Mar
29
How to Handle Deadlines
N.R. Wick

Deadlines are one of those things that are necessary and important but can sometimes make you feel rushed and suffocated. No matter if you work at home for yourself or in an office building for someone else, deadlines are an integral part of business. It’s much more difficult to get anything finished without some sort of deadline because your mind rationalises the importance of projects based on their due date and their rewards. For example, are you more concerned about a 3-day project due tomorrow, or a 3-day project due in two weeks? What if the latter project is of higher value than the former? I’d bet you are still more concerned about the project due tomorrow.

What happens if you are not given a clear deadline? Well, I have a lot of experience with this in my current job. The setting is fairly relaxed but my job is integral to the company. I write all of the website and marketing content (and sometimes write articles for the company’s ezine), create marketing graphics, flyers, brochures, etc. and I film, edit and compile video… among a number of other things as well. I do this primarily on my own and the workload is hefty. This is why it’s so important for me to know which projects are of top priority and which are not, but I rarely have this luxury. But I’m rarely given a set deadline.

In a perfect world, you would work together with other members of your team to write up a calendar and have a clear plan, but often times this doesn’t happen. Instead, you are stuck making your own calendar. Try to prioritise your projects by the ones you feel are most important. If you know they are time sensitive, then be sure to take that into consideration. The only problem I find with doing this is that sometimes it makes me lazy. I’m a big time procrastinator when the pressure to finish on time isn’t there because no one is depending on me at that moment. It gets even worse when I’m working on something I don’t like to do (like making seminar power points! UGH!).

INTERACTIVE: How do you handle non-existent deadlines and/or work you don’t care for?

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Mar
21
Book Review: The Summoning by Kelley Armstrong
N.R. Wick

Fifteen year old Chloe Saunders can see the dead. Unfortunately, after having an episode at school, none of the adults believe her. She is diagnosed with Schizophrenia and placed in a group home where other teenagers staying there are not what they seem to be.

The Summoning is the first book in Kelley Armstrong’s Darkest Powers series. I can’t lie; I love this book. I was so intrigued and interested that I read it in a day, then turned right around and read the second book, The Awakening. Also, I am DYING to read the final book, The Reckoning (which comes out in April, I believe).

Chloe is a great character who is easy to sympathise with and easy relate to. She’s a vulnerable but strong and a great character. Her flaws are natural, but she learns from her mistakes and uses what she learns to grow as a person. Even though sometimes she doesn’t make the best choices, Chloe takes responsibility for her actions and tries to fix them or learn from them. These are important attributes for a lead character in a YA novel to have.

In addition to good values, Chloe has a passion for movies. The great thing about how her passion for movies is incorporated into the story is that she does very little title dropping. Meaning, she doesn’t really try to compare events happening in the book with specific movies. Perhaps it helps that she is interested in the screenwriter and director’s side of movies, but I have read other books with film lovers who title-drop non stop and it’s irritating. (And coming from a HUGE movie fan, that says something.)

The overall story is great as well. I’m always fascinated by concepts where reality and fantasy are connected to psychosis. The adults continuously try to convince Chloe that she needs to be medicated and that she is schizophrenic, and Chloe herself even fights to understand if she’s mentally ill or if she truly has power over the dead. The way Armstrong describes Chloe’s encounters with ghosts and corpses is chilling. I’m a huge fan of ghosts and zombies and this story kept my attention every step of the way.

My final note is something I found weird. The opening of The Summoning was somewhat bizarre. It’s a great thing I read the “Twelve Years Earlier…” prologue before the first chapter because it was very well done. I understand why the beginning is so strange and that it’s supposed to be that way. Chloe acts very strange and it helps make her (and others) doubt her sanity, but I have to admit I was thrown off by the beginning.

In the end, I rate this book a 5/5 Stars.

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Mar
03
Writing Exercises: Letters, Notes and Emails
N.R. Wick

Well, I finally finished the new site design. I’m quite pleased with it, to say the least. I need to seriously work on the illustration section, and I need to add things to the writing section, but for now it will have to do. I’m mostly going through and revising some of the written articles I have done because I’d like to update them before I put them up. Also, I decided that I would not be displaying a few things that I originally was going to display because I have decided to revise and lengthen, or revise and find a publisher.

Along those lines, I have also changed a bit of my current projects. Originally, I was going to use an original story to write and illustrate as a picture book, but have since decided that I will be seeking a publisher for that story instead. So, to make up for this, I am going to illustrate my own version of the Pied Piper as a picture book dummy sort of thing. This way, I can use it as a portfolio piece and not worry about the things that troubled me with using my personal idea. So yes. Pied Piper. I’m very excited about it because the Pied Piper is one of my favorites.

I’ve also been thinking about this series of children’s stories I started a while back ago. I wrote a story for a class about a little girl who finds a key that opens a special door. Well, at the time I was considering turning the story into a series of short stories about other children who find similar keys. After reflecting on it over the past few days, I decided that I could easily fit these stories into a chapter book and add a final story to connect them all together. I instantly fell in love with this idea and am now working out details for the rest of the “chapters.”

Today, I was going through some writing exercises to see which ones work for me and which ones did not. One of the exercises I found that I liked very much and is useful to me is where you write a letter or email or note of some sort as if you were the character. I used it as an idea builder for one of my novels. It was very helpful. The note its self is NOT in the actual story, but the character names and creatures mentioned are. It was a really fun exercise and helped me get my creative juices flowing.

Adeleine,
I’ve packed my rucksack with the things listed below. Let me know what you packed as well. That way I can help you figure out anything else you forgot.

Salt

Bundles of Sage

Violet Buds

Gold Coins

Bandages

Silver Locket

Calendula Paste

The salt and sage should be enough to ward off any Wispies or Night Dwellers in the forest. The Violets will keep the Grendals away. They hate things that smell nice, so I will make a satchel for you to wear around your neck. We have to go to Oubliette for help before we get too far in. She will know what to do, but won’t help us without incentive of some sort. So, we can give her the gold coins for her help. Luckily, she’s lost her mind and loves shiny things.
The silver locket is another barter item. No one in Mora uses money like where you come from. We just barter. I am almost positive the locket belonged to Lady Lorynelle. We have to get passed The Lady to get to Duke Magnus anyway, so I’m sure it will work out.
Oh, and Saffron insisted that I pack the bandages. He even let Mint help make fresh Calendula paste, in case you get hurt.
-Ian
P.S.
Don’t worry. We will find Devkah. I promise.

If you try this exercise, please feel free to tell me about it!

[This post was originally posted on the nrwick.com blog that has since been deleted.]

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Jan
31
Book Review: The Looking Glass Wars by Frank Beddor
N.R. Wick

I had the pleasure of meeting Frank Beddor at the 2005 San Diego Comic Convention. What originally caught my eye was his booth. It was decorated with lovely posters of illustrations from his book, comic, and even animation. Mr. Beddor was a very nice man and was extremely passionate about his book, The Looking Glass Wars, that was going to release in the U.S. in the upcoming months. My husband, of course, insisted we buy the book immediately. We did, and Mr. Beddor was kind enough to sign our copy while we chatted about a comic book based on one of the characters in his book. He even gave us a free copy of the first issue.

That was almost 5 years ago. My husband has since read the book approximately 3 times while I, on the other hand, just finished reading it for the first time today, despite his persistent insistence. I have to admit that I really enjoyed this book. The Looking Glass Wars is a reinvention of Lewis Caroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. The Alice that many of us grew up reading about or watching is actually a princess in Wonderland, the world of imagination, who’s parents are murdered by her wicked Aunt Redd. While trying to escape death as her aunt overthrows the kingdom, Princess Alyss winds up in our world where she is trapped. After some time, she returns to Wonderland and must take back the throne as rightful Queen of Wonderland.

One of my favourite parts about this book was the correlation of Wonderland and our World. Not only did Beddor take a little bit of history into account when detailing Alyss’s time in the Earth world, he also implied that Wonderland was only in her head. I love stories like this. For all intents and purposes, we can assume that Wonderland is real and that is where our imagination, ideas, and inventions, etc. come from, but planting the seed of doubt adds a lovely touch to the story.

Alyss is well developed and her character growth is pleasing. She’s strong, yet vulnerable, which is great because often times strong female characters are somewhat mannish and abrasive.

I adore Dodge, even to the end of the book when I started feeling sad that he had changed so much. Like Alyss, I miss the romaticised child Dodge, but Dodge was the most human character in the book. He was flawed, emotional and he struggled. He and Alyss began as childhood playmates who were clearly enamoured with one another, but ended on distant path after being away from one another. Even though Alyss grew up in a world where imagination meant very little and Dodge stayed in a Wonderland filled with turmoil and fighting, only one of them was really able to get past their hardships and become the great person they were supposed to be.

One of my only criticisms about this book is the lack of description for key elements. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of descriptions throughout the book, but key beings such as the card soldiers and the chessmen were not described accurately enough for me to understand clearly what they were. Even though many things were named after what they were, such as Wonderland or Wondertropolis, a pawn was called a pawn and was only vaguely described. Was it an oversized chess piece that had arms? Or was it humanoid, but costumed similarly as a chess piece? I wasn’t sure because it was never explained in a complete way.

In the end, I rate this book a 4.5 out of 5 and will read the second book in The Looking Glass Wars trilogy sometime this year.

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Jan
13
I followed. He followed.
N.R. Wick

I will be the first to admit how much I loathe first person narrative. The argument that first person brings a reader closer to the characters and events of a story or that somehow it makes the reader empathise more escapes me completely. More often I find myself reading a few sentences into a novel written in first person and by the time I near the end of those first few sentences my eyes have completely unfocused and I am no longer reading but gazing vacantly at the inky print.

Why does this happen? The reason is due to the way most first person narratives are written. So many of them are written like glorified lists of actions and self inserts. It always feels as though the narrator is listing off things that happen, even if they are “showing” and not just “telling.”

Then, there is this bizarre concept that first person is not only more personal but makes the reader connect more with the main character. The idea that a reader can only delve into the dark depths of the main character’s thoughts and feelings through the use of first person is a destructive one when so many stories are prone to obvious self inserts and lack of substance. A main character that is devoid of their own well developed characteristics and mannerisms in order to be a place holder for readers seems more like a marketing ploy rather than an acceptable writing device.

In addition to this, I always wonder how skewed the narrator’s perspective of things are. It drives me crazy. If it’s unclear, then I spend the whole time wondering why I should care or trust anything they say. If the author’s point is to make the reader doubt the validity of the narrator’s perspective, then there should be clear signs of this. That doesn’t mean it needs to be ‘over the top’ or ‘in your face.’ Subtlety is acceptable, unclear is not.

This is not to say that there is a lack of well written novels in first person. I know there are; I read one about a week ago. Stephen King’s novella The Mist is written in first person. Had I known beforehand, I may not have picked it up despite my adoration for Stephen King. (Yes, that is the depth of my irritation for first person narrative.) However, the amazing thing is that while The Mist is in first person, it wasn’t distracting and it didn’t FEEL like first person. I did find myself wondering why the story was even in first person rather than third because it was written in a way that flowed as well as third person, but used the words ‘I’ and ‘my’ in place the words ‘him’ and ‘his.’ Not only did I not mind the first person narrative, I actually enjoyed it.

It was then I discovered that I don’t loathe first person; I loathe first person that is written this way for the sole purpose of attempting to connecting with readers. With this understanding, I bring myself to the dilemma of which narrative to use in my new WIP. Normally, I wouldn’t give it a second thought. I’d write it in third person and never look back. Even as I write this, I’m annoyed by the notion of considering first person. But the main character of my WIP is telling me her story and I am merely writing it down as a novel just as Stephen King wrote down David Drayton’s story in The Mist. Do I go against my instincts to write in third person, even though I know that if I write in first person it will have a third person feel, or do I follow my instincts and write in a way that I don’t particularly care for?

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