Oh My Goodness...

Ok, so since I stirred up this monster, I went looking for whatever pieces of research or tidbits of writing I have around. I found my notebook for Gyrfalke, sample chapters of different things, sketches for Salome and Empress...

I have alot more, but unfortunately, I was probably the last person on earth who stuck by the 3 1/2 inch floppy disk, and I have about 20 of them that have things on them I HAVE to get access to. I will ask my future mother in law if she has access to a portable floppy drive, or see if the library has something. Where else can I go to transcribe what is on those disks?

I keep holding on to them because I did some reading up on copyright laws, and the best way to protect your intellectual property is to have proof that you created it first. If any documentation you have can be proven to date farther back than the person who stole it from you, then your chances are better of winning your case.

I'll also try to get my scanner up and running so I can scan in some of these sketches for my readers, a little inside glimpse into what I have envisioned.

Autobiography

I have a habit of including some semi-autobiographical information or details into my writing. I read or heard somewhere to "Write what you know". Well, I think I know my self pretty well, so I include a bit of myself or people I know in my characters. Some of them know I do this, and some don't, but I think the tell of a good writer would be if they could recognise themselves or not when reading it. In some cases, I wouldn't want this to happen, lol, so I have to be an even better writer and disguise the people. In others, it is because I respect or esteem a person and want to give them a place in my story, like they have a place in my life. But, all names have been changed to protect the innocent... or not so innocent in some cases too. :)

Even my oldest son J. has a place in my most involved story to date, listed as 1. on the summary on Publish Kestrel. He is a key element to the story, and he's one of the most important people in my life, so I wanted to give him a place.

I think most writers do this to some extent, pulling from experience to add to what their imagination gives them. Even little old Emily Dickinson, recluse that she was, probably had something of personal note in her work. It makes historians and literary people crazy trying to figure out what writers of old meant when they wrote stuff. Maybe they didn't mean anything, and were just trying to fuel those fires and make high school students mad with frustration while writing term papers.

Not that I would ever presume to think that anything I write might end up in a textbook someday, but just the very act of ending up in print will immortalize something, and I feel like I have to make a mark somehow!

To start things off...

I find it really hard to work when anyone is around, especially my fiance. He can get really judgmental when it comes to my love of romance novels. He seems to think that just because I read or write them that I must want my own life to be a romance novel. I am not that naive. All the same, no one likes to hear their hobbies degraded, so I just ignore him and keep on.

He wouldn't understand also why I chose to start a blog about it. He's such a private person, and I can respect that, but I aim to keep this mostly about my writing, but my writing pulls from my life. I CAN separate reality from fiction, but reality is my inspiration.

I enjoy the romance genre, and there's more flexibility there than one would imagine. Sometimes my characters undergo horrible things. My best friend said once that I loved to torture my characters. That's not necessarily true. Things that might seem horrible in real life don't look that way on paper, you have to be over the top, so that's what I do.

I'm anxious to start getting some readers who will vote for what they want to see me write. Now that I've started this, I need outside motivation to keep me going!