Tag Archives: letter

Open Letter to Yahoo Mail

by Liana Posted on July 8, 2013

Dear Yahoo,

You have never listened to any feedback I've ever sent you; you have never respected my privacy; and you  have never cared, so frankly, I don't expect you will now. You used to have one redeeming quality: you put out the one decent email program left.

Gone, gone, gone. As of today gone.

Not only am I required to downgrade to the BROKEN version of Mail that I kept telling you was broken and I wouldn't upgrade to until you fixed certain very nasty bugs, but with it, I am now required to let you rifle through all my mail and read it and use it to target ads to me that I will never click on. Unless there was a way to export my entire decade's worth of mail, which of course, there isn't.

Not only am I required to let you read my mail to make ads, you have moved the ads to the side so that I am required to never be able to move a blinking ad out of my line of view.

Not only am I required to downgrade to your lousy idea of an upgrade, but it's because you aren't supporting Classic anymore. Guess what? I didn't need support. It worked, unlike this new mail that only works if I have Messenger, chat, and photo slideshows active, which I hate and will never, ever, ever, ever use except to delete the spam messages you force me to have to look at.

Not only am I required to downgrade to the new Yahoo! Mail, but I'm required to use the Full Version I don't want because the Basic is so broken you can't even click "Previous Email."

You now have no redeeming qualities. And I still can't export all that mail that I need to keep handy since I used my email as a hub of operations before and now don't know how I'm going to hub without it.

No love,

the scribbler

P.S. Whoever invented infinite scrolling should experience ten levels of purgatory for making it cryworthy to try and clean up 14,000 emails in an attempt to actually see the number of emails in my inbox in the header.

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Something That Matters

by Liana Posted on December 29, 2012

Dear Scribbler,

I've been reading up about a writer's production goals and reading arliddian's latest open letter, a beautiful piece, and reaching out to the muse-ish side of my own self, and it made me want to sit down thoughtfully again and have a chat on behalf of the new year.

I want to write something that matters.

Oh, I know I should start off with the business stuff, but a long time ago, I wrote a lot of fanfiction and I wrote out 14 things in fandom I had never done, which included writing anything that mattered, that influenced others. The very next day, I posted a driveby question:

What is it about writing something that matters that scares the mess out of me?!

I still want to write something that matters.

In the interests of getting there, I'd like to produce: you know a few hundred thousand words of fiction wouldn't hurt, and at least 2 or 3 completed short stories or novel chapters wouldn't either. Figuring out print books on createspace would make me very, very happy.

But...

If there's anything I want to do different this year, it's that. The significance. The mattering. I want to reach people, not just scribble off into the abyss. And that willingness to scribble into the abyss has gotten me where I am, has made me willing to keep on putting one word in front of the other, and taking the time to create something of myself, but use it, muse.

Use it and do something with myself. I want to see my faith in my fiction. I want to see the girls who are not pretty and why that matters. I want to see feminine strength that is strength. I want to see the things I care about, the characters who prove that healing is possible, self-sacrifice is real, love is power, God is neither irrelevant nor evil, that the price for true power is giving up our selves and our wrongs, not embracing them.

I don't know how to wrestle these words into something that fits the shape of my heart, but this is me. This is it. I am writer. This is what I want this year.

Thanks,

the scribbler

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Dear Muse... When was the last time you and I sat down and had a chat?

by Liana Posted on December 16, 2012

Dear Muse,

I've been thinking lately, which I know you know, about why we freak out about committing to a large project and have to constantly wander off into other fields in any other place than the one we're in. I've been thinking lately about why I don't do meta, why my worlds are so thoroughly immersed, why I write about broken people who have to sacrifice so much to have any part of what they want and can never seem to have it all. I've been thinking about why perfection and perfect happiness always seems so far away, not even near in those crystal moments we wish we could keep by holding on, why it's always so hard for the ones who belong to claim each other, let alone maintain the claim, why I love romance, why I hate it, why I'm bored and full up and restless and writing and not writing enough all at once.

Let's sit down, my muse; let's chat.

I see you sitting shyly, uncertain and wary as most of the girls I like to peek on in a hundred worlds and spiraled worlds faceting the others. I see you wondering if perhaps I'm digging too deep this time. You know, analysis doesn't always help. Sometimes it's overkill, scribbler. Sometimes, you just need to let things flow.

But they aren't flowing. Oh, we could pretend, we could say they are, and sometimes you give me something, throw me a bone and even maybe add some flesh on that bone, but so many times you run away when I most need you to knuckle down and do. You run and I'm here and if I only wrote what you handed me, I'd have very little finished work to show for it. Why, muse? What is it you need or I need to do to help you?

Maybe it's these constant interruptions and difficulties getting into things, but surely we already proved that that wasn't the real big deal and I've heard the stories about those meat and potato writers: sit down, show up, the muse is attracted to a working writer. Is that so? I wonder sometimes what attracts you to me.

You'll dig.

Is that what you want? You want me to dig? But when does it stop being digging and just turning over the soil? When do we see some harvest from all this seed-planting? Muse, I want to write the stories you give me, but there's a little mess of a problem if you can't stay focused long enough for me to do it.

You give me fodder. It's hard to stay focused on the mix we've got when you throw more things in the mix.

The reading.

The music, the movies, the ways you keep working things around again. It helps; you know, scribbler, that it helps, but it hurts too. The well's too full. The cup's running over. Do you really want to shut off the flow.

I want to direct the flow.

Then stick with me, just me, for a while. I know we can work this out together.

I do have a couple of reading assignments for Rabia, for pygmymuse, for in_the_blue, for BookRooster.com.

Let them go and write with me. I'll give you something. I promise.

I'll hold you to that, muse; you know I will.

Love,

the scribbler

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This is Where I Buckle Down and Admit the Muse Won

by Liana Posted on November 8, 2012

So today, I struck a deal with my muse that went like so...

Dear Muse,

Under the circumstances of dire duress, I permit you to write anything you want during this November period under two conditions, as follows:

  1. You must produce words and a significant chunk of them at any point when I am following your guidance, and
  2. You must also produce definitive and significant progress on whatever story you undertake to have me write—

definitive meaning reliable, fully-formed, and complete; and significant meaning important and of sufficient volume to be worth my while.

Any failure to comply with the above conditions will result in immediate and summary dismissal of your input regarding which project I am working on.

Thank you and regards.

Sincerely,

the scribbler

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Letter from One Muse to Another

by Liana Posted on July 27, 2012

Dear Muses,

About that Pinterest thing: We know you've been putting off dealing with it because of valid points of inspiration and all that yada and primarily the fact that tracking a picture down to its original source is hard. to. do. 'Nuff said.

But we've been reading up here and here and here, and something's come to light you simply have to address. Not only are we held liable for what we pin, but also for what we repin? Oooh, goody. Nice going, Pinterest. Make sure every single person micromanages every other just so long as you don't get held liable. :grumbles thunderously:

So what happens now?

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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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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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Letter to Myself

by Liana Posted on November 2, 2011

There are times when a girl just gets tired of running. Between the mess that life tends to turn out to be and the fact that no one will let you go after your dreams if you let them stop you, sometimes it just feels like an abyss has opened up beneath you and swallowed your foot and your leg and as far up your side as it can go.

There are things that help. For me, cleanliness and order make a difference. Prioritizing makes a difference. Figuring out ways around the roadblocks other people give makes a difference. Sometimes it doesn't feel like enough, but there it is. Just keep putting one foot in front of another and you have to get somewhere.

So we keep on fighting. We keep on putting one word in front of another and another and another. We may be scared; we may be tired; but we're writers. We write.

I promise you, girl, you'll get there.

the scribbler

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