickets*

Hmmm. Ok. (Goes over basic knife safety skills...)  Alright..! Who here has heard of Ratatouille!?
*Crickets with disgusted expressions*

Really? Huh. Ok. How about Zucchini. Ever seen a Zucchini?
*Crickets who have gone to get their cousins cause their legs are getting so tired*

Sigh.

Oh well. It'll get better.  First Classes are always hard.

And now I'm off! Must rest up. Have lots to do. I have to figure out what amazing words of wisdom I'm going to impart on the world for the week over at UB.

There is always the revealing of my diabolical master plan....but no...I still haven't figured out how to get the bunnies to hold still while I glitter glue their tails....

Unicorn Bell News

Those of you that follow regularly...

GET A GOLD STAR!  WOO!

Ha!  Well...you can have a gold star..but! You also get first dibs on some very exciting news going on at Unicorn Bell in August!

Check out This Post for all the very exciting details.

Make sure you have your completed manuscript in hand...

And that you are sitting down...

Which I suppose you would be as most people surf the web from a chair....  ...

GO! I can't stand the suspense!

Submission of Major Proportions

What a ride!

Being over at Unicorn Bell all week...Whoa. I feel like my brain was scrubbed clean.

But in a good way.

Hopefully everyone was patient with my totally lack of any sort of posting here..and I still have *some* semblance of an audience.

Because I have a question. Stemming from a dilemma born of total newbie dumbassery.

So. Here's what I did.

I submitted a short story for an Anthology call from Writer and White Cat. (YAY! Stress!) Very exciting. However...all the link says is "Standard Manuscript Format" which, go ahead. Google that. I dare you. Yah. I haven't a clue what that means either.

So I asked the ladies that I moderate with over at Unicorn Bell and the consensus was 1" margins, indent the paragraphs, double spaced, Title and name on top of first page and a header on every page of page number/Story title/author name.

Easy enough, right? Right. So I did that. No problem. Worked all the formatting into the document. Then scrolled up to the top of the first page, and thought that the header of page number/title/author name looked redundant right above the section that I had centered the Title and written by on the first page. So I manually deleted it off the first page. Then immediately went into Send as Word Doc. And e-mailed it. Done! Whew! Felt great for all of about 3 seconds when I scrolled down and realized that when I had deleted the page number off the first page, it had taken the page number/etc.. header off ALL the pages. For the LOVE OF GOD! WHY!?!?! Sigh.  So I had just e-mailed a story with no page numbers. Great. Smoooooooth.

My question is this. What now? My gut says that I have to let it go, and hope for the best. But I honestly don't know. I would LIKE to send him a quick e-mail explaining what I did. But I also don't want to sound like a moron. I just want to get rejected solely on the basis of bad writing alone. Not because I 'forgot' to number my pages.

What's the opinions out there?

If anything. What NOT to do...and something I will remember to NEVER do again! HA!
 


 

So Many Blogs

This week I'm over At Unicorn Bell talking about the Characters in your heads.

Making you feel all sane and stuff.

Hopefully I will stick to some semblance of a schedule, and go with what I have planned...

Monday: Character Naming
Tuesday: Party!
Wednesday: Descriptions
Thursday: Getting inside THEIR heads
Friday : Wrap Up. Possible Critique.

Wish me Luck!

Hope to see you all over there...I'll be pretty lax here as I have a screaming busy week work wise and will probably have all I can handle keeping up with the HUNDREDS of comments I will be getting over at UB! (Hint!)

Up Next

So I just conditioned my hair with my leg shaving creme.

In my defense, I'm totally blind without my glasses on and they come in similar containers. They don't however smell anything alike...which is when I caught on. We'll see how it goes! Maybe I'm on to something!

But what I really wanted to talk about is the fact that Next week I'm going to be over at Unicorn Bell all week! Following in the considerable footsteps of L. Blakenship from Notes from the Jovian frontier. Yikes!

I'll be posting on Character. From the simple things like naming them (which may not really be that simple!) to the more in-depth stuff like getting inside their heads.

And even bigger news! My birthday falls on that week so I'll be declaring that day a national holiday! Make sure to check in to see what fun project I have planned for that day!

Hopefully I'll see you all there!