New Year is Around the Corner

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Christmas is tomorrow. The presents are under the tree. Stockings are filled. Lights are up. And everyone is looking forward to a big meal, followed by a long sleep.

And I am considering the last year, the progress I made, and what I want to accomplish next year. (Not waiting for a new years resolution.)

For 2013 I had no real plan except to start working through my old stories, and get as many of them finished and published as possible. Most of them were short stories (20 short, 3 novella) and I am rather pleased with the turn out. 2013 also gave me a huge start on some novels, and other short stories that I want to continue working on.

Sales were … okay, I suppose. I was actually really encouraged by how often I got sales, and while I can’t track my sales daily yet, I am doing so monthly, and that’s a huge step in the right direction for me.

Every sale just encourages me to write another book, and there is nothing wrong with that.

This coming year, 2014, I want to continue writing and publishing stories. I’d like to have at least two, if not three, 60-80k word books out. One is already half finished, so I have a nice jump on that.

I’m also going to work on short stories. Two a month seems like a good plan, because finishing something gives me a good sense of accomplishment, and bolsters my resolve to keep writing. Keep creating. “Make good art.”

I do, however, want to put more emphasis on the longer works this year. I need full novels, not just short stories.

And… sigh… I’m going to have to learn to market and get reviews, even though I hate that part of writing. But, since I’m doing this through the self publishing route, it is even more important for me to figure out the marketing side of this business.

I think once I have a couple of full length novels out I will feel more comfortable pushing the marketing. But only slightly.

So… here is to the new year, and a lot more story telling going on!

It’s been a while

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I haven’t written a post in a while because I’m tired of being a negative Nancy. My life isn’t that bad, so I really shouldn’t be.

Here’s the thing… I was hoping that in March I would be able to start the paperwork on buying a new home. Not renting, and wasting thousands of dollars on something I can’t change. Not dealing with ugly beige carpets that get new black spots ever time someone walks in with shoes on. (Seriously, why do they put beige carpets in DINING ROOMS?!?!?! It makes not sense.)

No, I thought I’d have my own home that I could paint, rip out carpets, ruin, or improve… but it would be mine.

I have a house loan. I can do this… if I can get a down payment. Which I can’t. My car breaks, or a kid gets sick, or my tooth gets a crack and… good buy down payment that I’ve been saving for a year. Or two. Or three.

And I don’t really want to leave the school district we are in because they’ve been so great to us. But the housing costs are rising here, and I won’t be able to afford even rent soon.

So, there you go. I’m feeling kind of negative as my savings gets eaten up, and I have nothing much to show for it.

Yay.

And, I am trying to look at the bright side. My kids are happy, healthy, and doing well in school. We have a roof over our heads. I have a steady job. We are all doing well.

But I’d really like a house… or at the very least I’d like to see upward movement in my house fund instead of the sudden downward movement every time I think I’ve gotten there.

Grumble.

Sales and Coupons

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Flight of the GriffinsI finally started putting books up on Smashwords, and hopefully that means they will be available elsewhere. To celebrate you can get “Flight of the Griffins” at 50% of this coupon: GJ84D , or “Osiren’s Tears” with this one: CD56X .

5SB5sm

This weekend I should also have “Small Bites: the Complete Collection” on Amazon count down. It will go from 99 cents, up to the whole price of $3.99 the weekend. Keep an eye out for that. I will try to announce it on Twitter.

“Flight of the Griffins” and “Osiren’s Tears” are both novella length fantasy books. Small bites is a an anthology of twelve short stories. All of the books are between 10 and 30 thousand words, with lots of magic, sword fights, and unusual circumstances.

Now… I am going to go sit down and write gosh darn it!

I should be writing

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I should be writing, But I’m not.

After NaNoWriMo I was a little burnt out, which is understandable. 50,000 words in 30 days, and I wrote 7000 just in the last two days. 48000 of it was just on one project.

I got tired of looking at words, and files, and spreadsheets of numbers. Tired of trying to string two words together to make a coherent sentence. Tired…. just tired.

So I took a little break, immersed myself in Minecraft for a little while, and haven’t written much in the last week. I did write one entire plot for a new novel that got added to my “to write”and list, but there are a lot of projects before it.

So… why aren’t I writing now?

I have two half finished books (one novel, one novella) waiting for me to finish them. I have several short stories almost finished that, if I actually sat down and concentrated, I could probably finish in a week.

I have convinced myself that as long as I keep putting out books, stories, novellas, and some full length novels, that eventually there is going to be a tipping point and I’ll eventually make enough sales so that I can write full time. But I also know this is going to take a lot of hard work, and time.

Hard work?! Ug!

So… to remedy this I am going to have to start writing every day again. Even if it’s crap. Even if it sucks and I know it. Because it can’t always be crap, right? But I’m going to start slower then NaNo levels, and work my way up.

Since I started tracking my writing last February I wrote 210,000 words. Finished, and published, 20 short stories, and 3 novellas…. lets see how many I can do before the next NaNoWriMo!

FAQ – Should I Really “Write What I Know?”

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writeYou see this advice everywhere. New authors asking how to write, or what to write, and other authors telling them “Write what you know.”

This is a quote from Mark Twain. It is fantastic, amazing advice, and yet people constantly miss understand it.

“How do I write about dragons? I’ve never seen one.”

“How do I write about love? I’ve never been in love.”

I hope to all that’s good that VC Andrews did not know about incest and child abuse first hand. Or that Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov had first hand knowledge of what is in Lolita. Stephen King probably hasn’t met a giant spider that makes children hallucinate evil clowns. Yet, they exist. And they are some of the most read books out there.

There are many things that I, personally do not know about. I have never experienced the death of a loved one, but I know what it’s like to loose someone. I don’t know the thrill of climbing Mount Everest, but I know the joy of accomplishing something I’ve never been able to do before.

We all have loves, tragedies, heart felt moments, days when we want to pull our hair out, and days when we think we’ve never felt happier. The trick isn’t to “write what you know” but to draw on the experiences, the hopes, the dreams, and the very essence of life, and create a realistic narrative.

If you don’t “know” something, then go learn something! Watch people. See how they react. Take a class. Live and love, and learn and exist in this great big world we call home. And then write about living.

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This morning I watched “Teens React to CaptainSparklez“, and I have to admit… I’m aCaptainSparklez fan. He, along with YogsCast, are the reason I bought Minecraft, and why I come back to it more then any game I’ve ever played.

At the end of the video they asked why people might watch CaptainSparklez, and other play throughs on youtube, and most of the teens didn’t know, even those who watched them. But I know why I watch them.

I don’t watch sports, because I have no interest in watching sweaty guys running back and forth on a field/court, playing an intricate game of “keep away”.  I don’t understand all the fine rules of most sports, not because “you’re a girl”, like most people would assume, but because I didn’t grow up with sports in my home. My dad didn’t watch football, and never sat beside me cheering on his favorite team. So it doesn’t bring me any nostalgia, or happiness to watch grown men playing the game I was forced to endure during PE ever school year for three weeks.

I don’t watch much TV anymore. Not because I have some moral issue with TV, but because I remember when TV was good. When every channel made you feel something, either laughter, love, fear, or awe as you watched your favorite actors and comedians in the shows you loved. Or the documentary about going to space. Or the show with an amazing woman fighting dragons, vampires, and/or gods, and showing girls every week that there was more to life then being a house wife.

Now, TV is 80% fake reality TV. Not just fake, but they take the worst elements of our society, and parade them around for everyone to see.

Watching channels like CaptainSparklez, YogsCast, or NorthernLion give me a real look at someone. I get to watch them actually react, jump, cheer, or laugh because of something in the game I want to play.

Watching Let’s Plays is just another form of voyeurism, but it’s on my terms. It’s far more realistic. The people are people I like, and would often love to be friends with if I met them IRL.

Now, I do think Pewdiepie is half show, and half reality. I think he, like me, gets easily scared and is just more willing then I am to confront that fear. (No, I am not installing Amnesia on my PC again, F*CK THAT!) But he does ham it up for the audience. And yet he is the most subscribed channel on youtube. Because he’s an all around interesting guy.

If TV execs would stop working so hard to make reality tv interesting, and just let it be itself, or put interesting shows with good story, drama and feeling back on… we’d probably watch a little more. Especially if you stopped trying to force us to pay $70 a month to subsidize sports channels.

People love good stories! They flock to the theater to watch epic, 3 hour long narratives. They buy books in hordes, listen to tons of audio books, and still they clamor for more.

But they also crave honesty. Something, or someone they can relate to, admire, be inspired by, or just teach them more about how the world works.

It saddens me that almost all of the great science and education shows have been replaced by crap. That science fiction, one of the most inspiring genres ever, has practically disappeared.

But I still have youtube.

 

 

PS! Thank you to Simon who helped me save the post I had accidentally deleted. You are AWESOME!

I’m a WINNER! – NaNoWriMo Day 30

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winner

I finished NaNoWriMo.

Now, to be fair, I did not finish my novel. I did write 50,000 words in my novel, and technically won NaNoWriMo, but I have so much more to go in my actual novel.

In fact, I rewrote a couple chapters already, and had to toss out 10,000 words of just pure rubbish over the last month. (They still counted, and I still have more to throw out once I rewrite those sections.)

 

What I learned from NaNoWriMo!

The muse will come. Sit down, start writing, and eventually the muse will show up to. Don’t know what to write? Write that. Write about what you think might be happening. Wright about an argument between the two main characters about nothing happening. But write, and eventually the muse will show up to.

Two, I do better at 1000 words a day right now. I had to push for the last two days to break that 50,000 word goal because I simply work better, and more consistently at 1000 words a day. But I also know that the more I do that, the more I will stretch my goals and eventually next year, when NaNoWriMo comes around again I will be able to complete this challenge with a couple days left to go ( I hope).

Lastly… It is really REALLY helpful to have a family who supports you when writing. That calls you up, or texts you every day and asks how writing is going. That encourages you, and tells you that you’re awesome. That listens to you when you are having a bad day and you think everything you write sucks.

Half of what I wrote (at least) was total, utter, crap. I’m going to have to pick out the few sentences I loved, and rewrite everything else. That means going through the entire books page by page with an editors mindset, and rewriting it ALL. But it’s gong to be worth it, because I will fill in all those missing sections, and make the story even better then it started out.

In fact… what started out as a “paranormal romance” has grown. Oh, the paranormal and the romance are still there. There is also political intrigue, a church gone amuck sacrificing people to their god to keep control, curses being lifted, a harpy nest, a siren that looks like death warmed over… I’ve got it all!

And I really can’t wait to show you all, so I’ll be doing some polishing and rewriting, and hopefully in another month or two I will have a finished copy.

I think I am going to take a short break from it all, and work on my zombie story, though. I need a short breather from mermaids and curses.

Time off – NaNoWriMo Day 25

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I took a me day yesterday. That isn’t to say I didn’t write, but I didn’t write nearly as much as I was suppose to write.

My boyfriend came over, made me dinner, cleaned the house a little, and I relaxed for a little while. It was wonderful. We got to spend time together, something I’d been missing a lot of this month since he wanted to help me finish my NaNo challenge, and I was behind.

I’m still behind, though not as much as I was three days ago. I’m making steady gains. And by taking a me day yesterday and only writing 700 words instead of 2k I felt much better today. I stopped thinking about how awful my writing was, and I just wrote this morning. I rewrote a chapter and I’m much happier with it. And I have another chapter waiting for me to write it. Any easy 3k words today, which pays off for the slacking yesterday.

Do you need a day to rest? It’s late in the game, I know, but sometimes… you just need a break. It doesn’t even have to be a whole day. Maybe you just need to go watch a show, or go have a drink with a friend.

Don’t forget to take care of yourself while you’re taking care of the writing.

Mid Novel Slump – NaNoWriMo Day 21

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It is day 21 of NaNoWriMo, and day 21 of me slogging through my novel.

I think i’ve hit the mid novel slump. It’s that point when you’ve been working on the same project for some time, and your brain starts saying things like “but what if it isn’t any good?” And “I don’t know what to write.” Or my favorite: “You Suck!”

Then I start looking at sales numbers, or old comments, or anything else that reinforces my brain trying to tell me that I suck.

Let me just say… THAT’S THE WRONG THING TO DO!

Usually when I get in this funk I switch projects for a while, and then come back at it with fresh eyes. It helps cut down on the BS my brain wants to tell me. Helps me separate the ideas brewing in my head from what’s actually on the page. Gives me perspective.

I’m trying not to do that this time. Switching projects is great. It’s given me a back log of stories to pull from, and tons of ideas and fresh perspectives. See, the problem with switching projects is that it also makes it really easy just to… stop working on that project. And never finish it.

I wrote and published just over 100k words this year. But I have 350k words written, and that’s only on the stories I’m tracking. About 2/3rds of that was written in the last year.

To put it another way… I am tracking my progress on 34 short stories, 17 novellas and novels. I finished 20 short stories and 3 novellas. (Not looking good for the longer stuff). But I’ve clearly added to all of those stories over the last year. I’ve also come up with new stories to add to the list.

This isn’t even including the file I have with “ideas” that literally  has thousands of story starters, each one between 100, and 5,000 words long.

Geez, I’ve written a lot over the course of my life. But… of those thousands of stories, only a scant few are finished. That’s not a good thing if I want to make my living as a writer.

So I have made this NaNoWriMo’s goal to work on one novel… almost exclusively. I have edited and worked on a short story that I’d like to have out next month, but my main focus is “Mermaids Curse”, which is just under 30,000 words right now.

I’ve added back story, world building, characterization, descriptions, and little plot points that add to all of these… and I’m still going.

But, somethings missing, and I’m not quite sure what it is. I know much of the second half is more action oriented, with the action helping to build the relationship, and character of each person. And the first half focuses almost exclusively on the relationship of the two main characters, with one big action scene right before the split of part one and two, and the shift in characters.

Do I know if any of this will work and create a decent book? Hell no! Am I going to write it anyway? Yes. Because it’s worth it to me.

Sex and Video Games

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body_sm_ratios1On Reddit today, there was a game designer asking if his female character was sexy, but not so sexy that it was conforming to the usual female game design stereotype….  So it got me thinking.

“Sexy” is subjective. What you find sexy I might not find sexy. And what is sexy by one regions definitions will not be the same in another.

For instance, this character has the mandatory large breasts, hour glass figure, and swaying hips that western society deems “sexy”. If you go to Japan, or Brazil it won’t be the same standard. They don’t have the same stereotypical “sexy” idea of women that we do in the west.

Now, is it still perpetuating the stereotype of video games? I don’t think so, because she isn’t half naked and her figure actually has a natural curvy form, while still being close to realistic, though not quiet.

Now.. as a woman I find the whole discussion to be trivial in general. “You’re painting women as sex objects” … No, they are painting them as caricatures of the “sexy woman”. That is to say, grossly out of proportion, gravity defying, and completely unrealistic. Some of them ape superhero proportions, but many of them don’t even bother with that. If that is a man’s idea of an ideal woman then he is in for a sad awakening when he goes looking for a real one.

Advertising has done far more to paint woman as sex objects than video games ever have, and yet fem-libers will shout far louder about a woman in impractical armor in a video game then they will about the anorexic looking fashion models, and half naked women in commercials and magazines with photoshopped bodies.

A character in a video game ISN’T REAL! It isn’t even close. It doesn’t paint an idealistic picture of a woman, it paints a fake, unattainable in any circumstances woman. What’s more, it doesn’t just do this for the women, it does this for the men as well.

Women who get all irritated about video game avatars are clearly not versed in gaming and comic book culture, nor do they know anything about the historical trend of art. Both men and women were painted, drawn, sculpted, and shown in the idealized versions of the time and place they originated, and/or caricatures of those ideals. It only sometimes has something to do with sex, other times it’s just something “pretty” to look at, or commentating on society as a whole.

And if they are versed in art history, then why the hell are they so argumentative about the whole thing? Why aren’t they using it as discussion instead of just saying “DON’T DO THAT!”

Superheros are a mans power fantasy? So because I’m female I’m not allowed to have the same fantasy? I want to fantasize that I’m the sexy muscular woman with all the power under my sword, able to slice through dragons, orcs and trolls with one swing of my sword. That’s my power fantasy!

Just because you are offended at something THAT DOESN’T MAKE IT WRONG! Stop fucking up life for the rest of us just because you got your panties in a twist. Let me have my fantasy for one fricking minute, and just enjoy being beautiful, strong, and capable, even though I’m not in real life.

And really, isn’t that what a video game is all about in the first place?