Author: Nicole Luttrell

I'm a speculative fiction writer. That means I write about dragons, ghosts and spaceships. Sometimes I write about the ghosts of dragons on spaceships.

Clockwork Wonderland

So, my favorite book as a kid was Alice in Wonderland. I pretty much love everything related to it, including the Looking Glass Wars series, Wonderland the comic book, American Mcgee’s Alice, and of course the new Alice movies. So, of course I had to include Clockwork Wonderland.

If you’ve ever looked over the whole world of fiction and games that encompass Alice in Wonderland, and it’s not as well known sequel called Through The Looking Glass, and thought to yourself, “This just isn’t scary or horrifying enough,” then this is your jam. Am I the only one who hears a story and thinks it needs more ghosts popping out of mushrooms?

Genre- Horror

Word Count– 2,500 to 5,000

Deadline– Oct 31

Payout-$10

Wait Time– A decision will be made within three months of the due date.

Here is you link to the full submission guidelines.

 

 

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Red Pens

Throwback Thursday!

Nicole Luttrell's avatarPaper Beats World

Red pens. There’s a love hate relationship there with most writers. It starts in grade school the first time a teacher whips one out and starts going through your essay with it. “Tighten this, misspelling, run on sentence.” My biggest one was misspelling.

Even so, I love red pens. I have a lot of them, but I only use them for one thing, editing. It’s one of the reasons why I have to print out drafts, so I can go through them with red ink, crossing out and leaving similar notes as the ones my teacher would have left, but probably with more swear words. “Show, Don’t Tell!” I’ll write, or “Cliche, rewrite.” My favorite one, “You can do something better than this!” By the time I’m done, my manuscript is awash in red ink. Then the next draft isn’t so bad.

Why do we use red ink for editing?…

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Talking to People About My Writing

So, first of all, I have to tell you that I have the worst luck when it comes to computers. I swear, I can’t get through a draft without something bad happening to mine.

This time, it was my adorable, lovable puppy. He chewed through my power cord, thankfully when it wasn’t plugged in. I was able to fix it with some electrical tape, but that was only a temporary thing. If you’re reading this I’m back up and running now, because I can’t actually post anything without my computer. But as I write this, (in an email document) I’m desperately praying that my power cord comes soon, so that this posts on time. The moral here is, if you think you’ve fixed a power cord with electric tape, assume that it won’t stay fixed for long and order a new one right away. Also, maybe don’t have a puppy. (Kidding!)

Anyway, what I really wanted to talk to you about today was something totally different.

I want to talk about talking about my writing to other people, because it’s something that I struggled with, and still struggle with. Maybe it’s something that you struggle with too. Maybe we can learn from each other.

See, I have a hard time talking to people. I struggle with social anxiety, and it’s hard for me to talk out loud to people. I’m afraid I’ll be perceived as stupid, or lazy. This causes me all sort of anxiety when I send out query letters, approach book reviewers, post my stories here on PBW, and pretty much anything else that involves reaching out with my work.

Obviously, I have to get over this. Whether I end up going the traditional publishing route or the independent, I have to talk to people about my writing. But it can’t just be gotten over. Anxiety, much like the depression I fight with as well, is not something that you just ‘get over’. In fact, if you tell someone with a mental illness, even a mild one like mine, to get over it, there’s a good chance you’re an asshole.

Now, this might actually all sound like bullshit. I mean, it has to be. I publish two posts a week, am active on social media, and share at least two of my stories every month. I’ve published two books, sent my short stories off to editors hundreds of times, entered countless contests and have sent my my novels out to agents.

The truth is that I’ve come a long way with my anxiety. I’ve worked very hard, and still do just about every day. I’ve learned, over time, to find ways to combat my anxiety, and get my work out in spite of it.

One big thing I had on my side was that I’m not afraid of failing, just looking like an idiot. So a kindly worded rejection letter has never been a big deal to me. I wasn’t bad, other people were just better. I’ve also, every time I’ve ever sent a query out, just assumed that I was going to get a rejection letter, so that’s not an issue.

My biggest concern is that I’m going to be personally judged. Even my fiction also touches on my history. I worry that I share too much about my family, my personal failings, my life. Which is why, in a large way, I started this blog. It’s why I’ve always been very loud about when you could expect to hear from me. I’m scared of posting, but I’m way more scared of not meeting an expectation that I’ve told others to have of me.

Following other blogs that also dive into personal issues has also helped me a lot. I feel better about sharing my history when I see other bloggers do it. One has talked in depth about her divorce. Another has similar issues as me, coming from an abusive childhood. Reading their stories helped me. I realized that A. I wasn’t the only one who felt like this and B. sharing is good for both the reader and the writer. I thank God for the men and women who were brutally honest online, because it encourages me to do the same.

Some of it is just shutting down the critic in my head. Telling that part of my brain to shut the hell up. It can be hard, but if I repeat it often enough I get pretty far.

And this is why, my dear readers, I am constantly saying over and over, “I am a writer.” Because if I say it often enough, I can make myself believe it. So, when I’m stressing out over a query, I whisper it. When I don’t really want to press publish on a post, I say it out loud. And when I nearly cried over putting my books on Gumroad, I almost screamed about it. I am a writer, and this is what writers do.

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Aps For Writers

I did not receive any money for the post you are about to read. I didn’t get any gifts, either. This post is not promoted, in fact, in any way. It just so happens that I use all of the aps I’m going to tell you about almost every day on my smart device, and I don’t pay a dime for any of them. With that being said, I’d like to tell you about them as A. my way of saying thanks to the creators and B. a hopefully useful look at some common aps that help me manage my house, family, writing and day job. Some of them are common, but I think it’s worth it to go over how I use them and why I think they’re better than other aps that do similar things. Some others, though, are not so common, or at least not commonly seen as writing life aids.

For the sake of brevity, I’ve decided to include only aps I use on my tablet. Many of them I use on my computer as well. But I have not included computer only aps or programs. I plan on doing another post about those at some point, but it felt like that would just drag this one out too long.

The Common Aps you should be using

Evernote. I’m not going to drag this one out, because everyone already knows about Evernote. If you’re the one person on Earth who doesn’t, though, here’s a break down. It’s a note taking system that you can type into, draw into, speak into and attach internet files to. You can also set up checklists on it.

How I use it. Wow, how don’t I use it?
– I’ve scanned the monster’s medical records into it, so I have them at the doctors.
– The darling husband and I share our shopping lists so we don’t buy/forget to buy milk.
– I have my whole world bible for Woven on there, in neat little categories, so I have the information available to me anytime, anywhere I might be writing.
– I have a rolling list of PBW post ideas.
– My five year plan is in there, where I can’t spill coke on it. (Again)
– My book outlines go there, where they can be color coded (especially important when switching pov characters like I do), added too, taken from, and basically made unrecognizable by the end.
– The Paper Beats World style book is there.
– The Woven Master Timeline is there. (14 books and counting, you’d better believe I have a master timeline that I’m not going to lose if my house burns down.)
– A log of how long each draft took me to write for Woven. It helps me get an idea of what I’ll be doing for the year if I know how long it took me the last time I wrote a rough draft.

I use Evernote every day, is what I’m saying.

Trello. I could not write the number of books I write at the same time without Trello. Basically, it’s a way to keep track of different projects in one place. I have Trello folders for each of my upcoming short story collections, and I can add a ‘card’ for each of my stories as they’re done. On that card I can note if I’ve sent this story anywhere, and if I’ve yet published it on PBW.

I actually feel like there’s a lot more I could be doing with Trello. If any of you out there use it, please share with us how below.

Buffer– There’s a good chance that someone reading this right now found me due to social media, either Twitter or Facebook. Social media is one of the best ways to be discovered by new readers, and it’s a great boon for an indie writer. That being said, I don’t have the time to drop everything I’m doing during the day to tweet. So I use buffer to schedule my social media for me. Tweets get sent out at times my readers are most likely to see them, and I can fill my Buffer feed whenever. I also like the ability to make lovely inspirational images, which I’m sure you’ve noticed if you follow me on either Facebook or Twitter.

ToDoist– Before I talk about todoist, please understand that my planner obsession has led me to try every single to do app and planner that you can imagine. I tried writing my to do lists down in my planner, not enough room. I tried writing them in my bullet journal, it was redundant because so much of what I do needs repeated so often. I tried every damn app I could find, and was irritated that I couldn’t figure out how to have a task happen every day unless it was ‘every weekday’ or ‘on the weekends’.

Todoist is great for that. Repeating tasks is easy, you can set them to repeat literally at any interval. I’ve got my daily and weekly to dos on there, and I also use it to set a reminder to toss my mascara and toothbrushes after three months. I set it to remind me when something’s going to be automatically deducted. I can also color code it! I have never had a better to do app.

Google Docs– Because I write everywhere, I need to be able to write on my tablet and have it be on my computer when I get home. That was a requirement. I love that I can access Docs everywhere, and copy from there onto my WordPress site. I also use Google Spreadsheet for all of my business hat stuff, payments and such. It’s not a fancy tool, but it’s an important one.

Pomodoro Timer– And finally, this one is pretty self explanatory. I use the pomodoro method for just about everything from editing to housekeeping, and I highly endorse it. This is just a nifty little timer app that’s set for 25 minutes and gives you little motivational things like, “I believe in you!” and “You can do anything!” Quite frankly, it’s not fancy, but it gets the job done.

The uncommon apps you might not have thought about for writing

I’m not saying you’ve never heard of these apps. In fact, you might already have them on your smart device. But you might not be using them to their full writerly potential.

Pintrest– Why am I listing Pintrest here? It’s one I have to be careful with, because Pintrest can be a huge time sucker for me. I kind of see Pintrest as a portal that will suck me into Buzzfeed and blogs that will never let me go.

But I use Pintrest for one highly underrated thing. I create vision boards for my writing. Inspiration for characters, worlds, costumes, weapons, world building. It’s all there. If I’m feeling wholly uninspired, or just can’t remember that great detail about swords I found the other day, having the Pintrest app and access to my vision board anywhere I have internet access has been a huge help. I highly advise creating a vision board today.

Drop Box– Obviously Drop Box is a great way to back up your documents. I personally keep every draft and short story there, not just for security but so that the darling husband can access it to read them for me. I also love it because he takes a lot of pictures for me, and I can access them whenever once he’s put them on Drop Box.

Budget Tracker– I love this for my budgeting, love it so much. Part of my grand scheme of life is being able to spend as little time at work as possible. Good budgeting is essential to that overall goal. I love budget tracker because I can put my money in different categories, so I’m not overspending in one area and robbing another. I can also use it to separate my PBW money from the household budget. Listen, I am really bad at overspending, but this app makes it easier for me to see my ‘fun money’ or ‘household money’ going to zero before we start into the ‘savings’ money.

Morning Routine– I generally have to be up pretty early. I’m not thrilled with it, and anything before 7:00 feels like torture for me. With my shift changing at the day job, I have to get up before everyone else if I’m to be assured any quiet writing time at all. And my old alarm was way to kind with the snooze button.

Morning Routine has helped a ton for my morning zombie brain. It wakes me up with an adorable image of two chihuahuas fishing for the moon, and it just gets better from there. You can opt to turn this app off with a swipe or by scanning a certain bar code. (I opted for the swipe, because there are no common bar codes in my house. I think that option’s for people who don’t just buy whatever’s cheapest when they get to the store.) You also have an option to set your smart device to do a series of tasks. Mine is set to open Feedly so that I can read my feeds while I run to the bathroom and walk the dog. Then, when it’s time for me to be at my desk I get another alarm. Finally, a third one goes off an hour later, and pulls up todoist so I can see what else I have to do that day now that my writing time is done. This is a huge boon, since my brain doesn’t work until at least 8:30.

Calm– If you’re already using all these other apps to make your life run like a well oiled machine, you might be kind of tired. In fact you might, like me, feel like you’re brain is a rat running on a wheel for dear life. Sometimes, that rat needs to get off the wheel. Calm is good for this. In fact, it’s probably the best meditation apps I’ve used. I can set it for any amount of time, and it’s got a lot of different soothing images. And I don’t want to hear anyone tell me meditation isn’t important. You might not suffer from depression and Adult ADD like I do, but you can still benefit from it.

So, what do you think? Did I miss an app you use every day? Please tell us if I did, I love to learn about new apps.

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The Real Life Writer

So, when I started writing out a theme for last month, I ran into a bit of a snag. I thought that journalism was a great theme, and it turned out to be so. But I really had to stretch to find post ideas for all four weeks. I think I did pretty well, but I don’t like to have to write what I feel is ‘filler work’. I won’t tell you which piece I wrote last month that would fall under that category, because I feel like all of them turned out pretty strong. But I think the month would have been stronger if I hadn’t had to do that.

This month, I had the opposite problem. I sat down with my list of post ideas, and I saw a theme right away.

Real Life Writing

It’s perfect. It’s all about living your life as a writer in today’s world. All kinds of ideas popped out at me, from presenting yourself as a creative professional, to running your home efficiently so that you have more time to write, to what tools I use on a daily basis to work. It was clear, to me, that I wasn’t going to fit all of this in one month. This is two months, at least.

So I decided to change things up.

From now on, a theme will last here on Paper Beats World for as long as I have ideas to write about. If you have any questions or suggestions that you’d like me to write about in any given theme, please let me know at nicolecluttrell86@Gmail.com. I’ll be happy to hear from you, and I’ll try to answer as many of your questions as I can.

I can’t tell you how excited I am about the Real Life Writer. I think we have a lot to share with each other. I’d love to hear from you, what you do in your real life. Please let us know!

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Potters Field Six

This anthology sounds so delightfully creepy, I can’t even begin to tell you. Potters Field Six wants stories about unmarked graves. It doesn’t have to be just about a potter’s field, of course, there are tons of historical mass graves. Think of the Catacombs in Paris. Honestly, this contest is making me rethink writing for publication this year.

Genre- Horror

Word Count- 2,000 to 8,000

Due Date- June 30

Payout- $25

Here is your link to the full submission guidelines

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Some more really bad poetry by me

Oliver

The wiggle, waddle

The excitement of your life!

You cannot stand still

Sluggish morning

Pouring myself in

Fitting into the crevices

Of the morning flow

Chai

Rain on he window

Steam rising from my tea cup

the scent of warm leaves

mingled with sweet, strong spices

warm hands, even in the cold

Color on My Lips

A little color on my lips

and I’m ready, now, to go

With a gentle swing to my hips

A little color on my lips

for comfort and courage to sew

to face the world with a glow

A little color on my lips

And I’m ready, now, to go

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Why I’m Not A Journalist

I swear, this month has gone by so damn fast! I’m still convinced it’s actually March and someone’s punking me. I didn’t think I was old enough yet for the distortion of time to really set in, but I guess I am. Wish it would distort a little more while I’m on the clock.

Anyway, since I’ve spent the while month  talking about journalism, and how much I love it, you might be wondering why I’m not a journalist. I know it’s something I asked myself a lot when I first graduated.

In fact, I had a recruiter from SRU in my journalism class, who went into detail about how I, an already pregnant 17 year old, could succeed as a journalism student. There were grants, she told me, and child care options. I could do it!

I could have done it, and one thing I want to make clear to everyone is that my daughter wasn’t what held me back. Or, at least, not in a ‘I can’t do this thing I want to do’ way. My decision to not become a journalist came from a very personal place, and a lot of things factored into it. Some of those reasons, my ex wouldn’t have moved with me, my mother thought I shouldn’t, I was scared out of my mind, are stupid and should never have held me back. It took me a long time, a very long time, to realize the difference between a legitimate reason to not go after a career and a damned lame excuse. Those were damned lame excuses. After over a decade, I know I made the right choice, though, because of these actual reasons.

My kids come first

And that’s a choice I made. I could have been the kind of parent who brings work home with her, works long hours and has a well chosen caregiver who looks after her kid. Heaven knows that’s what most people think I do anyway, given the stigma of working moms. But I wanted, above all, to be able to leave my work at work. I wanted to have time with my kids, and be as much a part of their lives as I could, even though I didn’t want to be a homemaker. Professional journalists have a really hard time doing that. They work a ton of hours, and often have to do crappy things like work overtime, bring work home and travel. Quite frankly, I didn’t want that to be my life, or my little Monster’s lives. Please also understand that I do not blame anyone who makes a different decision than me. I know that there are lots of parents that are passionate about their careers and they spend a lot of time on them. They are not bad parents, they’re just different kinds of parents. God bless your path, whatever it is my friend.

Full disclosure! I do write at home, and yes it does take up mommy time. But if I have to drop it, I can. If family time is going to interfere, I can put my creative writing aside and pick it up again tomorrow. Could I do that for my journalistic writing as well? Yeah, sure I could. Blow off work for an evening and get up early to get it done. But, quite frankly, I would have had to abandon my creative writing, at least for a time. More on that later.

I have a serious political bias

If you’ll recall, last week I complained for a whole post about what’s wrong with mainstream media. One of my big problems was a bias that journalists can’t seem to avoid. But a journalist is supposed to try to avoid it.

I can’t avoid my political bias. Further, I don’t want to. I want to be very clear where I stand on any issue, and I cannot find it in myself to silence that. Creative writing allows me to be honest about my opinions without damaging my principles.

At some point, I knew that Journalism would become a ‘day job’ for me

I’ve worked on Woven for over two years. Yes, writing is my job. But it’s also my passion, my art, what I do to create something new for the world. It makes me feel accomplished. Journalism would have, at some point, become much like my current day job. I like it, but I’d rather be writing.

And this is what it really comes down to

I like being a story teller. I like writing about dragons and witches and magic. I like telling ‘what if’ stories. I like making worlds up and living there! At the end of it all, if I’m going to spend years waking up early and going to bed late, working in the seconds I’ve got between mommy stuff and my day job, then I need to have a constant, never ending driving passion. I have that passion for speculative fiction, and it has driven me my whole life. I have written for years without making a profit and in fact losing money on the deal. (That’s okay. Most small businesses lose money their first year, and most small business owners don’t plan on making a profit for at least five.) I wouldn’t have done that for journalism. I wouldn’t have done that for painting, the military, ballet, police work or EMT work. (All careers I’ve considered and rejected.) The only thing that’s kept me up at night, working in every crevice and second I can find, is my stories. I want to tell my stories, to however small of an audience I have. And, thanks to all of you, it’s not that small at all.

If it had just been one thing or the other, I might have pursued journalism. But it wasn’t my passion, and that’s why it didn’t happen.

I can’t say I regret it.

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Bloggers Hold The Future of The Fourth Estate

Yes, I am going to kiss ass a little today. I’m also going to be a little vain. Not very vain, though, because while I am a blogger I’m not blogging about news.

You know what site does blog about the news? Buzzfeed. Recently they did a great series of photos where they asked Trump and Sanders supporters what questions they would ask of each other. I really enjoyed the post, and here’s a link so that you can enjoy it too. But what struck me is this; while Buzzfeed does have a very strong liberal slant, the Trump supporters were not made out to be ignorant or hateful. Some of their signs were misspelled, but so were some of the Sanders supporters signs. It showed the best possible examples, instead of showing highly intelligent Sanders supporters and moronic Trump supporters.

And this was Buzzfeed! Their other big accomplishment this month was blowing up a watermelon with rubber bands. Here’s a link to that, too. While I love Buzzfeed, they sure didn’t start out as someone you’d consider a reputable news source. But they kind of are now, and they’re not the only ones.

Here are just a few of the reasons why I think we, as bloggers, should embrace this.

We aren’t bound by advertisers, for the most part

Actually, a lot of blogs do have ads. And some bloggers do sponsored posts. But we also tell you beforehand, “Hey, I got paid for this.” And most of us aren’t making so much money from an advertiser that we’ll cry a river if they leave us. So if an ad partner doesn’t like something we’ve written, that’s sad and all. But we don’t really mind.

We aren’t getting paid

The vast majority of us, anyway, are making no money from blogging. Many blogs that do make money don’t make enough to be a sole source of income. And even the bloggers that do blog full time are usually also producing products like e-books and educational courses.

Since our blogs aren’t money driven, we’re free to be honest. If I tell you about something in the news, my only motivation is that I want you to know. I might want you to feel a certain way about it, because it’s the way I feel, but mostly I just want you to have the information.

We are able to say, ‘this is my own opinion.’

This is a big one. Outside of editorialists, journalists aren’t supposed to outright say, “This is how I feel about this thing.” They’re supposed to tell you the who, what, where, when, why and how. Bloggers are free to say, “This happened, and I think it’s great.” Or, “This is going on right now, and we need to damn well do something about it.”

By expressing our opinions, we are being totally honest with our readers. If I tell you that I support Bernie Sanders, then you will read what I have to say understanding that I have an honest bias. You’ll weigh my words differently, as you should. Everyone has a bias, after all. Mine, and most other bloggers, are just honest.

People already understand that we’re not professionals, so they’re more willing to look into what we tell them.

And boy do people love to tell bloggers they’re wrong. Read comment sections if you don’t believe me. (Not so much mine, though. All of you have been nothing but sweet and supportive in your comments, and thank you for that.) But if you read a blog post about something, you’re more likely to say, “Prove it.”

My husband and I play a game with this. “Source, or it didn’t happen.” This means that if one of us finds some outlandish story online, we have to find at least two other sources of information that tell the same thing, or we don’t believe it really happened. Or one of us will say, “Did you read that off someone’s blog?”

No deadlines

As much as I might admire the productivity of a journalist, constant deadlines can lead to sloppy work. Not all the time, but sometimes. Bloggers don’t have that restriction. You know I attempt to publish three to four times a week, getting my posts up by six in the morning. But sometimes it doesn’t happen, and they go up late. No great loss, they’re still up there. If I feel like a piece needs more work, I’ll give it that time. This is a luxury we have, not being beholden to anyone. We’ve got all the time we need to get the story right.

 

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