Comments on: Various Sundries: Desks, Twitter, and Trendy Writing

By: michele

michele — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 02:56:44 +0000

Oh no, when are you officially leaving? I'm so hoping I get to see you before then.

And I think your high school notes are pretty darn impressive

By: Janice

Janice — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 02:08:17 +0000

Hmmm, I couln't see a mermaid in Manhattan or anything but I bet a mermaid could make it at Coney Island. Lots of water and money to be made at the freak-shows. That gives me ideas.
I also had the Little Mermaid Barbie and Prince Eric. Ariel was way smaller than my regular Barbies and Eric towered over them. I usually made him be the bad guy because he was big.

By: Phoebe

Phoebe — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 19:28:45 +0000

Isn't the desk so lovely and simple? Of course, mine would probably be a mess. It always is!

But yeah, writing or blogging > twitter. But twitter seems to be a great way to procrastinate on either of those!

By: Marieke

Marieke — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 19:26:49 +0000

That desk is gorgeous. I wants it.

I haven't quite figured out the whole Twitter thing yet. (And as a proud geek I'm ashamed to admit that.) I keep planning to spend more time discovering the Twitter-verse, but then I end up writing or blogging instead… Maybe I should make a resolution to start doing that. Tomorrow.

By: Phoebe

Phoebe — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:48:32 +0000

Following you! I'm feeling preeetty psyched about twitter. Which is funny after how violently I resisted it.

I think that Greek gods might be going out (did they ever arrive?)

Heh, this is one of the problems with following writing trends, too–or attempting to. For example, supposedly publishers have been inundated with Greek gods MSes–but other than Percy Jackson (which is clearly totally different from your MS), I can't think of a single one! So I wonder how the perceptions of what's "big" differ between the publishing world and the world of readers.

Don’t worry about people judging your motivation. Honestly, if they’re doing that, they have issues. Your writing is great. And you are motivated to write it, ergo it will go somewhere. That’s all that matters.

Aw, thanks. That's very kind–and inspiring.

By: Jaimie

Jaimie — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:32:40 +0000

Twitter is awesome. What's your Twitter handle? Mine's thejaimie. Follow me and I shall follow you. Well I'd probably follow you anyway.

I think that Greek gods might be going out (did they ever arrive?) but I can't really write anything else at the moment. So eh. Eh! It's my muse's fault.

Don't worry about people judging your motivation. Honestly, if they're doing that, they have issues. Your writing is great. And you are motivated to write it, ergo it will go somewhere. That's all that matters.

By: Phoebe

Phoebe — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:04:07 +0000

I do worry that people will see the "wrong" motivation in my writing–but then I stop myself, and remind myself that you never really know why someone is writing something, and it's entirely possible that those that we think are being (essentially) poseurs were working on their MSes for years, always wanted to write about a subject, are really passionate about it, etc.

I also worry that I write tooo slowly, and I will be too late for the mermaid train. But we'll see!

By: Suzanne H. Patton

Suzanne H. Patton — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:00:40 +0000

Twitter can do some pretty great things. Like bring readers to your blog! I've only been on Twitter since early this summer but I've made so many great connections with writers, editors, agents… I wouldn't consider leaving it, now. It's an enhancement of my writerly life. And I feel like I'm building a platform, granted, WAY before I need one (My novel is still a beat up, ugly baby :'( ) but it's the best.

As to writing trends? I don't think you wrote for a trend. You didn't say, "Hey I want to write about mermaids so Agent X will take my book and I will sell millions because it is the next trend!" you saw an agent tweet about mermaids which sparked your memory into recalling an old story. and, okay, so maybe you probably actually decided to start writing it again because you thought someone else might like it. But if I didn't have someone backing my novel idea, I probably wouldn't write it either. I think writing for a trend is much eviler (ooo) than writing a book that happens to be trending.

Trust me! I would LOVE to write books about vampires. And they'd kick Edward in the teeth. But you can't really get away with it right now, so I'll hold off on my blood-sucking desires for a few more years, until the storm has calmed down. But then people will probably say I'm trying to ride the "after the storm" buzz…