Adorkable literary proposals to read over Valentine’s Day, part 1

Posted in Book Reviews, Creativity, Inspiring Places, Seasonal Posts by tjwithersauthor

Read this story today and had to share because it is just aDORKable!

Britt Burgeson, 26, met Daniel O’Duffy, 25, when they were both students at the University of Notre Dame.
Image source: Krystie Yandoli, BuzzFeed

A proposal in a bookstore! Lovely! The ring was hidden in a book! ^

Read the full story here: http://www.buzzfeed.com/krystieyandoli/this-couples-bookstore-proposal-is-every-book-lovers-dream#.wu3dOzd92

I don’t usually approve of this sort of public proposal, because GOODNESS, what incredible peer pressure to say yes! I wouldn’t want to be forced to have such a humongous moment in front of a bunch of strangers.

On the other hand, if you’re going to do it in public, hopefully you’ve been together so long that you know each other well and have talked about the idea of marriage together already, so it wouldn’t be a shock.

Wait till tomorrow when I’ll share my faves from literary proposals in classic (and not so classic) books.

This post was written by TJ Withers-Ryan (C) 2015. Reblogging is highly encouraged as long as you credit me as the author of this text.

31Jan2015

Foreshadowing: Do you know what’s coming?

Posted in Creativity by tjwithersauthor

Image source: Artist Dan Reynolds via Cartoon Stock

One of my number one pet peeves is people who don’t indicate. Are they trying to kill me? They change lanes by swerving in front of me without warning; they stop in the middle of the road for no reason and then suddenly turn onto a side road without warning; they merge towards me without warning.

It’s no joke. Indicating saves lives.

In literary terms, foreshadowing is the equivalent of indicating.

Maybe it’s not life-saving, but it is a useful device. You’re telling your reader – without telling them – what’s coming. So it’s a bit more subtle than “Hey, I’m turning left now.” You’re hinting. You’re insinuating. You’re planting a thought. “Hey, maybe I’ll merge. Sometime soon. You might see it coming, you might not.”

Isn’t that cheating?

No. There’s two valid main reasons for foreshadowing:

To build anticipation in your reader. What’s going to happen next? Ooh, dramatic tension!
To make strange or unlikely events seem credible. The reader is mentally prepared for it to happen because someone already hinted that it could

So, how to do it well? How to do it poorly? It all depends on which method of foreshadowing you’re using.

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27Jan2015

Creating as an act of worship

Posted in Creativity, Words of Faith by tjwithersauthor

Every act of creating is an act of worship because it is an echo of what our great creator did in making us.

This month I’ve had one migraine after another – sigh! For me that’s just the result of stress and being too busy to find true rest. One of the more painful results of that is that I’ve been unable to stay in the room when we’re worshipping together at church or the awesome camps I lead on (SU’s Ubertweak, and Gateway Youth Camp)… because the music makes me feel like a hippo’s jaws are squeezing down on my head.

Photo of fighting hippos from Animals Time

On National Geographic’s TV show ‘Dangerous Encounters with Brady Barr’, Dr Brady measured the bite force of an adult female hippo at 8,100 newtons (enough to crush a crocodile), but they had to give up trying to measure the male’s bite pressure because it was so aggressive.
Image source: Animals Time

I’ve found this time of personal silence challenging, but it’s also brought me back to an old truth – that there are so many more ways to worship God than just singing songs. The method of worship that I’ve found most powerful during this time is creating: every time I create, or write, or paint, or sew, I’m worshipping.

Me painting in 2011 during my ‘A Year on Canvas’ project.

A couple of years ago I ran an activity at Youth called 1:1. The name was a reference to the beginning of the Hebrew poem that tells the creation story in Genesis 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Over the course of the night, our 150 kids painted canvasses, journalled, made encouragement cards for each other, and made and flew paper airplanes. We revelled in the act of reflecting what God did in creating us.

One of my Youth girls’ talented artist mothers, Tess Geizer, made this cross for me for my birthday. I’ve worn it every Friday night since then for leading at Youth.

Soul Survivor church in Watford, England, experienced revival in the late 1990s when they did something similar. They cut back their music team from the now-typical rock concert style to the congregation singing with only their voices. Why would they do that when they were already one of the leading worship music creators worldwide?

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21Jan2015

Book-themed literary parties

Posted in Creativity by tjwithersauthor

January has been quite busy so far! I’m back into full-time work in Marketing at UQP and loving it. This is coming to you live from my delicious lunch break. Mmmmm lunch yum…

My best friend Nikki and I looked at a lot of ideas for book-themed parties when we were planning my hens’ literary high tea. One of our favourite things to do together is plan themed parties. Pirates of the Caribbean, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Merlin – the list goes on… Thought you might enjoy seeing some of the bookwormily awesome ideas we found for your next party!

‘Alice’ theme from from What Sofibi Saw blog

Book club party decoration idea from Party Frosting

Bookworm birthday party idea from Angela of Taffie Wishes via Spaceships and Laserbeams

My favourite:

Courtesy of Style Me Pretty

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1Jan2015

Writing the next chapter: What story will you tell in 2015?

Posted in Creativity, Seasonal Posts, Words of Faith by tjwithersauthor

Image source: ‘English girl riding bike’ from Riding Pretty blog

My first post for 2015 is bike-themed, because Tim and I went for a bike ride this morning to kick off the new year. No need to peddle old ideas when you can pedal into the future!

There are always endless possibilities for New Year’s Resolutions. Finish your novel. Lose weight. Find The One. Change jobs. Get to Mordor and drop the ring in Mount Doom. The usual.

As Dave Beck, NaNoWriMo Technical Director, puts it: “In the end, isn’t everything—from relationships to careers to geopolitics—about the narratives we choose? The narratives we write?”

So here’s what my resolutions are all about:

Write a good story with your life. A true hero need only be a person who sets goals and overcomes conflict to achieve them.
(paraphrasing Donald Miller in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years)

Image source: Our wedding photos by Kyle and Elissa Johnson, Slade Portraits

Last year I wrote my story as well as I could. I had goals, and I overcame obstacles to achieve them. After the usual stresses of preparation, I married the right man for me and enjoyed decorated our new home with the artworks I made with my own hands. I left a job I didn’t enjoy and worked hard at building my editing business so I could continue to do the editing work that I love. I made time to do some of the adventures I enjoy like bushwalking and beach trips, both with friends and by myself for much-needed and much-appreciated “God dates”. Halfway through the year life got really difficult for a time as I found I had some severe struggles to work through, so I asked for help when I needed it and I trusted God to get me through. I began submitting one novel to publishers, entered as many short story competitions as I could, and completed NaNoWriMo again. And I showered as much love as I could on the people I care about.

So here are the few things that I felt went into writing a good story with my life in 2014, and what I’ll be trying to seek out again in 2015.

Me and Tim holding hands at the altar.
Image source: Sarah Killey Photography

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26Dec2014

Happy St Stephen’s Day, everybody!

Posted in Creativity, Seasonal Posts, Words of Faith by tjwithersauthor

Image source: ‘I see the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God’,
painted by Water Rane, courtesy of Church History Museum

I know everyone thinks Boxing Day is all about shopping sales and cricket, and always has been, and until recently I thought that, too.

Nope, still about Jesus.

Happy Feast of Saint Stephen Day, everybody!

Stephen was the first disciple to be martyred for following and preaching the good news of Jesus Christ.

But why did they kill him? What did he do that ticked people off so much? And what can we learn to apply to our own writing?

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16Dec2014

This holidays, if you want to be a better writer, don’t binge eat – binge read!

Posted in Book Reviews, Creativity, Seasonal Posts by tjwithersauthor

Image source: Corbis via Jennifer Armstrong article in BBC News.

Image source: Matthias Tunger, Corbis Photographer, via Jennifer Armstrong article in BBC News.

I can’t say I’m a stranger to binge eating, or even binge TV-watching. But with the holidays coming up, I can think of something much healthier to do with my time.

Binge reading.

It’s been a lot time since the last binges, and I was a lot younger. I remember the Harry Potter books being devoured especially quickly and ferociously. Having to wait a year or more between books was torture back then!

Thankfully, when it came time to dive into the Tomorrow when the war began series by John Marsden, most of them had already been written, so I didn’t have to wait between books. I just had to scour every bookshop at every shopping centre near me until I had collected every book.

"One does not simply read the first Divergent book; you binge read them all then regret the third one immediately." Image source: MemeCreator image created by me :)

Image source: MemeCreator image created by me 🙂

More recently, there’s been the Divergent and Hunger Games series. (Tangent: Don’t you wish ‘serieses’ was a word? Sigh.) Again, I didn’t know about them until my Youth Group kids told me the movies were coming out. Sweeeeet!

Now yes, if you go too far too fast with binge reading you still feel as awful as if you’d binged on food or drink. You feel full and a little dazed, starved of sunlight (unless you have an awesome reading window or back porch) and kind of wilting from lack of exercise.

But it’s still the most productive of binge behaviours, since it helps you write better when you get back to your own stuff. Phil Edwards in the Huffington Post talks about his experience of reading 300 books in 2013, and how it actually helped him to know more (he wrote for a trivia site to prove it) and write better.

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12Dec2014

Read all about it: Write Around Queensland short story I edited and my reviews of other stories (50th post!)

Posted in Book Reviews, Creativity, Seasonal Posts by tjwithersauthor

Historic moment: Just realised this is the 50th post on my blog! Woohoo!
Thanks for joining me for the ride. 🙂

Maya’s signature look of excitement
Image source: Chelsea Anne Photography / Becuo Images
(http://chelseaanne.com/personal/mayas-signature-look/)

After 12 months of working and waiting for the 2014 Write Around Queensland anthology, today is the day!

You might remember that I said there would be some book reviews coming. Well, you also get to read the story that I edited in the eBook of the anthology – for free!

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9Dec2014

Why you should listen to your editor

Posted in Creativity, Grammar Tips by tjwithersauthor

Grumpy Cat
Image source: AP Images

“In the end, what makes a book valuable is not the paper it’s printed on, but the thousands of hours of work by dozens of people who are dedicated to creating the best possible reading experience for you.”
― John Green

At the publishing house where I used to work, we had one author who simply would not listen to the advice of his editors.

Ultimately, the final say in how a book is edited is up to the author. It’s their copyright; it’s their book. But the publishing house always has the option of terminating the contract if the author refuses to make required changes.

Our editors recommended very strongly that this author edit out his “purple prose”. This guy was in love with adjectives. It was a common problem in all of his previous books, too.

When this author’s book was finally published, it got reviewed in the Courier-Mail (one of Australia’s larger newspapers). Guess what. The reviewer picked up on the purple prose, too. They nailed the book, and it didn’t sell well – big surprise.

We talked to the author about it but he was convinced that it was a coincidence that everyone had picked up on the same issue and made such a big deal about it.

This is why listening to your editor is so important.

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4Dec2014

Go where you find inspiration: Part 3: The airport and times of transition

Posted in Creativity, Inspiring Places by tjwithersauthor

Go where you find inspiration, and go there often.

Alain de Botton writing in the new Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport
Image source: Zocalo Public Square

I’ve driven to the airport too many times recently, saying goodbye to people I love.

But it’s gotten me thinking.

How about visiting an airport to inspire new creativity for a “stuck” story?

Airports have always inspired me, with their excitement and anticipation of new adventures and fond reunions. I love starting new adventures and seeing people saying their “goodbyes” and “welcomes homes”. What does it mean symbolically if a character is at the airport? And where could your character end up?

Image source: Profile Books

I started thinking about this when I read an article about Alain de Botton, who did a one-week writers residency at Heathrow’s new Terminal 5. You can read about his experience and the book he wrote about it in his book, A Week at the Airport.

For this project, he stayed in the airport and the hotel for 24 hours a day for one week. That was his only venue – and he said the confinement to one setting was great inspiration.

He was inspired by the terminal itself – its technology, the design, and its sheer size and scale. He said he likes airports so much he often longs to be delayed in them.

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