Genre Hopping Crazy Lady?

"Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart - Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens." ~ Carl Gustav Jung

RaShelle at A No. 2 pencil stat! asked the question, "Where do you draw your inspiration?".

In Bridge Across Forever, Richard Bach (one of my favorite authors) shares the following :

What was the question? ...Oh. Where do I get my crazy ideas? Answer: sleep-fairy, walk-fairy, shower-fairy. Book-fairy. And in these last few years, from my wife. Now when I have questions I ask her and she tells me the answer. If you haven't already, I'd suggest you want to find your soulmate, as soon as you can. Next question?

I've always loved this answer, because it's pretty much true for me, too. (The fairy part, not the soulmate part, I'm mateless at the moment.) I just have to pay attention and listen.

The title for my current wip, Churches, Chickens and ChiChi's came to me while driving, from the car fairy, one word at a time. The day the third word fell in to place, I was driving home from a seminar and by the time I reached the house, I had the premise, the main character, several of the supporting characters and much of the storyline. Thank you, car fairy!

I'm now a third of the way through the first draft of that novel, a southern women's fiction with a big smattering of romance and some rauch. As I've mentioned a time or two, I don't multitask well, so when the idea for a new novel, in a totally different genre starting niggling at me a few days ago (during meditation), I told the meditation fairy, "thank you for sharing" and wrote the idea down for later. Later being when I'm done with this first draft.

Today, while sitting for meditation, lo and behold, instead of giving me more insight on where to take my current wip, little niggle insisted on being heard and handed me the premise, the main character, several of the supporting characters and much of the storyline for Novel Two. And it's SciFi. Go figure. Thank you, meditation fairy!

Which brings me to a post by Roland Yeomans at Writing in the Crosshairs a week or so ago. He said he writes in the genres that most influenced him as a child and asked what books we had read back then and whether we find that same corollary in our own writing.

At first, I had a hard time remembering what I'd read (after all, that was a long time ago and I was an avid reader from the time I first started putting sentences together). But his question engaged my rememberer, and I realized that my reads were all over the place. I genre-hopped like crazy. If it looked interesting, I would read it, even when the subject matter was way over my head.

But I was pretty sure I had not read any southern women's fiction or 'romance' back then (though every good novel has a smattering of romance).

Now I get it. Heaven help us. I started out reading all over the place so it's not unlikely that I would write all over the place. The trick will be to have some common thread because I'm pretty sure agents and publishers frown on genre-hopping.

Does Roland's theory hold true for you in your writing? Any words of wisdom out there for a genre-hopping crazy lady?

15-Year-Old Writer Counts 6.5 Millions Reads

That is the title of a Galley Cat article published today. Needless to say, I had to read the article and I HAD to share. I saw it in an email I receive daily from mediabistro.com. Apparently there is a 15 year-old girl in London sharing her fiction work on a site called Wattpad who's logged 6.5 million reads. Her name is Abigail Gibbs and she has 4,638 fans as of a minute ago when I looked. It seems she is posting a chapter at a time and her fans are snapping it up.

I say, "You go girl!"

But, I have several questions, and here's where my newbie-ness (i.e. ignorance) is showing.

1) Does Abigail get paid for these reads? I clicked on her work and accessed it for free so I think that answer would be NO.

2) If not, can she ever make any money on this work now that she is self-published on a free site? I mean, would a publisher pick up a work like this?

It seems counter-intuitive. But that's just me. Can you guys enlighten me?

Thanks for helping a sister out! Olivia

Do We Really Need Word Verification? Plus Awards!

One of the things I left out on my Looks Matter in the Blogging World post is word verification (WV). Did I mention that it drives me nuts? No? Didn't think so. At least one other of those 65 people who commented on Elana's post mentioned it too. It's just another layer that burns time and slows us down when reading and commenting on other blogs.

Here's my question: are there really dementoids out there waiting to hack in and make comments? Or computer programs that are busily sending out bots or whatever those feel-y things are to, uh-oh, wait, wait, drop some spam in my comments section?

Once I realized WV annoys the ever-lovin' outta me, I turned mine off. Doesn't it make it sooo much easier to leave a comment on my blog? If I get spammed, well, shoot. I might just have to take a fraction of a minute and, um, delete it!

My buddy, Eric W. Trant at Digging With the Worms, turned his on the other day and made a game out of making up sentences with it. Now that was fun. I even got a fun little snippet for my wip out of that game. But having to do WV every single time I want to comment on your blog? Ugh. Because chances are high that if I'm over there reading your post, I'll want to comment, too. Come on. Make it easy, k?

Now that I shared that peeve, here's my wip report. 22,009 words as of 1:18 a.m. EDT. I missed my goal of 22,000 by the 30th, my birthday. But only by an hour and eighteen minutes. So in my book, I dunnit. Yeehaaa!

Lastly (I think), thank you to Suzie, at Writer Junkie, for sending me some link love in the form of One Lovely Blog Award. Awww. Thank you, Suzie! Go check her blog out, this amazing woman has three! romance wips going at once. She's also a new writer for Critique This WIP.

Here are the rules:

1.Accept the award, post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award and her/his blog. (check)
2. Pass the award to 15 other blogs that you've newly discovered. (oh, man, more linky thingys, does anyone know an easier way to do that??)
3. Contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award. (I'll be around soonly.)

Newly discovered. Hmm. Here goes:

1) Stu, at Stusplace, who impressed me muchly with his Bickering Blogfest entry.
2) Tiffany, at Tiffany Neal
3) Kristen, at Take It as It Comes
4) Elizabeth, at Elizabeth Mueller
5) Donna, at Donna Hole
6) Elaine, at Wordsmithing
7) Jen, at unedited
8) Melanie, at Meanderings of Melanie Sherman
10) Arlee Bird, at Tossing It Out
11) L'Aussie, at L'Aussie Writing
12) Mary, at Giggles and Guns
13) Vicki, at Rambles and Randomness
14) Talli, at Talli Roland
15) Jemi, at Just Jemi

Okay, my arm is officially falling off right now sooo...that's it folks! If you recently became a new follower here and didn't comment, then darnit, I've missed you. Let me know and I'll come by to see you and give you some link love!

~That Rebel, Olivia

Postscript: Grown Ups is a sweet movie with enough belly laughs to satisfy. I stuck around until the end of the credits and was rewarded with this song. Adam Sandler wrote it for his dad a couple of years ago. I dedicate it to all our dads: