Not My May

Yeah, this wasn't a terribly good month overall. Ah well, it's over now. I've got some major catching up to do with regards to writing, I think I needed that break. Plus I got my World of Warcraft account back just over a week ago, and usually when I have gaps between activity I go on a gaming binge :) I'm such a game addict. But it's been one of my bigger inspirations so it's not all that bad. In total it's inspired nine stories to some degree, which is a pretty good chunk for a single source. One I'm working on alongside The Dragon King, which now I don't seem to hate so much anymore. I think I just had overall frustration, but the romance isn't as undefined as I had thought it was. Mind, how fickle you be. Anyway, the new story is called Fallen though whether that title sticks I have no idea. A lot of lore is going into it which likely won't see the light of day, but that's okay. Even hints of lore I find gives the world more realism. I don't feel ready to actually delve into the actual writing of the story just yet, so far it's just plotting various scenes while I work on backstory. One of those no-rush deals. Might be easier to work on once I get The Dragon King all straightened out.

So. This blog. This makes entry #70, so I think I'll be doing a contest once I hit 100 posts. Everyone loves a contest :) Not sure what the prizes are going to be just yet, but I have some ideas. I know popular ones are books, gift cards to B&N and such but I like being a little different. Also I've got some other cool things coming, like author interviews! Okay it's just one so far, but hey it's a start! I'm not announcing who in advance, it's a surprise. So stay tuned for that.

Rain is in the forcast for my area tomorrow. Should be a good writing day! Good thing I took Dalila out twice today (what happened to my little puppy?! She got so big all of a sudden! ;_; ) because I'm probably not going to get a chance with the rain!

Really, I Don't

It's always the same. New agent or publisher rolls onto the scene with no reason for a writer who's serious about their career to bother with. But according to their defenders, we should.

Because he/she is a nice guy/girl.

Usually this common defense is coupled with things like 'well he/she actually takes time for their authors' or 'they give authors a more personal experience than other agencies/publishers' or something similar. And to be honest, defenders of the inexperienced, I don't care. Not that I don't care in the sense that it doesn't matter whether my agent or publisher is nice or a total jacka--, but that it's not much of a determining factor for me. It's not even in my top three. Mine are:

1.)Do they rep/publish my genre?
2.)Do they have relevant experience?
3.)Have they been making good consistant sales to commercial publishers?/Are they selling to the general public?

There's also a fourth, are there any conflict of interests, which I won't go into here. That one aside, I think that's the most important top three a writer should stick to when they're ready to shop a manuscript. In my eyes, if you can't meet ALL of those top three the consideration ends. How nice you are becomes irrelevant. This is a business, and I for one am not here to be someone's guinea pig to learn from. Qualities like niceness, how easy they are to communicate with, etc. should only come into play AFTER meeting the top three. Not before, because then you're just wasting your time. I'll never understand this defense, just like I'll never understand why people query first and ask questions after.

Research. It's your friend.

And Just Like That...

Life returns to some semblance of normal.

It kind of feels like someone pulled the plug on all the stress, and things are a lot calmer now. So needless to say I've been enjoying that for the past few days, as well as getting my energy back. My mind's also cleared which has helped me get back into my writing. I'm still unhappy with how the first few chapters of The Dragon King is working out - well, moreso from Chapter 3 on. Chapters 1 and 2 just required a bit of addition to establish some things I forgot so that's no big deal. I noticed I kept repeating stuff from earlier chapters which is probably part of what drove me nuts that I couldn't pinpoint down. That's a first for me. I'm a little disappointed because I usually have a much better handle on my stories than that, at least enough to not repeat something a few times over. I'm still amazed that this story is giving me so many issues, though that only seems to make me all the more determined to make it work :D I guess every writer gets at least one that's a super challenge which requires a little more work than normal but you do what the story needs you to do. In this case it involves a lot of unincluded back story, worldbuilding, and reading the previous chapters repeatedly.

So I'm back, and immersing myself in stories. And reading - lots of reading. I have quite a bit of blogposts to catch up on, so don't be surprised if I'm showing up on old blog posts ;)

Onward and Upward...Again

Well when the stress won't go away, there's only one thing to really do - persevere. And that means (as the blog title says) going onward and upward.

So what have I been up to lately? Well I'll spare you the personal stuff because it's personal and really it's nothing to bore my blog readers about ;) But I have managed to accomplish a few great things. First and most importantly I've completed the gutting of my room. Finally. I couldn't believe how much room I managed to discover by tossing out the crap that was just cluttering up spaces. I also have a small collection of stuff I'm planning on selling. It's too good quality to toss out or give away, but I have no desire to keep it either. It's mostly some of my Lord of the Rings memorabilia back when I was a fanatical fan. Oh I still love it, but a lot of the stuff I can do without now :) So if anyone on my followers list is interested let me know. I'll show you what I've got and we can discuss payments and such. I'm willing to go a little lower for blog followers. So now it's just a matter of packing up the unwanted clothes and tossing out the recycling which is nothing really. There's a non-profit group in my area for cerebral palsy that periodically goes around neighbourhoods picking up donated clothing which is where all the clothes will be going. No sense letting it go to waste, and I like supporting a cause when I can. I'm a huge supporter of that. I know some people have certain causes or charities they prefer, I'm just more of a help-where-I-can-when-I-can type. Every little bit does help.

Dalila update: progressing well. Training has been kind of interrupted, but she sleeps from 11pm-11:30pm to 6am! You have no idea how excited that makes me! And she walks on the leash when I ask her to. I let her sort of run off most of the energy she has in the morning, usually a couple laps around our buildings (takes about 30min) then I shorten the leash and make her walk beside me. She's got the hang of it though. And I also taught her how to walk up and down the stairs, although going down takes longer. It's new, she's still getting used to that one. But she's just getting too big to carry around now, so no choice. Additional exercise though, which I wouldn't do if she couldn't handle it.

Dragon King has finally started progressing. I managed to close Chapter 3 which came out a lot better than the previous attempts. It's always getting down that attraction that gets me. Building it over time is easy to show, but I wanted the attraction between Celios and Amaya to be purposefully sudden. Because dragons are fantasy creatures I didn't want it to be that typical gradual build, I wanted it to be a different dynamic and experience. I think a lot of us have that fantasy of being swept up in a sudden romance, especially one that's not just physical attraction or a fling. And hey, this is fantasy so why not :) It's nice to move along though, and I started plotting its sequel already too. I couldn't help it, this story just doesn't want to end revealing Amaya's talent and how it affects Celios' dilemma. I could try and cram it all into one story I suppose, but I'd be overshooting the average wordcount for fantasy stories. Or trying to put too much story into too little a space. Two books works better. I wish I knew what it is with me and dualogies lately, this makes 3 stories that are too big for 1 book but not enough story to go past 2.

Also on the subject of writing I've finally managed to bring some sort of organization to the many story ideas I seem to manage to accumulate. They're divided into two groups; story summaries which actually have a plot, and story ideas which are just concepts. Helps me to remember them without having to worry about keeping them all in my head :) Concepts eventually become summaries, and there's some fun ones I'd like to eventually work with. So far I'm up to 24 story summaries and 17 story concepts. Well at least I have plenty to work with, I won't have to worry about running out of stories anytime soon!

Now to end, wordcount updates on the right are current as of today. I'm going to sort of attempt to reach 500k by August 1st. Sort of as in I'm going to give it my best shot, but with my current pace we'll see. I should set a nice reward as incentive...