Looking Forward in 2016

BY SUE VIDERS & BECKY MARTINEZ

Sue:

Whoosh…

And in a blink the year is gone and we writers are faced with the dilemma of what to do this coming year.

The new year is a place where nothing has yet happened. The calendar, while full of family errands and work related events, remains blank as to our writing goals.

Which, of course, poses the question, the huge question, of what we will write this coming year. What are our writing goals? Do we start a new story, poem or play or do we work around our writing, spending time doing publicity, finish up what we didn’t finish this part year orspend out time going to even more classes or meetings? What do we do?

Or do we want to look back and bask in the glory of what we accomplished this past year?

Maybe. But mostly no.

What has been written this past 12 months is history. It’s done. And unless there is something that needs to be carried over into the new year, sometimes it’s simply better to start fresh.

Okay, not always.

For example, I had spent most of the last few weeks finished up an outline for my next book. It was perplexing, as it is the third in a series with many old and new characters, each of which needed a new goal, which in turn needed a new plot.

Sigh. But with the holidays in sight, I managed to finished it up. Now, I’m not pleased with all the sub-plots, but I did finalized the last part, weaving all the various strings together into a neat and colorful tapestry.

But with the new year in sight, I deliberately put the outline aside, waiting to start on the first page of the new calendar where I could begin to fill in my writing goals. So many words here, exchanging a critique with my writing partner there and so on, until the empty spaces on the calendar were full of penciled goals.

Penciled in. I never use ink. In the writing game, it pays to always have options. Always have the ability to change the goal. Never get it up, but sometimes re-think the ultimate outcome you have in mind.

And now the new year is here. I look at my first goal, “write the prologue this week, goal, 2000 or so words” and I begin.

I love beginnings. I love the new year.

 

Becky:

 

For me the new year always seems like a new beginning. I really love the idea of starting over, even if I am working on a project I started last year.

 

There is always new opportunity in the new year. On the last day of every year I make a list of what I accomplished last year and then keep it. The next day, on January 1, I make a list of what I want to accomplish in the new year.

 

It's great to be able to look back on those lists in future years.  For instance this year, I was able to post that we had finally finished and published our first Dottie booklet.  For this year I listed the next three Dottie booklets as goals for finishing and getting published.  That would be a wonderful accomplishments, because we have wanted to publish our class lessons for several years now and we have continued to work on them every year, even as we teach new classes.

 

We're also going to be teaching our own classes that feature some of those booklets this year. Working with students is always a great way to get our own inspiration for our fiction writing.

 

I suggest making a list of what you want to accomplish in the coming year. We're still in January so making the list now gives you eleven months to get it all done.  These can be wonderful motivation, not only to get things accomplished, but I love looking back on my old lists.  Seeing the publication of my book, Blues at 11, in 2015 was wonderful, because it had been on my list of projects for several years. Now it is published! 

 

So I recommend, look forward to what you want to do, but don't miss out on looking back too. Celebrate what you've accomplished in the past year.

Dottie, The Writing Mouse

We hope everything has been going your way in the writing world this year. 2015 was a great year for Sue and Becky and we're looking forward to more exciting days to come. 

While we spent much of the year working on our fiction, we have also been teaching classes and still have our eyes firmly planted on ways to help aspiring writers become full fledged authors or assist published authors with whatever writing project they have in the works.

After years of being asked by many of our students if we were ever going to put some of our classes into book form so they could either buy and keep them or share them with other writing friends, we finally decided to do just that. We took your comments to heart and are putting many of our lectures into a series of how-to books for writers.

We spent many weeks working on editing our lectures for books, but before we could go “public” with our books, we had to come up with some type of not only a format but a recognizable image and name that people would come to associate with Sue and Becky, the writing teachers. We needed to focus on a marketing image.

There are hundreds of how-to write books out in the marketplace, so what would make our books stand out so the beginning writer would feel comfortable reading and following our advice?

An image was needed. Finally, after much research and discussion, we decided on a mouse. No other book cover had a mouse on it. Oh, there were pencils, pens, computers, typewriters—but no mouse. Right. A cute mouse.  A writing mouse.

 

And she would be working with a really tall number 2 yellow pencil. Eventually the mouse ended up with her pencil making several dots. And her dress became full of polkadots. It was then Dottie was born.  Let’s Write a Story became our overall marketing concept. It, along with Dottie, will be on the cover of all our writing books.

Our first book is out…

As we announced earlier, Seven Ways to Plot is now available at Amazon.com. It focuses on the seven plotting methods that most writers use when planning their books.  We hope you'll take a look.
More books are coming. We are on the final edits of book #2, Creating Memorable Characters which should be available in early 2016.

We hope you had a good 2015 and are looking forward to 2016 and many more Dottie books ahead!

If you have any writing questions, and we mean ANY QUESTIONS at all on your writing, we hope you'll email us at SueViders@comcast.net or beckygmartinez@gmail.com and we will be happy to answer them on this blog or privately.

 

New Writing Blog -- Any Questions?

Sue: Welcome to our new home. A blog where you can feel free to ask generic  questions, whether large or small, about your writing or writing in general. We are dedicating this blog to helping writers, aspiring or professional, with their writing problems and concerns.

Becky: Yes, welcome. We are so glad you found us. We have been teaching and guiding writers through the pitfalls and hazards of getting started with their stories for more than ten years.  Whether it be a romance novel, a sci-fi adventure or a shoot ‘em up thriller, we have worked with dozens of writers and now we are here to offer you guidance in your work.  


Sue:  Over the years we’ve discovered that many people who want to write a book just don’t know where to start. It all seems so confusing,  and once they do get started, they get lost in where they want to go with their story. How can you plot a story? Where do characters come from?

Becky: And that is where we come in. We have both been beginning writers ourselves and we remember some of those questions and the turmoil that comes from trying to find the answers.  We both enjoy working with writers and we like to see others succeed so we started working together years ago with the goal in mind of helping those who want to go from being a writer to a published
author.

Sue:  We also discovered writers are all different and we both bring some of those general differences to this teaching partnership. I’m the talker whereas Becky is more of a thinker…grin, but between the two of us we cover all the bases, from nonfiction books to a new set of cozies and of course Becky’s romantic-suspense, romance and mystery novels.

Becky:  Sue is the creative artistic type, while I am more of the practical journalist, but when it comes to writing a novel, she is the outlining/plotting sort of writer, while I take an idea and simply run with it, and let the muse take me where it wants to go. Because of our different approaches, we can see just about any side of a discussion, and that is why together we make a great team.

Sue: Right, however we both work best when we have deadlines we have to meet, and although we hate them, they do keep us moving and writing.

 Becky: Agreed. Deadlines and discipline are what get the stories written.  I worked for 30 years in a profession where we sometimes had minute by minute deadlines, but whether it’s hourly or monthly, without deadlines, often  the story, whatever it may be, stays in your head.

 Sue: Never to see daylight, let alone a book shelf  or to go “live” on Amazon in any form, such as a print or ebook. We  We are here now to  help you with your story. Send in your generic questions or concerns and please note that we never use real names in our blog unless,  it is a compliment of some kind.

Becky:  While we can’t always answer specific story questions, we are here to help you with your plotting, developing characters, pacing, and figuring out all those pesky little “insider” things like POV (point of view.)

 

We'll be bringing you writing tips each week, but we want to focus on YOU. Feel free to address the questions you want answered. Send your questions  or comments to either

sueviders@comcast.net or  beckygmartinez@gmail.com

 As a final note -- OUR NEW BOOK IS OUT.

Seven Ways to Plot -- the first in our Let's Write a Story series has just been published on Amazon and is available for Kindle and e-readers.  Here's the direct link:

http://goo.gl/tDKis3

Next week, we'll be back with more ideas to help so Let us Write a Story with you! Send questions!