jakedunnegan.com

I couldn’t believe how warm it’s been the last few days.. until tonight! WOW, it changed over night. Heck, not even over night, over the course of 4-5 hours.

Do you remember to put weather in your stories? Does it ever get cold? Is it forever summer? Always daytime? Does it ever rain? How does someone in a fantasy novel (or medieval times) protect themselves against the rain? I mean, umbrellas? Rain coats? Pneumonia anyone?

We (as writers) have a hard enough time involving all the senses – but don’t forget the setting has “senses” too!

Holy cow.. it’s easy to get side tracked when it comes to writing, no? However, I’m going to use November writing month novel something or other thingy to get 50,000 words put out this month. And I’m already behind, since I only have about 3k written. What’s worse, though, is that I haven’t touched my blog in a month or more. What the heck?

I miss my characters, though. I’ve really grown fond of some of them and they’re bouncing around in my head wanting to make a name for themselves. So, nothing left to it but to stop letting distractions (valid as they are, like sickness in the family) and just DO IT. (Insert Nike commercial here…)

Got a challenge from an old friend. A page per day, we’ll trade off. Little does he know that I’ve been setting all my little ducks in a row up for a while.. and fact is, I wanted to have my book done, at least the rough draft, by the end of September. To say that I’m a little behind is an understatement.

However, no reason to muss and fuss. Writers.. err.. they do something, now that I think about it. Err, what was it again? Oh, that’s right, procrastinate!

Fact is, putting sex in a story ain’t as easy as it sounds. It’s a really big question – sure, it sells, but it also turns some people off. And as someone who sells something, you really want to minimize how many people you are turning off due to something arbitrary about your writing.

Let me put it like this. My story is in the fantasy genre, and that right there will cut out I have no idea how many people from reading it – due to the fact they don’t read fantasy. Just like I don’t read horror or romance. Well, if you DO NOT have sex in your book, you’re not going to keep away the people who want to read about sex. Sex is everywhere, and it’s free on the ‘Net, so you risk nothing by avoiding it.

I’m starting to think what you need is sex, but put relatively delicately so that titillate w/out insulting or turning people off. It’s a tough call, but you’re writers! You can do it!