Another Slacker Tuesday in Seekerville

Can't you just smell it in the air? Yes, it's Slacker Tuesday.


Today's Slacker Tuesday writing contest revolves around writer quotes.


Anyone whose been in Seekerville awhile knows my favorites.




Now it's your turn:

Share a romantic scene that incorporates an inspiring quote appropriate for writers. That's it!


Rules :

1. Keep it clean. Anything not PG will be deleted.

2. Maximum word count of your scene is 150.

3. One entry per person.

4. You retain sole ownership of your entry.

5. Leave your email address. If you don't put your email address in the body of your comment your entry will not be considered for the contest.

6. The genre is romance, all sub-genres invited. (but remember rule #1)

7. Please be familiar with the Seekerville contest rules located in the bottom right column of our front page.

8. The entry must have one inspirational quote for writers.

9. If possible, provide the author of the quote next to your email address.


No whining allowed. If you don't want to play then take your toys to the other (boring) sandbox.

Deadline is Friday, August 6th at 9 pm MST.

(That's 8 PST, 11 EST, you get the idea..)

Winner announced in the weekend edition.

To the winner goes a $15 Amazon gift card.

Once again, Marlena Fortune and Madame Zelda will pick the winner based completely on their own special brand of twisted subjectivity.

Honorable Mentions: If you are a total slacker like me and simply want to share your favorite quotes you can win a copy of Ruth Logan Herne's Waiting Out The Storm, in a random slacker drawing which also ends Friday at 9 MST.

Also, today anyone who would like a Seeker bookmark, loaded with writerly Bible verses, simply send an email with your snail mail addy to the contact link in Seekerville. Offer valid until Friday, at 9 MST.



BTW the June scene winner was Kristen Arnold. She's the reigning champ to beat. Her entry can be found in the June comments.

Good luck.


Some inspiration to get you in the mood:

• Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. ~William Wordsworth

• Being an author is like being in charge of your own personal insane asylum. ~Graycie Harmon

• The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. ~Anais Nin

• You can fix anything but a blank page.~ Nora Roberts

A last note. Since this is Slacker Tuesday I feeling contractually obligated to give you a really good opportunity to slackerize, as I am doing today.

So for a good time, I mean, if you want to have fun--wait, what I'm trying to say is here's a great place to slackerate:

Nora Roberts Quotes

Charlie the Slacker Cat

Everything is Possible

In one of my Seekerville posts awhile back I shared several writerly quotes from the newspaper’s cryptoquote puzzle section. I deciphered another one this week that seems quite apropos for us writers:

“Everything is possible as long as you put your mind to it and you put the work and time into it.” -- Olympic Gold Medalist Michael Phelps

Okay, maybe not everything is possible (for a human being, anyway). But Michael has the right idea. We don’t get anywhere in this business without a huge investment of time, work, and will power. How are you doing in each of those departments?

Time. What’s your writing schedule like? Do you even have a schedule? Even putting in 30 minutes a day is 30 minutes of writing you wouldn’t have completed otherwise. Repeat that five times in a week and you’ve tallied up two and a half hours. That’s nothing to sneeze at. Do an hour a day, and there’s five hours in a week. How many words can you churn out in an hour? They all add up.

Work. How hard are you willing to work at improving your craft? Getting words on the page is important--vital, in fact. But so is learning and study. How many books and magazine articles on writing technique have you read this year? Have you taken any online courses? Attended any conferences? Which industry blogs do you visit regularly? How many published books in your genre have you read and analyzed to see why they work (or don’t)? Have you traded critiques with a wise and honest fellow writer? Have you entered contests where you could get valuable feedback? And afterward, did you evaluate the comments and revise your manuscript accordingly?

Will power. Otherwise known as stick-to-it-iveness. And after 25 years in this business, I know a little about this subject. If you don’t want it badly enough, believe me, it’ll never happen. Unfortunately, you can also want it really badly and it still may not happen. But that’s God’s decision, not yours. To fall back on a favorite Randy Ingermanson quote, “If God has called you to write, then don’t you dare quit. Don’t you DARE!”

If you’re feeling really brave, leave a comment answering the following questions:

1. How many hours did you actually write in the past 7 days?
2. What is the most recent craft book, online class, or workshop that made an impact on your writing?
3. What changes and sacrifices have you made in order to make writing a top priority?
4. What’s the one thing that keeps you keeping on?

Remember, “I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13 NASB).

Serving up some not-so-imaginary food for thought

Hey, Seekervillites, Myra here. One of my favorite lunchtime pastimes is deciphering the cryptograms in the daily paper. Over the past couple of weeks several of the puzzle solutions have been very “writerly.” So, while Ruthy heads off to those amazing imaginary ovens of Seekerville to whip up some scones to go with your cyber-caramel macchiatos, I thought I’d share a few thought-provoking quotes with you.

The key is not the will to win . . . everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important. —Bobby Knight

Definitely words to live by for us contest junkies. We must prepare well, making full use of what we learn from study, workshops, critique groups, and previous contest results. What steps have you taken lately to help you “prepare to win”?

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter. —Denis Diderot

Okay, now does that fit your usual response to a judge’s comments or not? If we aren’t willing to look objectively at both our writing strengths and weaknesses, we have no hope of improving. What “bitter truths” have you been spitting out as you digest your manuscript critiques?

As an artist, I feel that we must try many things—but above all we must dare to fail. —John Cassavetes

The contest you don’t enter is the contest you’ll never final in. The editor you don’t contact is the editor who will never buy your manuscript. The book you don’t write is the one that will never be published. What is God calling you to dare today? What are you afraid of? What are you going to do about it?

Finally, here’s a quote I recently came across through another source. Sinclair Lewis wrote these words in a letter declining the 1926 Pulitzer Prize for his novel Arrowsmith:

All prizes, like all titles, are dangerous. The seekers for prizes tend to labor not for inherent excellence but for alien rewards; they tend to write this, or timorously to avoid writing that, in order to tickle the prejudices of a haphazard committee.

Just the other day in Seekerville (see Ruthy’s post “Pimping your prose”) several of us confessed to tweaking our first chapters to get everything in that we think the “committee” of judges will be looking for. And we’ve admitted this is often at the expense of the broader scope and more natural development of our plots. It’s a choice we make because of our hope of getting those manuscripts in front of the finals judge who just might request the full . . . and eventually . . . hopefully . . . offer us a contract.

Tweaking first chapters is one thing. But does the quest for a contest final and eventual publication cause you to either intentionally focus on or steer clear of certain issues, character types, or plot scenarios? How much does marketing and sales potential influence what you’re writing right now? Are you writing for the market? Writing your passion? Or both?

No judgment here, just something to consider. I’m all about selling these days. I just pray that throughout the process I can stay true to my personal vision, my voice, and especially God’s Word.