Category Archives: FWA

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Writing Craft: Creative Shifts and Shorts

Life really runs just so smoothly, right? Nah! I began writing this post in May, the month celebrating the Short Story. I planned to blog about changing formats to challenge your growth as a writer, in my case, writing shorts instead of working on my usual long-format novel. You guys know I can’t resist stretching my chops and working on writing craft.

But, now it’s June. I’m just posting this, and all I can do is chuckle. And grab a cold glass of something refreshing. Because here in Florida, the temps are rising, and summer has hit the ground running.

Despite the heat, I love to write outside on our screen porch, which is a tad cluttered—read: tools, coolers, spare deck chairs, and general et cetera—but the view of our jungle (AKA, the backyard) is great for a creative boost.

And oftentimes a change of scenery, even a small one like moving from office to porch, can make a big creative difference. As I write and study the craft, anything that can enhance creativity helps. Sometimes, that’s a scenery shift, sometimes a format change to write something brilliant and brief.

It’s from the wacky screen porch that I wrote two short stories these past two months. And guess what? One of those stories has been selected for publication in an anthology. Woo hoo! You might recall I mentioned the Florida Writers Association Collection contest. The contest is open to poetry and short stories of up to 1200 words, a length which is definitely not my strong suit.

This year’s Collection theme was the unignorable Secrets, so I decided to submit a piece. I have entered this contest in the past, to no avail. But you only get better with practice, and that’s definitely true of writing craft.

You all already know I primarily write novels. Long, descriptive, but hopefully compelling, page-turning novels. I love to plunge into action, adventure, characters’ brains and emotions, food, travels, all that good stuff that drives a reader through every page. Novels are my happy place.

So, for me to shift to writing a short story is a real trick, and one I’m working on doing better. Because the thing is, a short story is basically a very short novel, meaning, that tiny piece of writing must contain all the elements of the novel with thousands fewer words. Yikes. By contrast, my novels run in the 70-90,000-word range. You can see the challenge this presents for a writer like me.

And maybe now you can see the appeal, too. Every author wants to improve, wants to hone their writing craft and make it readable, enjoyable, or gripping. I’m pretty okay (so I’m told) at putting together decent imagery, fun vignettes, things of that nature. If you’re keen, I post some of those under the Writing Snippets section here at my site. But they’re not all short stories, with a story arc, character development, conflict, etc. and the other elements of a true SS.

Writing the shorts these past months really challenged how I wrote, what I wrote about, and how good my recall of Grammar 101 was (it wasn’t!). ;P So, I hit some hurdles while working on my submissions. But the experience of writing a full story, succinctly, was excellent. If you’re interested in some smart tips for writing shorts from uber-knowledgeable folks, follow these two links to learn more: Writer’s Digest and Grammarly.

I can say honestly—especially after hearing about my anthology contest selection—that the experience was really worth the effort of writing something outside my wheelhouse. It sure helps when that effort is rewarded.

I haven’t heard back yet about the second contest I entered, for AutoCrit, so I’ll stay positive on that score. Once the judging ends and all the legalities are sorted, I’ll share the news.  

In the meantime, this creative shift should help me refocus as I return to writing Book 3 of my series. Sometimes all we need is that bit of clarity that comes from a change of perspective.

Thanks again for visiting. And please let me know in the comments how you like to mix things up with your writing craft. Would love to hear what works for you!

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Resolutions and Revisions—A Writer’s Reality

With another flip of the calendar, I find myself staring at a relatively clean slate. And so I decided to jump on the January-resolution bandwagon this year. Why not? The fact is, the changing of the year is a great time for people to reexamine goals, and I’m no exception.

A clean, snowy slate in NY

Since this blog is about my writing life, I’ll let you in on my writing resolution for this year. I made a small-yet-large-for-me pledge that pertains to you, dear readers and fans: My objective for 2017 is to blog more often and about more writing topics of interest to you.

To that end, I plan to blog twice a month. Yeah, no great shakes in the world of blogging, but in my world of chaos and distraction, doubling my monthly output is a major thing. Especially now, when I’m trying to power through the first draft of my second novel in the Found Mystery Series, still lovingly referred to as TB. ; )

As you may know, I believe life should be a continual learning experience, and I feel the same way about writing. I always want to learn more, become better at the craft, and I enjoy passing on what I learn.

Blogging isn’t my passion the way storytelling is, but the more I write in all formats, the better writer I become (hopefully). So, increasing my post output helps two ways: to give the readers what they want, and to sharpen my skills doing what I love.

In this first post of 2017, I’d like to share a link about one author’s editing process. I found this courtesy of Mary Ann de Stefano on the Florida Writers Association Facebook page, and I think it’s fantastic.

People often ask what it’s like to be a writer. Well, there are as many different answers as there are scribblers, but there’s a common thread: to write is to edit. And so, to learn to write is to understand you must edit.

This author, Patrick Rothfuss, was asked what it’s like to revise his own work. I think his answer is spot-on as he details the challenges we face, large and small, to make our manuscripts the best we can. Please take a look and let me know what you think.

As with writing, there are aspects of editing and revising that I love and those that I can hardly stand. But they go hand-in-hand. To be a better writer, I need to become a better editor. I’m working on it. 😉

Happy New Year to you all. Here’s hoping your resolutions are both fun and productive. Otherwise, they’ll be a pain to stick with. 😛

And with respect to my goal of blogging about your writing interests, please share what you’d like to hear about, either in the comments section, or by email: carolyn@carolyngreeley.com. Thanks and looking forward to your input.Facebooktwitterpinterestlinkedinmail