IWSG & Blogging News

  The Insecure Writer's Support Group is the brainchild of Alex J. Cavanaugh. He, his clones, minions, friends, and fellow authors make it an amazing event every month.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!  

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April 3 question - How long have you been blogging? (Or on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram?) What do you like about it and how has it changed?

Looking at my side panel, I see I've been blogging since 2009. Wow - that's a long time.

I started blogging without a clue how to do pretty much anything involved with writing. But it's been fun and I've enjoyed it.

My favourite part of blogging is the people I've met. I've met so many amazing writers and readers. I've learned most of what I know from people I've met through blogging. The connections I've made with bloggers, writers, and readers have been incredible.

Having said that, I think it's time for me to take a step back from the blog. I'm not sure if it's a permanent step or not, but I think it might be.

Writing and publishing are time-consuming ventures and I'm stretched a little thin. Time isn't a renewable resource and at this point, I need to make some tough decisions about where to best spend that time.

While blogging has been a lot of fun, I think I can better use that time on my stories. I'll probably still pop in from time to time, but I'm not making any promises :)

Thank you to everyone who's visited, commented, helped me along the way. I hope I've done my fair share of reaching out and helping as well.

Thanks to Alex and the IWSG for this wonderful, safe place to talk and connect.

Wishing you all the very best! I'll only be an email away!

IWSG & AI

 The Insecure Writer's Support Group is the brainchild of Alex J. Cavanaugh. He, his clones, minions, friends, and fellow authors make it an amazing event every month.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!  

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Have you "played" with AI to write those nasty synopses, or do you refuse to go that route? How do you feel about AI's impact on creative writing?

Nope.

AI is not for me.

I do this job because I love words and stories. I love playing with words and stories. I have no desire to turn any of that over to a machine - not even for blurbs.

I know a lot of people have played with AI and use it to help them with the non-creative tasks. Still, not for me.

Sadly, I think there will be plenty of scammers willing to take advantage of AI to make themselves money at the expense of humans who are trying to make a living from their creativity and art.

I prefer to do my own work.

How about you?

IWSG & Bloo Moose Nooz

The Insecure Writer's Support Group is the brainchild of Alex J. Cavanaugh. He, his clones, minions, friends, and fellow authors make it an amazing event every month.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!  

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February 7 question: What turns you off when visiting an author's website/blog? Lack of information? A drone of negativity? Little mention of author's books? Constant mention of books?

For me, blogs and websites are different and have different purposes.

I'm a pretty straight-forward person and like websites to be straight-forward as well. A clear menu is a must. I don't think most of us need a lot of fussy things - mostly we need: links to the series, links to the books, links to social media, and an easy way to sign up for the author's newsletter.

If it's too difficult to figure out where things are, I give up.

One of my pet peeves when visiting author blogs is the lack of the person's name near the top of the blog. I've visited far too many where the author NEVER says their name. If the Blog title doesn't have your name in it, please put your name somewhere at the top!

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Bloo Moose Nooz

I started publishing the Bloo Moose series in 2020. I've learned a lot about covers and series since then. My cover designer and I decided it was time for a bit of a refresh of the Bloo Moose covers.

We wanted to make them more visually alike so they are obviously part of a series. And we wanted the "Reaching For" to be more visible. We've added the series number on the cover as well. Some of the cover art remains the same and some are zoomed in to keep in with the balanced look for the series.

The two different covers are for Trust and Roots. At the time, we couldn't find a good pic of Jack & Trina, so we used the legs. Ryan and Emmy also get a refresh with a photo that's more in line with the series.

What do you think? I think she's done a great job and I'm thrilled with the refresh!

The No Fail Heroes series will be out soon, but after that, it will be back to Bloo Moose for some more fun!

IWSG & Built Of Steel

The Insecure Writer's Support Group is the brainchild of Alex J. Cavanaugh. He, his clones, minions, friends, and fellow authors make it an amazing event every month.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!  

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January 3 question: Do you follow back your readers on BookBub or do you only follow back other authors?

I generally only follow back other authors now, although that was different when I first joined up.

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If you enjoy small-town romantic suspense, Built Of Steel releases next week! (Jan 9)

When your heart is the weakest link

Amazon - Apple - Google Play - Kobo - Nook - Everywhere else!

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I hope 2024 is kind, gentle, and generous to you and yours!

May your hard work make your dreams come true!

IWSG & Reviews

 The Insecure Writer's Support Group is the brainchild of Alex J. Cavanaugh. He, his clones, minions, friends, and fellow authors make it an amazing event every month.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!  

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December 6 question: Book reviews are for the readers. When you leave a book reviews do you review for the Reader or the Author? Is it about what you liked and enjoyed about your reading experience, or do you critique the author?

Before I became an author, I never reviewed a book (or anything else). I had no idea how important those reviews could be.

Now, I always review books I enjoy. Life is short, and if I'm not enjoying a book, I don't finish it, and don't see any point in reviewing. Just because I didn't enjoy a book, doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it - it's just not for me.

I leave reviews for the author first, but also for the reader. I talk about the things I enjoyed in the book, hoping that those reviews will help both the author and new readers.

How about you? Do you leave reviews? Do you read reviews to help you decide what to read?

IWSG & NaNo Fun

 

The Insecure Writer's Support Group is the brainchild of Alex J. Cavanaugh. He, his clones, minions, friends, and fellow authors make it an amazing event every month.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!  

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November 1 question: November is National Novel Writing Month. Have you ever participated? If not, why not?

I love Nano!

I think your love/hate/apathetic relationship with NaNo has to do with how your brain works. We're all different, and like everything else, NaNo won't work for everyone.

I have an intuitive brain that works on my characters and backstories long before I start typing about them. I don't plan/think about the story itself, but I have a glimmer of the crisis scene at the end and I usually know a couple of scenes. When I start typing, the story starts to flow and my subconscious works on the next scene while I'm typing the current one.

If you're a plotter and have your planning ready to go, NaNo probably works too, as long as the timing works.

Whenever I'm drafting, I aim for a NaNo amount of words daily. Actually I aim for 2000 because that's the safe zone to make up for days that are more difficult.

If your brain thrives on external pressure, the graphs probably make you happy. External pressure normally makes me buckle, but NaNo is all about building the word count, so I don't think of it as pressure - it's more joy of writing.

This year I thought I would write Book #4 in my upcoming series for NaNo. But my brain was whirling with the story and I wrote it in late September/October instead. #oops

I'm hoping my brain is ready to draft Book #5 this month, but if not, I'll at least get new words to celebrate.

So to me, NaNo is about joy and fun. Does your brain or writing style match up with NaNo?

IWSG & the Borg

The Insecure Writer's Support Group is the brainchild of Alex J. Cavanaugh. He, his clones, minions, friends, and fellow authors make it an amazing event every month.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!  

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October 4 question: The topic of AI writing has been heavily debated across the world. According to various sources, generative AI will assist writers, not replace them. What are your thoughts?

I haven't even tried an AI program, so I really don't know much about it. I'd rather play with my stories than the tech.

I don't think AI can replace that human touch. When I was working as a teacher, it was always easy to spot kids copying from an Internet source (or when parents wrote the assignments for them) and I suspect AI will have that same generic tone.

We're all unique and our words and products are unique as well. Personally, I have exactly zero desire to see what AI can do for me. I'd rather use my own words and my own voice, but that's just me.

At this early stage of AI development, we're not talking about Borg-level technology, although we may be talking about that kind of tone. I can't imagine a future where technology can replace human creativity. It's one of the things that makes us a pretty fun species.

How about you? Have you played with AI? What are your thoughts?

IWSG 12 Year Celebration!

 The Insecure Writer's Support Group is the brainchild of Alex J. Cavanaugh. He, his clones, minions, friends, and fellow authors make it an amazing event every month.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!  

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September Question: The IWSG celebrates 12 years today! When did you discover the IWSG, how do you connect, and how has it helped you?

Happy Anniversary IWSG!!!

12 years - almost a teenager!

I remember when IWSG first started. I didn't join right away because life was overwhelming at that point. I also didn't feel like a "real" author yet and Imposter Syndrome was all-consuming. I still deal with Imposter Syndrome daily, but I manage to shove it to the side and get words written and published anyway.

For years, I read and responded to tons of IWSG blog posts, but I didn't post my first post until July 2016. That seems like such a long time ago now!

I wrote my first short story in response to the IWSG Anthology prompt of a ticking clock. I'd never written a short story before but an idea I loved popped into my head and it was selected for the anthology.

Having Until Release accepted and published was the boost I needed to start finding my way through Imposter Syndrome. If that hadn't happened, I'm not sure I would have ever had the confidence to publish.

Now, here we are in 2023 and I've published a nonfiction book on Dementia, 10 Bloo Moose Romances, 4 Small Town Heroes Romances (#5 Built Of Illusions releases on Sept 19!!) and I'm halfway through drafting the stories for my next series.

I'm so grateful to Alex for creating the IWSG and to the many (MANY!) friends I've discovered through the blogs. Not only is Alex a terrific author, he's a genuinely kind and generous human being!

So Happy Bloggiversary to Alex and the IWSG! Thanks for everything you do!!

How about you? Has the IWSG given you a much needed boost?

IWSG & Delete!

 The Insecure Writer's Support Group is the brainchild of Alex J. Cavanaugh. He, his clones, minions, friends, and fellow authors make it an amazing event every month.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! 

August 2 question: Have you ever written something that afterwards you felt conflicted about? If so, did you let it stay how it was, take it out, or rewrite it?

All the time.

I'm an intuitive writer. The characters walk around in my head for a long time before they make it onto the page. They tell me their backstories and their hopes and dreams. They grudgingly admit their flaws and fears as well.

What they don't tell me is how the story is going to work.

So, yes, I sometimes feel conflicted by what I've written. But, overnight, my subconscious works it out and I delete whatever I've written and start again. Thankfully, I've learned to listen to my subconscious and I usually know within a day or two that things need to go, so I'm no longer deleting chunks of 25 thousand words (or entire stories...) like I've done in the past.

How about you? Are you another fan of the delete key? Are you an intuitive writer or a planner or both?

IWSG & Emotional Sparks

The Insecure Writer's Support Group is the brainchild of Alex J. Cavanaugh. He, his clones, minions, friends, and fellow authors make it an amazing event every month.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! 

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July 5 question - 99% of my story ideas come from dreams. Where do yours predominantly come from?

Yikes! If I wrote from my dreams, I'd be writing horror or psychological thrillers and I'd probably never sleep again! #wimp

I don't really know...

My head is always popping with ideas, one of the advantages of having a bouncy brain. I think most of my story ideas start with an emotion. Usually, it's an emotion from the crisis scene (betrayal, fear, despair, panic...) although sometimes it's the opening scene where everything changes for the character.

The emotion comes attached to a character and then I know WHY they're feeling that emotion. Then I suddenly have backstory attached to the character.

My subconscious does a whole lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to story ideas - especially when the new character has been a secondary character in one or more stories.

For Built Of Second Chances (which just released last week!), the spark of the story was the feeling of total panic when a person who's been in witness protection for years meets up with someone who can put her at risk. But that person is someone she's always loved.

That was followed immediately by the emotion of the man who meets up with the woman he thought was dead. His emotion spark was betrayal and anger...with a bit of reluctant love tossed in.

My current WIP started with the emotion of a person grieving the death of her father and the terror of realizing his killer is after her too.

Those emotional sparks give me backstories to think about for a while and then my characters are ready to meet each other and I get to find out how they figure it all out.

How about you? Do your story ideas start with emotions, characters, settings, or plots? or something else? If you're a reader, what do you think was the spark for the author of the last great book you read?

IWSG & Don't Stop!

The Insecure Writer's Support Group is the brainchild of Alex J. Cavanaugh. He, his clones, minions, friends, and fellow authors make it an amazing event every month.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! 

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June 7 question - If you ever did stop writing, what would you replace it with?

I don't plan to stop writing any time soon. If I ever do, it will probably be because my hands are too sore to continue. I have some issues with arthritis and I assume at one point, the pain will be too much. Hopefully that point is a couple of decades in the future.

If Dragon dictation software ever integrates well with Macs and becomes available in Canada, I may try that. But dictation only does so many things, and the fixes it requires are currently more difficult on my hands than actually typing.

One of my other hobbies is playing piano, but if my hands can't type, they won't be playing either.

I'm not a big movie/TV watcher, so, I guess I'll have more time for reading!

My To Be Read list should only take me a dozen decades or so...

How about you? What other hobbies take up your time? What hobbies do you wish you had more time to enjoy? How big is your TBR list?

IWSG & Working Inspiration

The Insecure Writer's Support Group is the brainchild of Alex J. Cavanaugh. He, his clones, minions, friends, and fellow authors make it an amazing event every month.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!

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May 3 question - When you are working on a story, what inspires you?

For me, it's always the characters.

By the time I get to actually writing a story, I know the characters well because they've been walking around in my head telling me their backstory for a while.

Probably because I'm a #2 Empathy (Clifton Strengths), the only time I'm reluctant to work on their story is during the crisis scenes. Even though I know I write romance and I know it's all going to be okay, those scenes are difficult. Sometimes it takes me days to work up to writing the tough stuff. #wimpywriter

In general though, I can't wait for the characters to get their happy endings and they can't have them if I'm not writing. I like seeing them happy and enjoying life.

Hmm. Just thinking that this is more motivation than inspiration...

However, that's the answer that's calling to me, so I'll stick with it.

How about you? Are motivation and inspiration different when you're in the middle of a story? Do you write for the characters, the plot puzzles, the tension creation or something else?

IWSG & Great Twists

The Insecure Writer's Support Group is the brainchild of Alex J. Cavanaugh. He, his clones, minions, friends, and fellow authors make it an amazing event every month.

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds!   

March 1st question: March 1 question - Have you ever read a line in novel or a clever plot twist that caused you to have author envy?

I'm continually impressed by other authors. I've always loved mysteries and remember devouring Encyclopedia Brown. When I moved up to Agatha Christie novels I was enthralled. I think Christie is the queen of plot twists. And Then There Were None. The ABC Murders. Murder On The Orient Express. The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd...so many!

I also love a clever first line (It was a pleasure to burn) and a line that pulls me right into the character's heart. So many of my friends here at IWSG know exactly how to do these things well!

But, envy? Nope.

That's not part of my personality. I will be enthralled, impressed, and brought to tears, but I won't wish I'd written it. Instead, I'll cheer on the author and then dig deep to try to create my own magic.

How about you? Any favourite first lines? Any favourite authors who pull off those magical twists?