Tag: books

Have a Romance Novel within you?

romance novel

Hello all! Welcome back to this blog!

A few years ago I discovered Romance. Not just the sub-plotted thread lines existing in which ever genre that I came across, but the innovative, new born, sub-genres of Romance. 

I discovered that I loved to read Romance and that I went by these books in a short breath time span.

This phase gave me a good perception of what was being created in those years and how some storylines were most attractive to me than others.

I remember crossing paths with Young Adult Romance and Adult/Erotic Romance. I remember the impact of Urban, Fantasy and Paranormal Romance.

But what they all had in common was the Romance part.

Even when the plot was about something else entirely, it was the quality of relationships and the love that bloomed, as well as the griefs and disappointments of an unrequited love, and everything in between, that were the propeller to read more on different genres.

I’m from a time when writing romance was still very frowned upon.

Fortunately I can now say that I am from a time that saw these preconceptions evolve into a more mainstream type of literature and are a bit more tolerated.

Just a bit. Let’s not go crazy over this.

[Was this the reason they were so afraid of? To have a lesser genre to be a big earner? Never mind.]

By now, I’m tempted to list a few of my most impactful reads. ***Should I? Let me know in the comments, if you’re interested in knowing what got into my Best Romance Books Ever.

There had been a great number of romance books written in such an impactful way that I do hope they withstand the passage of time.

A few months ago I came across a few lists all under the reference “Best Romance Novels of All Time”.

I was quite curious about what would pop up if I researched something as broaden as this and it did not disappoint.

Of course we had the classics in there, which contains some of my favorites, but there was also a few of the published (and self-published) ones that are now considered modern genre-classics.

Goodreads produced a list of 639 books on this query: Best Top Romance Novels of All Time . A list which needs to be revised since it has escaped the fundamental criteria for existing.

Criteria: The list is compiled from Amazons Bestsellers in Romance for the peoples view, from Romance Readers Top 100 Romance Novels for a Critique View, And from the Best books From last 10 years lists. Each book has been rated at least 4 star by at least 75 readers.

639! And some of those are series.

Then, it was time for browsing through a Readers Digest Article with the 55 Best Romance Novels of All Time. Last updated in January 2023, this list contains more recent romance novels, from which I spotted a few well loved of mine.

Since this article has the following disclaimer, and it fails to state the choice criteria, I don’t think it to be an unbiased list.

Our editors and experts handpick every product we feature. We may earn a commission from your purchases. 

But its a list, no matter what. A list in which we may find some romance suggestions.

Then it was time to check out ProWritingAid‘s book list. The Best Romance Novels of All Time: Top 60+ Love Books contains a few well known works organised under the epithet’s The Essential Reading Lists: Romance.

Criteria: Top Classic Contemporary Romance Novels. Contemporary is the largest sub-genre in romance. It’s an umbrella term for romance novels set at the time the author was writing—from about the 1970s onwards. You’ll find stories about modern themes, challenges, and society, with most contemporary stories rooted in the real world. We’ve split this list into modern classics and rising stars.

I couldn’t avoid mentioning The Best Romance Novels of 2022 in The New York Times.

As well as The New York Times Best Sellers. [How many of these are Romance?]

I am contemplating doing a WTR list for my own purposes, after all, I love reading romance. I feel I have quite a few classics to catch up, I mainly disregard the contemporary romance best-selling books, and I write paranormal romance, so I should be reading further on these sub-genres across times. And a separate WTR Romance list would be wise of me keep.

For now, I hope you find some Best of All Times Reads in one of these lists and keep reading. Reading is very important if you want to keep writing.

And if you feel you have a Romance Novel in you, it doesn’t matter how many books are on these lists. There is always space for a truly brilliant story. The one you will write.

Please leave a comment and subscribe for more content.

Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼

***

References: 

My favorite writing-craft books

favorite books

Hello all! Welcome back to this blog.

This week is the final stretch before Christmas, as is celebrated by yours truly.

I have been on my usual predicaments, writing and reading, and more writing, and editing, but I’ve decided to share with you some of my favorite writing-craft books.

So, if you are thinking about giving a book to your favorite author/reader, feel free to pick one, or several, of these books. I’ll share a bit of my opinion about them, of course…

1. ‘Bird by Bird’ by Anne Lamott

I wish I could just share the impact of this book with you. This is a book for writer’s and for writer’s friends and family. It helps others understand a bit of what ails us.

Written by Anne Lamott, which I am a fan, and have read most of her other books also, never feeling disappointed by any of those. But I do feel this ‘Bird by Bird’ had made a great impact in me and in my writing.

If you like writerly themes, if you have an aspiring author in your life, if you want to gift someone with a great book about the writing craft, this is the book for you.

2. ‘The Artist’s Way’ by Julia Cameron

Is it a book? Is it a course? Is it guidance from above? All of those. I found this book in a very tricky phase of my life.

I was going through some life altering changes, and doubting myself, and my writing efforts. This book got me through a lot of doubts. It helped me get in line with my program and devote myself to my writing efforts, respecting myself as a creative person.

This is a book for people who lost or are losing hope in their creativity. I can’t recommend it enough.

3. ‘Writing Fiction for Dummies’ by Randy Ingermanson and Peter Economy

What can I say? Everybody is a dummy before learning to be something else.

This book has so many basics about writing and creating our stories, and methods, and writing techniques, and themes, and loads of other important information that is hard to list them all. I found this book very enlightening and go back to it repeatedly.

If you want to know some basics of the writing craft this is the book for you.

4. ‘The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art’ by Joyce Carol Oates

Having the undiluted view of a writer about her craft, and how it impacts life, it’s a priceless gift.

Through this book we get to learn how struggles make our path in writing a true one. Oates guides us through our most recurrent themes, showing us that it’s our faith and our devotion to reading and learning that get us through the difficult patches.

It’s a must read.

5. ‘Letters to a Young Writer’ by Rainer Maria Rilke

To have a teacher as Rilke telling us about devotion to our writing craft, in this particular case directed towards a young wanna be poet, is touching.

Life, writing, devotion, work, all are themes for Rilke to discourse upon, and for us to accept the vision of a very wise man.

You’ll find nuggets of wisdom that will make ou wonder how this could be…

6. ‘Why I write’ by George Orwell

A book made of several essays but it’s this ‘Why I Write’ that allows us to discern how Orwell’s thought about the writing craft.

It’s a very enlightening essay, full of technical questions and subsequent answers. The big premise of them all being inserted by the list of reasons that get someone to became a writer.

It’s a must read essay about the writing life and craft.

7. ‘How to read Literature like a Professor’ by Thomas C. Foster

Oh! This was a fun book to read. As a true Professor, Foster knows how to captivate his audience and make us see what might have been lost because of sheer boredom.

His way of handling the writing subjects, the meanings behind techniques and making us look for just good, unbiased, writing, is a gift for all that get to read this title.

I do recommend it if you are an aspiring author. It made a huge impact in me.

8. ‘Turning Pro’ by Steven Pressfield

Turning Pro is the nudge we all need to get in touch with our life’s program. Pressfield writes about his life and his experience in becoming a well-known writer.

There are some powerful lessons inside this book. No sugarcoating the thing, no handling with care, no lies about what we need to accept in our live’s if we want to pursue the writing craft.

It’s an eye opener of sorts. I do recommend it most vividly.

9. ‘Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear’ by Elizabeth Gilbert

This is road trip through all of our most ingrained fears and tremors about the writing life. Always reaching for a positive and transformative point of view on all matters, Gilbert help us having a new perspective of the writer’s life choices.

There are myths in here being debunked with the personal flair of this writer.

It’s a fun and helpful book if you are an aspiring writer.

***

I hope you found these suggestions inspiring. I’m always on the look out for other favorites so, let me know if you have one to suggest.

Let me know if you read any of these and your opinion about them. And, please feel free to suggest a few of your favorite books on the writing-craft.

Please leave a comment and subscribe for more content.

Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼

***

Another writing update on ‘The Shapeshifters’ and NaNoWriMo

writing update

Only five days to the end of November. Only five days to the end of NaNoWriMo. But ‘The Shapeshifters’ is a long way from finished.

I started planing this story, with all my usual twists and turns, but you can read more about it on ‘Hello NaNoWriMo and lots of Shapeshifters‘.

I made plans and then I made a plan for the plans… now I have a new plan. But about the planning stage of this story you can read more in ‘Setting up my NaNo Project and Prepping all the must have’s‘.

If you’ve been following me on social media you already know that I managed to write my 50K for NaNoWriMo on the 13th of November.

I was a few scenes away from the mid point, when I hit the 50K, and I over estimated how much it would take to write this story. I figured I could aim towards 100 000 words, so that I would have a bit of a wiggle room for cutting during editing processes.

Well, this didn’t happened!

I’m very conscious of what I put in when I’m writing fiction. I tend to write in a way that gives just enough details for the reader to imagine the rest, and allow them to make the bigger connections between the information if they want to.

I don’t employ many words in creative descriptions. Purple prose doesn’t captivate me when I’m writing fiction. And I didn’t want to fill it with unnecessary junk just to make the word count. So, no 100K for ‘The Shapeshifters’#1.

On day 23 of November, I already knew I wouldn’t be writing much more than the 77K. Even if I know I have a few more things to add, even entire scenes. But this will not represent 30K of writing. It really isn’t possible to accomplish on the remaining days of this NaNoWriMo… and I’ll tell you why in a moment.

I started getting a bit fretful about this, it’s been a freaky gut turner, but I figured I wanted to study my options first.

Option #1. I could go ahead and start revising the draft.

But this is usually a more slow paced activity and it would not produce the 1667 words per day I needed to put in.

Option #2. Or, I could move on to ‘The Shapeshifters’#2.

But this meant starting another rough-rough draft without having done my due diligences.

And… I’m not emotionally prepared for this!

Another detail, that might seem stupid to you, but it’s important to me, I really wanted to earn all the badges on NaNoWriMo website.

I can now tell you that this will not happen.

First badge: I will not hit my daily count every single day of November, because I already achieved the 50k and I’m not going for 100K anymore.

Second badge: I don’t know if I’ll be able to update the daily count every day, because editing is different from writing.

On the 23rd of November I tried to start editing the draft.

I know it needs a lot of work, but editing is different from fully writing, so I did some editing… 278 words worth of editing.

And on the 24th of November I went back to the drawing board.

I’m starting my edits now and there are some details that need to go in, and some considerations to be done now, if I want to write this trilogy properly.

And I do want to write this trilogy properly!

So, I’m all in my drawing board mood.

drawing board

For now, I’m trying to hold on to my win here. I wrote 77k on a draft in twenty two days. That’s a win.

I did it at a faster pace than I imagined possible.

I had great fun writing and rereading this story.

I identified some must have’s and need to do’s and I’m focusing on doing those.

I’ll be talking a bit about this on this week’s YouTube vídeo. Please, don’t forget to subscribe to VLook and hear all about it.

Hope you’re doing well and participating in this year’s NaNoWriMo. If so, how’s your project going?

Please leave a comment and subscribe for more content.

Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼

Pantser into Plotter

pantser into plotter

I guess as time passes, and we get to practice more and more of our writing, some things about ourselves are bound to change.

It’s not by chance that most writers start as pantsers and after a while evolve into plotters.

Why? I’ll tell you as much as I’ve lived it. 

something about yourself

I don’t believe this was meant to be taken literally. But, yes. When we start to write our first novel we discover many different things about ourselves.

Not all of them are as deep as implied here. But most most of them are of the life changing variety. 

The 4 Creative Paradigms

Picking up on the Creative Paradigms as explored on ‘Writing Fiction from Dummies’, meaning the methods we may use while writing the first and subsequent drafts, we have:

  • Seat-of-the-pants (write in one sitting, without planning or editing)
  • Edit-as-you-go (write without planning but edit thoroughly as you go)
  • Snowflake (write a general plan, adapting it as you go)
  • Outline (make a detailed plan, than stick to it regardless)

Our beliefs

When we start writing we want to be good immediately. We want to become the best. We learn how to do some tricks (those things that we read and thought them out of this world good) and pray they carry us into an organic, and not too troublesome, writing practice.

But, at that time, we hadn’t put in the how many?!?!?! working hours we need to have some proper insights on the work itself.

The pantser kind of is our first and most dearest friend. And he can stay that way if used for the parts where he does his best work, like imagining a plot.

So, a pantser writes his stories using the Seat-of-the-pants creative paradigm. A pantser writes fast, without planning much, making it up as he goes along.

A plotter write his stories using the Outline creative paradigm.

A plotter uses outlines to plan and write his story. He works out the kinks before getting himself into the trouble of writing a full draft.

My journey

Looking into my own writing practices, I have used all of the different creative paradigms.

Experimenting on what best fits my writing needs, seems to be my method, and I use them in different parts of the writing process also.

I believe it’s a good thing to respect each project and leave to it to dictate which method would serve him best. There are projects that ask for a quick plotting session and others that are best left to the heat of the moment inspiration.

But, one thing I had been noticing in my writing practice, other than it evolve regardless of should’s and shouldn’ts, is that each project seems to ask from me a different creative approach. 

As I’ve been working on different lengths and types of stories, I understood that some require a bit more planning from the get going than others. As well as, some ask for more improvisation in order to flush out more creative ideas.

Also, there’s a creative paradigm more fit for a first draft of a story, and another quite different, for a second or third drafts. Why? Some give us more leverage to explore, while others are more suited for working out the things that aren’t good enough.

permission

I had been using all of them, sometimes both pantser and plotter on the same writing project, just in different phases (drafts or composition materials) of it.

But I kind of figured out that, when we start writing, and have a practice for some years, we get to evolve naturally into using more wholesome writing methods. 

We do not have the thrill of the major plot twist. I mean it in a sense of spilling everything onto the page with just that big goal in mind, not delivering on all the other requirements for a good story.

With practice we get to appreciate the composition of the story as a whole. Enjoying it best when we can work out all the details that will help us deliver that plot twist emotion seamlessly.

And it’s kind of easier to draft an entire novel if we have the guidelines previously written out.

Writing an extensive piece of literature is a tiring long run, a marathon, not a sprint. If we have the road clear, and all set up, we can walk it until the finish line, without many path corrections.

But I believe, the important thing to retain in this subject is: we show up to our work, we practice, we experiment, we write stories and we evolve as writers. Then, the creative paradigm will be our own, perfectly suited for our way of writing and being.

Hope you’re doing well and participating in this year’s NaNoWriMo. If so, how’s your project going?

Please leave a comment and subscribe for more content.

Bye and Keep writing! ✍🏼

***

References ✍🏼

How books get us writing

writing craft books

I always get inspired when I read. I feel this a lot, specially if I’m reading non-fiction books.

Don’t get me wrong, fiction also gets me inspired, but in other ways. Kind of a different type of resources input.

If I read some fictional stories I usually absorb the inspiration of new ideas without giving it much thought. It’s like if the nuggets of wisdom get inside my head without effort or, let’s be upfront with this, get picked up in a less conveniente usable order.

Reading in our genre of choice can be a well of inspiration and, at the same time, a comparison tool that gets us crippled in our thoughts, if not in our actions.

When I pick up a non-fiction book, if it’s really good, usually I get a bit hung up on it, trying to take all of the great ideas, underlining it and even taking pictures of entire pages, so I don’t forget what I read.

I did a pretty good job of underlining almost every word of books like “Turning Pro” from Steven Pressfield.

This feeling of discovery of a meaningful work is the best inducement for my own creativity. I read it and I wish to share it with the whole world!

But then I hit the meca of inspiration…

Books on the Writing Craft 

Reading what others have written about the Craft usually represents a well of inspiring information.

And not just from the nuts and bolts part of it (“The Art of Fiction” by David Lodge comes to mind) but also from those inspiring essays and articles which form a lot of a writer’s daily work.

“Why I Write” by George Orwell is a good and inspiring essay.

It’s feels like we are given access to the minds of these esteemed authors and creatives, and we get to learn from their personal struggles.

Learning about the particulars of their writing craft, how they see writing related themes, the importance of taking notes and more. Through their experiences we get to work things out for ourselves, and use it all to advance in our own practices and ultimately, to know more about how to be a writer seems like.

“Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamott comes to mind here. It is one of the best books on writing ever!

Reading about the Writing Craft (and other related crafts) give me tools to practice on composing my own works, testing how to’s, and giving me insights and choices.

I always feel that, through reading I am given the lay of the land and a compass to help me find my bearings, through other writers thoughts and experiences on the matter.

I recall reading Rainer Maria Rilke’s work, part of his letters and his biography of sorts, through different sources, and got an immediate sense that it was okay to write in formats not attributed immediately to literature, like letter writing. 

His work lifted a boundary for me on what I thought was a formal writing practice.

Writing letters was fine too. And this got me more at ease with some of my writing activities and abating in that sense that if I wasn’t writing a long genre novel, I couldn’t consider myself to be writing at all… even if I had other ongoing projects at hand, like poetry, and short-stories, notebooks of sorts and (even) blog posts.

This notion was a major breakthrough! And reinforced my belief that books can bring us invaluable knowledge.

I do not consider myself a fast learner. Sometimes I take a really long time to perceive the obvious of a situation. But I always believe I capture other informations, less obvious, about a subject, theme or situation. Sometimes, how I feel about something is my firm indicator of an approachable way to get to know something more profoundly.

I also feel I lack the formal education part of the writing craft and I have found my teachers in books. I feel they help me learn about craft in ways that are more palatable to myself and less structured than a three years degree.

Sometimes online courses are an option and are a great pastime. But they kind of feel like a vanity pursue more than a formal experience. Which is fine, but not always to my liking. Specially because the very good one’s tend to be expensive and it’s crucial to manage all of my resources wisely. 

Books are a teacher of sorts. Through them we get access to formal knowledge, find some good contemporary mentors, or non contemporary ones, and they propose to take all our doubts away… specially if we read a lot and in different fields of knowledge. 

Books are great helpers, good friends and excellent teachers. They answer all questions, patiently give their support in our pursue of knowledge, are always available to repetition, and nurture our creativity.

Finding the answers through books is just a more slowly process to entail. But I like slow. To know is to repeat. To create is to live. To read is both.

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Bye and see you soon.