Author: Autumn

I write 'n stuff.
About Writing

My current WIP

Autumn

I’ve been working on the rough draft of my WIP for about ten months now. I started it when my youngest was still a newborn, so progress was very slow in the beginning. I even lamented that my main characters had been on their first date for weeks, and I was ready for it to hurry up and be over with.

For the past three months, I’ve been working on it every day. My realistic goal is a mere 400 words, though occasionally everything works out nicely and I get down about 1000. Progress is progress.

This is also the longest I’ve ever spent on a rough draft.

I’ve been enjoying it quite a bit. I like the extra time I’ve spent conversing with my characters, and the months spent day dreaming about their lives while washing dishes or folding laundry. I’ve grown very fond of these characters, and I haven’t become the slightest bit bored with the story yet. That’s a good sign.

I’m confident that the rewrite will go smoothly. Whenever I get to it. Ha ha.

About Writing

Dvorak

Autumn

If you don’t know what keyboard maps are, then you’re using QWERTY. The name comes from the top row of letters above your left hand.

QWERTY was originally designed in the late 1800s, and became the popular choice for typewriters. Its popularity was carried over into the computer era, and it’s now the default for literally everything.

The thing is, QWERTY was designed for typewriters. Typing too fast on a mechanical typewriter can jam the machine, so one of the design features of QWERTY is that it intentionally slows down how fast most people can get their fingers flying. Computers, on the other hand (snerk), don’t care.

Writing involves a lot of typing as an unavoidable part of the process, so in addition to typing speed, problems like carpal tunnel deserve some concern for writers. QWERTY is not the best option for heavy typing.

There are several options out there that were designed specifically for computers with the goal of increasing speed while decreasing fatigue. Personally, I use Dvorak.

It takes some getting used to, but once you learn a new keyboard map like Dvorak, it’s much easier to type faster with fewer typos. The first thing that I noticed is that my hands don’t have to move all around the keyboard just to have a mundane conversation. Occasionally, if a typo does slip through, it confuses others how I managed to hit ‘p’ instead of the ‘y’. I can also recognize other Dvorak users through their typos.

Yes, I know this is boring, dry, computer nerd territory, but I happen to think this is an important topic for writers. Go ahead and give it a shot. At the very least, no one else will be able to use your laptop.

About Me

Solstice

Autumn

Summer is not my best season.

I don’t have much heat tolerance, and the summer months are spent chugging electrolyte mixes while waiting for the hottest part of the day to hurry up and be over with. Popsicle’s are not so much a treat as a necessity around here.

Of course, there’s nothing quite like sitting outside on a warm summer night and listening to the crickets. Sometimes, the best part of life can be found in the quietest of moments.

This year, I’m going to play as hard as I can, heat tolerance be damned. I’ve got a big freezer and Popsicle’s to spare.

Happy Solstice.

About Writing

Sex Scenes

Autumn

Because I write romance, they’re inevitable.

As a reader, I tend to skip over sex scenes in books. Truth be told, I find them boring. Society has been so over-saturated with sex, that whenever another scene pops up, I can’t help but think of the quote from Yugioh Abridged, “Sex isn’t sexy anymore.” Most of the time, I’m not sure how those scenes contribute to the plot, and skipping them has no negative effects on my experience of the novel.

As a writer, my current WIP has a fair amount of sex in it, because marriage and babies are a huge part of the story.

I prefer to take an abstract view, and focus on the emotional aspect of it. Strangers meet on Tinder all the time, but deeply in love soulmates melding into one; now that’s something different. I don’t want to make my readers horny, but to fill them with butterflies and giggles; there are already more than enough resources for the latter.

Society has done a lot to divorce love from sex, to the point where a lot of people believe that the two not only have nothing to do with each other, but can be detrimental to each other as well.  I hope to illustrate that the two can be beautifully intertwined.

About Me

The practicality of popularity

Autumn

While mega popularity is a fun daydream, in practicality, I don’t think that I’d enjoy it at all.  Having people read my books just because everyone else is reading them feels rather antithetical to who I am as a person. It’d be a great way to be completely erased.

Then, of course, there are always the ones who feel obligated to create entire websites devoted to tearing apart your novels and proving that you are a bad writer after all. The harshest part is, those websites are usually right, too.

I’ve dedicated a lot of time to practice and research with my writing, and I try very hard to produce quality; but ultimately, I chose to be a wife and mother first. I still have plenty of sensitive feelings, and stumbling across the wrong criticism at the wrong time could hurt deeply. I’m just doing my thing to express my soul, and I just want to live my life with my husband and kids.

Obscurity is safe and comfortable.

About Me

Sameness in ideas

Autumn

Like most writers, I have several ideas on the back burner in my mind, but if I reduce them all to a one-sentence summary, I start to wonder if I really have just one idea in different clothes.

On one hand, readers like to know what to expect from an author. Sometimes, we really want the same core concept dressed up in different colors. There are plenty of professionals who churn out a gazillion books that are all fundamentally the same, and they make a good living doing it.

But am *I* like that?

I care about free creative expression, first and foremost for myself. Is the evolution of my mind destined toward sameness forever and ever? Do I even make any sense?

Will I eventually grow bored of Mr. Perfect marrying Ms. Beautiful? Or am I too enamored with the simplicity of love and family to ever grow tired of it?

I’ve had a fairly tumultuous life, so enjoying stability feels a bit weird to me. Perhaps I was meant to land in this wonderful place, or perhaps I still have more stormy weather to endure while I continue to evolve further.

About Me

Religion

Autumn

I’m what is called an eclectic Pagan, though I think of myself more as an obsessive cherry-picker.

Religion fascinates me. When I was 21, I made plans to move far away and get a degree in Religious Studies, but it turned out that I was destined for something else. Instead, I now have a large collection of books ranging from the Liber Null to Doreen Virtue.

I’ve dabbled in all sorts of magic, and I have a deck of Tarot cards that I consult regularly. If something doesn’t work, I move on to the next; if it does, I add it to the ‘eclectic’ part of my Pagan practice. All I really care about is finding what resonates with my soul, irregardless of what shape it takes.

I consider the religious beliefs of others to be sacrosanct, and while I will discuss why I do or don’t believe in a particular thing, I respect that everyone has their own path to follow. That’s also part of my beliefs.

All of my stories have an esoteric element to them, and they all happen in the same spiritual universe.

Light Eternal, for example, is pretty heavy on the spiritual stuff. So much so, honestly, that I don’t expect it to gain any sort of attention until after I’ve published a few novels. However, it was exactly what I needed to write at the time, and it’s a good foundation, so I went ahead and put it out there.

I’ve been a bit shy to say all of that right out. I’ve had very mixed reactions to this particular aspect of my personality, but considering that it’s an obvious part of my writing, it would be disingenuous of me to try to hide it.

So there you have it, I love religion. I’m just not picky about which one.

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