Saturday, February 28, 2009

Good News/Bad News

Yesterday was one of those days. The good news is that I'll have some more time to work on my writing and working through my TBR (To Be Read) stack. The bad news is that that's because, you guessed it, I got laid off from my full-time job. Seems to be a lot of that going around lately. :( Even worse? I really liked that job. Good job, good people, enjoyable work. Sigh. Oh well.

So I'm a bit bummed and don't really feel like doing much of anything right now. But it's important to always move forward with the writing, right? So I'll see if I can't get something worthwhile punched out on the keyboard today.

Just about the only thing cheering me up right now is that the new Nalini Singh book, the first in a new series, is hitting bookstores on Tuesday. Can't. Wait. It's called Angel's Blood and you should definitely check out the contest she's having over at her blog to celebrate. Can you say "Free Books" boys and girls? Ah, yeah! Admitedly, they're all romance novels of some sort, but you guys could certainly score some points for winning one of these great reads for your gals. Or man up and read it yourself! Even better is that she has a stand-alone novella set in the same world out in e-format right now. Angel's Pawn is currently available in KindleMobi PocketAdobe (pdf), Microsoft Reader and Sony Reader formats. Enjoy, because the woman just doesn't write bad books. Her Psy/Changeling series are some of my comfort reads. I've got a feeling I'll breaking a few of those out in the days to come.

I hope you all had a better end of the week than I did. Happy reading and writing!

Thursday, February 26, 2009

Starting Point

Here's my status as a writer: unpublished. Duh. But I'm getting closer to that goal all the time. I'm currently editing my first Urban Fantasy novel (presently unnamed which is driving me crazy) and it's about to go out to my critique group for input. I've got a couple of SF short stories written and I'm working on the 3rd in that series - I might just decided to make one big novel out of it, since it seems that I'm better at writing novels than short stories. 

Then I have two laughably bad more traditional fantasy novels backed up at home that will probably never again see the light of day. I liked the world and characters I made quite a bit but they'd require major overhaul to make them publishable. I have a mountain lion type character in them who's bonded to a human. But this poor animal is just a human in animal skin - all her thoughts, reasoning and motivations are human, not feline. Big problemo there. Two entire books of that, and she's one of the main chars. I can't imagine trying to go back and fix that through edits. I might as well just do a complete re-write. ANYWAYS.

So here's what I found out about editing:
  1. When you're new to editing, it's almost harder than writing the novel itself (don't know if that changes)
  2. I edit better on paper than on the pc
  3. It's tricksy
  4. I'm not good at it
I was doing okay with it, thanks to Paperback Writer (also try her workshop - lot's of good stuff and links to more good stuff in there) and all her advice to writers (I stalk her blog daily). But at some points, I couldn't decide quite how to fix a problem at the time I was editing. I'd end up bracketing whole paragraphs and leaving myself a note like"Fix Voice" or "Too emotional - over the top", figuring I'd fix it while inputting the edits. Then I finally got around to inputting the edits (some 2 weeks later thanks to a full-time job, kids, husband, housework -my husband is thinking "What? She does housework?" - other stuff, etc), and found out that I had a problem. I wasn't entrenched in the story anymore. I hadn't been immersed in it for days and days. I had forgotten the character's voices or why they shouldn't sound like my five year old at her whiniest, because, hey, that sounds perfectly normal to me... Yeah, so my advice to you is fix it while you're editing and the work is immediate in your mind. Now, PW had said this in her posts. But I got lazy and didn't do it. Big mistake.

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

First Post

I've decided to try this blogging thing to get comfortable with it before I become a famous author (hah!) and am expected to have a "web presence".  So, yeah - here's one more thing I'll be doing instead of writing my WIP (Work In Progress for those not familiar). Probably not a good plan in the short term, but I'm in it for the long haul, right? So here's to better time management and somewhere to vent about my writing frustrations besides my overburdened friends.

I'll be posting about my experiences in writing and publishing (please let there be some of these) in general, as well as random things that occur to me. I'll toss some free fiction up on the site as I write it. And I'm sure I'll be posting about reading. Because I LOVE TO READ. So we can talk about books we all love, and I'll link to my fav author's websites.

Yippee! So let's see if we can get this thing to post. :) 

Happy Wednesday