Visitors Part II: Fred Marion February 2, 2017

 

Fred Marion with the Plot Sisters

                                 (Cindy, Jen, Fred, Jude, Chris not pictured Ruthann & Traci)



   Last month we had another distinguished guest that shared their writing story with the Plot Sisters. We were pleased to have Fred Marion.

  

     Fred finished revisions on his middle grade fantasy novel, The Very Strange and Very Secret Trash Can Club, earlier this year. The manuscript is currently in the hands of his notorious agent, Ms. Jenny Bent from the Bent Agency. She will hold the key to the next step towards publication. Ms. Bent agreed to represent Fred after receiving an awesome query letter and reading his full manuscript. Fred shared that Ms. Bent shared many suggestions and asked him to revise aspects of his novel which he toiled over for months. 

     Not only did we relish and celebrate with Fred in the retelling the how of landing his agent, but Fred also shared endearing personal tales of steadfastness, perseverance, and providence. He told us how he believes writers process their own emotions in the words in which they write. How "writers have to keep writing because they simply must write." 

     Fred's background includes an English degree from Wright State University with an emphasis in creative writing, copy editing at the Dayton Daily News, journalist stints in both North Carolina and West Palm Beach, Florida until finally finding himself back in Dayton, Ohio. Today Fred creates a weekly newsletter of writing and literary events in Dayton, carves out time to work on his own projects, as well as freelances and does webdesign part time. He credited his wife for encouraging him not give up on his dreams. 

     Among the tips Fred shared with us were the following:

1) Create Accountability

2) Read A Lot In the Genre You are Writing

3) Information Diet- don't get too distracted by "other" information that may hinder your writing

4) Vary Sentence Length To Keep Your Writing Interesting

     Fred is going to be speaking on a panel, March 25, 2017, at the Antioch Writers' Workshop Spring One-Day Seminar about "Finding Your Writing Tribe." Other panelists will include Becky Morean, Grace Curtis, and Ryan Ireland. We hope you find him as charming and refreshing as we did. You can find out more information about Fred and his work on his webpage. http://fredrickmarion.com/

~Cindy

    

Love Stories

I've been writing novels for about five years now. When I first started, I had the seed of one idea in my head: the story of a little girl named Laney and her friend, Harvey the Hippo. These characters had sprung from some things I'd written in high school, and my first attempt at a book resulted in a novel called Drops of Jupiter.

I like the story, but I've done nothing with it since I finished it so long ago. Instead, I moved onto writing (in order) Hunting for Lilacs, Beyond the Trees, After We've Fallen, The Chocolate Garden, and Just Be.

The last of those was the novel that poured forth this past November, when I participated in NaNoWriMo 2016. It is a love story at heart and something I struggled with for a long time. Should I write a sappy love story? Does this love story have to have a happy ending? It this story really categorized as a romance? And how do I feel about that?

I didn't have the answers to those questions, and part of me wondered why I was so against writing a love story. What's wrong with them? If written well, the story can put smiles on people's faces. Isn't that what I want to do?

Well last week, I gave the first 20 pages of Just Be to The Plot Sisters to read and it was as if I'd purged myself of any bad feelings about love stories. They enjoyed reading the pages, and after our discussion, I realized that every other book I've written, with the exception of Drops of Jupiter, has a love story either at the center of the book or on the periphery of it.

I think I'd better come to terms with the fact that I just might be a love story writer. Plenty of worse things exists out there, don't you think?

Happy Writing!
~Christina