Why I Swapped To PayHip I’ve never been the biggest fan of online marketplaces (aka Amazon). I feel like they want you to spend too much time learning THEIR WAY, and yet don’t give you support if/when things go wrong. This gave me a lot of uncertainty when I first started publishing books. I […]
Author: Vanessa Smith
Creativity In Hard Times
Creativity In Hard Times No, I’m actually not referring to that global pandemic thing. I don’t wish to erase anyone’s experience (undoubtedly challenging experiences at that), but I want to talk about hard times at a smaller scale. I have chronic pain for mostly unidentified reasons. I know when and where I hurt myself, […]
Remind yourself that you have done things
Remind yourself that you have done things! I was feeling a bit like I had achieved nothing this year. Written nothing of note. Done nothing. I think it was the prepping for NaNoWriMo that put me in this place, a bit too on the reflective side. So I did an overdue task – copied […]
Feeling non writerly
Feeling non writerly So many writing conversation starters are about your main character (MC). And I get it, but also… not. I have a series of satirical books and I don’t even know what genre they fit in. Comedy? Kinda (I mean I hope so?!). Non fiction (well they’re not fiction but I also make up […]
Elite Writer Training
Elite Writer Training I have access to a large learning platform via my day job. Given my industry has been decimated by covid and government actions, professional development via paid courses isn’t really a thing anymore. I was flicking through the learning platform to see what looked good. I don’t just have work-related tags […]
Camp NaNoWriMo April 2021
I didn’t really plan for Camp NaNo in April. I mean, I’m much more of a pantser in general, as far as choices go, but I really didn’t think about it in a practical sense. The main way I was impractical was not giving any thought to my word goal. In Camp NaNo you […]
Audio Books
Would you believe that it took me until 2021 to try audio books? I was always mildly curious but just… hadn’t…. I had no idea how to start though. I was worried that I wouldn’t like audio books and that it would “ruin” a story for me if it turned out that I didn’t […]
The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games It must have been 2019. Hunger Games had been on our Netflix queue for a while and one day my husband said he wanted to watch it. I said sure, even though I knew they were books too. I was undecided (still am) on read first vs watch first. […]
Rehabilitation Theory Is Bullshit
From a personal Facebook post in 2019 when I had hurt my shoulder at work. Publishing because I think it’s the sort of thing that needs to be shared. I feel pooped from this long weekend. Got a weird amount of stuff done between not doing anything. But not as tired as I […]
Romancing SciFi
Romancing SciFi How do you feel about romance in Science Fiction? I feel like it doesn’t add anything. I compare Alien to the “not a prequel” movie Prometheus and I feel the romance detracts from the story. It changes the reason for the tension, and that is distracting to me. “Individual science […]