Category Archives: Writing

Check-In: Where have I been and why have I been there?

by Liana Posted on May 1, 2012

So.

Y'all might have noticed that with the exception of the Insurgent countdown, I've been pretty much absent without leave. But as always, there are reasons, and I'm going to cover them in brief before resuming a semi-regular posting schedule.

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Letter to a Recalcitrant Muse

by Liana Posted on April 9, 2012

Dear muse,

Just so we start phase three off on the right foot, I want you to know where we're headed in the next so long and ask for your valuable and necessary assistance (I could never live without you).

We need to earn some income. This means just four helfpul little articles a day that I can post up on Constant Content. I don't mind how you split them up through the week. It's okay to do five or ten one day and fewer or none on another. I don't really mind, just so that twenty go up for the week. Topics wide open, but I think SEO and health are two good directions to go in.

Also, we have some stories already published that need to be reconfigured, compiled, and put out there in more palatable editions. Think you can handle that? We want to make some lovely PDFs and zip packages, I think.

Last, but not least, there's this story that I owe the lovely trovia for her help with the summaries. She wants something about sports and we started down that road, but I'm hoping we can go ahead and finish that up. Then there's those other two meme-fics. I know you've given me some juice for the longer work. The shorter one is still kinda giving me head-itch, so you think you can scratch that for me?

Thanks so much.

Your loving writer,

the scribbler

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Behind the Times

by Liana Posted on March 12, 2012

The Scribbler as Writer

NONFICTION

So here we go. As of March 5, 2012, I have made $108.96 on Textbroker. That's a nice chunk of change and it would be a whole lot higher if I was used to cranking out nonfiction, but we're getting there.

Adding this baby to my sidebar:

You can guess where I wrote those. So I'm copyrighting, so to speak, and anyone that wants to commission something, give me a ring.

FICTION

Summerlight moves forward. It wasn't supposed to, but my muse is the kind that never says die. If I shelve a project, my muse will give me something new, then sneak off every chance it gets to go work on the old one. Go figure.

Storyworlds getting a few dumps and need about a gazillion more: I'm trying to cull all the notes I've scattered through would-be stories set in Vardin and dump them on Worlds of Mir so I can actually use them in Summerlight. I've a sneaking suspicion, I'll always be a little behind on that.

The Scribbler as (Not) Tech

FANDOM

My fandom site, Whispers, needs help. She's out-of-date and mid-process to getting anything like fixed up. :groans: Do not need to add more to my to-do list.

SOCIAL

For anyone who missed the announcement, my twitter has moved: @lianamir1 Now, just to get LiveJournal to actually update it when I post, like it used to!

My tumblr is not oft-updated, but there I throw out worldbuilding stuff I like or wrestle with myself.

The Scribbler as Publisher

So, The Intentional Writer is shippable, once I make a cover and format and do that whole tag/category/meta thing. Yeah. :shudders: But it's done, clocking in at 8752 words, which is not bad for me. Once I get it formatted, I will send the PDF free to anyone who agrees to give it an unbiased review wherever it gets up for sale.

Sorry for getting this out late. Sunday was my grandfather's birthday! I was busy celebrating.

How did your week go? Anything exciting?

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Quotation from a Haiku Jaguar

by Liana Posted on March 2, 2012

Of Black Blossom at haikujaguar:

An alien cultural scrapbook with torn-out bits of a dictionary, a book of parables and scribbled calligraphy.

This is exactly the sort of thing I would love to write. I just didn't think anyone besides myself would want to read something like that.

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On Brevity

by Liana Posted on March 1, 2012

I have been writing flash fiction for a long time. When I was younger, I only knew two ways to write: very, very long and very, very short. Now that I've spent more time in the trenches, I've learned how to write a decent short story or short novel in the middle ranges of word count.

Writing with brevity taught me things. Initially, it was merely a symptom of my tendency to sketch fiction instead of drawing or painting it. I never turned it into a sculpture and let it breathe. Eventually, it became my personal expression of a reality I happen to like: evoking a feeling, capturing a moment.

Aliette de Bodard, recent Nebula winner for The Jaguar House in Shadow, puts words to some of these thoughts for me in both her original post and her interview with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).

That means that genre takes on the mindset, narrative structures and favoured themes of that demographic...that stories are thought of in terms of protagonist and antagonist, and problems to be fixed; that they need arc, and changes...

and

I am sick of the redefinition of narrative as violence, of how everything has to be a conflict in order to be valid–even to the point of defining conflict “against yourself”, which contributes to trivialising the use of the word “conflict”, not to mention twist it far beyond its original meaning.

True, much of what she writes is complexity and rich and I am engrossed in my own longer fiction drafts of that nature, but what I've also noticed is that there are those that feel a story is too skimpy or isn't a story if it only captures one moment that makes you feel, even if all it does is give an awww or an ouch or a giggle. If it does that, then I'm happy.

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A Sketch Ain't Worth a Thousand Words

by Liana Posted on February 23, 2012

So I just remembered/realized why I love writing flash fiction and have such a hard time getting it to pass muster with my awesome, wonderful, incredibly stick-me-to-it beta: I write sparse. Always have; probably always will. Oh, joy.

In short, I'm one of those odd and rare writers that sketches in a story and, if I'm wise enough to not consider it done, fill it in later. This usually takes a lot of filling and it's a pain in the butt and I'm often bored with the exercise long before the exercise is bored with me. Cue beta shipping it back to me with a note telling me to "Bake it longer, chica." :headdesk:

This is also probably where my major problem with novel-writing is coming from, and it certainly stems from all my time mucking around in fandom where I can play off a certain set of standard assumptions. I'll be the first to admit (in fact, I already did somewhere) that "Crossing the Barrier" could have been deepened quite a bit. I was nowhere near ready to tackle that kind of work though, didn't have enough interest in the story left to want to, and knew that the story worked without it. So I didn't. It probably would have been good practice.

What about you? Do you write long or short? Do you have to layer in details later or trim the fat?

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The Words, The Web, and The Work

by Liana Posted on February 22, 2012
  • Finished a draft of an entire collection of flash, entitled: And Everything Nice. Too bad it's going back to the drawing board, but ah, well! It happens.
  • Got back a personal rejection for a drabble at Every Day Fiction. My perennial, "More! More! Tantalizing, but want more!" kind of note. Sometimes this phenomenon calls out my grumpy Bah humbug! vibe, but hey, it's a good sign. More's a comin'.
  • Figured out how to get synopses on my home page here, and while it does mean I can no longer restrict posts to just Therefore I Am..., I think it's an improvement.
  • Changed my primary twitter account from fandom-based whispersofromy to LianaMir1. I will no longer be updating the old Twitter.
  • Am working on building out a Zazzle store or two. More on that when there's more to tell.
  • Got started on Textbroker.com. I'm actually making some income!
  • Speaking of which, any praying folks out there, the government's holding onto my bucks and things are about to get not pretty financially if something doesn't break.
  • Am only one story short of a little Pearl Wise collection. Feeling out for the prompt: The Rule of Alchemy. It is:

For every portion of light to come into the world, a certain portion of darkness must be overcome.

Inspire any thoughts? Questions? I'd love the help, just saying. :grins:

And that, folks, is all for the moment!

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Note to Self: Ask the Right Questions

by Liana Posted on February 16, 2012

Finding the things that matter: it's no small feat. Do the things you write about really matter to you? Do the characters matter to you? Does the world matter to you? Why?

Let's not go throwing the baby out with the bathwater here, girlfriend. I know you (being you helps out with that and all), and there's a reason you're writing what you're writing. Now ask the questions about the things you care about.

Ask the right questions. (Reminding me of Ryven, girlfriend. It's always about the questions.) Got that right.

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Sunday Writing Stats

by Liana Posted on February 12, 2012

WRITTEN
We spent the last so long adapting some of my fanfiction to original fiction, in addition to wrapping up some stories I had previously begun and doing a ficlet writing session to music. Adaptations:

  • Goddess of Computers
  • Dorm Daddy Driver's Ed
  • Square Root
  • Tech Support
  • At Your Altar

This last week, I wrote 6900+ words. My goal was 5000+. My retained words didn't beat the 5000+ goal, but there's always next week.

POSTED
So, not that I expect a lot of people over here at this point, but I have consolidated my worldbuilding locale at Wikia. For my own sanity, I need a central location to dump story notes. It'll take a while to get all the ones I already have on there, but it's worth the effort.

SOLD
"A Dream of Spring" sold to Every Day Poets. Will link when it goes online.

PUBLISHED
Got quite a few things up since the last time we talked, so here goes.

"Baker of Souls," about a woman who is defeated by her own failure; "A Pretty Word," an exploration of the operation of the uncommon Writers among the powerful of Breath; and "The Rule of Prayer," a short that had been hiding in the bottom of my inbox for forever. See Bibliography

 

 

Also published some under my other name, but that gets tracked elsewhere.

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