Ever feel a little schizo?

It's odd, if you think about it. How many other people can claim to have so many voices in their heads and still be considered perfectly sane? All of us who write have that problem, if you can call it that. We have all these characters, some of whom are for stories that haven't even shown themselves to us, clamoring for attention. Add our normal lives and is it any wonder we seem a little distracted?

I've been feeling like a have a few more personalities lately. During the school year I always feel a little like Sybil. Teachers are the Swiss army knives of the working world, you know. In the course of a single day I've been a teacher, a referee, a mom, a fixer of broken binders, a finder of lost articles, a nurse bandaging boo boos, a money lender, a cheerleader, judge, jury and executioner. Alright, I made up the last three, but when you've got a sullen fourteen year old who knows he's been busted glaring at the square of carpet in front of his feet, you feel a little like that. It's one of the reasons I love the job. It's never boring. Sometimes I can't believe I get paid to laugh so much and have so much fun.

Beyond that, though I'm editing the paranormal romance book Solstice is publishing (insert happy dance here) and working on a young adult fantasy book. 15,000 words in and counting! Flipping back and forth between worlds, genres, characters and audience is starting to make me a little dizzy. 

In fact, I should be writing or editing right now, but it's a cold (12 degrees F, right now) snowy day and my daughter is cuddled up next to me watching "The Little Mermaid." I think I'll take this personality, this world, and this audience for the moment.

Comments

  1. AnonymousDecember 12, 2010 at 5:25 PM

    mmmm...as much as I love writing, The Little Mermaid is hard to resist. 'Kiss the Girl' is one of my fave songs!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rebecca L. FrenclDecember 13, 2010 at 9:30 AM

    Definitely hard to resist. So I didn't! I worked later on to salve my conscience.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Adventure in Self-Publishing

So, I'm attempting something this summer that I've never before thought I'd attempt. I'm going to try to publish a couple of smaller pieces myself instead of going through my publisher. Now, that doesn't mean that I have anything against my publisher. I don't. I love my editor and I've had nothing but a positive experience with them. However, I've been hearing over and over at the various conventions I've gone to this year that indie, what used to be called self, publishing is the way to go to really earn money. Here's a fact of life in publishing, no matter the means....you need to spend money to make money. That doesn't mean that you pay a vanity press to publish your manuscript. No, a publisher should always pay you and not the other way around. What I mean is that the publisher or the author, depending on who is putting out the book, is going to need to pony up some cash for marketing. Now, unless you're Stephen King or your publish
Read more

And Promo is the Name of the Game

We're at T-2 days until the start of summer vacation. Ah yes, summer vacation....that time of year when I can have bathroom breaks when I want them, take more than 10 minutes to eat lunch and I can drink a pot of coffee after 3pm. Glorious days. Anyway, back to the point. This summer, I decided that in order to make a little money, I'll have to spend a little money. I heard something at the RWA (Romance Writers of America) Chicagoland Spring Fling this year, "you have to give away a bunch of books before you sell a bunch of books." Huh? That refrain, have free stories, novellas even novels up on Amazon was repeated over and over again. Of course, I thought, these are those people who can crank out two hundred pages in two weeks. That's not me. I am a slow writer. A book and a novella a year, maybe with another story tossed in, is as quick as I can write. Can I? Well, this got me thinking. So, during May I set aside the full-length novel I was working on (another
Read more

Girls with Spunk

Katniss. Hermione. Lessa. Polgara. Lady Macbeth. Alright, I'll even give you Jane Eyre, but I refuse to add Bella into the mix of heroines who I believe are really kick ass. Now, admittedly, most of them are grown women, so I don't think it's fair to really pull them into the mix. I'll stick to the girls in the group--Hermione and Katniss, and because she's their exact opposite in all ways, Bella. Think about it. Back when all we had were fairy tales told to scare children, the spunkiest of the fairy tale heroines was Gretal who had the wherewithal to shove the witch in the oven and free her brother. I suppose she was one of the first heroines who really took the story in her own hands and proved to the world that we were more than damsels in distress waiting languidly in some tower for Prince Charming to rescue us. Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White--all waiting around for a prince to come and save them. Or in Cinderella's case weeping for a Fairy Godmot
Read more