WIPjoy Wrap Up - What I Learned

Day 15: Genre of Art That Best Describes Your WIP

As you all know, I took part in #WIPjoy this month. It is a Twitter event that celebrates your Work In Progress and helps authors to connect and encourage one another.

Aside from the social aspect, the part of the fun of the event is that I find most helpful is that it forces me to look at my story from angles I wouldn't necessarily see otherwise.  The amazing Bethany Jennings @simmeringmind  and S.D. Grimm at

@SDGrimmAuthor 

did a flat out awesome job at coming up with the daily prompts.

Some of my favorite ones included other types of art that best describes your story. So for Veridian's main character, tech hunter, Elara Savoya, I used the future noir graphic arts.

Day 29: Fall, food, festivities, and family.

We were also asked to share our writing playlist which was a lot of fun. If you'd like to check it out, its on Spotify here: Veridian Playlist

But it was the more personal questions that really served to help me solidify my main character in my head. 

There was  a question about what my main character's loved about fall.

Or what childhood dreams she had that will never come true...that was a really hard one!

It made me think about her outside of the story...outside of the high stakes drama. What was she like at home?

Day 23: Elara dreamt of the stars.

She loves her family. They drive each other crazy because they work together in the tech recovery game.

I realized they may fight a lot...but they fight best together.

Graphics and playlists aside, I feel like I learned a lot more about my characters and story through this event. 

Overall I feel pretty excited to head into next month's craziness of NaNoWriMo. 

If you are taking part in the race to 50K add me as a buddy. I'm under Raquel Byrnes on the site.

As a reader, do you like to see more than the books? Do songs, art, and other fun stuff get you excited for the story? 

I'm off to plot for #NaNoWriMo. Wish me luck and see you soon!

#WIPjoy and Playlists

This month is #WIPjoy! Its a Twitter event that happens every season, so four times a year, that brings together authors to share their Work In Progress and encourage one another. I love this event and look forward to it every year. The amazing Bethany A. Jennings @ SimmeringMind and S.D. Grimm @SDGrimmAuthor make WIPjoy both fun and uplifting. 

Veridian Playlist on Spotify

We are currently on Day 5: Tunes for Your WIP.

Whenever I start a new book I also start a playlist. I've always used music to help me not only get in the right mind-set for a give scene, but it really helps me to organize my story in a way that a visual chart doesn't quite touch.

I get a better sense of the pace with music. Too many fast, exciting songs and I realize I need a lull scene to give the reader a moment to catch their breath.  On the flip side, if my song list consists of too many slow pieces, I write in something that picks up the pace.

The playlist for my sci-fi thriller, Veridian, is coming along nicely. Since its a future-noir, I get to have some moody jazz, great old big band pieces, soulful love songs, and awesome space themed soundtracks.

A playlist is never complete until the book is finished, but its certainly fun to see what other authors use for inspiration.

#WIPjoy is such a fun way to connect with authors, see what they're working on, and to get sneak peeks at upcoming books.  I highly recommend checking it out.

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