A farm-themed snippet from DWARFED 2/2/14 #WeWriWa

The Weekend Writing Warrior and Facebook's Snippet Sunday are blog hops that provide authors with a fantastic opportunity to support one another, promote their books, and just have a good time. Each week authors post 8 sentences from WIPS or published works. It's lots of fun.

This week I pulled a 9 (sorry moderators) snippet from my contemporary manuscript, DWARFED. This collection of sentences picks up where last week's left off. It's a scene that could only take place on farm.

DWARFED is a YA story about Grace, a fictional teen with achondroplasia dwarfisam who currently finds life a little tougher than she ever dreamt possible. 

When you're done here, take some time and read some of the great snippets that other participants have published. You'll be glad you did!

            Luke sits in a farrowing crate, his back braced against the wall, his legs stretched out in front of him. There’s a steel bucket half full of strange-looking, small, pink blobbish things and a plastic container full of hypodermic syringes wedged against his hip, another syringe is stuck between his  teeth.

            His left hand snakes out, snagging one of the piglets. He ignores its ear splitting squeal and pins it between his elbow and rib cage. With one hand he swaps a patch of skin with what looks like a cotton swapped that has been stained with some sort of reddish brown substance, I’m guessing iodine. His right hand pulls the syringe out of his mouth, and in one smooth movement, pokes the needle into the piglet and depresses the plunger. He tosses the now empty syringe into the plastic box and picks up a giant crayon and draws a slash mark between the piglet’s shoulder blades.

            The entire process takes about two seconds.

            “What are you doing,” I ask again, raising my voice.

Thanks for reading my snippet!

Wordless Wednesday and Insecure Writer

This is a dual post. 1st my wordless Wednesday, followed by this month's Insecure Writers post.

 The view of the sunset from the Michigan side of Lake Superior.

Sure months ago a dear friend tells me about Wordless Wednesday, knowing I love to take pictures, but failed to mention anything about a linky list. Grrr. That list can be found here.

 Insecure Writers Support Group

I've heard about this but it was only recently that I decided the time had come to really check it out. Since it only posts once a month, I decided to give it a try.

I started a new project last weekend, and for the first time ever, I’m actually excited. Normally I can’t stop thinking about all the things I should be doing. But not this time. For some reason I’m relaxed about this project, and don’t mind taking time from other projects and working on it.

I’d like to believe my new attitude means I’m becoming a stronger writer and that fiction is getting easier, but I doubt it. I suspect the reason for the change is finally realizing the value of different types of writing projects. I think it’s finally sank in that taking a break from writing endless pages of web content and editing DWARFED, and working on a completely different project is good for my mental state, hopefully it will prevent me from the severe burnout I developed during the tail end of 2012. 

I do wish my writing is stronger, or that I’m the kind of person who could ignore the flaws until the first draft is completed. I’m bugged by my tendency to use characters over and over again.  In a single paragraph I mentioned the same character’s name five times, in a single paragraph. Ugh.

When it comes to DWARFED, I’m dealing with a lot of anxiety. More anxiety than I care to think about. I know I have a good concept, interesting characters, and the quality of writing keeps improving. When it comes to plot, I’m not so sure. I’m taking a month away from it, letting it age a little bit, and at the beginning of March I  read through it again and start yet another round of edits.                                                                                                                                                                             

 

2/3/13 Sunday snippet

It looks like one way or another, the tradition of posting Sunday snippets is going to hold strong. There's just some details that need to be ironed out. This week I'm sticking to the 6 sentence format, mostly because it worked nicely for this particular snippet.

Right now there's a Weekend Writer Warrior group with a linky list, and there's a 6 Sunday FaceBook group, for anyone who's interested in participating or seeing what others have written.

Anyhoo, this week's snippet, which I'm quite pleased with is from my YA manuscript, DWARFED. It picks up where last week's snippet left off. Thanks so much for stopping by and taking the time to check it out. I truly appreciate how helpful everyone has been. The comments and friendly crits I've gotten have done wonders for my writing. Thanks!

I’m going to be accountable for the piglet’s life, a responsibility I’m positively not ready for. I don’t know what I’m doing and I’m not sure how much help or advice I can expect to get from Luke or anyone else. She’s already so far behind the eight ball and everyone thinks her chances of survival are slim, and Etna’s going to be watching my every move, waiting for me to fail.

The door swings open and Luke shoulders his way into the microscopic room. He holds some sort of silver light fixture in one hand, and cradles my sleeping piglet in the other.

My heart shivers and melts.

Source: google.com via Bonnie on Pinterest

Six Sentence Sunday 1/13/13

Welcome back Sixers!

This week my little snippet follows up where last week's ended.

This snippet was brought to you via my YA manuscript, DWARFED. As luck would have it, the first four sentences are on one side of a page break, while the remaining 2 were on the other.

He’s looking at the pigs, but based on his expression he doesn’t really see them. I can practically see the wheels spinning in his head. He must have come up with an idea, because eventually he jerks his chin towards the door, indicating that I should follow him. “C’mon, we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us if you’re serious about keeping that pig.”

         

           Luke kicks the dark blue towel through the door and into the hallway where it joins the miniature mountain of soggy towels. He hooks his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans and surveys the tiny room.  

The official list of the amazing writers participating in this week's Six Sentence Sunday.

If you want to know more about piglets born (farrowed) during the winter months, you should check out this post at the Righteous Bacon.

If you're new to my Sunday snippets and are completely confused, but would like to know more, I've compiled all of my snippets here.

Last, but not least, 1 sleeping piglet. I don't know about you, but I could cuddle it all day long :)

Source: cutestpaw.com via Destiny on Pinterest