C-J.com » Site

A Fun Little Interruption

Courtney Johnson — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 18:08:16 +0000

My WIP is in a sort of transition right now as I work on query letters and synopses together. I’m working on a lengthy blogpost that will be ready for the light in a day or two. I’m also sprawled on the couch a few weeks from my due date, baking in the heat of a hot, Colorado day.

And along comes this nice distraction: a fun little post by Liana Brooks, guaranteed to get you chuckling, no matter what stage of “parenthood” you’re suffering through right now.

The Burden of Proof Lies with YOU!

Courtney Johnson — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 04:42:46 +0000

…Or, Why They’ll Never Put Me in Charge of Motivational Posters.

Grammar is such a funky issues for us writers, isn’t it? We get advice from both sides: “Don’t worry about grammar! That’s what editors are for,” and of course, “Grammar is vital to good writing. Don’t count on an agent so much as glancing at your manuscript if there’s so much as a single comma out of place.”

Like so many divisive arguments, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. I won’t lie to you. I do not fall in the camp of “Don’t worry about grammar!” You have to worry about grammar, because reasonably good grammar is a part of good writing. Why is that? It’s simply this: grammar serves the purpose of making your meaning clear. You can’t build a house without nails and you can’t structure a sentence without a period. Sure, you can write some sort of bleeding-edge, stream-of-consciousness, drug-addled literary masterpiece, but that’s a lot of hard work. It’s much harder than learning to use your commas and your semi-colons correctly. It’s also harder to get published.

So, having established that you’d probably be better off having at least a basic understanding of grammar, let’s move onto the next point: understanding when you’re doing it wrong.

As you go through the writing process, you’ll write and you’ll revise and you’ll rewrite and you’ll cry and you’ll invest some serious cash in coffee and you’ll rinse and you’ll repeat. Eventually, all of this blood, sweat and caffeine will make its way to a critique partner or two.

You’ll probably leave your first-ever critiquing experience feeling like everyone hates you and no one understands.

Those critique partners will tear your work apart. They will decimate your carefully comma’d sentences. They will deride your use of creatively sprinkled adverbs. They will decry all those adjectives that give your writing such beautiful, eloquent, and meaningful meaning. You will hate it. You might even hate *them*. You might even go so far as to hate your book!

And then…

Then, you talk yourself off that ledge, you put down the ceramic cup containing your 16th cup of coffee since dinner, and you remember something:

Rinse and repeat.

You will revise and you will rewrite. You will run a search for “-ly” in Word and you’ll reconsider the adverbs. You will scour for adjectives. You will make stronger sentences. And, gods willing, you will even figure out the damned comma.

It’s key to remember that writing is a constant learning process and that the ability to learn and retain is your responsibility. If a critique partner tells you that your comma usage is incorrect, the question to ask is not: Tell me why? You cannot ask your critique partner to teach you grammar, or to fix your broken sentences. You must learn. You must find your own answers. The question to ask is this: Why is it *correct*? And the person you have to ask is yourself. If you can’t explain why you’ve done something, the burden falls to you. Commas and exclamation points and nouns and verbs are your paint brushes. You have to know why you use them.

I’m a firm believer that, 9 times out of 10, your grammar will be mostly correct if the meaning behind your sentences is correct. If you can’t explain why a comma or a particular word doesn’t work in that spot, go back to the beginning. What are you trying to say? Does the logic in your sentence structure make sense?

Learn all the colors of the rainbow. Understand sentence structure, punctuation usage, subject-verb agreement, and word choice. Study writing like you would study math. It is a constant process and only you can ever really learn it the right way for you! Take pride and joy in your work by truly understanding the ins and outs of your art.

Grammar is just another tool, another means to an end, but it is one that you must get to the bottom of, one way or another. Some one, some day, will ask you to explain yourself, and that burden of proof lies with you. Know why you do it, know why it’s right, and stand behind your work.

Contest Alert!

Courtney Johnson — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:28:00 +0000

Rebecca Hamilton is hosting a contest giving away a signed copy of Nancy Pickard’s latest novel. Click here to check it out!

Expanding my Horizons.

Courtney Johnson — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 04:56:16 +0000

Or… Moving Past the Shampoo Bottle.

I am the proud owner of a lot of bookcases. They’re stuffed full, overflowing even, with a wide variety of books. Some of them are “necessities”: cookbooks, dictionaries, The Great Gatsby. There’s literary fiction, sci-fi, fantasy, a smattering of young adult books, lots and lots of classics filched from my mother, non-fiction covering a range of subjects from Al Capone to The First Americans to Toilets Around the World.

What?

It was a gift, okay?

Urban fantasy. Chick lit. Mystery novels. Pretty much everything Anne Rice ever wrote.

I buy books on sale or pre-order novels I’ve been waiting for for months. I pick things up because I like the cover or because it came highly recommended.

I’ve also started this new thing lately, of visiting my local library. It’s been, sadly, years since I’ve been a member of a public library. Too many moves and too much work to really take advantage.

I’m still adjusting to using the library. I’ve been using the online catalog pretty extensively, but haven’t done as much browsing as I would if I were in a bookstore. In an effort to force myself into expanding my horizons, I’ve been trying to grab a book here and there that I would probably never, ever purchase in a store.

To begin with, I started as far from my beginning point (my own shelves) as I could possibly get and grabbed a book from a genre where I’ve never so much as read a blurb.

Summer Snow, by Nicole Baart, is an inspirational novel. It’s the story of a young woman (a sequel, actually, though I’ve not read the first story,) faced with an unplanned pregnancy and a drastic change in her family situation. Julia DeSmit is an interesting character and the story itself is crafted in a way that I don’t have a lot of experience with. Simply put, it’s a book where not much “happens.” The characters live their lives, they go to work, they go out to dinner, they paint a porch. By no means, however, is it boring. The tension throughout the story is practically jumping off the page. These are characters just living life, yes, but every emotion, every motivation, is prevalent and tangible.

So what makes it so different for me?

It’s that first part. The inspirational part. As interesting as the book was, as well-crafted some of the sentences, I struggled to truly identify with parts of the story. Simply put, the characters worry about things in a way that just wouldn’t occur to me.

It gave me a great deal to think about, in the terms of how we approach our audiences. The book and story have a lot to offer, but it’s definitely geared towards a specific market. This is true of most books, to be certain, but is the inspirational market more narrow than your usual genre market?

I’ll continue on my quest to read outside my “comfort” genres. Next up? Military sci-fi, perhaps followed by a heavy dash of high fantasy (preferably something with a lot of walking!) But I do find myself wondering if I’d ever venture back into the inspirational genre. I believe good books can come in all shapes, sizes and genres, but sometimes, we have to look into a little corner of the publishing world we’d never considered to really be surprised.

And the winner is…

Courtney Johnson — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 00:20:50 +0000

…Me!

Just kidding! But, before we get to the good stuff (like, who wins the critique…) here’s the fun news:

It’s a Boy!

And the winner of the 10,000 word critique is….

Angela Ackerman! Hit me up on Facebook and we’ll make arrangements to get that word critique to me.

Link o’ the Day

Courtney Johnson — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 03:51:48 +0000

Or… What contest? There’s a contest going on?

Here’s an excellent article on self-promotion for new authors. Some of this is aimed at the lucky few who’ve landed an agent or even signed a book deal, but there’s some fantastic advice for writers from all stages of the process.

Wendy Webb guest posts over at A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.

Contest!

Courtney Johnson — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 06:00:41 +0000

…Or… hootie hoo hoo.

So, in case you missed it (since I didn’t formally announce anything…) I’ll be popping out a kid this summer, sometime after Hellish July and before The Snow Comes in September. We’re hopefully finding out the gender on Thursday, April 15th, so in the spirit of celebrating the advancements of modern medicine, I’m holding a contest.

Who? You!

What? Fulfill the entrance requirements below and receive a free, full (in Word! With TRACK CHANGES!) critique on ANY 10,000 words you like. It can be the first 10,000 of your novel or the last. It can be 10 pieces of flash fiction. It can be 100 pieces of poetry. You pick! BONUS: If more than 10 people enter, I’ll give out 2 runner-up critiques up to 2500 words (or your first chapter, whichever you prefer!)

Where? Right here, silly.

When? Contest begins Monday, April 12, 2010 at midnight and runs until Thursday, April 15, 2010 at 6pm. BONUS: Mountain time!

Why? Spreading the love, baby. Spreading the love.

Entrance requirements:

1) Link to this blog in your blogroll OR provide a link about the contest in a blog entry.

2) Comment on this entry and list your blog so I can check out the link. Include in your comment your guess: BOY or GIRL. You do not have to guess correctly to win, but you do have to guess!

In case you really want to get it right, here’s some symptoms:

1) I am, in fact, pregnant. The doctor said so! We even saw pictures!

2) I was miserably, horribly sick for the first trimester.

3) I crave food.

4) My back hurts.

5) My husband and I are both geniuses, but not smart enough to figure out the ring trick. It went back and forth, in circles and did a loopty-loop.

Get going, folks! Entries being excepted NOW!

ETA: Yes, you can post to facebook and twitter! Don’t forget to leave a link!

Happy Spring!

Courtney Johnson — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 22:58:07 +0000

…Or, Edits, what edits? I meant to redesign the site today. I swear.

Worked on a new site redesign today – here’s hoping it makes no one’s eyes bleed! Look for new posts in the coming weeks on:

Are you any good at anything? How can you tell?

Openings Suck. All Openings Suck. Especially Yours. And Definitely Mine.

How I Learned To Write (Because I know you care.)

Bestest Books of All Time

Also, don’t forget to check back on Monday! I’m having a CONTEST. Blimey.

Showcase

Courtney Johnson — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 19:12:46 +0000

Or… What? No, I’m not posting this just to avoid writing something else this week.

One of my critique partners, Gerald Johnston, has been featured in a Writer’s Showcase! Click here to check it out!

Fresssssh Blood

Courtney Johnson — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 03:37:14 +0000

Or… I love the smell of new blogs in the morning.

Rebecca Hamilton has setup shop to today with a new, shiny blog. Visit it. Comment. Subscribe.

Submit.