Ms. Pershing's Response

I know you have all been anxiously awaiting Ms. Pershing's response so here it is: http://espan-rwa.com/rwa-president-pershing-responds/

I have not yet read it, but I will come back after I have. Please feel free to go read it with virgin eyes in the mean time

*NOTE: I have like less then NO time today as I am trying to crit a manuscript and get ready to go into the wilds of NY tomorrow, so I need to get a lot of things done today and the blogging will prolly have to wait til I get back, sorry folks. Think you can live without my stunning wit for a few days?*

Villain??

I have a problem, shocking yes, but I find myself liking my villain even though I know he is evil. Truly evil, his mind is gone and all he wants is the power to make those around him suffer. He has made life miserable for nearly everyone in my series and is going to do horrible things that haven't even been written yet

but i feel for the guy

he hasn't exactly has it easy and while i don't want to go into a ton of detail, there are reasons his brain snapped but does that make his decisions excusable?

is it okay for people who have seen bad things to do bad things back? or are you expected to rise above and become a better person despite your circumstances?

Oy Vey

UPDATE RWA vs E-Pubs

I have learned that unfourtunatly Ms. Pershings comments are only availble to RWA members, which is fine as it is a letter from the President to her constiuents (yeah that's not the right word, but its the best I can come up with right now :D) however she will be responding to Ms. Knight's comments on the ESPAN blog this friday. I look forward to reading her reply to this issue.

In the mean time you can look at the blog of fellow author Eva Gale for an excerpt from the letter and some really good information!

RWA vs. E-Publishing??

Hey all, still plotting away here and man do I have a LOT of research to do!! But that is not today's focus.

Recently I have been considering joining RWA, or Romance Writers of America when I move up to NY (please god soon!) but after the recent kurfluffel in the ranks over the comments of RWA president Diane Pershing, I am not so sure. Now I have not yet read the full article, but I have read bits and done my best to seek out positive and negative comments about Ms. Pershing's remarks, but basically what she said boils down to this: people who e-publish their books through markets like Samhain, Liquid Silver and Ellora's Cave are not really authors and are in fact are marginalizing their work just to be called "published" (apparently published was in quotations like that) now I am trying to get a hold of the real article, so if I can find I will certainly post it for you to read, because I know that even invisible people like to form their own opinions.

However I will post for you Dierdre Knight's response to Ms. Pershing and RWA in general, it can be found here: http://espan-rwa.com/the-digital-age-and-rwa-a-call-for-change/

This is a wonderful and well-thought out article that outlines the flaws in RWA's current theory, and I will add in one more

I work a full time job, in fact I intend to work one for the rest of my life. In essence writing will be my second career, on that I will spend maybe 20hrs per week on instead of 40-50 hours like in my full time job. Reason: WRITING DOESN'T PAY!!! even with a 5,000 advance from an NY publishing house (ie Bantum, Harlequinn, or Penguin) and a contract to write 4 books in a year I would be living in worse then the poor house. I went to college not to be a writer, in fact its looking like I went to be a teacher, but I still have a lot of loans to pay off.

Consider for a moment that the average college student comes out of school with 50,000 in loans (which rounds out to about 700 dollars a month in payments), add in rent which even in a cheap market place is going to 500 for a studio apartment then add in 150 a month for food and 150 for things like gas and such and were talking at MINIMUM the average college graduate (which is what I am) has to make about 1,500 dollars a month to live comfortably or 18,000 a year

Now I know that I can do things to spend less money, like live at home and bum off my parents. Take a part time job (except that's going to take away from writing just as much as my job, I promise), find a sugar daddy (or momma if you're a man), make the government pay for me, or just go ahead and be independently wealthy. But really barring those things, I need to work.

More importantly I like to work and I don't want to give it up but that doesn't mean I want to give up writing either. Nor does it make me a "hobbyist" which has to be the most condescending thing I have ever heard, to imply that any writer who will bleed the way it takes to get words on paper and published is alien to me. Hobby's should be fun, not suicide/homicide inducing. /end rant

ANYWAY, I am committed to writing one book every year for as long as the people in my head keep speaking, and considering that i already have 4 books to plot out that's going to be at least the foreseeable future. I also plan to publish them through e-press because I love e-press, I feel that it will be much easier to get someone (ie an acquisitions editor) to actually read my book instead of rejecting out of hand because I am not a big name and I don't want to pay an agent. Will I eventually try to make a run at NY? I don't know, honestly at this point I will be content to see my books up for sale and if I find a publisher that treats me well then will I even have a reason to go for the heartbreak that is an NY publishing house?

These are personal questions, and right now I need to do what's best for my writing nothing else, but I am not so sure that joining RWA will be best for me anymore

Notes on Plotting

Okay, I have stopped and started, stopped again, read a bit, opened back up my files and glared menacingly at them, transferred things to work so I can plot during lunch, ignored everything and then neglected to keep all my files up to date so I have a string of plots wondering throughout my building *oy vey* written and discarded, changed direction, performed a sex change on a main character that I am not sure I am happy with, found and lost motivation for my main baddie and figured out a new and better way to make a mutant, and just generally found myself in a quagmire of my own making where things that I need are scattered to the four winds and buried inside my over stressed and very tired brain

Whoever said writing is easy needs to be kicked in the shin

But, my loyal invisible followers I have learned a few things

1) LESSON: Do what makes you comfortable not what you think you should.

For whatever reason it is 100 times easier to write things out in a notebook rather then on the computer, especially for plotting purposes. I think this is especially important due to my historical writing based background, I am used to having to write research papers and political position papers and when you do that you always start with notes. All through college I took notes in a cheap dollar store notebook where I would buy 1 for every paper and then fill it with notes I took from articles. Then once I sat at the computer it was time to write. Simple huh? So why it took me the last 2 months to figure out why I couldn’t bring myself to write outlines in word is beyond me. Call it professional blinders, other people were writing on word so by god I would to.

2) LESSON: People are always gonna judge the big dog harsher.

As a part of the ridiculous amount of success that the paranormal genre has experienced lately, it is currently the top dog of sub-genres which means it is constantly under attack. I have heard people, people that actually want to write the genre mind you, say how much paranormal annoys them with its sameness and how they wish they could write something else. Face it, the market is saturated and new ideas are rarer then a Ben and Jerry’s cartoon at weight watchers. I think the market is shifting away from paranormal in general and that means soon it’s gonna be harder to sell a book in that genre but does that matter? Check lesson 3

3) LESSON: Even if you don’t think you can sell it, write what the voices in your head tell you to.

Writing is hard!! No matter what anyone says, it is not a Zen experience where words flow full formed from a secret place in your brain down to your hands while angels sing chorus in the background and god himself (or herself or themselves) massages your weary muscles. (What? Sitting in a computer chair all day sucks) It is in fact work, and it takes a lot out of you so why on earth you would want to write about something you don’t like is beyond me. Not only will you suffer, your product will suffer, your characters will be flat and your readers will rebel!

Mini Lesson: Always remember that your fellow writers are also readers before you rag on something, people are always watching and they have big mouths.

Any who, if you really want to be doing historical then BY GOD do not write about vampires, because they will likely be crap. I am an avid fan of everything undead and bite-y but I can’t tell you how many books I have read where it just doesn’t work because the writer obviously doesn’t have the hots for a good vamp and therefore suppresses all the things that a vamp lover like me WANTS!! I don’t want to listen to my hero lament his existence for 20 pages, I don’t want his quest to be to find a way to be human. Humans are boring, I want mad, bad and immortal!! (Phrase stolen from Sherilyn Kenyon, who is one of my favorite writers) So please, just stop because reviewers will make it their mission to make sure no one buys your lame-o book anyway and then it defeats the purpose of writing what “hot” doesn’t it?

4) LESSON: Listen to the voices in your head.

When you get stuck (and you will) go talk to your characters. Writing is a little bit like undiagnosed Schizophrenia in that your characters will “sit down” and “talk” with you, or won’t depending on how you treat them. Because I have been trying to focus myself to just a few characters at a time I have missed connections that I need to have in order to make sure everyone meshes, by avoiding these I stalled myself out. Your world is not an independent one and everyone needs to be nurtured at once, characters need to come and go as they please and they don’t fit into well ordered boxes. So talk to them and let them tell you about their families, their pasts and what they want for their futures themselves, don’t try to ignore things that might be important. Otherwise they won’t live on your pages, they will just exist and no one will be happy


So that’s the words of wisdom for today, let’s get this train back to rolling!! TOOT TOOT!

quiz time!!

Hi Everyone,

yes i am still plotting i promise, and getting lots of good advice from books that i will review once i am finished reading them. I feel pretty good about the way I am connecting with my characters, though it appears they have hidden crucial things from me as i have been ignoring them.


ANYWAY

this is really about the quiz that is now located at the bottom of my blog, it is from writer extraordinaire Hailey Edwards!! She has been gracious enough to let us play with the boys from her series in progress Lineage, a tale of vampires and wolves *wiggles eyebrows* more about her writing and current books and WIPs can be found at her site: http://www.haileyedwards.net/

and her blog: http://haileyedwards.blogspot.com/?zx=840c2974eba62e59

go visit!! and remember that graham is MINE!! ;)