Revision is Done!

So all internet activity was put off for the past few weeks while I finished a final revision on my 3rd novel. I can proudly say that it is finished and ready for my beta readers. It took a lot longer on this revision than usual but the extra effort really showed. After a computer sabbatical yesterday, my fingers don't ache, my eyes are uncrossing, and the frown lines on my face may go away soon. Score!

I have 3 other projects in various stages of 1st draft-ness. The 2nd novel in my urban fantasy series is about 1/2 finished. My childrens novel is about 1/3 written. The 3rd novel in the Immortalis trilogy isn't beyond the 1st chapter yet but that's why they are called works-in-progress. I thought I would be going back to one of these projects now that the latest one is finished, but no.

Instead, I am taking on a massive art project. Yeah. E&L's birthdays are a few days apart at the end of the summer. They are having a luau themed party this year and asked me to make a stand-up cutout for photos. You know- those things where you get behind them and stick your face in the hole so that you are magically part of the photo. They want a beach scene with a dancing hula girl. I think they have completely overestimated my artistic abilities, but we'll see what can be done. It will be interesting for sure.

I've missed the internet. I had a good streak going with the blogging over the past couple months so I'll be back at that while I try to figure out how to paint using this awesome background technique I found but still be able to put my hula girl in the foreground. I'm out of my league here, but I'm not going to tell the girls that. Cross your fingers for me to figure it out soon.

Love is love, no matter the back story. <3 DS

I'm Always Writing

The past month has been a whirlwind for me! I finished the first rough draft of my 4th novel (or well, mostly finished at least). I made a full revision of my 3rd novel and sent it back out to Beta readers. I started working again full time for a short amount of time (6 to 8 weeks) as a long term substitute in a K-5 school. We've have had multiple major snowstorms. My Granny had a major back surgery and is now in a rehab center for recovery. My brother's baby is due in a couple weeks so we've just finished Christmas with them (for E&L since Christmas didn't really work out for a party time- the S-I-L's mother passed after a long battle with cancer on Christmas Eve) and then immediately jumped into baby shower planning.

Is everyone else always so busy in January?! I can't say that I remember ever having such a busy January myself.

Something else I've been working on: My friend and editor Steven is a fantastic writer and I've looked to him as a mentor for something around a decade now. As it happens, Steven has gotten out of the habit of writing. Yeah, I know- he's an editor and a blogger. He should be writing every day. And he does, sort of. He has a dozen or so blogs that keep him pretty busy between transcriptions, copy writing, fact checking, and editing. But, none of those activities is about him creating work- for a while now, he has only been able to manage handling the work of others, maybe with commentary and background, but he hasn't written his own stuff. Writer's block? Maybe.

Earlier in January, I came across Writer's Digest's weekly writing prompts. I sent him one. He told me that he would absolutely not be writing to those prompts. An hour later, I got his first draft. It was that simple. I have told him 100 times that he needs to write. Nooooo. Send him a prompt and he's freaking Kerouac all of a sudden! We (meaning mostly Steven) came up with the idea to catalog all of his first drafts to my prompts, various snippets of our unfinished works, sneak peaks at works-in-progress, old stuff and new stuff, and more in a blog. I thought I'd share it with you. Check out Creative Differences to see the writing prompts I've sent, his responses, some of his past work, some of my past work, and various writerly things. Yes, "writerly" is a word because I said it is. :) My "Firefly fanfic that was" short story (detailed in this post) was posted a couple days ago under the title RED DOTS if you'd like to check that out!

Love is love, no matter the back story. <3 DS

Images Removed

If you glance through previous posts, you will find

Edit: 8/15/2012 Image(s) removed. I don't want to be sued.

in place of pictures I have posted. The reason is here. In short, while nearly every image I have posted has been posted along with credit toward the originator and/or a link to where I got it from when possible, it still would not cover me if the owner of a photo decided to sue for copyright infringement. As I have already ran into the issue of copyright and fair use once with a clipart image I used when I first started this blog, I figured I should cover all my bases. I spent several hours pouring through almost 400 posts to delete all photos that are not mine or that I do not have permission to use and replacing them with the above statement. My own photos, those that my editor Steven has taken, and the cover for Journey of Shadows are still around. Some images removed included a link to find the image elsewhere online, but others were stricken completely as I have no earthly idea where they came from now. This purge included pictures that became viral, a Google Doodle, and several comic strips.

What I didn't remove were video trailers and clips from YouTube. I am still a little confused about those. Most movie trailers are from "official" YouTube accounts that suggest sharing it with your friends. So I'm thinking this is a gray area. If anyone has clarification on this, let me know.

Love is love, no matter the back story. <3 DS

My Writing Posts

Below is a list of the blog posts I wrote since June 2011 related specifically to writing:

The Writing Process Part One and Part Two
Writer's Block
Writing Tech
Voice
Writing Your Bio
Giving Feedback
Applying Feedback
Short Story vs Novel
Writing for Prestige
Twitter Hashtags for Writers

So out of 375 posts to date, 11 have really been about writing if you don't count the NaNo prep through October. If you do, add another 31 days of writing talk that doesn't always include stuff about actual writing. Let's see if I can fix that.

Love is love, no matter the back story. <3 DS

Clearing up the Clutter

I spent a lot of time writing daily posts about random things when this blog started. I have posted some neat art, funny comics, political commentary, NaNoWriMo information, and the occasional writing post related to writing/my projects. I ran full tilt for a while last year, blogging an average of something like 1.3 posts a day between June and December.  Daily posts, NaNo info, and my NaNo journal make up the bulk of my posts. 

When my computer decided to crash back in January, it came about just as I started a new job. Prior to that, I was unemployed so I had all the time in the world to blog, research, write, and generally waste time on the internet. Since then, I have posted a little over 60 posts as a result. Not great. I’m averaging less than 1 per day, and that is only because I have random spurts of 2-3 posts in a day. I decided to dig deep and find out the real reason why I am not posting as much now compared to last year. The reason is this: I would rather be writing. Yes, blogging is writing, but it isn’t the kind of writing I would like to do, so I haven't been as good about it lately. My entire blog is a mashup of various ideas with no cohesiveness or clarity of thought. If you came to this page today and browsed the blog posts on the left, I highly doubt you would know that this is a blog for a writer trying to build a platform. It is exactly as the sub-title describes: random.

I am going to try to make an effort to clean that up a little bit by focusing on more writing and less random. This is just a trial like everything else so we’ll see how it goes. So what am I going to blog about? No, I’m not going to blather on about “buy my book” over and over again. I am still abjectly against that. But I am going to blog about my life as a writer. I just posted a blog about Twitter hashtags and have decided to streamline my posts into similar categories. Check it out:

How You Doin'?

Okay that was a stupid joke. I've been away from the internets for so long that I feel like I have forgotten how to "do it" as they say. My last post was over a month ago. It was a Mother's Day post. Since then, a lot of stuff has happened. Not in a OMGUGOTGOODNEWS!!!! kind of way. Just lots of stuff happening. So here is a little update:

Friday Five: 5 Questions with Steven part 2

...about blogging.

It is Friday, Friday, Friday. Gotta get dow-... Okay, I'll stop, that was pretty lame, I know. But, Friday is a wonderful day, rain or shine. Today's Friday Five continues my 5 Questions series with the second installment of questions with editor and blogger Steven Thompson. Steven runs 12 very popular comic/pop culture blogs and writes a regular column on a 13th. He has been recognized around the world due to his blogs. Check out Booksteve's Library here and find the links to his multiple blogs!

Q: When did you start blogging?

A: I had enjoyed reading blogs for a few years. Kate Worley, a comics writer who had befriended my wife an I back in 1990, died in 2004. I was searching for information on her passing and found a blog by Reed Waller, her ex-partner both in life and in comics. Although they had long since broken up, Waller wrote eloquently of his friend and I thought, "I wish I had a forum like this." Then I realized how easy it was to get just such a thing.


Q: Why do you blog?

A: All I've ever really wanted to be was a writer. My wife has always said that, with all my arcane knowledge of trivia and minutiae, I should be a teacher. I decided that blogging was the best way I could write and at the same time teach people about some of the weird things I've enjoyed over the years.

Q: Why do you have so many different blogs instead of putting it all together in a single location?

A: Well, my first try at a blog didn't take. It was aimless and abandoned after only 3-4 posts. Eventually I deleted it entirely and figured I was through with blogging.Then I came up with the idea for a new blog centered on sharing books, movies, etc from my own personal library. It slowly became quite successful and was my only blog for the first three years. Then I found myself a victim of the economy, depressed and with time on my hands. So I started a second blog specifically aimed at a different audience. In time, some ideas hit me that just wouldn't fit in on my regular, all-purpose blog--my high school journal for example--so I gave them each their own blogs! I currently have 12 (and write a more-or-less daily column for another) but there have also been four more that I created, abandoned and eventually deleted along the way.

Also, it doesn't hurt that more blogs, appealing to somewhat different readers, tends to elicit more ad-clicks and thus more money for me.


Q: Do you have a few favorite blogs of your own or others you'd like to share?

A: Oh, I have scores of them. Other than yours [You are so freaking sweet!] , a few of my favorites:

http://martingrams.blogspot.com/

http://www.bionicdisco.com/

http://www.newsfromme.com/

http://my-retrospace.blogspot.com/

Q: What advice do you have for a newbie blogger or someone that is thinking about starting a blog?

A: It's the simplest thing in the world nowadays, even more so than when I started blogging six years back. Everyone has a voice and blogging is a unique and simple way to get yours heard. Blog about politics, family, life, death, books, movies, dental work, Lindsay Lohan, Justin Bieber [please no], the history of the telephone, how to bake lasagna. There is quiet literally no limit to the subjects you can choose. Maybe only two people will read your posts but on the other hand, there could be thousands. But you aren't writing for them anyway. You're writing for yourself. Now, go. BLOG! [Yes sir!]

Have any other questions for Steven about blogging? Post them in the comments section and I will forward them to him. Or, since he is over here pretty often, maybe he'll answer them himself! It is always nice to hear it straight from the source rather than a 3rd party don't you think?