Another Great Contest!

Yes, it's time for yet another contest for writers who have finished writing either a YA or MG novel. Check out the fabulous Guide to Literary Agents for a chance to win a 10-25 page critique by Jennifer Laughran (Andrea Brown Literary Agency) and some other fantastic prizes.

To enter, you need a logline and the first 150-200 words of your complete manuscript. There’re some other requirements, so please check out the blog.

For help on writing your logline, check out this and this great advice from the Query Tracker blog.

Good luck!

PS. Photography tips will resume next week. I was super busy this weekend, so I didn't have a chance to write the post.

Voice Envy

Not long ago, I started sending out queries for Lost in a Heartbeat. I didn’t expect a lot of agents to jump on it since it deals with a tough issue. It really isn’t for everyone. Fortunately, among the form rejections were two personalized ones. The agents liked the concept (yay!), but my voice was an issue. Groan.

I also entered last month's Miss Snark’s First Victim Secret Agent Contest (see her blog for more info on future ones). The Secret Agent was intrigued with my first 250 words, but thought the voice was bland. Talk about a left hook to the ego. Luckily, one of my brilliant crit partners had also read the entries. She told me the ones that grabbed her attention were the ones written in a chick lit voice. She was envious because that wasn’t her natural voice—it was mine.

Now the thing is, I'm jealous of her voice. I also love the voices of Sarah Dessen, Alyson Noel, Lisa McMann, and Richelle Mead. The trouble is I love their voices so much I lost sight of my own. It wasn’t like I was trying to emulate them. Now that would have been a huge disaster. But my Voice Envy had seriously hurt me.

Finding your voice is tricky, especially when you’re a new writer. It’s so easy to want to write like someone else. But even when you’ve established your voice, it so easy to let Voice Envy sway you. Sometimes it works. And sometimes the results are disastrous—as I’ve proven.

For more information on finding your voice, check out the blogs of Mary Kole (agent with Andrea Brown Literary Agency), Elana Johnson (contributor of the Query Tracker Blog), and Christine Fonseca for their brilliant insight.

Has anyone else struggled to find and keep their voice? Or is there an author whose voice you envy? Just beware of that nasty old Voice Envy. You never know when it might strike.

So I’ve learned my lesson. I’m now storing my voice in a safe place so I don’t lose it next time. Somewhere safe from Voice Envy.

The Link Between Writing and Photography

Yesterday, Carolyn Kaufman (Query Tracker Blog) posted a great article on what writer’s could learn from photographers. Naturally, I started to think about other connections between the two disciplines.

Stories have themes. It’s the unifying thread that ties everything together. Great pictures have themes, too. Like in stories, sometimes they’re obvious, and sometimes they’re not. If you haven't already, figure out what theme you're going for when you take pictures. It doesn't have to be complex. Maybe just a word like friendship. And definitely make sure your stories have a theme.

And what about detail? I love doing close up photography. It’s the attention to detail that gets me excited. For example, in the above shot, I zoomed close to the plant so the only thing you see are the leaves and the rain drops. Those are the important details. Not the ground or my home. It’s the interaction between the two that'll stick in your mind. Same thing with writing. By focusing on the important details, relating to the setting or character, a more vivid image is painted in the reader’s mind. Specific is easily remembered. General is quickly forgotten. But like in the plant picture, keep the number of details presented at a time to a minimum so not to overwhelm your reader.

And then there’s perspective. Remember how changing the angle from which you take a photo gives you a completely different picture. Same deal with fiction. Maybe your story could be told from a different point of view than from what you’d originally envisioned. For example, Cinderella is told from her point of view. But what if you retold the story from the fairy godmother’s point of view? Or better yet, the fairy godmother’s really a teenage girl attending the Academy of Fairy Godmothers, and Cinderella’s her first class project. The story would be very different, right?

So there you go, some more things to dwell on as to how you can make your pictures and writing even better. And thanks, Carolyn, for inspiring this post.

Stay tune for tomorrow’s topic. I’ll be discussing that dreaded condition that writers fear—Voice Envy.

Tip # 61: Sneaky Effects

To me, there’re two types of photographers. There are those—like me—who prefer to spend their time before snapping a shot to make sure everything’s perfect. That’s when we’re at our creative best. We tend not to like wasting our time on Photoshop. But it’s during the post production work (editing) when the creativity of the second type of photographer really shines.

So how did I turn the sky purple? Simple. I held a transparent piece of colored plastic in front of my camera lens. True, the Photoshop loving photographer would be able to create all kinds all different effects on her computer. But to each her own.

So what kind of photographer are you?

Destiny?

Check out the following cool Canadian Nike commercial.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR14o0R5Xlg

Destiny doesn’t determine if we win.

We do.

A great reminder that everything we do, we do to become better writers and increase our chance of being published. And that includes the beating our egos take from our crit partners and our rejections from agents. We can whine or we can push ourshelves harder like these athletes. We can succeed!

Contest!

If you've written a YA or MG novel (it must be completed), check out Kidlit Contest for a chance to win a critique by agent Mary Kole (Andrea Brown Literary Agency) . The contest ends Sunday.

ETA: As of Saturday morning, there were over 400 hundred entries. Wow, she's going to be very busy for a while.

The Snowball Effect

I was recently editing Lost in a Heartbeat for voice when I came to the following flashback:

“So where’s your boyfriend?” he asked.

“How do you know I have one?” I did, of course, but Liam wasn’t there. There were only a few weeks left of summer vacation then he’d be leaving for college, so I didn’t think there was anything wrong flirting with this guy. Neither relationship was going to go anywhere, either way.

But I realized the main character, Calleigh, wasn’t the kind of girl to flirt with another guy when she had a boyfriend. Even if the boyfriend was going away to college and she'd no intention of having a long distance relationship. So I tweaked it:

“So where’s your boyfriend?” he asked.

“What makes you think I have one?” Liam and I had broken up only a few days before that. Or rather, I had dumped a Blue Raspberry Slurpee on his lap after Alejandra told me the latest gossip. He’d been caught getting all hot and steamy with a junior varsity cheerleader at a party just the week before. We hadn’t officially broken up, but I figured the Slurpee incident pretty much said it all.

Great except for one problem. Yep, you guessed it. It caused a snowball effect. Other sections then had to be rewritten because of this one little change.

Yes, it was a lot of work, but it was worth it. The result was a domino effect that started with Liam cheating on Calleigh, and which resulted in the story problem. Now you see why I love editing. *grins*

Has this happened to you? Has one little change in your novel led to a snowball effect that you were excited about? One you never expected when you wrote your first draft—or edited your fifth?