#pennedpossibilities 323 — What's a piece of advice for writers that you listened to and are glad for?
I believe it was Marion Zimmer Bradley who said something like writing is 10% talent and 90% practice (or 20% and 80%?).
Anyway, I remembered that. And though I felt I sucked when I started, I kept on writing for fun, and now people who have never met me give my stories 4-5 stars.
#PennedPossibilities 323 — What's a piece of advice for writers that you listened to and are glad for?
Write what you enjoy.
I've followed that for all my writing life. The few times I tried to write for the market, it didn't work - I either didn't finish the book or it twisted away from the idea.
I do try to hit both - and the (relative) success of my Wolf Shifter series shows that I can make it happen, to a degree. (My Shifters are not spicy and don't have Alphas...)
#PennedPossibilities 323 — What's a piece of advice for writers that you listened to and are glad for?
An Australian author, Lucy Sussex, told us at Clarion West 1998 to be shameless in promoting ourselves. Being a shy person, networking and promotion has been a heavy lift, but I working on it and I know it's going to help. Mastodon: ☑️
About a month ago I kind of disappeared from this place. Some personal and family problems threw me out of the writing headspace and keep me busy. Patience is required of which I don't have much. Nothing dangerous though, don't worry. I'm slowly getting back into the writing, at least with microfic.
I think I'll be back in June with a different story, more gritty, fitting my mood. 😉
Eventually I'll find the energy to interact here again.
#pennedpossibilities 322 — What piece of advice, as an author, did you once receive but hadn’t followed? Looking back on it now, you might wish that you had.
Don't switch POV in a scene.
Cocky young me thought, pffff, I can do that, who cares!
It took me weeks later on to fix the issue after I realized what that does to the reader.
#PennedPossibilities 322 — What piece of advice, as an author, did you once receive but hadn’t followed? Looking back on it now, you might wish that you had.
I probably should have learned about writing blurbs a lot earlier. Also should have started building a good newsletter list years ago...
But I cannot change the past.
I can only change what I do now, and I'm working to make those parts of my author business better.
#PennedPossibilities 322 — What piece of advice, as an author, did you once receive but hadn’t followed? Looking back on it now, you might wish that you had.
Advice: Don't only write novels. Write lots of shorter pieces.
When I started I saw that you could only make a living if you sold novels, so I wrote novels. That completely discounted the fabulous practice you get completing lots of smaller stories. Completing a novel takes lots of time and there's a mounting anxiety that in the end the plot will fail or no publisher will be interested. Yeah, true with short fiction, but the investment is far lower (or should be if you're doing it right). There used to be lots of magazines you could sell short fiction to... for pennies a word, but it was something, and it offered a chance to build a brand name and a following. Such notoriety could help you sell novels, too.
#PennedPossibilities#Writing 321 — Did your SC once admire their parents? Who else did they admire growing up? What about today?
No, no, and no.
The narrative characters in two out of three of my books do at the start. SC nope. Their feelings range from hatred to disdain. Family of choice is a big theme in my books. The family we pick because the ones we come from are less than ideal.
#PennedPossibilities 321 — Did your SC once admire their parents? Who else did they admire growing up? What about today?
Laisal admired her parents - patient, caring, strong members of their community. She also admired the Priests and was very happy when she was allowed to become one - hoping to help the entire nation.
Today, she knows that the glowing image of the Priests was nothing but a lie, based on exploiting children.
Did your SC once admire their parents?
(Who else did they admire growing up? What about today?)
Darlene did admire her parents, especially her Father. He was the inly man who could provide the townsmen with all the needed necessities for their life, and never took advantage of that.
But this changed at once right after… (way too many spoilers here) …and it never changed back to how it was before.
#PennedPossibilities 321 — Did your SC once admire their parents? Who else did they admire growing up? What about today?
Caramello admired his mother. He felt loved growing up despite a difficult situation with hostile step siblings and a status as the youngest child of the chieftain that kept children his age away. The chieftain took her as a second wife because he needed help ruling Crab Island; his first wife, though she gave him many children, had him on disaster patrol keeping her from ruining things. The business marriage required a child, Caramello. His mother did everything to protect him while she worked, saw he had a good life and a real childhood, ensured trades folk trained him in fishing and sailing (he admired them, too), and the mainland traders schooled him in letters and numbers. She saw him safely away on the mainland when it looked like a succession bloodbath might start between his siblings. Today, he misses her a lot, and fears the next letter he might receive via ship.
Drusilla's father leaves her, at age 6, to be fostered by Julia Felix in Pompeii. She's lost her mother in the 62 AD earthquake, and now her father's disappearing as well -- because he doesn't want to be hampered by a little girl while he establishes a new business (and life) in nearby, wealthy Herculaneum. Drusilla's only companion for the moment is Invictus, her puppy ... but she becomes friends with Julia's daughter Claudia. Still, she's effectively orphaned for convenience.
—The Latinamerican Tower Earthquake. I was 9. It's called that because the legendary Latinamerican Tower, a building that had resisted many earthquakes fell. It even resisted the return of the lake. Lots of people died and many parts of the city were destroyed. We lost our house and survived by pure luck. Just thinking about this scare me. The tower was rebuilt and made to look exactly as the original…
Taking into consideration that in 12th century, a childhood ended way earlier than today - the loss of her parents. First, Katja's mother died in childbed, then her father due to sickness.
At the funeral for her parents, her mother's best friend, the main antagonist, took the opportunity to make a political statement instead of comforting the MC. Yes, her mother was (secretly) the strongest mortal "mage" of the modern era and the MC shows signs of surpassing her, but what the 4-year-old needed was to be hugged and told it would be alright—not elevated, titled, and given estates to govern.
Ume: "Worst how? The one that sometimes crowds in at me in nightmares, or the most serious one?
I remember my mother yelling at me for something trivial, Making me bow and touch my head to the floor in apology.
There was also the time I was biking off to join my friends and a tree branch fell and hit my bike. I flew off and broke my arm.
The most scary though was the time I told my mother I wanted to be a girl and she looked at me and said that was unacceptable and she never wanted to hear me speak like that again. There was something about her eyes that told me I had ventured too far. It was a look of utter contempt. I hid my feelings till I was able to escape to another country and transition. #Transgender#Transfem
#PennedPossibilities 319
MC POV: Where did you grow up? What was your childhood like there?
Dair Montgomery: We lived in Edinburgh. My da was what they called a hard man; he didn't like that I preferred the company of books and animals to playing football or cricket. My favorite time was the summer; my mum would drive me up to Ballachulish to visit Nanny Kilgour, her mother. Nanny understood me better than anyone; she nurtured my love for nature and learning. I dreaded going back home at the end of the summer.
When I came back from Afghanistan, I was pretty messed up. The only place I'd ever really felt like myself was Ballachulish ... so that's where I went.
#PennedPossibilities — MC POV: Where did you grow up? What was your childhood like there?
Alfie: I grew up on the Endsleigh estate down in Dorset, and even after my father inherited the earldom, my parents chose to remain there. The house is comfortable & compact with none of the big show rooms you find at other grand estates. We've never had a ball at Endsleigh, instead, when my parents host a small party, we roll up the carpet in the sitting room and somebody sits down at the piano.
Ume: "I grew up near Hanno City in Japan. That's near Tokyo. My family used to own farmland out there. Some of it was sold to pay debts and others to pay for vices. Gambling and vanity mainly. I got along with the other kids growing up but never felt like I belonged. After high school, I left as quickly as I could.
Let's see? My parents considered me a problem child. My grandfather never spoke to me after the 5th grade. I wasn't manly enough. The joke was on him, That was because I wasn't a guy at all. The one exception was when he made a deal with me to marry Hanayomi-shin. "If you don't have lumber, bamboo will do." That is how he described me.
Except to go to my grandfather's funeral I haven't seen my family since.
#pennedpossibilities 319 — MC POV: Where did you grow up? What was your childhood like there?
Katja: I grew up in Mainz! A lovely town at the Rhine - it's so beautiful there! My father taught me how to swim and told me stories from his travels, and the house was always filled with sweet smells of spices and foreign goods. But then he died, and my uncle had to take me in, and that was less nice...
But I still love Mainz!
#PennedPossibilities 319 — MC POV: Where did you grow up? What was your childhood like there?
On a farm and in the Fell Woods. I don't remember much about the former, but the latter was both exciting and difficult every day. I chose to live with wolves, which because of my gift better understood me every day. They were still wolves, and they lived and ate like wolves, not humans. I survived despite the dirt, raw meet, living without shelter, and an incredible amount of walking. The wolves cherished the cunning and technology I brought to the pack and helped me find a way. They taught me to hunt. People, I learned much later, like to be touched; contact was natural to wolves, but sadly despite people liking to be touched they don't routinely do so. The whole leaving the wild to attend school has left me with what one of Her Highness' psychologist call species-disphoria. I'm more comfortable living amongst beasts than people because they are so much more friendly and, if not, so much more predictable. I'm sure I'll go back when school's over—despite having a new boyfriend.
My brain writes when it writes.
When it says !TYPE!, my fingers float like butterflies and sting like vivid emotions... because that's where I write from most times.
When it says 'Not now.' I don't force it because like with batteries for electrictonic, you don't over draw the current capacity unless you want shit to break.
#PennedPossibilities 318 — What do you need in your writing space to help you stay focused?
Less is more in this case. That doesn't mean that in a perfect situation I won't suddenly find myself sweeping the floor instead of writing. They don't call it displacement activity for nothing!