E.E. Montgomery's Blog

Visit my new blog at www.eemontgomery.com/blog

This week I reviewed Out of the Gate by EM Lynley. This story has something for everyone. It’s a story of struggle against inner demons, others’ prejudices, selfishness, foolishness and danger. It’s also a story of growing love, and the nature of friendship.
http://www.eemontgomery.com/blog

Head over to my website for the blog:
Synopsis Writing:
I know the rules: 1. Hit the emotional highs and lows. 2. Don't get caught up in chronology. 3. You don't have to put in or name every character. 4. Keep it simple but don't leave any important things out.5. Write the beginning and the ending with a kick.I don't always get it right. Check out my blog to see how I've started my latest synopsis. It might not stay this way.
www.eemontgomery.com

www.eemontgomery.com This week I spent some time redoing my website. Instead of writing the code myself and avoiding any updates because the process took too long (and I'm not that good at it), I went to Weebly and created one there. There's an entirely new look, I've combined a couple of things and I'm migrating my blog over there as well.

This will be my last blog post from Blogger. 

I haven't worked out yet how to link the blog in my website to my Goodreads and Amazon pages but I will--hopefully before next week when I start using my website as my blog.

My new website has a really cool slideshow of all my covers. Each one is linked to my author page on the publisher's website--so it's easy to find and buy the book! If you want a bit more information before going to the publisher's website, the books page has the blurb for each book.

I'm a bit impressed with the Contact page, too. On the previous version of the website you had to create your own email. On this one, there's a nifty form to fill out that will email me directly.

To celebrate the new website, I've added a new free story. In a Pool of Blood is an experimental story. I wrote it as part of a series of stories I was writing that explore relationships between women. The relationship between these two women includes jealousy, murder and wild weather.

I write well. My sentence structure is good; my spelling and grammar is too. I have great ideas and can plot a book from the beginning or write from the seat of my pants (my preferred style) and still have a good story. My writing has improved over the years. I've got better at presenting the world in my head so readers see the same thing I do.

But there are some thing I can't get right. I make the same mistakes over and over again and it doesn't seem to matter what I think about or do during the writing, I still have to have them pointed out to me and then go back and layer it all in. I know I need to do it. I can see how it adds depth to the story and believability to the characters, and I think I'm doing it when I'm writing it.

Number one problem is emotion. I know why I keep glossing over this one. I don't like being in the middle of the maelstrom. I've been there in my life before and it's not a pretty place. I much prefer things calm and considered. Under control--as much as life can be. I like to skate through my life doing happy things, things that make me smile and say 'life is wonderful'. I choose things specifically to achieve that end.

But while that makes for a lovely, enjoyable life, it doesn't make a good story. To make a good story, I have to revisit every negative emotion I've ever experienced. I have to relive dissatisfaction, envy, jealously, uncertainty, anger, angst, longing, horror, fear. And then I have to, not describe it, but make my character live it too. I have to delve deep into the raw physical responses to the emotions and live through them again and again. It's hard, and every time, every single time, I avoid it as long as I can.

Thank goodness for my crit group who turn to me after reading my chapter and look at me with that odd mix of pride, anticipation and disappointment. They shake their heads at me and I can hear their thoughts in that place deep inside that spurs me to be a better person. "You can do better." They know it. I know it. And they're going to kick my butt until I do it.

You'd think I'd give up if the only feedback I ever heard was 'not good enough', but that's not all I hear. On the end of that phrase is 'yet'. It's not good enough yet. It can be. It will be. If I work hard enough. I can control it.

And every once in a while, I'll present a rough first draft of a new story, and the room will fall to silence. Then, when the silence is thick with wanting, someone will sigh, or laugh, or exclaim 'oh no'. And at the end of the reading time, they'll all sit back and say nothing. They'll look at me and breathe through the transition from fantasy to reality, and I'll know. I can do this.

Then they'll tell me how to make it better.

*sigh* It's a good thing I love writing.

I'll warn you--this is a rant.

I was in the kitchen this morning when I heard on the news that some teenage girls are wearing 'purity' rings to signify that they want to wait until marriage for sex. I thought I'd like to hear the girls' reasonings behind the decision--and hoped they were talking about marrying the person they loved, whether male or female. So I went into the living room to see the segment and found a middle-aged man kneeling before a young girl (12 or 13 yo) and saying, 'this signifies that God is your boyfriend'. (The link isn't up yet, but it should appear here.)

What the hell?

I spent a significant part of my teens and young adulthood supporting the right for women to be treated as human beings capable of making their own decisions and pursuing their own careers. I've spent most of my adulthood trying to encourage young girls to believe they can think outside the small box of marriage-and-motherhood.

I'll state here that there's absolutely nothing wrong with being a full-time stay-at-home wife and mother, but it has to be the chosen path--not the expected one.

I have a lot of personal problems with the 'purity' ring idea as it was presented:

There was no indication that the girls are making that decision for themselves.It's couched in words that indicate the girls must have a boyfriend to be complete people. In this case 'God' is the boyfriend and that makes it okay not to have another one.What if the girl wants a girlfriend but still wants to wait for marriage (to her girl)?And what about the boys? Are they going to wear 'purity' rings too? Or are they going to be expected to 'sow their wild oats', like always?This is just one of a number of things I've read and heard this week that makes me think we're slipping back into the old 'control-the-woman-keep-her-in-the-home' idea that was so prevalent until the 1970s. Women have fought, shed blood and died to have basic human rights, and there are still people out there who are trying to control them rather than teach all children to make well-thought-out life decisions for themselves.
It goes further than women's rights, too. Recently there've been a number of scary attempts in the US to pass laws that will effectively bring back discrimination and abuse of, not only women, but GLBTQI people too. 
The really scary think is that there are a lot of people out there who don't understand or accept that human rights and equal rights don't apply only to them and people exactly like them. Human rights and equal rights apply to EVERYONE, no exceptions, and none of us have the right to deny others their basic human rights, whether we have the power to or not. These people seem to be gathering more power to themselves.

I'm still editing so there's noting writing-worthy to talk about, so I brought out a few of my teapots.

I never intended to collect teapots but I can't stand pots that dribble when you pour. I bought nine pots before I found one that didn't leak, then I made an off-hand comment to my family that you only need seven items to be a collector. That's where it began. I now own over 150 teapots and a multitude of tea-making paraphernalia.

These are three of my favourites:


The Frog teapot. Bought at Maleny in Queensland, Australia, by a lady I worked with years ago, and given to me for Christmas. Val was one of the nicest people I've ever met. She was always cheerful, and thoughtful and her kindness often made difficult days bearable. I lost track of her when I moved jobs but, thanks to the kind of person she was and her kind gift, I'm always reminded of her and the way  Buddhsomething as simple as a smile can help people.a's hand. This was given to me by a well-travelled friend. She found it on one of her trips to China and immediately thought of me. The teapot has always made me laugh and has always made me relax. I don't know if the story is true but apparently the monkey-on-the-brain lid signifies that no matter how smart you think you are, monkey is always smarter. I've always interpreted that, loosely, to read 'don't sweat the small stuff'. It works. Tweetie and Sylvester. Childhood memories. It doesn't matter how much Tweetie and Sylvester bicker, they belong together. They're a combination that most people would think would be enemies but they're lost without each other. I always admired Sylvester's devotion (albeit misguided) and Tweetie's strength of character.

Toohey Forest used to be huge but it isn't now. It's a remnant of around 260 Hectares (642 Acres) in the middle of Queensland's capital city. The area has wide walking tracks to encourage people not to walk just anywhere and upset the ecology. The best thing about it is there are pockets in the middle where you can't hear any traffic. For all intents and purposes, you really are in the bush--you just have to ignore the wide man-made paths and clear signage.
Source: the link above. The green bit between the two orange bits is the forest.
The orange bits are the university.
We walked from the campus at the top, through the forest on the left, and back.
We decided when we were walking on Wednesday night that it was time we did a longer and more interesting walk. When we've walked Toohey Forest in the past, we've driven and parked at the picnic area, but this morning we decided to walk from another entrance.

I don't know about other people, but the usual initial bushwalking conversations in Australia run something like this:

"There'll still be paralysis ticks around this time of year, and there's been an epidemic, so make sure you check the dog and all your crevasses when you get home."

"Ticks are fine. I'll wash the dog when we get home and find them all then. We have a couple of days to find them on us before permanent nerve damage kicks in." (We're a prosaic lot.) "At least we started late enough that the snakes have had time to warm up."

*Nods sagely* "We're making enough noise to scare them away long before we know they're there."

*Crossing creek* "Check for leeches later too."

The paths are wide enough that there are very few spider webs to walk through, so we don't even mention them.

As the day warms up (it's Autumn and we're heading for 31oC (88oF) the scent of the eucalypts grows stronger. The birds settle into their daily activities so the atmosphere becomes more settled and sleepy. I always feel I can breathe more deeply when I'm in the bush.

We walked back into suburbia two hours later feeling calm and refreshed, and totally able to deal with the stresses and tensions that come with working and living in a city.

The intrepid Danielle Birch tagged me on Facebook for a My Writing Process Blog Tour. 

Below are my answers to the four questions I was asked:

1)     What am I working on?

Just the Way You Are is the fourth and last story in the Just Life series. It's Jonathan's story - he's the one who had been living with abusive Anthony (Cole), Mark's ex. At the end of Just in Time, Anthony stabs Jonathan, Liam and himself and they all end up in hospital with Liam and Mark tentatively deciding to see where their relationship could take them. 

At the beginning of Just the Way You Are, Jonathan is just out of hospital and packing up his belongings to leave Anthony.

2)     How does my work differ from others of its genre?
There are a lot of stories out there in different sub-genres. A lot of them feel larger than life. That's not a bad thing but my writing isn't often like that (although sometimes it is). It's more often about ordinary people living ordinary lives and sometimes having to do extraordinary things to achieve their dreams. I hope it makes ordinary people feel like extraordinary lives are achievable or, conversely, that ordinary lives lived happily are just about perfect.

3)     Why do I write what I do?

If you asked my family, they'd probably say 'because she's a nightmare if she isn't writing'. I do get very antsy if I'm not writing regularly. I have all these people inside my head clamouring for their tales to be told and I can't contain them. 

I also write because everyone needs a voice. I write in a niche market because it is a niche. It's the smaller avenues that often don't have a voice. I work with adolescents, many of whom don't have access to material that helps them feel normal and accepted. So why don't I write for adolescents? I reiterate: I work with adolescents. Anyone who's spent any time with adolescents knows what a challenge they can present to your mental equilibrium. Spending 8-10 hours a day around them ensures I don't want them in my head outside work. There are a lot of adults out there who haven't been told often enough that they're wonderful just the way they are. I hope my work goes some way toward giving my readers a message that everyone, whoever they are, deserves unconditional acceptance and love (with the emphasis on unconditional).

4)     How does your writing process work?
I don't plot. Clarification: I never have a plot or outline when I start a story. By the end of the first chapter I have several partially completed character profiles, usually just physical descriptions and background. These are built up as I write and get to know my characters better. By the end of writing, they include goal, motivation, conflict, emotional reactions to various things, etc. By the end of about 8000-10000 words, I'll have a scene description completed and a mind map or list of possible plot directions. Somewhere between 30000 and 60000 words, depending on how easily the words are flowing, I'll have to stop and look at the structure of the story. That's when I check I have all the important elements in and my characters' goals, motivations and conflict are responding accordingly. At this point I'll often rewrite scenes in different points of view so they're stronger and I'll add, delete or combine secondary or minor characters. I might or might not have finished the story at that stage. With longer works, I often have to do the structural thing before the direction to the end becomes clear because I still don't have a complete outline. I will also, at some stage, create a scene map so I can keep track of what's happening when and whose point of view it's told in.

I don't want to know the ending of the story until I write it, or just before. If I find out how things are going to end before I get there, I lose interest and stop writing. I have a lot of stories that have four or five chapters written, then the last chapter for the ending and the rest is still missing--years later.

All this going back and forth usually means that by the time the story is finished it's basically been through four or five rounds of edits.

Shorter works are different. Quite often, with short stories and short novellas, the entire story appears in my head over a period of time as I sit on my back deck watching the clouds go by. As soon as I begin to imagine the ending, I open my computer and begin typing. When it works like this, there's very little editing to be done. The stories are short enough they hang together easily, and after all that thinking, most of the glitches have been worked out. 

I'm a 'build a bridge and get over it' kind of person. I don't have a lot of tolerance for wallowing in self-destructive emotions and get very impatient with myself when I do it in my own life. I do understand that readers need and want to know how characters feel and deal. This means I often have to go back through my work and layer in the emotional reactions to things happening to my characters. They feel it, just don't always show it. It's this aspect of writing I find the most challenging.

Up next:

Amelia Bishop  

KJ Charles  

AB Gayle

Please check out the blogs of these fabulous writers.

I haven't opened my wip on the computer in more than a week. Usually that would mean I haven't been working on it, but that's not the case this week. This is the story I've been struggling with for a while and I've had enough of the struggle. I refuse to let this bitch of a story that simply won't work the way I want it to, defeat me.

I found another way around it: I've gone back to pen and paper.














I'm about to open a new version of the document on my computer. I hope I can read my edits. Some of them are overlayed three and four deep. I've even got to the stage where I'm using multiple and numbered asterisks to indicate sections that need to be inserted elsewhere.

It feels better. I hope it reads the same when I finally get it sorted.

Yep, I'm still struggling with this story, although I think the struggle is more in my head than in fact. I just have to find what's stopping me from pushing through and finishing it.

I've decided to go back to the beginning. Not the beginning of the story, even though I'll need to do that again too. I've gone back to the beginning of the idea for the story and I'm going to analyse sections and work on it that way.

I've been working on my character tables, focusing on Goal, Motivation and Conflict. It didn't take me long to do because I know the characters. It's all sitting comfortably, but I don't want comfortable. Comfortable is only enough for a short story and this is already at nearly 58000 words. I need to ramp it up a bit.

I've pulled two books from my bookshelf: How to Write a Damn Good Novel by James N Frey and Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell. Today I'll be reading two chapters. From Frey: Chapter 2, The Three Greatest Rules of Dramatic Writing: Conflict! Conflict! Conflict!, and from Bell: Chapter 13: Common Plot Problems and Cures. I'll probably add a couple of others as well on structure.

I've put Jonathan's table below. What am I missing?

Jonathan:
Goal Motivation Conflict To get away from Anthony ·       It’s dangerous near Anthony, both physically and mentally ·       Anthony continues to phone Jonathan, finds out where he lives and stalks him.·       Jonathan has lived with fear for a long time. He’s jumping at shadows, his nerves shot. With Anthony stalking him, he doubts his own judgment and can’t find peace.·       Jonathan misses having someone to care for although he never wants to go back to the restricted life he was living. To develop a strong, loving relationship with a man ·       Jonathan needs to be loved by someone other than his family.·       Ben seems to be the embodiment of all his dreams of the perfect man.·       Ben is physically very attractive and emotionally stable and supportive. ·       Anthony seemed perfect in the beginning as well: perhaps Ben will change and become more like Anthony.·       Jonathan can’t trust himself to be a good judge of character anymore: his self-esteem has been constantly undermined by Anthony with little against it.·       Ben is such a convenient escape from both Anthony and the smothering love of his family that Jonathan’s afraid he’s using Ben to escape. Pretty much what he did with Anthony at the beginning.·       Ben has a secret. To live a life of his choosing ·       To gain control of his own life so he doesn’t have to rely on his family for his sense of worth. ·       Jonathan has spent so long being told how to live his life, not just by Anthony but also very gently by his family, that he no longer knows who he is or what he wants.·       He loves his family and doesn’t want to hurt them so can’t tell them he feels smothered by them a lot of the time.·       He has a long-term pattern of doing what he’s told, partly because he doesn’t like conflict. He also still has survivor’s guilt and thinks if he’s super-agreeable they’ll keep him. (‘They’ being his family) His fear of rejection has made him easy to manipulate.