Blogging again!

I stopped blogging quite a while back, except for my weekly flash fiction stories on Friday.   I had no really good reason for stopping, but a number of factors simply made blogging about writing (which will always be my primary subject here) difficult.

So let me ramble for a little while.

I went through quite a long stretch of self-doubt, even though I didn't truly recognize it for a while.  I didn't stop writing.  I didn't stop editing. 

I did stop publishing.

Part of this was due to several emails telling me, among things, that apparently I didn't care about my work, or else I wouldn't publish so often.  The emails were not about the books themselves, and it is likely these few people had not even read any of my work.  My Two Year Novel Course classes were popular at Forward Motion and the books continue to sell well.  Every year at least one or two people tell me how much help they've been.  You can't ask for better than that from classes that I know won't help everyone.  We are too diverse in the ways we work.  Sometimes, though, what I've said nudges someone in the right way, and they adapt it to what works for them.

That did not, however, help when talking about my fiction writing.  People often complained about what I did with my writing, and this is not the same as critiquing.  The ones who complain about how I work never mentioned the books themselves.

I am prolific.  I write several new novels a year and rewrite several more.  I get ideas from everything, and the hardest part is not to go rushing off to write something before I fully see what I have in hand.  When I'm lucky, multiple ideas meld together into one story.  When I'm not so lucky, I end up with little notes all piling up and have to decide which one next to expand.  I do background work.  I do outlines.  I get everything lined up, and then I write a fast first draft, just letting the story flow.

And when I finish the first draft, the manuscript is set aside for weeks or months -- sometimes more than a year -- before I go back and start editing.  This process works very well for me because it allows me to work on other things and get the first story out of my brain.  Then, when I do edit, I see it for what is there and not for what I expect to find.  One edit, two edits -- maybe more.  I do not rush the work.

I am also aware that I am not a perfect writer.  I haven't given up hope of getting better, though.  I am still willing to learn and try new things.

So, all of that continued over the last year and a half.  What I didn't do was take my work to the last step and publish.  It took me a long time to realize that I wasn't pushing that next step, and then longer to come to terms with why.

I was simply tired of dealing with those people.

I'm over that little snit with myself and have long since deleted the messages.  I've started publishing again. I started with print versions of five books that had already been in ebook versions, but the first really new book I put out was the sequel to Mirrors.  Mirrors 2: Reflections has Skye (my half-human, half-fae genderless main character) dealing with problems within the family.  I am working on a science fiction novel that is decades old and is really coming together well after three massive rewrites.  I am going to line up some more work for the rewrite-to-publish work, and I am not going to let what others say stop me this time.  Go ahead and do reviews on how poorly told the novel is (but you better say enough to show you've actually read it for me to take the review seriously), but attacking how I work is simply going to be ignored.

I'm going to start blogging about writing again.  I will likely pull up some old articles and edit them to fit newer times and put some of those here, too.  I will talk about my stories again and enjoy sharing the fun part of writing.

I am a prolific writer.  I'm not going to try and hide the fact by not publishing work.  You can enjoy the stories or not, but how they got from my head to your hands is nothing you need to concern yourself over as a reader.  Either you like my novels and shorter works or you do not.  I hope you do enjoy the stories, of course -- and if you do, at least you know you won't have to wait too long for something new!