Roisin Moriarty

Website humming along.  Just started work on My Favorite Scribes page to showcase writers I've met on thenextbigwriter.com who reviewed my work, told me what was what, and helped make me a WAY better writer than I could ever have become on my own.  If you're looking for a place to mingle with other writers, check out www.thenextbigwriter.com and no, I don't get a commission if you sign up!  Being able to put up a page to promote other writers is actually an unexpected bonus to having my own website.  I'm really pleased about that!  Have begun my search for an agent for Willow, scrabbling through the 2007 Novel & Short Story WRiter's Market.  If you're in the process of putting together a submission package, great book to have handy!  And no, I don't get a commission on that either!  I've been sweating out a synopsis.  Most agents want 1-2 page synopsis.  Damned if I know how to squeeze a tightly plotted 481 page ms into 1-2 pages without losing something!  I guess I'm trying to get away from and then this happened and then that happened and give a flavor of what's happening with the characters, but it's hard to do that out of context of events.  Nevertheless, I've got an eight page synopsis down to three, which ain't bad.  Also going to submit Keeping Gerald Alive.  Think it's ready for marketing.  Took a four-week, online course with Writer's Digest Writing School on marketing the short story.  Fabulous course.  Highly recommend it to anyone not sure what to do with their short stories.  Anyway, that's what's going on here, aside from the fact it's FREEZING cold!!  Happy February.  Roisin

Aside from a few tweaks here and there, my website is now up and running.  I keep clicking on the destop icon to make sure I'm not dreaming!  I, the techno-moron, have a website.  People are so impressed when I tell them I  feel as if I've acquired some kind of status!!  Down, Roisin!  Down!  I have dwrhodes.squarespace.com to thank.  He dragged me here,  kicking and screaming.  I whined I had no idea how to put up a website nor what to do with it when I had it up.  He didn't give up; wheedled, argued, pleaded, slapped me around until I surrendered, muttering naughty things in Gaelic.  After that, I did what he said and, lo and behold, a website crept into being!   Thank you, Dale.  You are, without doubt, the best, and a damn good writer to boot!

I have to go back and fix Chapter One of Willow.  It doesn't work the way it is.  I've rewritten that chapter at least a hundred times, dissatisfied with every one of them, finally slammed it into one paragraph and it still isn't right.  I could scream!!  Dale suggested making it a sort of prologue to the current Chapter 2, so I'm going to try that.   Rest of the novel is finished.  I'm going through it yet one more time to clean out every extraneous word.  I'm amazed at how many I find; words like 'very', 'some' 'began to', etc. etc.  I'm pleased with this final version.  It's only taken me four years!!  Admittedly, I've written other things in between, including extensive work on novels two and three but Willow has been my main focus.  Started out as a simple historical romance, morphed through countless revisions to become a journey into the heart of the human spirit, especially the Irish spirit.   

Joined thenextbigwriter.com in December 2005, with some skepticism.  A helpful online writing community?  Yeah, sure.  Over a year later, I can tell you, it was the best thing I ever did for myself.  I started earning credits by reviewing other writer's work, amazed by the quality of the writing I was reading, an inspiration in itself, began posting Willow, and was absolutely blown away by the variety and generosity of reviews from fellow writers, covering everything from inconsistencies, to overly long sentences to which I'm prone, to punctuation at which I'm terrible, to praise for my characters, my dialogue, my descriptive passages, by ability to set a scene.  This was how I discovered my strengths and weaknesses as a writer.  How valuable is that?  Open forums allow writers to chat with one another, and they do, at great length, with much spit and fire and lots of TLC.  If you're a writer, doing your lone thing, don't.  Sign on to TNBW.  You'll never regret it.   No, I don't get a commission or extra credits for people who sign up!!  You can sign up and never even mention my name.

Need to add an author's LINK page so anyone looking in on my site can easily access other writers' websites. 

Aside from integrating Chapters 1 and 2 of Willow, will add Chapter 3 and post a new short story, not about Ireland but about Iraq, called The Interrogator.  Might post some of my 'Love Talk" shorts as well.  Most people seem to enjoy them.  Well, that's it for Friday, 25th January in the Year of Our Lord, 2007.  Off to make dinner!