Writing, Drawing, Feedback, Not Giving Up on Ourselves - Freewritehouse to the rescue!
Drawing was one of my favorite pastimes, until I met my husband, who never took an art class in his life, but his work is brilliant and beautifully finished, while mine is never finished. Today, Facebook reminded me of something I'd totally forgotten--positive feedback-- and something I didn't know: This 1981 drawing of mine was my most-commented on Facebook photo of 2016 (a whopping 51 comments--LOL!). Not a cat or dog photo, not a nature shot, not something I wrote, but this.
Maybe I should write less.
This one looks pretty good--if you don't compare it too closely to the photo I was working from:
Inaccuracy, in the smallest details, make or break a drawing--or a story.
The same "unfinished" quality (er, problem!)
plagues my drawing and writing, but I didn't quit writing, in part because it's one thing Tim doesn't do better than me--and only because he doesn't write fiction. He has no desire to. His mind doesn't work that way. When I'm doing chores or outside gardening or walking dogs, I'm entertaining scenes in my head with people who do not exist outside my head. I eavesdrop on their conversations. I imagine worst-case scenarios, but more often, I imagine happy scenes. Finales. And most often, I write none of them, and forget 99% of them.
5-Minute Freewrite
is a fantastic way to help me remember. Sometimes I look back on a last-year's freewrite and wonder where that came from and why I would NOT REMEMBER the names or details, AT ALL, had I not written and preserved the vignette.
I couldn't even tell you the names of half these characters. The high-school dropout who drag races in a fictional version of Falls City, Nebraska. The woman whose husband was rear-ended and killed, and the little blonde from Register Six turned out to be someone she'd misjudged. What were any of their names? I have no idea!
Don't take it personally if I can't remember names in your stories. Off the top of my head, I would say Dranuvar was the name of @kaelci's hot-guy protagonist in her NaNoWriMo novel, but no, @dranuvar is a Steemit user, and the name of the guy in Half Past the Moonfall is... starts with a D, I'd swear... Of course I can't remember a name like Katéa; I can't even spell it from memory, and I never remember how to add accents to English keyboard characters. Copy-paste:
é
Sigh
I cannot believe the gaping holes in my memory, especially with names and numbers.
But I remember how much I love this story!
It all began right here at #freewritehouse!
Hop over to Smashwords and pick up Half Past the Moonfall for FREE!
It is said that you should never follow the Min Min Lights; they will lure you away never to be seen again.
So, what does Katéa do? Chase after them of course!
Determined to capture the myth and make her fortune, this young Australian stumbles out of the bush and into a fantastical new world filled with pixies, dragons and perpetually drunk villagers, and even falls in love.
With What's His Name?????
But, not all is ever as it seems. An awakened evil stalks the land and Katéa finds herself in the centre of malevolent misfortune. Can she deafen this disaster she unwittingly helped summon, or will the world be shrouded in darkness forever?
Warning: Contains sexual themes, crude language, and Australian humour.
Freewritehouse, NaNoWriMo, March Madness,
It's all been good, and I am grateful for the encouragement, the positive feedback (which I tend always to forget), and the inspiration. We saw a November novel become a published book!
We've also seen Freewrites collated into an anthology, and published. I posted about @honeydue's book. I reviewed it a Amazon but they flushed every review I ever posted due to some "violation" of their "Family and Friends" policy.
Book Reviews are good for authors, but connecting with readers is drives me, not sales, not critical acclaim. Here at Freewritehouse, I've found a few like-minded writers and readers, and they keep me from giving up. I do have two published stories, both in anthologies that hardly anyone has read, but I need to stop looking at numbers ("My own children can't stand to read my stuff!"), and focus on letting the characters that roam in my head out.
Not in a million years would I have remembered
names in my own stories, which I just looked up out of curiosity. e.g.,
Sarah Savage
was the widow in the story that morphed into a Demolition Derby, and I would never recall the names I came up with for Day 488 - prompt: baby "Junie Unash!" came the voice of her boss, Tammy Bauersox.
You guessed it: I never remember my own passwords, either!
Monstrous Moonshine
is another term I struggled to remember, gave up, and found among my own note for March Madness.
...in addition to monstrous moonshine, there are 23 other moonshines: mysterious correspondences between the dimensions of a symmetry group on the one hand, and the coefficients of a special function on the other.
I hope I didn't put that in the story.
Here is the #unfinished Sara (Sarah?? OMG, I can't remember how I spelled it!!!!) Savage freewrite that morphed into four parts:
Part 1 -In a Pig's Ear - Day 478: 5 Minute Freewrite: Sunday - Prompt: pig's ear
Part 2 - Pineapple Finials- Day 480: 5 Minute Freewrite: Tuesday - Prompt: pineapple
Part 3 - "Live. Love. Smash." - Day 481 - Prompt: sound of sirens
Part 4 - Magic in the Mundane - Day 482 - Prompt: magical realism
My Steemit Stories + Photos
dominated my Twitter profile one day - which cracked me up:
Long Live @Freewritehouse!
Thank you for all the encouragement, inspiration, and positive feedback!
Check Out The @FreeWriteHouse Prompt Of The Day By @MarianneWest
I always hit "publish" prematurely. This 2-month-old commentary illlustrates so well why Freewritehouse is a great place for feedback and encouragement:
Fatherland by @deirdyweirdy
Arrrrghhh. Let's try that again.
@kimberlylane · 2 months ago
I agree with Marianne, a surprising twist! I always enjoy reading where others took the prompts, an endless stream of possibilities~
@deirdyweirdy
Thanks very much. Your own story wasn't too shabby either. You have a very distinctive style.
Reading this post made me remember how I felt when you were reading and raving over Half Past the Moonfall. And then your amazing review. I felt so special that someone out there loved it so much. Such a confidence boost. Tears in my eyes right now. Haha. And to think I mostly feel shame and cringeworthiness at it now. And now, months after publishing, I don't really want to advertise it because I feel that it's terrible and I don't want to convince people to read a terrible book. I've taken to be self-deprecating about it. "This won't be the best book you've ever read, but it might make you crack a smile once or twice!"
And after reading it again all these months later........... it totally could have gone another round of editing. CRINGE.
And! I keep changing the cover!!! Why do I do this to myself? The first one was fine. Then I made it look simplistic with a new font. And now it looks totally terrible with some weird new font. I'm mad, I tell you.
I won't fall into all of this with Vengeance. Doing things properly. And I won't be ashamed of it. Well, I'll try not to be. I'm rewriting-and-editing it for the Beta Readers Group at the moment. And half the time I'm thinking that this is a pile of crap and only interesting to me who has dreamed it for years.
ANYWAY.
Ohmygod.
Babbling.
I love your drawing. You're so artistic! And I love you! Thank you for being you, and thank you for being a part of the @freewritehouse - I'm so grateful to have met you 💕
also
that made me giggle so much.
Also, I had to copy and paste Kat's name over and over too hahahah! I wrote it once, with the help of "rose wine" on google to snag that accented e... and then I went through the document and "search and replaced" all of the Katea's with the fancy one. :D
Oooh, that makes me feel better: even the author did a sort of "cheat" by doing a global search and replace to get the accent in Katea's name. :)
But this - this - no!!! - I have read many books, many by Indie Authors, and yours is golden. I feel that it's terrible--wrong! and I don't want to convince people to read a terrible book. I've taken to be self-deprecating about it. "This won't be the best book you've ever read, but it might make you crack a smile once or twice!" more than once or twice. The fairy cell phone charger is the only thing you might wince and cringe over, not because of your writing, but because... (no spoiler here!). Humor and wit abound in the story. Keep talking like this, and I might go re-read it and start fault-finding. But no, I'll just laugh out loud at the city girl in the expensive dress chasing the Min-Min lights into the wilderness. It's a great story!!!!
@kaelci. Stop!! I loved the story!! And it was the first book and you did it! Advertise it! Sell it! Be proud!
You can always edit it again when you publish the sequel 😀👍
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Sorry! I have no filter when I babble in the mornings, haha. It all just ... blurts out. :D Thank you!
No being sorry. I love that about you!
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You're a treasure! I'm happy and grateful to have met another Aussie writer--not to stereotype, but y'all have a special "voice," and wit, and humor. And personality. And a storytelling gene. No more shame! You have humility and a perfectionism thing, but no lack of talent!
Love you so much. And let those characters out of your head onto the page. Who cares about names 😀 let an editor catch that.
Even in real life, I don’t remember names but the stories of people’s lives.
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I love you too, Marianne, Kaelci, WakeUpKitty. Staci (oswego), Adrienne (adncabera? ..) all of you at Freewritehouse! And I wish I could remember how to spell names without constantly looking them up because I will misspell it if I don't. Yes, editors might catch that, but my grievance was that I can't remember AT ALL the names of characters I wrote even a few months ago. "Even Steven" is about the only one that ever stayed with me. The rest... poof! My own characters! I've been known to think long and hard about whether there's an -e at the end of my middle name, because it's so rare that I ever write it out (Lynn). So, we will not discusss passwords.... I can spin 'em out but remember them, in spite of mnemonic devices (like Even Steven), no....
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I really like the shading and facial expressions. They both look like they care deeply for one another. Really cool sketch 👌🙂
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Thanks so much!
Aaah, you have my memory 😁.
I always was bad with names and faces (sorry but all white people look the same to me) but great in remembering numbers and dates.
You can write and drawn. Illustrate your own books.
☘, 💖 and 🌞day
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Thank you!
I forget names AND faces, too. And numbers and dates. At least in writing we can go back and verify, verify, verify the names before hitting "Post."
☘, 💖 and 🌞to you too. :)
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STOPI'm so glad you're a part of us!
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Aww, thank you!!!