Well, today is the day! The day I’ve
been tagged to post for the World Blog (Writing Process Blog). I’ve been anxiously
eagerly awaiting this day ever since fellow Pelican Book Group author, E.A. West, tagged me. Stop by her
blog to learn more about what she writes and her books. I know she has a new YA
novel coming soon which I'm looking forward to reading.
A bit about Cindy: She
is an award-winning author of more than 10 titles both in print and out of
print. She is also a mother, wife, teacher, and homeschooler. Originally from California,
Cindy transplanted to North Carolina with her husband and two sons nine years
ago. A previous middle school history and English teacher, she now writes
Inspirational Christian and Sweet Fiction in several sub-genres for the Adult
and the Young Adult. Visit her website and take a
look at the books she currently has on Amazon.
About my writing process:
1) What am I working
on?
The question is what am I not working
on? I have several projects going right now, but today I am going to talk about
my YA Faery Guardian series. The
first book in the series was published way back in 2010 and due to personal
circumstances I was unable to write the remaining stories. Well, I received my
rights back to that story and I am planning to self-publish the series in the
near future. Book 1 Struck By Conscience
(previously published), Book 2 Sold My Soul to a Frog (manuscript complete),
and Book 3 Mirrored Beauty (outline plotted and ready to begin writing). The
tagline for this series is: Urban
Fairytales for the Modern Teenager.
2) How does my work differ from others
of its genre?
I think the voice is very much like Meg
Cabot’s Princess Diary series. I like my books to be fun and humorous because
life is already too serious. There is a fairytale element in each book, but not
really any magic. Honestly, I think they are quite unique.
3) Why do I write what I do?
I write YA because I love reading it. I
started reading them when I was a teen and I’m still doing it. I also taught
middle school and I think the genre just stuck with me. My husband likes to say
that I don’t want to grow up and I hope that’s true.
4) How does my writing process work?
I almost always begin with characters.
In this series it was my first Faery Guardian, Dahlia, and her old-styled
speech. It’s like having a Regency-era character in a modern day story. Then
came Dahlia’s human charge, Charisma and her 2 other friends Avril and Deena.
Next came the 2 other Faery Guardians, Brimble, who appears as a talking frog
and Nova, the magic mirror. Then comes the plot. I do try to write out what I
call a “Skeleton Plot.” Just enough to keep me going but not so detailed that
my creativity feels cornered. I like to have main plot points and then allow my
creative muse to take me on a ride to reach those points. I am an insatiable
self-editor which slows my writing down. I have learned that even though I may
want to edit, edit, edit as I go because it just doesn’t seem quite right, I
have to keep plowing through the words and worry about editing later. I did
that with a NANOWRIMO book this last November and wrote a 60k+ word book in 22
days. It was amazing!
Thank you for joining me today on my
special World Blog Day. I have tagged a couple more authors who will be posting on
their blogs July 22nd. Make sure to stop by and visit them.
No comments:
Post a Comment