The secret to being a writer

I have noticed that other writing blogs like to tell people how to write. This is not a bad thing but I do have a small problem with it. Let me give you some personal information about me. My undergraduate degree in English and Creative Writing, so I have done and am doing a lot of writing, both on the technical level for my MLIS that I am working on and for four years as an undergrad. So I guess I do know something about writing. The secret to being a writer is this- Write. Do it. Ray Bradbury say to write at least one thousand words a day. He is right. Also the more you do something the more you can do it. In writing that means the more you make yourself sit down and push through the 'I can't's and the 'I just don't know if I can do this' or whatever the voice in your head says the better you get at doing what you do think that you can.
As far as write what you know, I have not listened to that for years. This reason is if you look at my plots there is no way for me to 'really' know what I am writing about. I write high fantasy, hard science fiction, and I have a steampunk story just banging around in there. There is no way for me to know about any of those places in reality. I had people in my life when I was much younger and just starting to write for more than just school work, who in an mistaken attempt to help me, discouraged me from writing about what I saw/see in my head. They said to write what I know. Well I was 8 I really did not know much. But I did, and hopefully still do, know people. So instead of writing about being a unhappy 8 year old I wrote about people that I would like to meet. I wrote/write about people that I would like to meet. Heroes, villains, spaceship pilots, and brave people who overcame their bad pasts to become so much then anyone believed that they could be. So in hand I do write about what I know because I write about the people who live in my head and on the other no I can never write about my plots like I know them.
In the end it really does not matter. Write about what you love, write about what is in your heart, write about the people you would love to met and you will write true. True writing is great writing, just think about your favorite book. Why is it your favorite? Because there is some truth in there that you see and you love the product, the book, because it is the way to the truth. See you next week.

Unemployed but still writing

So the job that I started last week is done now.  As some of you may know and some may not I have Lupus and I live in the deep south. Well Lupus and heat do not mix well at all. My previous employer was told about me and heat not working. I point blank told him I needed a cool workplace and he said that would be no problem. Now I do not know if he just forgot or what but it was a problem. He would go through the small office and turn off the window units but not the one in his office. Then the other employees would wait for him to either leave or get busy doing something else then turn them back on. For a normal person having 80+ heat inside for about half of the day is uncomfortable but live able. For me is not is live able by yesterday, Sunday, I could not walk I was in so much pain and my joints were so inflamed. It is and was horrible. So I went in today and told him that. He said that I could go. I did quit just so you know but man I am glad to be done with that place. But I now have more time to spent with the writing that needs to get done for my classes and the writing I want to do for personal. I have already put in some apps so I have hope to hear back soon. The job I would really like is working for my university in their archives because I want to be an archivist/writer/ Because I'm a nerd just in case, my dear readers, you did not know that. until next week then!

Yay writing, schooling and god awful heat.

So I live in the deep south at the moment and we are having a god awful heat wave. By god awful I mean it has been over 100 degrees for the past three weeks. As I have complained before I also have Lupus and fibromyalgia and heat is very bad thing for me. So for the past three weeks I have felt really really bad. I do not want to curse in this blog because I do not think that is the best use of either the blog or your time but feel free to put any words that come to mind because they are going to be more true to what I was feeling and thinking about the heat. That means I have not had either the energy to write or the physical ability to do so. Because of where I have my SLE lupus fluid it hurts to sit up, to have anything on my lap because it pulls on the muscles making the fluid move which not any fun for me or anyone around me. But this week-end we got rain. Wonderful, cooling rain. The heat went from 105 with a heat index of 115 to 93. In about 20 minutes. I still need to stay inside but I can sit up with much pain and I have the desire to write again. I still need to get about 25,000 words before I can call this draft done. Then I get the wonderful task of breaking up the single novel in three. Like I said in a previous post I realized that 63,000 words that I had a trilogy not a single novel. Which is fine but man I wish that I knew that before I started writing it. This week is going to be very busy with my next grad school class, starting a new job, having a relationship and some kind of social life. I'm only when I'm being pulled in five different directions. See you next week!

Just a quick note

Well I'm in between classes until Thursday and I don't start my new job until next week so I'm hoping to get some writing and some reading done. I have not written anything on my novel for about two weeks and I'm feeling bad about that. But I was in very research intensive course with my June class. The class was basically how to be a research librarian. Not bad but man now I understand why every librarian I ever asked for help from loved me. We were given real questions that either the professor who was teaching the class or what the other professors had really been asked over the course of the years as librarians. For example one question was this- A GTA comes to you with this problem. Her professor is writing an article and wants to use a particular reference. But neither the GTA or the professor know the title of the article, who wrote, if it was published in a scholarly journal or in a trade journal. They think that they know what publishing house published the articles but they are not sure about that. The GTA does have a quote from the article but it may or may not be right. That was really one of my questions that I had to answer. I would never ever have walked up to a librarian with that question. I facepalmed when I finished reading it. I was able to find the article but man it was a pain in the a$$ mostly mine but a pain none the less. Don't feel too bad for me but pity my partner because he got to hear all about it, with full adjectives and very colorfully. He's a great guy with much patience.  Well see you next week!