(milk) duds and publications

I'm terribly sorry to all of those who desperately desire my take on such things as random philosophical topics, but I don't really have one to discuss this week. I've tried to think of one...really, I have! But all of my ideas have seemingly oozed out of my brain through my ears. Or maybe the day-long retreat in St. Louis I attended on Sunday has left me contemplative, without actually having something I wish to muse here. So, I'm sending out a desperate plea - please please please please post different topic ideas in the comments! Otherwise you may end up with a technical explanation like this one that you really didn't want...

Book publishing! I gave a speech on the process thereof recently, and I'd like to share how I publish my books with you. It's not something that's very common knowledge, so I shall regale you all with my stories of publication. ;)

First, I need subject matter. I addressed this in a previous post, particularly character creation, so I'm not going to go into that today. If you would like to read what I had on it, you can find it here. Then I have to edit it. This is typically a painful process during which I choose a random friend, beg them to read my story, and sit back and cringe until they give me their initial response. They really get into nitty-gritty of what's excessive, what needs to be more in-depth, what needs expanded, and what needs to be cut away. It's a painful process...painful but necessary, comparative to childbirth from what I've been told. (No, I don't know it from personal experience!) Anyway, once I think I have it edited enough (which takes quite a while - I'm picky even if I hate the process), I start working on formatting my pages. If I was going to use a traditional publishing house, I'd have to pitch the story at agents, hire one, then let that person start pitching it at different publishing houses. Granted, they'd take care of everything, but I do not have the money to try to hire an agent. So I plead insanity and do it on my own.

I publish my books through a company called lulu. This is a company that will put the book together for me, I just have to have all of the elements to put together. So I format my pages to the book size I want to use. I typically go for a 6"x9" or what they call the A5 size (5.833" x 8.264"). Sometimes I'll do a pocket book (4.25" x 6.875"). But I have to format the pages within my word processing program so that the words don't become so small that you cannot read them. Then I upload the documents to lulu, have it create the combined PDF files that it needs for the book, and start working on the cover. I have lotsa options available - I can upload my own covers, or I can choose to use some of the images and fonts that are automatically made available on lulu. After that, lulu assigns an ISBN number to my book, I click the little button that says "Publish", and the book is available for anyone to read!

You can find my available titles at stores.lulu.com/yavetil. I've been working on more that should hopefully be available soon.

And this is the life of a college student-turned-author...people wonder why I lost my mind...

-enna

What's inside YOUR head?

I don't know what's going through your head as you read this post. You probably don't know what's going through my head as I write it. Granted, some of what is inside my head will probably end up in the post, but a lot of other thoughts will probably clash around in my head. You will probably never know any of them. Poor readers.

But I think this is a good thing. We all need our little things that not everyone knows. Or at least I do. It's a certain amount of privacy. I don't need everyone on cyberspace to know every little detail of what's going through my head. My mood does sometimes affect what I write, and even my ability to write (or at least, write anything worth reading), but in general, you don't know anything about me except what I post here for you. You are at my mercy.

So how do you know that what I'm going to type is something worthwhile? How do you know that I'm a conservative Catholic, or a liberal Muslim? How do you know if I'm short, or tall, or blond, or brunette? The answer: you don't.

You don't know anything about me for sure. If you've physically met me, you do know things like physical attributes and a few of the quirks of my personality, but you don't know everything. You don't know what went through my head when Zinn died. You don't know what went through my head in January, or February, or even what is truly going through my mind right now. You have no way of ever knowing what I truly experience on a day-to-day basis, or what a certain circumstance will do to my mental state. Even if you're one of the people I trust most on this earth, I am still somewhat of an enigma. I can still surprise you with little things like birthday presents or a surprise visit when you're not expecting me to be there.

Some people have started to learn many things - how to tell when my mood is off, when I'm sad, when something's bugging me - but it's almost a lonely thought to realize that no one on this earth will ever fully understand everything I'm experiencing right at this moment.

Which is where God comes into the picture. When no one else is around, when I am in most desperate need of someone to listen, to understand, I can turn to my heavenly Father and He will meet my needs.

Praise God for His blessings.

-enna

P.S. What's inside YOUR head after reading this post? Please share a few of your thoughts in the comments!

new music group

So, I found this new rock music group floating around out there. Right now, they look kinda pitiful...no CD out, no record label, not much of anythin' except a name and a few songs. Looks to be a band of two. Their songs aren't even very easy to find. You can find their two current singles, "Fear" and "Destiny", on IMRadio. According to their facebook page, they're in the process of remixing those and creating a playlist for their first CD.

Just thought I'd throw this info out there. I'll keep my eye on them and let you know more.

-enna

an unfathomable mystery

Remember when you were little? You were always so excited about your birthday. Cake and presents, all for YOU!! You were the center of attention, the diva (or divo), the pièce de résistance. Everything was about YOU.

Then you started getting older. I don't know about you, but birthdays...don't seem like such a big deal anymore. Sure, the cake is nice, and the presents too, but I don't feel any different than I did the day before. The rest of the world doesn't even know unless I choose to tell them. I think it's a bit of a wake-up call as we get older. We start to realize that no, the world does NOT have to revolve around us for the day. Heck, your birthday isn't even unique - I share mine with Prince Harry of England, Heidi Montag, and William Taft - a former President of the United States. To name a few. That's just FAMOUS people. (And no, I did not know that on my own. I had to look it up.)

So enjoy your cake, enjoy the fellowship, but don't lose sight of what's really important in life. Because that cake may be good, but if you eat too much, you'll make yourself sick.

Today is also the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows. I don't know too terribly much about it myself, but you can find more information by clicking here.

Our Lady of Sorrows, pray for us.

-enna

bringing life

Meet Anna. She's almost 18 years old, preparing to leave school. She's ready for graduation, and gets along great with her classmates. Oh, and she's a princess of a make-believe country.

Did you ever have an imaginary friend? I still have one...actually, I have many. Lots of people roam around the inside of my head, interacting in new and strange ways. Welcome to the process of story creation.

Yep, my promised and long-awaited philosophical musings are going to be on story and character creation. I'm going to use Anna and her story for the purposes of this post, simply because it is her story I am currently working on. I've taken a sabbatical from The Zephanaian Chronicles right now, mainly because I've run into a Zephanaian road block. It's really annoying, but it means I can turn my focus onto other projects.

Something you have to understand if you ever want to write anything (beyond news - I'm talking creatively here) is that it cannot be forced. If you don't already have a poem or story or what-have-you rattling around in your head, don't try to write one! You'll only give yourself a headache. If you do manage to write something, it will be stilted and unnatural; it won't feel right to you OR your readers. You need to write something that matters to YOU. If it doesn't matter to you, it won't take on a life of its own.

Generally, a plot is highly suggested. I say this as a dramatic understatement. Before you EVER start writing, you need to have at least a very vague idea of where you want the story to go. I know a lot of writers outline heavily as they write. Great for them. I tried that a few times. It didn't work. As you create the characters, and if they come to life on the page, they will be beyond your control (like a literal child - only this is a brain child). This is good; it means they live on their own. It's not so good for outlining every little thing. You do need to have an idea of where the character will be at the beginning of the story and the end of the story.

Take Anna, for example. (By the way, that's my drawing there. I'm not the greatest artist in the world, particularly when it's from my imagination, so some of the perspectives and shading will be slightly off, but it's as close as I can get.) In the story The Frog's Challenge, she is initially a model student in an academy for princesses where they learn lots of princessy-type things. Personally, I'm glad I never had to do that, but my personality doesn't fit into that type of environment. In my initial creation of Anna's character, I made sure that, while she does have a very strong personality, she also can fit into any situation that she encounters. This is, I think, a true sign of nobility. If you can behave just as refined, poised, and confident in a swamp as you can in a palace, you could definitely do well in the medieval-type kingdom that this takes place in. (If you're curious, yes, she will have to deal with both environments.)

You have to take things like that into account when you initially are creating this character in your mind. If you don't, and if the character comes to life on the page, then he or she won't do what you want him/her to do. Not so good if you're trying to aim a story a certain direction. If you're doing a never-ending comic-type thing like Order of the Stick or Looking For Group (or even possibly MegaTokyo...not so sure on that one), then that's fine...you let the character evolve as it will.

Even in a somewhat-set storyline, though, your character needs to be allowed to evolve as becomes necessary. It's not something you necessarily plan for; it just happens. And you have to allow it to happen and possibly tweak a few things here or there to make it work. Allow the character to become a REAL person. (This is part of what I talk about in my post on manipulation - you want the character to become believable enough that the readers CARE about the character. If you say the word, it does sound like "care" is in the beginning of character.) I'm still in the beginning of Anna's story - I totally scrapped what I'd written initially and started over - so I still don't fully know the full evolution of her personality from beginning to end.

So you know a little bit about this project, The Frog's Challenge is going to be one of multiple short stories that will be published in a single volume. No title for it yet, but I'm working on it! The main premise behind this project is to take fairy tales (some popular, some lesser-known) and rewrite them a bit to make them a little more suspenseful and add character depth. Most of these will be based on the Grimm Brother's lesser known fairy tales, but I am going to be including a few of the more popular ones as well. I'm also going to rewrite The Dark Forest and put it in there, as well as The Journey. That will be removed from publication as its own novel on October 31, 2010. A few other fairy tales to receive a revamp will include Beauty and the Beast, The Twelve Dancing Princesses and The Frog Prince. Most of the others will be obscure Grimm titles. The concept came from Regina Doman's Fairy Tale Novels for teens. The difference is that I'm not going to try to turn each story into a novel; I'm simply letting it be a little short story. Depending on how long/short each one is, this project may become a multiple-volume project. We'll see. Right now, only two of the stories have even made it to the initial completion without editing.

That's it for now. :) I hope you all have a marvelous September (no, it's not over yet, and yes, I will post before then, but there's nothing wrong with me saying it anyway). :)

-enna

P.S. Please open the picture in a separate tab and view it at full size, then critique it! I want feedback on it. :) I know the scanned version isn't the best, but it's got the basic gist of what the drawing is.

Immanuel's Veins - an intoxicating read

On the book - Immanuel's Veins was released on September 7, 2010. It's the latest book by Ted Dekker. Visit the link to read what the official book description is. I have here my review. :)

WANTED: a friend

This isn't what I was planning on posting for my philosophical musings - that's coming, but I decided today that I'm going to post something else first.

I started college last Monday, and yes, I love my classes. It's the in-between or during the day that I don't like so much. I'm not very extroverted, so for me to start college has been very difficult. I still don't know very many people. I don't talk much. I pretty much keep to myself. It's not that I don't want to make some new friends; it's that I can't bring myself to make the first step. I don't trust easily, and I've been squashed so many times that I'm extremely reluctant to put myself out anymore.

Actually, I may know a lot of people, but I can count on one hand the number of people I'm close to outside of my immediate family. Actually, on two fingers. I don't open up easily. Which makes this harder than it seems.

It's times like this that truly remind me why we humans surround ourselves with people. We all have some kind of support system that we can trust to catch us if we fall. For some people, their support system is larger than others. It's almost like a web of interconnections. When we need it most, the web will hold us up and keep us from hitting the ground. If a strand is dropped, the others pick up the slack and won't let us fall.

Most of the time, we don't realize what we have until we lose it. For me, with my family and friends at least an hour away most of the time, it's made it very difficult for me during the day without that support system to fall back on. It's making me value what I have even more and helping me truly appreciate it when I am securely within my support system. And when I don't, the loss is all the more acute.

Hold onto your support systems; they keep us afloat.

-enna