The Fight for Followers

One of my teachers said that blogging takes like zero effort and that if he could get paid a million dollars to sit at a computer all day he would totally do it. Now it’s obvious that he doesn’t “internet” much so I get that he thinks it would be easy. You post things and hope it gets noticed, but that doesn’t take into account all the planning that goes into it. It would be like assuming a teacher walks into the classroom without having made lesson plans, odds are that, if students could, they would walk out. 

Bloggers are like teachers, except we don’t get paid. We plan, have a specific subject, share our knowledge, look at the interests of our audience, get ignored, answer questions, and interact with people. It’s not easy and building up a following is extremely difficult, at least teachers are given followers.

Rules are Made to be Left Up to Style

It drives me nuts that we have unbreakable rules for such small things like:

• west as a direction, but West as a location
• If you want to shorten a word it's 'em and not 'em (of course no curly quotes here)
• How to properly use ellipsis 
• Three different types of dashes 

But when it comes to the bigger things like capitalization and when you want to use commas, errors in writing become "the author's style." 

Characters Are People Too

I think one thing that writer's forget sometimes is that their characters are people too. That's probably where we get the "Mary Sue" trope, it's with this idea that the person who is going on this amazing journey has to be perfect since they are the only one worthy of it. As much sense as that makes, it's also not true.
We never go and do something different with the expectation that we will be perfect at it (if you find any early writings you'll know this to be fact). Yet that doesn't mean that the character won't pick up on one skill faster than another, we all have our areas of expertise. Though just because we have areas we do well in doesn't mean that we don't still struggle, and isn't that why we read? To see the character struggle and come out stronger for it?
Characters are people too, they'll learn, mess things up, win and lose, excel at somethings and completely fail at others. Sometimes they'll be put in front of some hard decisions, make the wrong choice, and have to face the consequences. All of this is part of the journey that a reader wants to see, it's why they picked this story.

Onelook.com

This website is extremely helpful if you are look for the proper way to spell a word, since it depends on what dictionary you're looking at. The great thing about Onelook is that it will tell you how many and which dictionaries use which spellings.

There are two different ways you can spell goodbye and it shows that "goodbye" is the most accepted one. Most often I will trust the Merriam-Webster or the American Heritage dictionaries.

Does this count as a "Writing Process"?

When I start working on a writing project it starts slow. An idea here, a scene layout there, some fantastic lines that stick in my brain. All together it looks promising enough, so I get started in writing some of the pieces down so I can place the puzzle together later. Then comes the point when these vague ideas need to stop floating around so I can pinpoint order out of misty chaos.

This is where things get tricky.

As the dust starts to settle into hard set plot, I find that there are so many different paths I can walk down, and each path has smaller foot paths of variation. Some of these foot paths are clear and an easy hike to the end of the story. Other foot paths are more over grown and harder to maneuver through, but the views at the end are breathtaking. 

Plotting stories out is extremely difficult, but the confusion and frustration is so worth it when a piece comes together in the end. Sometimes what I have in mind at the beginning of a project is not where I find myself ending. 

What I’ve learned so far in my editing class:

• Selling 100,000 books in a year makes you a New York Times Best Selling Author
• If you want to work with the Big Publishing Houses you need a Literary Agent
• Do Not become attached to the title you come up with
• Always get veto rights on you cover art
• Cover Art can make or break a book
• Always avoid Vanity Presses
• Keep a reference list on hand of all the words you have trouble spelling
• Keep a story specific list of words or phrases to save time on double checking