Deborah Woehr

It’s because I’ve been trying to catch up on my reading. One of my goals for this year is to educate myself on the different aspects of book marketing, including drawing up marketing plans for each of my WIP’s. I’ve just finished one book, taking copious notes.

I read somewhere that the first manuscripts of several of the most prominent writers never saw the light of day. Success came from their second or third book. Next to parenting, writing a good book is one of the most challenging things I’ve set out to accomplish.

I started writing my first story in April of 1997, which involved a serial killer who stalked a “married with children” businesswoman. At the time, it was a unique premise because most of the themes involved single or divorced women with no children. It took me about eight months to pound out this story.

Once I finished it, I gave it to my sister and grandmother to read. Both of them raved about it and urged me to rush it off to publishers. Despite their kudos, I hesitated. As a voracious reader, I wasn’t happy with it, although I wouldn’t know why until after I’d shelved it for a year.

Since then, I’d bought several “how-to” books on writing and devoured them as I began the first draft of Prosperity. Friends and family kept urging me to get that first story published. By this time, I’d decided not to submit it because I felt that the horror market was oversaturated with serial killer stories already.

Still, they kept pestering me until one day I dug it up and endured the first chapter. Adverbs peppered every page. The characters were flat and lifeless. I could go on, but I won’t. My gut instinct proved correct, and I’m glad I didn’t send that manuscript out.

My family and friends continue to ask how I’m doing with my writing, and my response is always, “I’m still plugging away.” Once they hear my response, they change the subject. That’s fine because I’m not writing for them; I’m writing for myself.

Has anyone ever heard of or used theNextBigWriter? It’s writer’s site that allows you to post your work for review. As a reader, I’m put off by the fact that I have to sign up to be able to read what these writers have posted. Then again, it’s a good deterrent to theft.

How many of you believe in ghosts or the afterlife? I’m the seeing is believing kind. I’ve never seen a ghost in my life, but I’ve heard and felt strange things that I couldn’t explain. A few years ago, I read John Edward’s One Last Time. Part of the book discussed dream visitations.

That’s what Amanda experienced in the prior chapter, although she blows off the dream as “her craziness” and overreacts when Travis mentions getting a phone for the house. Amanda has issues that she needs to deal with, which are evident in this scene. Travis tries to get her to talk about the dream, but she refuses.

In the second scene, Amanda receives a revelation about Naomi that she didn’t expect. This causes her to lose her job at the diner, which will force her and Travis to be around each other 24/7 until this story ends.

I ended the chapter with Travis, who is trying to make sense of the events that are happening around him.

Faucets didn’t turn on by themselves. His house didn’t burn to the ground for no reason. Travis seated himself on the sofa and gazed at the ceiling. He’d had no clue that Naomi was dead until Amanda came. The fact that Naomi’s ghost had appeared on the day Amanda had arrived was a powerful coincidence.

He sets out to investigate Amanda’s past in order to find out more about her.

I’ve seen this circulating around the blogosphere and thought I’d go and cast my vote. These are the people who have touched me and inspired me to become a better blogger. Thanks!
WordPress for Best Weblog Application: I’ve tried several apps over the past year and this one has proven to be the best.

Life Through My Eyes and Benjamin Solah for Best Australian and NZ Weblogs: I’ve really enjoyed Alan’s pictures/commentary and Ben’s commentary. Reading their blogs is the closest I may ever come to Australia.

David Boles’ Urban Semiotic for Best Topical Weblog: David’s blog makes me think.

Ramblings from the Desert and Smoke and Mirrors for Most Humorous Weblogs: Ramblings has become my favorite. I look forward to reading Pat’s snarky posts about her animals, Lost, and life in general. Smoke and Mirrors got added to my list when Michael wrote about Thanksgiving dinner.

All Kinds of Writing and Chick with a Gun for Best Writing of a Weblog: This was a tough one, as I enjoy many writer’s blogs. I chose Melly’s not only because of her writing style and topics but because of the way she interacts with her readers. This is one of my faves. I found Chick with a Gun last month, when I was contemplating the anthology project. Her story about Venus struck an emotional chord in me, thereby landing a place on my blogroll.

Lee Pletzers for the Lifetime Achievement spot: Lee just told me that he’s been blogging for four years.

Weblog of the Year: That’s a secret.

After reading various posts about bugs, I have to warn those of you who are thinking of upgrading your WP blogs to wait. Click here to read what others have to say. The biggest complaints are plug-in compatibility, the WYSIWYG, and the image uploading. If you’d like an education on the software process, read the comments by How To Blog. Very insightful.

So far, I’ve experienced no problems with WordPress 2.0 on a new blog. I haven’t tried to upload an image yet, but will keep you posted on my experiences. Despite all the negative publicity, I think this version has some great potential. The majority of the upgrades were made for the developer side of the program, which will allow them to produce some fantastic plug-ins that they couldn’t do with version 1.5.

While I did a quick browsing for plug-ins, I noticed some for video and podcasting. This might not interest many of you, but I instantly thought about my scratchboard blog. One of the projects on this year’s list is to write a book on this medium, and think a multimedia blog would help the book’s sales a great deal.

As for the Admin side of WP, I’m happy with it in general. It’s a bit cluttered with features, but you can collapse what you don’t need and expand what you do. The best feature is the ability to add categories directly from the Write Post page. This has come in very handy as I’m forced to copy and paste six months worth of posts and comments into this blog, which leads me to my one complaint.

That complaint is the Import feature. If you have a Blogger or Textpattern blog, you’re fine. If not, you’re screwed. I went to the WP 2.0 support site and found a tutorial on how to import Movable Type blogs into WordPress. After I printed it out, I went to my File Manager to find the import-mt.php file in the wp-admin directory. It wasn’t in the main part of that directory.

I did find an Import subdirectory, where I found mt.php. After I opened that up, I scoured the file for the string I was supposed to edit but couldn’t find it. I looked at the tutorial and found that it was written for version 1.5. Well, that did a lot of good. My beef is that WP should have included the MT import feature in this version because I’ve seen more MT blogs than Textpattern blogs.

That’s it for now.

I managed to import my MT posts from December 22 to today via the RSS import feature (after a fruitless attempt with the WP tutorial). The process had a big downside–no importing of comments. So if you’re wondering why your comments show up only in the latest posts, that’s why. I’ll get them in (along with the rest of my posts), but it’s going to take a while.

So far, I’m liking WordPress 2.0. The interface has some definite improvements over the 1.5 version. For instance, if you type a post before you realize that you want to add a new category, you can add it directly from the Write Post page.

I found some great plug-ins, which I’ll share with you later. In the meantime, I’m going to get some dinner in me and finish up Chapter 13. See you tomorrow!

How do you like the new theme? The stargazer lily is my favorite flower. And, since I’m artsy-fartsy, I thought this would fit. If you’re one of my regular readers and don’t see your link here, don’t worry. I’ll be adding them soon.

Movable Type just isn’t doing it for me anymore. My readers are having problems viewing the comments, and so am I. While a simple refresh solves the problem, it’s annoying. There are other factors, but they aren’t as important as the usability issues. So I’m switching this blog over to WordPress.

http://www.deborahwoehr.com/blog/

You can still comment on my latest post, if you haven’t already. I’m going to make an attempt to port everything over to the new blog. It was time for a change anyway. Plus, I’d like to use the home page as a gateway to my other blogs, upcoming books, and my resume.

Crafting characters is my favorite part in writing a story. First, I envision what they look like. Then I’ll name them. Next, I dream up their history and personalities. Usually by this time, I have a general idea of what my story is about and how it’s going to progress.

What are your methods of character creation?