Proactivity

Today has been a somewhat frustrating day. In way that’s good – it means it can only get better. Problems will be solved, some of them simply throwing some time at it, people will move on, etc, etc.

Of course, this is exactly the opposite to how problems get solved in books. Well, in interesting books that actually pull the reader into the action. The hero(ine) does stuff to solve the problem. They get out there and ask their friends, or search for the magical DooWhat, or kill the bad guy. They’re proactive.

It occurs to me that being proactive isn’t just a necessary quality in a fictional hero(ine). It’s also a necessary quality in a successful person. Successful people don’t make their dreams come true by sitting around waiting for people to stumble across their idea, or by letting it mature on its own in a darkened room.

Books do not write themselves and they don’t sell themselves either. They need regular, frequent input and they need promotion.

So, how have I been doing on this front? Well, the first draft is finished, so that went well. Now I’m in edits, which hasn’t been going so well. A lot of other stuff seems to have come up recently: the chance to write more for Deepwood Publishing’s Splintered Lands anthology; the chance to beta-read for a few people; the chance to have my own website. Of course, I have leapt at all of these chances which, along with a few others, suddenly rendered my writing To Do list rather full. So I spent a day or so worrying about it and then I made a list (Kait Nolan would be so proud of me). Like she says, the list helps.

I managed to do all the beta-reading yesterday which was great, as that was a very big job ticked off the list. The next biggest job is editing For the Love of Gods so I really need to get on to that. I’m being slowed down by my brain’s sudden and perverse desire to think up new stories based in the same universe as FLG. It’s not helpful right now, although it probably will be in the future when I want more story ideas. *Sigh* where did I put that notebook?

Proactivity has also been delayed as I try to find the right image for my website. It’s currently got just stock images and I don’t want them, I want something that really encapsulates my writing. Not being an artist, I have no idea what that ‘something’ might be. I thought about werewolves/unicorns/dragons/four foot high scarlet bears but I don’t want people to only think of that one thing when they think of me. I have to admit, I love Kait Nolan’s and Susan Bischoff’s website headers – they work so well. My latest thought is one of those space images, you know, of swirling galaxies and so on, but now I’m thinking that might make people think I’m a space geek and I’m not. Well, not beyond the usual ‘oooooh isn’t it PRETTY?’

Any ideas? I really want it to be pretty and so far I’m batting zero… Of course I should be working on prettifying my manuscript, rather than my website, but I’ve always like running multiple projects simultaneously. As long as I remember to run both of them :S