Writing compared to Disney World (Part 2)

By Kelly Bridgewater

Last week, I wrote my first part of comparing my trip to Disney world with writing. Click here to read that piece of advice.

For today, I will be discussing expectations versus reality when it comes to Disneyworld and writing.

What did our family expect when we traveled to Disney World?

www.disneyfoodie.com

We expected a fun time filled with many memorable moments. My youngest son, Obadiah, is a huge Dumbo fan. He owns 15 different Dumbos, and he could not wait to write the Dumbo ride and maybe add another one to his collection. My middle son, Isaiah, is a huge Star Wars fan, so he wanted to experience the Stars Wars Jedi Training, and he adores the classic Herbie movies, so he wanted to see if there would be anything there about that. My oldest son, Elijah, is almost 14, so he tries to act like he is too cool for the trip to Disney World, but I know he really wants to go. I, personally, am surrounded my boys all the time, so I wanted to spend some time in Belle's castle. Beauty and the Beast is my favorite Disney movie, so I want to do some girly things for a while. My husband loves thrill rides, so he really wants to do The Hollywood Tower of Terror and the Aerosmith Rock and Rollin' Coaster.

What did we actually experience?

www.disneytouristblog.com

Writing is the same thing. I spend a lot of time dreaming up plots with characters who roam across the page, imagining how their lives will change by the end of the book. I can see them falling in love or catching the bad guy and saving the day, but I also can struggle with peeling back their layers and allowing everyone to see their most vulnerable moments.

When I actually sit down and put my idea to paper, sometimes my story takes a different turn than I originally planned. Sometimes my characters act different than I saw them when they entered my life. The setting may even change to better suite my characters personality or even to make the characters lives more difficult. I love creating villains that are easy to hate or love. I can't decide. I enjoy when I really like the antagonist for his reasoning, but I also truly enjoy the moments when they have surprised me and made me hate them. I can't wait to see what is going to happen to them. I enjoy writing a story where the ending is totally unexpected and even I didn't see how the story was going to end.

Share with me an example of when your writing took a turn that surprised you. I want to be inspired by how many writers share this trait with me.

Writing compared to Disney World (Part 1)

By Kelly Bridgewater

Writing.
Disney World.

What do these two random things have to do with each nothing?

www.insidethemagic.net

Nothing to the normal trained eye, but as someone who just spent the last week in Disney World for the first time in her life with her husband and three boys, I drew some connections.

Back in July, my husband and I finally saved up enough money to take the boys. I don't like the heat, so there was no way I would plan a trip in Florida during the summertime. Since Christmas is my favorite time of the year and Disney is just plain awesome, I wanted to go during Christmas time. We called a local Disney travel agent and met with her. She suggested going sometime in November because they will still be all decked out for Christmas, but we will miss the majority of the crowds. During November the boys have school, but they do get the whole week off for Thanksgiving. Since my husband works for the school corporation, he would only have to take Monday and Tuesday off to have the whole week off too. So we scheduled our trip to Disneyworld for the week of Thanksgiving. As an added bonus, my birthday just happens to fall on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Score!

Now we know when we were going and where we were going to stay. I had to come up with a doggy sitter for our Golden Retriever and our Beagle. Thank goodness for grandmothers who love dogs! Make sure we had money on the debit card. Make sure the bank knew we were going to be in Orlando, so they would okay our debit card to work. (Something I never knew until the travel agent mentioned it!) Figured out and reserved a hotel an our outside of Disneyworld, so we could sleep before the fun begins. It is a 14 hour drive from our home. Pack our suitcases! Remember the camera with the sharing port for the battery. Laptop with the battery pack. Extra battery for phones and such as we drive down there. Cash for food to eat meals along the way. Snacks in the car. Cooler in the back with some drinks, so we don't have to stop every hour.

www.whimsicalworldtravel.com

Doing all this reminds me of how much planning goes into writing my novel. I might have a great idea, but will it flush out completely into a novel? I have to do research. My latest novel is a spy novel that takes place in World War II in London. I have never been to London, so I have spent a lot of time glancing through hundreds of images of London. Found a house I think my heroine and hero would live in. I found a map of London and have it printed out, so I don't have my characters traveling down the wrong road. I have images of clothing, lists of music, and favorite past times near my writing area. This helps me bring the 1940's to life for my characters and for my readers.

I also have my story plotted out on the door in my office. What needs to happen when. If I reached a certain climax in the story and haven't covered an important part, then my story will fall apart for my readers. I want my writing to flow smoothly.

Just like planning for my Disneyworld trip, planning for my novel takes a lot of time and energy. But both of them will be worth it in the end as my family had a great time in Disneyworld last week, and hopefully, someday, I will have readers who will truly enjoy my historical spy novel.

What do you do when planning a novel? How do you bring your era or setting to life? Share with me some of the resources that you have found that make writing your novel even easier for you.

Welcome to 2015! (Part III)

By Kelly Bridgewater

If you have been following my blog for the past two weeks, I started the New Year with setting my year off right with focusing on God. Then I followed up with my writing goals for the new year. Now today, I will be showing how I set up by reading goals for the New Year. I try to read 200 books during a year. For me, it doesn’t seem like a lot, but as an avid reader who can complete a 400 page book in a twenty-four hour period while watching my boys and getting dinner on the table, I think my list should be longer.

Maybe this year.

Let’s me share my secret. First, I read all the time. My Kindle is in my purse. I find an extra fifteen minutes waiting to pick up the boys from school. Sitting in the doctor’s office waiting to go back and then watching the clock tick by in the examination room. I pull out my Kindle while standing in the line at the grocery store. I read while my husband is driving down the road to the store.  My nose is always in a book. My favorite moments are when my youngest, Obadiah, hands me a book, and he cuddles in my lap while we devour the book together. He is really into Franklin and Lego Batman right now, so we read a lot of those.

Last year at the Indiana ACFW meeting in December, our speaker, who name escapes me, (Sorry!) challenged us to be intentional with our reading. He suggested know ahead of time of at least fifty books you want to read in the New Year, and then read accordingly.

In the past, I have been purely a reader who read a book because of I’m a devoted fan of an author who I buy everything of, or I read the synopsis on the back of the book, and I’m interested.  I have a lot of books around my house that need to be read, so I plan to be intentional with the books I NEED to finish by the end of 2015. Not that there won’t be more added as new books come out. There are a lot of books coming out in 2015 that I want to devour. I have been reading every suspense and romantic suspense, so I can study and improve my writing, so now I can venture out of my genre. Lately, I have been obsessed with World War II fiction.

We all know I will be reading the Bible every day, so that won’t be listed.

Let’s begin:

2 authors:

·         Alexandre Dumas’ The Three Musketeers (all four of the books in the series) and Camille (which I found at a yard sale this summer) 

·         C.S. Lewis who I have an entire bookshelf devoted to his writings and writings about him, but I haven’t gotten around to reading all of them.

6 contemporary romantic suspense books (Including Love Inspired Suspense) Let’s be honest, I’ll probably be reading a lot more of these:

·         Drawing Fire By Janice Cantore

·         Buried Secrets by Irene Hannon

·         Hidden Agenda by Lisa Harris

·         No Place to Hide by Lynette Eason

·         Desperate Measures by Sandra Orchard

·         Gone without a Trace by Patricia Bradley

4 World War II or historical fiction books (absolute minimum):

·         The Curiosity Keeper by Sarah E. Ladd

·         Through Waters Deep by Sarah Sundin

·         Not by Sight by Kate Breslin

·         A Sparrow in Terezin by Kristy Cambron

3 suspense/ thriller books:

·         The Last Con by Zachary Bartels

·         The Bones Will Speak by Carrie Stuart Parks

·         Hiding Places by Erin Healy

4 favorite fiction authors:

·         The Wonder of You and Always on my Mind by Susan May Warren

·         Steven James

·         Kathy Herman

·         Dee Henderson

2 new fiction authors:

·         James Rubart

·         James Rollins

5 Young adult books:

·         Siren’s Fury by Mary Weber

·         The Princess Spy, The Captive Maiden, The Healer’s Apprentice, and The Huntress of Thornbeck Forest by Melanie Dickerson (I have read The Merchant’s Daughter and The Fairest Beauty. Both which I have loved.)

4 writing craft books:

·         Story Trumps Structure by Steven James

·         Stein on Writing by Sol Stein

·         The Fire in Fiction  and Writing the Breakout Novel  by Donald Maass

2-3 Christmas books:

·         Where Treetops Glisten by Tricia Goyer, Cara Putnam, and Sarah Sundin ( I read this book this past Christmas, and it became a classic that I will want to read every Christmas)

·         The Christmas Candle by Max Lucado

·         The Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (Never read the actual book! Shame, I know)

Non-fiction books: 

I have a couple on my bookshelf from C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien I need to read.

1 daily devotional:

·         A Year with C. S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works

This is just a summary of the type of books I plan to read this year. Plus, if anything new comes up, then this list has the right to change by adding or deleting a certain book. Some of these books aren’t even going to come out until the end of the summer, so I probably will have included some new books by then.

How do you decide what books to read for the New Year? Share. I have a journal next to my favorite chair where I list every book that I read during the month and under the heading of what I have actually read during the year. It helps me keep track of what I already have read. Plus, it is cool when someone asks what type of books I read. Like they couldn’t tell by looking at my overflowing bookshelves.

Let’s meet back here for a recap in December and talk about our books that we read during 2015.

Welcome to 2015! (Part II)

By Kelly Bridgewater

Wow! I can’t believe it is 2015. Where has the time gone? I graduated from high school in 2000, so I can’t believe it is the year of my fifteen year high school reunion. Not like I’m going because there were 1,000 kids in my graduating class, and the ones who I would want to see again, I still keep in contact with.

This is the year that Marty McFly went to the future. You know, in Back to the Future Part II. That one was always my favorite. Even though we have advanced a lot in technology since my days of high school, the creators behind the movie even had technology that we don’t have yet. No flying cars available for the masses. No pizzas that grew bigger in a matter of seconds. I don’t have a fingerprint scan to enter my house.

But as we look on the vast expanse of the New Year, what do you plan to do? It is a time of new beginnings. Time to start again. Even though, I believe you can do this anytime of the year, not just in January.

If you missed my post last week, where I shared how to start the year off on the right foot. Here is the link to that post. I hope you read it and then return to this entry.

As a writer, I set personal goals during each month. Right now, there in the back page of 2014’s planner, which need to be transferred to my new planner. My yearly planner is a 400 page planner that I customize with handmade calendars then two pages for each day. I am the most productive that way. Plus, it costs an arm and a leg to buy planners that are daily and monthly. I don’t like the weekly monthly ones. There is never enough time for me to write in. My husband keeps joking that there is an app for that on my Note 3, but something about writing it down every day. Must be the writer in me. J

Back to my writing goals. During the month of November 2014, I finally sat down and crunched out 71,000 words for my first novel in a series featuring Chloe Walker and Devin Sanders titled Face of Admiration. During December, I finished it, completing at 98,000 words. Also, during December, I worked on plotting the second book in the series. No title yet.

During January, I have started another writing marathon working on the second book. I hope to finish the whole book in January, but I think it will leak over in February too.

During February, I will finish the second book and plot out the third one. Now these aren’t full on sketches. I use the cork board method in Scrivener and write little ideas for each chapter. I love being able to drag and move the chapters around.

During March, with Seekerville, who offers prizes and advice to encourage writers, I plan to compose the third book in the series.

April, I plan to catch up on my reading and just relax (even though I have to read and submit reviews for books and work on my blog postings all year long) after completing 300,000 words over a span of five months.

May, I will start revising the first book.

June. Revise.

July. Revise.

August. Revise.

September, Prepare one sheets and my pitch for the annual ACFW conference. This year, I plan to actually pitch to editors and agents. I have never done that before. I have never thought my writing was good enough.

October. Read and relax. Hopefully, preparing my book to send to an agent or editor who I sparked their interest.

November. Write another book. I don’t know what yet.

December. Spend time with family while finishing the book I started in November and plotting my next book.

A lot of writing goals for one year, but we’ll see how the year actually goes. Stayed tune for my next post next Friday on January 16th where I will share my reading goals. It won’t be month by month like my writing goals. It will be something more interesting. So come back. I need tons of feedback on both of these posts.

Do you set writing goals in the beginning of the year? How do you do it? If you don’t, should you?

I would love to hear your comments on what you do to set the year off in the right foot when it comes to writing.

Welcome to 2015 (Part I)

By Kelly Bridgewater

2015! Wow!

Every year in January for the first twenty-days of the year, our church does a fast. Not for fame or to have everyone pitting you because you can’t eat certain food, but to place our priorities in the right place as we begin this New Year. Our church follows the Daniel Fast. No red meat. No candy. No coffee. No caffeine. No dairy products. Just lots of fruits and veggies, grains, and fish.

For the twenty-one days, we read our Bibles and spend a lot of time in prayer, asking God for what he wants to accomplish in the New Year. It is hard when your stomach is growling, but you drink some juice and open the Bible. The first year our family participated, which was five years ago, it was really hard. I wanted to eat, but as I learned how to do this, my stomach still growls, but I feed it by eating some fruit and flipping open the Bible for some inspiration.

I designate certain days to pray for each of my boys: Elijah, Isaiah, and Obadiah. I pray for Michael and his leadership in our family. I pray for my church. I pray for our country. I pray for mother, father, brother, sister, aunt, mother-in-law, father-in-law, our neighbors.

Finally, I pray for God to guide my steps during the year. To be a better mother who treasures the moments with her children. To be a better wife who loves her husband like God loves the church. To improve my writing. I pray to be a better daughter of God who seeks after him with my whole heart. To spend more time in worshipping him. Worship isn’t just for church. I pray for a job that will meet our financial needs and my spiritual desire to write and create for God.

I set Bible reading goals to keep searching and discovering something new in the Bible every day. I know, personally, how hard it is to keep reading the same book day after day and skimming over the parts that I have read and heard my entire life. I ask God to give me the eyes of someone who has never heard that part of the Bible before. I want to hang on to something new and fresh from the Bible every day.

What do you do to set your heart in the right place at the beginning of the New Year? Have you ever fasted and given the New Year over to God to see what he wants to accomplish during 2015?

Come back next week, when I will discuss my writing goals for 2015. On January 16^th, I will show you my reading plan for 2015. Return and you’ll see how I read around 200 books a year.