"So often the enemy of the best is the good."

Hello All! Sorry for being AWOL for the past few months (has it really been that long? Wow...) First I was sick with every illness on the face of the planet for a month, and then I had to catch up with school. :)

I'm still not completely caught up with school yet, so I will be spending most of break away from the computer and the social networking... So this will yet again be my only post for a while.

So... watch as I cram everything into one ginormous post!

I've noticed lately that brainstorming a new novel is much like choosing colleges. Shiny new genre! New characters to manipulate and shape into whomever you wish! So many wonderful choices but which to choose!

Surely you should pick the college your whole family went to. Legacy is important after all. And if everyone in your family went there and loved it, how could it possibly be wrong for you!?

But then... there's also that nice college a little upstate that has beautiful programs that really allow you to explore every corner of your mind while at the same time being challenged. But it's a little scary. You know nothing about it... why throw away total contentment and familiarity for something entirely different... a risk...?!

Often times coming up with a new novel follows the same trail of thought. I'll give you my own personal example: I'm choosing colleges right now and find that the college my brother and sister went to, the one I have been dreaming of attending since I was 8, is being overshadowed by another college. The other college is just offering me a better chance to grow... and I would be a fool to not take it.

In the writing world, my genre is mainly science fiction, and sometimes a little bit of fantasy. Realistic non-fiction. Throw anything at me and I will take it on.

Except romance. *barf* I cannot stand romance. Reading or writing. I find it borderline repulsive and unbearable at all levels. Except - and call me a hypocrite if you please- my NaNo novel ended being a hard-core romance. And you know what? It was liberating.

All the pent up hate I have against romance novels I puked out into my own. And it's almost half decent. It was not liberating in the sense that I have at long last found the genre of my choice that I will stick with for the rest of my life. It was liberating because I finally got it out of my system. Before I hated on pretense, without really experiencing. But now that I have experienced it, I can genuinely say I dislike romance. I explored, did not like what I found, and rinsed myself of it. Much better than sticking my nose up in the air from a distance.

My point: Keep your options open. You never know what will be good for you. And as the title says, "So often the enemy of the best is the good." So don't just settle for your GOOD writing, chase after your BEST. You might think it's in your hands now, (and maybe it is, who knows?) but you'll never truly know until you explore every inch of the writing world. And can you really live with yourself as a good writer? Why not aim to be the best?

That's all for now my friends! Au revoir!

Stick With Me!

Okay, so it looks like Akurei is back in action, and Moon has a new hard drive on the way. :) So hopefully we'll be able to get things somewhat back on track.

I don't have time for a post today (busy, busy, busy!), and there likely won't be one on Friday (due to Christmas, obviously), but I promise you, I'm going to make myself a schedule and I'm going to stick to it! One of my biggest new year's resolutions this upcoming year is to get my time management back in check, so please do stick with me. :)

Blessed Yule to those who celebrate and a very happy Monday to all,
Jenna.

Topic of the Week

Okay so if you've all forgetten me, i'm the ninja formally known as Akurei.  I've been sick and in the hospital for who knows how long so i haven't been able to post so i'm posting a quickie!

I'm going to write a small idea and i want everyone to comment with a small paragraph or poem.  Please and Thank you!

Topic: "You've lived ten thousand days, what have you accomplished"

so tell me what you can write with that!  I hope to be posting more often so i'll see you all around!

Bloggy Fail

I'd like to start by saying I'm sorry. I know I haven't been around--but I'm trying to run this blog pretty much by myself right now, in addition to my other blogs and all of my other things. Moon's computer died on her, Hadhafang is eyeball-deep in schoolwork, Akurei keeps going MIA on me, and I just don't have time to regularly post on three different blogs--not to mention do my two posts a week on The Writer's Chronicle.

But I really don't want this to die...

So.

Options?

1. Just let it die.
2. Yell at my mods.
3. Find more people who want to post.
4. Take a hiatus.
5. Only post a couple times a week.

Of those, I like number five the best. So here's what I propose to do:

I'll still keep posting here, but only on certain days. Say, Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday? I can keep Tuesday as activity day and Thursday as publishing industry day, and take Sunday and Saturday to do the other posts. When my mods get out of the swamps they're currently stuck in, maybe we can reform the schedule. But for now, this is what we've got. Does that work for everyone? I hope so.

I'm so sorry that I haven't been on top of things, but it's exam week for me and I'm swamped, too, so I'm just trying to keep everything from going under. I can't do much more than that. Posting on my own blogs takes a lot of time and effort.

I promise you, though, we'll get this fixed up after we all get out of our ruts...

--Jen

Taking the Plunge

I don't know if any of you guys out there have jumped off of cliffs before, but I have and I have to say that submitting a query letter feels a lot like it. You step up to the cliff after minutes of mental preparation and look down, just knowing that you're going to hit the rocks or get carried away by the current or drown or something. You just know that it's all going to go wrong and you'll DIE.

But then to take a step back and get a running start, flying out into open space and knowing that, no matter what happens, you've done it and you can't go back. What will happen, will happen.

And then you land. You get pulled under, down, down, down to the bottom of the water, flailing around as you struggle to reach the top before you run out of breath. You know that, oh, God, you're dead. You're dead, you've died, you're dead. It's all over.

And then you resurface.

And it feels awesome.

In my experience, gearing up to send a query letter is a lot like that. You prepare the query, you research, you set everything up. You hesitate before you send it, but then run forward, full-force, barrelling off that end. You know that you can't turn back--your queries are out there. You can't get them back. What will come, will come.

You can't worry. You have to trust that you're safe, that you won't hit the rocks. You have to trust that you wrote a good query.

So, when you're positive your book is DONE and you're positive your query is PERFECT...take the plunge.