Revamping the blog: July blog chain

There hasn't been a post here in awhile. I was thinking of getting rid of it. But was convinced otherwise. I have changed focus onto something I can feel more comfortable writing on. I'm going to kick off the new blog with an AW Blog chain blog post. This month's blog chain is question and answer. The first person in the chain answers a question asked by the last person in the chain. Then poster one asks poster two a question. Lady Cat was the previous poster in the chain and she asked me:

Do you believe in writer’s block, and if so, what do you do to combat it? If you don’t believe in writer’s block, do you ever suffer from days where the writing just doesn’t want to come and how do you overcome this?

I don't believe in writer's block. I think writer's block is an excuse not to write because the writer doesn't feel like writing that day, or they lost interest in what they are writing and cannot see how to make interesting again. I also believe that it affects newer writers more than writers who have been writing for awhile. Why? The new writers are still learning that writing is work and one can't always be inspired in order to write. I think this where the "myth" of writer's block come from.

How do I overcome when I just can't seem to write? Well, sometimes the best thing to do is to not write for awhile. I'm currently in school, planning my wedding, working, and packing to move in with my fiance. Since I do not depend on writing for my income I don't allow myself to feel guilty for not writing at this point in my life. You have to when you do this I believe set a date when you will start writing again. Otherwise, you'll never get back to it. I'm going to start writing again in the beginning of August after I move and I am out of school. While I will have to find a new job I won't be in school and I'll be done moving. So I'll have more time to focus on writing without having to worry about something else suffering.

During this time I didn't stop thinking about writing. I've come to the conclusion that at this time I'm not really a novel writer. I don't have the attention span needed for a novel right now. So I have decided to focus on short stories. Looking at a lot of magazines the average short story should run around 2,000 words. This I can do and the short story helps me focus on the story because I tend to ramble. The great thing about short stories is if I get stuck or I feel that the story is not going to work I can easily put it aside until later or work on something new without feeling like I'm abandoning a project that I've put loads of time in. There are a lot times when working on a new piece of writing I come up with an idea that will fix or at least change an older work enough in order for me to regain my interest in the story and fix it.

Reality: Mostly because I have not been writing at all I have not really tried out this new method of writing so I don't really know if it will work. During this time I was planning and doing research for a novel but have since decided to write it as a series of short stories and I did come up with an idea to fix a short story I have that I haven't sent out yet for submission. So this new blog is really where I'll be talking about writing short stories and how it works for me.

The next person in the blog is aimeelaine and my question to her is:
Do you write short stories or novels or both? What made you choose that medium? If you write short stories does is it disheartening that you can't make a living writing short stories like in the heyday of short story writing? If you write novels is it discouraging that it is a longer time period to see any return on your writing or that it gets rejected after all the time you put into it?

Here is everyone else in this months blog chain. Please visit their blogs and leave a comment.
DniC
BigWords
Fokker Aeroplanbau
harri3tspy
razibahmed
Forbidden Snowflake
bsolah
jen.nifer
Lady Cat
rosemerry
aimeelaine
Proach
Apelle
lostwonderer5
upsidedowngirl
JamieMT

Weddings and Mystery religions

While I'm not in school I've been getting as much wedding stuff done as I could. Thanks to my maid of honor all of my invitations are done and ready to mail out. Yay! You can follow her on Twitter here.

I've still been working on my novel and I have 80/1400 colonists completed. It can be rather boring but I still think it is important to have a solid foundation to work from. If I don't do now I'll just have to do it later anyway.

I am thinking of others for my novel besides the actual characters themselves. I have decided to have religion/faith in my novel and so I am going to add a mystery cult. Not real sure how much of my population will be affected by it though. I got the idea after reading The Golden Ass by Apuleius and translated by P.G. Walsh this past semester in my Roman Empire class. I'm also going to throw in some mixture of Christianity as well but I don't know how yet.

Finding information on mystery cults is a bit difficult. When I went to Books-A-Million today I had no titles to go by and their ancient history and mythology selection is very thin. After posting on AbsoluteWrite about it. I found that there isn't a lot of information out there. But I did get some great suggestions and I'm going to cruise the bookstores tomorrow for the following titles:

The Mysteries of Mithras: The Pagan Belief That Shaped the Christian World by Payam Nabarz and Caitlin Matthews

The Book of Gods & Goddesses: A Visual Directory of Ancient and Modern Deities by Eric Chaline

Ancient Mystery Cults (Carl Newell Jackson Lectures) by Walter Burkert

The Atlas of Lost Cults and Mystery Religions: Rediscover Extraordinary Traditions from the Dawn of Time by David Douglas

Thanks MaLanie1971. You can visit her blog here. I'll have a link to her blog over in the sidebar. After a suggestion given to me by Medievalist I was able to find a site about the Villa of the Mysteries to help with forming my own mystery religion. Thanks Medievalist. You can find her blog here. I will also have a link to her blog in the sidebar.

I'll let you know the results of my book search and post anymore interesting sites I might find on the web about mystery cults tomorrow. Now I have to read The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane for my short novels class starting the 11th.