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Poe War is a great writing blog that covers everything from identifying ways for writers not to negatively reinforce themselves, to hilarious fun lists of annoyances that writers find out in the wilds.

While a lot of the entries deal with freelance writing, a lot of the information they give can be readily applied toward fiction. One of the most useful I’ve found recently was an entry in how to use slang and accents when writing dialogue. While not entirely addressing what I needed, it was still a very useful starting point for me in trying to find resources to help me with some of my character’s speech patterns.

And some of the posts under the Fun section are items that any writer will definitely get a laugh from.

Well, after a couple of emails between my mentor and I, I have started my revisions in earnest. Right now the majority of them are dialogue related. Which is interesting since I thought dialogue was my strongest capability in a story.

The cardinal sin I committed while writing the dialogue was that I had made the characters sound much to alike. More than likely this was due to letting my own diction seep through as I wrote the draft. Understandable, considering the speed I was trying to keep in order to finish the thing.

So now after having basked in the afterglow of accomplishment, I now start the task of making my characters sound different from one another. I guess for starters some contractions would be nice, according to some of my critique partners.

Picky, picky. Ah well, as long as I don’t all make them sound alike when I relax their speech then that would be good. I could just give them all cockney accents, even though they are nowhere near the British Isles.

It would be hilarious though, wouldn’t it?

I’d like to know what your thoughts are on accents and dialects. Can they be used effectively without making them look like caricatures? And can you use accents or dialects from our own world in Fantasy or Science Fiction worlds without having the reader stop and go “Why is there an Irish guy in the middle of that group of dwarves?”.

Wow, I can’t believe the day came, but I finally finished my 1st draft of my thesis novel on Sunday evening. It came out to 91,768 words with a marathon 5,437 word dash on the last day. You have no idea how relieved I am about it. By no means am I finished (I still have re-writes to do) but those are a lot easier to do when you have a completed draft in your hands.

For the past two day’s I’ve been holding off on beginning re-writes until I head back from my mentor Gary Braunbeck, but tomorrow I will start writing again with an eye at correcting some of the too formal dialogue and perhaps even writing a short story to change gears a bit.

Either way, it’s great to be done with the first major milestone!

Well, it’s Wednesday and I’d thought I’d post on my progress since I aim to finish the novel this week.

I’m just shy the 85,000 mark and right now I’m approaching the “big action scene”. In some ways I’m elated to be almost there, but in others I just want to finish the damn thing already. Some of the mornings I feel like my mind is full of molasses and my fingers are made of cement. I just want to finish and then take a big, long, nap.

But, I know that my work is just beginning since I need to start revisions as soon as I’m done and then have everything finished by September 30th in time for the readers.

Sometimes I wish I could scream.

Does anyone have any tips on how to fight these weird “end of novel” emotions?

I was able to get through about 2,300 words during the weekend. By far my most productive weekend, but still shy of where I wanted to be. There had been hope that I could finish the manuscript before the final hours of Sunday, but I found “Weekenditis” had taken hold.

What is Weekenditis? To keep it short, it’s a condition which affects me during the weekend and prevents me from getting any actual writing work done. Oh sure I get other things done, but my writing comes to a complete halt. It’s a rich combination of laziness and procrastination with a small bit of avoidance thrown in for spice.

In the coming days, I’ll talk a little bit more about Weekenditis and how to combat it, but for now let’s continue with the update on my progress.

I’ll be setting a new goal to finish the novel by the end of the week on Sunday. I’m confident I’ll have it wrapped up before then, but I want to put a self-imposed deadline to push me to finish it.

And after that it’ll be time to take a harrowing spin through Revision Land.

Beware the Red Pen! Beeeewwwwaaaaarrrrrrreeeeee!!!

When I woke up today I happened upon something that saddened me.

I’ve read many a story in Science-Fiction and Fantasy where a sensitive social subject could be explored without fear of the usual backlash from those parties involved. So it disheartens me to read a rejection letter with comments of someone who is blinded by their own hatred of a particular group. However, another thing came to light as I had gone through the comments on these blog entries. I kept finding the same recurring theme from minority writers and readers that SF/F is racist and bigoted.

Huh?

I agree with the sentiments that William Sanders had overstepped the boundaries of professionalism and good taste, but then these commenters on several of these blogs lump all of SF/F together as racist and a “white man’s club” because of their own experiences? Isn’t that just as bad as what William Sanders had done by writing those racist words himself? Generalizing an entire community and industry by the actions of a few?

I’m a minority writer myself (Hispanic) and I’ve had nothing but great interactions with the SF/F community and industry at large. I’ve found support everywhere I turned and even in my rejections I had found more to strengthen me in my pursuit of being a better writer. Where is all this hatred coming from that I haven’t run into it?

Maybe I’m just lucky I haven’t encountered it. Or perhaps more likely is the SF/F community and industry are a lot more supportive of the growing voice of minority writers and those few commenters had run into the wrong people. I’d like to think that SF/F will prove me right in this regard, and so far it has.

I can now say that the end is nigh. No, not the end of the world (at least I hope not) but the end of my novel. So far I’m in the last 5,000 words or so of it and I can feel the threads are coming to a close and then I can start the process of re-writing.

I do apologize for the lack of content update, but it’s been a harrowing week or so. Who could have thought possible to first catch something at Residency and then get either some minor food poisoning or stomach flu from a July 4th family gathering? It makes me the lucky winner this month and my prize is an economy sized bottle of Pepto.

Toward the end of this week, when I aim to finish the novel, I’ll be going back to my daily posting regime and post some more information on what happened at Residency and what I learned while there. I also have some great updates as far as social networking is concerned and how writers can use it to their maximum effectiveness.

I just came back from Residency at Seton Hill University today. It was nice to have an uneventful flight after the interesting week I had.

First off, I apologize for the lack of updates while I was there. About a couple of days in, I began to feel under the weather, which culminated in a visit to the urgent care on Saturday morning. It took only a couple of seconds for the test to come back positive for strep throat, but thankfully I was prescribed some meds and now I’m feeling better. My main problem now is my wife insists on asking me who I was kissing to catch it.

The Residency was enjoyable as ever, and meeting all of my friends always gives me a rush. Being surrounded by so many writers can in inspire in ways you can’t expect. Since there were a lot of things that happened, I’ll spread out some of the more significant events and lessons I learned through some of my blog entries over this week.

Lastly, while I was sitting in bed for most of Saturday there was one thing that kept popping into my mind: Was there any way I could do some work during the time? I found I lacked the energy to leave the room for the most part, but I’m curious if any of you have some tips and tricks for keeping productive while being dogged by the bug d’jour? Feel free to post some of your ideas in the comments.

I’m done packing and I’m read for the flight out tomorrow morning. I’ll be posting some of my thoughts on what happens during Residency here and there, but I may be posting infrequently during the next week. Things will go back to normal after I get back.

And for you other Writing Popular Fiction students, I’ll see you tomorrow at the opening reception!

Well, here we are the Sunday before Residency, and this is my first post concerning progress on my thesis novel. I hope to post occasionally on this to tie together the quick status posts I put on Twitter, Pownce and Facebook about my total progress.

Right now I’m almost at 80,000 words so I have about 10,000 or so words left in order to finish the novel. I believe though that I can wrap it up in about 5,000 words. I’ll be able to get at least another 1,000 tomorrow, and I plan to see if I can keep the momentum going during Residency, but that might be a little difficult considering I still have my critiques to do.

So far though, after speaking with my mentor, I’ve had an output spike and I hope to keep it going. I seem to have gone through so many different ways of keeping my output up. I’d like to hear some of different ways all of you use to keep on writing. I’ll post the top five methods you recommend in a later post.