Slave in Heaven

I'm done with my dilemma. I've made my choice. I'll be a slave in heaven.

This means that I'm done with fanfiction for the time being. I used to be terrified of sending a manuscript into a publishing house or to a literary agent. I know chances of getting something published are like nil, but I want to try. If I post my work online, I know a whole slew of girls will come read it, but I want to see if I can pull of an actual career of it. Even just to have a publisher acknowledge that I don't completely suck would be an overwhelming achievement.

That's what I've decided.

I'm not sending 'Ghost Mist'. I'm working on a new novel, one that I think is probably more up my alley. No one will see it until it's finished, which will be hard for me since I'm used to constant validation, but I have thousands of reviews to ease the pain, so I'll read them when I feel down. Thank you once again to everyone who reviews my work or who has ever reviewed my work.

Even if I crash and BURN BURN BURN - I can still change all the characters to Van and Hitomi (maybe they'll buy that they were supposed to be them all along) and post it on fanfiction.net and then maybe I'll be a star again instead of a slave. For the time being - I'll have to be the slave - there's just no other way for me.

Another Reason to Hate Fanstory.com

Okay, so lately, I have been posting a story on fanstory. Not to worry - it's not a story my faithful readers haven't seen before.

Anyway, I got a review stating that my writing was more 'telling' than 'showing' and most of my dialogue was exposition. At first, I wasn't sure what the heck the reviewer was talking about, because I always understood that 'telling' instead of 'showing' was when an author summarizes events or conversations instead of explaining the exact circumstances by letting the characters act it out. This is something I used to be extremely guilty of, but I've worked hard and it's rare that someone can point that finger at me now without having their opinion dismissed (I think it's lame to write a play-by-play when boring stuff is going on). In this particular chapter, it was completely inapplicable. Most of the chapter was conversation, so I started thinking about what this guy said and maybe he thought that I had a higher ratio of conversation versus narrative.

Now I'm going to talk about the 'exposition' part of his comment. Without plot exposition ... there is no plot. There is no story. Personally, I always thought that putting the plot exposition in conversation was a way to get the reader to enjoy the exposition (explanation) because when two or more people talk about what's happening - they can flirt, make jokes, and build relationships. So, when we put plot exposition in a conversation we're killing multiple birds with one stone. I can't believe anybody would complain about this ...

Which leads me right into yet another reason why I hate fanstory. They advertise that you will get actual advice about your writing from the readers. I think this guy just spouted off that gibberish so that he would get the member dollars. He probably didn't even read my story. Wanna know why I think that? I wrote the guy back - very diplomatically - and asked him to clarify his comment so I could understand better, explaining why I thought his comment didn't make sense and that MONKEY did not write me back.

Sheesh ... I hate fanstory so much!

Too Eager

Today is New Year's Day and I am going to make a couple of resolutions for the new year - even though I think that sort of thing is cheesy and unlikely to be accomplished solely because a resolution was made on New Year's Day. New Year's resolutions are cursed. Do you know how many people start jogging the day after New Year's and then give up? ... I don't know either. I've never been one of them. My resolutions are strictly to do with my writing, because those concerning other parts of myself are silly - I try to be a good person all the time.

First - I'm going to stop being such an eager beaver. Sometimes when I write, I feel like I end up spewing the chapter out because I haven't got the patience to tell a story carefully and beautifully. I just want everything right now and I'm terrified that I'll lose the reader's interest.

I am stuck in a miserable catch 22 and I don't know what to do about it. I hardly get any time to write too - it sucks. There's no time to write storyboards, write in my journal, write for fun, write seriously, write emails, write letters, get involved in the community and write bylaws. How the crap am I supposed to get better when I have no bloody time?

I'm frustrated.