The Year of the Bear

I'll be honest: I went back and forth about self-publishing for a long time. For most of the time, I felt like it was the cheap way out -- that if my book was actually good, it would be traditionally published, with the prestige of an actual House behind it, chock full of editors, marketing types, and an agent telling  me -- and the rest of the world -- that it was good. Oh, and in case you missed it, By Ways Unseen  is coming out on July 12 on Amazon, through CreateSpace and Kindle.

Three of the Fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5), those are. Why am I writing about them? Well, I shot my mouth off on Twitter and said: "Oh, I have a blog! You should, you know, read what I wrote a few months ago!" I also said somewhere else that this is my website -- which will bring a lot of the same thing: people showing up expecting stuff. So, I wanted to take a moment, and reiterate what my hope is for this blog: this is a place for writers and people who are alive to find Love, Joy, and Patience. And hopefully all the others, too.

As some of you may have heard, I'm self-publishing my fantasy novel this year - in a couple months, actually (website and all that jazz coming soon). It's been an incredible month, this past April, so let me tell you a bit about it.

"Writing is like meditation or going into an ESP trance, or prayer. Like dreaming. You are tapping into your unconscious. To be fully conscious and alert, with life banging and popping and cuckooing all around, you are not going to find your way to your subconscious, which is a place of complete submission." Carolyn Chute. Um. Okay.

"I can't write five words but that I change seven." Dorothy Parker. The theme of this day is editing, revising, rewriting...but what caught my eye the most was Amy Peters' comment on perhaps why people dislike editing so much. She said: "Perhaps, they flash back to childhood days when having to rewrite a paper at school was taken as bad news. ...As Parker describes it rewriting and editing is an opportunity to improve and express your ideas." [Emphasis mine.]

Can't take credit for that one; I heard it first from Mr. Dylan, then Mr. Collins. But it's still accurate. You may have noticed I missed a WriProSun. Now that semester has started, and projects are due Sunday night, I'm feeling some pressure to change up the format of my blog schedule. So, from this hour henceforth (bonus points if you know THAT quote), WoWWed will still be Wednesday, but I will now be posting Class Saturday - which will be from a Writing Class prompt from the Writer's Devotional - on Saturday. I may have to dig into the archives a little bit this week, as the class is to make a one-panel comic strip about getting your hair cut. I may  write something funny about haircuts and barbers, but more likely I'll pull one from an earlier week. Thanks for following along, though! See you Wednesday!

"Writing is a way of talking without being interrupted." Jules Renard. This may seem like a very self-important thing to say - that we, as writers, should not be interrupted and you common folk  don't know your place well enough to sit quietly and listen. But sometimes, I've spent so long thinking through an idea that, when I'm done, I just want to get it out. Interrupt me, and the idea is off the rails chasing down the various rabbit trails conversation invariably builds. And that's with ideas that will take maybe five minutes to disclose. A novel? Yeah, might need to let me just go with that one.