Thursday, July 27, 2017

Don't stop. Never stop. Can't stop.



Well friends, we’ve come to the end of the line. I only have one more thing to talk to you about, when it comes to things writers do. One more thing, that happens to be the most important thing of them all. It’s the thing that it all boils down to, and the thing that really keeps us going, when it comes right down to it. It’s the part that matters, the part that we cannot overlook and cannot allow ourselves to ever forget.

What is it, you ask?

You wouldn’t stop being a writer for anything in the world, because, hey, you get to create worlds


For me, personally, I cannot even imagine not writing. Even now, when I’m finding it hard to make time to keep writing, to keep constantly writing even while I’m in the midst of two editing projects and about to start on a third, I cannot imagine what I would be if I wasn’t writing my own book.

It’s been less than a decade since I started writing in earnest, but these past eight years have been the time in which I’ve really come into my own. I’ve learned more about myself since I’ve been writing than I learned in the many years prior.

I know who I am, because I know what I write.

And yes, I now spend a mass of time editing and far less time sitting down at my computer to write, but you know what? If I was given the chance to edit full time and never write again, I wouldn’t take it. I can’t not write. I can’t even imagine not writing.

Writing is my passion, it’s the passion of every writer out there. It’s the thing we do, the release that helps us the most, the way that we get from point A to point B in our heads. It’s what we do, whether we like it right now or not.

When we’re not writing, we’re not creating.
When we’re not writing, we’re probably not thinking clearly.
When we’re not writing, well, we’re not writers.

It’s a hard life. We all know that, and we knew it when we jumped in, from the very start. Our own friends warned us that this was going to be hard, they asked us if we were ever going to make it, because the market is so saturated. They told us that it wasn’t worth it, because we’d never make anything of it in the end.

But for some of us, that’s not the part that matters. The part that matters is that we’re writing, that we’re out there, and that we’re never going to give up on it.

We’re creating people, we’re making new worlds that no one has ever dreamed of before, and we’re forming a story out of our own heads—a story that we believe needs to be told.

That’s what we are, and that’s what we do.

We write because we must write, and we never stop. We wouldn’t even be willing to stop. Many of us wouldn’t even consider stopping.

Why would we, when we so love what we do?

[love]

{Rani Divine}

p.s. Be sure to stop in next week to find out what our August series is! It’s a good one!

Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Always with the words



It’s the last week of our July series! I have a really interesting theme picked out for next month, and I’m getting really excited to finalize what I’ll be talking about. One of these days, maybe I’ll do a blog to tell you guys how I blog… Digressing again, aren't I? 

Since this is the last week of our series on things writers do, I’ve picked out my two favorite topics. Well, technically three. Today, we’ll be talking about two things. Why? Because they went hand in hand, and it made more sense to take a day and talk about both than it did to take two days for smaller topics.

But enough descriptions while hiding the actual topic! Let’s get started.

If you’re a writer…

You know what it feels like to have your eyes spin from staring at words too long


And…

You know how to prevent the screen-staring headache, but you don’t always do it


Know what I mean?

I spend hours every day, sitting at my computer, writing or editing (and sometimes reading) until I seriously can’t look away without my eyes hurting. It happens a lot during the editing phase, actually, because I’ll spent about eight hours in any given day editing as much as I possibly can. When I’m writing, I usually take breaks here and there to do some other things, but when I edit, that’s just not the case.

As writers, we know what it’s like to continually stare at a screen.

And I’m sure you’d say that a lot of other professionals have that problem as well. Really, in this day and age, nearly everyone is on the computer all day. But you know what? Most of them aren’t extremely intensely staring at the screen, at words, waiting for magic to happen.

Most professionals are doing rote tasks on their computers all day. They’re working, yes, but they’re not actively focused on words all day. They’re looking at images as well, they’re looking at different websites and the graphics therein. Writers, however, are just sitting here looking at words—and you can only stare at words for so long before it gets old.

It happens when you’re reading all day, too. Pretty much, it just happens whenever you’ve been looking at words for too many hours in a day.

Unfortunately for writers, that’s our livelihood.

But, for many of us, we’ve gotten to the point where we know how to prevent the oncoming headache that ensues from staring at said words. We’ve been at it long enough that we know we should look away for fifteen minutes every hour, to take your eyes off the words for a little while whenever we can and give our eyes the break they need.

Then again, most of us never bother to do it.

Why? Because that would mean taking our eyes off the thing we do, the thing we love, and who wants to do that? Sheesh. No, we want to keep doing what we’re doing, we don’t want to stop writing, to stop reading and editing and bettering our craft.

So we continue to stare at the screens, at the words, and fight off the headaches threatening to bubble over the whole of our consciousness, and for that, you have a writer who’s written many books, and a writer who never stops writing.

Isn’t that what we are, in the end?

[love]

{Rani D}

Thursday, July 20, 2017

If you're not writing... you wish you were



It’s Thursday! You’ve almost made it through the week! Which means I’ve almost made it through the week, too… which is a very good thing. It’s been a long week. But Mynidd is almost done with edits, and it’ll be off to my advance readers very soon. That’s a very good feeling, believe me.

Which brings me to the topic I picked out for today, one that is really in my heart during weeks like this, times like these. The life of a writer isn’t always what we want it to be, but you know, we’re dreamers. And that’s a good thing, too. 

Know what writers do, all the time? 

We spend more time writing than we do anything else… or, we dream of a day when we can.


Now, for me, writing is my career. Well, one of them. I’m a writer, an editor, a blogger, a social media manager and marketing specialist… which all equates to the fact that I write pretty much all the time.

But you know, it wasn’t always like that. And that kind of writing that I do all the time isn’t always the kind of writing I want to be doing. It’s not like I’m sitting at my computer, writing my books day in and day out. Just ask my betas. They’re getting Collide as I write it, and right now, that means it’s not coming very quickly. I’ve been so deep in edits that I haven’t had as much time to write. I’ve been so busy with my new position at RAD that I haven’t had nearly as much down time as I used to. Which means I find myself wishing I could write more, but at the same time, glad that I get to write as much as I do.

As writers, there’s nearly always a storyline running in the backs of our minds. It doesn’t really matter what we’re doing, we’re always thinking about story. And when you’re thinking about story all the time, you really want to be able to sit and write that story down.

Life doesn’t always let that happen, unfortunately.

As writers, we dream of a time when we can spend a whole week in a cabin in the woods or holed up in a beach house, doing nothing but writing, day in and day out. We envision ourselves being able to sit and write for a living… while in reality, we often struggle to find the time in our daily schedules to even write five hundred words a day (that’s my new goal, by the way—remember when I used to write 4,000?!).

There was a time, not so long ago, when I spent more time writing than I did doing anything else. If anyone asked me what I was doing, the answer was always writing. It was the thing I loved to do, the thing I focused on the most, the thing I never wanted to give up.

And I still won’t give it up, but maybe I won’t write as often as I used to, and I’ll dream of writing, remembering the time when I used to write so much.

Because I’m a writer, and if I’m not writing, I definitely wish I was writing.

So do you, I’d guess.

[love]

{Rani D.}