There’s a difference between writing for a living and writing for life. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises, and you might not ever be able to uncompromise yourself. If you write for life, you’ll work hard; you’ll do it in a disciplined fashion; you’ll do what’s honest, not what pays. You’ll be willing to say no when somebody wants to play games with our work. You’ll be willing to not sell it. You’ll have a very strong sense of your work, your self-development.
You know you’ve lost it a bit when you’re wandering around DeviantArt and you catch yourself right before you do a search for one of your original characters.
/sigh
In a way, this wee adventure animation describes what I want to do as a writer. And what I want to do with my life.
Came across a quote today, supposedly from Oscar Wilde:
Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
And that pretty much sums up how I feel about my characters.
Hurray! Actually started writing the sequel to the book I finished last year. I’ve just realized this is the first sequel I’ve ever started. That’s not really momentous — it’s just another book, right? — but it kind of feels that way. Maybe because I’m continuing something for a reason other than that it wasn’t finished to begin with. ;)
I think it might be (at least partly) Camp NaNoWriMo’s fault, as I discovered (last week?) that it’s going on this month — woohoo for not missing it yet again — and signed up for the first time. Figured since the first novel got a big progress boost from NaNoWriMo, maybe it’d work again for the sequel.
Anyway, it’s 5:30 in the morning and I haven’t slept yet, so I’m not terribly coherent, and should probably go to bed. I just wanted to make a tinily squee-ish note here that some progress has been made. Squeeeeee … and done.
Body Language Cheat Sheet for Writers
As described by Selnick’s article:
Author and doctor of clinical psychology Carolyn Kaufman has released a one-page body language cheat sheet of psychological “tells” (PDF link) fiction writers can use to dress their characters.
This is something I have always encouraged people to consider when writing. If you can afford it, and you have one in your area - TAKE A BODY LANGUAGE CLASS. It will open your eyes to a whole new world of subtleties you never knew existed. SO worth it as a “Real Life” skill and for all those times when you’re writing and you need your character to react nonverbally.
There is also, in addition to these others, the writer resource book: The Emotion Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi
Is it sad that I want to publish my book solely because I want it to be in book form, so I can carry it around and read it, instead of having to read it in a Word document?
I feel so narcissistic. ;)
Fantasy novels to read
A work by one of my favorite authors (who happens to be not so well known) made it onto Flavorwire’s list of best fantasy novels you probably haven’t read. *happy dance happy dance*
Her book is the #6 listing: The Death of the Necromancer. Her name is Martha Wells. Go and read. As a bonus, the author is a lovely person, too, so supporting her is a double whammy of yay. Good writing, good people. Not a whiff of fail. ;)
There’s also a bunch of other stuff on there that I’ve been meaning to read, and even some stuff I really haven’t heard of, which is always exciting. A trip to the library may be in order.
I Should Be Writing...: So naturally one part of my submission has no line breaks in it....
Sadly, though the agents themselves are most definitely human, and probably understand, they don’t often have a lot of time. They get hundreds of emails like mine every day, and just to meet their own quotas so they can pay their own bills, they have to be ruthless.
I do agree with you though. Thank you for your thoughts. :)
I won’t get into how I think ruthlessness is a poor (but very human) substitute for efficiency, since that’s not the point here at all — instead, I’ll just say: You’re welcome, and good luck on future submissions! It seems like success in publishing is pretty strongly linked to perseverance, so here’s to keeping on with the keeping on.
There’s something posted over on i-should-be-writing that references the Bechdel Test, which sent me off on a hunt through my lone finished novel manuscript to see whether the conversation I remember occurring between two female characters is focused around a man or men. (The answer is “no,” if you care. Or rather, the answer is more accurately “They have way more conversations than I remember them having, and while they mention men in some of them, they have quite a few conversations in which men are not mentioned at all.”)
And now that I’ve been sucked into re-reading bits of said novel and the accompanying notes, it amuses me to realize that there’s a group of five people in which only one person has a name so far … and she’s the only female in the group. ;)
Aaaanyway. I think I’m going to go read some more of the final battle scene, because, y’know. I like that kind of thing. Teehee.
