Tag Archives: anxiety

Exploring: Guest Posts

A small white rose

Each guest the petal of a flower

As the happy holiday season is now upon us and many writers are wrapped up in NaNoWriMo, time is  sucked away in more ways than usual and I’m guessing many blogs will be quite neglected over the next couple months. This made me think about guest posts. Not only looking to do some myself – gifts of time to my fellow bloggers, if you will- but also to invite bloggers to guest post here.

If you’ve been reading here for a while, you know I’ve set up a five day schedule with specific topics for each day and if you are new, here’s what I’m doing:

Monday- marketing, promotion, self-publishing, children’s picture books

A quilt of nature photos

Each a part of the Natural Tapestry

Tuesday- agents, query letters, middle grade fiction

Wednesday- Revision, re-writes

Thursday- Reading, book reviews, book lists, reading sites

Friday- Exploring, writing prompts, adventures, filling the creative well

Want to write on any of these topics? To be a guest writer on this blog, please let me know in the comments or send your post idea to mariaberg@mbercreations.com. Please, original (not previously posted on your blog) posts only. If I get enough interest maybe I’ll add Guest Post Saturday! I’m excited to get your outlook on these topics. Offering a guest post would be a lovely gift to me, to ease my fear and anxiety of running out of time to post while I make gifts, work on publishing the sequel to Gator McBumpypants Hears a Scary Noise, get over this stupid cold and try to revise my novel.

I look forward to hosting your fabulous writing and anyone whose interested in trading guest posts, or book reviews, I’d enjoy that as well. ‘Tis the Season for giving and I will do my best to give as much (or more) than I get.

Revision: Exploring my characters’ motivations

A nice sunset

A nice sunset

And after a few revisions in Windows Photo Gallery

Sunset with revisions

I love playing with simple photo editing software. All of those fabulous colors were in my photo just waiting for me to draw them out–slough off a bit of brightness, delete a bit of shadow, redefine the contrast and saturate the hues. Now, to apply the same principal (drawing out the good stuff) to my manuscript.

This morning I approached my task in a new way. My goal is to make the motivations of my characters clear to my readers. I had planned to read through my manuscript and note my characters’ motivations for each major action in the margins (and I am still planning on doing that), but as I wrote my morning pages, I started exploring some of the hermit’s major motivations: Abandonment, Rejection, Betrayal, Judgement. Then I explored events in her childhood that would have led to these feelings. I quickly filled my morning pages with ideas. One of the ideas for betrayal seemed to be a better motivation for my other main character.

Looking at the origin stories of my characters’ motivations, I saw a common theme–Perception. Specifically, how incorrect perceptions both internal and external can negatively affect one’s life. At first it felt like a revelation to define this underlying theme, but really, it is no surprise. I got my M.S. in perception, be it the biopsychology (behavioral neuroscience) of visual perception and memory, but I am obviously (though somewhat subconsciously) writing what I know.

Now, I’m daydreaming about quoting my own journal articles and bringing in quotes about the physical aspects of perception and anxiety. It could be a fun tie-in for chapter titles. I’ll see where it takes me.

Today, I’m excited to be making some progress toward taming the beast named First Novel.

Anyone have revision tips? Every idea is welcome and appreciated.