Richard Freeborn

Fiction and Non-Fiction

Tag: #Reading

A One Year Streak

September 16, 2024 /

I wrote earlier in the year about how 2023 was a lean year for writing. What I didn’t add at the time was one of the activities I put in place to improve my word count.

I’d been reading Julia Cameron’s book Write For Life, and as she does in all her books, she advocated Morning Pages. I tried Morning Pages several years ago, struggled with writing three of 8.5 x 11 pages in a timely manner every day, and let it drop.

Last September, I was ready to try anything to get back into a regular writing rhythm, so I sat down and set a goal of three pages within thirty to forty-five minutes. It has now been a full year, and I haven’t missed a day. There have been days where I only managed one page, usually because of a time crunch, and occasionally because instead of letting go and just writing, I tried to force words onto the page.

Most days, I stay within the time limits I set myself. Some days, I find myself looking blankly at the page, and not quite sure where the thought or idea was going? I don’t think that’s a symptom of age as I’ve always been a bit like that.

Has it helped my actual writing? I have to say an unqualified yes. I blew past the 2023 word count in early June, and found Pages a useful place to work out questions or issues I have with a story. It’s not outlining, more a discussion with myself about what I want to happen next. This might be a page or more of discovery, or a dozen bullet points on ordering events across the next three or four chapters. Sometimes what goes into the actual story is close to those musings. Other times, they trigger something and I’m off in a different direction. Either way the process has helped my writing.

Julia Cameron recommends a weekly review and the first question is “how many days did you do Morning Pages this week?” There’s an implied expectation that at some point you will miss a day of Morning Pages. Last September I expected a miss to happen. So far it hasn’t and I hope to say the same this time next year when Morning Pages has become a two-year streak.

Sprinkles not Spoonfuls

August 5, 2024 /

This past weekend I received some feedback on The Corpse in the Courtyard from one of my first readers.

I found the prolog hard, she said. There were time when you used a comma and I expected the word and after it. Did you do that deliberately?

As an example, I wrote A part of Jacob wanted to relax, walk across the courtyard The expectation was relax, and walk.

Writing that way was a deliberate choice. I came across the technique while studying the Eve Dallas novels by J.D. Robb (Nora Roberts). I liked what she did and how she did it, and decided to experiment with the technique about the time I started writing The Corpse in the Courtyard.

Dean Wesley Smith describes using many craft techniques – tags, power words, etc., as sprinkling a spice in your writing. It adds depth and flavor when done right. If you do it wrong, it can pull the reader right out of the story – just like that mouthful of cayenne pepper when you used a tablespoon instead of a pinch.

So I went back to the Eve Dallas books, and then my manuscript.

Essentially that’s what I did in the prolog. Instead of sprinkling the technique through the pages as J.D Robb did, I spooned it on thickly in just about every other paragraph. Because I was now reading the story from a different perspective, I saw what I’d done and felt how clunky the story flowed. Not good as I could lose a reader in the first four or five pages, and they would never know why they didn’t feel at home with the story.

It didn’t take long to make some changes that improved the flow of the opening. Now I have to read through my current work-in-progress and make sure I used sprinkles and not spoonfuls.

So Bad It’s Compelling

May 28, 2024 /

Have you ever sat down to watch a TV show or movie, or picked up a book, and in the first few minutes said: this is terrible, but you persist anyway?

This happened to me recently. I was surfing the dozens of channels on my subscription and complaining about how there was nothing to watch.
Not quite true, but I’ve never been into a dozen home shopping channels or following the exploits of housewives in this week’s target city. It was also that time of the evening when movies I might be interested in are well under way, and my cable provider is very unpredictable on which shows get the restart option.

I never thought I’d say it out loud, but there are times when I miss Comcast and Xfinity. Anyway, after the third cycle through the channel guide, I settled on a movie called Trailer Park Shark which was just starting.

Yes, you did read that correctly, and a couple of minutes in, it was about what I expected. “This is awful,” I said more than once. Despite that, an hour later, I was still watching. I may even watch the movie again because there must have been something in the way the story was told that kept me in front of the screen.

I’m sure there’s a learning opportunity there, and techniques I can use in my own writing once I figure them out.

Sisters in Arms is now available

March 25, 2024 /

A short post this week to let everyone know Sisters in Arms is now available at all eBook retailers.

Women who put it all on the line when the shit hits the fan. Military, family, or thrown together by chance doesn’t matter. They join, they cooperate, and, when they run out of options, they fight.
Tales from feudal Japan to modern day Angola. A slink through the Parisien woods and a strut along the Seattle streets. A Babylon that we never knew to a war-torn hell we should all fear.
A baker’s dozen of stories about women owning their place in the world.

Sisters-in-Arms | Universal Book Links Help You Find Books at Your Favorite Store!

A New Approach

February 19, 2024 /

This past week my writing study and reading intersected in a way I didn’t expect.

I’m coming to the end of a nine-week class on dialog, and wow, has it been illuminating. In parallel, one of the fiction books I was reading was Beyond – the first of Mercedes Lackey’s trilogy about the founding of Valdemar.

I enjoyed the book but something felt off, and not quite right. I couldn’t pin down exactly what it was. Not then, but later when I finished working through the lectures on the dialog class, I had a glimmer of an idea.

This week’s topic was narration, and how a writer can use it to give the reader information, and to paraphrase, there’s light narration, heavy narration, journal narration, and whole book narration. The assignment was to find examples of each type.

And there was my answer. Beyond isn’t just heavy narration, the whole book is mostly narration, and that was what disturbed me.

The thing with whole book narration is it tends to keep the reader at a distance, and I wasn’t expecting that from Mercedes Lackey. When you read the other Valdemar books you are deep inside the character’s head feeling their thoughts and emotions, and I kept waiting for that in Beyond.

I read the book almost in one sitting and know I’ll go back and read it again, so although I wasn’t expecting this approach, I suspect the next book in the series – Into the West – will have the same style.

This time I’ll be ready for it. And probably read the book in one session.

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