From The Rabbit Hole

Man, I have been so busy with my writing class and my novel that I have completely forgotten about my blog! I didn't even think twice about it- that's horrible! At least from where I stand, as I always try to make an effort to at least post something, even if it's just to say hi. And moreover, I'm usually obsessed with my blog! Oh the life of being a writer. I often find myself down what I like to call 'the rabbit hole'. I think I'm there now- though at least I'm popping up for air.

Hi!

But in all seriousness, for those who don't know what I'm talking about, the rabbit hole is a serious phenomenon. As defined very aptly in the show scorpions, this is when you  get "so deep into your thoughts that you forget to function. You get dehydrated, you lose your sense of time, you exhibit antisocial behavior" -Walter O'Brien (Scorpions). However, it is a phenomenon I know well, so anyone else who understands this, well, just be careful. Fortunately I'm not so far down that I'm being antisocial, and (hooray!) I'm still eating haha. But I just thought I should go and explain why I've neglected posting. Writing is taking up so much of my time, though I really don't want it to take up all my time.

Scheduling.
Scheduling is key.

My Beautiful Cover Mock-Up

I am literally posting this everywhere as I'm really excited for this announcement!!!

I have just created the "Changing Kathryn (Book 1)" cover mock-up for what I want the end result to look like and here is the lovely result. I personally and honestly don't think I could have asked for a better result if I tried!!!!

I spent hours searching for the right thing and then...then I got this beauty as a result:

 © 2016

I'm so happy and I think it's absolutely beautiful! I can't wait to see it when it's in it's final cover form, and has a proper DPI (the above was put into Paint so the original DPI was shrunk and thus pixalized). But again, I think this is absolutely stunning for a 1st time mockup!

Novel Length

Ever since I pumped out an 800 paged novel (biggest regret, though it would have been an even bigger regret if I had officially published it), I've cut ti back. But now I've been terrified I'm going to pump out another really long book. Fortunately one thing I've just looked up is an average novel length as well as a word count and got these numbers: 240 pages/60,000 words is the typical length for most mainstream novels (from: Writing Fiction: How Many Pages Make a Novel? - Writing for the Web). Fortunately I'm only on page 170 (not including glossary section). However I am at 67,000+ words. Still, I feel like I'm doing well, and there's also a lot of stuff I've deleted on my manuscript that hasn't yet been transferred to the actual word document, so those numbers are sure to decrease...until I start redoing and adding in the new ending. But I feel like I'm in a pretty good safety zone right about now.

Granted My Own Wish

I have created a writer's group that is—as of now—up and running! I'm still making little changes to it, but I thought I should share this wonderful announcement. You can join the "Pen Guardians" here at http://groupspaces.com/PenGuardians/. This group allows you to converse with other writers, in addition to critiquing the works of other writers, share your own ideas, and post your own creative pieces for others to critique. I'm super excited, so please come check this out!

Thanks, and I hope I see you on there!
Kay R.

--- Update 5/19/19 ---

This group has been updated my recent name change: Dylan Sabrina

--- Update 6/23/19 ---

This group has been updated with my most recent penname change: Dylan K. Regan

--- Update 2022 ---

This group has been dismantled. To get a new meetup going, please contact me via this blog

I Must Have A Writing Meetup!!!

I've gained so much insight from this class I'm in, and it's really important for me to continue the work I'm doing, and gain more knowledge into this world of writing hence I'm considering starting my own writing meet up on my college campus using my current writing class a way in. Or better yet, trying to convince the professor to oversee us as a class we can get credit for. I also really want to use my spare time to start an online meetup via this blog, too. Anyone interested in joining? If so I'll start working towards ways to get this going. It would be on a separate blog, like my articles & short stories are, and I'd create a way so people could submit their own stuff on their, and allow others to comment. I'm not quite sure how this would work yet, I'll have to do some creative blog designing...ooh! I'm really excited just thinking about this. But first I need to know if anyone would do this with me.

Let me know what you think!

Thanks,
Kay R.

Internet Dilemmas & Distractions

I don't find myself scrolling through the internet very often. Generally it's for writing purposes to look up a word, or fact checking. Sometimes to post something on my facebook page or my blog. Very basic stuff. But there are those other times when I think I'm just going to check facebook to see what other people are doing...just for a minute. And I know it's not going to be for 'just a minute'. However I'm always shocked when I start getting what I like to call 'internet dizzy' which is what happens to me when I sit mindlessly scrolling through stuff. It's during these moments I look down at the clock and realize I've wasted an hour and my poor novel has gotten shoved to the side. It's moments like these where I wish I had a typewriter to avoid this.

Then again, without spellcheck I would be absolutely screwed.

"The Fruit Race" - Dream

Fruit. A fruit race. I don’t think I’ve had a stranger dream, or perhaps a more vivid one, than dreaming of about five girls (but no one I know in reality), and me, dressing up as fruit–and a radish (which I was wearing, though it somehow counted as a fruit in my dream)–then racing each other. The most vivid fruit-and-one-veggie-race costume I still have from my dream, aside from my own, is the banana. The mesh tent on her back…and it was supposed to be a pop-up tent she was wearing. The six of us were training for a race. We started on a very green, buttercup-ridden field with nothing around us but a few trees, and ran miles in bulky costumes, our arms, like little T-Rex arms, were flailing left and right, all of us serious as we ran miles all the way into a city, and then into what I can only assume was supposed to be a WinCo. We had to cut through the ribbon in order to make it past double swinging doors inside. It was a close race. Caralin or Corrine or Caroline (whatever her name was I can’t remember; but she was banana girl) won the race, with all of us ‘fruits’ cheering her on. Not a split second later came the plum then I think the orange, or perhaps it was the peach…I don’t remember the order, but it was so close we were lined up like the AT&T bars. I, the radish posing somehow as a fruit, was last to the doors. I was the only non-runner of the group, and decided I did well considering my lack of training. When the six of us entered ‘WinCo’ there was no one around except our coach who was waiting for us in the dairy aisle with a clipboard and a timer, wearing very blue and incredibly stereotypical gym-coach style short-shorts. We all cheered as we gathered around him, excited that we had finished the race and with such a small winning distance between us. He announced to us we were ready for the 38–or was it 48?–Love of Health run, and plum girl (Bea, or Becka or whatever her name was in the dream) ran and grabbed something for her feet that said ‘Foot Love’. “It may be 48 for the Love of Health, but let’s just hope the same isn’t true for the love of feet,” she said with a snicker beside me, showing me the foot care kit. My mom appeared then behind us and laughed out loud, and when we all turned she disappeared behind one of the aisles with peach’s mom, the two of them laughing quietly together by the ketchup. And then I woke up.

I went online to find an apt picture for an idea about how we looked in the dream, so now, with further ado here it is, from a scene in a movie I saw as a kid, “Confessions of Georgia Nicolson”:

Needless to say something must have been in the tea I drank last night! Perhaps a touch too much sugar? And obviously far too much fruit!

(Originally posted on Tuesday, January 26th, 2016 at 4:20 pm from "The Blog of an Unpublished Writer")

Back Online! (For Now....)

So I just happened to check in with my old blog as I generally like to do, and discovered for once it's working again. But because I don't use it anymore I decided to go ahead and steal some of the stuff from there and post it here so people can actually read it as I found a lot of useful items that would have otherwise been lost I'm sure. Helpful tips, personal quotes, and more. These are going up like, now!