Second life workshop

I'll be in Second Life in about an hour, giving a workshop for NaNoWriMo on "Building the Novel of your World." It starts at 2 PM SLT time (Pacific time to the rest of us). :)

You can find the SURL here. Just scroll down the page a little to today's date. The Virtual Writers have a great site, so take a look around it while you're there.

Hope to see you inworld!

Diana

NaNoWriMo 2014

I know. Every year I say I'm going to do this and every year I fall apart (here, here and here). Why? Because I taught high school and, here in New York State, grades are due for the first term the second week of November. I'd have great intentions, then get flooded with term papers to grade, tests to evaluate, projects to assess. Anyone who still thinks teachers work only 40 hours a week is living in the stone age.

Besides which, November, for me, is also the lead-up to Christmas. My family usually hosts Thanksgiving, which is a minimum of two full days of preparations. The day after Thanksgiving is decorating day when the entire family is put to "work" and the house is transformed. Christmas carols play for the first time and leftovers abound. And the next day, the Saturday of that long weekend, is baking day. Christmas cookies and, increasingly, Christmas candies come forth from the kitchen while the TV watchers gorge on Christmas specials.

So what makes me think this year will be any different? For one, I'm not teaching. Well, not in that schedule, anyway. I'm adjunct at the local community college, but have no grades due in November. At all. Yay!

For two, we're not hosting Thanksgiving this year. That means the decoration boxes can come down Wednesday night and we can start decorating when we get home on Thursday. We've done that a few times over the years and like the relaxed feel. Of course, my son no longer lives at home, so we'll be one set of hands short, but I think we'll be okay. We've repurposed one of the downstairs rooms over the summer, so it'll be fun to find new places for traditional decorations. Saturday will still be baking day. I think I'd get lynched if I dropped that. :)

All this means more time to actually spend on writing come November 1st.

I've been working on a fantasy for the past few months and had originally decided to make a huge push on it in November. I've changed my mind. There's a historical romance (that will undoubtedly end up erotic in nature) that's niggling at my brain. I'm spending the next two weeks doing historical research so when the clock starts ticking, I'm ready to go. I've already thrown some spaghetti, but need to immerse myself in the world a little more before I can come up with something that sticks.

Speaking of immersing oneself in the world of one's story, I'm doing a workshop in Second Life on that very topic on November 9th. Not sure of the time yet, but probably 1:00 or 2:00 SLT. If you're around, come join the fun! I'll post more details and a SURL when I have it.

If you want to sign up at the official NaNoWriMo site, go ahead. I did this year. Because this year, I'm going to make it all the way to 50,000 words in one month. Honest!

Play safe,
Diana

Finding my voice

When I first started this blog back in 2003, I did it because it was expected of me as a new writer. Websites were de rigeueur, so of course, I had one, but blogs were the new kid on the block, the bandwagon everyone was jumping on.

So, I jumped, too.

And missed.

What the heck was I supposed to say? I wrote fiction, not conversations with strangers. I posted a few things every once in a while, but heck, I barely managed that other author necessity, the newsletter. How was I supposed to think of stuff to say every week? Or worse, every day?

The blog sputtered and nearly died several times. For a while it was pretty much a repeat of my newsletter. I had books to write and a family to raise as well as a full-time job. And readers didn't talk back to me, anyway. Might as well just chuck it.

(Sidenote: I pretty much felt the same way when Twitter came along. All the advice said, “Have a conversation with your readers, don’t just post when you have a new book.” But I’m terrible at starting conversations in real life, let alone cyberspace. I’m just not that interesting a person!)

Yes, I did the required reading and posting on other people’s blogs, but mostly I just read them and learned about publishing (and snark). Posting on them didn't seem to lead people back to my own blog and stating that I’d covered a similar topic myself in a post was (is) considered blatant self-promotion and frowned upon.

Then one year (2010), for my own edification, I decided to keep track of all the books I read. I figured the easiest way to do that was to make a post on the blog with a sentence or two about the book. Not a review, just a record.

To my surprise, the hits went from single to double digits each day. I pretty much doubled my readership and that surprised me because I really wasn't posting for the readers, I was posting for myself. I was my own audience and so had loosened up. Maybe I was on to something here?

And then I started the writing workshops in September, 2011. I took the idea from Dean Wesley Smith about putting each chapter out, then collecting those chapters and making a book available. I’d been teaching writing in both the real and virtual worlds (Second Life) for quite some time – making those workshops available on the web seemed the next logical step.

This time my numbers tripled. Each Tuesday I’d have between 40 and 50 people visiting, apparently just for the workshop. Some would email me with questions or comments, but mostly, the only indication I had that the site was getting more traffic was in the hit numbers, because still, few left comments.

(I double-checked the settings over a dozen times those first few months of starting the writing workshops, concerned that maybe I’d turned the comment feature off by accident. I hadn't.  My readers are just not talkers. In other words, they’re like me!)

But somewhere along the way, posting those writing workshops helped me to find my voice when it comes to posting on this blog. I threw off the artificial constraint I had put on myself (trying to figure out what people wanted to read) and instead posted what I wanted to write. Sometimes that’s my opinion about something, sometimes it’s a reflection about an event, sometimes it’s barely anything at all but me enjoying the flow of words and exploring a subject for fun.

But its me. It’s my voice.

Took me nearly nine years to find it, but find it, I did. And my hits nearly doubled again.

Thank you to those who have been here from the beginning, thank you to those who pop in occasionally just to see what’s going on. And thank you to those who read every post, every time. You may not say much, but I know you’re there and that’s what counts.

Beginning writers, want some advice? Learn faster than I did! :)

Play safe, everyone – I’m having fun and I hope you are, too!

Diana 

Well, as you can see, I've been very lackadaisical in posting to this thing. The latest idea was a bit of a bust, although I thank those who did participate. I suppose I should just up and admit, I'm a better fiction writer than blogger, period.

That said, it's been an interesting several months! I've done live readings in Second Life...yes, readings of my very own work. It was hard at first...I was terribly nervous and I self-edited some of the more specific words out of my readings. The second reading I suddenly came across the word "pussy" that I had missed in my editing and hesitated before saying it. But the audience egged me on and I haven't looked back since. I think, though, it cost me some listeners.

In fact, while I had a segment that wanted to hear the hotter stuff, the majority (I think) didn't want it so explicit. It was really hard to tell. I started with audiences/listeners of 15-17 people...and by the end of a six weeks had only 2 or 3. Time to face facts...either they didn't like my voice, didn't like the selections, didn't like me....I had to do some pretty dark soul-searching because the reality was that, whatever I was doing, it wasn't working.

So I took a hiatus, ostensibly to write more (which I have done), but it reality, it was to nurse a wounded ego. I really don't have a big one. No, really...I don't! lol But to go from a small audience to a tiny one would make anyone stop and think. During this time (most of May), I curtailed my SL time somewhat...touched base with the Real World and started a new project (see, you can't keep me down for long!).

Working with Selina Greene of Book Island, I proposed 4 writing workshops. I thought to use my stream and do a combination of streaming and chat in order to present. The delay makes it...interesting! I'm either ahead of the conversation by a full minute...or behind it! But the attendance has been steady in the 20-25 people range--a perfect number for a workshop. Small enough that everyone who wants to participate in the chat can...and yet large enough to make Book Island want more.

So yes, I added two more workshops to the line up and probably would go on with more, but I'm going on holiday (yes, I'm from the States, so I should say 'on vacation' but I really like the British choice of words better!) and I won't be in-world for three weeks. I hope they don't forget me!

I'll be adding more workshops when I come back as well as restarting this set from the beginning for those who missed a workshop or two. I'm having fun...and even when the stream breaks down or SL decides not to cooperate, I'm finding the people of SL are just fun to be with and are very understanding that technology always comes with issues.

If you're still reading this...I have a few thank yous to give: to Secundo Dharma who has been a big supporter and who interviewed me for SLCN; to Selina Greene of Book Island who is graciously hosting these writing workshops, and to Ronin Kirosawa of Booksquare who is helping the publishing world see there are alternate avenues to getting your work out for public consumption (sorry, Selina...can't find the link for the Book Island website!).

I'll try to be better in posting to the blog!

With AS the SL WORLD TURNS off to a good start, I've turned my attention in Second Life to doing readings of my works. Taking a lesson from the musicians, I have done three readings so far...one in my home shop (Passionate Books) and two on the island of Hukilau, where I was asked to come and read! Two other sims have contacted me about doing a reading in their venues and I'm setting up a weekly reading at Passionate Books.

I have to say that this blows my mind a bit. I've never even done a reading of my works in RL! The response has been positive (although the lag between the time I make a joke and the time I get a response from the crowd does drive me crazy a bit. Ahh..the technology of broadcasting!). I do worry people will get bored, though, so I hope they'll tell me if a piece is too long...or too hot!

Wednesdays, Passionate Books, 5 PM SLT...at least, every Wednesday in March to see how it goes. I have already begun to line up some guest authors in the erotic romance genre. The format of the hour is still a work-in-progress. At the moment, three readings with time in between for questions and/or stories (if no one asks questions) seems to work.

Still hoping for people to begin using this blog as an outlet for their Second Life stories!