Kristal Lee

According to folklore, a faery ring is an arc or circle of mushrooms that appear during the night and are thought to be gateways into the faery realm. These areas were believed to be places where faeries met to get down and boogie.

So, not only does my backyard have the Best Grubs in the Neighborhood, apparently it's a favorite night spot for faeries who want to kick up their heels for a little ditty.

All I want to know is why I wasn't invited to the party. By the number of faery rings decorating the yard, it was a doozie of a wing-ding.


~Kristal Lee

Blogging at New Kids on the Writer’s Block as Kaelee Morgan– on Voice and Sensibility.
(Reposted)
 
“Voice, at its most basic level, is the sensibility with which an author writes. It’s a perspective, an outlook on the world, a personality and style that is recognizable even out of context.” ~ Nathan Bransford

   Writing craft guru Dwight Swain writes “each of us experiences and responds to life differently, in a manner uniquely and individually his own. As a writer, your task is to bring this heart-bound feeling to the surface in your reader: to make it well and swell and surge and churn.” (page 7, Techniques of the Selling Writer).

So, how do we make it well and swell and surge and chum?  With our voice.

First, there’s the matter of style. Choices a writer makes with words, sentence structure, figurative language, and how emotion or conflict is layered.

Personality should also be present on the page.  For me, personality is reflected in the tone, setting, and theme.

Originality is a must. As I mentioned in a previous post, To Thine Own Voice Be True. Be yourself. Write what comes natural. Write what you know. Don’t be an imitation. Only Nora can be Nora. Aspire to be You.

Enrapture and provoke. I call this the Calgon, Take Me Away syndrome. Whisk the reader away from their every day life. Help them experience your character’s world as if they were there, in the middle of the story. As a participant, not a bystander.

Be consistent and in control. Know your characters. Know their story. Weave a tale that only you can tell. And tell it fresh. Tell it with power. Tell it with confidence.

In my endeavor to define my own voice, I’ve started to understand that it isn’t something you study like grammar and vocabulary. It’s recognized through practice, the same way a vocalist discovers, develops, and strengthens their range by singing and experimenting. So a writer must write and explore. Figure out what feels natural. What doesn’t. Write, write, write. And then write some more. Read what you wrote when you first began writing and compare it to your current work in progress. You will begin to see and hear your writer’s voice.

Rachelle Gardner explains in her blog that finding your voice “is a process of peeling away the layers of your false self, your trying-to-be-something-you're-not self, your copycat self, your trying-to-sound-a-certain-way self, your spent-my-life-watching-television self. It's like going to psychotherapy, delving deep and allowing the real you to emerge, only in this case you want it to find its way on to the page.”

So, tell me.  Have you peeled away the layers to discover your  true voice? What have you learned in the process that makes your voice unique?

Brave little basset had an eventful day last week. Stalking through the back yard with his investigative nose, he had a run it with a SUO (snake of unknown origin).


I call it a SUO because I didn’t see the darn critter, but brave little basset came trotting in the house with a swollen snout and two tiny pricks on the side of his nostrils. He seemed utterly unconcerned about the incident. Didn’t know what the fuss was about. Only wanted to go back outside and hunt for whatever he could find. Lizards and frogs. Butterflies and dragonflies. He’s not picky. He’ll chase them all with abandon.

After a trip to the vet, a day of observation, and antibiotics, brave little basset was eager to return to his backyard adventure zone. He zipped through the grass, around the hedges, and along the fence until he was convinced no SUO remained in his territory.

And still, he hunts. Ever watchful. Ever diligent.

As aspiring writers, we face many challenges. The sting of rejections and critiques that point out our flaws, our weaknesses, and all the other nit-picky stuff in between, is enough to send us dashing behind any obstacle that puts a barrier between us and our critics. Sometimes we become afraid to go back out and try again.

Watching brave little basset patrol the yard I realized that writers must be fearless in their endeavors. Nothing should slow us down or deter us from our paths. We will get stung along the way, probably many times over, but it doesn’t have to deter us.

~Kristal Lee

It’s alligator season in Florida. Everyone’s secured their hunting permits and readied their bang sticks. Gassed up the airboats and motor boats. Filled up the coolers with drinks.


While enthusiasts spent the night tracking and wrestling gators on the still, blue waters of Lake Okeechobee, hubby and I snuggled in for an evening watching the Lake Placid movies. Might have been more realistic if the setting was Lake Placid, FLORIDA where there are real alligators and not up in the North East. And someone should have taken the time to at least google alligator behavior and habitats.

Another thing I notice was the confusion between alligator and crocodile. The two are not interchangeable. Like a rat and a squirrel. Both are rodents, but they aren’t the same rodent.


Loved Betty White in the original. John Schneider didn’t quite steal my heart in #2 the way he did in the Dukes of Hazzard (the original TV show, not the movie remake). Yancy Butler was the tough, go-getter cougar that I expected her to be in #3.

So, what did I learn about the craft of writing watching this monstrous trilogy?

It’s not enough to simply make something larger than life. You have to make it believable or it becomes farcical. Monsters, even supernatural ones, should come equipped with predictable behavior traits. Random chaos doesn’t apply, because if you want to get into the quantum matter of things, there is order even in chaos. But, that’s another topic.

Everything in the universe adheres to rules and patterns. When world building or monster making, that is an important fact to remember. It should be the foundation of your creation.

Without a core structure to support all the fantastical things that a writer can imagine, the creation falls apart. Think of the human body without a skeleton, a skyscraper without the steel supports, a jellyfish without its fibrous membranes. Take out the internal structure and what’s left is a puddle of goo.

Plan your monsters carefully. Give them strengths and weaknesses and use those to their advantage and against them. The stakes for the hero/heroine should be high, but not unobtainable. They can’t be defeated at every turn and then suddenly defeat the monster in the last second using the same weapons, cunning, etc., that failed them time and time again. To do so is the result of lackluster writing and an underactive imagination. Trust me, if the writer isn’t interested in investing the time needed to carefully craft their monsters, the reader/viewer won’t be either.

Blogging at New Kids on the Writer’s Block today as Kaelee Morgan: To Thine Own Voice Be True -
(Reposted)

I like post-it notes. Whenever I come across a phrase or a quote that I find enlightening or inspirational, I write it down on those tiny colored pads and stick them on my desk. On my bulletin board. On the bathroom mirror. On the refrigerator door, etc. into ad infinitum.

One of my favorite quotes is by Ingrid Bergman, "Be yourself. The world worships the original."

Les Edgerton tackles this sentiment in chapter four of his book, Finding Your Voice: How to put personality in your writing. He states that many writers follow the pack to the detriment of their writing instincts because they've been educationally programmed to do things the proper way. This leads to formal, text-book style writing. It may be technically correct, but doesn't showcase voice. When one reads it aloud, it doesn't feel natural.

If something doesn't feel right in your writing, trust that feeling. Your gut is saying, "Hello! Did you develop a sudden case of writer's laryngitis? Cuz I can't hear your voice no more."

Les suggests reading your work out loud to friends and family and ask them to comment when the "hear" your voice. Once those sections are identified, read them aloud again until you become accustomed to the sound and the rhythm of the words. This will put you in tune with yourself.

He also suggests selecting a writing sample from your WIP and marking out all the adverbs and adjectives. "Adverbs and adjectives are the hockers of your voice." I love that sentence so much I have to type it again. "Adverbs and adjectives are the hockers of your voice." (Yep, that's definitely going on a post-it note for my netbook.)


Once these phlegm balls are cleared from your writing, the true essence of what you wrote will shine through. The pace will be faster and the writing more alive. It's okay to go back and sprinkle a few adjectives into the prose, but sparingly and use stronger adjectives when possible. And ex-nay on the adverbs. "They bring bad karma and are rarely aligned with the planets." --Oh yeah, that's going on a post-it note, too.

The important thing to remember is to be the same person on the page that you are off the page. Don't use words that you wouldn't use naturally when talking to people. Don't adopt a writing style that doesn't mesh with your personality. Learn the rules so you will know when, where, and how to break them. Trust your gut. And above all, to thine own voice be true.

My “Books To Be Read” has taken over the top of my dresser and the floor space on either side. And, my “Magazines To Be Read” pile has taken over the armoire. I won’t mention what’s pending in my Nook.

When those precious moments of personal reading time become available, I dive into whatever tickles my interest at that time. This week, I grabbed a popular women’s magazine because the cover mentioned an article on ways to improve memory. Not just a couple of ways, 23 ways. Since I have a background in psychology, I was eager to glean as much as I could from the article.

I only had a few minutes to devote to the article and spent 95% of my time looking for it. I checked the table of contents. Hmmm…not there. I did find an article entitled “Memory Lame.” A play on words, but ironically accurate. I don’t know if the cover was a misprint or if the wrong article was published or if they forgot to print the article in its entirety. But the write-up certainly did not a address 23 ways to improve memory. I counted 8, and that was a generous count. Maybe they expected people to forget that they had promised 23 techniques.

Now, I’m annoyed. I chose this magazine based on the front cover teaser. The magazine failed to deliver the goods. Isn’t there supposed to be truth in advertising?

Building up a reader’s expectation and failing to fulfill them is a critical mistake for anyone trying to build a readership or maintain one. Such a shortfall undermines the reader’s trust. She is more hesitant to invest time or money in the author’s next project.

Lesson learned and filed in my writer’s rolodex. Don’t promise what you can’t deliver and always deliver what you promise.

~Kristal Lee

Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do – Blogging (as Kaelee Morgan) on writer’s voice at New Kids on the Writer’s Block – (Reposted)

I can hear Julie Andrews singing in the Sound of Music simply by reading the words do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do. Her voice is as clear and distinctive in my mind as it was to my ears when I heard her sing them. I will never mistake another singer for her.

Why?

Because her voice is unique and very identifiable.

At the mention of her name, I bet you heard her voice in your head too-- if, you've ever heard her sing. If you haven't, you should.

As a writer, I want my manuscripts to be as vivid and memorable as a Julie Andrews performance. I want readers to recognize my voice from the first paragraph. I want it to stand out. I want it to sing to the rafters.

But first, I have to learn what my voice is and isn't.

I pulled out some old contest critiques on my first manuscript to see if others had heard my voice. What a relief that they had. I read comments about "strong voice" and "unique voice".  But what does that mean?

Ambiguous terms, although complimentary and very appreciated, haven't helped me in my quest to discover who I am as writer.

To help me gain a better understanding of  "voice,"  I bought books and dug through past issues of RWR. ( I keep every issue and stack them on the floor in my home office because they contain nuggets of wisdom that I need to dig for from time to time.)

In the July 2008 RWR, Julie Rowe wrote an article entitled "Love Your Voice" and said, "Voice is an extension of who the writer is. [It] is a writer's personality on paper."

Hmmm.  Houston we have a kink in the fuel line.

In life, I have two distinct personalities. My work personality and my non-work personality. The two are very different. Maybe that's why I'm having difficulties defining my writer's voice. In re-reading the old contest critiques, I came across a reviewer's comment that my writing style fluctuated between formal and informal with the suggestion to pick one and stick to it.

In essence she was saying, "Know thy Self."

Julie Andrews had to learn her true singing range in order to become the vocalist everyone recognizes. I need to learn my true writing style in order to become the novelist I want to be.


Over the next few weeks, I'll be researching the different elements of voice and trying to define my own through some writing exercises. So, come "sing" with me in a two minute  practice session in writing outside the box.

Write at least four alternate uses for the following items:

* A popsicle stick

* A bobby pin (hair pin)

* A newspaper

* A dog bone

I'll post mine in the comments later in the day, and no I won't look at yours first. I already have mine written.

This week hubby and I watched 30 Days of Night with Josh Hartnett. It’s about a small town in Alaska that gets no sunlight for 30 days. Naturally, this set-up provides the perfect smorgasbord for vampires. I won’t go into the gory details of the fanged leeches run a muck. And I won’t give the details of the hero’s demise in the end. I’m a romance writer. I want the happily ever after, not a Nicholas Sparks’s ending, no matter how poetic.

So, what caught my attention the most in this film?

Unnecessary characters.

Throughout the story, there are 5 maybe 6 vampires that are shown consistently. We never learn their names, but we see them often enough to identify them as the collective villain. However in the climactic scene, suddenly there are about two dozen vampires. So, where did they all come from and why didn’t they show up before the end?

Also, a couple of characters emerged for very brief scenes and none of the “humans” knew who they were. Apparently, the vampires didn’t either.

Hello! If no one in the story can explain who the mystery characters are or why they are there, why bother having them pop in?

Unnecessary characters clutter the story and confuse the heck out of me.

I’m not talking about the nameless, faceless, cardboard stand-ins that are the innocent bystanders or persons in the check-out line at the grocery store or the pedestrian the heroine passes on the street who are needed for local color. I’m talking about the characters that suddenly appear, unannounced, un-introduced, and no one but the writer knows who they are or why they’re in the story. Then, poof! They’re gone.

Now, I’m annoyed. I spend more time trying to understand the intrusion and lose focus on the story.

In one such scene, a little girl vampire is devouring a nameless someone. Every known character on screen comments that no one knows who this child is or where she came from. Okay. I was a bit intrigued, expecting a plot twist because so far none of the vampires had children in tow. So, where did this pointy-toothed munchkin come from and why was she in the story?

I’m waiting for the big revelation and they promptly lop off her head.

Big disappointment.

Later, it’s revealed that she bit one of the humans that had banded together and he begins turning into a vampire. Hmmmm. Why not use a vampire character who we’d already seen rather than one that no one knew how to explain?

The little girl was a loose thread and if yanked, the plot wouldn’t unravel. Wouldn’t have left even the tiniest whole in the fabric of the story.

Switching gears to writing…If a new character can be deleted, or replaced by another who the reader has already been introduced to, and still maintain the integrity of the story, you must snip that new character out of the manuscript immediately. Failure to do so will cause little fuzz balls in your reader’s mind. The danger there is that little fuzz balls are worrisome and distracting. The reader may become irritated at those imperfections, lose interest in the story, put it down and never pick it up again.

Every character that you write into your story should be, in some way, integral to the plot. No one else should be able to act or react in they way that character does and his/her actions should push the plot forward, complicate the plot, or twist the plot in a fresh direction. If the new character can be interchanged for another, you’re using the wrong the character or you have a weak plot point. My advice, yank that string out and re-knit that scene.

~Kristal Lee

My former day-boss used to hand out weekly goals with an inspirational message scribbled at the bottom of the page. Only one left a lasting impression on me.


If you only work 40 hours a week, you have a job not a career.

In less than a microsecond, I knew my daily occupation was a “job”, not a career.

I like my day job. It’s interesting, challenging, and a continual learning experience. But, I don’t want to slave at my desk for extra hours or come in on weekends. I give my all during the 40 hours I’m there. But when the LED display on the clock flashes that time to go home, I do. Because at home is where I work on my career.

Dictionary.com defines career as ” a person’s progress or general course of action through life or through a phase of life, as in some profession or undertaking.” For me, that’s writing. That I’m not published and not paid to write doesn’t deter me from doing it any way.

I’m committed. Every spare moment is dedicated to writing or learning the craft of writing. If I had more time, I’d spend it writing. As surely as I live and breathe, I write. It is my general course of action through life. I hope to make progress along the way because I do have the goal of becoming a successful published author. But, I think a career is about the journey, not the just the final destination.

So, do you have a job or a career? Or both?

~kristal lee

Ricky Martin's idea of "Livin La Vida Loca" is kid's play compared to my crazy life.

Up a 5:00am. Exercise, then off to work. Don't get home until after 5:00pm. Then, there's dinner to cook, fur-babies to feed and play with, and can't forget spending time with the hubby or tending to the occasional medical issues that arise from his spinal cord injury and paralysis. Toss in monitoring his autistic brother, laundry, dishes, vacuuming, and dusting and I've used up 27 hours in a 24 hour day.

Okay, so I fudged on the dusting. And I forgot to calculate sleep time. Point is, necessities in life dictate my daily schedule. But, time waits for no writer. So, how do I find the time to write?

In a nutshell...I don't.

Time isn't something you find. It's something you make use of. And I have to make the most of mine.


Tiny fragments of time can add up to a chunk of missed opportunity if ignored. So, I carry a netbook everywhere. I write at work on my breaks and lunch hour. I write waiting at the doctor's office. I write when I'm riding in a car. I write while watching TV.

If I'm not writing during these hidden moments, I'm reading. To be a good writer, one must read. A lot. Read for pleasure, read for study, read for enrichment, read for enlightenment. Reading and writing are like Hansel and Gretel. Where you find one, you should find the other.

My brain is hard-wired for writing. At any given moment, a dozen or so stories may be crowding my cerebral cortex. I've learned to make notes on index cards, scraps of paper, the back of receipts, to keep track of story ideas, characters, and situations.

And, like every other writer, occasionally I get walloped with the wand of the writer's block faery. When this happens, if I can't work through the issue on the computer screen, I sleep on it. Yep, that's right. I go to bed. Or at least take a nap.

Of course, as I close my eyes, I'm thinking about plots and characters, turning points and black moments. Sometimes the solution comes to me when I wake up, sometimes it takes several days. But it does come.

Why?

Because the brain never sleeps. It is the ultimate in the state-of-the-art personal computers. I can input a plot point that isn't working, or a character that's misbehaving, and soon the busy beaver inside my head computes a scenario or solution that gives me that incredulous "Ah Ha!" moment.

Think about. Write while you're sleeping. Capitalize on 6-8 hours of untapped time.

Okay, maybe that's not for everyone. But it works for me.

I like to use weekends for marathon writing. Limiting social activities helps. All my friends and family understand and are supportive of my off-the-cuff time management. I haven't cut myself off from spending time with others, but I'm not running to every BBQ, every potluck, or every picnic that comes along.

Another tidbit on time management came to me when my husband suffered a set-back in his medical condition. I was stretched beyond my capabilities, as far as responsibilities go, and I made the decision to hire a cleaning service until things became more manageable for me. From them, I learned only clean what's dirty. If it isn't dirty, don't clean it until it is. Maybe that's common sense, but it was an eye opener for me. I no longer have the cleaning service, but the rule is still fresh in my mind. The floor still gets vacuumed and mopped, but only when dirty. The laundry gets done in bulk, rather than piecemeal. And so on. Instead of spending a day on the weekend cleaning, I clean what needs to be cleaned and use the remainder of the day to write.

I believe that we can always optimize time to include the things we want to do. Though each day is different, I manage to pull it all together and when I finally stop for the night I'm usually satisfied with the time I spent on writing.

So tell me, what are your biggest challenges in carving out time to write and what ways have you found to overcome those obstacle?

I survived RWA’s 30th Anniversary conference.

Thousands of chickens did not.

I’m not talking about individuals afraid of taking risks. I’m talking poultry.


Chicken is my favorite food, next to pizza. It’s versatile, easy to prepare, and goes with anything. To my dismay, Disney’s lack of culinary creativity would have Chef Ramsay dropping the “F”-bomb because the delectable bird was cut and cooked and served without any variety for two luncheons and the awards dinner. Don’t mistake my intent. There was nothing wrong with how the chicken tasted. But, I expected more finesse and flair and variety from the magnate Mouse of magickal moments. To say I was disappointed, barely scratches the surface of the sentiment.

In pondering the many ways that the chicken could’ve been prepared, I began thinking about books and story-telling. {What can I say? I’m a writer. My brain is wired to that path and all roads of thought will eventually end up there.}

As writers, we must not fall into the trap of disappointing readers by dishing out plain chicken reads.

We must take every opportunity to stock our writer’s rack with savory words, ripened plots, and satisfying world building. Marinate characters with the mesquite of the wild west. Add a bit of cinnamon or cardamon for outer-space spice. Simmer plots like robust stew or turn up the heat for fast-fried scenes.

If we don’t, our stories will be as bland and unappealing as an unseasoned chicken.

That’s why I’m grateful for the RWA’s ongoing efforts to provide authors, aspiring and established, with tools to sharpen and hone our skills. The workshops at Nationals were fun, challenging, and oriented to helping writers learn about the craft of writing.

I had a fabulous time meeting interesting people from all over the world, developing friendships that I hope will be long and fruitful, and gleaning from those who have created their own recipes for success.

I’ve expanded my writer’s rack with fighting tips from Angela Knight, witticisms for career planning from Cherry Adair, admonishments to write without whining because it wasn’t any easier then than it is now from Nora Roberts, and Jayne Ann Krentz’s advice on how not to kill your career.

I learned about publishers and publishing, agents and editors, query letters and synopses, hooks and high concept pitches.

But, the boring poultry, thrice served, that could’ve been much more appealing and satisfying if a little creative effort had been put into making it, will be what I remember the most. Because I never want a reader to feel that I didn’t care enough to season my “dish” to perfection.

~Kristal Lee