Wow, I can't believe how busy I've been! All of my days just woosh right past. With new classes, LOTS of college homework, writing, editing, and rewriting WIPs, RWA e-mails, and trying to promote myself as an author--I have no spare time.
I became a member of RWA (Romance Writers of America) a few months ago. New York Times Bestselling Author C. L. Wilson, a fabulous storyteller of fantasy romance and one of my most favorite authors, mentioned RWA on her website as a great tool for aspiring authors. I took her advice, joined a few days later, and have been extremely glad that I did.
In RWA's monthly member's catalog I read a recommendation of getting your name out there before you even have a book contract. They suggest building your own website, making a Twitter profile, and creating a blog. So far I've done two of the three--I'm putting off building my website until I have some stuff to put on it! But Twitter is such a time consumer! It's a great networking tool--don't get me wrong--it just eats up the minutes....hours without you even being aware of it. On Twitter I'm following other authors (published and unpublished), literary agents, marketers, publishers, animal lovers, wiccans--and getting tips and links to suggested sites from all of them! (You can see now how it becomes time consuming)
Thanks to Twitter and RWA members I've joined two online writing workshops to make up for not taking any writing classes at the local tech. I'm very excited to begin them in the coming weeks. I can't imagine how I'm going to juggle everything though. I just need to add it into my schedule I suppose. Priorities.
And lastly--the characters in my fantasy romance MS, Risking Existence, have forgiven me. Also meaning....I'm working on it again. There is one problem however. Today I realized that I need to rewrite the entire beginning....
Ah, well. I like a challenge :)
Monday, September 14, 2009
Friday, September 4, 2009
Life Happens
I started my second year of college this week and have been busy getting everything sorted out. I haven't done any writing and for the past couple days and feel very disappointed in myself. I usually make it part of my every day routine to write for an hour minimum in order to ensure some sort of progress every day. On top of becoming a full time student again, I've had some....difficulties. Over three hundred dollars worth of unanticipated difficulties in this first week. Two involved my math class, the third my laptop. But--life happens. I payed the money, hopefully fixed my problems, and will have my home work complete and checked for classes next week.
I'm taking transferable classes at the local tech. I'm unable to take a single course on writing until my third year when I transfer and switch to a Creative Writing major. Well, not unable, but am choosing not to because the teachers of those classes are very narrow minded and fixed on their own styles. The reason I chose to go to college was to take classes to improve my writing. My whole life I've wanted to be a published novelist, but my goal isn't just to be published--I want my published story to be well written. I want readers to pick up my novels not only because of plausible characters, sentence structure, plot, vocabulary, conflict, etc.--but because my story flows and captivates.
Before I returned to classes, I finished my first manuscript. It's in the process of being edited by my old high school English teacher who is an extremely under appreciated man and who helped me develop my writing to where I am today. I'm taking a breather from my first finished manuscript to work on my second, or that was the plan anyways. I spent so much time writing the first MS that I'm getting tired of it. While my high school teacher Morris edits my Science Fiction Romance (1st finished MS), I'm not going to think about it. I spent three months completely obsorbed in that world, over a dozen characters all talking in my head, and if I spent any longer with it right now I wouldn't want anything more to do with it. Good news--other authors have the same problem. That made me feel better. We all need breaks. Now I'm relaxing, letting myself ponder and daydream until my energy stabilizes and the characters from my Fantasy Romance (2nd MS) start talking to me again about what happens next during their journey. I am a terrible multi-tasker and so I neglected them while I worked on the 1st MS. Fortunately, only one of them really knows how to hold a grudge.
I'm taking transferable classes at the local tech. I'm unable to take a single course on writing until my third year when I transfer and switch to a Creative Writing major. Well, not unable, but am choosing not to because the teachers of those classes are very narrow minded and fixed on their own styles. The reason I chose to go to college was to take classes to improve my writing. My whole life I've wanted to be a published novelist, but my goal isn't just to be published--I want my published story to be well written. I want readers to pick up my novels not only because of plausible characters, sentence structure, plot, vocabulary, conflict, etc.--but because my story flows and captivates.
Before I returned to classes, I finished my first manuscript. It's in the process of being edited by my old high school English teacher who is an extremely under appreciated man and who helped me develop my writing to where I am today. I'm taking a breather from my first finished manuscript to work on my second, or that was the plan anyways. I spent so much time writing the first MS that I'm getting tired of it. While my high school teacher Morris edits my Science Fiction Romance (1st finished MS), I'm not going to think about it. I spent three months completely obsorbed in that world, over a dozen characters all talking in my head, and if I spent any longer with it right now I wouldn't want anything more to do with it. Good news--other authors have the same problem. That made me feel better. We all need breaks. Now I'm relaxing, letting myself ponder and daydream until my energy stabilizes and the characters from my Fantasy Romance (2nd MS) start talking to me again about what happens next during their journey. I am a terrible multi-tasker and so I neglected them while I worked on the 1st MS. Fortunately, only one of them really knows how to hold a grudge.
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