It’s My Birthday and I’ll Post if I Want To

Yes, it’s my birthday. And what better way to celebrate than with a blog post?

Okay, I can think of plenty of better ways to celebrate a birthday, but the blog post is all I’ve got. Although I did treat the grandbaby and myself to McDonald’s for lunch. What can I say? You gotta have something bad for you to celebrate the day with, and it’s not like anyone remembers to make/get me a cake (I refuse to make my own anymore). So fatty food it is! ;-)

As you may have noticed, I haven’t been doing so great on my goals for the year so far. Um, in fact, the only one I’ve followed so far is the reading - I read a book of fairy tales over the week end. Sandman’s Fairy Stories to be precise, it was a thrift store find in really good shape.

Last week I still had Monday and Wednesday off from babysitting, so you’d think I’d have all kinds of time to write and craft and settle into a routine. But, well, did you forget this is me we’re talking about?

Since it’s a new year, I think it only far that I start with a new numbering system for my excuses. Therefore, I present excuse #001 (notice the optimism that I won’t be exceeding three digits worth of excuses for the year): cleaning.

If you read my Other Blog you know all about the bathroom renovation. For those of you who don’t... In a nutshell, the in-laws got one of those walk-in tubs and since their old tub with the jets in it was only a couple of years old, they didn’t want to just trash it so they gave it to us. This necessitated a remodel of the main floor bathroom, which has been an ongoing project since September.

Anyway, in the course of things the hubby used an electric sander on the walls and even though he had the door shut a toxic cloud of dry wall dust settled over the entire house. Especially in my office, which is almost right across the hall from the bathroom. So, from Christmas through New Year’s I spent a considerable amount of time in my office, cleaning away the dry wall dust. By Monday it was mostly clean again, but I still had to put all the stuff back where it belonged. By the end of Monday (last Monday, not yesterday), all that was left was de-hairing the reading nook (which still isn’t done).

Excuse #002: the tile guy. The friend the hubby was going to have show him how to tile the bathroom became unavailable, so he hired someone to just do it. Tile guy (who did an amazing job) showed up shortly after 8 a.m. Tuesday through Friday and I was too intimidated by his presence to work in my office, even though the desk was now cleaned off and everything was organized.

Tile guy finished up on Friday, which brings us to the weekend and excuse #003: I got sick. *sigh* Stomach issues with slight back pain on Saturday, turning into more increasing back pain on Sunday. And Monday. Today the Advil finally kicked in so I’m not feeling too bad *knock on wood* but ... you know, it’s my birthday. So I figure this blog post should count for something.

:-D

At any rate, this is the time of year I usually use to shake things up a bit on the blogs, so don’t look for any kind of consistency or actually sticking to the goals list until the dust settles after I’ve finished thinking about what I’m doing.

Me. Thinking. Might be dangerous. At the very least I’m sure it’ll be interesting. ;-)

A Crisis of Faith

I think we all have the occasional crisis of faith when it comes to our writing. One of mine came yesterday morning from an unexpected source. I like to read on my Kindle while I’m riding the stationary bike first thing in the morning and after opening and closing several ebooks, I finally settled on one that appeared to have all the ear-marks of a good read for riding - Vikings, Highlanders, historical romance ...

To make a long, ranty post short, it was bad. And not just bad, it was very, very bad. There were no Vikings, no Highlanders, and other than the fact the main character lived in a castle and there was no technology, it wasn’t even historical. The writing style was ... weird. Sort of third person, but bordering on second person at times. I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. ;-)

So you’re probably asking yourself why did I keep reading if it was so awful? Part of it was the train-wreck syndrome (it was just so bad I couldn’t look away) and part of it was that I caught myself starting to catalogue all its faults and then suddenly wondered if someone out there is doing the same to one of my books. Or maybe all of them. Maybe I should stop wasting my time and get a real job.

Enter, the crisis of faith in my writing ability.

Self-doubt is a nasty little troll that hides in a dark corner, waiting to attack when we’re at our most vulnerable. In my case I was already having problems second-guessing myself with two of my WIP, the incident just seemed to add fuel to the fire. The inability to fight this troll is what keeps us from finishing that story, completing that novel, it may even persuade us to give up writing completely.

So what can we do about it?

Maybe you need a change of scenery, or a change of pace. Why not try something completely different? If you write non-fiction, try something fiction. Or if you write suspense, try a cute little love story. Nobody except you has to read these, but you never know, you just might find a new direction for your work.

You could try reading a how-to book, just to continue your growth as a writer. Or perhaps there’s class you could take or a writer’s group you could join. At the very least it might renew your enthusiasm for what you’re doing.

Accept that you won’t always succeed at what you do. You’re going to get rejected, you’re going to make mistakes. Accept the rejection and move on to the next project. Your failures weren’t a complete waste of time, learn from them. And above all, keep writing.

The Science Fiction Writers of America have a far more comprehensive article about self-doubt and overcoming it that you can find HERE.

Wordage Report

Blog Posts (not counting this one)
3,719 words total
Up by about 500 words from last week. Guess I was feeling chattier or something. And once again I was able to get my posts done and scheduled on time. Well, all except this one. This one I was up extra late working on because the hubby kept finding good stuff to watch on TV last night and I kept getting distracted. ;-)

Goodreads Reviews
895 words total
And this gets me caught up with my back log of reviews. Whew! What a job. From this point on expect much smaller numbers. I’m going to try and review the books as I finish them, and then update Goodreads at the end of each month.

New Ideas
0 words total
Ditto to last week: My mind’s been a bit of a dust bowl lately. Sometimes the ideas come faster than I can write them down, sometimes ... no so much. But that’s okay, I’ve got ideas a-plenty in my files in case I want to start something new. Which I really don’t.

Editing
0 pages total
The thing about editing is, it’s best done in spurts. Finish a draft, let it rest. First rounds of edits, let it rest. Second round, let it rest. An Elemental Earth is resting for now. In the meantime, I need to get some idea about what’s going to happen in the next (and final) book in the series so I can make sure I set it up in this one.

New Words
558 total
These were added to my short piece Dreamer. I’m kind of at odds with myself here. I really want this to be a short story, but I keep writing it like it’s a flash piece. Maybe I should just suck it up and write until it’s done. I can worry about the length once I know what the length is.

I also, while sitting on my deck enjoying the sun, wrote out about six pages of notes (roughly 1,000 words) using a pen and paper. Some of these notes were trying to work the kinks out of Wandering Wizards -- trying to decide whether I should try to cram all action into one novel or spread it out into two. The rest of the notes were ideas concerning my final two elemental books.

This Week’s Goals:
Make a decision on what I’m doing with Wandering Wizards
New words on Wandering Wizards
Figure out how to start Elemental Spirit
New words on Dreamer
Bonus blog post

Last week I only managed to meet one of my goals, and that was to add new words to my short piece Dreamer. But I think all that note writing should count for something. :-)

This week’s excerpt is from Dreamer:

Long ago, before the world existed, there was the Dreamer. It was her dreams that brought the world into existence.

Is she God?

No. I don’t know. Perhaps. Now hush, and listen.

Where does she live?

According to legend, she sleeps in a beautiful temple on one of the moons in orbit around our world.

When I grow up I want to visit the temple.

You can’t. You would have to travel through space to get there.

Then I’ll learn to travel through space.

I surely hope you do not.

Why not?

Because she dreams all the hopes of the world. While she dreams the world is full of possibilities. To awaken her is to doom us all.

Happy First Day of Autumn!

Apparently I took the summer off from this blog, my last post was shortly after the first day of summer.

So ... did you miss me? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

I haven't been idle while I've been on my unintended hiatus. I've been pretty steady with the writing, and Lucky Dog is in the merciless loving hands of my editor. The cover is being designed as we speak ... I hope. I'll have to jog my cover artist's (aka the daughter) memory.

I finally figured out why I was having problems getting going on An Elemental Spirit, the final book in my Ardraci Elementals series. Every other book has featured an elemental, plus their soon to be significant other. In other words, I focused on the two main characters and everything is pretty much from their points of view. But Spirit is bringing all of these characters together, so everyone pretty much has equal billing.

However (and you knew there had to be a however coming, didn't you?) however, I finally figured out that I did have two focus figures after all: Gra'anna, the ancient Illezie who's pretty much orchestrating this all, and Kaine, the former mercenary from the as of yet unnamed race/planet who was mentioned briefly at the end of Elemental Water and who has a special role to fulfill in the upcoming events. Finally I have my focus and I can move forward.

In writing a series of stories about the same characters, plan the whole series in advance in some detail, to avoid contradictions and inconsistencies.
~ L. Sprague de Camp

Excellent advice. And it's also a good idea to take a lot of notes as you go along so you're not having to keep going back to previous books for fact checking. Too bad I didn't figure it out until the end of the series. It really does pay to have at least a sketchy idea of the story arc if you're doing a whole series. De Camp's advice is definitely something to keep in mind for future use.

In fact ... I have another space series that I began many (many, many) years ago that involves the human/Kohl-trin war mentioned in my elemental books. I have the first book in the opening trilogy, and a stand alone that takes place after the war already written. But the series itself never went anywhere because I only had a vague idea of what was going on. Once I'm done with the elementals I'll be sitting down with notes, pens, and plenty of paper and figure things out.

It occurs to me that this could be why I have an easier time with my Moonstone Chronicles than my Ardraci Elementals. To be fair to myself, I didn't start out with the intention of writing a series when I wrote my first elemental book. The intention was to write a serial for my blog. But once it was finished I figured I might as well keep going and write one for each of the elements, even though I only had a vague idea of what could possibly tie them all together.

But the Moonstone Chronicles started as a short story that kind of petered out once Jessica was magicked to the magical realm. It sat for a couple of years, and then I had an attack of "what if" and wrote a multi-page back story about the magical realm and Jessica's parents, then continued on with a sketchy outline of Jessica and her story and the final, epic, confrontation with Anakaron, the evil wizard. So even though the books have kind of wandered off track from the original story arc, the back story is still solid and I know what the ultimate goal is.

I'm a panster, I prefer to write by the seat of my pants, so you'd think I'd find knowing how a story is going to end would stifle my creativity. But just because I know the ultimate goal doesn't mean I know how we're getting there - there's still plenty of room to be surprised. As Ensign Harry Kim said on Star Trek:Voyager: maybe it's not the destination that matters. Maybe it's the journey.

Something to think about.

Don't forget to check out my newly updated progress bars to the right, and join me here Saturday when I continue to talk about writing a series and also about ... the number seven. :-D

Man, It's May?

Funny thing about time, it stands still for no one. Least of all for struggling authors.

Given my lack of posts here, one might get the impression that I've been slacking off on the writing or something, but that's not true at all. I've actually been doing okay in the writing department, it's the editing I've been slacking off on. My own editing that is. Give me someone else's book to work on and I'm a happy camper. My own, well . . . not so much. :-D

I will admit that I've been a little low on motivation these last few weeks, but I take heart in the fact that I'm not alone. Several other authors I keep tabs on through their blogs or Facebook are also rather unmotivated. Maybe it's something in the air, like pollen?

Because author cannot live by editing alone, I've started a new story, the first of a trilogy. I'm not quite sure how to categorize them, they start out contemporary and then kind of segue into fantasy/paranormal. They're connected by a common prologue, but each should be able to stand alone as well.

My focus for the month of May is going to be to finish up with Lucky Dog. I've really been dragging my heals with this one, and there's no good reason for it. I had the draft finished before Christmas, so it should have been released into the wilds by now. My only excuse is that I'm intimidated by its sheer length - 300 pages and over 100,000 words. I would really like to pare it down to a respectable 80,000 words, but . . .

I've had my mind set on getting it out there first, not just because I finished the draft in November, but because I've had so many people asking about it. Give the people what they want, eh? However, I have to admit that it would have been smarter to do the edits on An Elemental Earth first, because it's a cleaner draft to work with and if I'd timed it right, I could have released it on Earth Day. Now wouldn't that have been cool?

Yes, it would have been the smarter thing to do, but no one's ever accused me of being overly smart. :-D

So here's the plan, such as it is:
Finish up the edits Lucky Dog so I can get it to my betas this month and hopefully publish it in June
Edit and publish An Elemental Earth by July
Finish writing Wandering Wizards, the third in the Moonstone Chronicles
Start writing An Elemental Spirit, the fifth, and final book in the Ardraci Elementals series
And at the same time I'll also be working on the first in my Wishing Star trilogy, simply because I've already started the first book. Yes, I can write more than one book at a time. ;-)

You notice Guardian isn't on the list? While I'm glad I took the time to actually finish one of my NaNo novels, I'm not in a big hurry to get it out there. It's the start of a new series and I already have two series on the go. Three if you count the Wishing Star. So no rush for it.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

Anybody out there like serials? Personally, I love them. I read so fast normally that sometimes it's refreshing to read a story that stretches out for a long period of time.

My bestie Jamie has started not one, not two, but THREE new on-line stories that will be updated each Friday. Now the installments are only up for a week and they started last week, but if you email her nicely, she send you the installment you missed.

On The Variety Pages we have Live With Me the sequel to Sleep With Me
Her alter-ego Alex Westhaven has a story guaranteed to make your skin crawl called Dry Rain. Having been plagued by a moth problem in the past, this is really hitting home for me.
And her alter-ego Trinity Marlow has started a story called Sailing Blind that is sure to heat things up on those chilly spring nights. ;-)

And if that weren't enough, you can also sign up for newsletters from Jamie and her alter-egos and have installments from three entirely different stories sent to your inbox each month. Romance, thrilling suspense, steam - there's something for everyone. Seriously, it doesn't get much better than that!