http://www.karenleefield.com/blog the joys and frustrations of a writer Sat, 29 Nov 2008 01:45:34 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I used an email address for the submission of Cat’s Eyes that I rarely receive or send anything from. Moments ago, I realised I hadn’t checked it for several days. Imagine my surprise when I heard the tell-tale “ding” that announces new mail has been received. Immediately ... http://www.karenleefield.com/blog/cat%e2%80%99s-eyes-full-manuscript-requested.html I actually started writing this post on Sunday 23 November 2008, but never got around to finishing it…or posting it. This is how the post started: Today, when I complained about the difficulty I’m having with the edit of Mirror Image, someone close to me asked what I was trying ... http://www.karenleefield.com/blog/finding-a-way-forward.html I've been tagged to do this Birthday Month Personality Meme by Sherry. I've always found birthday (or zodiac) traits to be amusing and weirdly close to the mark, so let's see how this one measures up (or should I be saying how close I measure up to it?). The instructions: 1. ... http://www.karenleefield.com/blog/the-birthday-month-personality-meme.html Imagine if we could write the perfect manuscript in one draft. How brilliant would that be? Of course, I’m dreaming here as very few writers would be able to do this with any amount of success. I feel it would be impossible to write 100,000 words and ... http://www.karenleefield.com/blog/the-perfect-manuscript-in-one-draft.html When I started out on the Anthology Project (back in early 2007) I did so with enthusiasm and excitement. For several years, I had been trying to help writers become published and finally, I believed, I had found the way to do just that. Whilst receiving and reading submissions ... http://www.karenleefield.com/blog/anthology-woes-amazon-try-to-rule-the-world.html Some weeks ago I mentioned that I want to submit Cat’s Eyes for consideration. The manuscript has been completed for some time, but I haven’t done anything with it since entering it into a competition last year. Anyway, once the decision was made to submit it I set ... http://www.karenleefield.com/blog/cats-eyes-submitted.html I was recently at Jim Butcher’s blog – author of the Dresden Files. There is a lot to read there, but I was especially interested in the article about using an arc to plan a story. His suggestion is to simply draw an arc on a piece of ... http://www.karenleefield.com/blog/planning-a-scene.html I just spent an hour logging in to a number of websites I’m subscribed to or a member of and have cancelled my memberships. You will no longer find me at places like MySpace, Twitter, Issuu, Bebo and quite a few others. The reason I deleted my accounts ... http://www.karenleefield.com/blog/bet-you-didnt-even-notice.html The minor character in Mirror Image I mentioned a few days ago – the one who started out one dimensional – is now a fully fledged person. It didn’t take much work – several days of thinking about it, then finding the right place to add in additional information ... http://www.karenleefield.com/blog/think-before-you-write.html I started the editing phase for Mirror Image on the weekend. There are six view points (I thought there were five, but discovered I was wrong) so I decided to create six files and work on each viewpoint separately. Sounded like a good plan to me. That ... http://www.karenleefield.com/blog/minor-characters-deserve-the-same-depth.html