Crazy thing, I never thought to create one!  My LinkedIn profile has a lot of my writing, so it wasn’t too hard to set up.   And yes, this is for freelance writing, not creative writing.

Thing is, I’m so hugely talented…I’m good at all KINDS of writing and at editing as well.  So, why not go out there and look for what I’m good at?  Maybe it’s wrong, but I don’t feel like writing of any type can hurt. 

As mentioned, I’m back from vacation, but just before we came home, something really horrible and potentially catastrophic happened.  All is well, but up until last night I still had post traumatic stress about it.  I was fine all day until time to drift off, at which point I played all the BAD “what if’s” over and over in my head.

On the return trip, I realized that I could use this to get a feel for the traumatic events happening to my character. While it was still fresh, I noted down all the physical feelings that happened to me.  For example, my tongue got so dry with a matter of 20 or so minutes, that it swelled up and I could barely speak.  Who knew?

Thinking back, I wish I had done the same thing as I sat in New York on 9/11/01 and watch the towers fall.  I had written down some of my feelings, but not quite enough of the physical reaction.  Same with my stroke.

Next time I’m in the hospital, somebody had me a pen!

Like the excellent podcast, I Should be Writing, I think I should be writing right now.  But I am SOOOOO exhausted. Who knew it would be so hard to get back into things after Disney?  I have zero plans for this weekend so I can do web work, but when does the writing happen?

I also feel like I STILL have some heavy decisions to make about writing and for my goal this week, work on my commitment.  But again, I am way too tired.  Sleep sounds so so beautiful right now…  Mama needs her energy to pick one story and STAY WITH IT.

Next topics: Channeling Pain, School Plans, and Romance??

Hi folks, it’s taken me a few days to get up to speed.  I have a lot to blog about but for now I just wanted to check in and let you know that we had a blast as usual in Disney world, but it AINT easy dragging around or flying with 2 preschoolers.

I sort of feel like, “Writing?  What’s that??”

Heh…

So check THIS out:  As you know, I’m taking a class at WritersStudio.com and I’m in the midst of my last assignment before leaving for vacation.  I noticed that there are some assignment where I really love the piece and some where I don’t.

But, even when I DON’T like the piece, I’m getting better at capturing the persona narrator, which is the aim of the course.  Which tells me that not only CAN I write well, I can write ANYTHING.  I’ve written pieces on a gay mafia daughter, cancer patient, a father, a teen with acne, a woman who was a girl scout as a kid, a girl growing up in a gang house, a creepy womanizer, and those are the first persons.  Third person, I did a group in a 1970s blackout, a severely injured hiker, an unhappy married couple.  Wow.  I don’t have ANYONE like these people in my stories.  In fact, I don’t even know where I came up with this stuff - some of it is very different than the assigned story.

Very cool.

Ok, this is last post before vacation, see y’all in a week or so…

How awesome!  This is what happened: I read my Holly Lisle newsletter yesterday, the last one, about how something was missing in her story and nothing she did brought a solution, and then in the shower, randomly, it came to her.

It took FOREVER yesterday to GET to the shower, but while I was there, I thought I might try to figure out a way to make worldbuilding fun, or at least a whole lot less like root canal or labor & delivery.  I begrudgingly built another typed out page, answering questions that I didn’t want to, knowing too well that a book that involves politics, a ruling monarchy and a coup needs to have it’s history, culture and foreign policy worked out.  Argh.

I finally got in the shower, plopped on the shampoo and let my mind wander back to Earth Science, a class I took 10 years ago, and thought about a planet accreting together from the dust in the cosmos.

Don’t ask me HOW, but that did it.  15 minutes later, I’d gotten all the way up to nearly modern times in my country, and even started to form the underpinning theology of the major religion, also critical to the book.  I still have big swatches to go through, like foreign affairs, but I went to bed, opened my notebook and let my world grow.  AWESOME!!

Ok, so recently I discussed “what” should I write as it relates to genre, and I did some thinkin’ today and realized that I may have been wrong.  A little.

I DO love to read literary fiction, true.  But it is true that I also love to read sf/fantasy.  Problem is, I’m a snob about it. It has to be amazing.  And that doesn’t necessarily mean Hugo winning or anything, Dune for example was pure torture for me.   Anything with time travel that’s GOOD and NOT romance is excellent, but let’s face it, time travel is tricky at best and ugly at it’s worst.  I surely won’t write it!

I can count the books that fall into this category that I love on 2 hands: The Sparrow (not its sequel) and Time Travellers Wife - neither written by sf/f authors.  Solitaire.  Kim Stanley Robinson’s first 2 Mars books (Red and I think Blue).  Neil Gaiman (oh hell anything by Neil).  Harry Potter series.  Used to love Diana Gabaldon but it became too romancy and too historical.  Loved Mysts of Avalon, but much of her books are depressing.  The Historian was fabulous, but it took me forever to read.  (Really I guess that’s horror though, hm more like Goth.)  Hm, what else?  Contact.  Cloud Atlas (not sure of genre with that one.)   Oh yea, and Jack Finney.  Former Anne Rice fan too,

That pretty  much covers it.  I haven’t much liked the other stuff, even the stuff I’m “supposed” to.  But let me give you a list of my ideas for novels:

-my work in progress, which has a 3 novel future, about a people who have race/class conflict over using mind powers - or as they see, them “magic” (fantasy)
-a woman doctor who falls in love with a killer (drama)
-a group of people who keep returning to life throughout the ages (fantasy)
-a woman who finds a ring that grants her the power to save lives (fantasy)

Add to that a few random ideas based on superhero themes (used to be a huge Xmen/Spiderman fan). So there. That’s it, that’s me.  Fantasy with some goth thrown in.  The scales weigh in at 3 to 4.  And if you look at my film and teleision preferences, you’d see more of this same trend times 10.

I GUESS my biggest issue with the fantasy genre is NOT that I don’t like it, it’s just that I can’t find BOOKS in it that I do like, or only rarely.  I don’t really like books with dragons or elves, or dwarves or hobbits or lycanthropes or too much magic - but demons and vampires are sometimes ok.  I like books in there here & now, or something that closely resembles the here & now, and have some twist to them that is fantastical.   If you have any recommendations on this, throw them at me.  Help!  I’m stuck in a genre I don’t read and can’t get out!

(Just kidding)

OK, as you know, I’m taking an online writing course, which costs a fair amount of money but is very good for me.  I might have mentioned before as well, I registered for an in-person non-fiction writing workshop at the local college which I’m courting.  It costs almost 3x as much as the online course, and if all goes well, I will be taking 1-2 classes there til I complete my degree.

Now, we are going on vacation in 2 weeks and we are doing a few things right now that require an outpouring of cash, but are necessary for the value of our home.  (Long story i can’t get into.)  That means I had no idea how to pay my 4 digit tuition in July or August, whichever time its due.

Enter a friend giving me a lovely batch of work, enough to cover tuition (although some of it might also have to go the house thing).  And I was just wondering this morning aloud to God if I was on the right path with school…