Please Don't Kill Me, Stephen

Last night I was working on my novel when I naturally began picturing my life as if it was a narrative. I do that often. I know, it's not normal.

I began thinking about the sort of protagonist I would be: a very young, stuggling writer dicking around in junior college while she struggles with figuring out if she's going to major in journalism or anthropology and managing to live a fairly healthy lifestyle with absolutely no money.

And, you know, there's the obsessive compulsive disorder that needs to be put under control before she can get a car and, as a result, a job that isn't freelance writing.

Then I started thinking about how many of Stephen King's protagonists are odd and/or struggling writers, and that made me paranoid that my entire life was really nothing but a Stephen King book.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

God, I hope he lets me die with dignity.

Or at least naked.

This is worse than the time when I watched Silence of the Lambs and became inexplicably frightened that Anthony Hopkins could read my mind.

I've been paranoid about a lot of people reading my minds ever since I was ten and watched a TV show about it. This is actually the one thing I haven't told my psychiatrist; I'm terrified that I'll keep revealing crazier and crazier things until I'm eventually committed.

Or worse, they tell my mom what I'm telling them. She can't handle what she knows already. I know they're not supposed to unless it sounds like I'm going to hurt someone, and I know I'm not doing that, so I should be good. Too bad being scared of things coming to pass that can't possibly happen is sort of the dealbreaker, here.

Whelp, I just heard something trying to get in through my window. I think I'm going to get off of here for the time being and figure out just what the Hell one does when one is the protagonist in a Stephen King book. 

Bonus Post: I Don't Want To Live On This Planet Anymore

Because people like this guy live on it, too.

You know, we writers are often lauded as intellectuals. Actual writers know that such is far from the truth, as most of us are simple dreamers and lowly scribes. A solid grasp on ways to accurately and efficiently use the English language are not always testimonies to how much a person generally knows about reality.

Hell, there are people out there with Ph.Ds who have no clue what the real world is like. This, friends, is why the human race is doomed.

You all know that I don't support SOPA or PIPA already. I've done a rant on it before, and I intend to do many more before the shitstorm has passed. Because of SOPA and everyone who is backing it, I'm seriously considering following in the footsteps of Cory Doctorow and releasing all of my books under a Creative Commons licence. I normally keep swearing to a minimum so that I'll appear to know more than 100 words, but I absolutely hate how everyone claiming ownership to art has taken all of the passion out of creation. e.e. cummings truly did see a clear picture of society and its future when he claimed in his poem Now Does Our World Descend that "create" had become "contrive".

I wonder if he suspected just how true his statement of how freedom was what made a slave would become in the following century. Everyone wants nothing more than to be worshiped by "the little people" for their amazing talent. I have no more talent than a monkey, and I'm not afraid to admit it to anyone. I'm a firm believer in the creative belief of the artist as a vessel. While most people like to think of themselves as  great geniuses of their time, I know that I just put my pen down on the page and write what comes out. I don't sit in front of a fireplace with patches on my elbows and a pipe hanging out of my mouth muttering, "Yes. Indeed." every time a good idea occurs to me. The best writers are nothing more than idiot savants to something greater and larger than themselves.

Maybe Lord Xenu. No one really knows for sure.

That being said, I don't want to rock back and forth with copies of my stories hissing, "No, they're mine and you can't have them!" to everyone who tries to get close to me. I hate to break it to anyone who has ever worshiped their own work, but that story stopped being yours the moment someone else read it. Without readers, writers are nothing more than glorified bums.

I've mentioned before how much I loved the manga Hanako and the Terror of Allegory just because the protagonists kicked the writer's ass at the end for getting too greedy with her stories, which belonged to the readers.

In light of SOPA, I want to go ahead and tell everyone reading my blog and future stories that my most urgent wish is for you to make them your own. I was appalled to find out that people have actually been sued over fanfiction, because in my opinion it is the sincerest form a flattery a writer can receive. Stop being an money grubbing asshat and be proud that you've created something so great that it lives outside of itself. Can you imagine what our language would have been like today if something like SOPA existed in the fifteenth century and Shakespeare had everyone who used one of his invented phrases put in jail?

Everyone who has ever lived owes me three times the national debt. 

Please take this blog post to heart. I know this sounds cheesy, but I need all of you so much. A writer who wants to hurt his readers for keeping his stories in their hearts and lending his books to their friends is no writer at all. He's just a tiny version of those big record companies who don't give a crap about how many tears you've cried while listening to that one song that the artist only got half of a cent for. I felt sick when I found out that book lending actually does piss off quite a few writers.

Like Whitman, I'm a noiseless, patient spider casting out my web and hoping that it catches on to one of your hearts. Just one. That's all I need. I've listened to readers talking about how much their favorite writers have changed their lives and dreamed of the day when someone, just one person, would give me that same look and tell me how the stories that I've written have helped them to escape.

Trimming the fat...before the cow becomes a steak?

Image via WikipediaI know that editing during the first draft is a bad idea, but I've been compelled to do the most major form of editing that I've come across: cutting out entire scenes.

Or rather, ripping them out. I literally tore about five pages out of my notebook when I realized that I was going in a direction that was completely wrong. In fact, I may  need to do away with several scenes. They're all getting repetitive.

At this point I fear I may even need to re-title my novel, "A plot revealed through a bunch of characters sitting around talking about it."

Of course, the problem isn't that extreme, but it might as well be. Any problem is magnified to twice its size in the eyes of the readers, be it an inconsistency or an author who is too frightened to leave the exposition.

As I reminisce about my older novel projects that have been started but never finished, I realize that they all could have possibly been saved had I sat down, looked at all of the scenes I had, and figured out which ones could be combined, especially if they take place in the same setting and are made up mostly of exposition. I just don't know how to get the beginning of the novel all squared away so that I can jump right into the middle. It has always been a problem of mine; the first novel I ever started writing had about 150 pages and at least 20,000 words before I really even got into any of the action at all.

Now that I have recognized this problem, I feel as if I've taken a huge jump forward in remedying it. There are some scenes that just don't belong. Even if they reveal necessary information, that necessary information may not be necessary at that exact moment in the story's timeline. You can always put it in wherever you feel it needs to go in the rewrite. The first draft is, more or less, about getting the very basic story out of you and onto the page so that you can work with it. It's better if you don't even worry about spelling and grammar until you sit down to do that editing.

 Some things are even better left unsaid, like Hemingway said in his famous Iceberg Theory.

If a writer of prose knows enough of what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an ice-berg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water. A writer who omits things because he does not know them only makes hollow places in his writing.  ---Hemingway

For example, Hawthorne never writes, "The Reverend Dimmesdale was too scared to admit what he had done."

He makes you know it, and without ever saying a word.

Related articles

• How to Silence Your "Inner Editor" (thewritersrefuge.wordpress.com)

Freewriting Prompt: Prompt Writing, Sans Prompt

I haven't done a writing prompt on my blog in a really long time, and I thought I would try one out again. I wanted to make use of Freeblogging, which keeps track of time for you, but I couldn't think of a good fiction prompt that I could honestly keep up for any length of time without stopping for a good while. The result was me doing a promptless stream-of-conciseness writing exercise, just like the first one I ever did.  This is by no means a work of fiction, essay, or anything serious at all. Just me rambling and trying to find whatever stories and blog posts might be lying beneath the mess of seemingly meaningless text.


It's a great thing to do, but I wouldn't recommend anyone else making an ass out of themselves by sticking it up somewhere for everyone to see like I did. 

I decided that, for my first writing prompt in a long while, I would do a completely promptless stream of conciousness exercise. That's right. I don't have a single thing that I'm supposed to be writing about. I'm just letting it all come right out of my head as I type, which is something that you should probably be a little bit worried about. No going abck and erasing the embarassing or horrifying stuff. Nope. Not at all. Here it goes.

I'm watching Family Guy right now. They're making fun of the moon landing or something like that. I don't know becuase I'm only half-way paying attention. I think I heared something about surly blondes. Don't really know how that fits in there, but it's there. Kinda silly if you ask me. Guess it would have made sense in context, but I don't have the context because I wasn't paying attention. Just gonna have to let that one slide, I guess.

HA! Stewie just stole Brian's Peanut Butter Jelly Time thing. HA. That was something that Brian did, not Stewie.

I have no idea what to say now. Oh my God. It's like my mind just went totally blank. Usually when this happens while I'm writing my book, I just put on a song that reminds me of the stuff that's happening in my story and think about it until I finally have stuff to put on the page again. I can't really do that now, seeing as I'm just doing freewriting.

My cousin just came to the door. I bet he thinks I'm pretty weird, sitting here writing on the computer and yet talking to him at the same time like I'm not really thinking about what it is that I'm typing. Oh boy. My family thinks I'm pretty damn weird anyway, though, so I guess it's not a big difference.

Geez, let's talk about how awkwardly that was worded for a moment. Gaw. I can't believe I let that sentence at the end of that paragraph right up there leak out of my head. I'm entirely sorry. Good God.

You know, the first stream of onciousness prompt I ever did required me to not puncuate or capitliaze a single thing. I could n'efve evend end the sentence. And now this thing is freezing up, and I can't see where I'm typing. I bet the typos are absolutely endless. I am sorry. So, so, so sorry.

I want a banana.

Well, looky there. I didn't type for quite some time because my computer froze, and it's still letting me continue writing. I wish I would have known that, otherwise I qwould have actually planned somethign to write here. Instead I think I'm just going to sing a song in my head, but not write the lyrics down. That's difficult. Oh wow, is it ever and called it macaroni....DAMNIT!

Well. There you go.

Think of it as going on your own personal MapQuest.

It doesn't have to look like this ^^^

Today's post is about one of my favorite parts of the novel writing process: story world mapping.

If there's one thing that most writers of genres outside of fantasy tend to ignore, it's the importance of drawing up a map of your story world. Sure, it's important to form an image of the layout of your world if you literally have an entirely different world, but it's just as useful to draw a little map of all of the normal, everyday settings that show up in your novel.

You know, like a character's bedroom, or the diner where most of the scenes take place...you get the picture. Mapping can actually be a valuable part of your brainstorming process, even if you're a non-otherworldly writer. Just try it out and see whether or not it influences how you picture the scenes in your head and how vividly you write them.

Now, I'm not saying that you have to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. My mountains are, to this day, nothing but triangles, and my trees look like chicken feet. I'm a writer, definitely not an artist. It doesn't matter if your people are stick figures, or if your dragons look like squiggly lines with crudely drawn feet. It's still a perfectly respectable story world outline either way, and you should be pretty damn proud of it if you ask me.

When I was little I did nothing but draw maps of the places I wanted to write about sometime in the future, sometimes having them set up so that to see the whole thing you had to piece several notebook pages together. My mother thought I was insane, especially because I wrote in mostly first person back then. I actually believe that her reaction to finding my writing notebooks is just the reason I have such an aversion to first person writing: she accused me of being schizophrenic and threatened to commit me.

I would suggest carrying your writing notebooks around like they're a treasure box full of gems that everyone would rip away from  you and steal forever if you were to let a single person catch a glimpse of what's inside. Nobody likes to know you're writing something unless you've been published. Once you have, everyone wants to know, and I hear it gets pretty freaking annoying.

Try drawing a map your main character's bedroom. If nothing else, it'll at least be fun. Then, feel free to go map-crazy, even if they're all just simple aerial views.

I'll Just Leave This Here

11 Types of Bad Writing Advice

Believe me, I've heard all of these and continue to hear them to this day. Pick up any self help writing book and you'll see nothing but around two hundred pages of this crap. Just a quick reminder:

There are no laws to writing.

Just because Bill H. Authorguy (sue me for the corny joke later) has written seven hundred bestselling books doesn't mean that you'll only be a successful writer if you mimic him.

Writing is fun. Some people love to make it look like it's brain surgery, because they don't feel important enough if they're doing something they enjoy. Work should be hard. Tough. Grr. Manly. That's a load of bull, however, and you'll never finish a manuscript if you feel like working on it is some form of punishment. While they are challenges, they are worthwhile challenges that you should enjoy undertaking.

If Mr. ITeachWriting hates romance novels, he'll shoot down anything of that nature that you show him. It doesn't mean it's bad, he just hasn't learned to be unbiased.

You're supposed to explore, have fun, and learn things about yourself.

Making a mistake or trying something that doesn't work is not an indication of whether or not you'll make it as a writer. This has happened to everyone, even the person writing that hoity-toity self help book, and it is part of the process. I usually have at least three different versions of a scene floating around before I find one that works when I try it out.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, some people just should not give advice. Most of these people are writers. Not all writers, of course, but the more pompous types. You'll know them when you see them.

Last but not least, remember that we writers are sometimes the most stubborn people you'll ever encounter. Many seasoned professionals make it painfully obvious that they believe their own way of going about their story to be the only way of going about ANY story. I've tried all of the advice I've ever been given, and can honestly say that no one thing worked perfectly for me. You basically have to take little bits and pieces of what works until you shape your own unique process. It's like a fingerprint, and not the same for everyone by any means. Try something that just doesn't feel right, and you'll end up with a story as awkward as that analogy.


I think I'll also leave this here, seeing as most of the people looking at my blog have author blogs, themselves. I found it beyond useful. I posted it on Twitter earlier, along with the realization that most of the people coming to my blog from a search engine are looking for Pinkie Pie. Sometimes Google Analytics will surprise you. 

It's not like the old days when you could afford to be a recluse.

I'm going to level with you here. I have both ADD and Noise Anxiety, which makes writing anything at all extremely hard if I'm not in just the right environment. Any little noise from the outside world--someone coughing, shuffling around, the TV in the next room at a distance, voices chattering--can totally set me off and wipe my mind completely clean. I'm serious. It's like every little noise is a moist towelette, and my novel is a mustard stain. But not a bad one. One that I want to keep. For some reason. Sorry, I'm not in my 'environment' right now.

I'm also bothered by motions as well, which is why I absolutely have to be alone when I'm writing anything. That, or near a person who's extremely talented at sitting perfectly still. A Buddhist monk mid meditation, if you will. People stomping through the house even tends to keep me from working. The second anything comes into my mind that isn't one hundred percent related to the task at hand, it might as well be gone for good. Imagine how much I hated using Microsoft Word when that stupid little paperclip was still there. People who didn't even have any problems with concentrating hated it.

I'm beginning to think that writers just don't have these problems. That, or that they all live alone. Every single writer who ever talks about their process seems to be living completely by themselves in a little cabin on another planet. I'm waiting to see if there are any real people out there who have to lay their heads down on their desks until their mother stops screaming about who won on America's Got Talent.

If any of you happen to be reading this post, I have a bit of a solution. By 'bit of a solution', I mean that it sometimes helps me, but not always. Listening to music, for example, can't do a thing to stop my brain from emptying itself out ever time the entire house vibrates from someone stomping through it. For all of your auditory and visual distractions, however, I believe I have found what may be a step toward a solution.

Music.
I've actually offended quite a few other writers by saying that I listen to music while I write. You just...just can't do that! Oh my God! How do you concentrate?

Well, how do you concentrate with a screaming baby in the background?

Forget I said that. Before you get lost in the world of your headphones, you should probably make sure that Little Timmy hasn't stuck his finger in a light socket.

But I digress...sometimes it's your choice of music that works best. I have an entire writing playlist composed (see what I did there?) of nothing but songs that make me zone out, i.e., I hear the music but am not really paying attention to it. If it's a song I really like or one that's too catchy, I'll find myself focusing on the words or tune and zoning out from the writing. The real goal here is to make sure that you sort of zone out of the music and let it play in the background of your mind, letting the words that you're writing come to the forefront. Slower songs usually work best, as well as songs you could imagine playing while you talk with a friend. Anything that can drown out noise, but at he same time take a backseat to your thoughts. For some reason songs with lower pitches work best for me than higher ones. It's also a good idea to throw in a few songs that remind you of your story in case you're running out of things to say and need to mull over the idea that you first had when you started to write. I also like to make my "Story Soundtrack" into a playlist for when I go on walks by myself. It's pretty much the only way I can brainstorm.

Distraction Free Writing
Hear me out on this. I thought it was only for programmers at first. Not to mention, of course, that it's not exactly aesthetically pleasing. That is, of course, the goal. Felt sort of 'derp' after that one.

DFW programs provide a very basic interface for writing. I didn't think I needed one until I tried one out. I was amazed at how things as minuscule as the task bar and the temptation to check Facebook were hindering me.

Creawriter is one of my favorites. You can choose whatever background image you want, and the ambient sound is a great addition. For some people (myself included), the noise and image gets to be too much sometimes. In that case I would recommend  Dark Room or Writemonkey.

Fiction Writing Books: The Only One You'll Ever Need

Image by The Shane H via Flickr

Anyone who's read some of the writing help books out there on the market knows that they're a slew of problems with nearly each and every one of them. It's actually quite a bit harder to find one that helps you than it is to find one that discourages you from writing ever again. Seriously, sometimes I think that the writers of the aforementioned books write them just to discourage new writers and eliminate the competition.

The two biggest problems with writing help books:

--The writer almost always pushes his process on you, telling you that the reason why you've failed is because you weren't doing it his way. Oh, please. A writer's process is like a fingerprint. A true writing HELP book (the key word being help) will aid you in figuring out what your own writing process is and using it to the best of your abilities.

--Work is being pushed and creativity is being ignored. I wouldn't be lying if I said that I had read books that actually discouraged you from being creative. One book even went as far to as say that it really was all work and no play. Well, all work and no play makes a novel dull as hell. I would know. I got as far as my outline before I read over it and had to admit that it was directing the writing of one of the most boring books in history. I shudder to think of what it would have been like had I actually written the thing.

You can only imagine how discouraging it was for me to fail this hard while reading a book that tried as hard as it could to convince the reader that if he or she couldn't make their novel come out in ninety days with the instruction they were given, they were just a terrible writer and not cut out for the buisness. It was literally impossible NOT to fail, however, when I remember how I felt about my writing during those few weeks.

The writer of the book seemed to think that you should hate writing and dread the time you set aside for it as if it were the worst part of the entire day. If you enjoyed it, well, you just weren't pushing yourself hard enough. Sometimes professionals get so caught up in making their job look hard and important that they actually end up stripping all the passion out of it.

So what is an aspiring writer who's having trouble mastering the novel to do?

Well, I'm absolutely thrilled to say that I've actually come across a book that's helped me tremendously. I've taken classes on creative writing and can honestly say that they weren't as good as Alan Watt's The 90 Day Novel: Unlocking the Story Within.

That's exactly what I did. I followed the advice within the pages, and I can't even explain how it worked, but it did. I seriously didn't know that all of that plot was sitting inside of me waiting to explode onto the page. The story is almost one hundred percent different than it was when I went through it the first time I had novel writing doubts, and it's almost that much more interesting. It's not just a story---it's a good one. When I read his book, I get the impression that he actually gives a crap, rare as that is in today's world of self help books.

So if you've been trying to write a novel for the longest time (in my case, bordering on four to five years) and just can't get it to work no matter how hard you try, I highly recommend this book. Translation: GET IT. GET IT. GET IT.

I'm beginning to see what my writing process is now, and it's working so much better than trying to roll with everyone else's.

This book is a must for aspiring writers. The reviews are not lying. It really is that helpful, and I will swear on a stack of whatever religious documents you wish that I am not being paid a cent to say any of this stuff.

Prompts, Straight out of My Head

Image by J. Paxon Reyes via FlickrI have antibiotics in my system, and I believe I just might be back.

Or, well, hopefully. Today I went to a College Composition class where I was told that I would have to think completely mechanically for the next fifteen weeks. I could have died that very second. Good Lord, how am I going to manage writing something technical that isn't about wizards and space aliens?

It sort of reminded me, however, about one of my bigger problems lately. My writing is, well, too mechanical. It sounds like Ben Stein is the narrator (no disrespect intended to Mr. Stein, of course). So, I took a little break from my novel and decided to brush up on some stream of consciousness exercises. These are always fun. I always produce the most interesting little things when I work this way. It isn't at all filtered through my stupid left brain. I'm just writing, and that's the best thing any writer can do.

That being said, I thought it would be great to post up some good stream of consciousness prompts just for the fun of it. If anyone decides to tackles these and comes up with something they think particularly hilarious (or frightening), feel free to put it in the comments. The best possible thing that could come from this is you getting a whole new story idea. These really are just the best around for generating ideas.

• The thing you want to do most of all before you die
• Write about the one thing that scares you the most and why it scares you.
• What is your passion and what about it makes you passionate?
• The thing you feel society has most screwed up on
• OR the thing you feel society is doing best of all
• What you feel is the biggest injustice today
• An event or period of history that makes your skin crawl
• The most admirable thing about the person you think of as your hero

Remember to give yourself a good set time (the usual one is about five minutes) and not stop until the time limit is up. If you're writing, don't let that pen or pencil leave the page until the whole five minutes are up. If you're typing, you're fingers shouldn't leave the keyboard. Just go and let it come straight from your heart and as you yourself would say it. Don't think it. Just feel it. Above all, don't judge it.

At Least 42 is an Even Number

Image by phatcontroller via FlickrHow many scenes does the average novel have? Mine, after I made a little timeline, appears to have forty two with about three scenes per chapter. I wanted to make my usual tediously detailed outline for it by the end of today, but I don't think that's going to happen. I worked on it for a few hours yesterday and only outlined eight scenes.

Yes, eight. Out of forty two. Looks like I've got to either give myself an extra day or down a gallon of coffee and work from now until Kingdom Come. I'm starting with the former, but like always will most likely switch my plans to the latter. Either way, it's work getting done, right?

I know I can't be the only one who sits there staring mindlessly at my blinking cursor unless I have a perfectly prepared outline of the scene. Seriously. I even need to divide the scene into a beginning, middle, and end. After that I divide the different parts of the scene into their own beginnings, middles, and ends. Sometimes I even go further than that, but I won't delve too deeply into my insanity. It makes people  nervous.

I'll have to note that the excerpts I posted were done without any sort of scene outline at all (let alone the hyper detailed one that I prefer), which is why they tended to suck. I honestly don't see how some authors can spin a tale out of an outline that's basically just a bulleted list of the scenes. Everyone has a different process, though. Most indie authors, what with their freethinking ways and such, scorn the outline entirely.

Me, I need it to survive. I didn't even realize it until my current novel. All of my previous works were attempted with absolutely no outline at all, and they never made it past a few horribly written chapters with no concept of any sort of narrative arc. One common mistake of novelists is, after all, that they're writing a novel from beginning to end and literally making it up as they go. Makes foreshadowing a bit hard when you're literally writing the thing as a reader.

Looking back over my old writing makes me nervous. I shudder at how terrible it is, and back then I thought it was so good! That in turn makes me worry that what I'm writing now isn't good even though it at least feels decent. Isn't it frightening to work so hard on something that you might scorn later when you've gotten more experience?

Anyone else afraid of this? Or are you perfectly comfortable with laughing at your old work (whether it's in writing, art, performing, or sports) and beaming at how much you've grown? I wish I were. I'm going to try, anyway. I'm definitely going to do the whole, "wait a few weeks and then proofread again" once this baby is through, though.

I would like to close by leaving all you other indie authors out there with a link to one of my favorite blogs, Publetariat. I always get a kick out of the title, and it's an amazing source of valuable information for independent authors.

Related articles

• How Many Scenes Does Your Novel Need? (advancedfictionwriting.com)

Tips for Writers Using (or Choosing) Pen Names

Image via WikipediaYes, it's another list. I tried typing this out in paragraph form, but it just wasn't aesthetically pleasing. Nobody likes walls of text, right? I mean...some people do, but they always put me to sleep.

I have a bit of a confession: I hate using a pen name. If I didn't have an incredibly hard name to pronounce and spell, I wouldn't. It's just so...odd. I feel like I'm lying or playing pretend. Quite a few writers use them by choice, however. Even more desire to do so, but can't quite find the name that's right for them. Here's what I've learned in my tedious search to find the right (or at the very least, most acceptable) name with which to sign all of their creative works.

1. Don't be a ham.   I cannot stress this enough. I even think of "Harlow Clark" as too showy, but quite a few people out there want to write with names like "Rain" or "Stardust". I seriously wanted to go with Jane Doe just for giggles, but I figured that it would seem hammy to people even though I was going for the opposite of hammy.
2. Make it genre specific...if you want.    Sometimes it may be helpful to choose a sort of...edgy?...name if you're a horror writer, or a beautiful and romantic sort of name for a romance novel. It may just help make the novel! What would A Series of Unfortunate Events be without Lemony Snicket? The series just wouldn't have the same sort of magic to it if it were written by "Daniel Handler". And what on Earth would people think of steamy erotica written by a Howard O'Brien instead of Anne Rice?
3. Make sure it rolls off the tongue.   A name that has a nice ring to it is also likely to be remembered. I've also heard it mentioned that a two syllable first name and a one syllable last name is a good choice, though no one can really tell you why. 
4. Unisex is always a good choice.    Especially if you're female and write science fiction, crime, or horror novels. It isn't fair, but it's a known fact that people are far more likely to pick up a book of such a genre that was written by a man. If a name is unisex, people are also more likely to assume the author is a man than a woman. I've found myself guilty of this from time to time, as well. You'd be surprised how writers turn out to be women once you look them up! Methinks the tables may be turning. *wink**wink*
5. You can always just use your initials.    If you have a name like Svietgein Horwinkle Zvet Henderson, you can bet it will be easier to sell your books if you write them as S. H. Z. Henderson, or any combination of the first three. It saves a lot of trouble choosing a pen name, and if people find it hard to say the initials, well, they can always just get over it and call you by your last name.

On a totally unrelated matter, I found a random folder on my computer titled, "Japanese Horror Files". I opened it up and found a bunch of images of my friends and people I barely know that I don't remember saving, plus a few weird extremely blurry images and some random anime sprites. There were even some stills from South Park in there. I find this incredibly odd because I'm the only one using this computer. I'm running Linux, so I don't think there's a chance some kind of virus put it there. Spooky, eh? 

Four Websites to Break the Tension of Writer's Block

Oh, good Lord. It's another blog post in the form of a list. Lord Xenu help us all.

Image via WikipediaIn case it hasn't made itself obvious by now, I can't think of a single thing to write lately. Isn't that just the most irritating feeling in the universe? Staring at that blinking cursor...chewing on your pen until you can taste ink...it's just infuriating. So, what's a writer to do?

Why, compose a blog post about writer's block, of course!

Or you could just whine to everyone you see regardless of whether or not they care. That's normally the route I choose, but it never really does much good. I've found that visiting the following websites can be a tremendous help, even if it's just to have a good and slightly inspirational laugh.

1. Language is a Virus - While most people have heard of this one, but I can never keep from mentioning it. The poetry generator always proves to be nothing short of hilarious. If anything, it will stop you from being so uptight about the fact that the stupid poem you've been working on for the past week just refuses to budge past the first quatrain. Sometimes just relaxing a bit can make all of the difference, after all. The site also offers quite a few inspirational articles, not to mention writing prompts that can force you out of your comfort zone. I've used a few in the past to compose some of my favorite of the poems I've written...you know...the ones addressed to the reader that most people find a bit creepy.
2. WeHeartIt.com - I love visual inspiration. If it strikes just the right chords, a picture really can be worth a thousand words, maybe even more. It doesn't work for everybody, however, as no two people write (or get inspired) in the same way. If you're one of those people who could just go to town on a manuscript after seeing a picture of a mountain or a beautiful work of art, this website is most certainly for you. 
3. Seventh Sanctum - Seventh Sanctum, much like Language is a Virus, is another well known website that's great for playing around and having a good laugh. While some of their generators prove to be more amusing that anything, I would definitely be lying if I said that it hasn't helped me to compose some serious works. You'd really be surprised at what a silly sounding randomly generated collection of words can stir up inside of you. In my opinion, such websites do a wonderful job of proving that inspiration will come to you if you could only allow yourself to forget that you were looking for it in the first place.
4. Random Book Title Generator - I'm just going to be completely honest with you here and say that this generator is only on the list because it's one of the funniest things I've come across on the Internet. I can't really say much else about it...you'll just have to see for yourself. As is the case with Seventh Sanctum, you never know when it will actually inspire you. For the most part, however, it's just a wonderful way to make yourself laugh when you've probably done nothing but bang your head against your computer screen for the preceding week.

Related articles

• Random Whimsy - Treating Writers Block (emilyandthelime.wordpress.com)
• The best way to Defeat Writers Block. (leccoworkshop.com)