Redheaded Bandit

This post is completely self-indulgent as it's for me to remember some of the lovely lovely comments I received on my Smallville fic, and me waxing philosophical on what writing means to me and what I want to do with my life.


"The rest of the chapter reinforces this point, your writing is solid and good. You manage to keep the characters consistent and give them that nice spark of life which makes me want to read more. So cheers on your excellent work, please keep writing as I think you will only improve."

And then another one:

"And I agree with the commenter upthread about the nice spark of life you give the characters. There really is something particularly vivid about your writing. I read many excellent stories by talented writers, but there's something difficult to define that makes the style in which this fic is written stand out."


Wow... that's some extremely nice praise there. They think my characters have a spark of life!!

Also feeding my ego this week is hearing from the two people who read my novel recently a lot. They both have said that they can't get the characters out of their heads, which is awesome.

One actually told me that it was inspiring her and making her want to do art to represent the characters, and she doesn't do art!

Now, obviously this is only a small handful of people who knew and got along with me so they were pre-disposed to like my story, but to hear that something I wrote is capturing someone's imagination and inspiring them to want to do something creative?

I can not even put into words how magical that feeling is.


And I can't stop thinking about the fact that when she fired me yesterday, my former manager encouraged me to go out and find something that I love. To pursue my dream instead of "trying to be... this." in her words.

I know it's a longshot. I don't even like to think about the odds, especially given this economy. I know if I beat the odds, it will take years before I start earning enough to not have a day job. But it all feels like life is trying to send me a message. I've known for awhile that this is what I want to do. Maybe there's a reason why I was let go. Maybe there's a reason why she said something like that to me. And maybe there's a reason why I feel like I'm closer than ever to having a novel I feel comfortable trying to shop around.

Maybe now is the time.


Or maybe not. Either way, reading the above comments (and other very generous comments!) made my day.