Some things
Sep. 6th, 2013 05:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
necia_phoenixOriginally published at Necia Phoenix. You can comment here or there.
Take a moment, watch this. As a writer, think about what it is you’re doing.
I don’t know about you, but this is my favorite scene from that movie. As a kid I would sing this song as I led our family dogs through the backyard and into a world of imagination. As I got older, I found my backyard became the world of Pern and I was a dragonrider (somehow swings became dragons, don’t ask I’m still not sure 
), then other times it became the side of an Integral Tree from Larry Niven’s Smoke Ring stories. Sometimes it was the setting of the Enterprise and I was on a voyage with Capt Picard and all them, and so on.
I read voraciously as a kid and a teen. Sadly I don’t read as much now as I did then, which is something I’m trying to change. Writers need to read after all!
But as a writer, do you know what we’re really doing?
Like Willy Wonka in the movie, we’re holding out our hands to the reader, we’re saying “Come with me, come play in my world, come see what I dream about, meet the characters that move me. Come on, don’t be shy, jump right in!”
There is a lot of drabble out there, talk about readers as if they are some stupid non-entities we’re trying to get to open their wallets and pour out their hard earned into our pockets. But that’s not the right mindset, if you ask me. I want my readers, all eight of you (:P just kidding, there are twelve of you! XD), to walk the roads of my imagination. I want you to be able to enjoy the adventures of my elementals and dragons in the Elemental stories, to stand with Zander against incredible odds in the Avaria stories, to walk the paths of the ancients in the phfr stories.
I have all these stories, I have all these characters, I hope one day you’ll all get a chance to meet them.
Fellow writers, remember when you get discouraged and down that somewhere out there is a kid in his or her backyard playing out the adventures you’re writing about. Whether its aliens in alaska, or out of control spam, or crazy squirrels and dimensional rifts, there’s someone out there who is waiting and loving every word you write.
Write for you, and know someone, somewhere will love it.
~*~
In final I saw today on my newsfeed on facebook that Anne (A.C.) Crispin passed away this morning from cancer. I don’t know the details, I was unaware she was ill until just a few months ago and it made me very sad. I had one, brief interaction with her, some years ago (5+ I believe) and we discussed books and she was super encouraging. Goodbye Anne, another great gone. **sigh**
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2013-09-06 06:42 pm (UTC)I think, for me, this is probably why I feel like such a disappointment and failure as a writer. I don't think this will ever happen for me...and it makes me sad.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-06 07:11 pm (UTC)Have you ever heard of Friday Flash? You write a flash fic piece 1000 words or less, post it on your blog/lj/whatever publicly. Then you link to it over here http://fridayflash.org/press/the-collector/ they then post it to their little catalog thingy on saturdays.
One of the things I've noticed about building up a readership is having bits of your writing up and out there for people to see. That helps when you self publish. A way of marketing which costs nothing more than however long it takes you to write up a flash fiction piece.
no subject
Date: 2013-09-06 09:42 pm (UTC)I have heard of Friday Flash, but I edit things to death, LOL, so I don't know if I'd be willing to throw something together and post it. :) Good suggestion, though.
I'm wondering whether I'll even bother to self-publish. If I have a website some day, I might throw things up there. ::shrugs:: We'll see.