Anne Woodland

      So, I've been doing some research on various publishing methods and options and now I'm getting all these horrid targeted ads about using AI to write an entire ebook without actually writing anything! It makes me so mad! They try to make it sound like this amazing thing with lines like "I have no creativity, but look at this book I wrote with AI." And I'm like, "You did crap, dude. Also, I'm 99.999999% sure you are AI, so shut your artificial mouth and leave the creative endeavors to the humans who are actually capable of producing original thoughts instead of just regurgitating whatever inputs they've been given!"       Publishing quality has already gone downhill with publishers being less thorough while pushing for incessant book releases. We do not need to worsen the situation by adding shoddy AI catastrophes to the mix! Poorly written and edited books drive away readers. Authors already have to compete with each other and other forms o...

      So my husband and I recently watched Part One of the movie version of Wicked. It was an interesting experience... Maybe we're overly critical, but there were a few issues that we both had with the film.      Firstly, there was the fact that a movie set is supposed to make you feel like you're actually in the world of the story, and there were a few scenes that accomplished that, but more frequently it felt like an overdone stage production. Which when you're actually watching a stage production isn't an issue, especially because you aren't getting close ups of the set and props, etc., but for a movie this can be a huge issue. It was frustrating to have overly fake thatching and the like shoved in our faces, or how massive "stone" or "brick" buildings had a complete lack of any lichens, moss, or even just normal weathering on them. It had a phoney perfection that was visually jarring. Despite all the flourishes of the sets, all that stood ou...

       Grief is a strange thing. You are going about your life and then suddenly this aching just slaps you in the face. I woke up recently with a strong desire to hear my mother play The Entertainer by Scott Joplin. It was my favorite piece to listen to her play, and she was usually willing to take requests, as long as she wasn't in the middle of rehearsing for a performance.       The thing is, when she passed her quality of life was already so diminished that even if she were still alive now I still wouldn't be able to listen to her playing such a complicated piece, if she were able to play anything at all. Everything that I miss the most about my mom was already gone before she died.       I distinctly remember visiting my parents for Easter two years before she passed. I was four or five months pregnant with my oldest and one night I just broke down sobbing to my husband because I realized that no matter how things progres...

       I read a lot, and since around 2014 the majority of what I've read has been in Ebook form. The great thing about the explosion of Ebooks and other forms of digital publication is that it's made getting your work seen a lot more accessible to writers. There are a number of authors who self-publish whose work I actively anticipate. In fact, I would say my current favorites publish this way.      However, I do think one problem that isn't properly recognized about self-publishing is that you don't always get as many eyes on your work in the early stages, which can lead to pitfalls like pattern writing. What do I mean by that? Well, I have examples.       There are two different writer's who've done fairytale retellings, which is a genre I really enjoy, particularly if they're doing one of the lesser known fairytales. After I read the first book by each of the authors, I quickly purchased their next one... and it was basically th...

       It's interesting how life is constantly trying to teach you things if you let it, especially about yourself. In recent years I've discovered a lot about my inner workings. The most recent thing I've realized is that I am way too prone to independence.      To clarify, I do think some level of independence is a good thing, but it's also important to know when to ask for help or when to collaborate, and that is, apparently, a skill I do not possess. Some of that might be due to the fact that I was the second of seven children, so independence was quite a useful life skill growing up.  That being said, I do think most of my issue stems from the fact that in most situations asking for help literally does not occur to me. My instinct is to research and fixate until I figure it out or give up for an extended period of time, and while I do ask questions, I rarely explicitly ask for help. Also, on the odd occasions when it does occur to me to ask, ...

      One of the difficult things about writing, at least for me, is how much of myself I put into my characters. That's not to say that all my characters are the same, although undoubtedly they have some commonality. Rather my characters are expansions on aspects of myself. Or even a sort of experiment on an emotion that I experienced but didn't dwell on. They're "what ifs".  What if I had a different background? What if my temperament was completely different? What if I was someone else?     Now obviously, you have to build on the foundation of that "what if" concept and by the time you're finished you'll hopefully have a decent character. It's a rather interesting and often surprisingly introspective exercise in imagination. The dangerous part is how vulnerable it makes you feel.  Not only are your characters your brain children, they're reflections of yourself. You love them and you want other people to love them and see them as you d...