Well, I took the weekend off from everything, well except school because I was on duty (read: in charge of entertaining high school students for the weekend). So I didn't write over the weekend, despite my lofty intentions to do so. Instead, I drove some students around, took a group out for a day hike through an awesome canyon, watched a few movies and generally avoided being productive in any of the ways I had intended up until Thursday night.
Today, however, was back to work (teaching) and consequently back to writing. The truth is when I decide to shut off my brain, I really shut it off, and writing will do no good when my brain is shut off. However, weekend over, Monday back to work, and suddenly, I have the motivation to write once more. If my brain must be on anyway, let's put it to good use!
Yet, writing, for me, always comes with its fair share of procrastinating, and on many days of late that means browsing the various projects presented on kickstarter. Have you heard of Kickstarter? If not I suggest you go check it out immediately. No, it's ok. We'll wait. Go right ahead. Look you can google... ok fine. Just click here. Let us know when you get back...
Right, so as I'm sure you saw. Kickstarter is an amazing website that allows everyone with an internet connection the chance to discover and financially back amazing creative projects produced by... anyone with an internet connection and an idea.
I had heard of Kickstarter long ago and thought it sounded cool, but I had never checked it out until two weeks ago when one of the authors of a webcomic I enjoy (lfgcomic.com if you're interested - warning, not overly funny unless you're a WoW nerd) posted a link to his awesome kickstarter project, which he posted because it's completely unrelated to his webcomic and is something very different (and something I think everyone should check out, especially new parents). From there I did some casual browsing and lo and behold I'm now backing four different projects on kickstarter.
This is particularly important to me because I plan to launch a kickstarter project of my own in October. The short stories that I am currently writing, I plan to self publish using createspace.com which enables me to publish with no overhead as the whole thing is on demand (of course that lowers my profit margin, but whatever, it ensures that there IS a profit margin no matter how many books are purchased, so it's well worth the price in my book). I'd like to use kickstarter to help me out for this project.
"But, Virginia!" You say. "Didn't you just say that there's no overhead. Why do you need funding if you're doing on demand self publishing?"
An excellent question. There are multiple reasons. One, I'd like to pay someone to make the cover. I could do it myself but it probably won't be very good. I have a couple of friends who are graphic design wizards and I'd like them to help me design the cover so it looks like something people really want to own. But, I don't like asking people to donate their artistic talent. I like artists to get paid, even when they're my buddies. So that will cost some money. Also, I would like to promote my book. I'd like to throw out a couple of ads, and I'd like to drive some places to do some readings and signings. Those all cost money. So, to raise money, I plan to run a kickstarter project. Should be fun. Look for more info in October!
The other thing I've been doing lately to procrastinate is looking at pictures of Mars, because, come on, how f***ing cool is it that we've got a new rover on Mars? Pretty f***ing cool.
So, that's what I've been up to lately. Fear not, I've also been writing. I'm hoping I'll have a worthwhile excerpt to throw up here sometime in the next two days. I have a hard time choosing excerpts without stopping to edit them, but right now is about writing, not editing, so I have to just suck it up and copy and paste them mercilessly despite their being semi-formed and not really ready for the world.
My husband asked me the other night why I bother posting excerpts that are unedited. I told him that based on my experience with people who follow authors on the web, people like feeling like they're in on the process and people enjoy getting sneak peeks at artistic works. I get that, because I feel the same way about some of my favorite authors, so I figure it doesn't hurt to share. However, it also reminds me that I don't have any of my finished works up on this site so, I'd like to get a couple of those up too so that people can see that my writing isn't always riddled with typos and tangents and other things that wind up getting cut.
Await the completed works page! Coming soon...
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