Well, we are down to the second-to-last letter. I never thought I would be able to get this far. It just shows what a little challenge plus determination can accomplish. I can’t wait to see what my fellow bloggers have come up with for the letter Y. For this post I decided to feature the blog of my friend and critique partner, Yvonne Anderson. Yvonne’s blog is called Ys Words, and as you will see from the entry below, she does give some Ys words on writing in particular and on life in general. Yvonne is the author of Story In The Stars, the first in a series of speculative fiction about life on the planet Gannah. In this entry, Yvonne’s main characters, Dassa – protagonist – and Pik, Dassa’s husband argue about who should be the protagonist. Let’s listen in:

Author: All right, then, ladies first. Dassa, why do you believe the term protagonist applies to you?

Dassa: Since the book opens with a scene in my point of view, it stands to reason that my character is the one upon whom the whole book hinges. Isn’t that some sort of a writing rule? That the protagonist is introduced first?

Author: I don’t know if it’s a rule, but—

Pik: There is no such rule. I’ve checked with a number of industry professionals, and they tell me—

Dassa: Industry professionals? Name one. Probably a guy who drives a forklift in the Book Bargains warehouse. No—more likely, some agent’s dermatologist.

Pik: Not true! I—

Author: We needn’t name names and draw innocents into this. But I’ve raised this question at conferences and such, and from what I’ve been told, there is no hard-and-fast rule. Generally speaking, the reader meets the protagonist first, but there are legitimate exceptions. So I’ll give a point to Dassa for this while conceding that her argument isn’t definitive. And now, let’s move on. Dr. Pik, why do you think you’re really the protagonist?

Pik: First, and most obviously, readers love me best. You said yourself, when you were submitting your chapters to critiquers for feedback, everyone commented on how much they loved my character. And if you hadn’t submitted anything for a while, it was me they asked about. “What’s Pik doing these days?” No one inquired about Dassa.

Author: Well, that’s true, but—

Pik: But more objectively, I think everyone here will agree that my character is the one that shows the most growth. Don’t several reviewers comment on the impressive character development in this book? Which character are they’re talking about? Certainly not Dassa, who remains a cold fish throughout the entire story. My character gives the story its depth and adds a lively humor. It’s my words in the last line that put a smile on the reader’s face as she closes the book with satisfaction. Dassa is merely the straight man, so to speak, around which my character revolves.

Author: “Cold fish” hardly describes Dassa. It’s true that she never gets carried away by her emotions, but she does clearly feel them. And her role is far more vital than that of a mere straight man. Nevertheless, you raise a good point about the character development. Your character shows amazing growth between his introduction in chapter 2 and that last line of the book that you mention.

So what do you have to say about this, Dassa? Pik seems to have scored two points to your one so far. Can you offer another reason why you should keep your protagonist status?

Dassa: Absolutely. It’s true that the doctor shows the most character growth, but plainly, the reason for that is because he had more growing to do. I may be younger than he, but I was more mature at the beginning of the book than he is by the end. No, don’t argue, Pik, it’s true and you know it. However, all that aside, I believe the biggest reason why I should remain the protag is because it’s my character who has the most to gain or lose. You had a life—a career, a family, and a future—before I came on the scene, and if I had never made an appearance, you’d have gone along your merry way without a care in the galaxy. I, on the other hand, lost everything. The story is more about my struggle than it is about your character growth. Clearly, that gives me every right and reason to be the protagonist.

Author: This is quite the dilemma. All your arguments are valid. I think we should put it to the vote. Readers? Who do you consider the protagonist of The Story in the Stars? I’m asking that question on my own blog today, too, so if you don’t mind, would you go to YsWords.com and cast your vote?

Intriguing, isn’t she? To learn more about Yvonne and her writing, you may visit her blog at www.YsWords.com.

After racking my brain to come up with an X word for this third-to-last post in the A – Z challenge, I came up with Xanax. To some, it may be an ugly word, to others it may be better than Open Sesame. Xanax (Alprazolam), in case you didn’t know, is a drug used to treat depression and anxiety. It belongs to the class of drugs known as benzodiazepines and it can be habit-forming.

Xanax, like most medications, carries with it a host of side effects including: drowsiness, light-headedness, headache, tiredness, dizziness, irritability, talkativeness, difficulty concentrating, changes in sex drive or ability, nausea, constipation, seizures and weight changes among other things.

But why am I writing about Xanax on a blog for writers? Maybe because of their lifestyle, writers are prone to anxiety and depression. You may have heard of Sylvia Plath, author of The Bell Jar, who committed suicide. Eleven years after Sylvia’s death, her close friend Anne Sexton, poet, also committed suicide. Other famous authors have also suffered from the “Sylvia Plath effect” including, Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse (1927), Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man And The Sea (1952), David Foster Wallace, The Pale King. This is just a short list. Wikipedia has over 200 names of writers who killed themselves.

These writers all left behind a legacy of their genius for the world to enjoy, but that genius came with a price. Some researchers believe that creativity and mental illness go together. That may be true, but as a creative individual you don’t have to succumb to depression, anxiety or any of the mental illnesses. Notice, I said succumb. That doesn’t mean you don’t have it; all it means is, you learn to control it, in the same way you learn to control your weight, blood pressure or diabetes.

From the research I have done, and from what I have seen as an occupational therapist in a behavioral health unit, Xanax may help some people in the short term, but long-term use can lead to addiction and other side effects. If you must take Xanax, do so under your doctor’s supervision. Don’t take your cousin’s Xanax because it worked for her. In addition, if you take Xanax, you should be careful to follow the instructions to the letter. Do not take more or less than the prescribed dosage, and do not stop the medication without consulting your doctor. Also, before taking Xanax, be sure and tell your doctor if you are taking any other medications, or if you are allergic to any.

The writer’s life can be an unhealthy one. Long hours staring at the computer can take a toll on your eyesight, weight, posture, circulation and mental health. Trying to get your plot and characters to work the way you want them to can lead to anxiety and depression. The same goes for struggling to market yourself, find assignments and meet deadlines, if you are a freelancer. Counteract the stress with regular breaks and exercise (preferably outdoors). See my post on Fitness for Writers(http://angelasfreelancewriting.com/fitness-tips-for-writers). Resist the urge to snack on cola drinks, potato chips and -dare I say it- chocolate. Spend quality time with family and friends, and if you can, cultivate another interest besides writing. It will do wonders for your mind.

Related articles

• Book Review: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
• Whose Life is This?
• Xanax, Adderall, Vicodin — We’re Gonna SUE Over Kitson Druggie T-Shirts

I couldn’t think of a better topic for the W in the A – Z challenge than to tell you about the Working Writer’s Club. This is a writers’ networking site that provides you with resources and opportunities to grow and succeed as a writer.

As a member of the club, you can:

• Participate in live teleclasses each week. Writing coach, Suzanne Lieurance conducts this class which features tips to help you hone your writing skills and increase your earnings as a freelance writer.

• Network with other club members. One of the things that Suzanne stresses is the importance of having a weekly marketing plan for your writing. You can receive feedback for this in The Working Writer’s Club Forums. You can also post your query letters here and have them reviewed BEFORE you send them off to editors.

• Access the Working Writer’s Club Resource Center. Here you will find helpful articles, templates, forms, and other great resources to help you in your work as a freelance writer.

• Take your book on a 5-Day Virtual Book Tour. This month several of our members are getting exposure for themselves and their books through virtual book tours hosted by other members.

• Receive Discounts and Special Offers. Suzanne offers lots of products and resources to members of the club that are not available to anyone else.

• Get Exposure for yourself and your writing. As a member of the club you get to post your articles on the site with a link back to your site, which gets you noticed by the search engines. Our Facebook Friday chats and tweets are other ways you gain exposure through the club.

Basic charter membership in The Working Writer’s Club is now available for only $9.99 per month (or save 20% when you pay a year in advance – just $99.99 per year). That’s less than what you pay for a cup of coffee a day. As a charter member of the club your membership fee will never increase while you remain a member.

If you are serious about becoming a successful writer, do what I did. Join the Working Writer’s Club today.

My V is for verses. A verse is a single line of poetry, or it can represent a group of lines formerly known as stanzas. Poetry is sometimes referred to as “verse”, which may be rhymed or “free” without meter or rhyme. The opposite of this is prose which can be a sentence or paragraph. Prose can also be poetic, depending on the type of language used.

Who can resist the allure of beautiful poetry? Verses have long been used to convey the writer’s sentiments in beautifully-couched language, guaranteed to transport the reader into another dimension. Love is usually the subject of most poetry, but it has been used to express mundane matters and sometimes even downright morbid ones. In this post, I bring you some of the more memorable verses I have come across in literature. The first two are anonymous, the third is by William Wordsworth, 19th century English poet and the last is from the Bible. So, turn off the ringer on your phone, get your favorite cup of tea, curl up in your comfiest chair and enjoy!

The rose speaks of love
silently, in a language
known only to the heart.

You’ve got to dance
like nobody’s looking,
and love like
it’s never going to hurt.

I wandered lonely as a cloud:
That floats on high o’er vales and hills
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
-William Wordsworth

Love is patient; love is kind.
Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on its own way: it is not irritable or resentful;
it does not rejoice in wrong doing, but rejoices in truth.
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
And now faith, hope, and love abide,
and the greatest of these is love.
( 1 Corinthians 13)

Today I take a break from my writing blogs to bring you something different for my letter U.

One of the many fascinating objects I came across when I visited Alaska in 2010 is the ulu knife. My friend, who is a scrabble freak, was delighted she had a new word to add to her scrabble vocabulary. As you can see from the picture, the knife is curved so you cut with a rocking motion, instead of sawing as you would with an ordinary knife. This also helps to secure the item being cut so you don’t need to hold it down with a fork. Some of the ulus we saw ranged from $9. 95 for the small, souvenir type to over $65.00 for the larger and more ornate ones.

My T in the A – Z challenge is for Theme. I remember when my literature teacher in high school asked us to find the theme of a story we were studying, a collective sigh went up in the room like if a gas line had burst. Ask us to summarize the plot, we could do that, describe the characters, that was easy, but find the theme? We could sooner find the Holy Grail.

Nowadays, we hear the word “theme” used a lot. There are theme parks, theme parties, theme restaurants. What the designers have done is to build the setting or occasion around a central point that no one can miss. The theme of your novel is not much different. It is that common thread that runs through your plot, and impacts your characterization and sometimes even your setting. It is a necessary element of the literary novel.

As an aspiring novelist, you may not consciously set out to create a theme, but if your story flows logically, you will have a theme. Sometimes a theme could be a place, a time period or a metaphor that adds depth to the story. Some common themes used in novels are: loss of innocence, coming of age, losing hope, pride, danges of materialism, good versus evil, lost love and many others. The next time you read a novel, try to identify the theme. If you have written a novel, what is its theme?

We are on to S in the A – Z blog challenge and my word for today is Synopsis.

Many writers who have no difficulty churning out a 500-page novel cower in fear at the thought of writing the synopsis. However, if you are trying to find an agent or publisher, the synopsis is a necessary evil you have to deal with. A synopsis, quite simply, is a summary of your plot. What happens in the beginning, middle and end – without extraneous details. Some authors write a synopsis before they begin the novel, then modify it after the book is complete. The most common method is to write it after your novel as part of your query package. (more…)

You spent months, maybe years, working on your novel and you have finally typed the words The End. You stand and stretch, then head for the fridge to celebrate. You’re finished! Well, not quite. Go ahead and celebrate with friends and family. You deserve it, but just keep in the back of your mind that you are not finished. Far from it. The real jewel now has to be revised and polished until it dazzles even you. So, hide your flash drive in a drawer for a week or two, then come back and begin the arduous task of REVISING.

If you are fortunate to belong to a critique group, you would have benefited from the extra pairs of eyes and the different perspective each member would have brought to your work. However, they may not have caught everything. If you do not have a critique group, you have even more reason to go back and revise. Here are some things you will look for: (more…)

My post in the A – Z challenge is going to be a short one on querying. If you are an author or freelance writer, you have no doubt researched the art of writing the query letter, or may have attended workshops on the subject. Therefore, I will not bore you with writing what you already know. The query letter is one of the ways you get an agent or publisher to take notice of your work. If you get it right, you could be on to something, get it wrong and your excellent work goes unnoticed.

What if you could find a list of suitable agents, get some help with your query letters and keep track of where you sent them? I just signed up for Querytracker, a site which does all that and more. When you join Querytracker you become part of a community of writers who share the same goals and who can help you get your foot in the (agent’s) door. Sounds worthwhile? Check out Querytracker.net, or if you are already a member, drop me a line and let me know what your experience is like.

When you set about the daunting task of writing a novel, your main task is to plot it in such a way that people will want to read it. And by plotting I mean writing a series of events from beginning to end in a logical manner. In order to do this you may use the first tried and true method, which is,

Sit and write, stand and write, kneel and write, whichever works best for you. And you begin your novel, It was a dark and stormy night. This didn’t work for Snoopy and it might not work for you either. So how do you plot your novel? Here are some plotting methods I’ve come across in books.

1. Write down some background information. This may include notes about your characters and what makes them tick. Next, you put your characters in a place or several places, which will be your setting, then you give your main character a problem. How he/she solves (or does not solve) that problem will be your plot.

2. Using an outline. Some authors swear by this. You start with a problem for your main character, then you write a chapter outline of the plot. This is okay, but I have found that I can never stick to an outline. My characters tend to pull me away from it in more interesting avenues, which I can’t resist.

3. Use 3 x 5 cards. If you can still find these in your office supply store, they might be more helpful than the outline. Here’s why. After you have written your plot points on the cards, you can always move them around to see where they fit best, or discard those that do not work. Maybe it’s better if Sally tells Johnny she is divorced after they have gone on their first date instead of before. So you move that card to where you want the event to occur.

4. Draw a bell curve or a graph. Either of these will give you a visual representation of where the climax of your story comes. To do this, use the points you plotted on 3 x 5 cards or in the outline. Again, I find the cards are easier to play around with. Draw your curve and plot the salient points on your curve in the order in which they appear. Hopefully, the high point of your novel or the climax will fall in, or near, the middle of the curve. If it doesn’t, you may have to do some restructuring. The reason for this is, if the climax comes too early, the resolution tends to drag and the reader may lose interest. If it comes too late, the resolution may seem rushed and the reader may feel cheated.

The important thing to remember is, there is no hard and fast rule for writing or plotting your novel. You may ignore everything that was said here and simply sit at your computer like Snoopy and type. However, if you think you need a little bit of planning before you delve into the literary waters, then play with some of the methods above. If you find one, or a combination, that works for you, go for it.