So I lack play in my writing and art. It’s something I’ve learned recently.
I grew up in a strict family that always saw me as doing something silly or scolded me for crying. They weren’t a bad family but mentally things could get rough. Trying to improve my writing and art has shown me i’ve fallen into their steps. I’ve lost my ability to play and let it be trained out of me by my family and instructors over the years.
My mentor recently commented that he liked me childlike charm with my art which surprised me. I don’t like it and would rather have it look more serieus.
That’s kinda changed now. What changed it? A week of busy writing and pushing out that same writing. The very short story (VSS) posts I’ve been making haven’t left me much room to think. I’ve been just spitting out what ever comes to mind. It allows me to not over think the story and generate new content on the fly. One of them even inspired this coming Friday’s short story which will be about a cake monster (Opens to BlueSky).
I also realized with last Friday’s short story, “Greet me at the well”, that I lost my ability to write extermly detailed scenes. I’ve relized this for a while but seeing how much fun I was having writing it and then going back on the edit, I realized just how bad I’ve gotten. I went to college for creative writing and my stories used to be detailed then. I had an instructor tell me that I was too detailed but looking back I think they were wrong. There is nothing wrong with having a lot of details because it builds a scene. I love building scenes!
That reminds me. Last week we talked about hesitation and hesitation and play tend to go together. Some of us are a bit shy as children so we may hesitate to play with someone. It’s the same as adults. We may want to play but hesitate to do so because we need to work.
Shall we segway into a recap of last week’s events in the studio?
Recap of last week’s Studio events
I did a great job in not hesitating lol! I talked to a lot of people at HQ. Met some new startups even and advertised my studios to the others. I’m getting closer to a great one-liner and slogan even! After a random thougth last night before bed, I think I may have the one-liner that explains both my dedication to my stories and to create a social media for creatives. I cater to improving adult entertainment because I belive that popular modern stories just don’t have that same ring as they did back in the 80s, 80s, and early 2000s.
And I’m not complaining on all of you writer’s reading this today. You all are great story tellers. I’m mostly complaining about popular books, movies, tv and games that tend to sensor because they are afraid to influence are young folk. Don’t get me started on Disney’s Wish! It’s entertaining but very broken storywise and cheese because they pushed it too hard and made the eastereggs to obvious. That is just a summary.
But what do I know? I’m just an unpublished author that know one has heard of (yet).
You see the danger’s of me talking about stories like wish tend to add a paragraph of non-sense to the subject I’m attempting to write about lol. It happens a lot when i talk to other’s back at HQ. I talk and talk and talk and I’m sure they get tired of hearing me. I have to much passion lol.
So what did I do beside’s work on the smaller details of my studio?
I pushed out one update, a Story Review, a blog, and a Friday Readable Story:
I was working pretty hard on “Greet me at the well”. I started on it Wednesday I want to say because up until then I had planned to release my first podcast episode. I ended up pushing that back until the 27th of this month so that I can have more time to record and write. I’m glad I did that!
That didn’t leave much time for me to illustrate or work on the two other larger stories in the backlog of projects. I have possibly a surprise announcement coming up soon (if all goes well). I got the announcement, myself, about it last week and set up a meeting for it this week. I also got some legal questions partially answered and expecting another response on it this week.
Socials have been booming. I’m not trying to grow an audience for the money (even though that would help the projects) but i’m doing it because my stories need an audience. I want people to enjoy the stories. It’s one reason why I’m pushing it at 200% on as many platforms as I can lol. I’m not planning to be on all of them but for now I’m seeing which ones have the audience I’m looking for.
Speaking of social…
This week’s social schedule
Based on how I handled last week I decided to change a few things. I’ll be having one dedicated lurk in the morning for socials (I’ll still be active throughout the day), and I’m doing daily very short story (VSS) posts. I’ve also found certain hashtags to lurk on and may add a few more by the end of the week.
Monday
Morning lurk: 7:30 AM EST - 8:30 AM EST
Vss post on BlueSky, Mastodon, and Substack
Mastodon posts: #WritersCoffeeClub, #PennedPossibilites, #WordWeavers
Tuesday
Morning lurk: 8:00 AM EST - 8:30 AM EST
Vss post on BlueSky, Mastodon, and Substack
Mastodon posts: #WritersCoffeeClub, #PennedPossibilites, #WordWeavers
Wednesday
Morning lurk: 7:30 AM EST - 8:30 AM EST
Vss post on BlueSky, Mastodon, and Substack
Mastodon posts: #WritersCoffeeClub, #PennedPossibilites, #WordWeavers
Teaser for Friday Readable Story
Thursday
Morning lurk: 8:00 AM EST - 8:30 AM EST
Vss post on BlueSky, Mastodon, and Substack
Mastodon posts: #WritersCoffeeClub, #PennedPossibilites, #WordWeavers
Friday
Morning lurk: 8:00 AM EST - 8:30 AM EST
Vss post on BlueSky, Mastodon, and Substack
Mastodon posts: #WritersCoffeeClub, #PennedPossibilites, #WordWeavers
Updates to my author site and Fiction Bites
And now for the site updates announcments!
So I did a bad thing and didn’t do the updates I said I was going to do. So here’s a list of what to expect on my Liath LaVerne Hawke site and some coming updates to Fiction Bites. The Fiction Bites updates may take longer then a week but I’ll see how many I can do.
Liath LaVerne Hawke site updates coming this week:
Add skiplinks to site
Change heading leaves for accessibility purposes
Update projects list
Update home page with upcoming schedule and other info
Archive of Substack posts and VSS posts
Fiction Bites updates coming soon (can’t put a date on this yet):
Add new icon illustrations for subsections of Fiction Bites
Add a new logo for Fiction Bites
Upcoming Content Launches!
Monday on Substack: Weekly Update 38 for 9/16/2024 - 9/21/2024 “Play isn’t bad for adults”
Wednesday on Substack: Story Review on Stiches by Hirokatsu Kihara
Wednesday on all socials and Substack: Teaser content for Friday’s short story and title announcement
Friday on Substack at 10:30 PM EST: Readable short story
Conclusion
In conclusion, my goal for this week is to play more. I will find fun ways to create my content while also getting the work that needs to be done, done. I think that is the key to my work. To play more. As creatives, we can forget (easily) that playing can lead to great content that we (and everyone) can enjoy. When you enjoy the content others will enjoy the content. Fun always trumps story structure mistakes. At least the minor ones.
Most of the time I can ignore mistakes made in storytelling if the story is good. Large story structure mistakes are still a bit glaring and hard for me to take in though lol. Keep that in mind as you write. Your story doesn’t have to be good, just catch (and keep) my attention.
Any thoughts on the subjects I’ve mentioned? I’d love to hear them! Plus I try to comment back (or at least like) all comments made.
If you enjoyed this blog (and any of the stories or content I mentioned) feel free to subscribe or follow because there will be more!
Thanks for reading!