The People You Know

***First of all, I'd like to wish everyone a happy 2011 filled with book deals and adoring fans.***

Most writers write with an audience in mind, even if that audience is only a vague: people like me. Sometimes it's way more specific, with age, gender, even socioeconomic standing or ethnicity taken into consideration. Who a writer writes for will vastly alter what s/he writes, not to mention what gets cut during editing.

So, what I'm wondering is, do you ever find yourself writing for the people you know? Do you worry about what your friends and family will think about a certain scene, concept or character? Do you avoid basing characters off of friends of friends or colleagues, in case they're recognized.

There's no denying it can get awkward. It's kind of hard to hand your Dad a piece of writing with a sex scene and say, here, read this and not feel weird about it.

The popular theory seems to be that it's not what, but who you know that will determine your success as a writer. One of the best tools a writer has is his/her circle of acquaintance. Word-of-mouth is an excellent form of promotion (I know I'm personally a lot more likely to read a book based on a recommendation from someone with similar taste than I am to read one because it's a best-seller), but I find it kind of difficult to approach people and ask them to promote me - and even more difficult if they themselves are not part of my target audience, or worse, I know they're likely to disapprove of what I've written.

So, do you skip sex scenes to prevent your dad from reading them, or skirt religious debates to avoid upsetting your grandparents, try not to rail against your day job to placate your boss?

Do you just not tell people what you're writing and hope that some never find out?

Alternatively, do you just write the way you want to write, release your writing into the world and reap the whirlwind (/backlash)?

I was terrified to let Aigaion Girl go. I wrote it happily enough, not really giving any thought to anything other than the flow of the story, the realism of the characters, the cadence of the prose--It never occurred to me that I should avoid certain topics or images - until I was getting ready to publish, and realized that somewhere along the way, there was good chance my grandmother was going to read it. She won't, thankfully*. I was actually a little surprised that I didn't experience more negativity from my extended family. I didn't send them all invitations to join my Facebook fan page or anything, but, especially with social networking sites like FB, it's kind of impossible to keep my writing secret from anyone without using a pseudonym.

So there's a question, too: Is it worth it to write under another name, so that you can write with abandon?

Really, I'm just curious to know how other writers deal with their family and friends when it comes to their writing - how much of a consideration friends and family are.


*I love my Gran and I don't want to read something that I know will upset her (I've since been told by others that the book is really sexual, which surprised me because all the sex scenes are fade-to-black).

Aigaion Girl Officially Exists!

So, as the title of this rather shameless and long-overdue self-plug suggests, my proof copy of Aigaion Girl arrived today.

I'm fairly excited. CreateSpace is back in my good books. For one thing, when I read UPS in their email to me, I was thinking UPS, not US Postal Service, and there's a chance they actually said USP, and I misread it. Not being from the states, it didn't ever occur to me that UPS could mean anything other than the courier company.

The interior looks amazing, very crisp, very clean. The only problems with it are my own typos, and hey - What's a proof copy for? Also, since I have to update the interior files, I can correct what have become tiny fibs (IE, I can't really put that I live in B.C. in my bio).

I really like the outside (especially the part where my name is on the spine of an actual, real book!) as well, though I wish I could have a higher res image than 300dpi. It's clear unless you're really looking, but I think I'll shrink the cover image down just a hair, to make the graininess less obvious.

I actually got it this morning, but I wanted to wait to write a post until I had pictures {other than the pictures of me in my PJs, looking like I'm hung over and don't believe in showering (the only reason I posted this one is that the flash didn't fire)}. This afternoon, I went out with one each of my brothers and sisters to celebrate. My brother bought me a celebratory muffin. It was tasty.

Another one of my brothers is going to ask his teacher if he can read it for his English ISU, because any of the questions like what was the author trying to say here? can be easily answered by him asking me. I think it's a good idea.

At the moment, Rhiannon is reading it (she's already halfway done) and telling me all of the places I forgot things like personal pronouns and the word the. This is good, because my mind tends to put these things in when I'm reading, whether they're there or not.

OK, so this is turning into a ridiculously long post to convey a very little bit of actual information, for which I apologize. Please forgive my bouncing-off-the-walls enthusiasm and enjoy the rest of your day :)

One Year to the Day

ago, I started writing Aigaion Girl for NaNoWriMo's 2008 contest. Today, I finished my edits.
Right now I'm just working on some layout stuff, then it's hello self-publishing!

I'll be lambasting you all with updates and shameless plugs as the publishing saga continues.

Help?

I'm finally getting to the end of my editing process (Mephie is being held together with scotch tape, but is being a remarkably good sport about the whole thing), and starting to look into formatting.

I'm poor, so I don't even have MicrosoftWord. What I do have is OpenOffice. Today I figured out how to get the page numbers not to start on the first page. Now what I need to know is how to justify my text without short sentences being spread across the page l.....i.....k.....e.......... t.....h.....i.....s. If someone could tell me how to achieve that, I would be a happy camper.

I still have no idea what I'm going to do for NaNoWriMo, as I've been focussing all of my attention on Aigaion lately. The other thing, of course, is that my internet connection isn't good enough to even get on the site, let alone sign up. Does anyone know what they're doing yet? I think I just got a good idea. Hum. Shall have to think about that one, and let you guys know.

Oh, and something totally random: I want the Last of the Mohicans soundtrack to play at my wedding... whenever that happens to be.

A Couple of Things, While My Internet Works

Aigaion Girl. I'm still plodding along with edits, and I'm actually just about done, I think. I've just got finish up a couple of things, then put it all back together and see how it reads. Overall, I'm quite impressed with myself.

Also, NaNoWriMo. Who's entering? Any ideas what you're going to write about? Any idea what I'm talking about. If not, I strongly suggest you check out their website. A/G is a NaNo story, and I'm looking forward to doing another one this year, if I can figure out what to write about. It has to be something that requires almost no research, because the Internet here is so sporadic and the closest thing we have to a library is a shelf with books that got left behind in hotel rooms (actually, I nearly stole The Gargoyle from an empty room last week, but ended up thinking better of it and putting it in the lost and found). Most of them look like Crap, but I'm going to have to start reading them soon anyway, on account of having only brought Pride and Prejudice with me and having finished it the week before last.

Also, I've been crazy busy with edits, and haven't gotten around to writing my prompt story yet, though I really, really want to.

I think that's all for now, folks. I've got some other places to visit before my Internet craps out on me again.

Taking Off

I'm moving! I got a full-time job in another province, so I'm heading out there on Friday. The Internet being the wonderful thing that it is, I'll still be able to post and update and stuff, but because of how remote this place is (I'll be working in a resort near the rockies), I don't know how fast their internet is, or how often I'll be able to update.

At the moment, Rhiannon is the only other administrator, so if anyone else wants to be an admin, let me know, and I'll set it up. I'm happy to have everyone be an admin, as long as no one messes with my html; this site took me for bloody ever to code ;)

My edits on Aigaion have come to a halt, but I'll start up again as soon as I'm settled at my new job. I'm still hoping to be done editing by September, but it might be later... we shall see.

I think that's it for now.

Editing

Does anyone else hate editing as much as I do?

Edits

So, editing is underway for Aigaion Girl. I'm taking Moloch, one of my characters, and giving him more of a unique voice by having him speak like he's a romantic era revolutionary (he's a demon, so this makes a certain degree of sense). Moloch has his own character, obviously, so it's more just changing his vocabulary and syntax around. Oddly enough, people didn't really speak all that differently in the 1790s than they do now (except their grammar was better). Nonetheless, I'm finding it very difficult to completely reword everything one of my main characters has ever said, especially because I want to keep so much of his personality in tact. On the other hand, it is a little cool. I'm mostly taking from William Godwin, because he had a very clear way of explaining exactly what he was thinking, and I kind of like that.

Once I'm done with Moloch (sixteen pages from his PoV, plus all of his dialogue from everyone else's PoVs), I'm going to make Camael a little more Philadelphian and Cheryl-Lee a little more consistant. Then I get to start the additions to the actual story. Eek, this is going to be a lot of work.

This shamelss plug was brought to you by the letter H.