Category: #amwriting

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#amwriting editing Internet news Novel 1

Blog mishaps & Laying out the cards

I apologize for the brief outage of the blog yesterday; I decided to upload my website and put it live on the web since I had been working on it diligently all weekend. However, all weekend I have also been racking my mind with how to make my blog show up on the homepage of my website. I had attempted to install WordPress on the server, but the program kept crashing and I could not figure out how to customize the layout. Due to the seemingly never-ending frustration with WordPress, I decided I would uninstall it and keep with this current blog.

Then, I thought I had figured out how to transfer/re-publish all my blog posts from this one to the FTP server…only to find that the blog posts simply weren’t showing up on the index page as I had hoped. I know there was some line of code I must have been missing, but I could not figure it out on my own. The Blogger Help Group was no help, ironically; nobody had an answer to my question. So, long story short, the blog has migrated back to Blogger for the timebeing. If any kind soul out there knows how to solve this problem, please, drop me a line here.

Aside from that, I did have a pretty good day of editing/revising yesterday. I laid out the PowerPoint slides I had printed out of Novel 1 and I was very impressed to see my first novel’s work all laid out on the floor (see picture above). Last night, I went through the cards and cut out a few nonessential scenes; the next step now is to shuffle some scenes, rearrange some parts of the plot. I also typed a brief plot synopsis to send to a few of my close friends for critique/insight; have received one response so far, and looking forward to the other responses.

I shared the first draft of one of my short short stories with one of the online writing communities I’ve been a part of for some time; got some tips and revised the story. The story, entitled “Tight Jeans” is now available under “Other Works” via downloading (.pdf) or you can view it on Scribd. Please feel free to read and review the short. Let me know what you think.

More works will be available soon. =)

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#amreading #amwriting Internet

End of the week; extra notes.

Well, it’s been one of “those” weeks, but surprisingly I have managed to stay upbeat about things. Tonight I finally got around to purchasing my domain via DreamHost, so I am hoping by tomorrow I will be able to start playing around with creating my homepage. I’ll need to get back into creating graphics of some sort.

The movable outline stage of the editing process is moving along well (no pun intended, perhaps). Since I have a long weekend ahead of me, I aim to finish my outline by tomorrow or Saturday and start shuffling the cards. Originally, I was going to seek out plot advice from a larger group of people, but I think now I will only share it with a few people whom I trust.

In terms of the writing realm, my confidence in my story weaving has dropped a little during this week, perhaps from my general moodiness of the week. Also, I began reading Howard Mittelmark’s and Sandra Newman’s book, How NOT To Write A Novel, and I realize a lot of the elements they list in the book are in fact in my first draft. But, I keep reminding myself, that I still am working off of my first draft, not my final. I know I have a long way to go to polish the novel off, so I know I cannot get myself down over my first draft. Besides, I already see a lot of characters in the novel that need to be “killed off” for the re-write.

I wrote a piece of flash fiction last night and found myself rolling into confusion over the different types of work I can produce. For the longest time, I just kept referring to my shorter pieces as “short stories”, when in fact, they are supposed to be labeled “flash fiction”. I’ve been perusing WikiHow lately with their writing articles, and have refreshed my memory on the different writing techniques and so forth. Of course, this weekend I am going to reserve one day to go to the public library and do more research on writing/how to get published/etc. It will indeed be a scholarly weekend for me.

Well, here’s to the end of this week, and knowing that I survived.

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#amwriting Thought of the Moment

Passion.

What do you do when you realize that the passion you had for something was dormant for so long–only to have that passion be reawakened with a kind vengeance (a paradox, really) on the time that was lost to other supposed endeavors?

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#amwriting change Internet Twitter

Get the word out: New URL, Twitter URL, etc.

It’s already Sunday, but I feel like a lot happened over the course of the past couple of days: a lot of brainstorming, planning, etc. I have decided that I will not use a pen name, since I realized I was having trouble signing the pen name I had decided on (silly reason, but it’s important, isn’t it?). I have also decided that, instead of starting a whole new writing blog, I will simply use this current blog as my writing one.

You may notice that there have been some changes with this blog and my Twitter account–both have been “rechristened” with my name. No longer hiding behind my Internet moniker; I think I’ve grown out of that phase as well.

So please, update your bookmarks for this blog; the new url is http://helenekwong.blogspot.com/

I’m hoping by the end of today I will also have purchased my domain so I can begin building my website and getting the word out there. Oh yes, and I have also decided that I will self-publish my first book instead of going through an agent. Thank you to everyone for the additional insight, and I hope that you will join me along this journey of getting the word out on my works.

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#amwriting contest editing New Year reflection

After the holidays;

Sorry I was away for the past two weeks. I spent time back in my hometown with my family and didn’t spend much time on the computer at all. I suppose that’s how holidays are supposed to be spent, right?

Well, with the holiday and the time away from the computer, I also didn’t get much progress done on outlining my novel. I’m aiming to enter the novel into the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award on February 2, so I need to really get going on my editing and revising. I need to get the novel in decent shape for submission.

Another new year is here, and during the final hours of 2008, I was thinking about what I wanted to achieve for 2009. A lot of things happened during 2008, both good and bad; however, as you can see, I survived from all the experiences and managed to learn so much from the past year. I looked over my 101 list I had started last January, and it just amazed me to see the difference in my goals then and my goals now.

It seemed like July was a changing point in my life, since I last glimpsed at my 101 list at that point, and that was also when I was last enthusiastic about posting in this blog and other places online. Will it be the same again this year?

Well, I hope that with this new year that there will be many more changes and experiences to learn from. Cheers to you all for a good 2009.