The world we live, or read, in.

I love to get transported to a new world, so when I began on my fantasy, I had great fun creating my character's new environment. Today, I read the post, The Importance of World building Uncreated Conscience and was reminded of several of my favorite "new worlds."

Memoirs of a Geisha, Girl With a Pearl Earring, Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter are all favorites for me. I think we all tend to enjoy escaping our lives for a good read or movie.

JJ says:

...what makes a work of fiction with great worldbuilding stand out is the
implicit understanding the writer creates about the values of the society in
which the novel is set.

I think this is a major part of world building and is a good place to start building. Without consciously thinking about it being a basis of the world, my whole "what if" idea for Moon Tree Brothers is based on a conversation, or argument actually, wherein it was said that we just had a "difference of opinion in child rearing."

From this grew a world of dragon men, dwarfs and fairies, all dedicated to protecting children, and magical electrical energy that we are depleating by our increasing violence. They work to erase the 'Unknown Darkness' that is affecting the world we live in. They would like to do it without violence, but is that possible?

Write what you are passionate about, even if it is not vampires

In my agent compatibility search, I ran across an interesting post. Agent in the Middle's take of the current market is:

it's become increasingly difficult to sell any genre fiction from a male
protagonist's perspective, unless he's really hot. But even if he's a really hot
teen vampire, it's better to tell the story from a female point of view."

I am no expert. While this is not my first manuscript, it will be the first I am actively pursuing and, early on, I fell into the trap of fretting over every single thing I read.

So, am I going to stop pursuing my male viewpoint fantasy story, sans vampire? No!

You have to write what you feel passionate about and I am passionate about this manuscript.

You have to figure that it can take upwards of two years to get your work out into the buying market. While female vampire stories are the current hot topic, two years from now it is going to be brothers living in a tree, or something you cannot even imagine.

Write from your heart and write with passion.

VISTA, Agents and Tense. Hmm, a correlation?

So, here I sit fighting with VISTA, unable to write as I must type to write. I can hand write notes but my hand is unable to keep up with my brain for anything else. If I were on a desert island, I suppose I would get used to it, but really I am supposed to be sewing a quilt for my grandson for Christmas. But, no, I am screwing up the only computer I can work on.

It had two or possibly five versions of VISTA on it so I go online, find out what to do about it, download a program to fix it. Fix it! HAH! I now have nothing on the computer but five versions of VISTA and AOL. No Word, dang! No Jasc! No, nothing.

So, I go online again and decide this is a time to find possible agents. I decided to start by going down Miss Snark's First Victim blog list of blogging agents. And, guess what I found! I found an agent who has my same "Tense problem." AgentObvious

I have a horrible time with tense. The writer's group, in Wyoming, pointed out my tense issues, my daughter catches it and my grandson catches it and I read it and go, "HUH?"

I finally found out that I catch most of my tense problems, if I keep a book (it has examples of tense) open on my lap, as I edit, and look at it every paragraph, and sometimes sentence, to fix my tense. I really felt like such a horrible writer that I could not just automatically know my tense was off.

I am so reassured. Thank you AgentObvious.

The best laid plans!

Yup! I was in the webpage creation home stretch, when my "Got Viggo Mortensen" bit the dust.

That's the name of my last computer. I do not normally name inanimate objects, but my Master's Daughter got me this neat sticker last year at Christmas, and, since I spend the most time with my laptop, I put the "Got Viggo Mortensen" sticker on the lid. We won't go there!

It was a beloved Hewlett Packard, write on swivel screen with styllis, dream machine. Now it is history, and I am stuck with a few pages to correct and create for my web site, and no way to get there.

Our house has many computers in it, from an ancient first generation laptop with no back up way to reinstall anything, to the three that supposedly work. I keep looking for a donation spot and just discovered that Good Will takes them.

I have three printers and three accesible computers. The newest computer is, of course, a VISTA. Drat!! The reason I am now using it is that no one else wants to and I am the resident computer person. So, now it is do or die to make the blasted thing work.

Out of three printers, one finally installed on it. I was able to put Word on it and then the story gets depressing. I could not install Coffee Cup HTML (which I need to fix the pages of my website that are not loading their pictures). I even spent eight hours on dialup, yesterday, uploading it from their website and it's nowhere to be found this morning. It is really difficult to find where things are on VISTA.

Jasc Paint Shop Pro installed just fine. The older desktop that takes all of these programs, is not wanting to view the graphics in PNG, which is what most of mine are. Other than that, this computer has nothing on it. What a sad waste of money and what frustration as I sit here waiting until the 22nd for my new Dell.

Anyone know where I can get another "Got Viggo Mortensen" sticker?