April Showers: Mulch

I don't have time, but it's a long post this week. Spring, glorious spring, and me moving across country, I'm going to miss the whole planting party this year. Boo.

In the spring time, it's a good time to chop all that rich mulch into the hardscrabble dirt. I thought I would share the current stuff I'm cutting into the soil of me to make beautiful stories bloom in my heart.

Here's the deal, folks. I'm out of control with the books. I have been, am, and always will be out of control with the books, so this week I will discuss only the writing books I'm reading. Next week, I will jump into the fiction I'm reading, and the week after I will cover the rest of it.

Currently the stack by the bed:

Scene & Structure: How to Construct fiction with scene-by-scene flow, logic and readabilitiy by Jack M. Bickham. I like this book. It's my think-about-that-before I snooze book. Chapter 7 on sequels after scene particularly rocks for me because sequel is one big weakness in my writing. The disaster happened! Now my character must react to this: the gut emotional reaction, then truly my character must think about what the disaster meant, then they have to make a decision that will hopefully make the disaster all better, and last, my character needs to rock his or her world with breath-taking courage by acting on their decision. I learned this from this book. Good stuff. Agh, Writing is hard work.

I also have Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself Into Print by Renni Browne and Dave King. Doesn't the title make you want to grab a red pencil and go crazy? My characters think, ponder, and consider entirely too much. Want to cut the fat? This is a good book for that.

I have a new book on the shelf that was given to me by the wonderful Katherine Grace Bond. SHOUT OUT. Katherine just got an agent. Read about it at Holly Cupala's website. So Katherine gave me Finding Water: The Art of Perserverance by Julia Cameron. Considering that the prologue made me cry, it's probably going to be a good read. It was the idea that something in this universe really cares. This something watches out for us, hears us when we cry, and is determined to guide us to good places and pure words. I need to go look for a tissue.

Hope something here gets you enriching the soil of you with some excellent mulch. :) Seize the day. See you next week.

I'm moving back to where my creative spark started. This week's doodle was painted 25years ago or so at the Texas A&M campus, back when I thought Chemistry was a calling. This is a detail of a larger work I'm calling this "H20". I wish someone would have given the girl painting the Chemistry building instead of studying her Chemistry a darn good shake. Wrong major, Chickadee. Live and learn.



The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning. Mitch Albom