Happy Holidays, Haitus

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I realize I’m sort of copping out for this entry, but I’m taking some much-needed down time until after the new year. I recently converted the blog to WordPress (finally, I know), so let me know if things still aren’t working correctly.

Happy holidays, everyone.

Announcement: Feed Update

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This is just to let everyone know that later today (4pm Eastern American time) the feed URL will switch* to http://blog.worderella.com/feed/. Please update your readers accordingly. An actual post will follow the feed transition. Thanks for your patience!

LiveJournal users, I’ve already notified the system that the URL is changing, so you have nothing to worry about.

*This is because I finally caved in and installed WordPress as my blog CMS. This does mean I have to learn the new system in order to implement my own layout design (seen here), but since so many clients these days use WordPress, it certainly won’t hurt to know how to do it.

Quote: Failure to Please

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I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone.
- Bill Cosby
And now for some amusing news that will make any rejected writer feel a little better…

Publishers fail to spot plagiarized Jane Austen
LONDON (Reuters) – Even Jane Austen would have trouble finding a publisher today, a struggling author revealed Thursday.David Lassman sent off to 18 publishers assorted chapters from Austen novels in which he changed just the titles and the names of the characters.

He called himself Alison Laydee after Austen’s early pseudonym “A Lady.”

Seventeen publishers rejected or ignored his bid for literary glory. Only one spotted the ruse and told him not to mimic “Pride and Prejudice” so closely.

Lassman, who decided on the experiment when struggling to get his own novel published, told British media: “Getting a novel accepted is very difficult today unless you have an agent first. But I had no idea of the scale of rejection poor old Jane suffered.”

Thanks to Redshoeson for the heads-up! Article from Reuters on Thu Jul 19, 2007 9:45AM http://www.reuters.com/article/email/idUSL1941223720070719

Writer’s Digest Website Contest

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I was just notified that I am a finalist for the Writer’s Digest Best Writer’s Website Contest! I’ll be in the October issue, so look for me, Belinda Kroll at www.worderella.com! This is very exciting, as I was certain I wouldn’t even place.

In other news, I’m a little over 40% complete with First Draft B. It’s pretty amazing how these characters are taking over.

I have a couple more book reviews to post, as I’m inhaling my summer reading almost as quickly as I inhale food…and I’m planning on posting more notes from my notebooks. I just got my Dickens’s Dictionary of London 1888 in the mail today, so I might post a few of my notes from that as well.

Things are looking up! I hope your works-in-progress are coming along as you want them to!

Good-bye to Miss Snark

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I bring sad news! Miss Snark { http://misssnark.blogspot.com/ } is leaving us, though not without a prize: the archive of her blog, thus allowing us to search it at will so we can learn from the snarkiest of snarks. Miss Snark, if you don’t know, is an agent with a penchant for telling the truth, as brutally as possible. A form of tough love, if you will. I suggest you look at her snarkives (a.k.a. archives two years in the making) for guidelines on how to write a proper query (any of the submisions Crap-O-Meters will give you an excellent idea of what not to write to an agent).

So good-bye, Miss Snark. Do send my regards to Killer Yapp.

Tragedy, Haitus

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First, my thoughts and prayers go out to the students, staff, and faculty at Virginia Tech, and their friends and families.

Second, I am starting a slight haitus. The quarter is heating up and it’s time for me to be a full-time student. See you in a while, and leave a comment! If anything comes up then I’ll be sure to post, but in the meantime, may the muse be with you.

An Update

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So. How is the WIP going? Fairly well, I would say. It’s a new month, which means I’ve printed out the previous month’s (incomplete) draft, kissed it, set it aside, and convinced my mind that I’m starting this month with a new inspired view of the WIP. I know it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but it seems to work for me. I’m 29% complete with this draft that I call The Rewrite of Novel # 2 ™.

It’s sort of a running joke between my friends, or, at least, those who are interested in my writing, to call my books by the order in which I started them. There is, of course, Number One, which is my self-published (subsidy) book from high school, Catching the Rose. Number Two is what I keep calling the WIP here, while Number Three is the sequel to Number Two, and the result of my participating in NaNoWriMo 2006. Number Three’s fun and quick tone convinced me to rewrite Number Two. (All of this is more information than you cared to know about, I’m sure, but I find the writing habits of other writers fascinating… so every once in a while, I indulge myslf.) I haven’t had a chance to write in the last four days or so, other than blogging, and I can feel the strain. This is funny, in a not-so-funny way, because last week I suffered from a mini-Block. This week, I’m struggling to hold the reins of my imagination until I have control of everything and know the exact route I want to take. Talking through the plot, or just talking about the WIP in general, does help, however, which is what happened this time around to kill the infamous WB.

I’d like to make an update, however, about a previous post in which I talked about Lulu’s Published By You package. According to POD Critic, while the package claims that the author (which would be you) is designated as the publisher (which essentially means you are the publisher and Lulu is merely the printer), the truth of the matter is that everywhere else you submit your book, Lulu will be listed as the publisher.

I began to think about this, and what the implications are. So, let’s walk through this. By registering your book with Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble.com, etc, POD Critic claims that these websites still list Lulu as the publisher. Which means Lulu is still a subsidy press, rather than a community of self-run micropresses. It does make sense. After all, you can’t actually buy ISBNs separately, you have to buy them in groups of ten. So, Lulu is still being the middle-man by buying the blocks, and then allowing you, the author, to buy the ISBN separately, from them, Lulu. The U.S. ISBN Agency, however, will still list the ISBN as owned by Lulu. Anything that happens to the ISBN after selling it to Lulu is not really their problem.

Tricky, no? I think it’s a tricky move, and kind of mean, actually, but then, I suppose it is the author’s responsibility to look up and understand all the details of such a transaction. And really, if you’re going through all the trouble of buying the ISBN from Lulu, you might as well just set up your own micropress, like how POD Critic advocates. If you’re that serious about self-publishing, you might as well go all the way and just do it yourself.

Good-bye to POD-dy Mouth

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I just wanted to mention the going of POD-dy Mouth. She had a wonderful experiment of finding self-published print-on-demad authors, reviewing them, and even coming up with a top list of books with the reward being that the winner of her Needle Competition would have a reading with a literary agency. She’s done a lot of good work these last two years trying to change the way the publishing industry looks at POD and self-publishing.

This is kind of big for me. Her posts kept me inspired to continue the work of being an independent author. In fact, I was hoping she would keep it up long enough for me to possibly submit my own work… sadly, I have taken way too long and worried too much about my details/characters/whatever to get farther than 25% done with the manuscript.

Which is another update: I’m more than 25% complete with the current draft! How exciting is that! This is the one bad thing about finals week: instead of studying, I start writing. But then, when I indulge the writing urge, I can focus on studying because I’m not daydreaming about writing…

Anyway, I just thought I’d make note of POD-dy Mouth’s leaving the blogosphere. She’ll be missed.

Procrastination

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I should be studying for my finite automata exam. Really, I should. However, I find myself procrastinating. Which is funny, because usually I use my studying and classwork as a way to procrastinate from my writing. Now, I’m procrastinating from the very thing that allows me to procrastinate.

Why am I procrastinating from my writing? Well, because when I look at the page, I sigh and my shoulders slump, rather than smile and put my eager fingers to the keyboard. Like I said before, I know where I want to go next. What I don’t know, what the characters refuse to tell me, is what path to take in order to get there. And no, I am not schizophrenic, though sometimes my mother worries I might be when I start talking about my characters as if they were alive.

The interesting thing about this (to me, at least) is that I have to write. I need to write. Not writing causes actual changes in personality. Feel free to picture a Jekyll/Hyde situation, but only because it’s amusing, not because it’s true. I do become a little more cranky, but the main thing is, I feel a lot more stress when I don’t write. Being a person generally inclined towards stress (and here my friends laugh and shake their heads at me because they know that’s an understatement), having a writing outlet has become an integral part of my personality, especially if I want to maintain general content (the adjective, not the noun).

I’ve heard from multiple people that this…need rather than want to write is what makes me a “serious” writer. I heard it earlier today, actually. Does it make me a serious writer? Perhaps so. I can’t be sure, I only know my experience with writing. I do know that there is a direct correlation between how stressed I am, and how long ago I last wrote something “creative.” Or sometimes since the last time I wrote anything, period.

So, I suppose my main hope is that by writing this entry, I will have gotten the procrastination blues out of me. That I will turn from my monitor excited to study finite automata, context-free grammars, and regular languages.

Or…at least helped you all to procrastinate a little with me.

In French, Chat Chapeau

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I forgot to mention that this past week, The Cat in the Hat turned 50. I have very fond memories of that book, and the little musical cartoon movie. Dr Seuss’s nonsensical words, among many other things from my childhood (Sesame Street, The Letter People, Reading Rainbow, and Wishbone), gave me my love of language.

So, happy birthday, Mr Cat.