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Poetry Short Non-Fiction - Fictional Worlds

I'm Back

August 15th 2009 20:50
Anyone who commented on the posts I've made over the last few days will notice that their comments are now being responded to-and thanks to everyone who's been reading-as I am back from the cottage.

I had a great time. I did pretty much everything I wanted to do in terms of writing except outlining the pre-Nano course I have planned. I went swimming twice every day except yesterday, when I only got down to the beach once (I wish I could've gone twice though). I watched the sun rise and set on the beach, and we had lots of fun with fire.

Today I have to catch up on my Augnowrimo. For the end of this week my goal is/was 45K, and I'm currently at 37K. I hope to write 3-5K tonight and finish the rest tomorrow.

I'm also working on Bleed, the poetry collection. I'm hoping to have 30-40 poems in it by my birthday because I would like to submit it to the Youthful Wisdom Press. Having an actual publisher behind my work will help a lot with marketing it, so hopefully I'll sell a lot more copies. Due to the sensitive nature of Bleed's content, I don't intend to announce it to my friends or most of my family, but if I do sign up with Youthful Wisdom Press I will have to get my mother to sign the contract for me.

Once I've hit 50K, which I'm actually hoping to do Monday, I will be starting work on A Cutter's Journey good and proper. It's going to be research intensive, mostly finding websites that I had bookmarked on another computer but don't currently have any real access to.

Tonight I'll be posting the Sunrise on the Beach exercise. I did get pictures of the sunset, but not the sunrise; I'm going to wait until the pictures are sent to me to post my other exercises because they'll be so much better with the pictures.

I had a lot of fun, I'm so glad that I got out of the city for once, and I feel a lot better and more at peace with everything. You can expect more posting later.
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10 Things To Look Forward To On Fictional Worlds

August 14th 2009 00:11
This is a list of ten things you can look forward to here on this blog over the coming year. I've been planning quite a few workshops and things to do around here to make life more interesting. I've also been debating making a forum for these workshops. Anyone who would be willing to help me run it should contact me at diannalgunn@gmail.com about it.

Here are some things you can expect to see:

1. Early Releases Of Ebooks Bleed and Myths of Tamraq will both be announced here before anywhere else. I will also be releasing a couple free PDFs of myths. A Cutter's Journey will be announced here and on its own website a week before I go to any of my regular forums and places to announce it.

2. Nanowrimo World-Building Workshop This will be a two week workshop, with a half hour exercise every day. You can expect things like building a God, building a religion, looking at architecture, looking at weather, culture, and art. It will be run in the second week and second last week of October.

3. Nanowrimo Pep Talks I will be doing a weekly pep talk for Nanowrimo once again on this blog this year, because I had lots of fun last year. I'll also be looking for a couple other Nanoers and asking them to do guest post pep talks.

4. Dear Diary Workshop This will be going on next February. I will be doing my own Dear Diary, and each day have a list of questions to consider when writing your own. More on this later, when I have a proper 'course' outline type of thing.

5. World-Building Workshop This will be a multi-post workshop, each post focusing on a different part of the world building. There will be two exercises a week. This and the following few workshops already have basic outlines, and I'm seriously considering starting a forum for the different workshops on this blog.

6. Religion-Building Workshop This is another multi-post workshop which will be six weeks long, one exercise per week. It will cover how I usually build my religions and have various questions to ask. One of the exercises will be myth-building.

7. God-Building Workshop The Gods are characters too. This will be a four post workshop, two posts each over two weeks, about how to create a God.

8. Culture-Building Workshop This will be a six week workshop like the Religion one, with exercises focusing on art, myth, music and language.

9. Character-Building Workshop This workshop will be like the others, showing how I develop characters.

10. Plot-Building Workshop This workshop will cover various ways to build plot, including my reviews on two or three different methods and an overview of my own personal method.

These and much more will be coming over the next year. Thinking about it, I will be creating a forum in October which will have sub-forums for each workshop so that people who do the workshops at any time can discuss them.

Thanks for reading,
~Dianna
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2 Year Blogaversary

August 13th 2009 23:40
This is my official two year blogaversary for Fictional Worlds. Today, that is. So I'm writing a special post to talk about the last two years of my writing.

When I first came here, I had never had a poem published. I was completely unknown, unheard of, and no, I could not be found on Google. But I did have one good thing going for me: a talent and passion for writing.

When I was offered a domain name, there was only one thing that I could think of that would provide me with a lasting blog. This thing was writing, and thus Fictional Worlds was born. I didn't have any other specific topic, nothing that really struck me, at least not that I could write about constantly for a very long time.

Early on I made some great friends. Jeanne Dininni, author of Writers Notes, Kleonaptra, author of Kalika Psychosis, and Katyzzz, author of a variety of blogs found here, among others. Some have come, some have gone. Ruby Soho, Morgan Bell, various characters throughout the network of Orble have all contributed to my blogging experience in some way.

I've spent a lot of time and effort building this blog. The average post that I write takes ten to thirty minutes. But half an hour every day spent writing-that is without reading various posts on how to increase the quality of my blog and draw readers, and keep them-adds up over the course of a month, let alone the eight or nine months total that I've spent constantly blogging.

At first, I had a specific, rigid formula for the blog. I've realized that this doesn't work for me, yet again, not really a surprise; very little in my life is 'properly organized'. I need a certain amount of freedom, of flow in everything that I do. I can't follow rigid routines very well for more than a couple weeks, I think this is my biggest problem with school (other than stupid teenagers everywhere.)

Since I've come here I've had poems published in a few places. I've become findable on Google (Google Dianna L. Gunn and see what you get) and a lot more disciplined in my writing. Knowing that I have expectant readers here looking forward to gobbling up my content keeps me writing more each day.

I really and truly love blogging. I love the people that I've met through it and the things that I've found, sometimes in the sidebar on my own blog, links to the best writing posts on Orble. I love being a part of this site, even if other people think it doesn't have freedom of speech, I am free to talk about what I love, writing, and I even get a domain name from this site, which I couldn't afford on my own. Score. I get to read the posts on the network, comment, make friends, all that good stuff. Score.

Thank you for all of my loyal readers, the few that have been with me since the beginning and those of you who have only recently come to this blog. Thanks to everyone who takes time out of their day to read what I have to say. I'm glad you think I'm worth it.

So what do I want to do on this blog in the next year? Well, I want to do a monthly book review-or more than one in a month-here, starting this month. I will be releasing Bleed hopefully late next week, if I write enough poems at the cottage, but if not before Halloween; before Halloween to my readers, that is. It'll be cheaper for the first week, and only known about by those who read my blog. After the first week it'll go up slightly in price and I'll announce it in various other places.

I plan to release Myths of Tamraq, or two of the myths, on PDF and only inform blog readers of this; it will be free. The full ebook will be published early next year. I will be running a Dear Diary workshop type-thing in February, wait to hear more on that. In October I will run a two-week worldbuilding and character building workshop for Nanowrimo.

I have a lot in the works here at Fictional Worlds. If you've stuck with me this long, why not wait around to see what's next?
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Best Of...

July 30th 2009 05:34
So. My two-year anniversary of blogging is coming up. (Agust 13th) I've decided that on the date itself I will be doing a special post, thanking those who have inspired me since I came here, talking about why I blog etc. etc. It will also have links to some of my best posts since January.

I'm going to do four posts, total, in relation to this. Each one will contain 10 of my favourite posts from a certain time period since I've been here


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Developing Your Voice

July 8th 2009 23:20
I often see writers on various forums asking the same questions. Usually they're questions about things like chapter length, pacing, character building-all those important things. One of the most frequent questions asked isn't specifically about your story though-it's about developing your voice.

Writers ask 'How does one develop their voice


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Working Towards Your Goals

July 3rd 2009 12:51
As writers we must set goals. Without knowing where we want to go, how are we supposed to get there? Especially considering that writing can be such a vicious industry-when we're going for professional publication, we have to be twice as willing to do the work as when we're writing for friends or family.

But once we've written our goals, how do we push ourselves to achieve them


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Facing My Past

May 16th 2009 03:21
Hi everyone; sorry I've been unable to post. My laptop still has not been replaced. This is a post to let you all know I'm alive and a quick poem. Some things that brought me a lot of pain last year have returned. Tomorrow I will face them; I will end this war with my past.

Facing My Past
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Posted By: Dianna G - Category: Poetry, Short Non-Fiction
   


Struggling

January 29th 2009 04:07
So far in 2009 I've managed to blog consistently, but it hasn't been easy. There's been a lot going on in my life outside my writing, and my writing is suffering for it; it's just hard for me to write when I'm going through hard times-at least, anything other than poetry.

Things have sort of settled down now, and I'm hoping the writing will become easier for me, but I can't know for sure. We all have times when we struggle, even to do the things we love-especially for those of us who suffer depression


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Working

January 25th 2009 08:03
Writing isn't always easy. The words sometimes come only with force. Sometimes we get bogged down trying to create our worlds. We get fed up when we find out that somebody's already had the same idea. We get depressed, bored, fed up, angry with all the world and with our muses.

We get angry because everything we're writing sounds like crap. We get angry because we feel we aren't getting anywhere


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Learning

January 17th 2009 03:52
Writing is in large part a learning process. A writer needs to be open to new things; this is why we have classes and workshops and books about writing. Not all things will work for you, this is true. We're all different. You probably won't find a class that's absolutely perfect for you. A method won't always work.

But if you don't try new things, how can you possibly know? Everything changes; our writing should too. Let's take the example of a well known author, JK Rowling of the Harry Potter series


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What makes a writer?

December 12th 2008 06:31
I've gone over this before, but I was reading a thread on Forward Motion earlier and it's been a while, so I felt like writing about this topic.

What makes a writer in my mind is someone who loves to write. Someone who can't help themselves; they just need to do it like most people need to breath. Writing is a passion, writing is a love; when the going gets tough we still keep going. Writers love to do what they do, and are willing to work at it


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When Everything Is Just Too Much

October 4th 2008 23:28
So let me tell you something. School is stressing me out; I'm trying to force myself to go but it isn't working very well. Things at home aren't pleasant either. I'm stressed; so stressed that I've been sick on and off for two weeks now. Nanowrimo is on the horizon.

It's times like these when anybody-writer or otherwise-starts to wonder about all their obligations and if they're worth it. It's times like these when normally I would abandon the blog for weeks at a time; I'm trying not to. It's sort of working. It's times like these when we just want to throw in the towel


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Conventional English Classes

September 6th 2008 11:22
As I'm waiting for a response from my editor, I'm going to be here today and possibly tomorrow as well. And in the spirit of the start of school, my first post is going to be about the evils of grade nine English.

As some of you may remember, I disappeared for quite a while last year from Orble, as I was stressed out to an extreme level; well, I disappeared from school, too, and as a result I'm retaking all of my grade nine classes (with minor changes) this year. Which means I'm taking English


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Why Do I Write?

September 1st 2008 05:57
I've written about this topic before. But I've been thinking about it a lot lately, so I decided to talk about why I write-not only this blog, but everything else that I write.

I write because without writing, I would be locked away with no outlet to express myself


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Write What You Love...

July 18th 2008 05:35
Some people say 'write what you know'. But if I recall correctly, Stephen King and I have the same belief-that it is best to write what you love.

Because we can all write about what we learned in school, but most of us wouldn't want to. We know it-but we do not love it. And if we are forced to write something we do not love, it is by far a lesser product than what it would be if we loved it


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Words On A Page

June 16th 2008 03:56
Writing: the art of putting COHERENT words on a page... and so much more.

Just because you can perform the act of writing words coherently doesn't make you a true writer. A true writer takes talent and hard work. To be a true writer you have to be determined to write, to want to write, to love writing


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A Writer's Work

June 13th 2008 23:14
What good is writing?

Let me tell you what writing is good for


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Trying To Start Again

June 13th 2008 21:09
It's so hard... so hard. I've been through hell the last few months and I've lost all drive to live. All drive to write.

But I'm back. I'm going to try again. I HAVE to try again. If I am to survive the hardest trials of my life, if I am to survive these things, I must write. I have always written. It is my release. It has been with me since grade three, one of my hard years. It was there when I had to move, Daddy got sick, my parents split up. It was there all throughout the worst school ever


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A Lack Of Drive

March 11th 2008 00:47
I haven't been writing much and to be honest a lot of my drive seems to have disappeared with a stressful weekend. I'm sick, lacking smokes, possibly being broken up with, among other things.

It sucks to be me. And when it sucks to be me... sometimes that's good for my writing, other times it's horrible. Right now it's horrible


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Writing Is My Work

February 27th 2008 04:40
Writing is my work, my passion, my joy in life. Writing is everything to me; it is the one thing I have had for six years, the one thing that I rely on and trust in.

And there may be something called a 'day job' but I'm praying I'll never need one. I guess I didn't really see much hope until that publication. Now I'm out searching for more of the same and I'm ridiculously happy


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