Category: #amwriting

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#amwriting Work in Progress

Writing as a man.

Over the past several months, since I’ve begun writing more on a daily/regular basis, I notice a lot of my protagonists tend to be male. I had admitted it before to myself, but this week my reason for this was emphasized more as I felt myself thrown into the “wonderful” moods of being a woman:

I write from the male perspective because, when I write from the female perspective, I feel overly frilly, i.e., girly. Nothing wrong with being girly, but when I read my writing (from the female standpoint), there’s this sensation I feel where I’m just irritated by my words. The cliche feelings, the same struggles…

Not to say that writing from the male point of view does not have its stereotypes, but I don’t play into those stereotypes as much since I myself am not a man. However, because I’m well familiar with the female gender, I know the stereotypes all too well and find that, as hard as I try to avoid the stereotypes, I play into them too well when I write.

It isn’t to say that my writing may be more interesting with a male protagonist; in fact, out of the three novels I have completed so far, the one novel that seems coherent enough (in the first draft) is my first one, which has a female protagonist. With the other two completed novels and the fourth novel I’m working on, they all have male protagonists. However, the plots have been more or less complex than the first novel.

I am hoping that I will soon be able to find a good balance between writing from both male and female standpoints.

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#amwriting

Inspiration when away from home:

For the past week, I’ve been finding myself writing email “blurbs”/prompts to myself regarding some observations/thoughts I’ve made while away from my personal computer. Here are a couple I’ve written so far:

1. He felt fretful from watching the curtain fall across another store, closing due to the sluggish economy. He watched the workers file out of the store and he felt himself clinching his own chest, wondering what would happen to his own job eventually. His office was located on the tenth floor of the building, yet he could see clearly the faces of distraught and worried pain across the street. The Great Behemoth was falling; which would fall next?

2. Two and a half cups of coffee later…

Just some things to jump-start some future projects. I usually keep a small notebook on me when I’m on-the-go, but sometimes it’s easier to type a fleeting thought than to write it down. That’s just how my mind works at certain points in the day.

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#amreading #amwriting

Thoughts about "The Street-Smart Writer"

Since I flew through reading my previous book, I cracked open The Street-Smart Writer this week to finally check out what Jenna Glatzer has to say. One of my sisters mentioned this book to me since I was growing confused about how to go about with publishing/sending my work out.

I have to admit, reading this book has made me feel depressed over what I had hoped to do with my novels (self-publishing). I’m not saying I’ll completely rule out that option yet, but the advice/tips in the book have been big reality checks for me. All of it has made me wonder what it is that I want to achieve out of becoming published. It’d be nice to have a bestseller, but that’s not the sole reason why I want to be published. I want others to enjoy my work, to be able to understand how my characters feel and whether or not they can relate to those characters.

When I embarked on this mission late last year, I wasn’t being foolish; I knew that the road to getting published/building my foundation in the writing world would be a long and sometimes frustrating journey. However, that’s how most things are like in life, no matter how different the subject matter may be: job hunting, establishing a romantic relationship, etc. It’s not all different from the life of an unpublished writer striving to become published. We all go through the same kinds of hardships, but in the end, if it’s something important to us, it’ll be worth all the tough times.

So, even though some of the topics listed in this book have made me feel slightly discouraged, I know it’s just a bump in the road, and that, by reading this book, hopefully I will prevent too many mishaps from happening to me in the “preditor” world.

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#amreading #amwriting

Muse Gone MIA; flying through books.

All weekend long, I wasn’t able to feel much inspiration to work on Novel 4 nor move along the progress in Novel 1’s editing/revision stages. I suppose my muse has gone on vacation for the time being, but I only hope he or she will come back to me soon enough.

During this past week, I have been flying through some books that I checked out from the library. I finished reading Shirley Fong-Torres’ The Woman Who ATE Chinatown and am currently wrapping up Martha Brockenbrough’s Things That Make Us [sic]. Both books have been insightful and good breaks from reading fiction (Stanley G. West’s Blind Your Ponies was a huge project to finish up anyway…). However, as my habit has become, I’ll need to get back to reading some more fiction soon since I’m feeling slightly burnt out from reading nonfiction (is that the correct classification for those kinds of books?). I’m trying to cut down on adding any more books to my “to-read” list on Goodreads since I’ve hit 300+ on that list…there’s no way I’ll be able to read all of those books if my list continues to grow. Gotta slow down.

I continue to receive notifications about people adding my story “Riches to Rags” to their favorites on Scribd. It’s amusing to me to see how my other story, “Tight Jeans”, hasn’t received nearly as many hits and nobody has added that story to their favorites. What is it that has drawn readers to Ivan instead of the anonymous bakery shop owner? It’s something I’ve been pondering; is it because of the POV? The voices of the stories themselves? What can be improved upon “Tight Jeans” to make it more appealing?

Perhaps my answer will come to me soon enough. In the meantime, I will need to really get working on my other short story revisions. Until next time….

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#amwriting Novel 1 question short works Work in Progress

New Story Post; Characters & Settings and Tangibility

It’s safe to say that I can breathe again after a less-than-fruitful week. For the past two weeks, I haven’t had much time to devote to my writing; in general, I haven’t had much time to myself due to festivities for Chinese New Year and my birthday over the past two weekends. Don’t get me wrong: I love celebrations, I love time with family and friends, but like any other person, I also love time spent alone.

I feel like I can’t fully function/be alert with tasks/work when I do not have at least one full day to myself to do whatever I want to do. Even though on certain days of the week I still have time before and after work to myself, it’s never enough for me to have those pockets of time. I need a full day.

So, because of the lack of time lately, my updates to my website and my short works had been suffering; only today was I able to get around to adding another short story to my website (called “Riches to Rags” under Other Works); it’s slightly longer than my other work, and the POV is from a man instead. As always, please feel free to leave feedback/reviews on my comments post.

I’ve been working hard on developing more about my characters from Writing the Past, but I’m having trouble with a couple of elements; in general, I feel like this is a weak point in my writing at this stage. The question goes–

When writing non-Science Fiction/Fantasy, is it important/mandatory to have real location names (i.e., names of real cities like New York, San Francisco, Fairfax, etc.)? Also, is it necessary to directly address characters’ ethnicities/cultural backgrounds?

The reason why I struggle with these aspects of writing is because I do not want to box my characters into the stereotypes or “familiar” things akin to familiar locations, cultures, etc. It may be a controversial matter, but I don’t want to feel like I am limited to only writing about Asians, Asian-Americans, etc. and their plight of living in certain conditions/cultural conflicts/etc. What exactly is accepted/not accepted though? What makes a storyline tangible, easy-to-relate?

Any insight is appreciated.