So I have a dilemma: do I sell my soul, or attempt to keep my integrity in place and perhaps wither away in the process?

Let me elaborate.

Last week, my compadre and I were discussing the merits of writing bad fiction for the sake of making money. Perhaps not in such blatant terms, but… that’s really what it was. She mentioned ‘pot-boilers’, the kind of writing certain famous women used to do in order to ‘keep the pot boiling’ and put food on the table, while they were working on the fiction they actually wanted to write.

I’ve thought about this. I’ve thought about writing crap in order to actually have an income worth noting, and doing my ‘real writing’ alongside. The thing is, if you’re spending all this time writing crap, would it perhaps be better spent honing the “real” stuff instead, possibly leading to a finished work and publication sooner?

All I know is that for the stories I really care about, it takes me forever (or what seems like it) to research, plan, and then finally get it down on paper. I have some other ideas that I consider more ‘trite’, which I don’t really care about and I have a feeling I could write fairly quickly. I know, getting anything published these days takes a significant amount of time and effort… but if you can write quickly, it means more submissions get out in the mail, which typically means less waiting before someone wants to pay you for your work.

To boil the pot or not, that is the question.

I found this interesting article that made me smile, which I find to be so very true. Now, I’m not saying that I could write anything worthy of a Newbery Medal, but I’ve read some of these, and let’s be honest… beyond the heart-wrenching death of a beloved pet/pathos character/MC’s parent, a number of them are, well… not really that well written. In my opinion. It’s like the Oscars – the critics like it because they think it’s ‘art’… but the public is just bored.

But, that’s another topic for another day. For now, it’s time for another cup of coffee and a few more hours of keeping my soul to myself.

For now.

Tags: pot boilers, W.C., writing

Today I was walking through the aisles upon aisles (upon aisles…) of Halloween costumes and supplies at our local Value Village, and found myself faced with a significant amount of “fairy” outfits. Among these were costumes for an ‘evil fairy’, a ‘demon fairy’, a ‘copper fairy’ (what the…?), a ‘goth fairy’…

Now, don’t get me wrong – at a basic level, I’m impressed that the majority of adult fairy costumes actually attempt to correctly represent original faerie nature, before the dumbing down that began in Victorian England and cemented itself in Disney lore.

How is this relevant to writing in ANY way? Well, I’m so glad you asked.

You see, this year’s NaNoWriMo topic falls into the realm of the fay in Ireland. Yes, I’m writing a fairy story… but with real faeries. I’ve noticed a number of authors taking this direction lately, and it’s heartening. However, I want to write my own.  And so, we come to the point of convergence with Value Village costumes.

One of the threads on the NaNo forums is called ‘Let’s all dress up like our MCs on Nov.1st!!!’, to which I posted something along the lines of “fat chance, my MC is a 9-year-old boy”. However, the faerie queen will play a significant part within the story, something which just so happened to occur to me as I walked the aforementioned aisles…

No, I didn’t end up purchasing a costume. Yes, I did carry one around the store with me for about 40 minutes as I looked at other things, only putting it down at the last minute when I began to feel slightly doubtful that I would actually use it more than once.

But who I am kidding. A dress with wings? That’s got year-round written all over it.

I may go back tomorrow.

Tags: faeries, writing

This January, I decided to take up a little something called the 50 Book Challenge. I think the idea originated on LiveJournal, but I’m not entirely sure… either way, there are subgroups on Librarything.com and Facebook where you can talk about your progress throughout the year.

The premise? Read 50 books in a year. Some people choose to measure it through word count – since clearly some books are longer than others – but I figured that for my first year at it, I’d just count the books. It’s easier.

In this blog’s earlier incarnation, I was posting my progress and reviews of the books I’d read each month, but I think at this point I’ll just wait until the end of the year. At the very least, I’ll reveal this: I’m well on track to significantly surpass the 50 books. I certainly didn’t expect it… but I guess when you’re conscious of the amount you’re reading, you can really manage to find the time to do more of it.

Not such a bad thing, in my opinion.

Tags: 50 Book Challenge, books

Nothing brightens my day more than receiving a free book in the mail.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I do love cake.

But you know what I mean. Yesterday, courtesy of the HarperCollins First Look club, I received an advance reading copy of Dreaming Again, edited by Jack Dunn. It’s a collection of speculative fiction by Australian authors… sounds pretty interesting, if you ask me. Which you didn’t. And yet, I’ve told you anyway.

My free book!

Imagine, people giving away free books, and all that is asked in return is an honest review of said book. Really! Incredible.

I also received notice on Librarything.com yesterday that I’d won a copy of We Bought a Zoo by Benjamin Mee… which means that there’ll be another day-brightening book coming along in the mail anytime now.

Huzzah! I’ll post my reviews on here eventually…

Tags: books, Librarything.com

Huzzah! It’s NaNoWriMo season!

That’s right… we’re only 25 days away from a month of little sleep, excessive caffeine consumption, and frantic attempts to make daily word counts.

I blogged about my progress last year, but as I mentioned before, I’ve lost nearly all the posts from this blog’s previous incarnation. I plan on attempting to track down some of the posts that may be sitting on my defunct laptop – I’m fairly certain I wrote at least a few in Word instead of right in wordpress – and posting them here during October as a “lead-in” to November’s insanity.

My husband has decided to try his own sort of writing challenge with me, revolving around his business blog. I’ll try to post my own progress here during November on a regular basis, but at the very least, I’ll have a widget or something in place that updates my word count every day. Maybe I should also install one that tracks how many cups of coffee it takes to actually make it through 50,000 words in a month…

Tags: NaNoWriMo

…but then again, when isn’t it? To be honest, I have no idea. Until this past weekend, I hadn’t entered a writing contest since… well, since grade 2. I won, mind you, but that was then (“this is now, this is Stouffer’s, ooh ooh”).

Old Maritime commercials aside, this weekend I entered the Writer’s Weekly Fall 2008 24-Hour Short Story Contest – sort of on a whim, sort of as a challenge to myself. I wanted to force myself to produce something creative under pressure, since I tend to have problems getting anything done without some kind of pre-arranged structure.

Now that it’s all said and done, it was a pretty good experience and I’m glad I tried it. The results (ie. who won) won’t be in until the end of the month, but this time around, it wasn’t really about winning. Next time, perhaps. This time I just wanted to see if I could do it. I managed to write the story fairly quickly once the topic was released, but I ended up spending hours and hours editing the thing, trying to cut it down to the 850 word limit. I started with 1200 words, and thought “that’s not bad, I can edit that down”… naturally, I didn’t realize how difficult it can be to remove 400 words of a very short story, since in short stories, every word needs to be crucial to begin with. I think I got 3 hours of sleep that night.

The next contest with Writer’s Weekly runs January 23rd.

In terms of the next contest that I’ll be entering for sure (hah) is probably one of the Writer’s Digest competitions. They run a number of variously themed contests throughout the year, and the genre fiction short story deadline is coming up fast. I’ll keep you posted on my progress…

Tags: writing, writing contests

Welcome to the Boughanfire.com blog relaunch!

Unfortunately, the situation that required a relaunch also caused all the previous posts to be lost, so for anyone who’s here for the first time… welcome, thanks for visiting, and no, this isn’t a brand-new blog. Except that it is. Kind of.

You get the point.

Anyway, I’m hoping to chronicle the potentially-but-probably-not-so-much-exciting adventures of a writer/reader/bellydancer/gamer (how’s that for topic focus?) on this blog (that’s me, for those of you who haven’t had enough coffee yet). Hopefully some of what I say will be helpful, or at least mildly intriguing. If not, well… thanks for stopping by anyway!

Feel free to leave a comment, ask a question, tell a joke…

Tags: welcome