Author Archives: Amanda

About Amanda

Married to my best friend for six years, we live in a small house not far from where we met in elementary school with two cats. In the time not spent keeping house, or working at one of my two part time jobs, I enjoy reading novels, trying to write them, and the occasional craft project.

Plotting on the wall

Things have been kind of stale on To get him back since I started the new job. I have quite a bit to type up, but some­thing doesn’t feel right.

As a nice sur­prise some of my char­ac­ters have come back to visit me from my BIG project that I’m going to work on next. I moved my room around, to get my desk and a dresser out of the way. Now I have some wall space to work with. On the wall, I taped up the note cards from the first book in the quartet.

Plotting

Plotting

Seeing it like this, it needs some more flesh­ing out, more details added in (I’m think­ing post-​​it notes added with details). I also cut out a good chunk from the begin­ning, and set it aside as either ref­er­ence for back story, or a poten­tial pre­quel. If that hap­pens, and the planned sequel, than that brings the whole project up to a total of six books.

I don’t even want to think about that at this point.

To start with, I’m only going to deal with this first book. The sec­ond one is where the bulk of the first draft ended up. This first one is mostly new mate­r­ial. It’s like start­ing a new book, rather than a sec­ond draft, but the char­ac­ters are famil­iar. I’m anx­ious, and a lit­tle excited too, to get going.

I just want to fin­ish the cur­rent project first, so I guess that means I need to get typ­ing that one up.

Progress Report

I started a new job two weeks ago. So far it’s going well. I’m learn­ing new things in the field that I want to make a career out of, gain­ing expe­ri­ence that I’ll be able to use to move for­ward along this path I’ve cho­sen, and I’ve been doing some writ­ing on my breaks.

I feel like I’ve made decent progress. It’s been slow, since I only have a few min­utes here and there, but some­thing is bet­ter than noth­ing. And noth­ing is what I’ve been get­ting accom­plished lately  I haven’t read a book in about a month. I haven’t had a chance to type up what I’ve writ­ten yet, but I think it might be about 2000 words or so, spread out over two weeks. Not spec­tac­u­lar, but it’s a small note­book that I’m using.

Amanda’s top 10 writing rules to live by

Okay, after some prod­ding I’ll admit that I’m a writer. I’ve been writ­ing sto­ries since I was about six or seven years old, and over the last twenty-​​odd years I’ve com­piled a list of help­ful tips for myself.

  1. Second Draft = First Draft — 10% This is taken directly from Stephen King’s On Writing. A book I would highly rec­om­mend even if you’re not a King fan. It works for him because he tends to write way too much at first. For me, I might change that — to a + instead, since I tend to write a skele­ton and then have to add meat to it. Come up with your own equa­tion that you think is a good tar­get. Having a num­ber to aim for gives you an idea of how well you’re on track.
  2. No adverbs, no pas­sive voice. This is another King tip, but I’ve read it other places as well
  3. Write the truth. When I read a book and I see some­thing shown the way I think of the world, I relate that much closer to the story. For exam­ple: If some­one writes about brush­ing their curly hair and not end­ing up with a fluffy mess, I’m imme­di­ately jarred out of the story with the thought “but that’s not real!” and I get quite indig­nant about it. Conversely, if some­one writes about comb­ing out their wet curls and then pray­ing to some deity that those curls behave, than I’m much more likely to favor­ably immerse myself in the story.  Continue read­ing →