Rhino Puzzlings

The end of October naturally follows into November, and I'm still getting my bearings after the shutdown and scattering of NaNoWriMo a few years back. From the outside, the collapse appeared—bluntly—catastrophic, and for those of us who'd seen it from early days, it was especially painful to watch. NaNo was the nursery that fostered me, that gave me the courage to try to write something large and messy and wild and surprising and  just not worry about it. I'm proud to say I won every November I participated, seventeen in all. I tried the off-season writing (Camp) but it never really stuck with me the same way November's event did. I credit the lack of daylight, the turn in the weather, the general  gloom  to fostering the mood to sit down and scribble, even if Novembers in my part of the world are generally mild, often sporadically sunny, and all around tolerable. There's other events, indie or sponsored, commercial or personal, and I admire folks for keeping the fl...

Book launch!   The Fall And Rise of @TheRealJoyG  is out the door and currently for sale exclusively on Amazon as a Kindle ebook. I plan to go wide with other distributors after the mandated time period, and to use that window to prep a paperback edition. Oh, and work on all the other titles I've got going, too.  Influencers! Villany! Mildly Comedic Family Drama! Las Vegas! Poor Life Choices! and more. Available now at everyone's favorite mega retailer. 🧩🦏 

 Rhinos may be solitary, but writers can't go it alone. Or at least, that's what I'm reminding myself these days. I've got a lot of drafts--a whole oversize bin of typescripts--all hammered or scribbled out in relative anonymity and the safety of knowing that  nobody will ever read them.  And without being held accountable for quality, that elided into  and nobody has to edit them, either.  Because for an audience of one, I don't need to please anyone, or deal with all those linguistic luxuries like "good grammar" and "understandable plot" and "deadly dull dialogue." First drafts are notoriously shitty things, but if they just remain so, then all I have is a bin of... well, crap. The spark that turned it around was actually investing time to edge out of the reclusive-scribbler comfort zone and get into a  safe writerly space.  A safe  sharing  space, specifically, which felt more than a little frightening. I'd been drafting novels f...

There's nothing my Muse ( she/her ) likes better than stillness. Over the years of our partnership, we've agreed on the terms of our relationship: namely, that I show up, hoping to write, and if she's in the neighborhood, will deign to drop by and leave me some raw material. It's a dysfunctional partnership, but it's ours. What matters (for her) is that I'm showing up, pen poised, mine relatively clear, ready to go. This... is not easy. "Relatively clear" is not my state of mind most days, before the whole stare-of-the-world gets factored in. Honestly, some days, the Muse could pull up in her ride, ready to toss an institutional brick through my proverbial mental plate-glass window, but I'm too preoccupied to hear her show up. And she doesn't accept being ignored. She gets sulky. Withdrawn. Reluctant. And ultimately: erratic, maybe the worst thing for a Muse to be when she's tethered to someone with a full life. Why do all the good ideas co...

For continuity, and a vain attempt at SEO, this writing rhino was previously blogging at  clickthing.blogspot.com   This place is less gadget-focused and more writing-oriented but it's still me. Hiya! The NanoRhino is all growed up, glowed up, and navigating the world of publishing.  🧩🦏