Outlining vs Writing by discovery

One of the blogs I follows is Miss Snark's First Victim.
AT: http://misssnarksfirstvictim.blogspot.com/ .
Apparently, she received some advice that her book would be better if she did a detailed outline first. Puul-Leaseeee! I appreciated her response, which was to tell her what is wrong with her book but do not tell her how she has to write it.

When I began Moon Tree Brother, I tried to force myself to outline. I tried graphs, index cards, organizational charts, standing on my head (not really, that would not be a pretty - or safe- sight). But, I tried.

What I discovered was that it did not work for me. What works for me is writing by discovery. I start to do research on one thing and bump into something that I just have to include in the book. It may not make the final cut, as my beloved Roma (gypsy) scene did not make it, but it keeps me going.

My manuscript for book one, Moon Tree Brothers, is winging it's way back home from my personal editor, my beautiful sixth grade teacher daughter, as I write. I cannot wait to get onto my final edit before sending it out. In the meantime, I am working on book two.

With a working title of Moon Tree Madness, I am having a blast. Things are getting crazy in the Moon Tree and I only slightly hyperventilate that I have no idea where this will end before I remember that I had no idea where book one would end for a very long time. It actually has had two different endings. This is a lot better than the twenty-seven different openings it has had.

The thing is, we each have our own process. I do not think my book would work near as well if I tried to force it into an outline I did before I had discovered all the wonderful things that happened along the way.

More power to you, if you outline. It's all about what works for you.

VISTA, Agents and Tense. Hmm, a correlation?

So, here I sit fighting with VISTA, unable to write as I must type to write. I can hand write notes but my hand is unable to keep up with my brain for anything else. If I were on a desert island, I suppose I would get used to it, but really I am supposed to be sewing a quilt for my grandson for Christmas. But, no, I am screwing up the only computer I can work on.

It had two or possibly five versions of VISTA on it so I go online, find out what to do about it, download a program to fix it. Fix it! HAH! I now have nothing on the computer but five versions of VISTA and AOL. No Word, dang! No Jasc! No, nothing.

So, I go online again and decide this is a time to find possible agents. I decided to start by going down Miss Snark's First Victim blog list of blogging agents. And, guess what I found! I found an agent who has my same "Tense problem." AgentObvious

I have a horrible time with tense. The writer's group, in Wyoming, pointed out my tense issues, my daughter catches it and my grandson catches it and I read it and go, "HUH?"

I finally found out that I catch most of my tense problems, if I keep a book (it has examples of tense) open on my lap, as I edit, and look at it every paragraph, and sometimes sentence, to fix my tense. I really felt like such a horrible writer that I could not just automatically know my tense was off.

I am so reassured. Thank you AgentObvious.

Great resources and a contest on the web

The web site is going pretty well now. If I knew CSS better, I would probably be done by now. I cannot wait to be done, as I have been very neglectful of my blogs, twitter, etc and I am constantly tired, as I am waking up in the middle of the night and spending an hour writing on book two. Hey, it's when I get my ideas.

On the non-website side, I have been internet networking more. I just caught up on ideas on Writing for Kids (While Raising Them) and got a great news flash on We Interrupt Your Ideas for a Special Announcement « Writing for Kids (While Raising Them). Those who have 30 ideas by the end of the month, will be in a random drawing for a neat grand prize.

TA DA!!!! Jill Corcoran of Herman Agency - Representing Professional Artists, Authors, & Children's Book Illustrators and Lauren E. MacLeod of The Strothman Agency, LLC Advocates for books that matter. will each take one of the winners and read five of the winner's one sentence fleshed out idea proposals. Cool, huh??

And, on to the second great thing: I have a 1000 words of my YA novel in with Miss Snark's First Victim for some critiquing and was checking up on her site and found out that one of her follower/entrants, Lisa and Laura Write: Spread the Love, Win a Kindle, used the feedback they got on that site to revise their manuscript and score an agent.

Their book A Kate Lowry Mystery: The Haunting of Pemberly Brown (sorry, the link would not work) is now being published. And, they are celebrating by giving away a Lisa and Laura Write: Spread the Love, Win a Kindle KINDLE!!! (same link, so shoot me). But, and this is a cool link about their journey to publish their first book. Lisa and Laura Write: The LiLa Publishing Timeline.

We've all been waiting a lifetime for that, Right??? So, go to their site and enter to win a Kindle and read a neat blog. And, check out PiBoldMo, get 30 ideas and have five sentences ready for an Agent's review.

My webpage week

This is the umpteenth version of this webpage and I like the look but, what torture putting it together.

I spent Monday starting the page, all the search words, title, etc, the background and the banner up and centered. Then, moved onto the line of links that will be next.

I wanted to draw them myself and not use anything borrowed from a free site on the web. Geez, I painted portraits for a living for fifteen years, I should be able to do a colorful enough drawing to pass. Ya think????

I started a new sketchbook for this book and have pages of sketches I have started and discarded. That is nothing new. I have a reasonable set of sketches for the links, used Jasc Paint Shop to eliminate the background and put them up and guess what, the background showed. Did it again two more times and finally gave up and just blacked out the background.

I tried a little CSS again, went back to HTML. I tried using a template from HTML Editor, Flash & Web Design Software CoffeeCup Software, which I own, and have gone to using a table with two rows. I know there has to be a better way. I have always put the link list down the left hand side. My last version of Coffee Cup had a whole bunch of templates too, but I had to reformat and lost it all and, while I have upgraded, I have yet to find the long list of templates.

So, now I have a background, a banner, and a row of hand drawn icons to dress up the link buttons. As in all things with this webpage, it is all trial and error. Right now the buttons do not link. So, that is next.

In the meantime, I have entered the first 1,000 words of my novel in Miss Snark's First Victim critique. I could not find the complete rules, so here is hoping I did it right.