Monthly Archives: July 2009

Finally! Light!
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This is a classic Eureka moment. (I love the Eurekas.)

I had been working in two projects for the last 17 years (yeah… life got in the way…) and I have almost a thousand pages written with no direction whatsoever.

I used to work in the corporate business all that time and my Muse was held prisoner in the back of my head.

Yesterday I was working on lesson 3, The Sentence, and could not manage to make my Muse speak louder until I finally named her (Amelea) and shaped her into a light bubble that goes over my notebook and stops on what she likes and moves away of what she think it stinks. I actually can see this in my head, as crazy as it sounds. First I thought it was a stupid technique (name and picture your Muse… Ha!).

Today, I woke up in the middle of the night from sleeping in the couch with my loved-one to walk the dog, and when I came back I could resist to peek at my notebook and started writing and testing sentences and… VIOLA!!

I was pushing my main character to be one guy, but Amelea pings me… “What if you put HER in command of the story?” I listened and…

Find out what happened here… You do NOT need to be logged in to read this post.

Holly’s “Write A Book With Me” offer
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Current student writing discussion:

From the comments it seemed as if a number of Thinking Sideways students are taking up the offer to write with her.

Want To Write A Book With Me?

Maybe we could get together here and share the projects that we are working on for this.
You could start by posting answers to the following questions:

1. What level are you taking up the offer: beginner, intermediate, advanced?
2. Are you doing a new project or working on something in progress?
3. If you are working on something in progress what is your current wordcount?
4. If you are working on something new where are you in the planning?
5. Can you share your story sentence, genre, general feel etc.?
6. How many other writing projects do you have on the go beside this?

To join this discussion, log in, then follow this link.

Genre Research: Speculative Fiction Romance
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Current student research discussion:

While I usually consider my stuff to be fantasy or science fiction (either adult or YA) — both genres I’m quite familiar with — I’ve come to realize that a fair bit of my writing might also fit in the fantasy romance, supernatural romance or sci-fi romance genres. To that end, I’d like to trawl for recommendations so that I can get a start on book mapping, just in case those genres prove fruitful. So I’m dipping briefly back into Step 6 for a bit. ;)

I’m looking for books that include:

Speculative fiction elements and rich worldbuilding with strong female characters and a focus on romance.

Speculative fiction elements mean anything fantasy, science fiction or paranormal — I’m not getting too specific here, so fantasy worlds with magic would work, or space ships, or psionicists, or alchemy, or dragons, or witches, or werewolves in modern cities — almost anything, as long as it’s out of the ordinary. (The one sub-subcategory I’m iffiest on is straight-up horror; while vampires and werewolves and psychics and creepiness is fine, stuff intended to be really scary tends not to push my buttons.)

Rich worldbuilding is, I realize, a bit fuzzy. What I mean is that the elements of the setting that are made up (whether it’s the whole setting in the case of a dragons-and-magic fantasy, for instance, or just the specifics of werewolf society in a werewolves-in-modern-LA story) are internally consistent and don’t appear to just be tacked on.

By strong female characters I simply mean that I like prominent female characters who have agency, who act and are effective rather than simply being acted upon.

And by a focus on romance I mean a primary or very prominent secondary romance plot — not just a standard fantasy or science fiction novel with a love subplot (since I’ve read a lot of those already and don’t feel the need to get to know that genre), but romance-centric books. And, er, while explicitness is most definitely not a requirement, I am interested in erotic/sensual romances, so those would be particularly appreciated.

Per Holly’s suggestion in the last Q&A, I’d prefer suggestions for books first published in the past five years, and three years would be better. YA that fits most or all of the criteria would also be fine.

Thank you in advance for your help! I’m feeling hopeful that this will result in a lot of productive reading and mapping. :D

To participate in this research or simply to read the topic, log in, then follow this link.

NEW! Private Boards: Student/ Grad Feature
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Students who have been enrolled in the course through at least lesson six, and all grads, may request a private, password-protected board with which to work with a crit parter (or crit partners).

These boards take a bit of time for me to set up, so will be created on a first-requested, first served basis on my schedule.

Here are the Private Board rules:

Please note that these boards will ONLY work for enrolled students or graduates of the Think Sideways course. Your course membership is what gives you access to them—your password restricts access to those students you’ve invited to join you, but will not allow non-students to use your board.

Boards are provided for course-related and writing-related work, and the normal discussions that arise from such work. Boards used for purposes other than working on writing will be deleted. (Examples: Turning your board into an online dating service or virtual frat party.)

Boards that go without posts for more than three months will be considered abandoned. Participants will be given notice, but if none respond, board and contents will be deleted without further notice.

If you would like a private board, send me a private message (Log In: You can then use the PM link from this linked post) and include your Student ID and the Student IDs of your crit partners.