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While reading the times and looking out the window,

I wonder sometimes as to why I am being watched,

constantly by the carbon products of my internet life.

 

The drilling of information seems far exceeding my needs, yet

before I begin with my microblogging nuances, I feel the need

to read the newspaper which is still dutifully delivered to my door every day at 5am.

 

After I have had my fill of coffee, a bite of a bagel, and a story

about the city council asking for another municipal bond,

I find myself on the computer, hunched over my keyboard

just as I was 15 minutes before I fell asleep last night.

Rewriting

Through the past year, I've learned a lot about myself and about writing. I've learned that there are times when I need to dive into a little more detail and there are also times where I can be long winded. I've slashed thousands of words out of my work since I began, but sometimes thousands just isn't enough. I also believe I've found my place in the writing world. On more than a handful of occasions, I've been told I tend to write more as a story teller. That may seem like a general term for a writer, but I believe it's not. Sometimes people write simply to inform you on certain events so that you know what happened. Other writers, story tellers, take you by the hand and let you walk with them as they lead you down the very same road it feel that they once took. So often I am asked if the events in my book are real because of the way I've written them. For many, it feels to them as if I am presenting to them a glorified anecdote and calling it a book chapter. I am ok with that.

It is for that reason that I am going through my previously released works and rewriting certain portions of them. Obviously, even after going over them countless times, there are still a few piece of the books that simply do not flow as well as I want them to and even a handful of grammatical errors. From my very first serious work to Rumbling Heart to my latest release Emily Martin, my style has morphed and become something very different that how it originally started. I've discovered my shortcomings and taken hold of my strengths. For this reason, I have decided to take on a simpler, story telling approach to my work from here going forward. In the first book, there is quite a bit of story telling, but I believe I made certain instances far more complex than they needed to be from a grammatical perspective. For this reason, I am sure that RH will go from about 220k words to something a little smaller; maybe about 210k. Still quite large, but smaller and still telling the exact same story. At one time I was going for more of a Hemingway type approach and style, but it seems that many of her techniques died with him all those years ago as some of my critics are calling portions of the work "old" when it comes to style. It was for this reason that I tried what I did with Recorded Butterflies. I took on a very different perspective with this work and I think i did alright. It still wasn't exactly what I was wanting to do, but I did it.

The latest book Emily Martin is the one I am the most proud of. I found my strengths with this book and I was able to really connect with my Emily character as she tells the story. While I felt I was almost one in the same when it came to my character John, it turns out that I was more in sync with Emily and the way she saw her life and handled her station in life. It was obviously not the way she grew up or the life she lived, but it was more of the place she found herself as an adult. The feelings that she had kept pent up inside her were something very close to my own so I was able to really speak from her perspective. I will make updates to this work as well, but only for the sake of continuity. Even after the release of my final work in the series, I think I will still be most proud of Emily because of the way I was able to convey my feelings through that character.

That being said, I have work to do.

 

Visit Richard's Amazon author page here!

Writocrisy

It seems there are countless people out there who want to tell you how to write. I find it rather alarming that there are more people looking to change my style of writing than there are people reading my material. To have someone tell you to change your writing style while never having read your work is absolutely ridiculous.

If there is any confusion as to what I am saying, here it is in plain English: there is no one, single way to write.

Write the way you feel is best for you. All these people out there telling you to write this way and that way are completely full of crap. Example: I've had three different professional editors tell me three different things and of course each of them thinks the others are full of it. So...who is correct? Maybe none of them are. Maybe they are so self serving that they don't even realize that they are just hurting themselves by constantly disagreeing with each other. Each of us has our own style of writing and our own methods. For anyone to come out and tell me what I am doing is wrong while not even taking the time to read any of my novels or short stories, or even my poems has no place in my life. Read my work, look at it from a literary standpoint, then maybe you can offer some critical review. Until then, I could care less about your "writing advice." Sharing experiences is fine, but when you tell me I am doing it all wrong, maybe you need to look in the mirror and say the same thing to yourself. You cannot say you support all writers, yet tell us we are all wrong in one form or another. Just as I have never said I am perfect nor is my work, I have also never told anyone they are wrong in the methods used for their creativity.

Pushing ideals on people is wrong, especially when you can't do the same thing for yourself.  And as I've always said, you cannot force people to do things they do not want to do. In my mind, doing that is a form of slavery and no one respects a slave master.

Amazon Author Biography

I spend a little time and worked on the biography on the author page I have set up on Amazon.com. It seems pretty solid and I think I will leave it as it is, but I wouldn't mind a little feedback. I tried as much as I could to focus on the work and how it came to be. Although I don't have any reservations about keeping many of my personal details out of it, I still wanted to make the page about the books so that could be focused on and not so much on me. I figure if people really are that interested in the work, then they will eventually want to find out more about me. That will come with time. Have a look at the page here and let me know what you think.

I duplicated this data for the Smashwords bio page as well which can be viewed here.

No Breaks

My attempt at forcing a break from writing is not working. I wanted to give myself a good month from it so I can prepare to head back to Austin and just so I can unplug, but it's not working. I cannot stop thinking about the final RH book. I know it won't stop bothering me until I just up and write the darn thing so I might as well do it in between the times where I am looking for apartments and permanent work. Unfortunately, writing isn't paying me much. That being said, I did get a royalty check the other day which was nice.

The name of the last book? Not saying, at least not now. I am just going to work on it and get it outlined and first drafted. I don't want it to exceed 450 pages, but we'll have to see how it goes. This will be the first time I've written where I am looking to keep pages to a minimum. I want over 375, but less than 450. We'll see how it all goes.