I love making videos, but I’ve only just recently started putting them online. Here’s a video I made today.
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Rain, Rain, Go Away
I moved to the UK about two and a half years ago from Florida. I knew that England was famous for its dreadful weather, but I really didn’t expect it to be this bad. When we first came here it was late March. I remember taking the train from the airport. When got to Victoria Station where we needed to transfer, my husband suggested that we go outside for a minute just to see London. We stepped out on to the street and were assaulted by icy rain and howling winds.
Whenever I tell people that I came here from Florida they seem quite confused. “Why would you leave Florida?” they ask truly confused. On weeks like this one when the clouds are hanging so low in the sky it seems like you could reach up and touch them and it seems to be raining constantly, I often wonder the same thing. Why would I leave sunny Florida for England? The short answer is work. My husband is English and a jazz musician. The gigs are a lot better in London than they are in the Tampa Bay area. That’s for sure. Financially we’re better off.
To be honest, I don’t really have anything to complain about. Sure it’s cloudy and rainy here some of the time but that just makes the good days seem so much better. When the sky is clear and the sun is out England is beautiful. The countryside is wide open. The landscape is so lush.
It cleared up at about seven o’clock tonight so we went for a walk. The sun was low in the sky bathing the clouds in orange light. I never seem to have my camera at those most beautiful moments. We went to a field by our flat. I took off my shoes and socks and did some sprinting through the grass. We talked and laughed and got pleasantly tired. It’s these moments when the sun comes out if only for a few moments before setting that I live for.
Crazy Busy
I’ve been very busy recently and I’m thinking about changing my writing schedule around a bit. I usually write in the mornings and I’ve been distracted and interrupted for the past couple weeks. I think if I write in the evening when my other work is done I’ll be a lot better off.
I have several large websites with hundreds of pages and I have a few smaller 10 page niche websites. I’ve been taking some classes in a web marketing program and that’s been taking up quite a bit more time then I initially thought it would. I love working online though. It’s great. I learn so much.
Enough about my work. I was looking at the LDS church’s new marketing campaign on mormon.org. I really like it. I know that some people on other Mormon sites have complained about some aspects of it. You can search questions you may have about the church and find answer from normal members. These answers are not checked and have some errors. That is a problem. Also some people have complained that the videos of “normal” Mormons make Mormons seem quite liberal. I say good. I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one.
Slick marketing campaigns for churches are a bit strange, but I guess they do it because it’s part of declaring the gospel. Anyway, I had fun looking around the site and watching all the videos last night when I should’ve been writing.
Falling Between Genres
I was talking to an acquaintance the other day and he asked how my writing was going. I’m just getting used to talking about myself as a writer and the books that I’ve written. It’s really hard for me to do it still, but I’m getting a lot better. I’ve written three novels so far. That’s frickin’ amazing! Granted the first one was what I would consider a practice novel that no one is ever going to read, but I finished it so it does count. This acquaintance writes. He writes fantasy and he has a deal with a small publisher. Anyway, we were talking about reading and writing and how we write and such when I realized that everyone I know who writes fiction writes in a really clearly defined genre. They all write genre fiction–horror, scifi, fantasy, romance…
I can’t describe my fiction as any of that. The best I can do is literary, but that’s not really the case either. In my personal life I like not being able to be put into one clearly defined box. I’m black, but I’m a Mormon. I’m a Mormon, but I’m liberal. I’m health conscious, but I drink full fat milk. See, I’m just a pile of contradictions. That’s fine. I like myself like that, but maybe that doesn’t work too well when it comes to fiction. How do I market my book to people if I don’t know what genre it is? If my books don’t fit neatly into any one genre, where will I be able to find people who will enjoy reading them?
I think about this all the time now. I really have to figure out an answer soon.
First Reading Completed
I finished my first read through of Flying Lessons yesterday. This was just a rough look over. I didn’t really do any correcting. I just wanted to make sure there were no inconsistencies in the plot or writing style. I needed to check the time line to make sure it made sense. The second reading is when I start correcting things. I’ll go through about four times before passing it on to my first reader. Then I pass it on to second and third readers. I have lots of readers.
I found a few things that I need to change. Mainly I have this prologue that I wrote and I’m not sure it’s necessary or even fits into the story now that the whole thing is completed. I’m trying decide whether or not I should cut it out completely or if I should just make some changes to it. I think it could definitely be shorter. It only need to be a page and a half to get the message across instead of the 12 pages it is now. I don’t even think a prologue is supposed to be that long, is it?