Well, I got busy and then I got the flu and then…yada yada yada, I guess. However, if you recall, last month was “AuthorLifeMonth” on Instagram, so here are the rest of my entries!
Day 12 was “Killed Darlings”. “Kill your darlings” is a common bit of advice for writers; it means that you can’t get overly attached to things in your writing, if removing them would make the writing better. It also means letting projects go, which is what this represents: my first attempt at writing a novel, an Arthurian fantasy called The Promised King. It was intended as a duology, and I actually got the first one, The Welcomer, finished and posted it online in blog form. But some stuff happened in the mid-2000s, and as way leads on to way…I doubt I’ll ever come back this way again. I did learn a lot from writing that book, though.
Next is Day 13, “Favorite Books in the Genre”.
Day 14 was “Favorite Cover”. I figured this meant favorite cover of our own, but I only have two and I can’t possibly pick between them, so I went elsewhere: the wonderful cover for Nicholas Basbanes’s book A Gentle Madness, which is about book collecting:
Who wouldn’t want to read that!
Day 15 was “Swag”. All I have right now are business cards.
Day 16 was “Where you write”. This photo is my workroom at the day job; I often use my thirty-minute lunch period as a writing session.
Yes, it’s cramped, but I do tend to do well in tight spaces. (Not that open spaces freak me out, or anything.)
Day 17 brought us “Where You Relax”. I love to kick back and read at home, but there’s also some very real spiritual revitalization to be found in the woods and forests and along the rocky streambeds of Western New York. I’ve always enjoyed hiking, but the last year or so, with the dog as my partner…it’s becoming nearly an obsession.
Day 18 was “Research”, so here’s a part of the background work for The Adventures of Lighthouse Boy: the poem “The Highwayman” by Alfred Noyes. Reading in the genre is research, for me; I like to get an idea of what kinds of tales can and have been told, as well as seeing if I can figure out various tricks of those trades.
That’s it for now. More to come, sooner than later!
