Worderella Writes

A Recent Conversation

Mina: So how is the new work-in-progress going?
Me: Really well! I mean, I got up to chapter 18 and I was flowing and everything. Wrote a couple thousand words last month, but then… (sigh)
Mina: …?

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Quote: Effective Openings

An effective opening may do many things at once. It might set up the main characters and their relationship, it might describe a setting or a dramatic event, it will probably always introduce key themes.
- Michèle Roberts

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Leg/Back Pain

There is a good side to this experience: I know the exquisite pain that comes from using your body incorrectly. I have some idea of how a person would walk, would change their habits, in order to accommodate something that will most likely never go away. And it just so happens that I have a character (or had a character since he’s dead) that, while his accident happened much differently, has many of the same symptoms.

Do you use your personal experiences to flesh out your characters? If you do, does it ever hurt to relive those memories in order to write it on your character’s behalf?

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Being Worderella

Things have been crazy around Worderella’s part of the world lately. I took the GRE yesterday, my second time, just to see if I could improve my somewhat decent score. I did, so huzzah! I have been reading a lot, which explains the lack of article-posting and the proliferation of book-review-posting. I’m also working on graduate school applications, my college’s magazine, and my appeal to graduate form which gets me priority scheduling for the next year.

I have not been writing. I wrote about ten thousand words last month, and this month, maybe two. I’m not too worried about this, however, because I came to a scene where I realized my character, who is very spirited, was doing something no girl in her right mind would do in 1887 London. Back to the research books for me!

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