I’m happy to announce my new blog, You Are the Muse. I’ve moved the YAtM posts from here to there and added a couple since, while I waited for the right time to tell you about it. Everything about this is different from anything I’ve ever tried before. It might not be an original concept, might not even be very important in the grand scheme of things. It might not turn into anything at all, ever, just me pissin’ in the wind here. (Hard for a lady, but not impossible. ;) I might not ever finish, but it’s asking me to begin.

I tried to box it in here where I’m comfortable but it never felt right, so now I’m trying to let it go where it wants, without a plan or even a destination. There may be many changes in the early days while I adjust course. I have a feeling I won’t be able to see the turns until I’m right upon them.

It’s funny how a blog about finding the muse within oneself seems to be coming from the outside. It might be the only way my subconscious can get around my inability to promote myself. I mean, who am I to tell other people what they should value? Am I really so audacious as to think I might make something out of this? Really? I can only do it if it’s not me doing it, that’s what I think.

And so I ask for your help on behalf of this-thing-that-is-not-me.

Here’s what I need, and you may do any of these or all, whatever you feel comfortable with. I understand you might not be interested in the subject of the new blog, but your friends might be. Anything will help.

1. On Twitter: Follow YAtM on Twitter, and if you feel so moved, give a #FF shout-out
2. On Facebook: “Like” the new YAtM Facebook page and share with your friends. I’ll be suggesting the page to my friends, to make it easier. Subscribe to YAtM with a FB app called Networked Blogs. It’s a safe subscription service, with no spam whatsoever. Very unobtrusive. I’ll also be sending invites for that.
3. On your blog: If you think your readers will be interested, give YAtM a mention and/or put it in your blogroll. I’ll return the favor. I invite you to write your own post about creativity or the muse and tag it with You Are the Muse, or send it to me as a guest post, or both. I have two lined up, but would love more.

I think that’s a good start.

I imagine I will still post here with news of my life, but I might be a bit busy with YAtM for a little while. I would be EXTRASPECIALLY HAPPY, NO LIE, to hear your suggestions for features or improvements. This is a project for all, not just for me.

Thanks for all your support.

The answer to all those questions is: I won’t know until I try. And so I begin.

I’ve spent the past two months adrift, a necessary thing, releasing old ideas about how this blog, my career, my relationships should be. I played at NaNoWriMo; wrote parts of books and stories, but nothing that lights my fire; joined OWFI and planned to enter their annual contest in several categories, and actually got quite a bit done in that direction; accepted the fact that crappy stuff happens all the time, and I have to learn how to write anyway.

I think I finally settled on a blog theme that works exactly how I need it to, and will build it over time. I might post writings here, stories that maybe aren’t worth trying to sell but still have some entertainment value. A new About Me page would be nice.

I’m accepting the fact that the blogging community has changed immensely since I started. It used to be the way I communicated all the parts of my life, but I have Facebook for the more mundane stuff now. I used links and images, and I thought about SEO and getting the blog out there. That helped in the beginning, but dang… If you enter “Sherri Cornelius” into Google, Yahoo, and Bing, you will find this website in the top spot, not to mention various others of my hangouts in positions below that. I’m “out there”, mmkay?

The writing of the blog never bored me, but all the side work did, and I guess I don’t have to do it if I don’t want to. I don’t want to imagine what I can make of this place, but to be surprised with what it becomes.

The hiatus thing… Well, you may have heard Moonrat is, sadly, closing her publishing blog. A lot of the reasons she gave for the closing sort of matched up with why I want to change direction here. I’ve run into the thing most bloggers do, and that’s the repeating-myself thing. The blog as it is doesn’t fit my needs or goals now. It got me thinking it would be a good thing to close this one down and start from scratch, but I’m too much of a coward. Then Sarah suggested a very long hiatus to give me some distance, and that sounded like just the right thing.

I’m not ready to do it today, because when I go I think I’ll be dismantling the whole website. Not even sure why I decided I needed to post about it. I guess I’m just thinking out loud, the same reason I always post, really.

But I have this feeling my perspective can fit into the babble somewhere. I just have to figure out what that perspective is. I’ve learned a lot about what it means to have an agent, to be on submission, to get critiques both good and bad, to give critiques good and bad. I’ve done a lot–and I mean a lot–of work on my internal process as a writer, and some of my insights on that could help someone. Briefly, I was on the other side, the editing side (and btw, the start-up e-pub isn’t happening after all), and surely I could write something about that.

Do you know, the only thing that’s dampened my enthusiasm for the blog is the worry about hurting the business side of my writing career. I worry endlessly about that, and it’s hard to let the Muse of the Weblog off her leash to find a post for me when I’m afraid of sounding like a whiney-butt, or hurting someone’s feelings, or giving away too much information about my professional relationships. I can’t keep stifling myself like this. It seeps over into my real work.

I don’t know, I’m just restless; thinking out loud. Is there anything about my writing experience so far that you’d like to know more about? The response here might help me decide where I need to go with the blog. The chirp of crickets would indicate I need to dump it entirely, but I can’t seem to do that. Sorry to disappoint. :)

I’d been toying with the possibility of having a static front page, but I didn’t know what to put there. I like the way this one’s laid out. Of course, when I start promoting a book I’ll probably have to get a real website built based on that, but this will work for now.

So apparently this is a time to prepare my external persona for success. If you’re on Facebook, I have an author profile that will go active if I get a publishing contract. I expect it to be the easiest place to do news updates and such, and an easy way for people to connect to me. Log in to your Facebook account, click this link:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sherri-Cornelius/#!/pages/Sherri-Cornelius/91241069662?ref=ts

and then click the “Like” button, and you’ll be all signed up. If you “like” my author page it will show up in your friends’ news streams, and that’ll spread the word.  Some of you are already on there, and I thank you. Also thanks to those who gave me notes on this theme. (Talking ’bout Soho Serenity.)

Time to go eat lunch with the hubs.

Then I thought I could just separate the topics into their own blog posts like a normal person, but since my blog is a snapshot of my mood at any given time, I find it nearly impossible to write posts for the future. So far I’ve used blogging as a way of impressing my personality onto the Internet, quite unintentionally. I don’t see it as a place to showcase my stories or to write persuasive posts, and I don’t treat the posts like magazine articles the way some do. That’s probably why I don’t draw a lot of readers.

I think I’ll try separating my topics into new posts. I’m experimenting, right? So maybe you’ll get three or four posts this week instead of the usual point-five.

In one week, the Little Bubba got the car door slammed on his fingers, ripped his hand open with barbed wire, got dive-bombed by a kite, fell of the front porch, and a bunch of other little owies I can’t remember. That kid has a bullseye painted on his back and fate has the darts. It’s gotten so every time I hear a thud or a shout I run straight to him. Good news is his little 8-year-old self is still “going good, great, happy” with his girlfriend.

The hubs is looking for a pickup. The van is getting more and more difficult to drive, so thank goodness we had a pretty good tax refund. We had decided to pay cash for an older vehicle rather than take on a car payment (you may remember that I have enough trouble keeping the bills paid as it is), but this afternoon we went looking and there’s just not that much to choose from in the older pickup department. And let me just define “older” for you by saying the ’97 Saturn I bought last year is the latest model I’ve ever owned.

I guess people either trade in their pickups every couple of years or they just keep them till they fall apart. The guy at Automax almost talked us into a 2007 Nissan Frontier by telling us he could get the payment down to $150 a month. But man, I just don’t know. One-fifty a month when I was paying zero will be hard to swallow, especially when I figure in the insurance thing. So what are your thoughts on buying an older vehicle that may need more repairs, or making monthly payments on a newer one?

I was glad to find out it was a legitimate bump! Woo! My blog was featured on this group I belong to on SheWrites. Welcome to all the new visitors! Feel free to comment or subscribe to my feed. New posts aren’t as frequent as they used to be due to my working my butt off to get this book done, but of course you wouldn’t know that if you’re new! Forget I said anything.

Thanks to everyone who commented on my boy’s story. I let him read the g-rated comments (lookin’ at you, Knyt ;) and he was just thrilled he was such a hit. It also fluffed his feathers when the SheWrites reviewer mentioned his story specifically, saying she laughed so hard she woke the dog. I can’t link to the review because it’s a private group, but the reviewer is mystery writer Lauren Carr.

Full disclosure: After I posted the story he told me the “I could use a wetnap” part came from Spongebob. *sigh*

I’ll admit I haven’t been very active on SheWrites, but I’ve always thought I should be. If anybody wants to connect on SheWrites (which accepts men, too!), click that badge in my sidebar and I’ll see you there.

Maybe it’s a good thing I haven’t snagged a publisher yet. It’s an accepted fact that publishing is changing in ways we can’t foresee. It’s possible that when the dust settles the Kindle will be law and physical books will be a novelty item. Of course the dust may not settle for years, maybe decades. We are in transition, for sure.

I don’t want to wait till the dust settles completely, but I would like to debut in a more stable marketplace than we have now. My goal for a long time has been to sign with one of the big sff publishers, like Tor (whose parent MacMillan just had a tussle with Amazon), DAW, Baen, etc. in book form, with electronic publishing secondary. I think this is still a viable goal, but in a few years it may be the other way around. Some of these little eBook publishers like Damnation Books/Eternal Press may emerge as the brass ring eventually.

But really, there’s no reason for me to speculate because I can’t control how or when I get published. All I can control is the book I’m writing right now and let the rest take care of itself.

Don’t know if any of you noticed, but I haven’t been interacting online much. I’m bored with all my usual things, i.e. Twitter, Facebook, and blogging, plus there has been an unusual development in my psyche, whereby the need/desire to write outweighs the distraction factor of the Internet. I’m still keeping up with what everybody’s doing, but it’s more out of habit. Probably twenty times in the past few days, I’ve typed out a whole comment and decided not to share, because I didn’t want to be distracted by the ensuing discussion. What an antisocial a-hole I am!

Nah, not antisocial. I find myself wanting to email people instead of commenting with a mass of other people. I’m tired of the Internet with its constant barrage of other people’s opinions. I’d rather be discussing things with folks one-on-one. This blog is a comfortable space for me, with a small circle of commentators, but then I’m forcing y’all to come here, and that’s not fair.

Besides, I’m getting tired of the whole blogging scene. I’ve added very few new blogs in the past two years to replace the ones that folded, and my circle is shrinking. I’m in a rut. A rut I’ve seen before, no doubt, but a rut nonetheless. Anybody know what the next big thing is going to be? Because I’m ready to jump on it.

I’m not hiding and I’m not mad and nothing bad is going on in my life. I’m happy to get emails and comments and tweets from you, and I’m sure this isn’t my final post. I’ll still be around on Facebook, too, but I might stop announcing what I had for breakfast. Just slowing down on the info overload.

I don’t want to tell you, but I’ve already started, so… I want to start a spiritual writing advice blog. I see so much concrete advice for the nuts and bolts of writing, but hardly any for the writer like me who stumbles around in the dark. I believe in writing from one’s spirit, because that seems to be the only way I can do it. I can’t force things, because then I get all stopped up, in writing and in spirit, and I think a lot of other people are that way and don’t know it. Strange how there’s so much noise in such a solitary activity.

So the first question is, do I have the qualifications to write an advice blog? Probably not. But I’ll show you what I have.

• I’ve written almost two books
• and about twenty short stories, none of which have been published, although a couple were well-received in contests.
• A decade ago I wrote a popular newspaper column for a year, which was basically exactly like what I do on this blog
• I have an agent and am actively seeking publication
• I was an editor for a few months last year
• I think I’m good at reading people and a good advisor, and the baring of my soul on this blog seems to get a better response than any other topic
• I’ve done a TON of work on my own self in this area

So see, the list is long, but none of the items is that impressive. It’s not like I’m an industry professional, or a spiritual advisor, or anything solid. So why do I need to start another blog? Why can’t I just write posts like that here? Well, because this blog is me, online. It’s centered around me and what I think and what I do, and while you’re all a necessary part of my happiness, it’s still like you’re coming to my house, you know? I’d like the new blog to be about the reader, and it can’t be on this blog which is named after me. I thought about calling it The Writing Guru, but that’s already a popular phrase in Google. Two other choices are Your Writer’s Soul and Spirit of the Pen, both of which are not being used. Or maybe You Are the Muse.

Topics? Well, I’d have writing book reviews, guest columns, reader questions, maybe a week-long feature where I delve into the writing psyche of a willing victim participant, and my own journey.

It’s probably stupid. It’s probably been done before, and I probably don’t have the follow-through. But that’s what I’m thinking about this morning.