Don't force the shoes to fit.

It amazes me the amount of people willing to shove their foot into a smaller shoe just because they like the shoe or they are ashamed to admit their actual shoe size, or even worse, just because the shoe is on sale! I imagine that they must feel very uncomfortable walking around wearing a six and a half when they wear a size eight. The same goes for writing and character actions. If you make the characters do things that are out of character your readers will be uncomfortable.

Dialog

I took a college fiction writing class at a community college last semester. It was actually more like a fiction reading class with a splash of writing thrown in, since we only did three or four writing assignments and we read about twenty stories. I took this class because I believe you can learn something from everyone, but I learned nothing in this class. Well, nothing the teacher taught me. For our first writing assignment we were told to write a 300 word story that was character vs. nature, character vs. the world, or character vs. supernatural. I went against my better judgement and took the easy way out. I wrote a courtroom scene that was mostly dialog. I thought my teacher would run screaming away from anything I actually wanted to write. I had to filter my writing for fear of being feared. Even tame fiction can be twisted into something that it's not. What I mean is, because of all the violence, school shootings, etc., I was afraid to write a story that I might actually like. An innocent piece of werewolf fiction could be frowned upon in a school setting because of the violent content. When my teacher graded the paper she wrote, "Too much dialog, and it's boring." Maybe not in those words, but she wrote them. The next assignment I turned in had maybe two sentences of dialog, but I wrote more along the lines of what I wanted to write (well, the paper was based on a photograph the teacher had chosen for us). My teacher did enjoy that assignment more, but she didn't love it. For the last assignment we were given a 1000 word limit and no boundries, so I finally decided to write about something I actually wanted to write about. I picked a topic that was more tame than werewolves, but was still something that interested me. This time my teacher actually loved it. I wonder if I had just wrote what I wanted in the first place if I would have actually learned something else.

The struggle to keep characters fresh

I think one of the biggest struggles any author faces is keeping the characters fresh. In your head you think of all these actions you want your characters to carry out, but if your not careful you can make flat characters, or even worse, annoying ones. Today I feel like I need to take a look at my characters. I need to make sure that they are all speaking with their own voices and all have different personalities.

Some nights I don't feel like writing.

Some nights, mostly those that come after a long day at work, I don't feel like writing. By the time I get home I'm tired and I'm sick of people and I just want to take a nap, but sometimes I manage to force myself to write. On those nights I don't write anything profound, just a couple of words, but at least I've written something. Tonight is one of those nights, and I'm about to try to force myself to write a few words.

Could writing a book cause me to lose interest in reading?

In the past I couldn't wait to take a trip to Barnes and Noble. I loved browsing the shelves and looking for something new to read. Today I visited Barnes and Noble and walked away empty handed. It's not the first time that I've walked away from the bookstore, but it is the first time I didn't see anything that held my interest. I try to squeeze in writing time on a daily basis, but I have been neglecting my reading list. The only books I've even picked up in the past few months are Double Dexter and Angel Ink. I'm sure this is just a phase and it'll pass, but I hope it passes soon.

Blurbs and about me

As I prepare to write those two little words, the end, I realize that I'm missing something. I don't have a blurb for my soon to be released novel. What's even worse is whenever I sit down to write one I end up staring at a blank page for thirty minutes. How is it possible that I can't think of a summary? I know my novel better than anyone, and I work in sales, so it should be easy to type out a short summary. What's even worse is the about me section. Am I so dull that I can't think of a single thing to say about myself? Maybe. Maybe I just don't like talking about myself.

Go Fund Me...

I know a lot of people probably won't agree with me, but I am sick of seeing the gofundme.com posts in my facebook feed. I know a lot of people set them up for valid reasons, such as care for their special needs children, but some people who are setting them up could easily help themselves. I have no issue with the people who are using gofundme.com to help their children, I'm annoyed by the people who are using this as an excuse not to work. I recently saw one that said one part time job isn't cutting it. Why can't the person who made that get a second part time job, a full time job, or a better job? I know it's hard to find jobs, but right now a lot of people are hiring seasonal workers. It shouldn't be incredibly hard to find a job. I also know that it's hard working two jobs. I've done so myself, more than once. Whenever I go through hard times I find a second job, or do whatever I can to get myself out of that situation. I don't have kids though. It would be different if the people asking for money had kids, but they don't. I can understand wanting to provide a great Christmas, but what I can't understand is someone who is completely healthy and capable of working a second job, or looking for a better one, but they ask for money instead. Why should I give you my money? I work pretty hard for my money, and I know I can't understand your point of view. I work when I need money, and I am also enrolled in school. I know that I'm not supposed to judge, but it is hard for me to understand why someone who is only working part time wouldn't seek another job. I would feel ashamed to ask online strangers to give me money. That's just my two cents, I'm sure not everyone agrees with me. I just felt like I had to get that off my chest. I do think gofundme.com is a great tool, if used right and not abused.

Being almost, but not quite there...

The end isn't always the end. Even after the happily ever afters, there's always something you've missed. I'm there now, finished but not quite finished with my zombie novel. Everytime I let my novel sit I think of something else to add. Sometimes it gets frustrating, but I guess that's because I've been working on the zombie novel on and off for over a year. I feel like it should be done, but it isn't. I keep second guessing myself. I ask myself things about the characters and the story itself. Sometimes I delete whole paragraphs or even pages. I guess I just feel like my story should be perfect, and there's no way it will be. There's no such thing as a perfect novel. There's no way that I'm going to make everyone happy with my novel, I just have to get used of that and write the story I want to read.