Writing Kryptonite

As a writer, I've found Twitter to be an invaluable source of information, support, and today it even provided inspiration for this blog post when Georgia McBride sent a tweet reminding us writers to be aware of our weaknesses.

I know I'm not perfect. Far from it. So, I began pondering my weakness, my Writing Kryptonite if you will. The one thing that I do that will destroy my story if left unchecked. It wasn't hard to figure out. In fact, I came upon it almost immediately -- Dialogue.

People find my obession with a great/funny/profound line quite humorous, but I can't help but appreciate a well-written piece of dialogue. I know just how hard it is to craft. Or at least how hard it is for me.

I'm sure there are people out there for whom dialogue is natural, witty, and sparkling on the first try. Me? I have my gems that appear out of nowhere, but for the most part it takes me five or six revisions before I can read my dialogue without wincing at the inane and unbelievable words on the page.

The truth is, I talk funny. At least by modern standards. I grew up dirt poor (with 8 kids in the house, how could it be any other way?) and I think without realizing it, I overcompensated. I didn't want anyone thinking of me as uneducated poor white trash, so I absorbed everything I could. I worked hard to perfect my speech and expand my vocabulary. And unless I'm riled up, you will never even notice an accent.

So, it's safe to say that I don't speak like other people my age. A fact highlighted whenever a reader tells me a normal person would never say a line I've written on the page.

I'm okay with this weakness because I'm aware of it. It's the first thing I point out to my earliest readers when asking for a critique. And when they come back laughing, I understand.

So tell me readers, what's your writing Kryptonite?


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7 Things About Me - Again

Okay guys, I should have done this like two weeks ago when the wonderful Sara Furlong Burr over at the Starving Novelist presented me with this award:





This award comes with a few rules:

1. Thank and link to the person who nominated you.
2. Share seven random facts about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 5 new-found blogging buddies.
4. Contact the winners to congratulate them.

And since I had just done a 7 things about me post, I was pretty sure you'd all be tired of hearing about me, so I decided to wait a few days.

In any case let me start out by thanking Sara. Thank you Sara!!!! You should all check out her blog here. She is amazing and talented. And she likes my blog, which means she's smart.

Now on to another 7 random things about me:

1) I love musicals. This includes all cheesy Nickelodeon / Disney Channel musicals like this one here:



Believe it or not I get this from my father who shared with me his love of musicals and classic black & white films, along with his love of science fiction and honey roasted peanuts.

My father's favorite was always West Side Story.



My favorite is a Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers musical called Shall We Dance?

2) I don't cry in public. I'm not a person who is comfortable showing my emotions. This is not to say that I don't cry. I do. I just prefer to do it alone, in the privacy of my own bathroom, or in the car on my ride home from work.

When my father died last year, I took a lot of flack for my failure to cry at his funeral. Several relatives jokingly called me a sociopath. All I can say to those people is that just because I don't grieve in the same manner as they do, doesn't mean I don't grieve. I'm human. I hurt, my heart breaks, and believe it or not, I cry. Just because I choose not to be a broken mess in public does not make me a bad person.


3) My sister Katie is my best friend. Since she is only 11 months older than I am, we are what is known as Irish twins. We went through school in the same grade and have done practically everything together since we were babies.

Katie got me into a lot of trouble when we were younger and is the inspiration for a lot of my work. She is now a proud army wife and a mother of two. That's her below with her husband Casey.

4) I was due on Halloween but not born until November 20th. If I'd been born today they would never have allowed me to remain in the womb so long. It obviously hasn't adversely affected me. I think.


5) My favorite song is Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

6) I'm addicted to Coca Cola. I hate Pepsi. And I prefer to drink it in the small 12 oz. bottles.


7) And last but not least, the first creative writing project I ever tried to share with the world was a play in the sixth grade about a princess who was turned into a tree. Genius. I know.

The opening did not go so well. The lead was sick and didn't show up, so I spent the entire time puking in the bathroom. I'm so good under pressure.

Now to pass on the award to five new blogger friends:

1. Terri Rochenski
2. Kelcey McKinley
3. Allie Burke
4. Claudia C
5. Angela Kulig


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Kaidan Alenko is Back

Kaidan Alenko in ME3


After his absence from Mass Effect 2, it seems that Kaidan Alenko will be returning for Mass Effect 3. I love this man. That is all.

No seriously, I realize this post may seem like it makes absolutely no sense in the grand scheme of my writing life, but these games -- Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and the upcoming Mass Effect 3 -- comprise one of the greatest stories I've ever experienced in my life.

Maybe it is because the story allows me to create the main character, Commander Shepard. In the first game I get to design her physical appearance and pick her background - where she grew up, her parents, her military career, even the fact that she is a female, is all up to me. And throughout the game the choices she makes, the paths she chooses, these are my choices. I get to decide whether my Shepard does the right/moral thing, cuts corners to save time, or makes decisions based on her gut feeling.

Even if these choices lead her to mercilessly kill for the greater good of the galaxy.

Her choices affect the gameplay, and some of these choices could end up getting your squad members killed. But I think it's the life and death type of decision making that allows me to feel a deeper, more personal connection to my heroine than I would ever get from reading a book. I'm responsible for her. I'm going to feel just as guilty as she does if a choice I have her make means somebody dies.

For me it's just like writing. I have to make the hard, sad, emotionally eviscerating choices for my characters because I know that it is how they would respond.

In the first game, I chose Kaidan Alenko as my Shepard's love interest. I spent a lot of the game solidifying this burgeoning relationship. However, during one mission, Kaidan and another squad member, Ashley Williams, both get pinned down by enemy forces. They are in two separate locations. Saving one ultimately means leaving the other to die.

I adored Ashley. I knew her history. We'd fought together. She was my Shepard's friend. Still, I had no choice but to save Kaidan. My Shepard loved him.

So tell me, how can making this choice for her not emotionally cement me to my character?

My brother Joey teases me relentlessly about my affection for this game. He believes the time I took to play it bordered on obsession. But I worked hard to make sure my team was ready. I equipped my ship and my team with every available resource. I spent hours scanning planets for raw materials. I talked to my teammates. I delved into their lives, their history, their hopes and dreams, because I could not, like my brother, simply play the game and accept the result.

If I was going to be responsible for these people I needed to know who they were.

He lost team members in the final battle of Mass Effect 2. This would have been an unacceptable outcome for me. Not because of pride. But because I know that the Shepard I created could not live with the result. It would've devastated her.

I know that I can't break this hero in the second act. I need her in the best condition that I can manage. A bigger threat, a much greater battle, awaits us in Mass Effect 3. And I can't win if I'm playing with a worn and defeated Shepard. Having Kaidan by my Shepard's side will only make things easier.

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Darkness/Exposed Giveaway

Confessions of a Bookaholic is having a Blogoversary Giveaway!


Prize:

•  1 winner will receive a copy of Exposed by Kimberly Marcus, and an ARC of Darkness Becomes Her by Kely Keaton.
• Swag includes: Desires of the Dead sticker, a promise bookmark, and a Dark days of the Supernatural bookmark.

Details on how to enter are here.


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7 Things About Me

I don't want to gush, but seriously, I'm overwhelmed by the online writing community. It's friendly. It's amazing. It's more supportive than my therapist. Okay, so maybe I want to gush a little.

I took the day off of Twitter yesterday so I could concentrate on a new WIP that had been gnawing on my brain. Of course as the evening wound down and I started to prepare for bed, I couldn't help but sneak a peak at my tweets. I'm glad I did, because I discovered that I had been given this award by the lovely and talented Ashley Graham @ http://argraham.blogspot.com/:



Wow! Thanks Ashley. I love this award!

This award comes with a few rules however:

1. Thank and link to the person who nominated you.
2. Share seven random facts about yourself.
3. Pass the award along to 5 new-found blogging buddies.
4. Contact the winners to congratulate them.


 Okay, so let's start!

Thank you again Ashley! You're awesome.

7 random facts about me:

1) I'm intensely shy. Like the-mere-thought-of-public-speaking-makes-me-vomit shy. Since I've always viewed this as a deep personal weakness, I try really hard to hide it. Unfortunately, this leads most people to believe I'm stuck up.  Which I'm not.


2) I have a huge family. I have 4 older sisters -- Sarah, Joanne, and Katie (I'll talk about them on this blog a lot). I have 1 younger brother -- Joey -- who was born on my 8th birthday. My mother went into labor while we were blowing out the birthday candles.

I also have 3 additional older sisters from my father's first marriage -- Michelle, Jodie, and Carrie -- and 15 nieces and nephews.

The picture below is from when I was really young so it doesn't include Joey, but that's me behind my father's head, wearing a shirt that was a pink version of one he owned. Oh, how I adored my daddy!

Also, FYI - the little girl in the bottom left corner is not a member of the family. To this day I still have no idea who she is or why she's in this picture.

3) I'm addicted to the Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 video games. Each of the two games takes 30+ hours of gameplay to complete and I've played each several times. You play as the heroic Commander Shepard and you race to save the galaxy from a race of sentient machines known as the Reapers.





This game is epic. There are aliens, exploding aliens, almost magic-like powers called biotics, and even a little romance. I would compare it to any great novel I've ever read. The best part is that the story line of the game changes with each decision you make. I could play through a 1,000 times and never have exactly the same experience.



4) I eat all of my food in a circular pattern. Chewing the edges off and saving the middle for last. I know, strange, right? There's just something about the very center of everything that I like to save for my last bite.



5) Growing up my father always told me I should be a lawyer. I originally thought it was a comment on my intelligence. Came to find out later it was merely because I love to debate. Most of the time I don't even have a strong opinion on the topic. But since I like to get to the root of everything I will continue to ask questions of those who do and throw out any scenario where their position might not be the most logical.

For the longest time I had no idea that people saw this as my being argumentative. I simply looked at it as character study. I just wanted to know why they had this opinion. I wanted to know what events transpired in their lives to lead them to the point where the point of view they held was the only point of view they could see as right.



6) I on the other hand wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up. Of course back then I was certain that by the time I was an adult we'd be exploring the galaxy Starfleet style.




Which brings me to my next random fact about me:



7) I had a huge crush on Spock. I loved him! Everything about him from his pointy ears and weird eyebrows to his calm and logical approach to every situation.

My sisters Joanne, Katie and I would play Star Trek all the time. Joanne would always play Captain Kirk, Katie was Dr. McCoy, and I got to be Spock. I think part of me truly believed I would one day grow up and marry the Vulcan.




Okay, that's it about me. Now to pass the award along to my fellow bloggers:

1. Keriann Greaney Martin
2. Stacy Green
3. Kara Malinczak
4. Sara Furlong Burr
5. Kate Larkindale

Okay ladies, come and get your award!!

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