The Writing Life
Everyone has their own way of getting down to the business of writing…or dancing around it, procrastinating at it.
Got a few dozen email accounts that can suck up time. Got kids, pets, and a hubby. So, there’s always laundry to catch up on, endless dishes to wash, after–or before–the endless meals to prepare. A house that often looks disaster struck. Trips here and there. Life happening all the while I want to be creating a fictitious world with life happening.
As a self published eBook fiction writer, there’s a lot more to this business than writing the story. Have to format it, design covers, design and compile the eBooks–I know plain black and white would be easiest…but I’m so into cheerful color! So, I spend time matching background colors and fonts with the covers. looking for graphics for the covers and all that sort of thing. Sure, it’s time consuming, but SO much FUN! Never thought I’d get this addicted!
Then there’s the promotion and the marketing. And I am not an extrovert by any stretch of the imagination. I deal with panic attacks on a frequent basis. Fortunately, they don’t seem to put me in the hospital anymore… Don’t know how an eBook signing would turn out, don’t know anyone who’s tried to do one… Don’t know if I could swallow the panic to do it–even for a print book. Covered in cold sweat just thinking about it! So, finding ways to get noticed in a more passive manner is constantly on my mind. How does a shy person get noticed?
Oh, sure, I don’t sound all that shy. I’m so much better on ‘paper’ than I am, sometimes, in person. Once I get to know you, though, it may be a different story. In any event, all this serves to take time away from my real love–writing.
Therefore, my poor characters are tapping their toes, arms folded, impatiently waiting for me get back to them and go on with Book Three of the DreamWind Romance Series– A Storm In My Heart. I keep promising that I will, but I think they’re beginning to think me a liar. Actually, all of a sudden I’m deluged with new ideas for the book. I had the thing nearly half completed, when my hero and heroine put the brakes on the project. Plus, characters I’d originally only wanted to allude to now want to become a real part of the story.
And I’m listening.
Characters can do that. Just hijack your keyboard or your pen and run off with your ideas. Or delete them… In Thomi’s story, originally Brett and Tristen were twins. However, when I had the real Brett and Tristen who’re 17 months apart, but who looked like twins for years and weren’t terribly thrilled about being mistaken for such–I realized that the pair in the story didn’t want to be twins either. Adrien, who’d been a younger brother at the time, did want to be Tristen’s twin. (I don’t have a real Adrien, in case you’re wondering!) So, I paired them up, although I didn’t change their physical appearance at all–Adrien is still dark haired with emerald eyes while Tristen is much fairer with blue-green eyes. Their facial features and build are pretty much identical. They’ve been happy with that ever since.
Some things that have changed because a character insisted I can’t tell you about. Would spoil the story. But there I was, for months or even years, going along thinking things were this way, when in reality, they were that way… And one of these characters, Stormi’s sister, Kourtnay, is not the sort of person one would guess would do what she’s done…. I sure didn’t!
Stormi didn’t want to be short and dark. She wanted to be almost as tall as Stephan who’s not quite as tall as Geoffrey, Nicky and Nick, Sr., and she wanted auburn hair, fairly long. I thought she’d have a thing for Nick’s brother, Zal, but after a failed start in that direction, I realized she’d had an eye on Geoffrey all along. And, now, as I say, a couple others are demanding to have a bigger part in the plot of it all…so I’ll have to take the time to figure out just how much of a part they should have…and at what point to allow them to make an entrance. At the time I wrote Thomi, these people were only supposed to be talked about, not seen. I think I know how to overcome that, but we’ll see. Maybe one of them will have a better idea…
Another thing is, I’m left handed–and proud of it! So, many of my characters are, too. Thomi, Geoffrey, Anetra, Halleigh, Joleigh-Anna just to name a few. Something that bugs me when others write about lefties is that they write condescendingly about them. As if being left handed is a handicap as devastating as being paralyzed from the neck down. Being left handed is natural to me. So, when I write about lefties, they’re doing only what comes natural to them. No second thoughts about it. Left handed characters are a part of what my writing is about. A part of my author brand, I guess you could say. Need a tagline for that….
If you’re interested in lefties, visit my lefty web site: theSouthPawConnection.com
I’m going t quit here for now. I’ll share some more later. Till then, happy reading and/or writing.
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