I am happy to announce that I am part of this project! “LOVE Potions, Lotions & Lore” is a 60 page eBook for sale on Amazon. It’s priced at mere $.99 and all of the proceeds are being donated to National Center for Family Literacy
“Love Potions, Lotions & Lore” E-book celebrates the spirit of love. It was published by FolkHeart Press: an independent book publisher located in Northern California. And it includes the works of 18+ authors and artists from around the world (Denmark, Switzerland,USA) sharing their thoughts, hopes, and artwork. Anthology topics include true love, love of family, love of art, food lore, and more. (from: FolkHeart Press – press release)
The National Center for Family Literacy is located in Louisville, Kentucky. The center provides free resources for parents and early child educators to support literacy in the home and in the classroom.
I hope you will take a moment to check it out, buy a copy for you, or for a friend – and most of all, I hope you enjoy both my poem, “Schumann Fairies”, and all the other wonderful stories, art and beautiful words.
AND, IT’S CONTEST TIME!! Right now you have a chance to win a FREE copy!! It’s simple, all you have to do is leave a comment below in relation to “Love Potions, Lotions & Lore” – what’s your personal love story? Your favorite way to woo your mate on Valentines Day? On Valentines Day, Thursday, February 14th, I’ll pick my favorite comment, and announce the winner on my blog!
So, you will have to remember to check back to see if you won!
Hello all – I’m currently looking for beta readers. If you’re at all interested, comment below!
If you want to learn more about the story, head over to The Hope Saint’s tab. THANK YOU!!
-Aryn
Life can be interesting out there, but it really is so much more interesting inside my head. The places, the battles, the people and their baggage – a world of my very own where what I say goes, and what isn’t fun about that? It’s a vacation to a far off land or a new world never before seen with all the right/wrong things and all the best/worst people. Ah, writing is the breath in my lungs.
I sit, on days, for hours, pouring over the oddest little things until I find a source that never seems to leave me. The people, especially, haunt me at the oddest times. There are moments when I’m at the market and I see a piece of fruit that makes me think of one character, or maybe I’m people watching and I see another walk by. These characters, these people, burrow into my brain and my being until they are my newest best friends that I can not live without.
Has this happened to you? Passion for all your make-believe friends?
Alas, maybe it IS just me, but I’m okay with that, because never a moment will there be that I am all alone. Never a moment will there be that I can not fly to another world with them. Yes, that’s why the world inside my head is so wonderful, because of the passion, because of the drive and because of the dragons.
Seriously. They’re the bomb.
I have spent the last 2 years working on the same WIP. I’ve written, rewritten, and rewritten some more. After that I took the 400+ page book and split the it into two, bringing it down the 50k-80k words, a respectable word count for a young adult novel, and after that it was rewritten again, but here I am, getting nowhere. Happy form letters, generic form letter – silence! No one wants it, no matter how much I love it.
I believe in the story, but I know that I need to rethink the direction and to do that properly it was take time. So, I finally made the decision to move on. I know it is for the best and as I rationalize why I was doing what I was doing it left me with one question…
How do you know that it is time to let go of one piece and start another?
I wish I could say I have an answer, but I don’t. I’m looking at it is like every other hard decision I’ve made in my life. I’m relying on my gut to tell me it’s time to move on, and to let go. I know that if I stay it will only be out of love (which I really do), but by doing that I’m risking running myself into the ground, and taking the story with me. I fear I will grow to hate this story I love, and I don’t want that.
While I dive into a new WIP filled with new ideas, characters, themes, a whole new world I find myself growing excited, but I do hope that one day I’ll be able to return and fix things and get her where she needs to be.
That’s the problem with writing. Everything you create is a child of your imagination, and no one wants to leave their child behind.
When you start asking if it’s time to let things go, it probably is, but even with that knowledge it doesn’t make it less of heart wrenching choice. My very own personal Sophie’s choice…
Everyone likes to remind me that J.K. Rowling received 12 rejections prior to finding an agent to represent her and (the now juggernaut) Harry Potter series. It has become one of those things I smile and nod through. I know the intentions are good, the people are being supportive and encouraging, which is sweet and wonderful. But the longer I write and querying, the less I speak of my rejections. This silence make life easier, plus its a wonderful excuse to make brownies at 10 o’clock at night on a Tuesday.
But that doesn’t mean the rejection still don’t still. They do.
Above is an image of a rejection letter addressed to Andy Warhol, infamous artist and socialite. It is a letter like many others I have seen, read, and used to encourage myself on low days and my friends and family are right – one day I will find success. While the sane side of my brain understands and comprehends that it’s a lot of work, the emotional and artistic side is thrown into a tizzy of “woe is me” and “can’t they see my genius?” all of which morph into something I like to call the Karma Effect.
Obviously I’m being punished for some past indiscretion. Yes, that’s it. Blame the universe!
I’ve heard it all before: From “I must have done something wrong.” to “They don’t know what they’re talking about.” Massively bi-polar reactions to the same event, but I know it’s not karma and know they do know what they’re talking about. Maybe I’ll get more than 12 rejections (which is very, very, very, very common) and maybe I’ll have to write more than one book (which is also very, very, very common) but blaming the gods won’t get me any closer to the prize I want – only writing will.
In the end it is a process, like anything else, and you’re going to have to be willing to work REALLY hard to make it work. But the funny thing about passion and doing something you love, is that it never feels like work – it feels like love. That’s what it is, isn’t it?
It’s the process of expressing our love of writing. What are a few pesky rejection letters? They are the paving stones to the fabulous writing life you’ve wanted, allow them to lead the way – not block it.
Now… I have to go write.
Why do you write?
It’s a simple question asked to about every writer that lives. Curiously enough, people want to know what prompted the need to sit in front of a computer (or by hand) and hide away from friends, family and outdoor fun – for many hours at a time.
When asked, the same answer tends to arise, “Because I have too.”
I thought about this a lot the other night, as a stiff neck inhibited me from writing, and I have to agree with all those other writer’s out there. I write, in part, because I have too. That said, as I explored deeper I found an excess amount of other reasons, and I’m adding the following statement to clarify:
“I write because, buried deep inside my heart and brain, are the adventures I have always wanted to go on. I write because, while I find comfort in the words written by so many others (whom I adore) there are still a very large assortment of characters causing a ruckus in my head, and I have to release them to live among us. I write because words haunt me, whether I am sitting pen in hand, or showering, washing clothing, cooking, shopping, paying bills, or playing with my son, they wait to spring themselves on me.”
This is why I’m here, and I hope it goes to a place where I can share with the world all of those words that are lying in wait, but even if that never happens… I will write.
Because, as it would have it, all those other authors hit the nail on the head – because I have too.
To Aryn S. Youngless’ authors site. Please nose around and feel free to leave a comment on what you think!
-shanti
Aryn
asyounglessauthor.com 
