Monday, March 20, 2017

Dreaming of Dragons - Loving Our Writing

Last week I was driving to our local wal-mart with my 4-year old with me. We were having some daddy-son time by shopping for toys, getting groceries and getting his free pizza from Pizza Hut because of the reader program.

As I was driving, I glanced in the mirror and saw him staring out the window making facial expressions from epic to happy. I had the soundtrack of a Two Steps From Hell blaring and when I asked him what he was thinking about he answered, "Fighting dragons."

I think as writers, we sometimes forget to stop and enjoy our stories. I know for me, I can get obsessive about my story, making sure that it is working, the grammar is correct, and that there isn't an obvious error. The problem though is that I forget to stop and enjoy the story. If you aren't, you're missing a great part of the entire writing process.

We, as writers, have the power to create people, worlds, and adventures. We should take the time to enjoy the company of our characters and exploring the unknown with them. The time to worry about prose and grammar can come later.

I do not know about you but stories are something I cannot do without and I need to work on taking my time with them. I know that if I do, I can imbue it with more love and magic than I already am.

How about you? Do you enjoy your stories? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter!

Friday, March 10, 2017

Are you Saying Women Can't Write?

Lately, with the Women's march and the strike wednesday when women did not come to work, I still cannot figure out how people who believe in either active or passive sexism think it makes sense.

What really crystalized this for me was reading a blog post about how quickly a woman's manuscript is rejected because it has her name on it. I don't know if it's because of misconception that women can't write certain genre's or that women "can't really write". Whatever you are thinking, it's bull.

I have read some amazing women writers and that they are forced to either publish under a pen name or use their initials to mask their gender is an insulting slight.

I will support women writers and I hope you will do to. All manuscripts and all books should be judged by their content, not by the gender of the writer.

Let's stop this crap and support our women writers in our community and make sure that the publishing industry know that they aren't going anywhere and they have the backing of an awesome writing community.