Log Lines by Christine Duncan

You might know log lines by another name. Elevator lines is my favorite name for them because it tells you what it is: a line you would use to describe your book if you were in an elevator with an agent or editor and had only until the next stop to talk to them. So now you know all you need to know, right?

By whatever name you call them, log lines are …difficult to write. But they are so worth it.

Reducing your manuscript to one sentence that sums up the whole book helps you define it. And thus, makes it easier to write or edit. That might be why you want to keep a log line in mind as you do those things.

As an example, let’s say you have a log line that says “Twinkle Twinkle is a S/F novel about a man who harnessed the power of the stars to make his interstellar ship run and found himself with a bigger problem than lack of power.” Nobody is saying this is a good line, just an example. But, right then and there, you know pretty much the word count, the genre, that it’s about a hero not a heroine. It doesn’t include any love interest or vampires, or any historical aspects since we don’t regularly engage in interstellar manned space travel yet.

An elevator line isn’t something you’ll just jot down and never mess with. But spending a little time on it can tell you what is important to you about the book. Then you can figure out how to make that the most important part of the book.

TGIF!

    It’s Friday!  Don’t you just love the sound of that?  One short sentence that spells out thoughts of the weekend, sleeping in and taking it easy. 

  Michelle is not feeling well this weekend.  She’ll be back soon, so keep her in your thoughts and prayers. 

Discipline by Christine Duncan

I’m late. And I have no particular excuse, other than chronic busyness. I just read Michelle’s last post about procrastination, and I can only agree. I think I’ve written on it more than once myself.

I keep having the same conversation with people lately. I have come to believe that all of life is a head game. I can not say to myself I will (insert activity: run, clean house, write novel, look for job) when I have time. There is never enough time. I have to schedule it as though I mean it.

I run, for the most part, in the morning, before I wake up enough to know I’m running. I can run in the afternoon, but I am more likely to put it off, to tell myself I’m tired, too hot/cold or too busy. I clean the house on this day, look for work at this time.

Writing, I’ve found is the same. For instance, usually I know that I will write this blog on Sunday afternoon. For the most part, nothing interferes with that. When something does interfere, the rule is I get the blog done ASAP after the interference.

The fiction writing goes the same way. I have to set the time. I find that subconsciously, I tend to work on the thing in my head that way, sort of looking forward to it, figuring out what comes next in the story and how I want it to go.

I don’t know whether I’m a robot, or just obsessive compulsive but it works.

But despite the fact that Michele and I are so familiar with procrastination, we have managed to make it to 5 years on this blog. That is freaking amazing.

Procrastination is the Thief of Time

In Mark Haddon’s new book, The Red House, one of the characters imagines writers sitting around in their dressing gown all day, trying to resist the distraction of daytime TV.

Considering how much we all enjoy writing, it’s amazing what writers will actually do to put off the moment of sitting down to write. I know I’ll love it when I start, I know I’ll feel great afterwards, but I do find myself putting the actual sitting down to write moment off.

In the past, to avoid writing, I have gone to the theatre (very enjoyable), cleaned the entire flat (not so enjoyable), done the laundry, fallen asleep, gone shopping (to the big shop miles away, not the little shop downstairs), done all my mending, ironing (ironing! I hate ironing) and gone to Hampton Court (bit excessive, but also very enjoyable).

I have tried to coax myself into it – ‘Just ten minutes, that’s all. You can manage ten minutes’. I have tried telling myself off ‘Stop messing about it and just do it!’. I have tried rewards ‘do five pages and you can have this chocolate bar’.

I know I’ll love it when I start, it’s just that moment of starting is difficult. It’s good to know I’m not the only writer to suffer this.

I know that rules are made to be broken and that most of us break a few now and again. But lately, in the race to be different, too many people are trying to write fiction in the present tense. Stop it already!
I am not sure how the rule to write in the past tense ever got started. Maybe it was part of the oral tradition long ago before fiction ever was written down. “I’m going to tell you a story about a man I knew many moons ago.”
Frankly, I think it just makes sense. New writers often struggle with tenses anyway. They tend to wander back and forth between present and past. So learning to stick to one tense is a mark of someone who has already been writing a bit.
Present tense jars me. I don’t know why. I guess because if it is happening now, I expect somehow to be able to see it.
Present tense with a third person point of view really throws me. How can I see from someone else’s eyes? I can hear the story when they are done living it, but I can’t experience it with them. Can I?
So for me, present tense in a novel interferes with my willing suspension of disbelief. I can’t focus enough to really get the satisfaction I get from a novel written in past tense.
Is that alienation of at least part of your projected readers worth it, just to do something a little differently?

Spirit is Willing, Body is Bleurgh

Once again I’ve fallen behind schedule, and once again it’s to do with my health. I have colitis – it’s mild, and mostly manageable. But every once in a while my body decides it’s going to start reacting badly to something in my diet, and I become very ill. No details, but you can imagine. Then I have weeks of trying to track down what exactly it is making me unwell, whilst I get sicker. (The upside is, once I find out what it is, I tend to recover fairly quickly).

So, although my mind is busily spinning stories and filling out the gaps and playing out scenes, my body is saying ‘can we just lie down for a very long time now please?’.

A lot of my favourite writers had illnesses, the prime example being the Brontes. It’s only now I really now how that must impacted on them – to have a mind spinning with stories, but not have the strength to hold a pen. Or the massive amount of energy it took to just sit and write when unwell.

I’m better now, and back to writing. But it’s very frustrating to have lost two days of writing because of a health problem. Inspiration can be so fickle, it’s annoying to have to ignore it because I can’t physically write.

Happy Memorial Day Everyone! by Christine Duncan

Michelle celebrated towel day this week. Drop her a note if you know what that means! (No, it’s not some obscure British holiday!

And we in America are once again celebrating Memorial Day.

I know that it’s fashionable to make fun of FaceBook, but I was feeling a little sad. Today Facebook helped make my world a little smaller–which is really why we’re all on Facebook, anyway, I think.

Memorial Day is one of those holidays that can make you sad. It has morphed from the day to honor our heroes to the day to honor all of those people we love who have passed away. And yet, I couldn’t go back to put flowers on the graves of the folks I’m missing.

But today, on Facebook, some kind soul posted a link to my home town news which displayed photos of the town where I was born, complete with the church my dad grew up in and was buried from. My cousin posted a sunset at the Jersey shore reminding me of many happy summers.
And my sister-in-law posted a pic of the flowers on her mom’s grave.

Because we authors are word people, we don’t talk much about pictures here. But sometimes, just a few pictures can bring you home.

Don’t you want to spend some time at your home today?