Part Four - Writing Contests
DLL. And we made it to the end, Nicolas! I hope everyone has enjoyed Part One, Part Two, and Part Three!
NL. Whew! What an adventure!
DLL. In Part Four we will cover Writing Contests and what I’ve got in the works because you were kind enough to ask…
Let’s wrap up this amazing discussion with writing contests and their benefits and challenges. I’ve had so much fun participating with you in the Writing Battle Summer Nanofiction 250-word Contest we just finished where we navigated our way through the huge community and commented on each other’s stories.
I find I enjoy the shorter writing challenges when I’m in the middle of a busy writing period. You get all the benefits that Writing Battle offers the community, but the participation consumes less time with the nano-sized stories. But wow! The caliber of these little pocket fictions blew me away! Every story I read for the Duel and in the Debrief was exceptional. I did a little blog about the contest and my results here.
I also participated in a Fae vs. Punk Mashup competition with the Fantasy Sci-Fi Writers Alliance. My story was judged fifth out of nine so it didn’t make the anthology but I loved this story so much that I worked on it post competition and that’s what my readers are getting with my newsletters in parts through the end of the year. So, I guess my overall take on participating in contests is having opportunities to write more, in different genres, in shorter bites, and finding ways to share it.
I’ll turn the mic to you for your take.
The Writing Battle – What I loved
NL. Let me break it down into a list…
Having a clear deadline to produce something outside of my ongoing projects. It’s super refreshing.
Reading ten great stories over one month, and a bunch more at the Debrief stage. Wow. They were all good, astounding and enriching, all in their individual, quirky, diverse, creative way. I stand amazed.
Commenting on other people’s stories. It’s a challenge, it’s a responsibility, it’s fascinating. Always easier to say what you liked about a story. More challenging to say something you think could make the story better, in a warm, understanding, respectful, constructive way.
Connecting with like-minded people eager to support and encourage and help.
Discovering so many great writers, and being introduced to their work.
Like you, I think it’s less involved, time-wise, to focus on the nano-fiction battles rather than the longer ones. I might try the long ones someday, but for now, having to read, and constructively comment on ten longer stories over one month, let’s say, each of them 2000 words long, however fun and captivating I’d have to do nothing else during all that time!
The Writing Battle – Questions I Have
It is fun; it is wonderful to connect with fellow writers and to read great stories, and dip my toes in constructive feedback, both given and received.
But one thing Simone Seol says is “If you don’t repel anyone, you can’t attract anyone either.” I’ve been mulling on that. It makes sense to me.
Hmmm. There is a risk when dealing with a lot of feedback from multiple people.
It’s a good thing to gather a lot of feedback, but how to use the feedback afterwards? If many people (let’s say more than three or four) tell me the same thing, and if it makes sense to me, then it’s probably a good tip to steer me into finding better ways of writing.
However, if I fall into the trap of trying to please everybody, then it can become counterproductive. If I tone myself down into trying to appeal to everyone, then I’m at risk of diluting my true self and writing something that may be somewhat acceptable to everyone, but not really appealing to anyone at the same time, even to myself.
The saddest thing about it is that the very people who might have loved my true, honest, sincere, creative work; they won’t even get a chance to see that I’m there.
If you don’t repel someone, you can’t attract someone either. I think it’s a life-changing notion, worth repeating.
If you quit being afraid of displeasing some, you have a better chance at pulling your true readers closer to you because they will see you when you show up in the world. The ones who will truly get and like everything you have to say or share, and who will love your work no matter what, because they’ve seen in you something that resonates deeply in them.
So who’s your ideal reader? Simone Seol says picking an ideal reader is BS. Don’t pick. Just imagine someone you really trust, someone who already loves what you do and believes in you. Someone who loves you unconditionally no matter what. Someone who drinks everything that you say and do and are. Write for that person, even if it’s just you; write for that person only. The others don’t matter. It’s not for them you’re doing this. Their opinion doesn’t matter. If there’s no one yet, just imagine them. Or be them. Be the first one. Start with yourself. How does your own work resonate with you? Be your own starting point.
But then, how do you improve your writing? Isn’t this a contradiction? How to find a balance?
I’d say, trust your instincts. Keep learning of course, but take your time choosing from whom you’re learning. Remember that any book you read, any course you take, any webinar or blog, or whatever you watch… is for you and for you only, to use at your own convenience, in your own time, with absolutely no strings attached, with nothing to prove to anyone and no reason to impress anyone either; with no other responsibility on your part than using whatever aspects serve you and your creativity, and help you grow into the true, sincere, wonderful, creative, honest, precious, human being that you already are.
DLL. These are awesome things to consider, Nicolas. I’ve had similar thoughts about the feedback and how to use it. In my previous work life, and I’m sure you will relate, it’s all about performance feedback and pleasing the boss, or the customer, or what have you. Writing is truly the opposite. Sometimes, old habits are hard to change.
It was interesting this round to read the feedback from those who didn’t get my story at all to those who raved about the power of the prose and emotion because they absolutely got what I was going for.
I’m in a writing group also and we critique each other’s work. I’ll be chatting with that group on my blog next month for my Spotlight. It’s been a real eye opener because I’ve had to have some serious talks with myself about utilizing the excellent feedback while maintaining my true voice. This speaks to the aspect I mention in my response to your questions – learning too much about writing! And how it feels like I’ve been stymied. I wrote much freer in the early days when I was ignorant. 🙂
While much of the feedback is consistent because it points to areas that everyone recognizes need work, a lot of it is very subjective and you can’t let subjective opinions mute your voice or color your efforts as you move forward. I feel like I’ve listened to too many people and tried to compensate (or compromise) much too often, and I need to pull myself out of the quagmire. I really like that idea about finding that one audience to write to even if it is just yourself. I also really appreciated something you said earlier about your rewrites of Seven Drifts. You love your story. I get teased sometimes about loving my own writing. Well, duh!! I wouldn’t be so dedicated to writing if I didn’t like what I wrote. We’re allowed to be our own worst critic and best fan, right?
NL. Absolutely. I believe we have too, in fact!
Darci, for the benefit of our lovely readers, what are you working on currently? What did you launch recently, and what are you about to release, mid term and long term?
In the Works
DLL. Thank you for asking! I’ve always been a multi-crafter with too many projects started at once and waiting to be finished even as many do get miraculously finished, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that my writing is the same. I would love to start jamming on all of them and stack them up on the publishing line, but I must be realistic. I’ve learned to work on what’s calling to me on any given day. Ah, those fickle characters…
I’m especially focused on listening to the passionate call as I struggle with that glut I mentioned.
Thankfully, it is currently a spinoff from The Starlight Chronicles (“TSC”), a contemporary paranormal romance series that is working for me. I’m committed to sticking with this one and publishing it next year. Crossing my fingers!! Michael Elliott is a dragon shifter, introduced in Ursus Borealis and featured in Drago Incendium, really a main character along with Selena Aires (human) and Andras Johns (a Kodiak bear shifter). Selena attracts both men to her cause and Elliott (as she calls him) comes to care for her as deeply as Andras does. Where the three end up takes us on a lot of twists and turns and concludes in Tigris Vetus.
It is important to me to follow my series with a standalone novel for Elliott. In TSC, we meet his dragon, Onyx, and are introduced, in tantalizing bits, to their backstory. Now I can flesh that out. Besides being the alpha of the Fire Star Pack with a territory that covers Oregon, Elliott has a medieval castle in the Scottish Highlands (due to his long history with Onyx). This will be the setting for his story where he gathers his friends from TSC and love and danger will find him there. The theme is trust and betrayal, and there will be lots of dragon lore and magic.
And thanks for asking about my latest release! It just so happens I have a volume of three fantasy romances on Presale in Les Romances des Trois. “The romances of threes,” (probably an awkward usage of French, so pardonne-moi, Nicolas! But it looked good for a title 🙂). It means we get three deeply romantic and adventurous fantasy stories in different settings and subgenres involving ménage à trois romances.
These threesome tales were previously published in anthologies, and I was dying to expand on them and offer them together because I love them so much. They average more than 20,000 words, so I’m calling them novellas. A short adult fairy tale is included as a bonus.
I have plot ideas for more spinoffs from TSC and I truly hope to get them out there in the next few years. I dream about a huge TSC world for readers to enjoy. The one I’m focusing on next is my vampire, Mortas. I left him on an awful cliffhanger and he is a fantastic character and deserves his story. He will be paired with a minor but important character from TSC, a witch named Ember. Their working title is Giving It Up for a Vampire.
The other TSC spinoff I’ve made huge inroads on is a historical fantasy romance, The Spanish Maiden Who Dreamt of a Bear. The main characters feature Andras Johns’ grandparents, Broderick Johns, and Elara Sofia Estrada de Luna. We dive into Andras’s family history when he shares his grandparents’ journals with Selena and their pack as they sail up the Inside Passage to Ketchikan on Elliott’s motorsailer – a scene in Drago Incendium.
This tale is set in a fascinating time in North American history, 1776 Alta California, when Spain competed for the Pacific Coast territory with Russia before the Spanish Crown gave it up to Mexico. I’m incorporating a historical expedition from Mexico to the Coast that established Monterey Bay and San Francisco. We will also explore early Alaska when Broderick and his father trek up the coast to Kodiak Island where Broderick takes on the first Kodiak bear spirit.
Other stories in the works outside of TSC that should go fast once I can get that mojo flowing again:
The Fourth Planet of Cinnamon Jones – a fantasy sci-fi romance that takes place in eastern Oregon and Portland and involves aliens from a nearby planetary system who have been visiting and inhabiting our planet for so long that they became the source of Earth’s elf mythology.
Caged Diamond – a sci-fi, cyberpunk, and mafia planet hybrid. My main female character is a retired MMA fighter who wants a peaceful life away from the UFC fight scene only to be kidnapped and taken to a fight ring on a mafia planet where she encounters many interesting characters including a towering barbarian warrior.
Can we say… “Three more lifetimes!” There’s more, but I’ll stop here… 😄
NL. Wow! Thanks for all this privileged, insider information about your TSC spinoffs and other projects!
About Les Romances des Trois, I love that you’ve chosen to use French in your writing, and from what I’ve been lucky to read already (from more insider information!), I can tell it is working beautifully.
I gotta say, I really dig your titles! Les Romances des Trois, Giving It Up For a Vampire, The Spanish Maiden Who Dreamt of a Bear, The Fourth Planet of Cinnamon Jones, Caged Diamond… I mean, come on! And not to mention, Ursus Borealis, Drago Incendium, Tigris Vetus… There is an art to finding great titles, and I believe you’ve mastered it.
DLL. Thank you, Nicolas! And I can say the same for Seven Drifts!
I Love Designing!
I will add that my writing process includes designing covers early on and coming up with working titles. Both steps inspire my storytelling and help me meet my publishing goals, effectively establishing a vision.
I design my covers with tools like Canva, DIY Covers, and Bookow, and with the help of a few generous friends. The paperback edition of Les Romances will feature my first wraparound cover using a free template by Bookow. I’m working on a new edition of my collection of short stories in Priss Starwillow & the Wolf, A Starlight Chronicles Short Story, and Other Stories to incorporate a wraparound cover. I’ve decided to get this volume into more stores like Les Romances. TSC is available only through Amazon and on Kindle Unlimited. Deciding to be exclusive to Amazon or going wide (other markets like Barnes and Noble, Apple Books, and Kobo) is a story for another day, and it’s been an endless headache.
NL. Each time I look at your work, I am delighted at how my eye is caught. I know that whatever tool you choose to use, you’ll always come up with something beautifully engaging to reflect the gems from the inside. I hope you find solutions for your headache! The choices are infinite and often painful but know you’re blasting a trail for others to follow, and we’re grateful for it.
DLL. Thank you Nicolas for your comments, support, and for letting me elaborate on my projects!
NL. Thank you Darci, for elaborating on them! It’s been such a blast!
DLL. And thank you to those who have sorted through our writer’s life discussion and taken away a few inspiring nuggets to add to your arsenals. This is it until Nicolas and I catch up again next year!
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