Wordy Wednesday, Feet Really Aren't Hands

Now, I know you know this, or you should, unless, perhaps you are a tiny baby, but feet really aren't hands.
They don't move the same way or look the same way or feel the same way. This is because they are at the end of your legs, farther from your heart, and they support your weight. I don't think hands can do that so easily, even gymnast's hands.

Course, if you look at a human skeleton or even that of a horse, you'll see the framework for hands. Same goes for an otter, though they actually have hands, but I'm not sure if their feet are hands. Huh, I wonder if otters will be the next race to reach sentience. I thought it would be racoons or cats. I once had a very disturbing dream about the beginning of sentience in cats. It eventually led to them trying to talk. Let me be the first to tell you, a cat's voice is pretty damn devilish.

So, feet could sort of be hands, if we didn't' have the flesh slabs that encase them. I guess they aren't because we lost the bid with the Orangutans.

This is what I say.

Feet that are hands would be cool.

Working on a New Cover and Wordy Wednesday, Success?

You know, things may be looking up for me.
I have a scanner now.
All I need is to get a decent sketch together and then scan it into the computer and do some magic to make it into a better cover.

To tell the truth, the cover I have now for Snow Sands, Book 1 is the problem.


I am proud of it, there's no doubt of that, but it's not right. Being unique is cool and all but the cover needs to tell what to expect, at least a bit. There's a reason to do something similar to what others do. It helps people who might like your stuff to locate it since it looks similar to other stuff they liked. So, I'm going to do that sketch and I'm going to use The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, by Patricia C, Wrede as a model because I like the books and they fit somewhat with what I did.

I leave you with a, sorta, poem that I wrote free hand a little earlier when I was feeling a bit blue.
Success?
Does success mean much if success doesn't mean much? Does it matter to try and feel if you can't even get feeling from a bloody stubbed toe? 
Is there a point when your resolve has dulled?
At what time do things just begin to matter?
When does the world sparkle, the sky glow, the air fill with music and the ground begin to shake? 
What do you do to live, to sing, to write, to paint? 
At what point do the fates just say, "okay," and let the milk of inspiration flow?
Why do they just say "no?"
Or, is it just me? Is that it all it takes? I must say yes, despite all the grey, despite the dull pain, despite a tired brain?
Is that it?

Wordy Day; Ode to Jager

I dropped the ball. I got nothing...Except this.

Deep black orbs, ringed with amber, shimmering with warmth and reproach. Brows crowned with speckled brown and white. Ears shaking and rising and falling in anticipation and then disappointment. A long mottled brown and white snout with a freckled moist nose at the end.

He wants it.
He shivers and quakes, his pink tongue inviting treats.
Always, he waits, standing or reclining nearby, sometimes underfoot.
He is always within reach of your hand, always around to lick up spills.
He is an elderly, bored hound dog who loves cheese, and bacon more than even his master, sometimes.
He doesn't care for carrots or broccoli.


There we are.

Wordy Wednesday. Different ways to go about writing, Part 1, Which Medium or, What Tools I Use to Write.

Writing is an art. It is a bit more clear than many forms of art, though that doesn't have to be the case. Surrealism exists in writing as well as painting and it may be difficult to determine what the writer's intent was though, often, we try and make sure you get it but it doesn't always work since references, tropes and sarcasm only work if you know about them.

Poe's law. Look it up.

Like drawing a picture, you can choose how to go about it and, as with drawing a picture, there are a few tools that you can choose from because they work. In that case, pencils, erasers and pens, in the case of writing, the methods have changed. First it was the pen and something to write upon, then it was the typewriter and then the computer. There were some intermediate steps, like the electric typewriter which has a certain amount of memory but I don't have any experience with that and I've had a bit of trouble finding them. 

What I want to talk about is the computer. It's not a dedicated writing machine. I kinda wish it was. I spend way too much time on it not writing for me to think of it as one. Just opening up my laptop and turning it on seems to make me flighty. Despite this, I've been doing most of my writing as well as my outlines on my laptop. For a while, I was doing well, highly motivated, productive. Then I had a bunch of depression and couldn't write. Then I could write but didn't really want to. Now I sorta want to write and the ideas are definately flowing, but I just can't seem to focus very often. 

Partly because of this, I got a new notebook. I opened it up and I began to write. everything came easily. I knew that I'd have to turn my computer on to get at it and the paper was right there. Everything was crystal clear. This is why I have decided to go back to using pen and paper for writing, at least the plotting and outlines. 

One of these days, I think I may try writing the whole thing by hand, like I used to do, but only if I have a scanner so I don't have to type every single thing out. 

My tools of the trade are a notebook and a Pentel R.S.V.P fine point as well as a late model Asus laptop. 

They used to be pen and paper and they could very well be again. I have used the computer exclusively most recently, but now I'm gonna try the hybrid approach. 

Perhaps one day I will try a digital pen one day. That would be midway across the bridge between the old and the new.

Wordy Day Bubbles 1.5

I remembered it was Wednesday yesterday, I really did. Several times, I remembered. I didn't do anything about it, though and that's the problem.

The dog went to the vet again on Tuesday. He got more shots. He was a lot better than before and so was the staff, mostly, or perhaps it's only that I stayed in the waiting room and didn't have to watch any slip ups, though I was told about them later. I'm preeeetty sure an antibiotic isn't a steroid, at least that's my impression.

While I was sitting in the waiting room, I began to think of Bubbles, the King Charles Spaniel.

The water in the scuffed silvery bowl was yellow. Bubbles didn't even bother to sniff it. He wasn't going to drink it. He was in a cage that smelled nosebitingly strong of anticeptic. He scowled and settled grudgingly on the thin pink blanket folded once that he'd been given, though it did nothing for the chill. This place was terrible. His round eyes had begun to dry out the moment he'd been shoved in the cage, stinging from the antiseptic. He put his tiny chin on his paws and whuffed, his gaze wandering. It settled on the food bowl. It was also a scuffed silver and contained what he could only assume was card board. It smelled enough like it.

There we are. Just a short bit, but something, none the less, and two days after Wednesday. I've been tired. I'll pick up the slack.

Working with Old Writing

I think I'm a pretty good writer, funny, charismatic and with a good understanding of the world around me so that I can describe it properly. Also, I have google image search, so if I don't know how to describe or draw it, I can find out! I'm pretty sure I was a writer with potential in the past, barely above a laymen as far as craftsmanship in the skill of book writing, but with potential. I had ideas! I even had good characters and pacing.
What I know I didn't have was patience. I was always in a hurry to slap the words on the page, in bare bone form just to get the story written because, as my father always told me, "Just write. You add to it later but you need to get the words on the page."

This led to sparse stories, lacking in much detail, save the bare minimum and, believe me, I did make myself describe things, I just didn't do it to the degree I do today.

He leaned against a yellow stone wall.
(It could have just been a wall. I made myself describe yellow bricks.)

Janus leaned against a wall, just off the market which he shared with several vendors who looked aside at him before returning their widened eyes to their wares and their customers. The yellow brick dug against his scars even through the thick material of his dark cloak and he shifted in an unusual sign of discomfort.
(See, I'm fighting not to describe the worn down mortar which exposed the hard edges of those bricks. If anything, I describe too much now.)

My writing now is better but the ideas and the feeling that I had in my old writing are probably just as good if not more so since I had a touch of wide-eyed innocence about me then and didn't feel like anything I came up with was already overdone.

When working with old writing, I have to juggle the tone of the old story with my new found ability to use several adjectives. I haven't quite mastered doing this. I'm working on it. What I do know, is that I prefer to have the scenery in my world be full sets as apposed to merely being back drops.

Conclusion, write with the same feeling but the new skills. The difficulty in this is reading your own, much earlier, heavily flawed writing without having another feeling well up within your breast. One of great disgust. One that inspires the most eloquent of speech which, really, is kinda mean to your old writing as well as silly. You don't say a kitten is horrible compared to a cat, even if they do wet on the sheets. Kittens become cats (reference) and writers get better. It's a natural progression. Live with it. Appreciate that you started writing and could become better and read your old work like someone who isn't an arrogant ass of a composer of prose.

If you're gonna be a writer, you should be nice to other writers. Your past self counts.

For goodness sake people, be nice!

Wordy Wednesday 8; Styles and Nom de Plumes

Barnaby James rolled up alongside the house on his tricycle. He was three and a large child, practically bursting out of his suit that'd fit just that last fall, his blond hair falling into his eyes as he bounced along the gravel track which led to the front porch. He scowled as he swung one short trouser clad leg over the trike and swaggered inside. His grandfather was dead. His relatives had been getting on his nerves. That was why he'd taken a turn around the track that led around the house. Otherwise, he would have smacked his Aunt Judith. "Have a candy and brush your teeth, indeed!" He was three, not an infant.

This was written by me on the spot. 

"You know, I wish that I had wings," said Melody. 

"Why?" asked Arianna distractedly, her eyes on the small glass vial of purple liquid in a stand over a small fire that extended from a small round stand, presumably for a fuel source. She delicately stuck a reed inside the vial and stirred. The mixture darkened to a royal purple, losing all translucence. She clicked her tongue in approval and used a pair of copper tongs to remove the vial from a stand and stick it in a pile of sand beside where she was kneeling. She looked up at Melody as she twisted the valve that extinguished the tongue of fire. Without the source of light, there were no worse off, as the moons always shed some light, especially out on the silvery dunes. 

Melody stared enigmatically at Arianna. "Why else, she said, with a hint of belligerence. "I want to be able to break someone's arm, like a swan or a goose, if they challenge me."

Arianna frowned. "We've only seen a goose at the dinner table and a swan once, perhaps?" 

Melody shrugged. "It's not my fault that people don't read." She tilted her head, " Or cannot make inferences based on the musculature of the roast goose we have seen." 

This was also written by me with no planning. I used two characters from my Snow Sands series. 

These are more similar than I intended but I think they'll still illustrate my point. 

Pen Names. 

Why I think they're important. 

For one thing, separating the genres you write in would make sense since you want your audience to associate a specific name with a specific sort of feeling. Otherwise, they might get confused and more cautious about buying titles written under than name. That's relatively obvious. 

The other thing is if your writing style changes. Going from plot driven to character driven or having a bunch of action packed novels that give way to a whole new series where two people talk in a room, is going to be even more jarring for a reader than changing your genre. 

The problem is that an established name is advertising. In these cases, though, it'd be bad advertising. 

I'm fighting with this. I don't like it. I don't even really like using my name, though I will for this blog. I suppose that even if I list all of my young adult work here, people will still see it under a different name and the name will serve as a brand. 

Yay. 

I don't think I have a brand yet.