Book Reviews are Like Unexpected Rainshowers...

[paragraphs]

Okay that is super corny for a subject line, but it just never seems to fail to happen...whenever I am feeling really stale  and crappy re: my writing, more in the mood to stop writing than pick it up again because once again I've managed to convince myself my writing is crap now, crap crap crap, just am all twisty and frustrated with too many half-ideas and no brain to figure even one out and wanting to do things that I really am not the kind of writer to do, I get a surprise in my mailbox that reminds me of what I *am* good at, and what I really love most.

Thanks Hayley, for the smack in the face.  (The good kind, I promise). 

It is truly strange to read what others pull out of a fic you've written.  The descriptions of my book and what this blogger saw in it make me wonder once again--HOW DID I DO THAT????  I honestly don't know.  In any case, I'm always grateful to get fan letters for this book.  So here it is if anyone wants to peek:

Red

I've got to answer her email and thank her...she asked if the rumors were true (rumors? where the hell are they talking about me, oh my!), am I really writing a sequel? Well, yeah, I started it...and I will now finish it.  LOL especially given I told my temp editor I'd have it done by end of September...meep!   LOL.  It is now mid-July...and I've made NO progress since April. ZIP.

I do worry though--how can I top Red? I think that is part of my problem with working on ballet boy (as I call it) because I know it can't be as good as Red was...and thus, I have let myself stalemate.

So...

Tomorrow morning, at 5:20, I board the bus to take me back to Hamburg Airport to catch my flight back to Fort Worth.  Home--yeah, I guess, but with each passing day, month, year, and with every new time I have with Nick, the less it feels like home. I grew up in Fort Worth, made my married life there, had the kidlets, we still live in the same house we lived in when the spouse died...I have a good job there, 8 years with it in fact...but it is not where I want to be, not anymore.  But...no changes for now can happen, so when I get back, instead of being the mopey banana I was these last nine months (since Nick left Texas until we met up in Hamburg) I am going to cut the crappy attitude and accomplish some things.  

Of course, it is true I got off my butt and lost a hell of a lot of weight (which Nick approved of, yeah baby he said all the right things when he saw me) but now I need to switch all that energy to other things. So, I will.  YES! I WILL! 

To writing, to finding (or founding) a writing group, open-minded people only can apply, thanks, to diving into GIS and seeing if that is the direction I want to go career wise and if not, figuring out something else because my job is extremely specific to BNSF Rwy and as such, is impossible to transfer anywhere else. I am woefully unprepared for working in any other field.  Being damn good at what I do now is useless to me.  Not good, that.

So, plans must be made and followed through on--swift kicks in the rear to help me stay on track are always welcome. LOL.

But first, have to get through these next hours without dissolving into a pile of jiggly woobley goo.  Sigh. (honestly, we really ARE better this time--last time I was in Germany we started wibbling three, four days before I left!).  Still, it is hard, always hard, to leave the most amazing person ever, who I love like crazy, even if only for a little while. 

Comments

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

That always makes me laugh, because some of the better work I do, I do without planning! Go, my sister in not planning!

I like writing in 1st person too. I wonder why I never do it.

I HAD TO FORGO THE CHINESE, BUT LIKE I SAID, BAD CROISSANWICH. :( SAD PANDA TUMMY.

[paragraphs.livejournal.com]

I was forced to give up first by my editor, so started the sequel in third, then said editor may or may not be missing...I have found writing this one in third (with two POV's) to feel trite and romance-novely which I do not care for.

I love first person. I tend to write mysteries and first is such a powerful pov for the kind of fic I like to write. Honestly--this is what keeps me from writing fanfic too--I am not happy writing in third, and there is such negativity toward first, that I just throw my hands up and just settle for being a reader, and Nick's cheerleader.

If I were a panda, I'd be sad.

(and honestly? This overwhelming, craving desire to write in first, dammit, is why I am seriously looking at a Being Human idea I have, and writing the damn thing in first, to hell with what anyone thinks. That fandom is practically nonexistent so I know I would feel free doing so. Plus, it is a werewolf story, and werewolves rule!!!)

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

DO FIRST PERSON. SOME OF MY FAVORITE STORIES ARE IN FIRST. And my werewolf novel is in first! Think of Charlaine! Think of Jim Butcher! Think of Anne Rice! Well, no, don't think of her. THINK OF MOBY DICK.

[paragraphs.livejournal.com]

Moby Dick was in first? Been so long! Yeah, me too on first....and YAY you are writing in first too? *nods* I knew you were super-cool, this proves it.

LOL.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

THEY CALL ME EFFING ISHMAEL. Sounds like first to me. David Copperfield. The Postman Always Rings Twice. Most of Frankenstein.

1st rules.