Author
INSECURE WRITER’S SUPPORT GROUP
FOUNDED BY
Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh
Twitter is @TheIWSG Hashtag: #IWSG
So this past week was my birthday week. I had some plans, but they all kind of fell through. The cabin where I was going to stay had poor management, and I spent way too much time trying to find where to check in, then find where the actual cabin was, and then try to figure out how to keep warm… There was a thermostat on the wall, but it didn’t seem to work, and a very empty and ashy fireplace with no instructions. So then I came home, expecting that if I couldn’t have a nice night in the cabin, at least I’d have more time during the day to do nifty stuff… But then my stomach rebelled. I have a stomach condition with occasional episodes, but I hadn’t had an episode in forever it seems, but no, of course it had to come back then. Thankfully, I was able to sleep through it (the usual best course of action if it works), but that meant I got up at 3pm feeling groggy and not quite well. Needless to say, not much got done.
My actual birthday, though, was the day before all of this, and I had a lovely dinner with my parents and then we watched Forrest Gump — this was the first time I’ve seen it, and it’s a movie I have long thought I needed to see. It did not disappoint, so my actual birthday turned out quite nice.
This feels like opening a can of worms. I don’t have too many limits in my actual writing. Maybe I should have more. I do have limits around writing, though. One of my hard limits is never to speak poorly of other writers, especially about their writing. Their character — thankfully, I have not actually met any writers of bad character, though I have heard many horror stories. But even there, I would not reveal names unless I was warning a particular person about someone who might harm them specifically. Again, I haven’t had the need to do anything like that. All the writers I’ve met have been great people as well. That may change if I ever have any success.
As far as the actual topic goes, though, I don’t really have lines. I will say I tend not to swear much, but that isn’t because of a line I’ve drawn, it’s more that I just don’t swear that much, and I find excessive swearing to be uninteresting. It’s not a moral opposition to swearing, although I was a teacher at one point, so have also made it a habit to not swear for that setting, which surely affects my swearing today.
As for topics, I don’t have many limits there, either. The only thing I tend not to write is pure autobiographical stuff because, again, I find it boring. I already lived my life; when I read and write, I want to live other lives.
So, in the end, I guess I only have one limit in my writing: boredom. I don’t write stuff that bores me (at least not on purpose). And while others may say that confusing the reader is the worst thing a writer can do, I still maintain that boring the reader is much worse. After all, sometimes I want confusion, but I never want boredom.
INSECURE WRITER’S SUPPORT GROUP
FOUNDED BY
Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh
Twitter is @TheIWSG Hashtag: #IWSG
The awesome co-hosts for the October 6 posting of the IWSG are Jemima Pett, J Lenni Dorner, Cathrina Constantine, Ronel Janse van Vuuren, and Mary Aalgaard!
“You’ve been neglecting me,” Nadya says, taking a seat opposite me in the Student Center. I look down at the sheet of music in front of me and scratch my head. This piece isn’t coming out the way I want it.
“Neglecting you? We’ve been practicing every night. Your voice is golden, babe,” I say, then look back at the sheet.
She pulls it out from under me, my pencil making a long dark mark.
“Look at me.”
My eyes met hers. Blue, intense. I remembered our first meeting, the little comment about the professor, the way her jeans clung to her. The way my heart began to race, imagining what we could be together.
“Let’s forget this for tonight,” she said, balling the paper up and throwing it in the trash. “One night. Please. I miss…” she paused, a suggestive smile dancing around her lips, “you know.”
One night turned into two, then fourteen. Two months went by.
Meanwhile, the music, well. I hadn’t been writing any. Or playing any, at least not outside the band practices. And those… didn’t go well. The other guys noticed my inattention, and hers. Rehearsals found me making the same mistakes over and over again
“We need a new singer,” the drummer said one night. “Or a new lead guitarist. Or both.”
The others nodded their heads. “You either need to get your head back in the game, or we need to find us a new group.”
I promised I would, but she didn’t. I didn’t lose her, though. Instead, I forced my self to limit my time. Practicing took time, but I needed it as much as I needed her company. And she helped me practice occasionally, if I made it clear that I couldn’t just give in to the waves of passion.
We found another lead singer, and Nadya became our biggest fan.
The End.
Well, I seem to be in a bit of a writing slump. Last week was worse than the week before, and this week is worse than last week, so… Hopefully I can turn it around by next week?
In any case, I have shifted a little, and have been exploring my Craft again. I have a new wand that I am planning to consecrate at Midsummer (so this weekend) and then have been working on a very intense Lammas Sacrifice ritual. My tradition explores various mysteries at the Great Days, and Lammas is for Sacrifice. It’s getting into some work that I haven’t done in a very, very long time, so I am hoping I can pull it off. Of course, that has taken my attention away from my writing, and I’m still mainly writing the fanfiction anyway.
I hate to say it, but this week has been even less productive than last week. I’m still working on the self-indulgent non-postable fanfiction piece, but spending more time reading other people’s stories instead of my own. Oh well, there are always cycles aren’t there? I am hoping to get back into revision, but probably not this week. We’ll see.
Music has been really important to me with this story. It was when I started it all those years ago, and it is now again. I’ve been writing to what I am calling my short dark cello playlist. It starts with Barber’s Adagio, then goes into Yo Yo Ma Solo, and finishes with Nothing Else Matters – a cello cover of the Metallica song performed by Apocalyptica. Barber isn’t all cello, of course, but it has the same “darkness” as the others.
I’ve also been lighting rose candles and dragonsblood incense. It’s been a very sensual week.
Well, this week was unproductive. It’s not so much that I haven’t been writing, but rather what I have been writing. Which is a particular fanfiction piece I started over ten years ago — around 2006 I think, but not 100% sure. There’s nothing wrong with fanfiction in general, and at some point, I may put a link to my work if people are interested, but for the moment, I am not sure about it. But this particular fanfiction piece… I can’t post it because it’s basically a fanfiction of another fanfiction, and starts in the middle of the other author’s chapter 20. Yeah. So, there is absolutely no future for this story.
But I am loving it. And I’ve done some revision, and I have some scenes that absolutely blow me away, so I am kind of stuck on it at the moment. It’s also incredibly self-indulgent.
So, there you go: writer writing exclusively for the pure pleasure of it. And: we need those sometimes.
This is a good question, so I am happy to answer it. I don’t have a specific amount of time. It takes me over 5 years to revise a novel so far (I started my current revision, the only one that I haven’t given up on, in July 2015 and I’m still not done with in). In the meantime, I have written five additional first draft novels, which, obviously, I have not started revising yet. I also had about 10 first draft novels before that one. So, basically, I start revising when I’m done with the previous revision.
As far as ideals go, I think I would like to have at least a month. But, for now, it’s going to continue being years… Until I get faster at revision.
INSECURE WRITER’S SUPPORT GROUP
FOUNDED BY
Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh
Twitter is @TheIWSG Hashtag: #IWSG
The awesome co-hosts for the June 2 posting of the IWSG are J Lenni Dorner, Sarah Foster, Natalie Aguirre, Lee Lowery, and Rachna Chhabria!
So, I did not get done as much as I would have liked this week. Once again, I ended up working on covers. I had meant to do website and platform work — specifically figuring out new playlists for my Sunday streams and resuming the website class I am taking through Udemy, but I guess those are still on hold. June and July will be revision months, and probably August, too — at least the first part of August, because I am going to a writer’s retreat then, and that is perfect for revision. And three months really isn’t too long for revision. I should really do it almost every month, really.
Anyway, so that was that week, derailed a bit by overtime at the day job. This coming week should be more productive since I won’t have the extra overtime.
I write these on the Sunday before they go live, so today is actually Mother’s Day, and I am looking forward to visiting my mom (which I do every weekend anyway) and spending time with her. I hope all the mothers who read this had a lovely day as well!
Bright blessings!
Just a weekly update again this week. I am working on setting up the post for the Storytime Blog Hop next week, so this one is short. Also trying to make progress on my revision of Cipher. I haven’t finished Katherine Neville’s book, The Eight, yet, but I am about half-way through and it is quite good. But it does mean I don’t have a review for you yet. It will have to be next month.
Happy writing and reading, everyone!
So, another long, tiring week at work, and not much done to show for it. But I will share the current covers anyway — these were made last year. Since this is an #IWSG post, it’s possible other people will see — these are just my very first attempts at this sort of thing, so feel free to offer any feedback and/or tell me which one(s) you like most.
The story is about a woman who is a funeral director whose husband has just died. She is preparing his body when something exceptional occurs. It’s not romance and there is a paranormal element. It’s connected to my Hazel Kanetzki series of cozy paranormal mysteries, but it is not a mystery itself.
Oh boy. This is a can of worms, isn’t it? Absolutely. I don’t deliberately add controversial topics, but they end up sneaking in because I mainly want to write what doesn’t exist yet. I love reading, but when I write, I want to write what I want to read but can’t find. And so that leads into what I personally and uniquely find missing, which, by definition means it’s not the usual.
And I have the problem where I like to read, and therefore write, in many different genres. At least, I have heard that is a problem. People searching on my name might run into drastically different stuff, so my Also Boughts are going to be a mess… Assuming I even get something finished.
My riskiest novel is one that has been set aside. It is a retelling of Snow White. The step-mother is only a few years older than Snow White, and the prince is her former lover who curses her, and unleashes insanity (basically the archetypal world warping everyone into archetypes — so it forces the step-mother into the evil stepmother role, for example). So all three of them are slowly going insane. It’s written in alternating first person from these three unreliable narrators. I want to get back to it at some point, but not sure when I will. Oh, and then there’s the idea (not even a first draft yet) of the sister of an abused girl who frames the abuser of serial killers and goes insane as she begins to become addicted to killing… Um, yeah. That one might never get written.
Even when I am in more mainstream genres, like the aforementioned cozy mysteries, I find myself wanting to play with the tropes and avoid the most common things (on the other hand, as far as tropes go, I love vampires, just not vampire romances, or at least not the typical brooding/protective male vampire with human female romances).
I think I am starting to ramble here, though, so I will leave you with these oh-so-amateur book covers!
INSECURE WRITER’S SUPPORT GROUP
FOUNDED BY
Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh
Twitter is @TheIWSG Hashtag: #IWSG
Thanks to our awesome co-hosts for the April 7 posting of the IWSG! PK Hrezo, Pat Garcia, SE White, Lisa Buie Collard, and Diane Burton!
So this week has been all about the covers. Last week-end, during my stream, I finished XIX – The Sun and realized, wow, that means I only have two left before the Majors are done. And since I’d already been adjusting the covers I made previously, I decided to go ahead and start making covers for the Major collection. Obviously, I will also need to revise them and format them, and in other ways make the stories themselves good enough for publication, but since March is covers month, well, there you go.
But I am still getting feedback on the covers for the Hazel Kanetzki short story, so here are the four I made for the title Grief’s Thorn. To be honest, these are definitely not my favorites, but hopefully will show my process of learning.
So, there you go. Next week, I will have the next Tarot flash fiction piece up! Have a great week, everyone!