Monday, August 27, 2012
1 Night Stand: Reality TV and the 1Night Stand and a GIVEAWAY!
1 Night Stand: Reality TV and the 1Night Stand: by Virginia Nelson The strangest things can inspire stories. Sitting with my teenage daughter and her best friend, a reality TV...
Thursday, August 23, 2012
I lied...and why you should know your muse.
I will NOT be over at the 1Night Stand blog today. It got moved to Monday. But the contest is still running to win a free copy of Taking Control over at Heather Long's blog (come talk chocolate and sex with us) and you've still got the fantastic blog over at Wendi Zwaduk's blog to comment on so...
Enjoy those and more blog hopping to come.
Till then, I figured I would talk about what I wrote yesterday.
I wrote complete crap. It was almost four thousand words, all told, of total garbage.
I deleted the whole thing.
Yesterday the weight of the world seemed heavier than it should. I've had a rough *cough sputter choke* August and not really allowed myself to deal with most of it emotionally. I just chugged along, head down and shoulders tight, plowing through one problem after the next like I was a...
Plow.
None of it got me down. I cried exactly once through all of it. Once. And it wasn't for any of the bad stuff. It was when one of my crit partners read the first twelve chapters of The Were, The Witch and The Baby and said it was "magickal." That broke me. That out of all the dogshit, something good came, broke me.
For a minute. Then hunched shoulders again and back to plowing.
Tuesday was hard. Wednesday...I think something shattered a little inside. I spent the whole day just really wanting to sleep. To go off and dream of things that had nothing to do with reality.
Nobody picked up on the fact that I was buried in a deep and overwhelming darkness yesterday. Nobody, that is, but my crit partner. She read my chaps from yesterday and asked if I was okay.
It showed in the work. My voice wasn't there. It was writing and it was passable but it was hollow and it was empty and...
I didn't realize it showed. I thought I could do what I usually do and bury how I felt in the work. In this case, for the very perceptive, it was screaming off the page.
(Note: That the same crit partner said my voice is normally ebullient was a thrill. Oh, flattery. It will get you everywhere especially if you toss around words like ebullient.)
This morning, I deleted most of what I wrote yesterday. Rereading it, I could see the hollow ring to the words and how it wasn't me.
The point of all this oversharing is two-fold.
First off, don't be afraid to delete. I stole a picture off the fantastic Kelli Collin's facebook that said in large print, Editing. In smaller print it said something like, "Making your contribution to literature." The image? A finger poised over the delete button. Sometimes, everyone writes crap. Shit happens. *snerk*
Second, although writing can be crazy cathartic and cleanse your soul in a way nothing else can...sometimes it isn't. Sometimes you are gonna have a day where you are just better off NOT writing. Yesterday was one of those days for me. I refused to take the day off (Take the day off. *snort* Who DOES that?) and because of it, I wasted my time. I probably wasted my crit partner's time because I wrote crap. Everyone would have still had that time if I just listened to my gut, put on my shoes and gathered my kids and went for a walk rather than working. We could have had a picnic. We could have done lots of soul cleansing stuff.
Instead, I sat, drowned in my darkness and tried to be a blockhead and work through it.
Some days, you can't.
Know your muse. If she is screaming that she is done--that too much has happened and she is drowning--give her the day off.
Happy Writing!
Enjoy those and more blog hopping to come.
Till then, I figured I would talk about what I wrote yesterday.
I wrote complete crap. It was almost four thousand words, all told, of total garbage.
I deleted the whole thing.
Yesterday the weight of the world seemed heavier than it should. I've had a rough *cough sputter choke* August and not really allowed myself to deal with most of it emotionally. I just chugged along, head down and shoulders tight, plowing through one problem after the next like I was a...
Plow.
None of it got me down. I cried exactly once through all of it. Once. And it wasn't for any of the bad stuff. It was when one of my crit partners read the first twelve chapters of The Were, The Witch and The Baby and said it was "magickal." That broke me. That out of all the dogshit, something good came, broke me.
For a minute. Then hunched shoulders again and back to plowing.
Tuesday was hard. Wednesday...I think something shattered a little inside. I spent the whole day just really wanting to sleep. To go off and dream of things that had nothing to do with reality.
Nobody picked up on the fact that I was buried in a deep and overwhelming darkness yesterday. Nobody, that is, but my crit partner. She read my chaps from yesterday and asked if I was okay.
It showed in the work. My voice wasn't there. It was writing and it was passable but it was hollow and it was empty and...
I didn't realize it showed. I thought I could do what I usually do and bury how I felt in the work. In this case, for the very perceptive, it was screaming off the page.
(Note: That the same crit partner said my voice is normally ebullient was a thrill. Oh, flattery. It will get you everywhere especially if you toss around words like ebullient.)
This morning, I deleted most of what I wrote yesterday. Rereading it, I could see the hollow ring to the words and how it wasn't me.
The point of all this oversharing is two-fold.
First off, don't be afraid to delete. I stole a picture off the fantastic Kelli Collin's facebook that said in large print, Editing. In smaller print it said something like, "Making your contribution to literature." The image? A finger poised over the delete button. Sometimes, everyone writes crap. Shit happens. *snerk*
 |
| Know your muse...Sometimes, she is screaming for a break. |
Instead, I sat, drowned in my darkness and tried to be a blockhead and work through it.
Some days, you can't.
Know your muse. If she is screaming that she is done--that too much has happened and she is drowning--give her the day off.
Happy Writing!
Monday, August 20, 2012
Heather Long: Chocolate and Sex with Guest Blogger Virginia Nels...
Heather Long: Chocolate and Sex with Guest Blogger Virginia Nels...: Heather, first off, I want to say thanks for having me on the blog today. Secondly, I want to thank you for inspiring o...
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Wendi Zwaduk - Romance to make your heart race: Sexing Up TV with Virg Nelson
Wendi Zwaduk - Romance to make your heart race: Sexing Up TV with Virg Nelson: Sex, snark and drama. Three things that make reality television so very fascinating. Everyone has their own guilty pleasure. How man...
Six Sentence Sunday-The Were, The Witch and the Baby
So, this is not a sexy sneak peek. Just a heads up. This is a scary kinda one. This is that moment in Raiders of the Lost Arc when Willy gets covered in bugs kind of creepy. You were totally warned.
Without further ado, my six!
Without further ado, my six!
Like a wave of black,
more and more ants swarmed up her legs, her arms, biting even as she fought to
brush them off.
Standing, she tried
harder to remove them but for every ant she succeeded in disrupting, ten more
took their place.
A scream squeaked past
her throat, cut off as the ants made it to her face.
Sweating, not in
passion now but in terror, she tried to calm her breathing. Still frantically trying to dislodge the
angry insects, she hop stepped and kept brushing at them.
Until she stumbled over
the edge of the roof.
I almost feel bad that I did that to a character.
Almost. Wanna know how Lyric got into this mess? You'll have to wait till The Were, The Witch and The Baby releases ;)
Happy writing!!
Friday, August 17, 2012
Where I've been hiding...a new release and blog hopping!!
So, without going too deeply into it, I've not been blogging. My father had a stroke and otherwise life started hurling lemons at me like we were playing dodgeball.
Life was winning for a minute but now I'm back and I'm bringing you a new release.
That's right, my long awaited 1Night Stand released today!!
Blurb:
Looking
for Love...
To celebrate this new release, I'll be blog hopping to some awesome author's blogs. First off, you can find me Sunday over at Wendi Zwaduk's blog talking sex and overdone dramatics. Then Monday you'll find me popping in on Heather Long's blog. On the 23rd, (next Thursday) I will be visiting the 1Night Stand blog to talk reality TV and the 1Night Stand.
More to come but that is where we are firing it all off. I would love if you could pop over to the blogs and leave a comment. If you read Taking Control, drop me an email and let me know what you think. Nothing is better than talking books.
Well, chocolate and sex...but we'll save that for the blog tour.
Happy Writing!!
Life was winning for a minute but now I'm back and I'm bringing you a new release.
That's right, my long awaited 1Night Stand released today!!
Blurb:
Looking
for Love...
When
she got voted off "Find Your Hubby," a reality tv gameshow, Mellie
gave up on finding love.
In
all the wrong places...
Everyone
knows that you are more likely to get hit by lightning than find a husband once
you’re 40. Using the last of her winnings in a spur of the moment fling, she
pays for a matchmaking service that offers you the perfect person-For One Night
Only.
Can
you buy passion?
When
the 'perfect person' they find her is a woman, she first questions their
selection service...Then her own desires.
Grab your copy today:
More to come but that is where we are firing it all off. I would love if you could pop over to the blogs and leave a comment. If you read Taking Control, drop me an email and let me know what you think. Nothing is better than talking books.
Happy Writing!!
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Winners to the Hero Hop!!
Congrats to The Brunette Librarian, the winner of the copy of The Accidental Pirate!! Check your email for your prize :)
As to the grand prizes, I've just heard from Carrie Ryan...
After over 8,000 comments our Hero
Hop has some grand prize winners!!
Congrats!
Grand Prize Winners:
Kindle Fire Winner:
Michele Ann Oboyle
(from Carrie Anne
Brownian’s Blog)
$50 Amazon Gift Card:
Daphne Deaton
(from Kristine Cayne’s
Blog)
Swag Pack:
Jan
D
(from Karen McCullough’s Blog)
Thanks to everyone who played along with us!!