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 |  A place to talk about myself, my writing, and any upcoming projects. |
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Hello! I'm not really sure who is ever going to read this because I don't actually know anyone on this site and I highly doubt this is the sort of thing anyone would be interested in reading anyway. I'm writing it for two reasons. The first is for myself, so I have a place to sort of keep track of my progress on various projects and everything. The second reason is because I just got my upgraded membership today, and I want to try and make the most of it, which means finally getting around to using all of the features. On the off-chance that someone is actually reading this though, I'm going to do a little introduction here where I talk about myself and my writing and the sorts of things you can expect to read if you check this out. My name is Cat Voleur, I'm currently 21 years old, and I'm a professional writer. I got my first writing job a few months before I graduated high school. After that I spent about a month taking writing commissions while I looked for steadier work, and I was eventually employed as a ghost writer, where I spent about 3 years. I've quit ghost-writing very recently (and am consequently broke) to pursue my own dreams and perhaps establish a small following. I really enjoyed ghost writing because it gave me the freedom to travel and sort of choose my own schedule, but now I'm looking for something that I can take credit for. It's pretty sad to have steady writing work for 3+ years and wake up one day and realize all of the pieces in your portfolio are things you wrote as an angst-filled teenager. I'm going to take some time, edit some of my old pieces, write some new things, and try to see if anyone is interested in reading the things that I write under my own name. My commission and portfolio sites are, as of this moment, down for some maintenance work, but hopefully I'll be getting it back up soon with links to some of my work on this site. I also have a couple theme blogs run through tumblr and am currently the head writer of Toxic Bubblegum which is a zine published monthly put out by myself and my very talented friend, Alan Johnson. As for what I'd like to do in the future - I guess it just depends on what sort of opportunities I run into. I'm a big believer in just seizing the moment and going with the flow. The one thing I am sure of is that I'd like a career in writing. I sort of lucked into my first job, but now that I have a taste of being a writer I can't imagine being anything else. Ideally I would like to eventually have something published under my own name and become an author, but I'm willing to see where life takes me. I prefer writing in the horror genre, because that's where my real passion is. I look up to a lot of horror writers and if I could do anything, that would be it. I have the most experience writing in romance because that, unfortunately, is where the money is and that's what a lot of my paying gigs have been up to this point. I've been told that my strength is in fantasy. I don't know if that's true or not, but it's what most people tell me. I first got my account here a few years ago, around the time I started writing professionally, and I haven't done a lot since then other than upload a piece here and there. That's something I'm going to try really hard to get better about. I'd like to upload more stuff, get more active in the community, maybe see about meeting some fellow writers. Today is a very exciting day for me because I just purchased my upgraded membership. It was on sale or I might not have done it because I am, as I previously stated, broke. I've really wanted a membership here for awhile and I'm so glad that I finally did it because so far it really has been motivating me to get some stuff done. The first thing I plan on doing is uploading the most recent draft of Silence of the Lamps, which was the first thing I ever put up on the site, and it's undergone a lot of editing since then. After that I'm going to work on getting some more rough drafts up on here, and then maybe attempt to socialize, which is hard for me because even online I get really nervous reaching out to people. Anyway, if anyone read this, I'm sorry I babbled so long and thank you for your interest! Feel free to message me at any time if you want to chat or would like to have me read something or collaborate or anything. I don't bite, I promise. -Cat |
| Hey guys, Just wanted to share the good news with you that I made it into two of the WdC newsletters this week;
Made it into the wonderful "Horror/Scary Newsletter (May 31, 2017)"  And...
Made it into the equally wonderful "Fantasy Newsletter (May 31, 2017)" I am very honored to be featured in the newsletters again, especially with such awesome themes this month. You guys should be sure to check them out - they're very interesting and the stories I have featured are in wonderful company. I'm not through all of the other suggestions yet, but so far I have really been blown away. -Cat |
| Hey guys, So the first "Around the World" entry was posted and guess what? The country is America.  On the bright side, I feel like I know the country pretty well, so it's nice to think that maybe I'll be starting the contest off on a good note. On the other hand, I know the country pretty well, so I might be starting out on a really terrible note. I'm the same person who earlier this year was told by four different subreddits that my contemporary political horror piece was upsetting people. All of my favorite songs about the country are written by punk bands. I'm looking into how hard it would be to become a citizen somewhere else because I am afraid to be here when the next world war is inevitably started by us. (Kidding about the last one... sort of.) Anyway, I'm excited about starting the contest. Let's hope that I find something inspirational about this country I live in that isn't controversial and doesn't get me kicked out of this contest in the first week.  -Cat |
~Introduction ~ Recently I posted the following item to my portfolio:
Since it's set in a world that isn't mine (and I'm honestly not very familiar with) I went to add an author's note/annotation like I normally do for fan-fiction or collaborations. As I was typing it up I realized that there were just so many things to annotate in it that I should probably just do a separate page for people who were interested in the finer origin points of all the weirdness in that story. So, for those of you who liked the story or who were really confused, this is just to add what little context I have. ~The Game ~ Adventures is a tabletop roleplaying campaign that runs on a d20 system and is being hosted by my best friend's boyfriend. I was invited to join a few weeks in after moving back up North, where I could actually participate. Because I was the last person to join, I know the least about everything that's going on - something that gets really difficult in the role-playing aspect because my character, as you probably know from the story, is the former mayor of the town this is set in. Thanks to this unique situation, writing this piece presented quite the challenge. I wanted to introduce some depth into Radley's character, incorporate running jokes from where I started in the campaign, and still bring something new to the table without really knowing anything about the world this is set in. "Becoming Boo" is what I was able to come up with. ~Specific Annotations~ Here are some of the things that I wanted specifically to mention, for anyone who is interested in the game/show aspect of this story:  The only thing I knew going into this game was that it was "super trolly." When rolling up Radley's character I wanted to make her as "trolly" as possible so that I'd fit in, while still choosing aspects that would be helpful to the party. A good example of this is that I chose "sawov" as my race simply because it had the most ambiguously worded race description, and my racial powers included scaring people and phasing through walls. One thing Radley and I have in common (aside from our love of books) is that in this moment in time, neither of us really know what a sawov is, or what exactly she looks like. Another good example would be that instead of just taking the character perk "Secret Agent Man" (where I get a bonus to stats but must roleplay a secret layer of identity) I requested permission to take the perk "Double Secret Agent Man" (which gives me the same stat bonus, but I have to hide my identity from twice as many people.) This is how the concept for Radley's back story was initially formed (and about the time our DM started to regret inviting me to game nights.) Radley's full name is actually Boo Radley? (the question mark was originally just because I was using it as a placeholder before it stuck. Then I decided, in my effort to "troll" the DM, that Radley's name would just be spelled with a silent question mark incorporated into it that does not change the inflection of the name in any way.) She was obviously named after Arthur "Boo" Radley from Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, which is my all time favorite novel. At the time, I didn't think it would be relevant how she got her name, as I assumed that would not be a book in the game world. Items are assigned to characters in the game by rolling a d20. Because of my high roll when asking for a book to carry with me, the DM decided that I would have a signed copy of To Kill a Mockingbird (he got the reference to Radley's name.) Then, because the roll wasn't quite high enough, he determined that the signatures came from everyone except the author. This is why in the story, Radley's copy of the book has a cover that is nothing but overlapping signatures - to the point where she doesn't even know the name or author of the book.To further elaborate on this point, since this is something that is important to Radley and she carries with her in the campaign, but it's not something that technically speaking would be available in this world, I chose to portray it as a sort of fantasy novel when it came up in my story - since that's what it would seem like to anyone in this insane fantasy world who happened to find a copy. The town with no name is where our party is currently at in the game at the time that I'm posting this. Many of the specific features of the town that are listed in the story are things that have happened in my experience playing. These include; Government Subsidies, The town's hatred of origami, the way they go through mayors, the carrots that taste like grapes, the man who fights fish professionally, blue drink, the gas mask museum, and the children's level book containing history of poison attacks.What can I say? It's a weird game. ~The Show~ This is where, eventually, I will have credit information for where you guys can listen to our show and meet the other participants. In the meantime, stay tuned I guess, assuming that you're interested in seeing more Radley. |
| Hey guys, Before I get too personal on what I am reminding myself now is a public blog, let's just say today sucked. I've been going through a rough patch and today was either the end of it, or a sign that it's about to get worse and there was a lot of weird stuff that happened that was good, a lot more weird stuff to happen that was flat-out painful, and once again here I am not dealing with it head on. A good friend pointed out to me today that I can't really afford to shut down right now, which is what I was very much on the verge of doing. Since I'm not emotionally mature or well balance enough to deal with things AND keep up a normal routine, I really only have one coping mechanism for when I get stuck in situations like this that I just can't deal with. I was actually talking about this the other day, how sometimes rather than dealing with stuff it's easier just to work on a ton of stuff until I feel ready to handle things - and that is the route that I'm taking. Mature? No. Healthy? Definitely not. Better than tuning out? Let's hope so, because this is where I'm at right now. So with that personal introduction out of the way, let's talk about projects! You know those portfolio edits and updates I've been talking about? I'm working on them. I've gotten some of the smaller formatting things cleaned up, as well as a handful of typos across several of my portfolio items (mostly in my book of Screams contest entries because we all know that's where I make the most typos.) Throughout this weekend you'll probably notice a lot of small updates like that happening because I'm going to be going through items one at a time to take a closer look at them, dealing the with the easy fixes and make notes of the bigger areas I need to edit. I also want to clean out some of my folders, getting rid of items I'm done with, arranging, etc. With any luck I'll be able to get some new stuff up as well, although the new pieces will, at first, be less polished than some of the other portfolio pieces I'll be working with. I finished my first short story in the science fiction genre (okay, first decent short story in the science fiction genre) and even though it won't be uploaded for awhile (it's being considered by a zine at the moment and who knows when they'll get back to me?) it's good practice for some other upcoming pieces that will be here shortly - including a promotional story that I want to start workshopping before it's time to start market hunting for the graphic novel it goes with (oh, and I'm doing a graphic novel, how cool is that?) I have a fantasy piece that I've just uploaded that I'll switch over to public viewing soon. It needs a tiny bit more editing and since it's a cross promotional thing for my friend's show, I'll need to wait until I get all the credit information okayed by the team, but that should be coming up since it's mostly done. When I pick up the rest of my notes and stuff from my office tomorrow, I'll have a better idea of what new material will be coming to you guys in addition to those. Oh! And I've signed up to do a super epic challenge. Just in case My NGHW contest alongside the blog that I'm failing at and the personal portfolio upgrading I want to get done weren't quite enough things, I decided to enter an intensive, 52 week challenge:
I almost didn't do it because the timing just didn't seem great, but then again, when is it ever? I think this is the kind of challenge that will be really good for me and even though I don't see myself doing well in terms of points, I feel like I'll learn a lot and come out the other side as a better writer. Here is the new book item that I've created for it:
And this starts Monday. So, all in all I feel like I'll be pretty sufficiently distracted - which is great, because that's what I feel comfortable with at the moment. Thank you guys for reading. I will hopefully be talking to you guys soon and if anyone wants to chat or anything, I will probably be around. (I also have 9 review slots open, so if anyone is interested in those, feel free to let me know.) All the best, Cat P.S. Also, I am thinking about setting up a new blog. I know I have plenty of space left in this one, but this was sort of my starting out point in the world of WdC blogging. I've been working on a new blog template and it might just be cleaner to start using it in a new book. What do you guys think? |
| Hey Guys, I have spent all day reading/reviewing, and answering emails. It's been a good day, and has served as some much needed distraction, but it's about time that I get back to working on some of my own stuff. (Especially since I have been better about trying to finish and put out more original material. Unfortunately, I don't know what I should be working on. Reviews were a really great way to procrastinate needing to choose. I'm caught between working on my manuscript (which I really need to get done) and working on my submissions (which the deadline is creeping up for.) I'm comfortable putting off my challenge stuff because my rough draft is done, and I still have plenty of time to edit - so it's probably good for me to clear my head in between drafts and get some other stuff done. I feel like the smart thing to do would probably be finishing my submissions first since they'll take less time, and I have a little less time to do them. Then I can dive right into the manuscript and I don't have to beat myself up over these decisions for a month or two because I'll be focused on one thing (other than the challenges, of course.) On the other hand... it's been a particularly nasty week and I want something I can really just lose myself in. That sounds a lot more like a manuscript rough draft than editing. I will probably decide after I pick up some soup - and chances are it's not going to be the smart decision. |
| Hey guys, So we all know that I have too many things to do as is. My last blog entry was just a giant list of things that I need to get done on here. Plus I'm doing this contest for another couple months. Plus my studying. And my charity. And my (two) social obligations. And also lining up work for after this contest. So I know in the grand scheme of things I don't need to be taking on anything else right now. If anything, I need to be dedicated to wrapping stuff up. But... I'm in a new D&D campaign (two new D&D campaigns technically, but we won't be starting one for a couple months because we're still a few players short) but...you know what tabletop games mean... more characters! And wherever I interact with characters, it means that fiction will surely follow. The issue(s) with this is that I a) don't want to get too emotionally invested in fiction that I write in another universe b) don't want to end up trying to convert an entire universe into something original just for the sake of one character I've gotten attached to. The first D&D group I was ever in, I got to play this really amazing character who I called Despair. She was a Tiefling Invoker and she was just generally a bad-ass. I got to play her every weekend, and those days I also felt like a total bad-ass. For our group site, I got to be the one in charge of transcribing sessions - which I of course did as a novelization. I got permission from the DM and other players to host the work elsewhere, and one of my friends fell really in love with it. When the group broke up, my friend got my permission to set his next campaign in Despair's hometown, and we ran a short 3 group that essentially worked as a backstory. Again, I got the job of transcriptions, and it almost served as a prequel to where I had started the first one. With encouragement from that friend, and two of the party members from the first campaign, I started adapting all of these D&D stories I had into original fiction - which as you can imagine considering the extensive nature of the Dungeons and Dragons universe, was a huge undertaking. It took years and years, but I eventually had full world concepts for what ended up being my first original, high fantasy series. It's a project that I'm still (somewhat passively) working on, as I have a comprehensive outline for the entire series and rough drafts for the first two books. Obviously - I'm not going to go through all of that again. It was exhausting and I am still not finished with the project inspired from my last D&D campaign. I do however want to do some fiction regarding my new character's backstory. The only danger of this is that, as usual, I'm afraid I won't be able to stop at just that. Because, as we all know, I have a serious writing addiction. On a related note... I've also been considering doing a couple short stories from my Adventures campaign. Again, I would need to get permission from the DM, but a lot of the stuff in that universe isn't copyrighted. I really like my character, she would be a colorful addition to my portfolio if I did a short story or two with her, and I think it would be a good cross promotion for the show (since we're recording and releasing the Adventure's campaign.) I guess what this whole rant amounts to is... I'll definitely be writing these things, but what should I do with them? Where should they go? If I decide to host any of the work for either of the new D&D campaigns that will probably go in my fanfiction folder, I suppose? If I host any of my Adventures stuff I have no idea where to put that... it's not really fanfiction per say, but it's also not fully original. I guess if that's the case I would just put it in fantasy with an author's note explaining that it's for a campaign. As for past works I've done based off of tabletop gaming, I know pretty much where to put those. Chronicles of Despair is something I put enough work into that I feel comfortable hosting as my own High Fantasy work now - especially the first volume. Everything about the world has been taken apart and reassembled so many times that the only thing recognizable about any of it is, well, the first name of my protagonist. It's essentially the same thing with the science fiction character I wrote based off of a tabletop game - the series took place on a planet that was designed specifically for her backstory and since it takes place years before the plot of the game, there won't be any dangerous copyrighting crossover. What I should be asking is, does anybody care about any of these things? If people aren't interesting in all my nerd-inspired stories, it's probably nothing that I need to be worried about. Thoughts? Opinions? As always, thank you guys for reading my ramblings and I hope to talk to you soon. All the best, Cat |
| Hey guys, So in my last entry (where I essentially just complained about stuff) I said that I would do a list of some upcoming stuff because I need to work out what will be going on my portfolio, so I'm going to talk a little bit about that now. ~Edits~ Here are a couple pieces that are already on my portfolio that will be getting edits soon, because I plan on using them as part of my portfolio on the official portfolio site (which, after a year of talking about doing and not actually doing, I'm still planning to do.)
(I know - but the abridged version got terrible reviews even though it was a clean 9.5k so I am going to attempt one more time to edit this piece to under 10k without everyone hating it.)
(This probably won't go on my portfolio site because it's...mildly controversial and for anyone who is just stumbling on my work for professional reasons, this isn't the best place to start, I admit that. I am going to leave it up on here though, so I'd like to get one last edit worked in there.)
(I'd like to get one more edit for this in before I put it up on my site)
(Again, this one probably won't go on my portfolio - at least not for awhile. If/when I get the full thing published I'll probably post an excerpt, but in the mean time it's safer not to have any of the full story hosted online. It will however be undergoing a ton of edits and receiving new additions shortly, for those few of you who have the passkey.)
(Since I am hoping to actually start the series that this goes with soon I'd like to clean it up first, and then link it out to the series after - and that's something I'm actually super excited about right now.) ~ Definite Additions~ There are a lot of things that I'm debating about putting up because I haven't quite decided what to do with them yet - and those are all things that I'm going to put in a different category. So here are the things that I am DEFINITELY going to be adding to the portfolio: Untitled.doc: A horror novella that I'm working on. It ties into the series I mentioned up above for "Invalid Item" and since my ultimate plan for that book is to self-publish as a prequel to the series, I'm not overly worried about hosting my progress in the meantime, which makes it an ideal candidate for my portfolio.Hotel Torres: This will be another horror book item. It's a themed anthology of ghost stories I want to work on, but I don't see much publication potential for it due to the size of the anthology - making it another ideal candidate for my portfolio. Start of a New Case: This is a realistic fiction novel that I plan to toss up on my portfolio some time in the near future. I'll probably need to workshop it a little bit because murder mysteries are not something I'm good at, but I'm not overly worried about it because it's just something I'm working on as a gift to someone - I'm not really sure that it's going anywhere past the excerpt (though there is a vague outline for more book.) Hide and Seek: A nonfiction story about my first successful ghost-summoning experience. It's terrible and will need a lot of work in between hosting it here and hosting it on my portfolio site, though that is the eventual plan. She Hangs Around: My follow up to the one mentioned above. I'd like to release it second, although it is much more polished at this stage than "Hide and Seek." Kitten: I don't know when exactly this one will be posted, but I do know that it's in the works. It's a piece I wrote for an issue of my zine that was never released. The zine artist will be out of school soon which means he'll have time to sort out what we're doing with that content, and once I have an answer it will probably go up here. It's a science fiction short that I had a ton of fun writing. Welcome: This is an abstract fantasy piece of flash fiction. It combines characters from two stories I was involved with years back and is more of a writing exercise than anything. The Kiss of Death: This is just another rights issue - once it gets sorted I plan to host the story. It's a dark fantasy short story (barely longer than flash fiction.) I wrote the original draft for a contest on here, but entered a poetic form of it into another contest, and once I'm sure I won't get in trouble for having it available for free I plan to put the edited, clean version up on here. The Interview: This is an excerpt from a book that will probably never see the light of day, but it's something that I would like to have hosted because it was the first fantasy sample I ever had hosted anywhere, and the characters are very dear to my heart. The chapter isn't great as a stand-alone, but it gives a taste for the tone of the book without too many spoilers. Erotica: This is a folder that I will be putting into my romance folder. I know that I don't technically need to separate my smut from the rest of my romance items (especially since I doubt I'll ever have an abundance of other romance items) because I can rate items, my erotica tends to get sort of....dark. All of the graphic romance I have the rights to show is pretty twisted, so I'd just like to put an extra layer of safety there before uploading anything, so people have a slightly better idea of what they're getting into. ~ Things to sort out ~ There are also some things I've been debating putting up here, but am hesitant to host for various reasons: ~ Work-shopping: There are a bunch of short stories that I have rough (or in some instances second) drafts for, that I would like to play with. On the one hand, hosting the early drafts would be a great way to get feedback on where to go with the ideas, but on the other hand, I want to be careful not to host prematurely - both to keep the original idea pure in early stages and because it's scary to host things when I don't have a long-term plan for them yet. These stories include; "The Underground Scene" (Horror/Short Story), "A Man's Best Friend" (Horror/Short Story), "Sent" (Horror/Short Story), "The Art on Her Walls (Horror/Short Story), "Left Off I-80: (Horror/Short Story), "My Girlfriend's Pet Snake" (Horror/Short Story), "I Was a Class Monitor" (Horror/Short Story), "Convention" (Realistic Fiction /Flash) "Exit Strategy" (Realistic Fiction/Flash), "X-Amount of Words" (Realistic Fiction/Flash), "Standing Out" (Realistic Fiction/Short Story), "A Quiet Place to Draw" (Realistic Fiction). "School's Out" (Realistic Fiction/Novel),"Therapy" (Sci-fi/Flash), "Odds" (Sci-fi/Novel) "The Wrath of Morthos" (Fantasy/Novel), "Music to Her Ears" (Romance/Short Story), "For Starters" (Romance/Short Story), "Little Black Book" (Romance/Short Story) Obviously if I decided to use those I'd have a lot more samples BUT they all require various degrees of fine-tuning and I'm not sure what my end goal for most of them, which makes me a little nervous about the prospect of posting. ~ Hope to Publish: If I've hosted something online for free on my portfolio (especially on the portfolio site when that launches) it greatly lowers that piece's chances of getting accepted anywhere if/when I try to publish it. Obviously I don't aim to have everything I write published, and some pieces I've already had published - that's how I still have samples on my portfolio. Where this leads to issues is that I can't host some of my best work because it is my intention to have that story published. Whether it's because of rejections or just lack of market, there are a handful of pieces that I'm reluctant to host myself, even though I think they'd be the highlights of my portfolio. These include: "Graduation Test" (Horror/Short Story), "Trypophobia" (Horror/Short Story), "Viral" (Horror/Novel), "The Ringing of the Bells" (Horror/Short Story), "Creepy Window" (Horror/Short Story) "Drip" (Horror/Short Story) "Statuesques" (Horror/Novel), "Whiskey Alone" (Sci-fi/Short Story) "Kalidisa" (Sci-fi/Novel) You may notice that many of these share titles with stories that I have on here already. Those are things that have been inspired by (but differ heavily from) items I already have on here. ~ Pen name: And finally there are the things that I am considering publishing under a pen name. Awhile back I was considering taking on a pseudonym to write erotica under, because it's something that I don't really feel passionately about, but it makes money, I know the market, and I have a ton of experience. I chose a different career path, but I do have a pen name (along with alternate accounts where appropriate) ready to go and before I let go of the idea, I did write some erotica. Obviously I could just use that to flesh out my romance folder (which is pathetic, I won't lie) but I would like to keep the door to my pen name open, at least for now. Taking that into consideration, I'm not sure that I'd be comfortable posting "her" work as my own at this particular stage. And in conclusion, this is why it takes me so long to get anything done. For each little bit of writing you guys see posted in my portfolio now, I have at least a dozen other stories that I'm working on. The things on my portfolio are the weird things in between what I have worked on enough to have in a presentable, typed format and the things that I'm not actively trying to have published. I have about a million projects that I'm working on, and I'd genuinely like to get them all sorted because they really clutter up my office, and I'm hoping to move soon. It would be wonderful if I could take under a hundred notebooks with me. This is how setting up my new portfolio site turned into the year long ordeal that it has been so far. I really am writing things for it, I really am getting stuff done, but if the pieces aren't good I don't want to host them and if they're too good... I also don't want to host them, because it would stop any future that piece might have short. But anyway - I am sorting stuff out. Those are some of the things that I'm sorting out, and I know it's a big mess to clean up. I'm not even really asking for advice on this one (although I'd take it, if you had it or would like to weigh in) I just typed this up to help organize my own thoughts on the matter to see if that would help any, and so that it looks like I have something to show you guys for my work. So yes. That's where I'm at - and if any of you guys are reading this, then welcome to my personal portfolio nightmare. |
| Hey guys, I'm sick, again. I'm back in the land of erratic weather patterns, so with my terrible immune system, I'm not exactly surprised to be sick, but it still sucks. This cold/flu thing I have now is actually on top of some weird stomach bug that I've had for about a week, so I'm especially miserable. I was being really productive and now it's a struggle to keep my head up. Sitting at my desk my head feels heavy and I get a little nauseated and just about every part of my body hurts. Originally I was going to try to take a week off but then I remembered that I can't. I have a horror contest to fail miserably at and a manuscript that I have to finish. If I don't get a clean draft of the one I'm working on now I'll have to submit my backup for this challenge and it's painfully bad. It's not like I'm going to win anyway, but I don't want to embarrass myself any more than I absolutely have to. Speaking of embarrassing myself.... I've been doing that a lot lately. Part of it is that I've been sick on and off since about a week before I started this contest. Doing writing challenges (that I don't think I'm qualified/equipped to be doing under ideal circumstances) while on a string of different cold-medications, antibiotics and fever reducers has been not fun. Part of that is my own fault because I keep procrastinating on these challenges, but I've really only had a couple good health days per challenge - and most of that has been spent cleaning/exercising/running errands because I've been too sick to attempt that stuff the rest of the time. The point is, I'm not doing well in this contest and that really sucks. This challenge is going to be especially painful because it's poetry related. I can't poetry. I'm allowed to do free form poetry so... I'll probably just end up submitting a rant and calling it poetry. Being sick so much, failing so hard at the only great writing opportunity I've had in months, my entire personal situation, it's just starting to get me really down. On the one hand, being this depressed is how I get the inspiration to write some of my best stuff and on the other hand - my eyes are so swollen right now that it's hard to write anything, let alone anything decent. Plus what I'm supposed to be writing is poetry, which the way I see it, is doomed from the start. And all the rejection letters are not helping. (All 2 or 3 of them - I'm a big baby, I know.) I have a lot of friends who are professional writers (and literally all of them are more successful/experienced than me) and I read/conduct enough interviews to have that rejection speech memorized. I know it takes time and people better than me got rejected a lot more than this starting out and writing takes a lot of patience and Harry Potter was turned down by a dozen publishers and, yeah, that whole thing. I got to a point earlier in the year where I was handling it better and they weren't so discouraging, but in my current state they're just sort of numbing me to the whole idea that I still want to be an author. They're reinforcing that part of me that genuinely doesn't believe that the effort will be worth it in the end, because the chances of me making something of myself are so low. For a long time I felt like I was doing better battling those sorts of demons, but I'm just so tired. I've been sick on and off since late April and my stamina is just not there. I had a few really good days where I was almost back on top of stuff and then this hit and suddenly I'm behind again. Anyway. I try not to spend too much time on this blog complaining about nothing, I like to try and put positive or optimistic spins on things when I can, but this one I'm just going to allow myself to be a bummer. I've been in the house feeling sorry for myself for days and I figure that even if blogging about it isn't technically productive, it's a step in the right directions - since I am supposed to be doing creative writing right about now. I am probably going to do another entry soon - if not tonight - that will be less whiny. I have a bunch of projects to sort out and I do like to do that in blog form - especially since a lot of it will be in regards to my portfolio on here. In the meantime, if anyone is reading this, I'm sorry for being bitter and pathetic tonight. I really am trying to get back on top of things, I just needed to vent a little first. Hope you guys are doing better than I am. -Cat |
| Hey guys! I got some really exciting news - but I couldn't tell anyone about it because I was on the road. Figures, right? My 2016 Writing.Com anthology finally came in. How cool is that? The piece that I had featured was not the one that I thought got accepted, but I was very happy to see my name in print alongside so many of the talented writers on here - and again, I just want to say another quick congratulations to everyone who made it into the book. I am going through the book still, and I plan to go write reviews for the things that were featured, but in the meantime I hope everyone knows how much I enjoyed their work, and how honored I am to be in this kick ass anthology with you guys. Other than that, things are still pretty hectic, but with a little luck I'll be talking to you all soon. All the best, Cat |
| Hey guys, It has been awhile. I moved. With the contest starting up and my unobtainable career goals to chase after, (coupled with a failed apartment hunt and some family tension) I am no longer living with my boyfriend. I have gone back North to harass my own family until such time as my horror writing contest ends and or I get an agent or a book deal. Probably just the contest thing though because I am already going crazy up here and I don't really see myself as getting an agent or a book deal or anything of the nature any time soon. I cannot even find a good balance between writing/blogging, which is my next big thing to tackle. The contest - for those of you who are wondering, is going terribly. I really messed up my first challenge because i was on the road for nearly all of it. I missed the mentor appointments, wrote my rough draft on 0 hours of sleep on the hotel room patio driving up, and had it typed/edited within the last few hours of the deadline. Only then did I realize that I misunderstood the prompt. If I get any points for that challenge, I'm pretty sure that I'll come in last. This next challenge doesn't bode well either. I'm not going to get into too many details but let's just say it's going to be tricky and I've contracted another cold. (My immune system cannot handle northern weather patterns OR climate change, so my life is going to be spent largely in bed for the foreseeable future.) While working on my next official NGHW contest, I also get to work on the real life challenges of adapting to a long distance relationship again (sarcastic yay) and balancing running a horror blog with my own, professional writing goals. Due to moving so soon into launching the WordPress blog....well, let's just say it might have been better not to launch it until after I was already settled up here. That would have been much smarter but, I'm not a particularly smart person. So, that's where I'm at with all of these things at the moment. I just wanted to catch you guys up. I'd like to say that I hope to get better at staying in touch and being generally less chaotic...but I am starting to understand that will never happen. I have the feeling that my life is always going to be this much of a whirlwind. All the best, Cat |
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