Certainly story ideas can come out of nowhere, but I find that mine often come from conversations with friends. One recent idea cropped up over sushi the other day, and I think that it has fleshed itself out into a decent short story. Here's vaguely how the conversation went.

Friend: "So how's your writing going?"
Me: "Pretty good. I've got two books published now, one under contract, one submitted, and another book that I've written, but haven't read yet."
Friend: "Wait, you have a book that you've written, but never read?"
Me: "Well, I've read parts of it of course, but I've just never read the whole thing start to finish."
Friend: "That's a great title for a story."
Me: "What is?"
Friend: "The Book I've Written, but Never Read."

We then spend the next twenty minutes or so throwing around plot ideas that might fit the title. Friends can be a great source of inspiration, and I hope that I've done their title proud. I'll be sending it out to the Writers of the Future Contest soon, and I'll update as events warrant.

Keep Writing and Edit On.
I Write, I Edit, I Write Again. Witness!
We're Making Better Words, All of Them, Better Words.
I Write to Burn Off the Crazy.

So, I've been going over some of my older short stories lately and I'm conflicted as what to do with them. On the one hand, I hate to get rid of something that I spent so much time and effort on. On the other hand, my writing from a few years ago is sh-much less good than it is now. Is is wise to spend time trying to revamp these stories for publication? Should I just let them go and write entirely new stories, possibly with a similar concept?

I know that writing is sometimes about "killing your darlings", and I'm not even really sure that these stories can be considered my "darlings", but I am in the process of reworking and revitalizing one of the stories for publication. I still think there are some decent nuggets of writing in there even if I have to nuke most of the story to get to them. So in a way I guess I'm falling back on the motto, reduce, reuse, recycle. It may be an even more difficult task to meld the old with the new as opposed to just starting from scratch, but I'm willing to give it a try at least once.

Keep Writing and Edit On.
I Write, I Edit, I Write Again. Witness!
We're Making Better Words, All of Them, Better Words.
I Write to Burn Off the Crazy.

So this week I am trying something new based on the recommendation of Brooke Warner from over at SheWrites, who gave an excellent free webinar last night through NaNoWriMo entitled Green-light It: Publish Successfully! promoting her new book of a similar title. Now, I have heard this advice many times before, but it fell on deaf ears. Let me explain what the advice was, why I didn't listen before, and why I am listening to it now.

The advice was to solicit for e-mails on my blog. I haven't done this in the past for several reasons. First, I thought that it was intrusive and that I had no right to ask people for their e-mail. Second, I thought that I didn't have any reason to need a person's e-mail since my site has a contact form and people are able to comment on my blog posts. Third, I thought that I had no worthwhile content to send someone that they couldn't see via Facebook.

Well, I now see the error of my mistake as they say. Asking for someone's email address is something that people do almost everyday and totally not invasive unless you force them to give it to you, say before they can view the content of your website. Also, sure my blog readers can get in touch with me via my contact sheet or by commenting on a blog post, but that doesn't mean that I can reach out to them in any way with important news like book release dates or author events or cons I'll be attending, which is useful content that I can send them. Now I will still be posting such things on Facebook and Twitter (and Pinterest when I remember), but social media is fleeting, and when you have over 200 FB friends, a lot of stuff gets lost in the feeds of new babies, cute cats, and pics of people on vacation in interesting places.

So there it is, what I'm doing, why I haven't done it before, and why I'm doing it now. So if you want to make sure not to miss any important information or dates, please sign up and I promise minimal emails.

Keep Writing and Edit On.
I Write, I Edit, I Write Again. Witness!
We're Making Better Words, All of Them, Better Words.
I Write to Burn Off the Crazy.

So, hate to write posts that aren't uplifting, but I was pretty affected by Confusion this year in a not altogether good way. There were a lot other authors there, which is great for networking and talking shop. But this year, for the first time, I felt like a very small fish in a very big speculative fiction pond. It was a particularly difficult emotion to take piggy-backed upon me getting my third book published and finishing my first trilogy. It was an epic moment for me and one that I thought might never happen, and I was so excited to share it with the world!!! And it seemed as if no one really cared, certainly not strangers at a conference filled with other amazing authors. It felt a lot like I'd had my big flash of excitement and I was yesterday's news. It was...I guess I could say, humbling? Not that I felt at all like I'd gotten a swollen head, but maybe I had. That is one logical explanation for how awful I felt after the convention, that I'd become full of myself off of my two-book success. Whatever the reason, as an author I have discovered the need to constantly stave off the disappointment of other people not caring about my writing, or worse, caring about it but not liking it. The best way of staving off this disappointment? Do know yet, but I'll get back to you.

Keep Writing and Edit On.
I Write, I Edit, I Write Again. Witness!
We're Making Better Words, All of Them, Better Words.
I Write to Burn Off the Crazy.