Happy Memorial Day

A Tear for the Fallen

by

Edna Pellen

*Dedicated to the past veterans and the families of the lost veterans. 

Thank you for your sacrifice.*

A tear for the fallen

A tear for the lost

A tear for the veterans 

Who let us gain through their loss

A smile for the family

who let their loved one go

A flag for the orphaned children

Their parents no more to know

An ache for the blood

lost on foreign land 

A cry for the victory

and freedom bought by passed away woman and man

Love for the country

that they died to defend

A promise to not forsake the freedom

A promise not to let it end

Don't Forsake Your Story

Dear writer, 

We live in a world bent on diversity. And that can be wonderful, because clearly God has made all men equal. No race and neither sex is anything more or less than human, and no belief warrants cruelty from another. 

And yet, society has taken race, sex, and religion and caused it to further divide, not unite.
But that is a subject for another day. I'm not writing to you to tell you what you very likely already know. I'm here to encourage you, when you're under pressure, to not bend to society.

What I mean by that is that content creators, writers, artists, musicians, film makers, are being pressured to include things in their work that they wouldn't otherwise include, and that's really damaging the world of artistic content. 

Writers are throwing in LGBT+ characters or making characters suddenly become gay or pansexual or asexual or bisexual or what have you, they're plugging in characters of a certain race that weren't there before, they're tossing in characters of some religion, they're shoving in a "strong independent women" attitude in their heroines, they're including arcs that make no sense and they're ruining dynamics, all for the sake of pleasing society. And I have yet to see this be carried out and written well.

Now, I'm not writing this because I am against diversity. I am a Christian and do not believe or support a few religions, beliefs, and the LGBT+ community, but I don't hate the people in them, either. I'm not against strong or independent women, in fact I would love to see them properly depicted more often. And I am not against any race.
What I am thoroughly against, is authors being pressured to include any of the above where it is not due. I am against an author forsaking their story for the sake of pleasing society. 

If you are writing something that includes these things, and they are genuinely a part of the story and the characters, carry on. 

If you are writing something, and shoving in some or all of these things for the sake of society, please, stop. You don't need to please society, it's okay for you to write your story and characters how you want to write them. And if you are called sexist, racist, homophobic, or religion-ist, then so be it. You know that you aren't those things, you know that you are staying true to your story. Your story, writing style, and character development will suffer greatly if you force yourself to write something that is wrong for the story, and you'll lose the good readers.

Then there's all the stuff that isn't political or about diversity, it's about your writing choices.
If you choose to have a character do X thing, or if you move the plot in this way when someone suggest you do the other way, or if you cut or add a character, or how you end the story, it is all up to you. The decisions you make in a story are yours to make.
Receiving advice, constructive criticism, having someone to help you brainstorm, being given word choice suggestions, these are all great things. But at the end of the day, those things are just ideas. Ideas that you don't have to take or follow through with. Sometimes, maybe you should, and when they're coming from experienced writers they're especially worth considering. 

Still, the only person who knows your story as well and in-depth as possible is you. You know things that may never make it into the book, you know minuet things about the characters that still manage to affect decisions, you know how you want your story to be received, you know the atmosphere and aesthetic and plot and every little thing so much better then anyone else ever could. So only you can make the decisions as to where your story goes and where it's written, and if something suggested to you feels wrong, you are under no obligation to go through with the suggested idea.

Stay true to your stories, friends. 

    Yours,

                   ~ Edna Pellen

On The Path to Publication: The Strategy

Hello!


I have begun an exciting journey; I am planning to publish a novel.
I'm not doing this soon, but I am doing this. I'm not letting that dream sit around anymore, but I'm not blindly running after it like all those inspiring quotes say.
Nope, I'm making a strategy.

This is it, so far:


May-October: Finish the first draft of Roslyn. 

I'm close. I'm really close. If you hop on over to my WIPs page, you'll see it has reached 50k words. That's a novel-length story.
But, I have a problem with that; I'm no where near the end.
How I managed to reach 50k when the story is just reaching the middle of the plot, I have not a clue. There's no way I can stretch it into two books, though.
So, I'm letting this first draft do its thing and will fix it later (which will likely involve cutting out a lot of stuff to make it a decent length).

I would also, ideally, finish this before October so that I can read through it before plunging into the next step.

November: Write the second draft of Roslyn for NaNoWriMo.

My plan for this is to copy my draft down and edit as I go. Ideally, I'd have it in a close to completed state.

December: Take it easy.

For December, I'm giving myself a break. I won't necessarily stop working on Roslyn, but I won't have any deadline to meet or anything.
I'm doing this for a few reasons:

• Holidays
• A tradition among my writing group to do a secret-santa short story swap.
• I don't want to get burnt out. This'll take a lot of effort, and I'd hate to complete the goal just to. become deflated and apathetic towards my story. 

I will probably at least read over Roslyn to be ready for the next step.

January: Edit the 2nd draft of Roslyn.

I'll be spending this month reading over (if I hadn't already) and editing the second draft of Roslyn.

February: Send  Roslyn out to beta-readers.

This will be a really important step. It'll probably be the most important to me, personally, before hiring an editor and spending money (which is a whole different matter that I will discuss and mention here when the time comes).


March: Make the appropriate edits to Roslyn.

These edits will be based on what my beta-readers suggest.


{This on down is very iffy and may change as I go. So from here on down, it's guesswork.}

April: Send to omega-readers.

I don't know if that's really a thing in the writing universe, but this set is the final set who will be reading it. Their job isn't to edit, it's to read like a reader. To be my test audience, almost. I may or may not edit my work based on what they say.

May: Gap month. 

This is the next rest stop for me.


June: Business begins.

This is when I will begin all the money issues and "official" stuff. An official editor, choosing traditional or independent publishing, figuring out the cover design, marketing, earning money for all of it, and so on.
That will probably be about a year in and of itself. And I'll make a post like this one when the time comes. 

~~~~

I fully recognize that issues may occur, and honestly, I expect it. I don't have the best background when it comes to deadlines and commitment, and money will be a problem.
But this time around, I have a crew to hold me accountable who are all working towards the same goal of publishment. 

What you can do to support me in this:

If you find that you'd like to support me, there's a few things you could do. You could share posts of mine that you like, post my blog on any social media that you have, pin my posts to Pinterest, etc. That will help be greatly, because the more people who read this blog, the more chances I have of getting an audience dedicated to reading my work.
And when the time comes, buy my book if you've got some spare change.

But the main thing I'm asking of you, is that you pray. 

This is a big thing, and there's a lot of things I'll need to balance with it. School, money, family, mental health, and just generally stepping into adulthood.
So if you could pray that God leads me to the path that He desires, that I don't lose hold of life in doing this, and that God provides me with ways to earn and do what I'll need, I would be much obliged. 

I will keep you updated as this process goes. This will be a series that I'm calling "The Path to Publication", and this is the first stage, The Strategy.
The goal has no date, but I want to do this within two years. I think that's a fair amount of time; one year to write, one year to start the publishing process.

Here's to hoping, hard work, and sneaking up on a dream than tackling it and pinning it down so it can't escape. 

Cheers, friends.

           ~ Edna J. Pellen

P.S. Fun fact: Blogger refuses to accept that "publishment" is a word. But it, in fact, is! It is the act or process of making something publicly known; publication.