Giveaway Winner

Last week I ran a 100 follower giveaway and the winner is...KIMBERLY GABRIEL!

Please mail me at viklitblog AT gmail DOT com with your address, and I will arrange your prize!

Write on Con? Write Club? + Camp Nano Fail!

There is so much awesome going on at the moment!

So first things first: who is going to be joining in the fun of WriteOnCon? It looks a great way of maybe getting the attention of agents, and also meeting other great writers. I am already going wow at the talent there is out there!

Is this just US based, does anyone know? I can’t see many of the faculty/agents as being UK based, though I suppose that doesn’t stop a UK person joining in, of course, but.. I wondered. 

I may use this as the opportunity to stalk some people’s awesome work and offer some beta reads, LOL. Also I have two ideas in WIP which I’m struggling with so I might put the first 250 words of each up and see what feedback I get, I see people putting WIPs up so I hope that's okay too?

Secondly, who is following the awesome WRITE CLUB at DL Hammons blog? Again am amazed at the variety and talent out there. I also LOVE just looking at the writing and thinking how I like it, without any... thought about who has written it. It’s neat! Love it!

Third: I think I have failed Camp Nano already. I just had a busy time going to the Olympics (and being twenty feet from Usain Bolt, OMG!) and work is busy so I am leaving late and... I am chugging away at the writing, but that combined with the fact my all planned out WIP is not playing ball means I likely will fail.

Still my aim in doing it was to end up with an idea I could work on, and I think I am starting to see my way clear (not with my WIP, a different idea, LOL) so if I achieve that much and not the word count, I won’t mind too much.

LASTLY Please enter my giveaway. I am giving away awesome books y’know: GO HERE

100 Follower Giveaway!

Hello

As promised, as I have hit 100 followers I have a giveaway! First off the prize, three books I have read recently and which are AWESOME:

1 x copy of Unraveling by Elizabeth Norris - action packed sci fi thriller!
1 x copy of Dads, Geeks and Blue Haired Freaks by Ellie Phillips - a unique, fun voice!
1 x copy of Slated by Terri Terry - a taut, tense dystopian!

I am going to be old fashioned about this and add up the entries myself, so:

OPENS: NOW
CLOSES: Sunday 12th August, midnight UK Time. So you have about a week to enter.
I'll put up winner a week today with how to contact me and it will be up to winner to drop me an email with their info.
OPEN: Wherever the Book Depository will post which is pretty much everywhere.

To enter:

1) You have to be a follower, sorry, but this is a giveaway to celebrate my awesome followers. Also, you have to let me know you want to enter so drop a comment saying 'me, I follow!' and I will confirm your smiley face is among my followers list. THIS IS ONE ENTRY.
2) In your comment if you answer this question, you get an extra entry: "If you have to live on an island with only one food source would you pick CHOCOLATE OR CHEESE? (or some other mad choice)". THIS IS ONE MORE ENTRY.
3) Advertise this giveaway and drop a link to the facebook/tweet/your blog and let me know you have: THIS IS ONE ENTRY PER AD.

So if you say in a comment: ME I FOLLOW! AND CHEESE! That's two entries.

I will add these up and put you in a hat and pull one out. I am being old school about this, though I may investigate rafflecopter for the future! For now I thought this would be a fun way to dip my toe in the giveaway pond.

Let me know if anything doesn't make sense.

(and for the record: CHEESE!)

IWSG: Putting yourself out there

Writing is about losing yourself in characters, becoming part of their lives. It is building the world of your story (their story) in the bricks and mortar of words and phrases, of full stops and commas. It is about building that world in order to communicate it.

It’s Insecure Writers Support Group time and I have been thinking about the gap which exists between burying oneself in a story on the one hand, lost in one’s writing cave, and sharing that story with the world.

It’s hard, I think, to go from the story being in your head to on the page to with other people. There are critique partner notes, which are tempered with love (we hope) so this part is easier to take. Even when stories evidently did not work quite how you thought they had. There’s worry about how much of yourself you have put into the story, about how much you are exposing.

In these days of social media, there are added worries about putting ‘yourself’ or however your online profile=yourself, out there. The posts which garner few comments, the tweets you wonder if anyone heard. Do you worry about number of followers or not?

Then there’s the putting the story out there to agents and to publishers. To Be Judged, because that is how it feels. I am hopefully soon going to send off, and I’ll admit, part of me doesn’t want to. It’s easier to hide in the cave and not share. To not have to steel myself for rejection.

Then I think, for every fear about posting, tweeting, blogging, sharing my work with CPs - what I have got back has been immeasurable. I have to hope sending my work out there will be the same.

Even if I might have to start a #sendityouwuss before I do ;)

Anyone else have any thoughts about ‘putting yourself out there’ in writing, or online?

#writemotivation update and Camp Nano? Anyone?

Writemotivation Update!

I set myself these goals at the start of the month:

1) Finish line edit of my novel - DONE
2) Continue to post twice a week in blog - DONE
3) Rough outline a new idea - DONE... kinda?

Yay! I do have to read over the line edits to make sure they make sense so there’s a caveat there I guess, but I’m calling them done!

The new idea outline... isn’t quite working but I did DO one. Does that count? I am not sure it does but hey...! I must say I have found setting goals really helps as does the awesome encouragement which goes on on #writemotivation on twitter. Thanks everyone.

As for August: I am going to join in Camp Nano! So my only goal for August is to complete the necessary words. I am not even going to set myself the goal they have to be on one piece. I am having trouble getting my next idea together, working, so I may have to write several openings to different pieces.


And maybe beg some poor souls to help me work out which of them works. Hope one of them does. ;)


But I am not putting any stress on myself other than to regularly write, try and make the word count, and hopefully by Autumn have a project to focus on further.


It may mean a slightly less regular blogging/commenting scheduling but am going to do my best to keep up!

Do join me in Camp Nano if you are doing it! Are you setting any goals for the summer? What's your next writing project?


PS Oh my forgot to say: 100 followers, a giveaway will follow, likely next week ;)

Me Interviewed? + London 2012!

The lovely Tara Tyler has interviewed me! Please do go here if would like to see and in any case you should go look at her blog and make friends with her if you aren't already because she is very awesome.

I am nearly at 100 followers: it seems like the done thing is to have a giveaway for such momentous occasions? I am not sure what I have to giveaway! Perhaps one of my fave crit books like Stephen King's On Writing or I'm a nut for grammar books (like Grammar Girl). Which is not to say my grammar's perfect, but I love to read them. Or a crit. HMMM.

Also London 2012 starts today! I am so excited to have the Olympics in my home town and was lucky enough to see a rehearsal of the Opening Ceremony. All I can say is: AWESOME. We won't disappoint!

Congratulations to winners, YA Highway + why is getting ideas onto paper sometimes so hard?

This is a Four Fold post.

Firstly I joined in the Hookers and Hangers Blogfest on Falling for Fiction and congrats to all the winners. I will work harder on my Hookers and Hangers ;) I certainly learned a lot. I learned that lots of my hooks start with ‘I’ and that the most favoured ones where were the voice came through most.

Second, congrats to Cassie Mae of the above Falling for Fiction and Erica Chapman on getting agents! HURRAH! Go congratulate them! It is so lovely to hear good news for awesome souls!

Third, YA Highway's Road Trip Wednesday asks which fictional character would you be reincarnated as? As Elodie said, a lot of the YA Characters I like, do not have the best time of it. I am not going to pick to be Katniss!

Not a YA choice but the person who immediately leaps to mind is Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice. She ends up with Darcy! She is witty and independent, knows her own mind - I would love to be her.

Suddenly want to read a YA Pride and Prejudice: are there any? Though Bridget Jones Diary may have corned that literary wise, albeit not YA.

Fourth, I am having trouble transferring new ideas onto paper at the moment. I am inspired, I plan, I think it is all great and then... nothing. It doesn’t work out. Humph. Likely the idea needs more work or the character fleshing out. Or my brain replacing. I am lucky that patient souls are happy to hear me witter on about my ideas (mostly YA futuristic type deals - the ideas, not the patient souls). If anybody else likes to throw ideas around, and I wil obviously help in return, comment or message me at viklitblog at google’s mail.  Does anyone else have this problem?

Ok tomorrow likely catch up on comments and blogs, have a good day all!