Long Winded Musing
Every writer needs a website, a landing place, that helps people find them. I often quip that I've spread myself all over the internet, like butter on toast. I should be easy enough to find. Why on earth do I need a blog or a website?
For people to find, of course. For the person who investigates, follows links, wants to know more. And yet, I am rather shocked when anyone clicks the link and comes to visit. It's like a stranger stumbling on my doorstep who isn't a stranger. If you have come here, you know enough to know my weird name. You know enough to search me out.
So Hello. Thank you for visiting. A couple of gentleman writers have visited, scrolled through these sloppily drafted musings of mine. Hello to you, Sirs. My target audience is female, gents are the curious breed I only pretend to understand
I recently received one of the best critiques I have ever gotten from an anonymous gentleman. If that is you, thank you. Thank you very, very much.
Wait, that's not true. I was in a critique group a decade ago and received similar detailed responses from men who later became established traditional writers - I got to read some of their chapters in the raw. This feels like a claim to fame.
Men think differently than women, are wonderfully clear and straightforward. They connect with the writing in an analytical way that most women do not - even if it is romance, even if it’s romantic erotica. Men tend to see in a clear, linear way that most of my women beta readers do not express. My women readers connect on an intuitive, emotional level. To have a man read through and carefully and give his all to the reading, can be scary. Line by line. But how can I improve my writing if I don’t get feedback.
This isn't an insult to my women readers, I need women to connect emotionally to what I write. If I don't, ladies if you don't connect, frankly, it's trash and not worth anyone's time to create. Scene by scene, my goal is not to waste my reader's time.
But the male perspective differs from the female and getting a chance to hear it is fabulous.
Writers WRITE
I'm still struggling a bit with embracing the whole "good writer" thing. I don't want to give myself the "impostor syndrome" dejour label. Because I'm old enough to know that skill takes time and effort. Mastery of a skill takes ten years or more. NO SHORT CUTS. I've been writing my whole life, but I'm rusty, lazy, and out of practice. I have not spent my time challenging myself, growing, learning.
I want to do more than sell books. I want to peddle fantasies, shape words, weave dreams. I want to give women the impossible love experiences we all long for, the fairy tale with the happy ending, filled with readable, intimate, emotional and sexy moments. And I want to do it well. Show don't tell. Find poetry in eroticism. Find the music in the words. It sounds awfully arrogant to say it - but it is the dream I have always had. I ache to be good at something, to be significant.
And you, making your way here, to discover more about ME. Makes me feel significant.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Iso
17th December