Rock N Rolling With It

Fall is in the air, and today was proof of it. We had frost last night, and Son and I just about froze at the bus stop despite wearing our spring/fall jackets.

It was still rather crisp at 10 a.m., when I decided to get myself offline, get my favorite hoodie on, dig out the old MP3 player and get outside for a bit. I wanted to capture some of the fall foliage with the camera, so it turned into a walk down to the stream and back, about 10 minutes each way.

It's not very colorful down this way. Our summer came late, so did the warmer weather, and things have been thrown way off. We do have some colors this year, but things are either still green or going straight to brown for the most part.

Some of the plants growing alongside of the road are brighter than the trees this year so far...

But that's okay. I still got out of the house for a bit, reset my brain from "online mode" to "offline/relaxing mode" and enjoyed the crisp, sweet smelling air.

This gorgeous flower is in full bloom, down by the stream. I saw it and couldn't help taking photos of it...

I was so invigorated when I got into the house, that I opened up the windows, and booted up Word. I was planning on working on the rest of the supporting cast and other names today, but things got a little... weird....

It seems that I'm not completely burned out as an author after all. It took seven months of being ill, stressed out, and other things, but I'm finally over that hump and back into things.. I hope.

Yes, the drought seems to be over finally... "Thirteen" officially has a main manuscript file, and there is one complete scene in it, the opener.... And the second one was started.

I don't remember much about the time I was writing that first scene. It's a bit of a blur... But it looks okay for an ultra rough draft so far, and it is within what I wanted for it... I may add or remove stuff from it over time, but that's normal. I got its rough draft started and hopefully something will come out of this, I do not want this to be just a trickle and stop again... I want to keep writing.

It felt awesome to be writing again, even if it was only 600 words. It's better than nothing, right?

At this point, I think I have most of the main players picked out... I have a few other things to create and name, but I can do that once I'm a little more into this one. I just hope some of my pals are up to brainstorming names for different things with me when the time is right...

I did get a few things done with some of the character bios, notably the leading male and some of the supporting cast even though writing took over the research and setting personality traits and so forth.

If I can get 500 words once a week, I'm going to be happy... Anything is better than not writing!!

Have a great weekend everyone, and if you are celebrating Canadian Thanksgiving, have a wonderful and safe holiday and long weekend!

Thank You Dear Friend! :)

If the rest of the year is as great as today was, 2012 is going to be the best year ever!
A woman I went to school with is now a published author and I happened to run into her while running a few errands today. I was very happy to see her because we don't get a chance to talk a lot in person (we do a lot of our correspondence via Facebook) and we hardly ever get a chance to really talk about anything. We caught up with each other a little bit then talk turned to our mutual love of writing.
From what I understand from her, my writing is not too "graphic" for epublishing with her epublishing house! I guess some of the stuff they've published in the past is more graphic than I would write! So if I decide to go with the epublishing route, I will definitely be sending my work to her publisher first! Funny thing is, I was keeping her publisher under consideration to send my own work to when the time comes... Amazing how things work out like that, isn't it? *SMILING*
This information was a REAL pick me up... As I had stated on a previous blog, I wasn't sure if my work was able to be epublished due to the ultra graphic scenes in spots but apparently what I write is "plain vanilla" to some work by other authors so my work will be fine for this particular publisher to at least consider!
So I'm now thinking of more ideas for ALL of my stories... RH, Untitled #7 and Untitled #6... I may put more graphics into some of the scenes or not but I DO know that what I do have written up for those "adult" scenes is OKAY and not over the top!
I'm still leaving that one scene out that I had 86'ed in Untitled #6 though.. Like I said to my friend and my mentor, pushing the envelope is one thing, but in that scene I had originally written up had pushed it over the edge, blew it up and burned it to ashes! *giggles*
I still haven't gotten around to installing the printer software onto my Pentium so I can print off the full copy of RH's first draft from Professional Write for its rewrite... Unfortunately, Professional Write is NOT compatible with Word, which is the word processor I use, so it's a case of printing it off and retyping it all up in "Version 2.0" in Word on my big computer. I can feel the carpal tunnel syndrome acting up NOW and I haven't really gotten into the rewrite a lot yet! YIKES! *THUD!!!*
Wednesday is my writing day this week... Hopefully I'll get SOME work done on one of my stories, preferably Untitled #7 or RH... Either one would be great as long as I get SOMETHING done and new material added somewhere! LOL
Thank you dearest LS... Your information, knowledge and experiences have really given this aspiring author a real boost! Blessings and love! :)
Have a wonderful week everyone and Happy New Year!
~Veridian~

"Write and Learn": Editing and 86ing...

You live, you learn. And boy did I learn a lesson the other night about certain things... Like which is acceptable for publishing and what isn't.
My mentor P is on the verge of being published via an online site, also known as epublishing. She has waited a VERY long time for this and I know she is beyond ready to become a published author finally!
I had been considering epublishing some of my own work when things were either finished or rewritten, to get my own feet wet in the industry so to speak. BUT after doing some research, I've discovered that my own style of writing isn't exactly what most online publishing companies or even traditional publishers are looking for. Some allow some amount of erotica, others do not allow any at all. If I want to be epublished, I will have to cut out a lot of the more "descriptive" scenes and that will change how the story goes and cut more out that I want to. I may wind up writing a completely new, less "descriptive" and extremely toned down story/novella just for epublishing and getting my feet wet in the industry unless I can find an epublisher who will not mind my style of writing. Which is something I was hoping I wouldn't have to do. I'm nowhere near close to being published at this time so hopefully at least one epublisher who doesn't mind pretty descriptive scenes will come along in the meantime and actually allow me to publish on their site.
You see, some of the scenes in all three stories are classed as "graphic", some are more graphic than one would see in a regular mainstream romance novel. One scene in RH does push the envelope a little bit, which is what I'm hoping to do with all of the stories somewhat to varying degrees. I've gotten good feedback about that particular scene from certain special and trusted friends who have read it. "Hot!" was mostly what I got back from said people.
Untitled #7 will be a tad more toned down but that story is more about a woman's journey in life than romance. Or that's what I'm HOPING it will turn out to be in the end, it's less than 1/4 written at the moment! There are some pretty "descriptive" scenes in it but nothing really over the top or going beyond what is seen in an everyday, mainstream romance novel.
HOWEVER....
Pushing the envelope is one thing, smashing the line between "normal/mainstream" and "not fit for human consumption" is another!
Untitled #6 pushes the envelope in many of its scenes so far... And in one case, literally pushed it so far, it fell over a cliff, crashed, blew up and the remnants burned to nothing but dusty ash.
I had to literally remove several paragraphs of the most graphic, out of this world stuff I had written several years ago, not long after I started working on UT #6. It seemed like it was the right thing to have in that story at the time BUT after reading it again to edit it several years later, I'm thinking it's going waaaaaaaaay too far and have decided to "86" the more graphic descriptions in that particular spot. You, the reader, will know it did happen but it won't be there in Full. GORY. IN YOUR FACE. DETAIL.
I had written it in a way that did allow a quick "chop" just in case I decided to remove it later on. I'm glad I did it that way because fixing that part of it took me less than 5 minutes to do. All I had to do was cut out the most graphic stuff, add in a few words to the next paragraph and go from there. You still know what happens and its aftermath but not exactly how things went down.
I feel a little sheepish knowing I HAD written something like that but as my mentor P says, "You write, you learn." She is so right on that! After having her give me advice about writing COUNTLESS times, (which I thank her for!) I am going to do what she's suggesting and with that particular scene especially, go the "less is more" route. Sometimes one doesn't need a fully described scene to get the point across, especially with the love scenes part of things!
I'm going to be working on things today but not sure which story I'll be tackling just yet. The rewrite for RH is starting to bug me but I have several ideas for Untitled #7 that are slapping me upside of the head. I'll update if anything happens here. Things will be described in more detail on my "adult rated blog" for anyone who knows where that is. I'm not giving out the link here either, that url is only for very special and trusted people and it is under a completely different name anyway.
Have a great Wednesday everyone and if you're a CSI addict like I am, there IS a new episode on this evening!
~Veridian~