April writing check-in

This year is rumbling along faster than my writer-self likes. Already a third of the way through 2024, it’s time to be accountable for the goals I set in January’s blog post and see how I’ve done so far.

For me, the best way to achieve goals is by working to deadlines.

Goal 1
Finalise a synopsis
I’ve completed 500- and 1,000-word synopses (thanks to competition deadlines).
I’m planning to have a 400-word synopsis completed by mid-May.

Finalise a query letter
Not done… no motivating deadline attached to this – yet!

Goal 2
Pitch my manuscript
I’ve booked my pitches in for August…

Goal 3
Run through a few more drafts and polish it (my manuscript) up
I’ve progressed on the current draft and have committed to sending chunks of 10,000 words per week to an initial beta reader. The plan is to address their feedback in the next draft and get it out to other beta readers so it can be polished for pitching in August.

Goal 4
Keep blogging – I’m aiming for one blog post a month. Any more is a bonus (for me). It’s all writing!
It sure is and so far, I’m on track, one post a month!

Goal 5
Contribute to flash fiction and writing competitions
– My entry in the inaugural RWA flash fiction competition is published on their website https://romanceaustralia.com/flash-fiction/.
– I’ve entered three writing competitions so far this year (apart from the preparation that goes into entering the competitions, the gold here is the judges feedback).
– The competitions’ requirements forced me tackle the synopses. I love that kind of motivation. More importantly it made me distill my manuscript into the essentials and now I’m constantly referring back to the 1000-word synopsis to ensure the manuscript’s storyline, romance and tension are on track.

* Accountability + Goals = Progress.

Peeking out from behind my writing…

Light’s, camera, action!

Or should I say make-up, hair, outfits?

I’m still buzzing from a photo shoot. My first one ever!

The background – a short story I wrote, placed equal second in a competition and I needed to provide a ‘head shot’.

Easy, right? I scrolled through my photos, not many of me as I’m usually the one taking the photos. What few there were, didn’t shout WRITER or AUTHOR.

I gnawed on my fingernails for far too long over this, deadline looming. I’m an introvert, the writer behind the words, I couldn’t put myself out there – could I?

Serendipitously I met a friend for lunch between Christmas and New Years and shared my news. ‘You need to get a professional photo’, she insisted and before I could crawl back into my introvert shell, she whipped out her phone and showed me a photo shoot her author friend recently had.

My eyes widened. We were similar ages. This is exactly how I wanted to be portrayed. Barely there make-up, stylish but casual and very approachable. Most importantly, the photos shouted AUTHOR.

Could I do this? The introvert chewed her nails, she was doubtful but the aspirational author inside of me was screaming yes, yes, yes!

The friend I was having lunch with is a coach and a culture and leadership expert. She’s all about helping people achieve enduring success. She thinks long-term!

According to her, this wasn’t about me providing a head shot for the launch of the anthology my story was to be part of. This was about my future self, my career as an author. She was seeing book launches, author interviews, panels and podcasts.

When I picked myself up from the floor (I was laughing so much), I knew she was right (about the photos). I wanted what she (her author friend) was having.

And so I contacted the photographer, Dominika Ferenz dominikaferenz.com. We met for coffee and discussed what I was looking for, my thoughts on make-up (I didn’t usually wear much at all) and outfits (I had some great pieces from last century (no joke!).

Then the day arrived. Dominika chased all my introvert worries away. We decided on outfit combinations and then Sophia sophiaivylee.com did my hair and make-up.

What a team and what an amazing, fun and relaxing afternoon.

Excited to say – I now have photos that shout ‘AUTHOR’ and I couldn’t be happier.

I’m owning my author journey.

Confessions of a Podcast Junkie

Reading – Writing Craft - Writing Tips – Motivation – Inspiration

I’m a podcast junkie.

Just love ’em!

Especially ones which lift my spirits, inspire and motivate me. Podcasts are perfect to accompany me when I’m walking or in those ‘in between, less exciting but essential moments’ – meal preparation, hanging up washing and driving.

If I need to switch my brain and focus from a ‘non-writing task’ to ‘writing’, I listen to one of the podcasts below. They inspire, motivate and get me in the mood to tackle whatever writing project I’m working on.

These are my favourite Aussie ones! I get giddy when they drop into my feed.
This is by no means an exhaustive list and I’m always excited to discover new ones.

1. Talking Aussie Books (Claudine Tinellis)
2. Writes 4 Women (Pamela Cook)
3. Writer’s Book Club (Michelle Barraclough)
4. So You Want to be a Writer (Valerie Khoo)
5. Ask the Author (Jodi Gibson)
6. That Rom Com Pod (Clare Fletcher and Karina May)
7. The Word Count (Jo Dixon, Fiona Taylor, Jacq Ellem)
8. Writers off the Page (Chenee Marrapodi)
9. Your Dream Life (Kristina Karlsson)

Only through writing craft, writing tips and writing will my writing improve.

Pressing restart

Hello again!

It’s been three years since I stepped away from this blog. It wasn’t intended to be a complete or even a long break. In hindsight, the timing was perfect, the world changed in 2020.

During that time, getting lost in a book was my ‘happy place’. I chose to read romance, guaranteed happy-every-afters. Nothing serious that made my heart sink.

Looking back on 2023

Each year I choose a word as my theme for the year. One that will help me achieve what I want to achieve in writing and other parts of my life.
Last year was PLAN.
It was a cracker!
With PLAN constantly on my mind and with the aid of my diary, it helped me set goals and carve out time to write. I achieved milestones I’d only dreamed about.

Looking forward in 2024

My word is BREATHE.
There is so much I want to achieve in the writing space this year and taking deep cleansing breaths while juggling work and family life is going to be essential. I want to:

• Finalise a synopsis and query letter
• Pitch my manuscript (to do that I need to run through a few more drafts and polish it up)
• Keep blogging – I’m aiming for one blog post a month. Any more is a bonus (for me). It’s all writing!
• Contribute to flash fiction and writing competitions.

Immersing myself in the world of writing

In the last few years I’ve focused on improving my writing and connecting with other writers by:

• Attending writing conferences.
• Connecting with writers and authors on Instagram.
• Doing writing sprints with fellow writers.
• Joining a Writers Group in the genre I’m writing.
• Taking part in Romance Writers Australia (RWA) writing competitions.
• Discussing all things writing with other aspiring writers on the RWA e-loop.
• Writing flash fiction to prompts.
• Listening to podcasts focused on books, authors and writing craft.

More about these in future blog posts.

Only through writing, will my writing improve.

No goals. Just be.

Kikki K

New Year’s resolution: ‘No goals. Just be.’

I’m stepping away from this blog. I may dip in and out from time to time, but unlike this time last year, I’m making no promises to myself.

I’ll continue to write because I love to. I want the buzz of creating a story without worrying about anything else. No self-imposed end goals or deadlines.

Happy 2020!

My NaNoWriMo Experience

I’m still catching my breath. It’s been a month of mad scribbling.

November was National Novel Writing Month and it’s been a goal of mine to do it ever since someone threw the acronym at me years ago.

Writing 50,000 words in only 30 days sounded insane. It’s at least 1,666 words a day to stay on target.

I wrote a staggering (for me) 43,227 words. That’s a first draft of a new novel I didn’t have in October.

Ask my family – I was insane! I spoke in monosyllables at home, wrote at the dinner table, at the hairdressers, in my lunch break, in the car, watching swimming classes. Anywhere I could.

I’d chosen to hand write my way to the end goal. A migraine friendly compromise – definitely recommend!

There were a few days where a migraine struck and the words evaporated. Word count zero.
And there were a few amazing days where the words poured out and I wrote close to 3,000 words.

One of those days was the train ride to Katoomba. 34 NaNoWriMers met at Central Station, took over a carriage and we did writing sprints all the way to the Blue Mountains. It was loud-quiet-intense. Once in the mountains we dispersed for a few hours to wander around, write in the library, café’s, pubs and parks,  then we climbed back on the train again to write our way back to Sydney.

Go November! What an experience.

Organising my words

I’m in the middle of a Scrivener trial. Day 16.
I love writing in Word but after years of listening to anecdotes about software to handle long unwieldy manuscripts, plus feeling the strain of mine, I’m taking the leap.

 

Trialing the leap actually.

It’s a 30 day trial and each of these days starts the moment I double click on the icon. I don’t need to block out 30 consecutive days. A big plus for me. My writing time doesn’t work like that (unfortunately).

What I like?

Inside I’ve broken my MS chapters further down into scenes. Love it!

With too much backstory upfront, I can now see (on the screen) where to break it up and drip feed in later.

Scenes are easier to edit. I’m asking questions like: does this scene have a purpose? Is it moving the story forward or is it just a filler (delete!).

I could ask these same questions in Word but I couldn’t ‘see’ my scenes summarised.

The single POV in Kallie’s Beach has troubled me throughout my sixth draft. My gut was telling me that the main guy Matt, needed a voice on the page too.

With a scene listing I can see exactly where his POV needs to be written.
So much better than the endless scroll back and forward in Word through 28 chapters.

It’s like playing with a new toy. So much fun!

I love the scene synopsis feature in its at-a-glance cork board view. I know I’m only using a fraction of what Scrivener can do but frankly I can’t be bothered reading the manual. If I’m stuck with a feature I just look it up.

So far so good. It’s winning me over one day at a time.

14 days to go…

Why Mummy Drinks

Confession: In my February blog: Fiction vs Self-improvement (or The Deckchair Divide), I incorrectly classified Why Mummy Drinks by Gill Sims as non-fiction.

While on holiday, every time I walked past a woman reclining on a deck chair by the pool, she was reading this. I was full of admiration, thinking it was a self-help book.

If I had peered closer, I would have seen: ‘The diary of an exhausted mum’.

Fast forward several months and its bright yellow spine called to me from a library bookshelf. I pulled it out, surprised to see it on the fiction shelf. Casually I started reading. My shoulders shook, tears ran down my face. It took all my self-control to stop laughing out loud. My vision completely blurred by the end of page 2.

For me, definitely funniest read of 2019!

Talking… and writing

In between editing Kallie’s Beach, I’m listening to two fabulous podcasts:

Talking… Aussie Books by Claudine Tinellis.
Interviews with Australian authors like Cassie Hamer, her debut novel is After the Party and long established authors like Michael Robotham whose latest book is Good Girl, Bad Girl.

Stories Behind the Story with Better Reading by Cheryl Arkle.
Interviews with authors from all over the world plus a series of interviews, Better Reading on Writing, which focuses on the craft of writing, from dialogue and character building all the way to getting published.

These podcasts are perfect if you are:

• a writer and love to be inspired by how published authors started out, what interests them, their writing process and their journey to the book shelf.
• a reader who wants to know more about authors, their books and where they draw inspiration.
• learning the craft and want to hear from the experts.
• a fan of great interviews.

 

 

Pitch ‘hopefully’ Perfect

A pitching opportunity? To publishers. I had to take it.

‘Leap, and the net will appear.’ This well known quote was my mantra years ago. It helped me when I was struggling over a life changing decision. It scrolled across my computer screen, a constant reminder that sometimes we have to believe in ourselves enough to take a leap.

It’s always stayed with me.

I’ve never pitched before. I have a finished (5+ drafts) manuscript Kallie’s Beach, so why not? I needed to pitch it sometime and if nothing else, this would be good practice.

So how hard could it be?

OMG!

How to jam an 80,000 word manuscript into a three minute pitch?

This is what I learnt:

• Know who you’re pitching to and what they like (to publish).
• Know your story intimately (yeah you’ve written it but are all the plot threads sorted?)
• Write it, write it and write it again (the pitch).
• Read it ‘out loud’ to yourself. (It may sounds amazing in your own head. Out loud – maybe not.)
• Rewrite it.
• Send it to or share it with fellow writers and readers of your genre (does it make them want to read your book?)
• Rewrite it again.
• Love your story, your passion and belief in it will show when you pitch.
• Be ready to talk about yourself – have something interesting and different to say.

Believe in yourself – you wrote the book.

Every successful author started with an idea for a book and wrote it, just like you.