Book Review of Jodie Renner's book: Style that Sizzles

Imagine the possibilities of your words having power, punch, and pizzazz! You can, you know, with the help of Jodie Renner’s book, Style that Sizzles & Pacing for Power, An Editor’s Guide to Writing Compelling Fiction.

I’ve read many “how to write” books, and currently have four that are my absolute favorites. The top book on this list is Style that Sizzles and Pacing for Power. I feel so strongly about this book that I bought a copy for my e-reader, and six paperback copies. I like to share. (I was going to say something smart, like: “In case I want to read it more than once,” except Renner says in Chapter 12, “Take out any explanations or self-indulgent ramblings.” I’m so guilty of this.)

Whether you are working on your first novel, or have completed several, this book will help. In a concise and readable format, Renner shares with the reader tips and habits a writer needs to succeed. My first book maxed out at 141,365 words – and that is after I took a good 30,000 words out. It was like pulling teeth. Now, with the help of Style that Sizzles, I’m scooting through Menoly and Antoine’s novel, removing the dross and leaving the gold. Taking a scalpel to my writing is difficult for me, but Renner makes that task easier with examples that clarify and edify.

Chapter headings are informative and allow the reader to focus on the parts they need help resolving. However, I heartily recommend the novelist read the entire book, and then focus on specific areas.

If you are serious about writing and filled with the desire to be published, Jodie Renner’s book is the one for you.

Now, I probably shouldn’t say this, since she is a world-renowned editor, but, if you implement the lessons Renner espouses, pare your words, take away lengthy explanations and wordy phrases, when you submit your novel to your editor, it won’t cost nearly as much.

Information on Jodie:

Website: www.JodieRennerEditing.com     
Jodie's blogs with tips for writers: Crime Fiction Collective and Jodie Renner Editing
Facebook: Jodie Renner Editing 
Twitter: @JodieRennerEd
Member: International Thriller Writers (Associate), Sisters in Crime (SinC)

Hurry! Go buy the book. Pour a glass of wine or cup of coffee. Sit a spell, crank up your writing skills, and imagine the possibilities.

Peggy 

Appearances can be Deceiving, Or, Warning, You Could End up in My Novel!

Writers!

What does a writer look like? How does he or she dress? You might say: “Go look in the mirror.” But that won’t do. Seeing my silly self does nothing to answer the questions of what an author looks like. Inside. Where it really counts, or at the very least, how the unsuspecting can have advance notice.

First Flight, from the Keltoi Pages

I like to go to writer conferences – they are excellent places to learn more about the craft of writing, publishing, and marketing your work. At conferences you also meet other authors. People who walk around like normal beings, but carry worlds inside their heads of marvelous invention. Worlds inhabited by dragons, and people who fly, and individuals who have pointed ears, who talk to trolls, commit murders, solve murders, love, hate, eat bugs, are bugs, ad infinitum. Worlds of fuchsia mists and pink tinged lightning, with islands that float in a sea of time instead of water. Oh, how I love the mind of a writer!

Yet, surely, there should be some kind of warning. I mean – here I am, wandering around with other authors who can twist time, and invent beings. I have a t-shirt that says: “Careful, you could end up in my novel.” Yeah. That’s what I’m talking about. Everything a writer sees, thinks, feels, goes into a big cauldron, is stirred, and then the author sticks her pen into that pot and puts it to paper. Or they thrust their fingers in the pot and hit the computer.

Sopchoppy Stone Age and Primitive Arts Festival, February 2013

My son and I recently went to the Stone Age and Primitive Arts Festival held annually in Sopchoppy, Florida, at the Ochlochonee River State Park. On this day, clouds lowered until the only thing holding them up were white pines and cypress. A constant drizzle puddled the ground. We met many intrepid people determined to have a good time and share their efforts to remind modern folk that were it not for stone chisels, arrow heads, and other such primitive tools, we wouldn’t be here.

One individual will not leave my mind. He stands there, bowler hat shoved down on his head above a halo of wispy white hair sagging damply in the mist. His wide smile reveals a lone brown tooth thrust up from his lower gum. Watery blue eyes, slightly protruding, glint, and are filled with excitement. He has two people listening to tales of how he found the ingredients for staffs, knives, and stone and bone tools he’s made and offers for sale. When we reluctantly left the gentleman to go search among the other presenters, my son looked at me and said: “Mom, he’s so got to be in a book somewhere.” Oh yes, do be careful, you could end up in my novel.

Fiction Among Friends

So here’s the thing – what does an author look like? Shouldn’t there be some kind of indication that you are in the presence of a person who at any moment could take part of your essence, and have a being erupt from your brain like Athena from Zeus’ head? I guess having someone walk in front of the prestigitator of words shouting, “Warning! Warning!” and waving their arms wildly in the air won’t do. Maybe a nice blue aura circling the author’s head with holographic images of the writer’s characters and worlds swirling around in this nimbus for all to see. I like that. Certainly, this would garner immediate attention and provide adequate notice. Decisions must be made. And in the meantime, be warned: you could so end up in my novel!

Imagining the possibilities,

Peggy

Writing to the Beat

How do you write? Are you cozied away in a quiet room by yourself, pounding at the keys? Many people write that way. There are all kinds of permutations in noise level surrounding an author. I have a friend who writes in a room with the soft sounds of Strauss tickling her imagination. Another friend can’t abide any sort of distraction at all. Not me.

Put me in a crowd with people milling around. Give me a strong bass and a steady rhythm. Throw me a little rock, some blues, country, or bluegrass, and a whole lot of roll. If the band sings long, sings loud, my imagination flies. My characters come alive. They take shape. Their bodies sway to the rhythm of the beat. They don’t just dance. They soar.

Plots fill the air intertwined with notes in a multitude of keys. Ideas emerge, woven in majors, and minors; saturated in the emotions of love, hate, and everything in between. Music drives the engines of my brain.

I also love to write in crowds. I adore the energy folks give off. I like to hear them laugh, sigh, giggle, cry. I hear the urgency in their voices when they whisper, and notice the surreptitious motion of a hand, the touching of knees, lowered lashes, and tiny smiles. I enjoy seeing people get up and dance. Sometimes the music is so infectious that there is no way people can stay in their seats, so the chairs erupt warm bodies onto the dance floor.

People give so much information about themselves when they dance, it is easy to spot the introvert’s mincing steps, arms held close. Or the extravert, with hands high, head lifted, moving across the parquet. Then there are those who sit so quietly at their table, they almost disappear into the fabric of the air itself, but when music flares out of tall black speakers, these same folk no longer sit still. Music transforms them as well as my characters, providing ideas for stories.

Live music venues are my favorite. I load up the computer, or paper and pen, into my polka-dot wheelie bag and head out to listen and write. In Tallahassee, we are fortunate to have many places that cater to local bands, and I certainly have my favorites.

Today I’m writing at the American Legion Hall at Lake Ella, in celebration of Indie Music. (Thanks Bert Calderon.) Most Thursdays there is music and food on Tharpe Street between the Post Office on Martin Luther King, and Publix Shopping Center across from Lake Ella. On any night in Tallahassee, a person can find live music. Whether to listen, dance, or write, our town is filled with song, and so I write and say thank you to the band, and thank you to the places that care enough about music to hire local acts. Another hearty thanks goes out to those places that don’t mind if someone sits at one of their tables writing away, their mind on images no one else sees, but whose ears are ever tilting toward the music.

The most important thing for a writer is to find what suits them. They need to find their own rhythm. Sometimes birdsong is perfect for a phrase, a sentence, an entire book, and sometimes, you have to rock and roll to that last page, paragraph, sentence, and period, until you reach: The End.

As ever, I hope you, too, are imagining the possibilities,

Peggy

On the Road in Georgia

There are several things I experienced and learned from my weekend trip up middle Georgia. Besides the indescribable joy of reuniting with my Junior High School best-friend, Kathy, I have to mention the intense pride and gratefulness I felt seeing all the farmland. Cotton, corn, tomatoes, Vidalia onions, legumes, strange grasses, and what I think were sweet potatoes. Then there are the farm-stock – donkeys, goats, horses, cattle. There was one big bruiser of a bull who had his own pen. My red jeep was the only vehicle on the road. The bull-to-end-all-bulls turned his great head as I slowed down to 20 mph to get a good look at him. I did not stop. I heard somewhere that bulls don’t like red. This one was every bit as big as the Liberty I drove.

I do wish that the farmers would label their fields in big enough signs so motorists can read them: Tomatoes, onions, red beans, rice, sausage – you get the point. Very helpful for the ignorant traveler, i.e.: me.

Camouflage is a neutral color. I saw brown camouflage mid-calf pants worn with an expensive looking white knit sweater-set. The top was edged in crocheted lace. The woman was easily in her late 50s, early 60s, her long silvery-white hair pulled back in a black barrette, makeup applied exquisitely to her beautiful face. Another man wore his Real-tree with a red Cardinals t-shirt, another wore green Vietnam-style camo with a Pittsburg Steelers shirt. Did you know that Deseret storm camo goes with a pink tank top? I could go on and on, but the consensus is that camouflage, whether worn by men or women goes with everything.

Next observation: In Moorehaven I saw a car. One. Everyone else had a pick-up truck, Jeep, or some sort of 4-wheel drive. Outside the Moorehaven Country Store was a humongous deer strung up ready for butchering. A man proudly stood next to the deer with his bow and arrows front and center, chest pushed out, camera ready. Across the street the local feed store pronounced on a hand-lettered sign that bags of deer corn are available. Guess it worked.

In the middle of no-where, a house, front porch filled with rocking chairs, perched amidst rolling cotton fields. A good 100 yards from the house, five-feet from the road was a covered wood-plank stand with honey lined up in various amber hues, a sign read: Honey, honor system. Take your honey, leave money in box.

I passed a yard full of every imaginable kind of appliance in various forms of rusted and broken-down manner that could be found. The front yard was not visible. A sign painted in red with at least a four-inch brush proudly announced “broken appliances for sale: cheap.”

Some of the towns held their pride high with clean streets, washed store fronts, and old southern houses painted and beautiful. Others looked like they were going to erode back into the red clay and never be seen again. I felt really sad for the last ones – they are on the way out, and unless someone in those towns decides to take a hand and spruce them up, they’ll be swallowed back into the antediluvian forest and forgotten.

I stayed off the major highways – rode the streets less traveled, drumming my own way across Georgia, singing rather-off tune to whatever song my I-pod threw at me. The air was clean – no industrialization, no smoke from vast lines of cars. With the sun-roof back when it wasn’t raining, I could smell fresh-turned earth, scent green-growing things breaking free of the soil and reaching to the sky. Sometimes I knew when the cattle areas were nearing, but it was the clean scent of critters out in the fields, munching grass and lipping water from small ponds.

Rushing to go someplace leaves out so much of the pleasure. Getting there, to me, is at least half the fun, and hands-clenched-tight-on-Interstate-traffic-packed-roads is not my idea of fun. It is hard to imagine that I drove twelve hours since Friday night, and pulled into my driveway at 3:30pm on Sunday refreshed and ready to write.

Both Baggins and I had a lovely time: going, visiting, and coming home. Seems we also brought back a trunk full of inspiration. Thank you to the state of Georgia, thanks Nicole for planning such a fun party, and thank you, Kathy for being my friend and for being older than me.

Imagining the possibilities,

Peggy

Where is the Music?

There is no music. However, I can fix this problem, and do. 

I cannot think without music. Cannot breathe, smell, feel, see or even write. Without tunes floating around me, I do not exist. I need the deep, passionate pounding of a throbbing bass drum, the light taps of the snare, the soul haunting humping of hands on bongos and congas, and the crashing cacophony of cymbals pushing up the hairs on my arms. It’s hard to stay away from those Zildjians, to remember to sprinkle them throughout a song like flakes of red pepper perking up a meal, or exclamation points spicing a story. I’d rather smack the shit out of them. Use them like lightning during a summer heat storm until the air smells of electricity and toes curl.

Then there are notes that weave around the drums. Give me a guitar and heart-rending riffs, the passion on the face of the artist painting with fingers on the long necked electric guitar, pushing notes deep into wood, the other hand plucking strings hard and hot, drawing out pieces of my soul. I’ve seen musicians caught up in a musical moment, eyes closed, body wrapped around their instrument or the mike while they spill out their guts to the audience, drawing everyone in, welcoming us to their world of love, heartache, laughter and tears.

I’m a bluesy girl. No doubt about it, and a belly-song is what I love – a song so full of life that it clenches my belly and ties me in knots. Add in a big bull or bass guitar to swing the deep dark tones that keep my heart beating, and a sweet sax to pull it all to heaven, and, if luck holds out, a singer who puts words to life and shares with me, the listener, a bit of their soul.

There are, of course, options available for my ever-present music addiction, and I do use any method available to get my music fix. Everyone has their favorite. Mine? Live music, hands down.

Get up. Get dressed. Go out. Listen. You won’t regret it. See, no matter how loud the IPod, radio, television, stereo, it cannot have the immediacy of live music. Try it. Pick a venue. In Tallahassee we have so many opportunities to listen to music and watch musicians play their own songs as well as old favorites that I cannot even begin to name them. Yes, I have my special places I go to listen and write. If you search in your town, you will build up a list of places to go. Most venues for live music are not expensive. Many bands play for tips, or, as one of my favorite groups say on their tip jar: Bail Money. Get to know your local musicians. If you have children, show them the beauty and passion of live music. Let your kids know that music comes from the heart, from hours of practice, sweat, fun, and real people.

Who knows? You may find the plot for a novel on one of your musical outings. You could walk in to the bar where the NQH (not quite human) hang out and hear the White Circle Blues Band. And when the moon is in full bloom, and the night calls, you might want to walk in the deep southern swamps and pine forests searching for a Critter-Splitter – or not.

But what ever you do, listen to the music.

Imagining the possibilities,

Peggy

The Real, Honest to Goodness Reason Frogs and Toads Show Up After a Rain Storm

The frogs and toads, my friends, have been in hibernation.  Their entire make-up says that no handsome princes or beautiful princesses are out and about in the wicked heat.  It tells them that the beautiful people only visit the out-of-doors in the summer when the rains cool down the sweltering skies.  As we all, being intelligent folks, know, frogs and toads are in perpetual search for their soul mate.  The person who will one day pick them up and plant a nice big smackeroo on their little froggy lips, thereby enabling them to complete their final metamorphous from amoeba-tadpole-frog/toad to prince/princess.  Ergo – rain equals the arrival of a bevy of hopeful long-jumping, fly-eating caecilians.

So, folks, you have a job before you.  Have some compassion, some feeling for your fellow amphibians.  Do the right thing!  Pick up a greenie and lay one on it!


Imagining the possibilities,


Peggy

Story, Undefeated

Story, Undefeated

Have you ever had an idea for a story and yet didn’t write it down?  The story filled your dreams.  Followed you around like a lost dog, begging you to turn around and pat its head, to pay it attention.  At the oddest times, you think of that story.  Shopping for groceries, it slips into the conscious.  Putting clothes in washer and dryer, the story taps at your soul.  Write me, please, yet the paper/computer stays blank.  There is something else you must—do—see—feel.  You close your eyes and turn away, shutting out the small flame of an idea that is looking for receptive tinder…. 

WHY?????

The story is too much.  Too close to home.  It grabs the heart and squeezes.  It holds a mirror up to the writer’s soul, then reflects like a prism to the world things we may not want anyone to see.  What will people say if they read this?  What will people think about me if I put this in writing?  The story spark lights up places better left hidden for whatever reason.  It is simply too much to bare.  (I meant that word.) 

Let’s face it.  As writers, we share our deepest selves to anyone who reads our work.  Everything our characters do comes from our mind, heart, and soul.  We feel what our characters feel.  We give them life and meaning.  We determine everything about the people in our stories whether truth or fiction, therefore it reflects something about the writer.  What if Shakespeare had never written To be or not to be, that is the question? Or Charles Dickens never said via David Copperfield, I was born.  Or Lucas’ famous:  In a Galaxy far far away…

I’m writing this, because I caught myself avoiding a story for the past few days, and realized that life is too short to keep things bottled up.  I’m going to try to uncork the bottle of hidden ideas and let them come forth like a magical being.  I hope to light the pages up with lovely black letters and let ’er rip!  It won’t be easy – I do know this, but it is time.  If one of my characters wants to do something, I will not hold them back because of my fear.  When the spirit strikes, even If I can’t put the whole thing in final form, I’m going to write as much as I can so the spark will not be blown out or fade into oblivion because of lack of care.

Story now completed, I am imagining the possibilities,

Peggy