...are out of control! Five books from some of my favorite authors are being released in July. This is CRAZY for me. If I'm lucky, I get two releases a month I want to purchase.
For those who might be curious:
Dark and Stormy Knights- a compilation with Jim Butcher in it.
A Wild Light by Marjorie Liu
Waking the Witch by Kelley Armstrong
Undead and Unfinished by Mary Janice Davidson
Jealousy by Lili St. Crow
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
The Haps
I've not only neglected my blog but neglected my writing and I can blame one reason- WoW. For those of you who don't know, I'm a big World of Warcraft fan. My husband got me into it last year and I absolutely adore it, even though I've never been much into games or MMOs. Well, when WoW.com said they needed a warlock columnist (which is my main character's class), I got so excited I was frothing with ideas. Then came the actual writing and submission.
I wimped out. I got so stressed out thinking, "Oh gods, what if I'm not GOOD enough to write this column! What if everyone flames me in comments and I'm *that* columnist, the bad one we all mock for not knowing their class!" that I never submitted. I let self doubt get the best of me and now am going to have to wait another six months until the column is available again (if at all). I feel a bit down about this but I'm using it as a learning tool- how do you know you're not good if you don't at least apply? Sure, there was a good chance I wouldn't make the cut, but at least I would have TRIED. And I would have articles to work with for next submission. Instead, I'm going to write the column I wanted to submit for our guildsite (highwaymen.guildlaunch.com), work on more actual columns and not brief helpful little spats I've been putting on there under the Newbie Trading Post, and work up my self-confidence. I missed a great opportunity but next time I won't.
In better news, my friend B and I got together for her editing review of my novel, which currently I'm just referring to as "Drunk". I am so bad at titles. Anyway, the review went well and she clarified a lot of things for me that I am excited to work on to make this an actual novel. First step will be mapping out the storyline so that it's more about the story and less about the characters. Hopefully that will allow me to flesh out a few of the characters that are a little too 2D or narrow in their focus. Make them stronger as actual people than vehicles for the book.
This last week has also been busy in another way- I got a gig bartending! This brings my job total to THREE. Yes three jobs (not including writing), but thankfully all are fairly flexible in schedule. I *could* get in 40 hours a week if I scheduled myself for it, but generally I work 30 to 35 hour if the day time data entry job has work for me. I also am going camping from Thursday to Sunday at SOAK, which is the Burning Man event for Portland. Meetings about that with the group of wonderful ladies I'm going with has also been a time sucker. When I get back it's time to get back on the writing wagon and make myself a schedule!
Very excited about the weekend after- B and I are going to hit a coffee shop and writewritegossipwrite! Hopefully this will become a regular thing for us. I could definitely use the encouragement. Now if we can keep writing and not distract each other with chatter...
I wimped out. I got so stressed out thinking, "Oh gods, what if I'm not GOOD enough to write this column! What if everyone flames me in comments and I'm *that* columnist, the bad one we all mock for not knowing their class!" that I never submitted. I let self doubt get the best of me and now am going to have to wait another six months until the column is available again (if at all). I feel a bit down about this but I'm using it as a learning tool- how do you know you're not good if you don't at least apply? Sure, there was a good chance I wouldn't make the cut, but at least I would have TRIED. And I would have articles to work with for next submission. Instead, I'm going to write the column I wanted to submit for our guildsite (highwaymen.guildlaunch.com), work on more actual columns and not brief helpful little spats I've been putting on there under the Newbie Trading Post, and work up my self-confidence. I missed a great opportunity but next time I won't.
In better news, my friend B and I got together for her editing review of my novel, which currently I'm just referring to as "Drunk". I am so bad at titles. Anyway, the review went well and she clarified a lot of things for me that I am excited to work on to make this an actual novel. First step will be mapping out the storyline so that it's more about the story and less about the characters. Hopefully that will allow me to flesh out a few of the characters that are a little too 2D or narrow in their focus. Make them stronger as actual people than vehicles for the book.
This last week has also been busy in another way- I got a gig bartending! This brings my job total to THREE. Yes three jobs (not including writing), but thankfully all are fairly flexible in schedule. I *could* get in 40 hours a week if I scheduled myself for it, but generally I work 30 to 35 hour if the day time data entry job has work for me. I also am going camping from Thursday to Sunday at SOAK, which is the Burning Man event for Portland. Meetings about that with the group of wonderful ladies I'm going with has also been a time sucker. When I get back it's time to get back on the writing wagon and make myself a schedule!
Very excited about the weekend after- B and I are going to hit a coffee shop and writewritegossipwrite! Hopefully this will become a regular thing for us. I could definitely use the encouragement. Now if we can keep writing and not distract each other with chatter...
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
I will let the nap pass over me...
Naps are the writing killer. Today my nap extended to three hours after I got home. I would blame Benadryl for this sudden laziness but it's just me.
Sometimes the hardest part of writing is just opening up Word. I go to press the button then a dozen sparkly internet things distract me and suddenly it's two hours later and I haven't even managed to open up a file. Right now, the story I'm working on is open but I haven't started typing on it yet today. Why is it always the first sentence that is the hardest? Once I start, I'm good to go, but that first sentence...
Blarg, off to write that damn first sentence and hopefully many more.
Sometimes the hardest part of writing is just opening up Word. I go to press the button then a dozen sparkly internet things distract me and suddenly it's two hours later and I haven't even managed to open up a file. Right now, the story I'm working on is open but I haven't started typing on it yet today. Why is it always the first sentence that is the hardest? Once I start, I'm good to go, but that first sentence...
Blarg, off to write that damn first sentence and hopefully many more.
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Note to Self for Future Consideration:
A year ago the notation "whiskey song" might have meant something. Tonight, a year later, it means absolutely nothing. And quite a bit of the story is based around it.
*facepalm*
Addendum: After some help from my roommate who listed possible "whiskey" songs from his IPod that might have been played at the bar a year ago, I figured out what song I was referring to. Whiskey Girl by Toby Keith. Terrible song but I heard it quite a few times at a bar with a jukebox (not a country bar but they had that on it). Why the hell did I think "whiskey song" would be enough? Why wouldn't I have put "Whiskey Girl", the actual song title?
Lesson learned.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Rain keeps me writing.
Genres will have to hold off for a while until I'm in the mood to write that blog. Instead, I bring you another post about WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING. The answer? Writing!
Whoot!
The problem is I haven't been doing the writing I should be doing. My post about getting some of the stories in my head out on paper caused me to go for it... by summarizing one of the stories and doing a minor scene write. Sounds good in theory but I've found that when I do, I tend to never come back to it. I've written out the story and now I don't want the work of fleshing it out. Laziness maximized! My best success comes when I start a story from the start to the finish, writing the entire thing out then going back and then later fleshing out certain parts (a sex scene when I wasn't feeling up to it, an instruction scene when my writing was coming off as nagging, etc) I might have written a little too quickly. So now this poor storyline is written out, and I'm ignoring it because I just realized how much work it would take to complete it. But oh look, here's a story over here in this folder that doesn't need all that work...
Bah humbug! Luckily for this poor story, I'm changing my writing habits so this weekend I will start writing the damn thing. Probably will be novella length, but could go short story too. I suppose I'll write it until I feel like I'm done and find out what length it is then.
Ahhh... the mystery!
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
When and where do you like to work?
I'm always curious where people's creative processes happen. For me, the bulk of the story making goes on in my head. Generally this happens right before I fall asleep or after I wake up in the morning. It's one of the reasons I lay around in bed so long- I'm plotting and plotting and plotting, trying to get stories hammered out. It's also where I chew over a plot issue or character quirk when it's holding up a story.
During the process of writing the novel I discovered that when I got hung up on a part of the story and just couldn't seem to work my way past it, it was because it WASN'T WORKING. You'd think this would be obvious, and yet somehow I missed it. Then, one day out of frustration I sat down with the section I was having issues with and cut out the last scene and started rewriting. Voila! Suddenly my story is flowing again!
Another time all my creative juices are flowing? When I'm at work, it's 10am and I'm data entrying away with nothing to occupy my mind, and I'm bouncing out of my seat because of that delicious caramel latte I just consumed. That's the time I want to write most, and since I can't I write it in my head. Good ideas have come from these times, as have pages and pages of writing that were lost since they never got typed out. If I could only do that at home when I'm not working, I'd have more finished pieces.
Rework this, rework that
Looked over the novella last night and ouch, it needs a lot of work. The storyline and characters are solid with fairly easy tweaking to be done, but it's been longer than I thought since I wrote it. I might have to rewrite it, keeping a few lines and tossing the rest. Not exactly a bad thing, but I was hoping to have it ready for editing not a complete reworking. Ah well, such is the life of a writer.
While scanning some of my files last night, I remembered another short story/novella I had started a while back but hadn't finished. It's rough as well but I don't need to completely rewrite it, which makes me happy. I *do* need to finish writing the end, which is already mapped out.
Hurray for more projects! After a month of this I should have a bulky enough stable of writings that I'll begin the process of sending out inquiry letters. But first- more writing and some research!
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