inspiration – Page 5 – Alicia Coleman

A Book That Has Influenced My Life

February 1, 2018 aliciacoleman

#MFRWAuthor Week#5

Welcome to the latest week in the MFRW blog challenge where authors use weekly writing prompts to create a blog post. Please click here to check out the other authors in this hop.

There were a few books that influenced me but to name just one, it would be Mary Burchell’s A Song Begins, a Harlequin Romance in the Warrender Saga.

a-song-begins-by Mary Burchell

A story about an opera, Anthea Benton, an opera student, who enters a contest to win money to further her singing lessons and clashes with Oscar Warrender, a world-class opera conductor. She is crushed when she does not win or place in the contest and feels it is the conductor’s fault.

When he finds out she had said some pretty rough things about him, he’s intrigued and sends her a letter of invitation to come to London to audition to become his student. What I loved about the story is although he was a butt-hole, she persevered and learned to no longer let his ill temper intimidate her. She won the major female role in his new opera. In the process, the romance between the two took a long time to develop.

At the end of the opera, when Anthea sang her last aria, to this day, I can still imagine I hear her clear strong soprano voice and it totally blew me away. Her voice made a huge impact on me. Reading this book helped to seal my decision to write in the romance genre. I vowed that one day I hope to make a major emotional impact on the readers of my future books.

What book or books influenced you? Tell me in the comments.

writing

How Much of Myself Is In My Writing? #amwriting #mfrwauthor

January 19, 2018January 18, 2018 aliciacoleman

Here we are in week 3 of the MFRW blog hop. All authors with blogs are welcome to participate. Each week, authors use MFRW’s writing prompt to create a meaningful blog post. Authors will post every Friday or as often as possible. Click here to check out other posts for this week.

Woman in the Mirror How much of myself is in my writing and/or characters? That’s a good question. When I start to create my people, I already have a little kernel of knowledge of who they are in my mind. As the process of getting to know them takes shape, the character asserts himself/herself and I find that, like with a new friend, there are habits or hobbies, jobs or locations that we share. Is it intentional on my part that we have these things or places in common? Maybe. Although I have been writing since I was fairly young, I’ve only been writing for a few years ‘professionally’ to one day publish a novel. So, I’ll leave it at maybe. Maybe I possibly, almost certainly, intentionally put me in my stories.

Tell me about your process in the comments. Do you appear anywhere in your writing?

blog hop, Fitness, writing

What’s Next in 2018?

December 29, 2017 aliciacoleman

This is week 52. The final week in 2017. This week’s topic: New Year’s Resolution.

I had set myself several goals -personal and writing – for 2017 and I’ve met quite a few of them. My power word of the year for 2017 was INCREASE. The plan was to increase my daily word count, increase social media interaction, increase the number of blog posts and learn how to use Canva. In last week’s post, I mentioned I began to write in small bites of 250 words four times a day not every day, which allowed me to increase my word count. For social media, I now post more than ‘happy birthday’ or ‘happy anniversary’. I take a more active part in conversations. That’s huge for me. I joined this blog hop and while I did not blog each week, I have blogged more this year than I ever have. I make some of my own simple social media graphics with Canva. I didn’t do so good with November NANOWRIMO. The idea of 50k words in one month is too much for me. I achieve better results with Camp NANO in April and July so I’ll be sticking with that.

For 2018, I’ve added two power words to help inspire me personally and in my writing. FOCUS and MOTIVATION. In late 2017, I started attending an exercise and dance class at the local community center two days a week. I plan to continue the classes and boost my weight loss efforts with healthy eating, I plan to increase my word count by 50 words (that will be 300 words), and I plan to continue everything I achieved this year. I need to focus more on Point of View, so I’ll read craft books and take a few workshops. And, I plan to attend a couple of Reader’s Luncheons in my area and a mini-conference to get a feel for in-person author/reader interaction.

This a blog hop. Please check out other participants here.