RITA ® Award-Winning Author of Fantasy Romance
//Creativity and vacations/holidays, moving from writing as a hobby to a career, taking your mental health seriously, maintaining writing productivity, meeting deadlines, and methods for aggressively filling the well.
//Tough love talk on how our families and the people who love us most can be the biggest obstacles to getting that writing time. Related: wants and needs, the difference between them and how other people try to tell what ours are.
//How I’m getting better at balance, increasing my wordcount, getting business done, and having more time to relax! Also, using AI “tools” as a writer and examining the whole point of being a creative in the first place.
//What it takes to be a career author – particularly a novelist – the kinds of sacrifices you have to make to carve out enough silence to hear the words of a story, and how there are no straight line trajectories.
//Ruminations today on what we mean by the “strong female character” and why this might be a more relevant conversation than I thought, given the state of feminism and challenges some female friends are facing.
//Happy to report that my training program to increase creative flow and word count is working! Also, additional thoughts on the ethics of using AI-generated work and how money factors into that for some people.
//A concern I have about a book cover designer who is offering discounts to authors who approve the use of AI-generated art. Also thoughts on training to improve wordcount and recognizing overdoing it.
//A round-up of what I’ve been reading lately, including several excursions from my normal reading. I’m thinking about female/femme narratives and how we center those (or don’t) in terms of stories about men.
//Thoughts on learning to paint by numbers, or learn to follow the rules of craft before you break them. How I’m breaking my own rule, on epistolary romances, and a funny story about my granddaughter.
//Updates on my travels, including WisCon and thoughts on being laid-back at cons instead of wall-to-wall. Also, trends in traditional publishing and speculation on why they all seem to want full manuscripts.
