Hola Gentle Readers!
I don’t normally make New Year’s resolutions, but I’ve decided to break my resolution not to make resolutions this year (lol) and make more blog posts. I’ll be doing these “off the cuff” which means I won’t be editing them for typos. That is the only way I can be spontaneous, so pardon all my misspellings (I think I might have just misspelled misspelling?) as there will be many.
Why do I want to make more blog posts?
Mainly because I think a lot of traditional methods of communicating with readers (like various social media sites) have become either too confusing for me to keep up with; riddled with advertising; and/or they have actually become “anti-social” when it comes to communicating.
I vow to be frank in my posts this year. To that end, let me just say that I despise most social media platforms (okay, I’ve been wanting to confess that for a long, long time). And despise isn’t a strong enough word for places like FB, which has become increasingly hostile to anything other than commerce and disinformation. I think the “blue thumb” function on FB is actually ANTI social and encourages the least possible effort. It seems like fewer and fewer people actually WRITE or comment on posts. As a writer, I find that disheartening.
Anyhow, I’m done ranting about that (although I could go on for a long time) and I’ve “put my money where my mouth is” and cancelled my FB and IG accounts. I rarely posted anything of interest on either site. On FB I shared a lot of animal videos, so I’m sure some people are sorry about that, lol, but I never did figure out IG as we don’t get cell reception where we live. So, that cancelling that was no big loss.
What sort of stuff will I post about? Writing, living, musing, animals, not writing, struggling with writing–well, you get the drift on that.
So what am I doing today? It’s extremely warm and sunny here, but the weather service is broacasting a severe weather alert, so I’m curious how that will work out.
I’m working away on THE ETIQUETTE OF LOVE, which finally started coming together about a week ago. Chances are I’ll have to bump the date on this for a 2nd time, from Feb. 27 to March 27. I am leery of doing that because I HATE to disappoint readers and also because the ‘Zon punishes authors for bumping a publishing date twice.
I feel terrible about how slowly I’m writing these days, but the more I stress about it, the less I write, so the more I stress. I’m trying to stay out of that loop of self-loathing.
It’s also tough to find writing such a trudge because I have so many books just waiting to be written. Because I don’t use any sort of generative AI, my books take time. I write them and real people edit and proofread them (but not this blog post, lol).
I AM trying to get the books out on the dates promised, but life keeps getting in the way.
If I can figure it out, I’m going to try and open the comment sections in my blog posts. It’s closed on the other pages just because I kept getting these really annoying spam posts. If I get an unmanageable amount of spam on here, I’ll have to reconsider.
I do encourage people to comment or ask questions. Please be nice, this is a safe space for me and if you think I suck or my books suck, you can go to numerous other websites and air that viewpoint and, I am sure, get lots of upvotes.
I’ll end this post with an observation about the word “dear”. This is a pet peeve word for me. I HATE it when some character in a book calls another character “dear”. Yeah, like a lot. It just sounds so fake. Or, more often, it sounds like it should be freighted with meaning. Like, “Did you have a nice day at work, dear?” I picture June Cleaver asking that, and holding an actual cleaver behind her back as she eyes poor old Ward. So, I will never use the word ‘dear’. If I have, somebody must tell me so that I can purge it from the book.
Happy Tuesday! I’ll leave you with this photo of Pickles and I having a staring contest (Pickles won! Again.)