A.J. Race's Blog, page 16

(Not) Summer Ready

It’s summertime again and once again for another summer my ass is not summer ready. Now some of you might be wondering: what kind of summer ready do you have to be? It’s not like you’d be wearing a bikini.

To which I will say this:

If I had the body for it, yes I would.

First of all.

Second… regardless of your gender and we could spend a lot of time talking about gender and different gender roles and stereotypes that I’m really just over, I really am. Everybody wants to feel pretty. Everybody wants to be comfortable going to the beach or going to the pool, nobody wants to feel as though they’re looking like a hot mess. It’s bad enough that I am about ten kinds of European pale whiteness that makes me burn to a crisp any time I’m in the sun to long (even with some kind of Sun block because they don’t make SPF 100).

When I was younger I really didn’t care what anybody thought about me, and for the most part I still really don’t. But it was also back then that I think I was more comfortable with me, and now the older I get I’m really not. There’s probably about a few dozen reasons for that, none of which I’m going to get into, but I think the biggest reason has to be my weight. It’s been a major issue for me for most of my life, and I’ve talked and hmmed and hawed all up and down about doing something about it, but obviously if I honestly wanted to I would have done so already right? I mean that’s how this happens. Try though I might, there is no weight loss spell (believe me I got my 5000 book of spells back and it’s not going to happen that easily). It’s a lot like writing a novel, it takes time and commitment and you actually making the effort. It doesn’t just happen because you want it too (and put a pin in that because I think I’ll be talking about that tomorrow).

A while back I wrote a blog post commenting on an article that suggested that you shouldn’t just exercise because it’s good for your physical health but also because it’s good for your mental health, it can help with writers block too. I thought well if that’s not going to give me a reason to want to exercise I don’t know what is… so… I started. And I made it maybe three/three and a half weeks (and that’s probably generous) and then one day of having a cold or being tired or something and deciding to take time off turned into just forgetting altogether.

The point I’m trying to make here is… I think I’ve reached the point where I’m ready to really do this for me. Not because it might help my writing and maybe not even because of health reasons but because I want to feel beautiful again. I want to be able to look in the mirror and be like… DAAAMMMMNNNN BITCH YOU FINE! Because you know, I may be a professional, but sometimes I like to have fun and just be crazy. (DON’T YOU JUDGE ME!)

I’ve made some great strides in this direction. I’ve stopped drinking soda altogether, I’ve switched exclusively to tea which to some people may not necessarily seem healthier but believe me it is. Probably a third of the sugar alone…and I’m also working on creating a workout routine for myself. I know that it’s going to be a slow process and to be honest that’s the most difficult part, I have no patience for anything. It’s another one of my control freak issues I think and it’s going to really take my sitting down (or not sitting down in this case) and just doing it and doing it everyday and not stopping because that’s the only way I’m going to accomplish results.

PS: I’m well aware it’s actually called Throwback Thursday but I thought this might be a bit more important.

Control Freaks Anonymous

Hi I’m A.J. and I am a control freak. Particularly when it comes to my books which is a large part of the reason I self published.

It’s been difficult having to relinquish control in varying aspects of the publishing process, between covers and printing (because color never quite comes out the way it looks on the screen) and letting the book go to the editor. It’s all a process of letting some of my control go in order to hopefully end up with a better product for my troubles (or in the case of the cover, more work).

This is particularly true when it comes to designing t-shirts for IHOR Clothing Co.

The other day you might have noticed on my Facebook page (and I believe also Twitter) that I mentioned that a lot of designs that look really awesome on the computer, don’t seem to translate particularly well to t-shirt designs, in large part because I don’t have the control I need. Let me give you an example.

This is one of my favorite new designs, and theoretically the way in which it was designed the whole thing should go edge to edge. However when placed on a t-shirt in Spreadshirt, this ends up happening:

Now to be fair, this is neither their fault nor their problem. As a designer like any other artist, often times you’re forced to work within certain parameters. To be honest it doesn’t look all that horrible, but when you expect something to look a certain way it can be a bit jarring to realize that the print reality isn’t always as perfect as you’d like.

I think the lesson that we need to learn as designers and maybe even as writers is to accept the fact that it’s never going to be exactly what we want it to be or the way we envision something in our head. And we can either accept that fact, or spend the rest of our lives trying to make small tweaks that ultimately no one will notice but us. At some point, you really just have to be able to accept what you’ve made and move on to something new.

#designerproblems

There are few sins graver (for a graphic designer anyway) than publicly admitting you hate a certain program. I’m often chastised (though generally playfully) for my open and unabashed dislike/hatred of Adobe Illustrator. I understand the necessity for the program but honestly I’m just not a fan. There’s a lot of things that are just a thousand times easier to do in InDesign than they’ve ever been in Illustrator.

A big issue I’ve noticed with Illustrator is consistency. A trick that I can do once in Illustrator I find doesn’t always work a different time around. Somehow changing the color of a outlined piece of text suddenly changes the way in which a clipping mask works.

Then there’s kerning and leading, two very important typographic elements which are surprisingly exhausting in Illustrator, particularly because you have to search for them if your character panel isn’t already up, but worse still apparently at a certain point no matter how much you try to fine tune the kerning Illustrator will simply ignore you.

I’ve been told that if I work more in Illustrator it will become easier, (sort of like how I hated InDesign when I first learned it). But the thing of it is, a lot of what I can do in Illustrator I can also do and do more efficiently in InDesign. I work better with text than graphics anyway… and worst case scenario I can drop things into Illustrator after I’ve designed them first in InDesign is that a little more timely? Probably no more so than starting in Illustrator and moving over to InDesign, and in my case probably less time as Illustrator often makes me want to throw my computer out of the nearest window.

I’m sure in the design world I’m mostly alone here, and I’m also sure that for non-designers a lot of this post will read as ranty nonsensical babble, but let’s put it this way, for anyone who uses Scrivener, imagine having to go back to Microsoft Word or some other word processor that was not specifically invented for writers. It’s exhausting and while it might be able to do most of the same things, finding the right button to do it is next to impossible and in the end the effort seems hardly worth it. It’s easier to just write it in Scrivener then export to Word (if necessary).

Loving It

I realize that I sometimes (okay a lot of times) complain about various aspects that annoy me about writing and I would RuPaulogize for that, but I think it would be insincere. The fact of the matter is, I do love what I do, and I’m not sure I could make that clear enough. I may not always love the end result and sometimes I don’t always love the process (at least if I allow myself to think about it) but I do love doing this. I’m not sure I could handle it if I didn’t. There are good parts and bad parts to everything, that’s part of life, but when the good outweighs all of the bad, that’s when you know your doing what your supposed to be doing, and for me the pure joy of writing and losing myself in that world and that story and feeling the emotions of my characters and just living the story, that joy, that excitement will always outweigh the nightmares of rewriting and editing. It’d be great in theory to love what you do every second of every day, but I think it’s only human to have moments where you wish you could do anything else, especially as a writer. This sort of love/hate relationship seems to go hand in hand with being a writer. Writer’s are not what I’d call particularly healthy people, for a lot of varying reasons…

All of that said, I think my desire to keep you informed with what’s going on has sort of clouded that professional wall I’d hoped to build up in which I don’t rant to you every time something annoys me about my books. I’m sure there’s better things you’d rather be doing, frankly there’s better things I’d rather be doing as well… like writing (or in this case re-writing). So I’m going to try… keyword there, to be a little less ranty when I explain how my books are going. To be fair, it’s sometimes difficult to say: nowhere slowly without sounding a little bit bitter about it.

Seriously, Again?!

I debated for a while now whether or not this was something I wanted to bring up here on my blog, but I see no reason to keep it a secret so here it goes…

A few months ago my friend had told me about how she was going to be sending her book off to a publisher, I was terribly excited for her. She had mentioned the publishers name and even suggested I check them out but I had my mind pretty firmly set on self publishing, and as is often the case when I get my mind set on something nothing is going to change my mind. Recently she was telling me how her first two chapters that she’d sent was accepted and now they were requesting the whole manuscript and once more it was suggested that I check them out, with two books under my belt in the self publishing world I decided that it couldn’t hurt and looked them up and they’re actually a pretty huge organization, attached to Penguin Publishing. And it suddenly occurred to me that this could be a big opportunity that I was letting slip through my fingers by not at the very least sending them what I had. I quickly checked out their submission guidelines (no agent required which is exciting) but then I saw it, manuscripts are generally between 80-120k words in length. Shit. Bridge of Memories in it’s current state is only 53k.

I wanted to send out to them but I was suddenly faced with a conundrum. Rewrite Bridge of Memories and be stuck back at the beginning of a trilogy I was almost finished with, or drop Bridge of Memories all together and simply start with book two, the stronger of the two and already at 80k. The problem of course being if I dropped book 1 I’d no longer have a trilogy, and after a great deal of inner debate I decided that it would be much better (though not quite simpler) if I instead re-wrote Bridge of Memories (maybe including bits from the original but definitely adding in important details as necessary) to the 80k minimum. I’ve decided that a lot of the backstory that has been added into book 3 is now going to comprise a great deal of book 1 instead thus meaning that book 3 (when I’m finally able to get back there is going to need a bit of work).

For the record the irony is not at all lost on me, I had promised myself I wouldn’t be re-writing it because I desperately wanted it to all just be done, but here we are. Back to square one… or book one rather. I’m hopeful that this will in fact end up getting me somewhere, but at the very least I’ll have a better first book to show for all of it in the end. I’ve got quite a bit of work left to do, it’s only been a few days since I started and I’ve managed to get the better part of two chapters down, so that’s something, but I definitely want to be doing more. It’s going to be an interesting few months, but needless to say this puts Edge of Darkness on hold for a while. Which isn’t the worst thing given the headache it’s caused me thus far.

Why Do You Write?

I’ve often been asked the question, what do you write, in fact it almost seems compulsory whenever you explain to someone that you are a writer (and I’ve said many times why this question always without fail flusters me a little) but the one question writers are never asked is why do we do it? Until, this article by Writer Unboxed asked the question: Why do you write? 

The obvious answer to that of course would be because I love it. It obviously isn’t for the money, I’ve been doing it for years before there ever was any money and the fact that some people are willing to pay me is actually more nerve wracking than you could imagine. There are some writers, I won’t name names, but I have seen that there are some writers who do seem to do it exclusively for the money, and hey they’re famous so what better reason would there be to do it right? Maybe it’s because they’ve forgotten the struggle that a lot of us authors go through or maybe they just don’t care, but I have to say, I think their writing would be a lot more genuine and authentic if they wrote for something other than because it sells well and makes them money, but perhaps that’s just me. I mean obviously it does continue to sell, (but then I’m pretty sure they could write anything and it would sell) so perhaps I’m the one who’s wrong here.

As a writer it has always been my belief that it is far more important to write what you love than to write what is popular. That’s the whole lesson behind write, defiant! in the first place. Rather than writing something because it’ll sell really well or you can catch a sweeping tide of what’s popular I would rather make what’s popular, and believe me the temptation to just give in and write some godforsaken vampire, erotic S&M horror show because it would probably get me a shitton of readers, is sometimes exhausting. It would be so easy to give in, but that’s not what I want to do, and that’s not what I want to be known for. I write because I love it, it’s in my blood, I couldn’t imagine having to do anything else for the rest of my life, I think I would go insane. It’s an addiction I’ll admit, the thought of ever having to stop for any reason is… frankly a nightmare scenario that I hope I never have to encounter.

Now I’d like to hear from all of you, why do you write?

Blog of the Week: Jamie Chavez Blog

Oh editors. Editors editing and blogging with snark. What more could you possibly want? I present to you, Read>Play>Edit by Jamie Chavez

I’ve discussed Ms. Chavez’s blog many many times over the last few months. Why? Because her blog is amazing, and always hilarious. Plus it’s nice to see a more human side to editors, I think a lot of writers sort of see editors as being these faceless assholes who reject you for no good reason when in fact they’re just as human as the rest of us, and they admit sometimes the industry makes mistakes. Another reason I love Ms. Chavez’s blog is because she’s a freelance editor, so while she works mainly with traditional publishers she does have advice for self publishers as well.

It’s definitely worth a look.

 

Seriously?!

This seriously rant, goes out to myself… because seriously? How do I keep getting myself into these things?

Why do I constantly do this to myself? No really, I’d like to know? Why do I get myself into these things? Do I honestly think I don’t have enough to do so let’s just add ten trillion other side projects because hey why not? It’s not as if anyone is forcing me to do these things. Nor for that matter is it as if someone said, Hey, you know what would be a great idea, if you did a magazine on top of everything else. So WHYYY did I decide that actually that would be a BRILLIANT idea?

I think what it is is that things sound really great, and really brilliant and honestly maybe even a bit of fun in the moment, and then I realize the shit storm of work I have to put into all of this and I’m suddenly exhausted before I even begin. Not that I don’t want to do it, I do. I really really do, I just wish I would think about what I was getting myself into before I just decided that I was going to add another thing to my schedule. But then, I wouldn’t be me, and what fun would that be?

As of now I have, a new podcast to prepare for next week I believe, I’d like to work on a sample version of this magazine before I make any official pronouncements just for the sheer fact that I have no idea the logistics of this and I fear that if I announce too soon (which I almost certainly always do) I’m going to have a billion things go wrong so for now, this is all just in the planning stages. Speaking of, if you haven’t voted on logos I suggest you click this link please and thank you.

On top of that there’s still quite a bit of writing I need to get done, combined with the start of finals just around the corner as we are starting week 9. Don’t get me wrong, I feel comforted when I’m keeping busy, but I’ll be a lot happier when this quarter ends and I have a three week break in which to get some (hopefully) uninterrupted work done. I say hopefully because I’m not stupid enough to think that there is any real possibility of this.

Let Your Voice be Heard

Yesterday I announced the fact that I wanted to create a monthly magazine tie-in to the Daily Racewood blog that I would make available through several different sources, including of course on this blog. Almost immediately afterwards I found myself wanting to work on various parts of the magazine to get myself used to the idea, I’m super excited and at some point I would love to have submissions for articles and interviews (if anyone is interested there’ll be a contact form below) but meanwhile I’d like your vote on which of the three logos I’ve come up with thus far you enjoy the best.

Take Our Poll

To submit, please use the contact form below and include any and all relevant information to your submission.

[contact-form]

Announcements

Today rather than vamp about something relating to self publishing I’ve decided to make a few announcements about upcoming projects that I’m super excited about and that I hope you’ll be… at least a little bit excited about.

Cult of Racewood Brand Identity Book

This quarter for my Corporate Identity class we’ve been working on rebranding a company and creating a brand identity book. The point of which is to showcase the proper way to use the brand so that anybody anywhere could use it. As a companion to my brand series I decided I would like to create a Brand book for Cult of Racewood, and share it with you as a .pdf. Soon. I still have to work out a few things, but I will release it (I’m gonna say within the next week or so).

The Best of the Daily 

I’m not 100% sure of the title as of yet, but I’ve decided that I’d like to create a book that is a best of my Daily Racewood posts, which will be available most likely through the usual suspects. I figure if I’m going to do it though I have to make something which would be a lot more interesting than what you could find here on my blog… maybe I’ll make a magazine or something. It’ll strengthen my skills of magazine design and it would be a lot of fun at the same time.

I’m not sure of the time frame of any of these projects but I’d like to say that within the next month or so I should be able to at least get the brand book out and maybe do the magazine thing every month or so.