Putting snow onto my own digital images has become kind of addictive. I made quite a few snow digital paintings last year because in my part of the Pacific Northwest, winter more often looks like the next two photos-- and I am not complaining about that because not only is snow inconvenient, but around here, when it comes, it often melts fast and that means flooding.
For creating more snowing images, I'd like a software program that lets me do it on my computer, not requiring going online, and lets me enlarge it to a full screen. It seems to me it'd be a very meditative thing to do. Although I have seen snow globe sites, they aren't generally with the kind of images I prefer. I'm going to look for that possibility next time I get into Staples. Where it comes to online, Blingee is the best for a free program that easily lets me create the volume of snow I want.
Doing something like this right now is especially good for me as a way to not think. When I do think, my mind is in hyper-drive. I had been working on a new story which will be another historical romance which was requiring research to get the setting and times right. I got into it because I thought I had finished editing my contemporary manuscripts right up until I went back and looked briefly at Desert Inferno, which was already on Kindle, only to find a lot of minor glitches. How the heck did that happen? I had put a lot of time into editing them all and yet it still wasn't as right as I could make it.
So I set aside the new project and went back to re-edit it (which fortunately Kindle allows you to resubmit and they offer the corrected version to those who already bought the story-- I know about that as one of the ones I had bought had that happen). Then rather than let the next one, From Here to There, just go out (which I had also thought was in fine shape), I edited it again too. Now I am onto what will be the third one, Golden Chains, which is the one that actually follows Desert Inferno with one of the characters from that story.
If that all sounds confusing to you, it does to me too. Anyway I think I will have a third one ready to go by the end of the coming week. I also feel very good about From Here to There. Of course, I naturally like all of my stories-- they are my children. For anyone interested in information about them, check out the Rain Trueax link alongside this blog which will take you also to Romance with an Edge or to Amazon to purchase the books.
Whenever I get these all done to where I feel good about them, finally I can go back to the new story. Any wonder I like some time watching a snow globe?
The above snow scene is in Wupatki National Monument in Northern Arizona, a Sinagua site of dwellings north of Flagstaff. I've only been there in good weather which meant this digital required imagining. I think it'd be great to be there when it was snowing-- assuming the roads weren't closed.
15 comments:
How proud you much be of your books. I envy you the ability to complete them and then lovingly re-edit.
It's really a mix of feelings about it. I always felt proud when I finished a story in a way that I felt good about. Now it is wonderful to imagine other people finding these stories and liking them... but what about those who don't like them? One good thing about Kindle is I can let readers read the first bit for free and that is reassuring to me that if they don't like my style of writing, they are forewarned. I would hate thinking someone bought them and hated them; so it's a mixed bag for how you feel about it. Which is really like any creative project that you get out into the world to judge it-- including our blogs although at least here nobody has laid out money for the experience.
It certainly looks beautiful with the snow.
I know what you mean about this kind of stuff being meditative as it is rather all-absorbing.
It seems like it would take a lot of patience to do all that editing though. I know on my blog I pretty much tend to write, spell check, and publish because I don't have the patience for re-writing.
Being a Southerner, I loved snow until I lived in Washington state and had tp shovel the driveway...:-)
Editing isn't so much rewriting as in the whole story. When I have a story down, the characters, the plot, the background, it won't change. What I catch in editing will be mixed up tenses, which no spell check can find. I also will see what you sometimes notice in movies where something happened that didn't fit with what was right before it. A dress in one scene, jeans in the next, etc. etc. with no transition. It's the kind of thing a reader might not even notice but I do.
For me editing is the craft part of a creative act. I don't want my work to be sloppy appearing or seem less than a reader would have gotten from a publishing house. I feel that way about my blog too but it's short and easier to deal with glitches. A book has a whole long set of transitions which you don't want a character changing their nature midway or worse their name. It's little things that to me come across as sloppy when I find them in my work.
Given that, I have heard there are writers who can just write it and that's it. They do it perfectly the first time. It might be a talent but obviously not mine. One problem I have is I am out doing other things, having other inputs to my life and it can mix me up when I get back to the story. Spellcheck definitely helps but it can't catch all the things I am capable of mixing up.
When I write a story the first time, I expect there to be more adjustments when I reread it say a month later. I will have thought of things in the meantime that often add to it. What surprised me with Desert Inferno is it had been gone over many times and yet still there were those silly mistakes. I wonder... can a gremlin come along and change things? I have thought it must be sometimes with the blog too ;)
The process of writing and re-writing and/or edting is certainly a fascinating one and different for everyone, in some ways....The end result of having your stories on Kindle has to be so very exciting and satisfying, though rather exasperating when you discover those "glitches"....Do you ever have anyone proof read to have a pair of fresh eyes check certain things out before publishing? And even with that---I notice little spelling errors or other things when I read a new published book....I also see more and more mistakes in printed material--Magazines on paper and things on line----It is as if no one proof reads anymore.
Farm Boss reads them before he puts them into the format that enables epublishing. He can't really catch these kind of things though. It really is fine detail work. Like you, I have seen the glitches in published work also. I am more picky about my own mistakes than I would be about someone else's. I don't really know how anybody else could catch the kinds of mistakes I am most concerned with-- like sequence. It is my baby.
It's like my creating my own covers. Nobody could know these characters as well as I do or pick the kind of pose that fits the story. I wouldn't have wanted to hire that done even if I could justify it financially. I have seen so many books with horrible covers, heroes or heroines that look nothing like the characters inside.
One thing that has amazed me about doing the covers was how I began working on learning to do digital paintings two years ahead of ever imagining I might use them on a cover of my own books. I didn't begin doing it with any purpose in mind but now it makes me wonder as it proved to be so convenient that when the need arose, there was the skill. Is there really a plan outside for us or is it internally we know what we don't know externally yet?
I think I have mentioned i have a pretty primitive paint system-- corel photo-paint7 but am thinking that in the future I may look for a painting program that gives me more colors and options. Another thing to learn to do-- someday!
I've finished Desert Inferno and found a few minor things that could be changed. Perhaps the main thing I noticed is early in the story when Rachel goes out onto the patio with a cup of tea. A couple of paragraphs later she is enjoying her coffee. But they were all minor and not offensive even to one who tends to bristle a bit at uncorrected typos and things. It is a good story and I enjoyed it a lot. Soon I will get into that second book which I bought on Christmas Day.
I have really appreciated your support of the books, Dick. And I did catch that one as one I am talking about. Worse was I have Rachel not really liking coffee elsewhere; so it was the kind of glitch I meant.
Here's wishing you a happy holiday season. Hope all continues to go well with your books. Nice photo of Wupatki -- been years since I was there.
I'm here from Robert's, and I too am an Oregonian--a Eugenian, in fact. Since you don't get snow where you are, then you too must either be in the Willamette Valley or along the coast.
I need to look into Internet publishing...someday.
I have to Google Blingee since it is extremely rare to find snow in L.A. (Did happen when I was a kid in 1949 and I was ecstatic.)
You are becoming as prolific as Stephen King with your novels. I checked your link and I am really impressed. You truly are a Renaissance woman, Rain. I hope you had a nice Christmas.
Welcome, Snowbrush, hope you come back often. I am in the Oregon Coast Range about 25 miles from Corvallis.
I wrote and am writing Rpmance with an Edge to encourage others to not only write but look into epub. The link to Romance with an Edge is in my blogroll and I will keep it up to date with what I learn logistically to doing this and how it works out. I don't expect there to be a lot of money in it but to get it out where others can read it and someone like Dick review it saying about it what I had hoped others would see, that is quite a reward even in itself. I will be mentioning it here now and then with what I learn also but most of that will go into the other blogs that directly relate to it
P.S. In your profile, you mentioned the six senses. I can think of seven, but I'm wondering how well our lists correlate. My list contains: touch, taste, smell, sight, hearing, heat and cold, and motion.
First five the obvious ones-- touch, taste, hearing, sight, smell, and I would put touch as part of the awareness of motion, heat and cold. So my sixth would be that thing we cannot explain but we sense and some call the sixth sense. So when I feel an inner voice that warns me to avoid say a particular street or that I should go check the sheep even though i just did, I'd put that under Sixth. It doesn't mean it comes from a spirit realm but does mean it's unexplainable why it sometimes happens along to help me with something. If you read my blog for awhile,you'll find I write about things like tarot or reincarnation or dream analysis. Robert and I obviously don't agree on these things but that's okay, I think, with us both ;)
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