Writing during a pandemic is something most of us do not have a lot of experience in doing. Keeping a productive writing schedule during a pendemic, when between permanent addresses, with one’s entire family in close quarters, with a high energy cat, making frequent 200 mile jaunts across state lines, dealing with spotty interwebs, two depressions and an anxiety, insomnia, a spouse whose job doesn’t exist during lockdown, is, well…something. Can’t make this stuff up, and frankly, I wouldn’t want to, even though making stuff up is kind of the whole point of this fiction writing thing.
On the one hand, I can defintely relate to feeling behind pretty much everything, as there are days when writing is just…no. On the other hand, I am already more than sixty percent of the way to my goal of ninety books on my Goodreads challenge, I am getting my bearings on Buried Under Romance, and the micro size Happy Notes I set up as my Sims journal for my current gameplay is getting, for lack of a better word, chonky.
I have gone hardcore into this play style, having downloaded a save file of the base game neighborhood of Simsd 2 reinterpreted for Sims 3, with a rotational play system, free will on high, story progression (aka Sims I am not controlling doing their own thing) and an ever growing cache of custom content. Plus mods. Oh the mods. Basically, it’s writing, only with pixels. Also a dystopian lighting mod, but that’s another story.
I am writing this post with a full “house” -aka hubster and bff home, cat reminding me that we did promise to get her a new red dot. I am in my pajamas, still, because insomnia turned into “may as well turn on the computer,” which turned into “eh, boot Sims,” which turned into “listen to Journeys of Romance podcast while playing,” which turned into catching the love of writing, which led to opening this Word Pad document while doing all of the above, and here we are.
Breakfast/lunch is a bag of microwave popcorn, positioned to the left of the keyboard, beverage of choice positioned to the right, notebook on top of the CPU, under the monitor, color coded getl pens at hand, to catch the its of story and “real” writing that trickle in as I do all of the rest. There are a bunch of notes for the Drama King scenes I owe my co-writer and I am going to have to do some reconstructing on Her Last First Kiss, but, with these intravenous baby steps, one thing at a time, it feels…doable.
When I was but a wee princess, back in the days when I only needed one digit to state my age, and, I believe, in the grade that comes after K, my parents (or perhaps the NY educational system) put me into one of those newfangled open classrooms. Basically a mishmash of traditional education with a dash of Montessori is a decent description, and we kiddos were often allowed to pick our own activities for part of the day (as long as work was done.) This allowed the teacher (whom I saw as Grown Up, but was likely in her midtwenties at best) to observe young humans in their natural state (um, that came out wrong. I did not mean naked.) and note what activities and/or behaviors affected their traditional learning, for good or for ill.
Surprising nobody, I did better when I spent time in the book corner (spot the baby writer for one hundred, Alex) and the art area (artist’s kid, no-brainer) but where I showed the most marked improvement in my worksheets and cuisinaire rods learning was on the days when we were allowed to bring our own toys, and I pretty much always brought fashion dolls. I won’t mention the brand, but my preferred dolls stood eleven and one half inches tall (when my friend, V and I did not remove their legs to make them stand in for kid dolls, usually their own kids, or kid-selves. Yes, we knew how to get legs off and on safely. That’s not at all creepy. We could do heads, too.) could swap clothes like nobody’s business, and took on more roles in one afternoon than Meryl Streep in a good year.
Once again, Spot The Baby Writer gets another point. Unfortunately, subsequent classrooms did not hew to this model, and my plastic repertory company was relegated to my room at home, and occasional play dates. I did try collecting as an adult, but not being made of money, or having limitless space, and needing to do adult things, as well as discovering actual writing, that chapter, alas, needed to close. Merely having the items in question wasn’t the same as actually having hands on and acting out the stories in my head with reasonable facsimilies of human beings.
But then — because there is always a But Then- I discovered a few things. Fandom, especially fanfic (ah, so that’s what I had been doing all by myself with Wonder Woman, The Bay City Rollers, and reruns of Family Affair, all along. Not at the same time, mind you.) Finding the plot holes (did you know that the fate of the father in The Partridge Family was never addressed? He doesn’t even get a first name or cause of death. It’s established that he’s dead, but that’s it. When? How? Were he and Shirley happy? Was he musical, too? Did they want a big family from the get go, or did it just kind of happen, because Shirley and Whatshisname loved each other very very much? Come to think of it, what did Mr. Partridge do, to be able to afford that big house and still allow Shirley to be a stay at home mom to five? I still want to know these things.)
Fanfiction was a huge discovery, though I never wrote for any of the above fandoms. I did hunt down licensed Partridge Family novels and comics in used bookstores and flea markets, and Wonder Woman does count as my first fandom, as I collected anything I could about the comic and TV series, and blew through two of the fashion dolls. Yep, I fanned that hard. The first fandom in which I wrote was Star Trek: The Next Generation, and even then I had to do it my way, creating an original love interst for a canon character, and I never budged from that. They are canon to me. They were also some of, if not the very first characters I made when I ventured into my next discovery: The Sims.
Sim versions of a (non-Trek) OTP
Since I am getting chatty on this one, I will stop here for now and pick up again on Wednesday. Need to get some novel work under my belt before I can play (and by play, I mean my current save of the Sims 2 adapted to Sims 3, which is far more fun that should be allowed, but more on that later.)
Even though the calendar has said it’s been spring for a while, and even though this is probably March the Blur-ty Second, my sure shift occasions happened a couple of days ago. I was getting into Housemate’s car for a grocery run, and that’s when it hit. Time to switch out my everyday carry (EDC) planner. Can’t force these things. They happen on their own.
Since fall, I have been using and loving my black Pen + Gear B6 travelers notebook cover, with a mini Happy Planner for guts. Still looking for my B6 mojo, insertwise, but that’s another story. For planning, this works. I’ve been carrying it in my burgundy tote bag, the fall and winter version of my beloved blush tote, which I will be busting out of stuff jail as early as the end of this week. Carry burgundy faux-suede in May? Perish the thought.
current EDC
First world problems, definitely so. Not saying that having anxiety and depression and being in between permanent addresses during a pandemic is a picnic, but the fact that I am having strong opinions on stationery and stationery accessories, well, I am going to file that under signs of life. The more chaotic life becomes, the more I want to organize it.
For my EDC, this will probably mean slipping my HP mini out of the black cover, sliding it into the blush one, and moving over decorative ephemera. My current planner, last year’s eighteen months version, ends in June. I will replace it with a new 2020 mini, with different layoyt, and th current cover (and some dividers) will find their way back into the black cover, with filler paper in place of planner pages. Et voila, notebook.
Feeling spring-y
These things work best for me when they happen organically (odd for planning, but it works.) Forcing them generally does not work at all. Funny enough, there are similarities to writing. I would like for there to be more writing, and there will be, and one day I will look up at the screen or down at the page, and the most recent line will read “the end.” Huh. How’d that happen ? I
Bit by bit, usually. One step at a time. Days when scrolling blankly through Facebook or Overdrive are the pinnacles of productivity, and says when writing hits a roll. Neither, in my experience, is anything I can force, but things like “time to switch covers” or indie pubbing book x makes sense, ” those show up when they will, and give a solid foundation for the next phase.
Spring is not usually my favorite season. It still isn’t, but a new season is a good time for a new start, and, after seven of the craziest, weirdest, hardest months I have ever had, it looks like the light at the end of the tunnel may not be a train. Not that there aren’t still question marks, because there certainly are, but fewer ellipses (… -= those things) so I am going to count that as good. I have every faith that we may soon be nearing the end of our vagabond days, and I am very much ready for it.
On the fifth of March, we have been officially between apartments for seven months. Longer than I had thought or expected, but also, we are, as Skye would have said, badbutts, because we are still standing (cue Elton John) and, as Mr. Rogers’ mother said, looking for the helpers is always good advice. Storm is a travel kitty extraordinaire, and I have become far more adept than I ever thought in breaking down a desktop computer and reassembling it in another location, and knowing for sure and certain that longhand really is the best way for me to compose.
Writing, yes, can be done anywhere (seriously, anywhere) but the part that goes beyond composing, the transcribing, the editing, the polishing and submitting and/or planning out an indie pub (independent publishing, where the author is also the publisher) strategy, those things need a home base. It’s getting there. Before too long, there will be a new location for Stately Bowling Manor, a new office to move into, books to bust out of stuff jail (aka storage) and set into place. Time to know and declare that the new normal is now within reach. Not here yet, but within reach.
Which comes to the often sticky part of writing, finishing. When I first started writing romance, a starry-eyed seventeen-year-old with an electronic typewriter and a dream, of course I could finish a book. A lot of books. Now, I could be the parent of a seventeen-year-old, with some wiggle room. (I am not. Real Life Romance Hero and I decided early on that all of our kids will have four legs and fur.) Life and writing are not always that easy. That girl with the stars in her eyes and correction ribbon on her fingers had read once that Valerie Sherwood wrote twenty pages at a session, so okay, that’s a normal pace. The more seasoned writer now also remembers that Valerie Sherwood also said that any writer who says they write thus and so every day is lying.
There are days when the words, when the story, don’t come, and life has proven that, in heaps. There are also days when they do, and those are the days that I want to nourish. This past weekend, spent at Chez Grandmere, I took an outdated planner I inherited from Housemate, and ripped out the guts but for the monthly dividers (setting aside the unused guts to repurpose as plotting charts) and cutting down plain white office labels to cover the names of the months, and now it’s my general writing :salute: notebook/planner.
Writing each area of focus on each label – historical romance, contemporary romance, blogging, Buried Under Romance, Patreon, even “paper” (one can never have enough filler paper) — felt…good. Right. A few weeks ago, I posted on Facebook that I had a finger hovering over a stock image on a cover art website, because the couple in it? Could very well portray John and Aline from A Heart Most Errant. My first thought when I figured out what I was thinking was, “Anna, what are you thinking?” because, well, vagabond days. Vagabond months. Independent publishing isn’t cheap. I have never done it before.
Hm, though, but have I? In the intro to my “Play In Your Own Sandbox, Keep All the Toys” workshop, I mention that I spent well over a decade amongst Klingons, Newcomers, Immortals and others, not only writing for fanzines, but also, in time, publishing my own. I didn’t know what I was doing back then, either, when I started on that (huge props to my friend, the awesomely talented E. Catherine Tobler, who did a lot of very patient hand holding and talking me down from ledges of various heights) journey, so, maybe…cannonball? I don’t know.
What I do know is a page a day is a book in a year. I know I don’t have to reach every reader (and can’t, and shouldn’t) but only my readers, who are going to respond with, “please, miss, may we have some more?” The answer I want to give is “yes, of course, here you go.” I know I am too fond of italics and need to brush up on my comma use (thankfully, my contemporary cohort, Melva Michealian, has a PhD in English, so odds are I am going to catch on sooner rather than later.) There comes a time, and I think this is it, as my finger hovers over cover stock, and I have sussed out to get myself as bottom of the line webcam, because starting somewhere is better than not starting at all.
Which all feels pretty on-brand for spring. New life. Things blooming. Baby ducks. Baby ducks make everything better, and if we end up somewhere near Washington Park once more, there will be baby duck pictures aplenty. Even if not, there will be stories. That’s what I do. That’s who I am.
Today is a very Monday-y Tuesday, but that has ceased to phase me. Internet may be spotty this week, but blogging feels normal, so I want to get an entry up on as regular a schedule as possible. The offline times are good for writing longhand, so I am not complaining at all. As much as I love winter, this has been a tough one, and I will not be that sorry to see it go. I am ready for a new season.
The title of today’s post comes from a discussion Real Life Romance Hero and I had earlier this week. We are pretty sure that the light at the end of the tunnel is not, this time, a train, so we are moving in that direction. That also means that the Patreon will indeed be a go, and, for the first time, setting up tiers doesn’t seem as scary as it once did.
This past weekend, I presented Play In Your Own Sandbox, Keep All the Toys, at Capitol Region Romance writers. I learned a couple of things. First, I really do need to use visual aids, for myself as well as the people taking the workshop. A dry erase board usually does the trick, and I probably should learn PowerPoint. I will add that to my list. The second thing I learned is that, when visually impaired, and knowing darned well one needs high contrast, do not attempt to work, in front of a group, from handwritten notes, if the only inks available are pink and turquoise.
Even so, I crazy love this workshop, and the CRRWA chapter, and I came away from the experience remembering how much I really do love writing romance. When I got home, a chapter was waiting for me from my contemporary collaborator, Melva, which has me excited to work on Drama King. I also need kick in the behind to get Her Last First Kiss back in action, because those pirate books are chomping at the bit. That’s part of what I’m taking care of this week.
I know how to do this. I know how to write books. I know how to write good books. This is the thing I wanted to do more than anything else in the world for as long as I can remember. It’s easy, though, to lose sight of that when life gets crazy, and boy howdy, has it ever this past year and change. I am hanging onto the “change” part. I have mad, mad, mad respect for the productivity of authors like Sandra Sookoo and Kathryn LeVeque, the staying power of Cynthia Wright and Kimberly Cates, and yes, there is most certainly a seat at that table for me. It comes by putting butt in chair (or passenger seat) and pen to paper and telling those stores. Dump from brain to page, rough and raw, and make it pretty later.
Right now, I am tired and stressed and hopeful, and very much in love with my chosen genre. I have added an ebook edition of the material for PIYOSKATT (pee-yose-cat? Pie-yose-cat?) as a Patreon perk for a middle tier, because now, it feels like a reachable goal, and actually kind of fun. Small online class offerings may also be in the offing, because I also crazy love teaching workshops, both on my own and with other talented author type people. It’s a good place to be.
Tails up, Storm Troopers! I’m Storm, you’re awesome, and it’s Valentine’s Day. Aunt Anna is cramming for her workshop tomorrow, at Capitol Region Romance Writers, but only to a certain point, because there comes a time it is possible to overprepare, and it’s really better to shut that stuff down and play Sims. Better yet, play Mousie, with me. I have a signature move. It involves hiding under the bed, where the blanket hangs down, then when Mousie goes by, I pounce. Works every time.
Buried Under Romance has been on a little vacation, but Aunt Anna is back on the job, and there will be new content up ASAP. Since I already put the Goodreads update in my last post, there isn’t that much to update on that front, and I can’t recap her workshop until she gives it, so that does leave me with a certain amount of wiggle room. I am exceptionally good at wiggling.
Since Aunt Anna is all about the workshop for right now, maybe I will stick with that for a while. She’s not doing visual aids this time around, because we are still on the vsgabond track, and because she isn’t doing any exercises that require visual aids, but she is hoping to put some sipplemental material on either the chapter website, or her own. She is strongly thinking of turning the material for her online workshop into an ebook for her Patreon patrons, and, for that, she’s goling to need pictures that are not copyrighted (well, not to anybody who is not her) so she will need to take new ones. It is a tough job, but I may volunteer to be her model. What *isn’t* better with a beautiful calico girl? I mean, look at me. I’m stunning.
will work for tuna
One thing Aunt Anna likes to do at the start of this workshop is that it is *not* a workshop on how to write fan fiction. That might be a fun workshop to look into another time, but if she had to say only one things about that, it would be, “have fun.” Also make sure the characters are in characters. Okay, that is two things, but it is not this workshop.
What this workshop is, is a way to use the media a human already loves, to amplify their individual voice and abilities. Voice is how readers can tell who wrote the story. No two writers will write the same story the same way. Aunt Anna thinks that is pretty exciting. This is part of why the romance level is such a wide and varied place. It still has a way to go, but Aunt Anna is adamant that writers who follow their own hearts put the very best passion into their work, and readers can definitely tell.
How does a human find that voice? Aunt Anna said I can’t give away her secrets, but she did say I could share a link to a bunch of songs Spotify says she really, really likes. Can you see any common threads (apart from the holiday music thing, but that too) in this playlist here? https://open.spotify.com/playlist/37i9dQZF1EpQ64htXwwvLs?si=aTSPRkcAQ0G3rATUOit9TQ
Huh. I thought that was a link. Hm. Hard to type with paws sometimes. If you copy and paste that link, it will work. Aunt Anna will try and fix the link once she comes up for air. We will see how that goes, but I will remind her. I do that by putting my paws on her leg while she is at work, and look soulfully into her eyes until she gets the idea. Usually this works when it is dinner time, but also when it is time for her to go to bed, but I think it will work in this case as well.
That’s about it for now, and my sunbeam is hitting the exact spot for premium nappage, so I am going to wrap this here and let Aunt Anna get back to business. Hope you are all having a good Valentine’s Day.
I did take a deskscape for today (okay, it was a lap deskscape) but there were technical difficulties, so let us all appreciate stock photos and photo editing software.
At any rate, I’m back. Our stay off the grid extended itself due to a couple of factors, but that’s life. Apart from the virus that converted all of my energy into super gross eye boogers, the whole thing did pretty well. I had a great working lunch with Melva Michaelian. We are oh so ready to get Jack and Kelly all the way to their HEA, so it can be Rob and Heather’s turn next, and we do know what comes after we finish this group of three.
Longhand really does work best for me, for composing/drafting, and the lack of internet distraction did allow me more time to get at least some of the ducks in a row. That does involve plotting out the bones of the gazebo story, which is taking a turn I didn’t expect (still a romance, don’t worry) and I actually have all of my pirate trilogy longhand notes in one container. ,I will do a post later, on the plotting method/template I used, and the modifications I’m making to it, but for this week, I have another focus.
Even though the whole future of RWA (Romance Writers of America) is a big question mark right now, I am super excited, and a little nervous, about the meeting of my local chapter, Capitol Region Romance Writers, because this month, I am the one presenting the program. I am honored and psyched that my fellow members not only asked me to present the workshop a few years back, but asked me to present it again.
Come to think of it, the workshop I presented back then was at a February meeting as well, so one more time, and it’s tradition. I could live with that. The chapter has changed in the intervening years, and so have I, so it stands to reason that the workshop has undergone a few changes of its own. Bob and Jane (if you’ve taken one of my workshops before, you know who they are) will be making an appearance, and there will be a few surprises as well. That’s usually what happens when we creative types dump a bunch of stuff we love in the kiddy pool of our imaginations and splash about with reckless abandon.
“Um, Anna,” I hear some of you saying, “the title mentions five things, and I don’t see any numbered lists here, just saying.” I hear you, dear readers, so I will get right to this wee listicle of five things that have made me happy recently:
1) photo editing 2) Sims (3 and 4) 3) getting back into my travelers notebooks 4) historical romance with adventure and pageantry 5) contemporary YA that makes my heart ache
To use a phrase one will hear often in my workshop, what do these things all have in common? Either with each other or as a whole. Anybody? Anybody? Beuller? The list took only a few seconds to come up with, because those things have been very near the surface over the last couple of weeks. It’s been a rough few months IRL, so that means that getting some of the good stuff is even more important, not only for creativity’s sake, but for emotional survival.
I will probably go into more detail on each item above, but for now, I’m going to be more general. I have been watching a lot of photo editing videos online, most with a very particular aesthetic. Take a look at the picture above and guess which one. The fact that I have been listening to a lot of The Smiths while I try to see if I can apply what I’ve learned to my own work probably says something.
Erik was born in-game, a while back.
Sims games are eerily similar to writing, and with custom content, I can -hey, like photo editing- make the picture on my screen look more like the picture in my head. Said picture does absolutely have a lot to do with those historical romances and YA novels that play my emotions like YoYo Ma plays the cello, and I can oh so happily spend hours getting a Sim or a house, etc, exactly right. I probably have the save with the above simulated gent in it, saved in the cloud, and if not, I have his parents; they always make gorgeous offspring.
is the return of Big Pink imminent?
Though I believe I have found planner peace with my current planner, I still very much miss Big Pink, and Li’l Pink, my travelers’ notebooks, so that probably means it’s time to get back to them. I don’t want to duplicate my7 calendar, but that only means that the next logical step is to make them something else. That, I can do. Not sure what, but I will start with my old faithful Moleskine cahiers, rather than the standard size pictured above.
That’s pretty much the gist of the workshop. Find what you love, and find a way to make it uniquely one’s own. No two combinations are ever going to be the same I find that exciting.
Hi, Storm Troopers! Are you surprised to see me on a Tuesday? Wild, huh? I know, but it’s one of those weeks. Aunt Anna and the other humans will be off the grid for a couple of days, as we are off on another trip to Aunt Linda’s family home, so Aunt Anna asked me to fill in today, to cover yesterday and tomorrow’s post. I told her no problem. That’s why I’m here, right? Well, that and to spread magical fibers of love and joy.
Anyway, about what’s going on over here. Aunt Anna is having kind of an existential planner crisis, or, depending on the perspective, (let’s reframe!) a chance to try some new things and get even more creative. She wouldn’t let me take any pictures of her planners in progress, but trust me, there is stuff going on. Some of that will be going on while we are on adventure at Chez Grandmere (the mother of your aunt is your grandmother, right? I think that’s how it works. I am not sure about human family terms.) Aunt Anna is also planning on doing a lot of writing in longhand there, because Chez Grandmere does not, unfortunately, have interwebs. Maybe not so unfortunately if that means more writing time.
Aunt Anna has already started trying out a new to her plotting technique that she learned from a Heart Breathings tutorial. If this works, that will go a long way to solving the problem of what to do with a bunch of outdated Happy Planner pages. She has set up her spread for a story to be determined, and will give that a go during out adventure. Watch this space for the results. Normally, she doesn’t go in for charts and stuff, but when it’s time to get back on the horse (nobody told me there was a horse) trying new things is always a good idea.
This is also a good time to go through some stuff that the aunts and uncle have stored at Chez Grandmere, which may provide some interesting results. I find that rather exciting. I also find the place called “basement” very very very exciting, but I am not allowed to go down there. No idea why. Other cats used to go down there. Maybe they left some food or toys. How can I leave that unexplored? Humans. Hmph.
Huh. This doesn’t seem like a lot of news for a “special” blog, but that’s okay. Can’t all be rock stars, am I right? Except for beautiful calico girls. We are all automatically rock stars. I like to sing the song of my people at special midnight performances, and you should see the choreography that goes along with it. Truly a work of genius. We’ll be back on Friday, Saturday at the latest, and there will be better updates then. Rest assured that I will be in full mews mode, providing inspiration and encouragement.
Okay, wait. I remember. I was supposed to list some of the planner and notebook things that Aunt Anna is going to revamp over the next few weeks. Let’s see if I can find some pictures to go with them.
Granted, these are not all of them, nor does Aunt Anna expect to be able to keep all of them running for unique purposes (or the same one; boy, would that be repetitive) at the same time, and she is beginning to come around to the idea that it’s okay to move the same guts to different covers as the mood strikes. Also that there are plusses and minuses to the different sizes and formats she likes, including but not limited to:
discbound (Happy Planner, etc) in micro, mini, classic or big sizes
Traveler’s notebooks (strings) in pocket, personal, and standard sizes
Six ring binders in personal or A5 size
Three ring binders in full or half letter size
traditional hard or softcover notebooks, sewn, perfect, or wirebound
So yeah, that’s kind of a lot, and it does relate to writing, because that’s what she likes to do in them, so she is figuring out what format her exploration of these should take. Blogging? Vlogging? If you have a preference, leave a comment and I will make sure she gets it.
Only one month now until I present my workshop, Play In Your Own Sandbox, Keep All The Toys, at Capitol Region Romance Writers. If you’ve heard me talk, before, about From Fanfiction to Fantastic Fiction or On Beyond Fanfic, the cores of the workshops are the same. The execution, though, is constantly evolving. I love that.
This morning, I opened the file for the workshop, to nab my bio and a blurb to send to CR-RWA’s esteemed webmistress, and next thing I knew, it was a couple of hours later, and I had accidentally edited some of the chapters, and slid, when I wasn’t looking, into “could I make this into an ebook?” mode. I think I probably could, possibly with a PDF version of t he exercises. This is partly for the workshop’s participants, and partly for my own use. Probably my own use first. After that, then we’ll see. Could be a cool Patreon perk, could be an indiepub, could be a couple of other things. That’s not what’s important right now.
Right now, what’s important is the accepting and embracing of what I love, and seeing how I can take what inspires me and make it my own. There are some tropes I am always going to jump on like a starving hyena with an unattended hot dog stand. Heroines disguised as male, especially if there are seafaring adventures to be had, yep, I’ll take that. second chance at love with the same couple, especially if there has been a decent length of their intermission. Mention of Bedlam Asylum or Newgate Prison. Tudor, Stuart, Commonwealth, early Georgian, skip up to the Belle Epoque/Gilded Age era, I am in my happy place. One or both lovers with a creative talent or profession will guarantee a second look on my part, and those are all things I either have or would love to include in my own writing. Angst. I love angst. Give me all the angst, as long as there is an HEA at the end of it all.
Grit in my settings, I want that, too. Also in the people. Life isn’t easy, and a love story where the hero and heroine have to fight more than their feelings, that adds a whole other dimension for me. That’s one of the reasons I’m keeping track these days of my media habits, of specific traits of the books, TV, podcasts,. etc, I consume, of what I love and why I love it. Will that be ready to share in some form by the time of the workshop? I am not sure, but I think it could be fun.
There is a quick and dirty version of this in the workshop in its current incarnation, so the idea is not totally unrepresented. Thing is, I’m feeling the itch. I want to know why it is that I’m bingeing the Council of Geeks podcast reviewing Cowboy Bebop. I have not (yet) seen the anime, so I have no idea what the host is talking about, but I fell in love with his analyzing style on the Council of Geeks YouTube channel. Do not ask me how I found the channel, since it largely talks about fandoms of which I am not a part, but I feel welcome, and that goes a long way. It’s the excitement and unabashed delight in a story, yet still able to discuss what could have been better yet, or what could have been different.
I want to do that for the romances I write, make them accessible both for those who already love the genre and those who may be new to it, or even merely curious. Fans of SF/F franchises have an enthusiasm I would love to harness that enthusiasm and do some high powered cheerleading for all the things I love most about romance. Maybe that starts with my own stuff.
A few days ago, Housemate informed me that while she very much likes her mini size planner, the classic size, eh, not so much. Did I want all her classic size stuff? In a word, um, yes.
Housemate’s old planner, aka my new notebook
With only a few pages marked at all, this opened up a huge amount of possibilities. Ever since I’d accepted that the discbound system works really well for me, and that I want to keep one notebook to track my progress on various projects, could this mean that I had that very thing dropped literally in my lap? With a little ingenuity, I’d have a gorgeous notebook with twelve distinct section. The only setup I’d need to do would be to glue paper over the obsolete calendar page on the back of each divider (easy peasy; paper, I’ve got) and change the labels on the tabs from the names of the months to a more descriptive label of what would be in each section. I also have stickers, so this works out well.
“Beginner’s Mind,” in this context, is a synonym for “let’s see what happens.” That ties into the whole wanting to write like I did before I knew any better. Before I even knew that wordcount could apply to anything beyond school essays. Before I had a working grasp of the state of the historical romance market, and the shift from single books to series, almost all the time. Before, certainly, the romance writers’ organization I couldn’t wait to join turned into a tire fire. Before a lot of things.
If I had to pick one passion beyond writing and reading romance, it would be planning, and I have always done better with pen and paper than direct to keyboard, so plopping myself down at a motel room desk, with an old planner, a bunch of paper, and a couple of pens, really does seem like the most natural thing in the world. What could go wrong? Better question, what could go right?
Back in middle school (aka junior high) I had the ide that the only genres open to me were hard science fiction and mystery. Neither of which cranked my motor, though they of course do it for a whole lot of other people, and wonderfully so. If I’d taken that at face value, I’d still be listlessly going through the selection in that school library, wondering what the fluff I was doing this for, but knowing that hunger in my gut wouldn’t go away until I wrote my stories. What made the difference was thinking, what if that assumption isn’t true? Enter historical romance. Oh yes, motor most definitely cranked.
Now, this master notebook (mistress notebook?) has a section for viable future projects. There’s the Regency I tried to write, that I still love, but need to repot into an era that I also love. There’s the blacksmith’s daughter who becomes a duchess, by way of a stage career. There’s two historical romance that are mine once again, since their first publisher retired. There’s the postapocalyptic medieval that I absolutely love, and got really, really good rejections on, that editors/agents loved but couldn’t sell, so didn’t buy. Well, okay, what if…what if I did it myself?
I don’t have to please or appeal to or attract every reader. Nobody can do that. But get the attention of my readers? That, I can probably do. That’s why I’m launching my Patreon in 2020. It’s also why I am excited to undertake an Abundance Self-Assessment. This is not a sponsored post. I met Eryka Peskin at a local RWA chapter meeting, and we clicked instantly. Lucky me, she is an abundance coach (and writer, among other things) and her workshops are a big part of how I learned beginner’s mind means more possibilities.
How much do I know about starting a Patreon? Not a lot. About the same as I know about self publishing commercial fiction, more or less, but everybody has to start somewhere. Let’s find out together, shall we?
Typing With Wet Nails 