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BEST of WWA CONFERENCE

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BEST of WWA CONFERENCE

By Natalie Bright

Western Writers of America held their annual convention in Lubbock. As a first-time attendee and new member, I was surprised to meet such a diverse group. Songwriters, poets, historians, museum archivists, writers of nonfiction and fiction, editors, agents, musicians, and newbies and veteran authors, all sharing a love for the people, history, and wide open spaces of the West.

Below is a list of quotes that resonated with me and will definitely have an impact on my writing:

  1. Don’t judge the 18th century people by 21st century standards. You’ll go crazy. Think about them as they were in their time period. ROD TIMANUS, author of numerous books about the Alamo.
  2. Deadlines are important. It’s not a figment of an editor’s imagination. JOHNNY D. BOGGS, author and editor, WWA’s RoundUp Magazine.
  3. The search within yourself is very important in your writing process. Search within your own soul. WIN BLEVINS, Owen Wister Award Winner.
  4. For years, these women assembled on this panel, have bounced around in a pickup in pockets of the country where at one time nothing seemed to grow but clouds.  They possess a special understanding of the important contributions women have made to ranching in the West. The notion that ranches were settled only by men is just not true. CHRIS ENSS, New York Time Bestselling Author, and moderator, Frontier Ranch Women panel.
  5. If you know enough to write an outline, you can write the story. Just write the story. KIRK ELLIS, Emmy and Spur award winning screenwriter.
  6. A set schedule works best for my writer’s brain. Same thing day-after-day-after day. ANNE HILLERMAN, winner of the Spur and Arizona Book Awards.
  7. Find the motivation of your character. Put yourself in your characters head. Their motivation may change from scene to scene. JOHNNY D. BOGGS
  8. When you collect local stories, care should be taken in what you can use and publish. Everyone has their version. GAIL JENNER, award winning author and cattle rancher.
  9. You’ve got the rest of your life to make the pages you wrote yesterday better. Stay on task and get the damn story done. WIN BLEVINS
  10. People are photogenic and “see” your characters. Don’t waste words on a lot of description. Leave it to the readers. DUSTY RICHARDS, Spur award winning author.

I am truly inspired and remain in awe of this gathering of so many truly gifted people. Next year’s meeting will be in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I can hardly wait!

Website www.westernwrigers.org

Follow them on twitter @Western_Writers

Happy writing and thanks for following WordsmithSix!

Nataliebright.com

 

WHY WRITE?

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WHY WRITE?

By Natalie Bright

 

It’s a question I’ve asked myself a gazillion times. Would life be easier if we ignored the voices in our head? Or, maybe not. It’s a delightful dilemma, this world inside a writer’s head, and then I found this great quote on Pinterest:

“Why Write? Why should we all write?

This is what I recommend:

Purchase a small notebook. Post-its. Colorful pages. Plain paper. Hold a pen. Pick a word and see where that word takes you.

Because you store everything in your body: the gorgeous, the ugly, the painful, the ecstatic. It’s all there locked away in your cells where memory, tension and confusion remain day after day, waiting to be set free.

You don’t have to show it to an audience or your spouse or your children or even yourself again. But when it’s written down as a list, as a paragraph or poem or story, you can go to bed with a greater understanding of yourself, of the world, or even of both: yourself in this world.

And at the very least, you know all those things are out of your body. Writing is essentially becoming free. It all begins with a world.”

-VICTORIA ERICKSON

 

 

 

THE SYMBOL OF ROYALTY: PURPLE

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THE SYMBOL OF ROYALTY: PURPLE

 By Natalie Bright

The color of robes for kings and wizards, making you think of wealth, spirituality, and the world of fantasy. If purple is your favorite color, you are probably a free spirit, compassionate, supportive of others. Your feelings run deep and people come to you for help.

The dye for purple was rare and very costly to produce, therefore only rulers could afford it. Queen Elizabeth I forbad anyone except close members of the royal family to wear purple. In modern times, it can designate things of high quality or superiority like cosmetics or Cadbury’s chocolates.

Write deeper using purple:

Lavender lilac orchid mauve plum fuchsia magenta

I like to write with a lot of emotion and a lot of power. Sometimes I overdo it; sometimes my prose is a little bit too purple, and I know that.

G. Bissinger

 

MELLOW YELLOW

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MELLOW YELLOW

By Natalie Bright

 

One of the first colors recognized in prehistoric cave art is yellow, a pigment made from clay. The color was used widely in tomb paintings by Egyptians, although the billiant orpiment, from arsenic, was highly toxic. The pigment orpiment was included in a paintbox found in the tomb of King Tutankhamun.

The color of sunshine, Vincent van Gogh was a fan, writing to his sister in 1881, “Now we are having beautiful warm, windless weather that is very beneficial to me. The sun, a light that for lack of a better word I can only call yellow, bright sulfur yellow, pale lemon gold. How beautiful yellow is!”

Creativity, cheerfulness, and good-humor side of yellow emerged into a dark side in the 20th century. Yellow triangles with the Star of David were sewn onto clothing of the Jews in German-occupied countries. The color yellow became a symbol of exclusion, judgment and spite.

Yellow is the most highly visible of all colors which is why it is used for pedestrian crossings. In some communities, red emergency vehicles are being replaced with yellow fire trucks and ambulances. It is the most popular color for neon signs.

Write deeper using Yellow:

Beige straw peach apricot butter buttercup lemon chartreuse citron canary chrome gold topaz ochre Sulphur mustard butterscotch orange tangerine persimmon

THINKING WHITE

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THINKING WHITE

By Natalie Bright

Wholesome and pure white. In its most basic sense, white includes and equal balance of every color of the spectrum, expressive of both positive and negative aspects of all colors.

It’s reflective. Think about competent and sterile, and a doctor’s lab coat.

White can be sad and lonely, cold and isolated, empty.

White:

Snow, milky, marble, cream, ivory, porcelain, oyster, pearl, silver, platinum, bone, bleached

White is the color of the page that is waiting for you. Write on!

 

GREEN WITH ENVY

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GREEN WITH ENVY

By Natalie Bright

Early Greeks believed if you were ill or jealous, your skin would look green and pale. Shakespeare and Chaucer wrote of characters “green with envy.” Shakespeare is also credited with being the first to use the catch phrase “the green-eyed monster.”

O! Beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green-eyed monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.” — Othello

Greens = 

Celery, mint, apple green, lime moss, pea Kelly emerald, olive, pistachio, chartreuse, hunter

Spring time is a great reminder as to how many different shades of green there are. Dig deeper into your characters and your descriptive phrases to paint an even more vivid picture for your readers.

 

 

SOOTHING BLUE

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SOOTHING BLUE

By Natalie Bright

 

Calm, serene, cool, the color of the sky and sea. Blue is my favorite color. I guess that’s why I love the Texas sky so much. We enjoy so many shades of an endless sky blue stretching as far as the eye can see.

Blue has such a positive vibe, creating a mental soothing, as opposed to red which creates a physical reaction. Blue is mentally calming. Consider the products that use blue such as vodka, water purification systems, airlines, mineral water. High tech gadgets use blue to put forward precision. Blue is associated to males, and is considered to be the preferred color for corporate America.

Light blue: health, soft and fluffy clouds, healing, tranquil seas, understanding.

Dark blue: power suit, seriousness of a mortician, knowledge, integrity.

Blue can have create negative mental images as well: lack of emotion, cold, aloof, unfriendly.

Blue:

Sky, sapphire, azure, delft turquoise, aqua, aquamarine, violet, peacock, teal, cobalt, royal, navy, steel, powder

 Nataliebright.com

 

 

 

THE PARAGRAPH

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THE PARAGRAPH

By Natalie Bright

 

A recent eBook purchase proved to be very frustrating.

It wasn’t the writing, which was very descriptive, literary, and wonderful. It’s the formatting. It has no paragraphs. At least on the eBook version, words continue for screen after screen after screen, with no paragraph break. I’m not sure how that would translate to a printed page, but I can tell you as far as the Kindle version it’s just impossible to read. It feels like my brain and eyes are working extra hard.

Let’s turn to the experts.

Under Chapter II Elementary Principles of Composition, The Elements of Style (by Strunk and White), they describe the paragraph as thus: “The paragraph is a convenient unit; it serves all forms of literary work.”

Paragraph Review

  1. In dialogue, each change of the speaker (even if it’s a single word) begins with a new paragraph.
  2. Each change of topic needs a new paragraph.
  3. Begin the paragraph with a sentence that suggests the new topic, or helps with transition.
  4. The paragraph can begin with a concise statement with the purpose of presenting or holding together the details to follow.
  5. For narrative action, the paragraph gives the reader a stylistic pause, used to highlight importance of some detail of the action.
  6. Large blocks of print look formidable and daunting to a reader.

In summary, Strunk and White explains, “Moderation and a sense of order should be the main consideration in paragraphing.”

Enough said. Write on people.

REF: Elements of Style by Strunk and White, Fourth Edition, Longman 2000.

SENSORY WORD: RED

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SENSORY WORD: RED

By Natalie Bright

 

We think of our eyes as video cameras and our brains as blank tapes to be filled with sensory inputs.

Michael Shermer

I love this quote! Think of your readers as blank tapes. It’s your job as a writer to convey that image in as vivid a picture as possible. You create a world on a page with words that comes alive in the readers’ brain.

Let’s consider the color red. Think about digging even deeper. Instead of red, how about:

Pink, salmon, coral, raspberry, strawberry, tomato, currant, cherry, crimson, vermillion, flame, ruby garnet, wine

Each one of those shades of red creates a totally different mental image.

Thanks for following Wordsmith Six!

Nataliebright.com

 

 

 

THE VERY BUSY SPIDER

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THE VERY BUSY SPIDER

 by Natalie Bright

 

A recent Publishers Weekly article announced a new initiative involving publishers and more than 30 communities working to make popular eBooks available for free to children. The Open eBooks app is being developed by the New York Public Library. More kids reading and discovering stories is so exciting. I hope the ConnectED Library Challenge is a huge success.

For the Love of Books!

Remembering the joy I found as a child from my favorite books makes me think of Eric Carle’s THE VERY BUSY SPIDER.

My son loved that book. His father and I took turns reading it out loud. Every. Single. Night. Never mind that I joined a book club and received 2 to 3 new picture books each month. Our boy wasn’t interested. The sheer drudgery of reading Mr. Carle’s book over and over for many years became almost unbearable. My husband and I took turns talking in goofy voices for the animal parts, seeing who could keep a straight face the longest.

Being desperate, I offered a brilliant compromise. We would read two stories every night. One of his choosing and one of my choosing, from the growing pile of book club treasures. My son thought this over for several long seconds. “O-tay,” he says. “But we wead busy spider two times.”

So that’s what we did. One new book and then the spider book every night. Twice. Outsmarted by a three year old, I admit it, but who can argue with that logic when someone you care about loves a book that much?

Dyslexia Diagnosis

Several years later, when my son was in elementary school and struggling, we discovered he had dyslexia. After training sessions and classes which included parent’s participation as well, I understood his fascination with THE VERY BUSY SPIDER. It has clean lines, simple yet detailed illustrations, pages filled with white space; that book literally relaxed his over active brain. The story calmed him down after a day of sensory overload.

Honestly, I still cringe every time I see that cover. No matter how much I dreaded reading that book, what if I had insisted on reading the other books instead? His heart would have been broken, and his over-active mind would have never settled down for sleep.

Readers Have to Connect

As a writer I stand in awe of THE VERY BUSY SPIDER. I learned two lessons from my son and that book:

  1. Some readers may not connect with your stories. Every reader is different.
  2. Stop writing to catch the latest trend. If you’ve never reached the end, it might be time to start something new. If you’re not really into it, how can your readers connect? Write the kinds of books that burn in your heart and mind.

When I dropped the drudgery of writing to what’s popular, my clip file and pub credits grew. The characters that spoke to me gained me a literary agent.

Book Lovers to Do List:

Long before I was a writer, I was a book lover and reader. Here are a few ways we can all promote the joys of reading.

* Recommend a good book to a child or parent, even if it’s not yours.

* Post a book review for an author.

* Comment on an industry related blog and share the link.

* Keep writing the stories of your heart.