I Am Confusing Myself. Or, I Am Making Things Too Complicated.

Sometimes, I post stuff to my Author's blog that I would also like to post here, but I don't want to bore you (awesome, wonderful, supportive, fantastic, valued) followers of both blogs by re-posting.

So... do I just link each of those posts to a post here?

How do I go about "re-posting" a blog from WordPress to this here Blogger blog?

These are the mysteries of the blogging universe I shall set out to solve...someday.

Meanwhile, please enjoy the latest installment of my Author's Blog.

Thanks for stopping by!

I Won a Writing Contest!

I like writing "flash fiction" (very short stories), so I was moved to enter the August 11, 2014 Prompted Writing Contest.

The challenge: write a short story (500 words or less) with irony as the theme andwhich included the word "dandeliony"

The Prompted Writing Contest was a great motivator to get something done and submitted, already.

I am pleased to announce that I am the winner of the challenge, and have had my story published on Tipsylit!

Read my winning story, "Financial Security", HERE

My book is too short. (?)

In the past couple of weeks or so, I have accomplished the goals I have set for myself. 

• I have written or edited some every day
• I have updated my blogs
• I have tweeted 
• I have researched and submitted to Literary Agents
• I have educated myself about some of the techniques scammers use to rip-off writer

And,

• I have researched the writing/publishing business to the point that I may despair.

The reason for my despair is that my book is, well, too short. I mean, it is too short to be considered for publications in the traditional sense.

I just went through and did a mini-edit. I took out an entire character who plays a small role in the beginning of the book and never makes another appearance. It kind of felt a teensy bit like murder.

It had to be done.

It make my book even shorter

The solution seems simple: "Your book is too short. Add stuff. Put in more descriptions. Weave in a subplot or expand on a currently existing subplot."

The problem is, I don't feel the story needs any of that. I feel that "padding" the book, simply for the sake of reaching an arbitrary word count, will make it bogged down and tiresome.

Now, I have considered that this is, perhaps, short-sighted on my part. I am very open to the idea that I may need to go back to this book, re-work it, and "beef it up" for marketability.

However, I have come to the realization that I am pretty darn sick of this book. I am way too close to this project right now to be objective. Trying to re-write at this point would be a mistake. I need to have a bit of distance from the work.

Where does this leave me?

I have determined that I will continue to shop this book, too-short-for-its-genre or no. After all, there are some "needle in a haystack" options out there for me. Meanwhile, I am going to keep working on editing another 2 projects. One new project is Young Adult, and  the other is New Adult, both genres that support a much lighter word count than typical commercial fiction.

And, I am going to keep on writing. I enjoy writing from flash fiction prompts very much. It is so satisfying to have something done so quickly. I will share the ones appropriate for self-publication on my Author's bog, and will submit others to literary magazines and other publications. It will all help someday (hopefully!), to actually give me something to put in my "Author's Bio".

I will find a home for my little book, either now, or in the future. Perhaps I will end up self-publishing all three books in the series one day. There are so many voices out there lauding the merits of self-publishing, but the thought of all that is involved with carrying the full-weight of promotions makes me feel queasy.

 

Let me tell you, it is great to come to this blog and see your supportive comments. They encourage me to keep going. Thank you!

Promoting Myself as an Author

I have written several books. Don't go getting all "impressed" on me. I know it sounds like a big deal, but, really, it isn't. What I have is a few folders on my PC (and hopefully some backups, somewhere!!!) with novel-length rough drafts in them.

Anyway, I have managed to get one of these books edited and ready to submit for publishing. I don't, currently, have any intentions of self-publishing. However, in the course of my research, I have discovered that it is expected that a novelist have a social media presence, whether self-publishing or not.

I confess, I hate this idea.

I do not want to promote myself. I want to write books and short stories, and be paid to do it.

But, it's looking like I'm stuck in the old "Love and Marriage" conundrum; I can't have one without the other.

So, I gotta do it.

In the past, my biggest dissuasion to self-promotion has been that I've felt like a "phony" calling myself a writer, and rightfully so. After all, to be honest, to be perfectly, disgustingly, frank, bare and raw...

I've never wanted to work at writing.

See that bold and underlined word, there? The four-letter one? Yeah. When I start to think about turning writing into work, I start to feel all Dobie Gillis' Maynard G. Krebs about the whole thing.

I confess, I have been lazy about my writing. It is quite near physically painful to write that, but it is true. My whole life, I've been a lazy writer. At the ripe ole age of (not gonna tell ya), I've come to realize that, if I am ever going to be taken seriously, I have to take my writing seriously.

But, for all these years, I really, honestly, did not think I could take my writing more seriously. I mean, do I really love writing, after all? Do I love it enough to scoop the monkey poop?

Okay, that last bit deserves a bit of explanation. You see, my Daddy always told me that, no matter what career choice I made, there was gonna be a "downside".

"Everyone wants to work with the cute little monkeys at the zoo," he told me, "but not everyone still wants that job once they realize there's monkey poop to shovel. Every job has its own 'monkey poop'. You've got to find a career you love enough to put up with the not-so-fun parts."

And that, I have determined, is what getting through the (nightmare) editing process of this first book has proven to me - I do actually have it in me to take the profession of writing seriously. I do have the "stick-to-it-ive-ness" it takes to get a piece from "rough draft" to "as polished as I'm gonna be able to get it".

I guess I do like the monkey-poop shoveling part of writing. Or, at least, I can hold my nose through it.

If I was able to get one of those old manuscripts dusted off and spiffed up, surely I can do it again... and again...

It's almost like I finally believe I can do it.

To make a long story longer, this post is to introduce  my new Author's presence which currently consists of a WordPress Blog and a woefully under-utilized Twitter account.

I'd love to have you follow my tweets and read my Slow Blog. Also, it'd be great to see a few more of you follow this here old blog (which, as it turns out, is also a Slow Blog. Who knew?).

Do any of y'all have a career that requires a social media presence?

(wow, did I just refer to writing as my "career"? gulp.)