Real People With Real Faith Struggles
I heard back from Painting With a Twist! Here is the link to register for the event.
https://www.paintingwithatwist.com/studio/mansfield/event/2897837/
Spend a fun evening with other fun-loving, book-reading happy people on Friday, December 3, 2021. Fun starts at 7:00 p.m. Bring a bottle of wine if you feel so inclined. Hope to see you there!
As a writer, it’s helpful that I have a family member who edits Christian publications for a living. I have my own, personal, built-in networking machine. (Thanks, Lori!) I recently enjoyed the opportunity to share an article with the magazine, The Journal: A Resource for Ministry Spouses.
I wrote the story, Courage to Stand Out, from an event that occurred almost a year ago. Now that I’m not teaching, I miss my chances of spending time with fun teenagers. A fellow church member, Linda Nowlin, asked me to drive our church van to Cleburne, Texas, to deliver gifts. Linda volunteers with CASA (Court-Appointed Special Advocate), as do I. Linda has also accompanied me to Mexico with my mission team, so we’ve worked with each other on multiple occasions. (More networking!) Our youth had collected several presents to donate to children in foster care.
This story is what came to me after listening to the girls chatter on the way home. My takeaway? Never be afraid to be different. God made each of us exactly the way we are, so embrace your difference. Check it out on page 16.
Save the date. More details to follow as soon as Painting With a Twist confirms the availability of the artwork we’ve chosen. When they give me a thumbs up, I’ll pass along a link so you can register.
To make it more exciting, I’m doing a raffle. We’ll have two lucky winners. One will win a frame for their lovely painting, and the other will have their registration paid for. To be entered in the drawing, send me a) a photo of yourself holding (or even better, reading!) a copy of Texas Heirloom Ornament or b) your Amazon receipt from buying it (if it didn’t arrive in time for the party).
Seating is limited, so sign up soon! I hope to see you there.
One thing the Bible teaches us is God made us to live in community. The writing community is no different. We have author friends who have already walked the path we’re now on ourselves, and they are more than willing to lend a helping hand. That support is both crucial and encouraging.
Toni Shiloh is one such author. She speaks to writing groups to help bring along new and learning authors. She spoke to our DFW chapter this month about writing with diversity. Her topic is something we all need to learn and honor.
Toni also posts each Friday on her blog, Toni Shiloh – Soulfully Romantic, where she promotes new publications. She included both of my Christmas anthologies on this week’s post, along with others. You can read it here. https://tonishiloh.com/2021/10/15/friday-reads-10-15-21/
Feel free to browse! There are several to choose from. You may find something that piques your interest, and may also find some Christmas gifts. Enjoy. And, thanks, Toni!
I am planning a launch party for my second Christmas anthology book (available October 12 on Amazon). I was invited to take part in the collection with Texas authors Jessica White and Sara Meg Seese. We titled the book Texas Heirloom Ornament, and it chronicles the stories of three generations of Texas women. Each story takes place around Christmas.
The first one, In Small Things Liberty, is set in 1923. Following is In Large Things Unity, which takes place in 1972. The collection wraps up with the third novella, In All Things Charity, in 2015. An heirloom Christmas ornament connects the three women in the stories as they pass it down from generation to generation. There is also just the slightest thread of feminism as each heroine deals with challenges from her particular era.
We are organizing a Painting With a Twist party, but they offer several options. Please tell me your top three choices of the following paintings. Also, let me know if you’d be interested in an invitation!
Thank you for your help, and I hope to see you there!
I’m a writer and I belong to a critique group. We meet once a week to share our works-in-progress. We listen to each other read and then offer suggestions about how to correct mistakes, or barring that, simply fine tune the craft. It’s the most helpful thing a new author can do for herself. Every writer should join a crit group.
Three months ago, one of my co-authors made a comment about my submission, and I cannot get it out of my mind.
The lady took umbrage at my use of a term she didn’t know. The word in question? Discomposed. She told me she’d never heard it, which is fine. There are lots of words I don’t know. But she went on to say she didn’t think my readers would understand it either. She suggested I change the phrase.
I declined her recommendation, but the idea behind her discontent has bothered me ever since.
I understand her reasoning. I totally get it. The biggest mistake a writer can make, apparently, is to pen something so distracting it “takes the reader out of the story.” The fear is, if this unpardonable sin occurs, the dear reader might decide never to return. There are a lot of easily available distractions in our world today.
But I disagree with part of that train of thought. I think reading can (and should be) a means of learning new things, of broadening our vocabularies. Any time you hear someone mispronounce a word, rest assured, they learned it from reading it. That’s a good thing! I can remember reading 101 Dalmatians as a 10-year-old and being puzzled by the differences in British English vs. American English, although I didn’t realize that’s what it was at the time.
Words like “bachelor flat,” and “trousseau,” and “stacked plates on a lift.”
I was ten. I saw the words “bachelor flat” and my imagination produced something very thin. Trousseau? How do you even pronounce that? A lift? I learned what a dumbwaiter was by reading Harriet the Spy.
When I read The Lacuna, by Barbara Kingsolver, I kept my phone by my side with my Google Translate app open, waiting to type in the Spanish words I didn’t know. I finished the book, by the way.
So, if you want to use a word that pushes your reader to learn something new, go for it. If your writing is entertaining enough, enticing enough, the reader will come back to the story after puzzling over the meaning of the unknown.
Seems like that’s my job as the author. Write a book they can’t put down, and none of this matters.
Follow me on TikTok to hear about the words I run into each day that were previously unknown to me. Share your words with me. We can laugh about how badly we pronounce them.
But at the end of the day, we’ll be smarter than we were at the beginning. And that’s a good thing, too.
https://www.tiktok.com/@paulapeckham?lang=en
Oh, by the way … check out my new book. I am one of five authors who contributed to a Christmas anthology titled Christmas Love Through the Ages. The book is full of sweet, wholesome, Christmas-y stories that will get you in the mood for the holidays. Enjoy!
I have a lot of new friends, now that I’m a writer. And those friends come with benefits.
Books.
Lots and lots of books. Books of all shapes and sizes, all genres. And my new friends want me to read their books. Because authors need reviews, and most people won’t take the time to leave them.
But because we, as fellow writers, know how important they are, we do it for each other. And the nice thing for you? You get to hear about books! Lots and lots of them.
So, we start with my good Twitter friend, Cheryl Burman, who wrote Keepers. Such a beautiful story. I highly recommend you take a trip to Australia and fall in love. With Teddy? Or Alph? Hmm. Choices.
Keepers by Cheryl Burman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Gorgeous prose, heart-rending love story, keeps you guessing till the end. This book tells the story of Raine and her brave struggle to survive … survive the war, survive her father’s illness, survive when her husband leaves. She has two wildly different men who love her, one she can depend on, one who at one time made her heart soar. Burman keeps you guessing till the very last chapter what Raine does for herself. It is a lovely story of courage, perseverance, and filled with beautiful descriptions of Australia.
View all my reviews
How to describe the feelings when something unexpected but wonderful happens?
Shock. Disbelief. Excitement. Gratitude.
On Father’s Day Sunday, June 20, 2021, I opened my spam email folder, checking one last time for a missing notification from a businessperson who wasn’t doing his job to suit me. I was preparing to make a phone call in which I had rehearsed my indignant argument. No, scratch that. I’ll be honest. I was preparing to bite someone’s head off. But before I did that, I wanted to be sure the “missing” email wasn’t in my spam folder.
It wasn’t. But something else was!
It was an invitation to join the Elk Lake Publishing, Inc. family. I had a contract hiding in my junk file.
My annoyance vanished without a second thought. I was home alone and had no one to share my news with. I pummeled my feet on the ground and shouted. Both dogs came running, ears perked, tails wagging uncertainly. Were we under attack?
I started writing Protected six years ago. I did everything wrong that was conceivable to do. My Christian fiction, historical romance topped off at 145,000 words. I later learned industry average is 75,000 – 85,000. Oops.
I had point of view issues. My characters’ thoughts head-hopped. I misused dialogue tags. Had no idea what an action beat was. Dangling participles, echos, passive writing, over-explaining. My novel was a train wreck.
But God directed me to ACFW (American Christian Fiction Writers) through a contact on Twitter (a mostly God-less place, so that was a minor miracle in itself). At an ACFW meeting, I met Lena Nelson Dooley and invited myself to her weekly critique group meeting, which she graciously allowed.
The patient ladies at Lena’s – Nancy Lavo, Sara Meg Seese, Rachael Acree, Lisa Crane, Kelly Daniels – slowly and gently guided me through my first foray into editing. Each week, they showed me a different mistake I had made. Each week, they helped me learn how to write better.
I attended several online workshops, events I wouldn’t have known about or been able to attend if not for Covid forcing us all to learn to use Zoom. I read book after book on the craft of writing. Other books in my genre piled up on my nightstand, so I could learn what the market wanted.
I turned again and again to my sounding boards, who helped me formulate better ideas for my stories. Ronda Elston, John Peckham, Kathy Severe. They got me over many a hump when the idea pipeline clogged up.
Nineteen months and several rejection letters later, I found myself in a Zoom meeting at the Mt. Zion Ridge conference, in a breakout room I hadn’t signed up for and wasn’t supposed to be in, but somehow was, talking with Deb Haggerty, owner and editor-in-chief of Elk Lake Publishing.
And that, as they say, was all it took.
That’s all. Six years of writing. Nineteen months of revising. Several attempts to make contact with someone in the publishing industry. And week after week of meeting with friends who wanted nothing but to help me as we all worked together to improve our skills.
And now, I have a contract with a publishing house to send my book out into the world. I feel validated. Seen. Valued.
Was I all those things before Father’s Day? Yes. God sees me. He values me. He validates me. And as I move forward down this new and exciting path, I pray thanks to God, gracias a Dios, and I ask for his guidance to help me produce work that glorifies him.
Thank you all for your support through the years. I hope you enjoy what comes from this effort as much as I have enjoyed producing it.
We receive messages throughout our lives, messages that tell us what to believe. About ourselves. Our lives.
Maybe those messages are genuine. Maybe not.
This weekend, I got two different messages from two different people, but they both pointed the same direction.
The first happened by accident (or was it?). I attended the Mt. Zion Writer’s conference via Zoom. It started Friday at 10:00 am and finished Saturday at 6:00 pm. We had the option to sign up for a 15-minute session with an agent or an editor and pitch our books. I signed up. My appointment is on Monday. Friday afternoon, I slipped away from the conference to take a friend to the airport. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get back into the Zoom link if I closed it, so I left it open and blanked my camera. (Learned some tricks this year from students doing school online.) I figured I’d make it back in time to catch the last hour.
When I returned home, much later than I expected (because there were wrecks like every five minutes on the highway between my house and DFW airport), my screen had a message on it, inviting me to a breakout room. The conference was over for the evening, but the agent/editor appointments were happening.
The invitation confused me because I was positive my appointment was Monday, but I followed the link, thinking it must be something else. It took me to a breakout room with three other people. Two were talking, one had her camera blacked out. No one said anything to me when I popped in, but continued their conversation, so I lurked, listening. Turns out, the one talking was pitching her book to the other, who I assumed was an agent or an editor. Since no one yelled at me to leave when I appeared so unexpectedly, I sat there and listened, thinking I’d take notes on how to best pitch a book.
When they finished and the author left the room, the agent/editor person spoke to me. She asked me to tell about my book. I confessed I probably wasn’t supposed to be there, but that I had an invitation waiting for me on my computer when I stepped back to my computer, so I clicked it. She invited me to pitch my book, anyway. As we talked, I realized I knew who she was.
I heard her speak last year on a different online conference hosted by Kentucky Christian Writers. Her name is Deb Haggerty, and she presented a class titled Publishing 101: How the Publishing Process Works. She has a very interesting background. She is a published author, a blogger, and speaker, but at age 68, she bought a publishing company called Elk Lake Publishing, Inc. She is now the Editor-in-Chief of an independent, royalty-paying Christian publisher.
I was invited to pitch my book to a publisher. By a woman who re-invented her life at 68 to become something new, something that interested her, something she felt God led her to be.
I told her I remembered hearing her speak, and how impressed I was to learn her story. She encouraged me it is never too late to do what you want to do.
Even if you don’t know what you’re doing.
If you don’t know, learn. Dig in your heels, buy a comfortable office chair, park yourself in front of a computer, and learn.
A reinforced fact for my life—it’s good to get the perspective of experienced people who have lived through things you haven’t.
The second message came from the polar opposite end of the universe. Our eight-year-old granddaughter, Emma, spent the night. She came home with us after my husband’s birthday dinner at my mom’s. By the time we got home, it was almost 10:00.
We packed a lot of adventure into the few hours we had.
We read four books before bed. She wanted to help me choose books for an article I write each month, recommending books for various age groups. Emma looked at some of her favorites, then we read some she’d not seen.
She noticed things I might not have, like the colorful artwork in one book (When God Made You, by Matthew Paul Turner) which she thought was beautiful, and the expressions on the mouse’s face in Frederick, by Leo Lionni. Emma wondered why he looked sad.
When we woke around 7:45 the next morning, she asked Papa to teach her how to make pancakes. Not the mixing part. That part is boring. The flipping part. She wanted to learn how to flip them. So we made a few disasters, then a couple of “taco” pancakes, and finally, we had success. She practiced until we used all the batter. Mission accomplished. She felt good about herself. Anyone want a pancake?
Next, I asked her to color the picture she drew for me the night before while we were at Granny’s. She had drawn an elephant, which reminded me of the hippo her father had drawn for me while he was in art class in high school.
She was conscientious about the colors she chose and took her time coloring so the shading came out even.
Her next project (it was maybe 9:00 by now) was a tug-of-war toy for her dogs, Jenny and Shug. She asked Papa if he had any material she could cut into strips, then braid. He brought her a pair of old blue jeans, and she cut three pieces of fabric about two feet long. I suggested we sew or staple them together at the top so it would be easier to braid them. She chose to sew. I got a needle, some thread, and a thimble to help her force the needle through the dense layers of material. I showed her how to wrap the thread around her finger, then roll it off into a twist that she could scrape into a knot. It took several tries for her to get it, but she wasn’t interested in hurrying. She wanted to learn. She had the strips braided in a snap. Then she sewed the ends to keep the braid in place.
With that project completed, she asked if I knew how to knit. I do not, but used to know how to crochet. We sat and watched a YouTube video (a quite good one titled How to Crochet for Absolute Beginners: Part 1, by simplydaisy). We decided we needed to watch it again, so we sat through the entire thing a second time. Feeling confident we could do it, we chose a color of yarn and sat down to attempt it on our own. Immediately, it became clear we didn’t remember what to do, so we watched the video for a third time.
Emma showed no frustration, no impatience, didn’t throw the yard and the crochet hook down to look for something easier to do. We just tried again.
And we got it. She crocheted a bracelet for herself. Then she crocheted one for her mom. We even added a button to the second one, now that we knew how it worked.
A new fact for my life—it’s good to get the perspective of an eight-year-old.
When I get the same message more than once, especially in the same weekend, I sit up and take notice. The septuagenarian and the eight-year-old both taught me to have patience when trying something new, to follow through, to push past the mistakes and figure it out.
To see more for yourself than you might have originally imagined.
To believe in yourself.
And, by the way, Deb Haggerty asked me to send her my proposal and my book.
I thought writing would be so easy. I’d sit on my back porch with a cup of coffee and my laptop. Or I’d rent a little cottage for a weekend and bang out a few chapters. And when I finally typed “The End,” I’d trot off to The Publishing Place and hand them my book. They, in turn, would gush gratefully and scurry off to print it. A few months later, I’d be rolling in the dough as those royalty checks came flowing in.
Boy, was I ever wrong. Or naïve. Or just plain dumb. Yes, those mornings with my cup of coffee and laptop happen quite often. Just . . . none of the rest of it. There is so much more than meets the eye to writing—and publishing—a book.
You read your work to your critique group who look for confusing sections, or mismatched time lines, or missing commas. You send it off to beta readers who check for flow, plot holes, or tell you if it’s boring. If you self-publish, you find someone to create a book cover for you.
But before you do any of that, you self-edit.
By the way, there are exactly 7,531 writing rules you must check for.
Because you probably broke 7,527 of them.
Seriously.
Today, I found a list. A wonderful, all-encompassing, helpful list. It makes sure I won’t forget any of the 7,531 writing rules, and actually added two or three more. I’m talking about the awesome Chapter Checklist compiled by the awesome K. M. Allan. She graciously gave me permission to post her list here.
Without further ado, here is the list. (I’ll post links to K. M. Allan’s social media at the bottom. You’ll want to follow her.) (Oh, one more thing . . . click on every single link to see more exceptional posts by K. M.)
(This is now in K.M.’s voice:) If you follow me on social media, you’ll know I’ve spent the last few months editing my latest WIP.
It’s book 3 in my Urban Fantasy YA series, Blackbirch, and I’m aiming to have it published in the first half of this year. I spent most of 2020 rewriting the draft I penned back in 2017, and now I’m in an endless editing loop.
So far, I’ve completed a grammar and spell check with ProWritingAid, checked for weak words, found and eliminated repeats, and made sure the punctuation for my dialogue is correct. I’ve even worked through notes I made during my last read-through to ensure all the characters aren’t grinning too much.
But before I pass the MS to my first round of beta readers, I know it needs something more. Checks that aren’t just ensuring I haven’t overused “that” or written every character as constantly nodding.
Enter…
The Chapter Checklist
For this checklist, we’re going to take each chapter page by page. You can print out the MS and staple/paper clip each individual chapter together to work on using highlighters, post-its for notes, and a red pen for corrections. Or you can work from your screen using digital highlighters and note-taking features in your preferred writing program.
The key is to concentrate on one chapter at a time, so it’s not overwhelming.
As this is a checklist, you’ll be doing just that: checking things. This isn’t the time to edit or rewrite, it’s the time to use a critical eye to look at what your chapter contains and note down what changes to make during your next round of edits. Here’s what we’ll be checking…
The Length
Some writers work to specific word counts for a chapter, others write it as long as it needs to be.
Whatever method you use, take the opportunity now to look at your chapter lengths and see if any need to be adjusted.
If a chapter is too long, cut it down or split it up. If it’s too short, brainstorm what you can add to make it longer, i.e., more detailed descriptions, an extra scene, etc. The task can then be completed in your next round of edits.
The Openings And Endings
Or as I also like to call it: the tops and tails of each chapter. Here we will check the opening sentence/paragraph and the closing sentence/paragraph.
These are important to check because it’s very easy to open a scene with a similar description when you’ve been penning a book over months or years. Checking the first sentence/paragraph of every chapter one after the other allows you to see if you’ve made this mistake.
As for the endings, to keep readers turning the page, closing each scene with a hook or a cliffhanger is ideal. Using this checklist to study each last sentence with more scrutiny will ensure you’re doing just that.
The Balance
Of scene/sequels and unanswered questions.
One of my favorite writing methods is using scenes and sequels within a chapter. If you’re not familiar with it, a scene is when you have an event, like an exciting incident, and the sequel is dealing with the consequences of that incident. For more info on each, check out the blog posts, Writing Tips For Great Scenes and Writing Tips For Worthy Scene Sequels.
For this checklist item, read each scene in your chapter, work out if it’s a scene or sequel (if you don’t know already), and ensure there’s a balance of both.
Another thing to balance is your unanswered questions. Every unanswered question needs an answer in your story (unless it’s a hook for the next book in the series). Use your chapter read to highlight any unanswered question so you, 1) know it’s there, and 2) can look for the answer in other chapters.
If at the end of a checklist, you find you don’t have a good balance of unanswered questions, or there are ones that need answers in this book but you haven’t done it yet (it happens), make your notes to add it to your next draft to-do list.
The Timeline
Looking at each chapter closely gives you the perfect chance to note down the timeline of your book and see if everything that happens is in the right order.
I don’t know about you, but I write my manuscripts on and off and usually over months (if not years), so it’s easy to miss that the characters have lived through two Tuesdays in a row, or you’ve forgotten to mention that it’s been five months between the opening chapter and the end of the book.
It’s also likely that edits might remove a reference to an event or the event altogether, but your characters may be dealing with the consequences in chapter 12.
Use this pass to check every event that happens in your book, big or small, and that those events are happening in the order they’re supposed to. Also look out for day, month, season, or year mentions. If your characters meet on a Monday, but the next scene is a Saturday, the reader might wonder what happened to the rest of the week. Get your timeline, events, days, months, seasons, years in order so your story is as plausible as possible.
The Plot Twists
While a plot twist doesn’t happen every chapter, the foreshadowing and the aftermath of each plot twist needs to be present in the lead-up chapters and the ones that follow the twist.
As you give your chapters a read for the millionth time, highlight any foreshadowing and plot twist consequence so you can confirm they’re enough, in the right place, and working.
The Mix
As you’re concentrating on each chapter, keep an eye on your descriptions, dialogue, action, and settings. Highlight each sentence that contains those things so you can see if the chapter contains enough of a mix.
This check may make you realize the chapter is super dialogue-heavy and could use a little more action to break it up. Or you may notice you’ve forgotten to add in the room setting so the reader can picture where your characters are as they make life-changing decisions during the climax of the book.
It’s the little details of descriptions and settings, and the combination of dialogue and action that moves your story along, so getting the mix right is important. Checking for that and the other elements mentioned here should strengthen your story. I’m hoping that’s what it’ll do for my current WIP, and if you give these checks a go, I hope it’ll do the same for you.
— K.M. Allan
And there you have it. The wonderful, one-last-pass-through checklist to help you polish that manuscript to as bright of a sheen as you can get it before you brave the world of querying.
Thank you, K. M., for letting me ride on your coattails and share your wisdom.
Follow K.M. here:
Now, open your manuscript and start checking!