130. I step out of the ordinary ...

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Happy Saturday everyone. I'm actually in a really great mood today. Not that I'm not on other days, but I'm in an especially good mood today. I'm getting some things done, and I wrote a little bit last night, so I'm happy about that. The past few days hadn't been that productive writing wise with some outside influences taking my focus away. so last night, I decided to write a little something to just get back into it, so I can try to tackle one of my WIP's today. You can see my short ficlet over at my fiction blog. I possibly even want to start on my WIP for Shivers because the more I think on the idea, the more I like it. It's just finding the time to write it! I have three other WIP's at the moment. One is on hiatus, Crash into me, and the third tentatively titled, For hire. That one is actually fairly short, so I can probably wrap that up in short time. Crash into me has a bit of ways to go yet. last night, I did finish one of my book review assignments, and I should have Guilty Pleasures finished reading wise today as well. I just need to write the reviews themselves, and submit them to their respective sites.

Today in my daily blog hop travels, I found two very interesting posts. One by Kelly and the other by Monica

In her post, Kelly talks about voice and style, and how we create them. Voice seems to be innate. It is a part of you, who you are, your experiences in life create this voice that is uniquely your own. No one else has lived your life, but you. So one else is going to sound just like you. Some may try to imitate, but are they really imitating your voice? No, I think they are imitating your style. Kelly asked an interesting in her post about style and how that is created. Is our style picked up from the books of others we read? Do those authors we read over and over again help us develop our own style?

I wonder what this says about me because growing up I used to read a majority of novels in the horror genre. Books by Rice, King, and Koontz dominated my reading, right along side the romances I read. I think style is picked up by books we read. I'm reminded of something I've heard over and over, and I mentioned this in the comments to Kelly's post. You learn how to write by reading the works of others. the more you read, the more you learn, and then in time the more you write the more you improve on those skills. You can write similar in style to someone, but you can't sound just like them because you have your own voice.

Moving on to Monica's post. Monica discusses the struggle to making a living as a genre fiction writer, and what it takes in order to do it. Simply put, it takes busting ass, as Monica says. you need to be able to get things done. You need to be able to produce words, and those words you do produce have to be good. They have to entertain. You need to be able to write all the time, and keep writing. I write both fiction and nonfiction, and I'm trying to make a name for myself with both. I know the nonfiction might be easier to make money with. I could focus solely on that, and try to make a go at it, but when it comes right down to it, I started as a writer all those years ago because I loved telling stories.

Sometimes busting your ass to get things done, you need to make the unpopular decisions. You need to be able to make the tough choice because the only person that can write is you. No one else. No one can make you sit at the computer and type those words in your head because they are in your head. No one else's. This month, I took a step back from a lot of things I do online. I knew I had a lot I wanted to accomplish this month, and hopefully start a pattern that could continue in future months. Some of my stepping back was perceived as me getting rid of my online friends, ditching them in a sense. /when in fact, I'm right where I've always been. I'm still here. I'm just not as accessible via IM's. I update my blog everyday. No change there. I'm not going to let it stop me from doing what I need to do. Because yes I plan on busting my ass to get it done. Plain and simple.

I usually don't do this, but I've been listening to this song over and over this week. A good song, so I spent the time while writing this post up to upload this song on my slow dial-up because I wanted to share it all with you. Proud by Heather Small was played on Queer as Folk this past Sunday, and it was also played in the opening episode of the show. It's a real positive reaffirming song. You can see the lyrics here, and download the song here. It's got a good beat to it, and I love the lyrics. So if you decide to download, enjoy!

Quick edit - 9:30pm: for some reason, blogger seems to like randomly disabling comments on my entries. I didn't even realize it had done so with this post until just now. It's been fixed.