I Can Do It On My Own

I am not published, but have written some fanfics and short stories...poems that are on certain sites on the web. I have learned many things about writing...some the easy way and others...not so much.

For those writers out there who believe that you can do it all one your own....you are very wrong. I don't mean that you have to have a co-author (I write without one as well)...to find one as good as mine is to me would be a long stretch (not that there isn't ones out there) what I mean is someone who can be your eyes...catch things that you miss, right wrongs that might not be physically possible, tell you if your timeline isn't just a bit off, and just be that voice of reason that tells you if your character might be a little too much of a drama queen or if the words you are using aren't up to par.

We all have a different way of writing. Some of us like just saying it is hot...others need twenty five words before we get our point across...but we all need a voice of reason. So...don't do it on your own...get a beta reader or just a friend....someone that loves your work as much as you do...and who you don't mind tearing into said work, being honest, and realizing that they are doing it to better you as a writer.....trust me, it's worth it. Laters, Gators...

Quote to think on.....

"Never confuse trust with convenience." Me

There is a reason...

As a writer, I have learned that not just everyone should look at your search history. With things like major arteries, collapsible sniper rifles, and kinds of explosives, one could really wonder what exactly might be going on. Of course, this is in light of the three prior items, which trust me isn't much better.

In reality, one might think I was going to war or then there are the other like blood letting, assassination methods, and the ever popular Jack the Ripper legend, where the ideas of me being a psychotic killer could come to mind. What's funny is that my husband takes it all with a grain of salt knowing that it's not the ranting of an insane woman out to seek revenge on a cruel world or a blood crazed freak in need of another gory fix. It is just me doing what I do best. Search out the web to better my stories and hope to God no one thinks I am anything or everything I have said above.

I am a writer....I promise...no matter what that little devil on my shoulder says to you....don't believe anything he tells you...I know I don't. (wink)

Nothing is true....

"...Everything is permitted."

For any of you familiar with that phrase, you probably know what this post is about. A wonderful series of video games known as Assassin's Creed, where the future meets the past in an array of blood and glory all at the point of a handsome hooded man and his hidden blade. This is what my diet has been for the last few days and it has become quite apparent in my dreams.

Picture if you will a mysterious man in a white robe who can kill someone before they even realize he is there. He's a champion of the people even though he doesn't chose to be and can leap from high towers to land in a stack of hay all around the cry of a bird of prey. His voice is sultry and rough and his demeanor worthy of dangerous, but all hidden deep in unbridled sex appeal.

Someone asked if my dreams had been good and I have to say yes, mixing the fighting assassin's that already plague my mind, her long red hair falling around her shoulder as Altair pulls him to her in a hidden and forbidden embrace. Or as they dance, lights of fires catching blades as the two do battle neither able to kill each other, but betraying their own people to remain together.

And as the game winds down and I realize that this passage soon will be at an end, I have hope that the next will continue to spur these dreams and images as I allow my fingers to write them down and play in a word where hooded men run on rooftops and take leaps of faith into my heart....

Quote to live by....

"Sometimes the best way to deal with reality.....is to create your own."

Sleep Deprived Writings

Caution, this is so not something one should do....especially when writing with a co author.

As much as I love my Muse, (see below post) I have come to find that not enough sleep makes a good idea become a bad idea in five seconds flat. And my fingers tend to go on auto pilot, which can lead to all kind of screwy debauchery. Especially half thoughts and bad choices in words. Thankfully, when writing, nothing is set in stone and the mistakes of a bad night are easily rectified by a couple clackings of the keyboard and the excessive use of the delete button.

Still, I offer this to a certain person out there who has to put with me and sometimes I am sure would like to brandish his shotgun my way. Thanks for not blowing my head off with Mathilda. You know who you are.....

An a'MUSE'ing complaint

A Muse...something or someone that encourages or inspires someone to write, also the name for which most writer's coin their creative spark. All in all, the Muse is an important part of a writer's lifestyle.

So here is where the problem arises. Mine won't shut up. I love her to death, but when it comes to the need for sleep, she continues to talk through the night telling me all the other things i could be doing. One of her biggest flaws (or mine) is I flitter to several different ideas and never quite stay on one. Especially when she is in overdrive.

It's not that I don't like her or wish her to be gone, but a little slower would be nice. Please....and sleep...oh, sleep is a powerful thing and I still devote half the night to her. LOL!

Just a Babble

Figured I best post something since well, I was one...bored, that happens in my life from time to time especially when I'm tired and coughing and my kids are busy watching something while my hubby is out workin' his muscles....and two, I feel like typing about nothing in particular, a feat that if you ask my co author from Canada, he'll tell you that is one thing I am excel at...that and annoying him with strange questions that come from maybe just a wee bit too much sugar and not a whole helluva a lot of sleep. The latter though I assure you is so not my fault.

I had every intention to go to be early, but my blasted cough kept me up until I finally downed enough drugs to sedate a Brahma bull. Midnight and my body decided to go to sleep. For all of three minutes....before I heard....'Momma, it's Carol...your daughter...it's your daughter.' My stupid neighbor's across the street...their drunk daughter came home screaming at the top of her lungs, crying like she was going to die if her mother didn't open the door. Is it wrong of me to have wanted to slam her headfirst into the brick of her mother's house. Finally, after about fifteen minutes of this, the mother opened the door (God, did I feel sorry for her) and let the whining brat inside. And this girl is older than me...I bet at least in her forties. She has been carted to the hospital for drug overdose like five times since she's been living with her mom. That was in July, people.

Anyway, after that, the lull of my hubby's breathing and the wind blowing through what's left of the leaves on my tree, my body decided it was now ready to sleep. Well, at least for another few hours, until that blasted cough woke me up. Here's hoping my co author don't want to kill me tonight. We write until two, but I do have a whole two liter of Pepsi. More sugar and caffeine should drive my mind crazy.....and my partner even more so.....Laters, Gators....

http://www.suvudu.com/freelibrary/

Has Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K. Hamilton for a free downloadable ebook. Definitely worth checking out ya'll.

Quote for you to think on....

Judge not, for do we not all have dark

secrets we would rather leave buried in graveyards of denial?!

and they say night is meant for the things that go bump

and the things that scare and horrify,

but i like the night and the dark and the things that go bump

so I pray tell which am I?

Why I Write

Wow! What a question to be asked at seven in the morning, but this was what was sent by a friend to my email. She is doing a little survey among a few of us that are aspiring authors...I believe that if you write anything that is yours and yours alone, published or not, you're a writer. Anyway, here goes my answer and if you don't follow it, is okay. My mind is kind of like those 3D pictures that were popular a million years ago, where you had to relax your eyes to see the image...well, in my mind's case, most of the time you have to be either completely drunk or nuts to understand it...most of my friends will tell you both helps tons.

Why I write...in the seventh grade, my mind began to wander down paths and into worlds that it ought not to when trying to learn math and science. I began creating characters in my mind since the rest of my imagination had been bottled up by moving to a new city and trying like hell to fit in. Gators, this girl couldn't fit into a mental ward, but try as I might, nothing seemed to work to stifle the caged beast from slipping out and making me miss the lessons my teachers were teaching.

Finally, one of the teachers I will always remember forever...Mrs. Moore, my seventh grade English teacher handed me a notebook and said three words that have forever changed my life..."WRITE IT DOWN." Never has better words been spoken to this little girl, who could never really find her place in the world to call her own. So, I made a world of my own.

With the quickness of my pen, I began to spin the webs of creativity, be it a poem about death, coffee, or just walking in a forest...to a full blown story about a heroine in search of her prince or crazed man with a shotgun, whichever the case may be. Notebooks filled with ideas that overtook me and flowed from my mind to my fingers like water from a faucet.

It has been more than fifteen years since that day, the day my teacher released the caged beast out on to paper and now, on to screen with the advancement of computers and Word...and the fact I can afford a laptop. Still, the mind continues its rants and though I have found quite a nice place to remain for a season or two, my place will always be in the stories I write. They are not only my blood...they are my soul bore out upon the sheets that soon will be tossed by the winds of change.

Why do I write you ask...well, the easiest way I can explain is...I write because I must. To silence the voices in my head, to free my imagination from the cage of reality, to search for that one thing that makes me...me. I write, my friends, because in writing, I feel complete. I found my place to belong, even if I had to create it to find it.