Sarah J. Carlson

Contemporary Young Adult Author

Category Archives: Writing

Sharing the Writer & Book Blogger Love!

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Are you a writer or reader looking for kindred spirits? My friend Hayley at http://booksaredelicious.com has a blog post listing a few of her kindred spirits. Check it out and share what you’re working on. Spread the love around 🙂 Happy writing (or reading…or both)

Hayley Knighten's avatarBooks are Delicious!

I love the WordPress blogging community and have made some great friends and discovered some amazing blogs! You can find my favorites HERE! I’m always excited to find new blogs or learn about books that bloggers have written or recommend. If you have a blog or a novel to promote, please leave a comment with a link below so myself and anyone who follows my blog can find it.

kindredspirits

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DOOOONNEE editing!!!! (for now anyway)

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Image(Me at Moraine Lake near Banff, Alberta, Canada)

So this picture pretty much encapsulates how I feel right now. I finished the latest round of edits on my perpetually nearly finished novel! This is at least the 5th round of full novel revision, typically after doing major reworking. This time around it was a real battle of willpower. Now it’s off to a development editor so I can get it back and have more editing to do. It’s getting closer!

How are your projects going?

My brain is out of words… So I’ll post a picture instead

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ImageThe Singapore Super Trees with Marina Bay Sands in the background.

Confession…  I’ve been editing and revising too much. I have to get through my entire perpetually-nearly-finished novel by Friday to send it for development editing. I’m about two thirds of the way through. Now my brain….it’s…refusing…to work.

Has this ever happened to you? What do you do to recharge your brain?

How’s that novel coming?

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Happy Monday morning for my time zone and Sunday evening to North America.

How is that novel coming? The same as four months ago. Editing and revising. Getting feedback. More editing and revising. Novels don’t get finished overnight, son! A good reminder to find inspiration in everything though.

How many times have you been asked that question? And what do you say?

iTunes Playlist Challenge! part 2

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Image(Retrieved from http://fungerms.com/music-quotes/)

One of my biggest creative writing fuels is music. I need to have music all.the.time. Riding Singapore’s amazing public transportation system, washing dishes, running, writing, shopping at the grocery store— music all the time. I create my own soundtracks for my books, with songs for different characters and events and setting. It helps me connect with the world I’m creating. This morning I ran my iTunes Playlist Challenge again because it was just so much fun last week. I put my iTunes on shuffle and wrote down the first ten songs (or so) that came up.

Here they are:

  1. “Attack on Murron,” James Horner, Braveheart soundtrack
  2. “Do or Die,” Papa Roach, Getting Away With Murder
  3. “The World Is Ahead,” Howard Shore, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
  4. “Exiles,” Bryan Tyler, Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune (Original Television Soundtrack)
  5. “House of the Rising Sun,” The Animals, Retrospective
  6. “Whispers & Confessions,” Trevor Morris, The Tudors
  7. “Thru The Eyes of Ruby,” Smashing Pumpkins, Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness: Twilight to Starlight
  8. “Ishwilf,” Disturbed, Asylum
  9. “Pinwheels,” Smashing Pumpkins, Oceania
  10. “Killing In The Name,” Rage Against the Machine, Rage against the Machine

So several of those were less than two minute songs, so I did one more for funsies:

“Tomorrow Comes a Day Too Soon,” Flogging Molly, Within a Mile of Home

Wow, that was a lot more random in terms of music…. But I wonder if shuffle got stuck on soundtrack mode or something. Now you know a little about what movies and TV shows I like I guess haha.

Try it for yourself and see what happens. Post your results here!