Being Mrs Jones

Today’s post full of GREAT tips if brought to you by the lovely Kristin from Musings of Me, author of One of a Kind and Better Off Friends. A commenter (Hi Tina!) asked about writing male dialogue, and it reminded me that Kris and I had JUST had a conversation about the very same thing a few days before!  She had some great advice, so I asked her to put something together to share, and she definitely delivered. Without further ado: How to be a man. . . When you’re writing So you wanna know how to tap into the mind of man when you’re writing? It’s probably easier than you think.  Take off your granny panties and put on some boxer briefs or whatever male attire you’d like and have a seat for a moment while I gave you some tips I’ve learned about writing like a man. 1. Stop thinking like a woman. Yea I know that’s much easier said than done but it’s a must! Women don’t think, talk, act like men so if you go into thinking like a woman, your male characters probably won’t be relatable to men. 2. Listen to men converse in real life. Men don’t … keep reading —>

“Let me help you with that.” Before Jai could respond, her new neighbor Rashad was lifting a heavy box from her hands and heading into the building.  She wanted to protest, but after she’d dismissed the movers for dropping her box of shot glasses from around the world, she needed competent help.  She grabbed a smaller box from the back of the truck and followed Rashad into her first floor apartment. “Where do you want this to go?” he asked, turning to receive directions. “You can put it in the kitchen, on the counter.”  Jai was right behind him, with another box for the kitchen.  She placed hers down beside his, and was stepping away to go back to the truck when Rashad grabbed her hand, pulling her close. “And where do you want me?” The corners of his mouth turned up in a bright smile as he stared down at Jai. She bit the inside of her lip, trying not to smile at his persistence. “It’s never gonna happen, neighbor.  You may as well give it up.” Rashad clapped a hand over his chest, feigning injury as he dropped his head. “Damn, Jai. Man down, man down.” “You’ll heal, … keep reading —>

Friday was interesting. I knew it wasn’t going to be worth anything when it first started though.  I just woke up with a feeling of “Screw this day. Where’s Saturday?” Nice little bit of foreshadowing that was. I made it through the morning mostly unscathed.  During my hour long break between classes I did some outlining for my next book, and ate pita chips. It was fine.  Time to go to class came around, and I went up the one little measly flight of stairs (in the building I was already in) to get to class. That’s when everything just went to hell. I take these same stairs three times a week. I take the stairs in another building three times a week. Never had a problem with them before.  Until Friday. I got up those stairs and I couldn’t catch my breath. That was the first time I’ve ever even been out of breath taking them! I think to myself,Ok, maybe I just went up too fast, got dizzy. This isn’t a big deal.  But, a few minutes passed, and I still couldn’t catch my breath, still felt light headed, still felt dizzy. Then the pain in my chest started. o-kay. … keep reading —>

Like… There’s a part of of me deep, deep down that kinda wishes I hadn’t even woken this beast up. Because when I wasn’t writing, I was fine with not writing. Now that I’ve started? I HAVE to. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE writing. It makes me insanely happy, but damn, y’all. Writing the first book was (relatively easy). The second was quite a bit harder. This new one (The Trouble With Love) is… man. I want to get it right. I really, really wanna get this right. It’s more “grown up”, with more difficult relationships, less than perfect characters, and that’s tough. It’s really tough to do this without turning my characters into caricatures. I want to do right by them, and do them justice, not just make them fit the plot. I want to become the best I can be, which means writing, and writing, and writing. It means reading, and learning, and erasing 30 pages of a manuscript because they suck. It’s tough. And it’s lonely. Everybody wants to feel like someone “gets” them. Like you have “cosmic twin” that’s thinking the same way you’re thinking, wants the same things you want, and in the case … keep reading —>