Welcome to my blog Upstate Girl, (a.k.a Follow Your Bliss Part II), I am an independently published author. This blog is all about writing and the stuff that inspires me to write, the joys and obstacles that come along with the writer's life, and my fascination with the psychology of people and what makes them tick...the human condition, as is...and my love for words, playing with them and making sense of them...and I throw in a few photos from my acre of the world just to make things pretty...sometimes there are things I have no words for, only pictures will do.

*Copyright notice* All photos, writing, and artwork are mine (
© Laura J. Wellner), unless otherwise noted, please be a peach, if you'd like to use my work for a project or you just love it and must have it, message me and we'll work out the details...it's simple...JUST ASK, please.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Too much to say


There are some days when I have too much to say...

too much to think about...

don't know where to begin...

does it ever end?

I photographed the sky one day last week...I'm in awe of the sky most of the time, being on top of a hill I get to be acquainted with its various moods and broods...the day I took this picture the mood was changing again from fair to stormy as a hurricane (Hanna I think) approached from the south and caused the wispy fair weather clouds to ripple in the blue...today is windy and humid with Ike pushing its way towards us...I swear I can smell the Gulf of Mexico out there...

I'm currently working with a manuscript Drinking from the Fishbowl a three part saga of three people who are intertwined in a friendship...when I first started it...oh, ages ago, July 11, 2000 to be exact, it was just a random conversation between a man and a woman...it just popped out, like I said, random...I don't know why I think of these things, it's like turning the radio dial and listening in on whatever is out there, and I caught it, and wrote it down...and kept writing, asking questions, interviewing these two people so I can get their story...

Who are you and why are you bothering me with your little drama, can't you see I'm busy writing my first novel? You're so inconsiderate, hold on a minute...say that again, what? You want names? Are you kidding me?


Sometimes being a writer makes me feel like I have a personality disorder...so I dragged out the baby name book to appease them, and started flipping through looking...

Okay, you're going to be Georgia and Eugene...how's that? Who's that? There's another one? You've brought a friend along this time...cripe...I wish you had mentioned him before...hold on... What's your deal? No, let him tell me. You're a writer, huh? Great. You have a great big ego too, congratulations. How about Bailey? I'm glad you like it. All right, let's get some history...not all at once, one at a time...ONE AT A TIME!

Okay...if only naming could be that easy...you have no idea how I agonized over these three people and tried to sort out their personalities and what their "deal" is...but the names were the easy part, I still had a long way to go...and the journey continues as I am still editing it years later...I'm not giving up on the book, it's good...I'm not saying that just because it's "my baby", I'm saying that as a reader of many fine books...it's good...and it's getting better...let me put it to you this way...I don't cringe when I pick up a chapter to work on...if I did that, I wouldn't be wasting my time with it.

I've sent it around to agents, a few times during its various phases of "done"...as I've learned, no manuscript is ever really done...it's been rejected more than I care to talk about, but one did ask for the whole thing because the first chapter perked their interest (March of 2003), but they never got back to me to even reject it soooo...I guess that's a big fat 'no'...

I've been told on several occasions, 'Its too long.' (I've been told this about all of my manuscripts, even my shortest one). Indeed, it is a hefty doorstop...its been bigger and weightier. It has evolved a great deal since the first draft that ballooned well over 220,000 words, it was ridiculously awful, as first drafts often are, yet I felt so proud of it when I finished it on December 30, 2002. I've gone over it and over it and over it several times ever since, it's hovering just under 540 pages now and I'm trying to shave off a few more pages...there's no way I can get it under 500 pages because it is such a big story with a great deal going on with these three little people who I've grown to know and love, but I'm giving it my best effort...

Over the years that I've spent becoming a writer...actively following my bliss since April 29, 1999, I am coming to terms with what needs to be done with these first efforts that I made, busting my brain to make them right without dumbing down the manuscript...I'm not out to make a quick buck, my goals are to write good books that will endure with time...call me a book snob, I don't care...I have my principles regarding the craft of writing a good book and I intend to stick to them...simply, I don't want my hard work to be distilled down to the fluff of a cheeseball...

I'm basically a nobody in this crazy writer world...I don't have a pedigree, I don't have a master's degree...I'm just little ole me, looking up at the sky where there are no limits...oh, there's more going on in that blue than blue...some days there is just too much to say...