Check In: 22 Feb, 2012 & My First Mashup!

As I realize the what the best ways for me to support the community of bloggers I thought I should share some other resources.  I am certainly not the only writer out there or the only blogger with anything to share.  So here’s a stab at my First Mashup.  Some from ROW80, Inkpageant, friends, & professionals.

Krissy Brady has a delightful post on: "Announcing the Ultimate Cure for Writers Block." 

Amber Mae learns something important in: "I don't have to love every aspect of my job."

David Powers King kills the last Mohican in: "The Last of their Kind."

Mary Ann Pope loads her shotgun and goes to take our the competition in: "This means War: the Love Triangle done right."

Kim Switzer is trying to keep her feet underneath her in: "Blown Away."

Shah Wharton shares about her goals and publishing deals in: "ROW80 19/02 & FiftyFifty.me challenge."

Natasha Guadalupe gets her groove on in: "1:20 AM When Music Mirrors Your Story."

Breeana Puttroff posts the new cover of her book in: "New Cover Reveal."

Morgan Dragonwillow posts a neat new contest: "Fantasy Fiction Writing Contest I - Day 1."

On Science Fiction and Fantasy:
io9 has an amazing post everyone who writes SFF should read on: "10 Writing Rules we wish more science fiction and fantasy authors would break."

Nora Jemisin (One of my heroines who was nominated for the Nebula Award again for the third book in her series.  This means every book in her series has been nominated for a Nebula!) posts on: "The Miseducation of the Writer."

SF Signal reveals how villainous they can be in: "Mind Meld: Who are your favorite villains in Fantasy and Science Fiction?

Some folks shared these with me in relation to my last post
This Food Technology one could be helpful if you chose to write about a lack of Instant Gratification (IG) in the food industry: "Food Technology Jobs."

This is a post on how living frugally helps our children (loosely tied to IG): "Five Ways Frugal Living Benefits Kids."

Hopefully you find something there that helps you in your day to day writing life or you are just able to cheer someone on in their quest to be the best they can be.  As for me here are my goals.

1. Finishing a Scene of "Crimes of the Umbramancer" each day.

     Early this week I focused on my blogging so that I would have the rest of the week to write.  Mind you that effort failed.  I spent so much time on Monday on my blog that I didn't write anything else.  I did draft and draft and draft to try and format the blog better... hopefully that counts for something.  However at my writing group yesterday I got some 400 words written.  :D

2. Comment on ten blogs in ROW80:

     Done!  I barely made it this week.  Pretty much focused on the new job and my scenes.

3. Walking at least a mile five times a week.

     I'm keeping this goal, cause while I'm failing at it, I won't forever.  And I really want to walk a lot more.  But life keeps getting in the way.

4. Building a new blog for my diversity issue.

   I’m reading Kristen Lambs books on developing a blog and hoping that I’m interpreting her advice correctly.  If any ROWers are up to it, I’ve love some advice to if I’m doing it right or wrong.  I got some advice for the past few days and it was wonderful.  Thank you to every person who shared their opinion!
5. Going back to my writing ritual.
   Sometimes I get lazy and I write before I have studies scriptures for that day.  But the funny thing is if I spend the time reading God's word before I write, I write better.  You may call this a form of meditation, but it is the form that is most important to my writing success.  I've got everyday this week down for studying, but not always before I begin writing for the day.  We'll see how the rest of the week goes.

I hope that each Wednesday I have a bunch of awesome blogs and posts to share from to continue this habit of the mashup.  I'm sure I will though cause there are so many wonderful bloggers out there it is hard not to find either quality work or inspirational work.

As the month is rolling to a close feel free to leave a comment.  Cause for every person who leave a comment I'm putting your name into a hat for an opportunity to win a book by, one of my role models in fantasy, N.K. Jemisin called "The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms."  Mind you it is the first in a Trilogy and each book in the Trilogy has been nominated for a Nebula Award!  I'm super excited to give three copies of this book away so please share your wonderful advice and thoughts with me in the comments.

As always my name is Jayrod Garrett and I am the First OG.  Who is your role model for what you write?

The Birth of the Diversity Blogs

This past weekend I spent at a writers symposium called, “Life, the Universe, and Everything.”  (Or LTUE for short.)  It is a wonderful program with many of the large names in Fantasy and Science Fiction who attend.  And each year that I attend I get so much out of it.  I learned about all sorts of subjects from “Plots, Subplots, and Foreshadowing,” to “Writing Humor.”  And I felt blessed for the opportunity to be there.  Only as I looked around I noticed something was missing.  I saw Tracy Hickman, L. E. Modesitt, Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, Dave Farland, and various other standards in the industry.  I met them and enjoyed their company and for some reason I felt like I didn’t belong.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say I shouldn’t be writing, but I felt the same way I do when I go to church.  Like a speck of pepper in a sea of cream.  All of the big name authors there were white.  Most all of the folks I saw come to the symposium were white.  No hispanics, no asians, and no blacks were in attendance from what I saw.  Recognizing such a poor mixture of diversity in the group of people I aspire to join made me realize something.  This is part of the reason we see such a lack of diversity in the science fiction and fantasy markets.  It isn’t because the people are racist, or they are focused only on the tropes of elves, dwarves, and orcs, but because there isn’t enough diversity in the community.

Between this and a conversation with a man I met at the convention by the name of David Powers King (read his blog, its pretty solid), I realized that I need to start blogging not only how I feel about various things going on in our culture, but about diversity in the various cultures that we have in our world.  Talking about Gay Marriage, Being Black Enough, and what Freedom is are important aspects of the culture we live in and themes to approach in literature, but it isn’t enough.  I want to write about how the Native Americans known as the Inuit live from the perspective of one of their own, or about hispanic culture from those trying to get a college education who are living in it, and introduce people to the rich heritage of black spirituality.  We have so many opportunities to recognize the diversity around us, not only in terms of race, but sexuality, gender, morality, and religion.  And I want to be a voice for helping writers to begin to recognize that.

I heard back in high school that drama was the mirror of man.  Well writing fiction is a form of drama, and I want to see the diversity of the world that I live in reflected better.  Now I’ve been trying to build an audience of late, and I realize that my journey here to develop better fantasy and science fiction will not happen without a community effort of some sort.  I can write about these things all I want, but without you sharing your thoughts and feelings with me, this won’t ever really get started.  And offering you my opinion probably isn’t enough.  So I’ve started an excellent book called the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin.  She is a black fantasy author who plays against the traditional methods by telling the story in first person and having a black female protagonist.  At the end of this month I plan on putting each person who comments on my blog into a hat and sending three of them a copy of this book.  Think of it as my way of saying thank you for having a conversation with me.

So my question to you is?  What do you want to hear about?  I have plans of talking about the hypocrisy in religion, sharing my own conversion story to becoming LDS, and about what it really is like to be an eskimo.  But I know there are a lot of other ideas out there for cultural diversity and thematic writing and rather than search all of them out by myself, I want to hear from you.  Lets become a team and discover the miracle of the diversity of the world we live in together.