deiform — Sarah Ettritch

Deiform Two and Rymellan Excerpts #1

I belong to several writers groups on Facebook. In one group, someone suggested that everyone post a sentence or two from their WIPs. I’m going to post a few short excerpts here, instead. I figure you’ll be more interested in reading them.

I have two WIPs on the go. The first is The Cult (Deiform Two). The second is Identity Crisis, a Rymellan story. Both are progressing well. I’ve worked out all the story problems for both projects, so now it’s just a matter of grunt writing until “The End.”

Reminder: I’m excerpting from the first drafts. The excerpts might be phrased differently in the published versions of the stories, or they might not be there at all.

Was it insecurity? Jealousy? Did she wish she could still fool herself into believing that there would eventually be order in all this madness, that justice would prevail and everything would make sense? Why? – Jillian
Fighting tears, she disconnected and blinked at her comm unit. Risk ruining her life, her Chosens’ lives, their daughters’ lives, and the family’s reputation, or look the other way and let a child be murdered. – Lesley Thompson
Christ. That trust exercise of closing one’s eyes and falling back into someone’s arms had nothing on this. What if her heart didn’t start? – Jillian
But every time I gaze at her, I’ll know that it’ll only be a matter of time before she turns on me. So I’m not only afraid for her. I’m afraid for myself. – Jayne Thompson

Since it’ll be a while before either story is released, I’ll post more excerpts over the coming months.

Filed Under: Rymellan, The Deiform Fellowship, Writing Tagged With: deiform, Rymellan, Writing

Word Search #1: My Books

By Sarah Ettritch Leave a Comment

Something light and fun for today. Can you find the following words in the puzzle? Remember, words can occur in any direction – forwards, backwards, and diagonally:

Rymellan
Chosen
Triad
Salbine
Emmey
Love
Margaret
Threaded
Rhyme
Deiform
Jillian
Atheist

Solution

Filed Under: puzzles Tagged With: deiform, puzzles, Rymellan, Salbine, threaded through time

My Writing Plans for 2013

By Sarah Ettritch 3 Comments

Before I talk about 2013, I thought I’d look back at what I said about 2012. How did I do?

“At the moment, I have only one story on my “to-write” list; in fact, I’m already writing it: the March Rymellan story. Will there be any other Rymellan stories in 2012? I don’t know. If I had to guess, I’d say no. “

Ding! I guessed right.

“I’ll try to do what I wanted to do in 2011: focus on shorter works.”

I blew it. The longest story I wrote in 2012 was ~60,000 words (The Atheist).

My concluding words were:

“In 2012, I’ll finish writing the March Rymellan story, and I’ll publish Rymellan 3 in print and eBook. I’ll focus on short stories, novelettes, and novellas for the remainder of the year.”

I got the first part right, but the second part wrong. I guess 50/50 isn’t bad.

Okay, what about 2013? Here we go…

1. THE MISSING COMATOSE WOMAN

My editor has this story right now. If you want to learn more about it, check out the post I did on Wednesday for the Next Big Thing Blog Hop.

2. Deiform Two

I’m currently working on this. It’s going well, and I expect to finish the first draft sometime around April.

3. A Rymellan story

I’ll write a Rymellan story this year. Because I won’t have a quarterly deadline hanging over my head, the story will be self-contained and whatever length it needs to be. It won’t pick up right after Rymellan 3. It will start about a year after that point.

I ended Rymellan 3 where I did because I felt that we’d reached the point where we could skip forward in time without missing anything important (in terms of learning something new about the main characters or Rymellan society). I routinely skipped time between stories in Rymellan 1. Obviously, once the events in Shattered Lives occurred, skipping ahead a year or two wouldn’t have made sense. But now I feel comfortable jumping to the next significant event in Lesley, Mo, and Jayne’s lives.

4. After I’ve finished the first drafts for 2 and 3, I’ll sit down and seriously think about writing another book about the Salbine Sisters. Readers have asked if there will be another book, and I’ve said, “Probably.” Later this year, I’ll decide if it’s the right time to write that book. It definitely won’t be released in 2013. The earliest it would be available would be sometime in 2014.

That’s more than enough to keep me busy in 2013. When I know whether I’ll start another Salbine book this year, I’ll let you know.

Now, a final item:

5. I’m planning to post to my blog every Friday. I used to do that, but I fell behind. After I was sick last year for longer than I would have liked, I had to play catch up with too many other things. This year, I’ll do my best to post every Friday. Hey, so far, so good!

If you want to be notified as I release these stories, sign up for my new releases notification list using the signup form at the top of the sidebar.

Have a great weekend!

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: deiform, Rymellan, salbine sisters, Writing

Word Hunting

By Sarah Ettritch 2 Comments

Every once in a while I need to make up a word. For example, I made up the word malflowed for The Salbine Sisters. Given what I was going for, that was an easy one.

Sometimes I’ll hijack the normal usage of a word. The word joined is a past participle, i.e. the past tense of a verb. In the Rymellan world, I use it as an adjective. I also capitalize it, because Joined has a significant meaning in Rymellan (another made up word!) culture.

Last night, I finally settled on what words to use for certain groups and people in the story I’m currently writing—and rather late in the process, I might add. I’ve almost finished the first draft, but before I went word hunting, I wanted to have a solid feel for what the words should represent. Up to this point, I’ve been using generic terms, which I’ll replace during my first round of editing.

Given the nature of the story, at first I thought I’d go with Latin words or combinations thereof, but after playing around with that for a while, I decided to hunt for good old English words.

When doing this, my two most important tools are a dictionary and what’s probably my favourite reference book when I’m writing: The Synonym Finder. This book is absolutely indispensable (and also the sort of book you must have in print). At 1300+ pages, it’s also huge. Drop this baby on your foot and you might have to pay a visit to emergency.

I’ll often start with a seed word and look up its synonyms. A few will jump out at me, and I’ll look up their synonyms, and so on, and so on, until I suddenly spot a word and think, “That’s it!” or “That’s part of it!” As I do this, I’m constantly checking meanings in the various online dictionaries.

When the dust had settled, I’d found all the words I needed. I hadn’t made up a single word, but I will be hijacking the normal usage of one word and capitalizing it.

Today’s word is: deiform.