Technology

Reader,

About a month ago I started receiving graduation announcements from friends and family.  It reminded me that I probably should have bought announcements.  Announcements are expensive, however, and I was not very impressed with the preview images.  Long story short, I decided to make my own.

Generally I take for granted everything technology has done over the past two decades.  Today, however, while I printed out announcements and envelopes I remembered back to a time when a beautiful card in a pristine envelope would be marred by my chicken scratch handwriting.  The more beautiful (and legible) I wanted my handwriting to appear, the longer each and every envelope would take.  The hours it would take writing each and every envelope, the mistakes, the whiteout, the wasted paper, all  have been made obsolete.

Similar advances have been made in the field of writing.  With word processors writers can delete, edit, and rearrange with a few clicks of the mouse, or taps on the keyboard.  The invention of the backspace is both a blessing, and a curse, as it distracts writers as they try to write, tempting their inner editors to take command, and squelching the creative muse in the process.  Yet the temptation of legible and savable work is tempting for many modern writers.

Add to this the plethora of new technologies out there, and a new writer can get lost fast.  No longer is it the choice between pens, papers, or typewriters.  Now you have your choice of computers: desktop, laptop, netbook, iPad, et cetera.   Word might still be the standard writing platform, but that doesn't mean that there aren't handfuls of writing programs out there for a writer to sift through.  These programs range from free to hundreds of dollars, and can have all the bells and whistles, or be minimalistic in nature.

With all these choices, how do you write?
Is writing on a computer too distracting?  If not, how do you cope?

Until next time,
Rose

Novels

Reader,

I hate to admit it, but novels terrify me.  I understand how to write scenes, and even short stories, but a novel length work still sends me quivering away.  The more I struggle with my varying projects that look to be novel length, the more I worry they'll never be good enough, and I'll never be good enough.

Don't get me wrong, I've participated in National Novel Writing Month twice thus far, and even won it once.  I feel my novel from last year had amazing premise, but I am at a loss for where to go from there.  The novel as it stands now is only a third done, and has been sitting on my net-book for months untouched.  I hope to participate in NaNoWriMo again this year, if only for the fun of it, but novels still terrify me.

So why tell you this?  I have a project that I'm planning out.  It's a project I was hoping would make a powerful short story, one I could send to the magazines in a few months once I polish it out a few times.  So imagine my horror when the story starts to grow bigger than a short story.  The themes and issues are too large, I fear, to condense into even a twenty-four page short story (Glimmer Train's maximum word count is 12,000 words).  Only time will tell how big this story will get, and how far I can revise it down.

Are you scared of novel length works?  Why or why not?
Also, when do you know when a project is a short story, and when it's destined for something more?

Until next time,
Rose

Introductions

Reader,

My name is Rose.  Well, in all honesty, it's not, but Rose is my middle name, and it's what the majority of the world calls me.  My first name isn't all too important as I don't necessarily like it, and it might even change.

I am not going to make any pretenses, I, like many bloggers out there, am writing this blog in the hopes of eventually finding a book deal.  I am also writing this as a way to document my experiences, for those who care to know, and those who come afterward.  Yes, my journey might be similar to many others out there, but I hope that there will be some things that are unique, things others can learn from, as I myself am learning.

This, here, is the start of my journey.  I just graduated with a BA in English under the Creative Writing option.  At this point I have no job so to speak, and too many ideas and not enough at the same time.  I am reading blogs on the industry as I find them.  I have a wish list filled with books on the trade, and books to read.  I have no illusions, if I want to get where I want to go, it's going to be a hard road.  But I'm willing to try.

I hope to post at least once a week, ideally two to three times per week.  We'll see how things go.  I hope to develop some form of normalcy to the posts, although I'm not sure what it will be at the moment.  We'll see how things go as they develop.