When you hope for a review..then you get this!!

Strong Characters in an intriguing Storyline

By Judith Rook - September 1, 2016 Breathless" brings into vivid existence the life of an Australian adolescent in the final year of school. The educational setting, and the relationships which build and grow there are authentic and convincing, as is the home life of the protagonist, Charlie, a girl at the boundary between independent living and emotional dependency on the father she loves.
Where is her mother? The question is one of the many interesting twists in this very well-crafted young adult novel and exists as a dark line which runs throughout the narrative, carrying with it a sense of unresolved mystery and fear.
MM Carter has a remarkable gift for character creation; even those who make only minor appearances are rounded and strong, and the main characters spring almost instantaneously into complete and persuasive reality. The year bully is cleverly used as a mirror for Charlie’s own growth and his comeuppance is a little different from similar cases of uncertain egos.
And what a reality there is in this book. The reader is taken at a very fast pace repeatedly from small crisis to large climax. The storyline is full of incident and tension, there is excellent developmental conflict between the youthful characters and a large-scale external structural conflict. Just the stuff to engage a young adult reader, and a more mature adult reader too.
It is a shame that the final proof-read did not pick up a number of grammatical errors, which happen often enough to call for a mention. But apart from that, in "Breathless", MM Carter demonstrates accomplished writing skills and presents a book which is well worth taking into a personal library for more than one read.

What if your new light bulb moment takes up everything you've got..ie magination, time etc and..

You faithlessly leave behind the novel you are working on, pushing it aside rather abruptly as your creative flow kicks in with a rush of adrenaline that is reminiscent of first love, bringing with it exciting plot lines, memorable characters and story twists at a pace you can hardly keep up with - jotting down the first chapter; racing to the novels conclusion; working on chapter headings; character flaws and, and, and.. and slowly.. decisively you hit on a sub plot that's shocks you, but is both so believable and doable that maybe, just maybe it will make an interesting if not controversial read..

Amazon's new tool for authors takes a reader straight into a book..brilliant!! Breathless by MM Carter

When Words Won't Come..

And it's 3am in the morning again. And you are mind blaringly(is this even a word) awake. And it's freezing..and the clock is ticking..and the keyboard is still..and still. And then the doubts creep in..writer you say? How in the name of everything written can you possibly be a writer? when no thoughts filter down from that space in your head that's called your creative side and trickle onto the page..forget leap onto the page!! And why must that urge to write (although empty) occur in the small hours of the morning and did I mention it's freezing and you've been pulled from the cocoon of warmth that is your doona with the hope of much..and results in little..and still the keyboard is still..

Writing spaces can make or break you..

Right? What is it about the effect of the type of writing space you have, impacts on your ability to write..I guess what I'm trying to understand and work out for myself is if certain types of writing spaces have a more positive affect on our writing performance (for lack of a better word) than do certain other types of space? For example does a quite, verses a noisy space, better enable a writer to get more words down on paper, so to speak? I mean libraries have always been a quite space and are certainly conducive to reading & studying..which often means writing essays etc and writers centres & rooms are not really known as a hectic environment..so it's a bit of a puzzle to me as I seem to be able to write equally in both a hectic setting (sitting in a crowded coffee shop in the middle of a vibrant city..and in the quiet dead of night..or in this space I was working in today..

So I guess everyone is different right? It's truly a mater of what works best & as long as words are being written and stories are unfolding what does it matter where they are written..

When Your Writing Shocks..

At first it's hard to get past the self doubt, it's a disaster, the woe is me why did I write this, they hate it feelings..and then the light bulb moment hits and you realize that what they are saying is exactly the type of response that you are waiting for. Shock is an emotional feeling and that's good isn't it?
This is what happened when I was quizzing a 30 something friend the other day on her thoughts about Breathless. I knew she'd bought it and read it, and hadn't as yet given me any feedback. At first she said she hadn't read enough to comment, but as I pressed her for any response, and assured her that I could take it even if she thought it was crap, and that I'm okay with constructive criticism and that not everyone is going to like it, I wasn't prepared for this response;

                                                          I don't want to read anymore because I can't handle  being taken back to the painful days of my teen years, I'm sorry but it's just too much, it's like I can feel everything Charlie feels, the loneliness, the heartache of things happening out of my control, the sadness, the grief.. and I don't want to feel like that again, it took me too long to work through it..

But isn't this why we write to evoke an emotional response from the reader; to have them feel what we can hopefully have our characters convey to them? As it dawned on me that that is exactly what I'd hoped a reader would feel as they identified with Charlies (my main female protagonist) dealt hand in life; this transitional, often sad and lonely, often complex, often raging emotional period of life from deep despair one minute to conquer the world the next, called Adolescense.. maybe writing is not so bad after all..Except for the pay.. but that's for another post , another day.

The Curse of Repetition...

can surely be a pain in the butt for many a writer..we were talking about repetition in our writers group at our last meeting and I was thinking about the time when I was going through a 'word repeat' edit on one of my novels and found a total of 49 'justs' 30 'likes' and 15 'saids'...there were other words on repeat but these were the main offenders, and try as I might I couldn't understand how in the blazes I hadn't picked it up going through the 5 or so previous edits!! The reason we were talking about repetitive words was because one of the members of the group found, in the 1st paragraph of the manuscript we were critiquing, the word 'over' five times. Talking about insignificant words like over often slipping through unseen by the writer, we were able to identify a few words that seem to remain on the write, repeat, write challenge for each of us. It was a great exercise to not only identify the sneaky offenders, but I found it really helpful to fess up and speak them out loud to the group cementing them in my memory, which I'm hoping will probably make me more aware of the excess use of these words as I continue to write.