Today: Updates on my WIP, writer websites, and fighting vile spammers.
Okay, so you know when these WIP Wednesdays start mysteriously disappearing over here that I'm struggling with a draft. I have two story starts with the same characters. One has about 18k words, the other 6k. I like them both and hate them both, if you know what I mean. In the first I'm having trouble nailing down believable motivation for my heroine. I know her backstory, I know where I want the story to go, but I have to come up with the thing that gives her enough motivation to make the decision that starts the plot. I've agonized over this piece of the puzzle but I haven't landed on the "fix" for it yet.
The second story start, I like, but I think the story would need to go down a steamier path than the first book to make the most sense. I have no issue writing an erotic romance, but this book is supposed to be the second in the series and Wanderlust is a sexy/sensual romance, but not erotic. Here's the difference from Passionate Ink, in case you're wondering what the difference is:
Erotic Romance: stories written about the development of a romantic relationship through sexual interaction. The sex is an inherent part of the story, character growth, and relationship development, and couldn’t be removed without damaging the storyline. Happily Ever After is a REQUIREMENT to be an erotic romance.
Sexy Romance: stories written about the development of a romantic relationship that just happen to have more explicit sex. The sex could easily be removed or “toned down” without damaging the storyline. Happily Ever After is a REQUIREMENT as this is basically a standard romance with hotter sex.
So there is my quandary. And this has paralyzed my writing, which is driving me nuts. I'm wondering if I should just work on some completely new idea and come back to these--although I hate doing that. So, I dunno. Maybe I'll throw out both to my crit group and see which start grabs them more.
Alright, moving on to websites. Last week I asked your opinions on pre-published authors getting websites. Most seemed to agree that waiting until you have an agent or book deal is your preference. I still haven't decided what I want to do. But I did (based on commenters advice) reserve my domain. So now, if you type in www.ronigriffin.com, it redirects you here to Fiction Groupie. (For those of you interested, you can do this at godaddy.com. It only costs like eleven bucks to reserve your domain for a year. So not bad. And that doesn't mean you have to have your website with them, all you're buying is the use of the name. You can point that name to whatever site you like.)
Lastly, spammers. I know we all get them. It's unavoidable. Some of us use the dreaded verification word as a defense (although that doesn't totally fix it) and some of us require comment approval to help with it. I'm not a fan of either--the first because it slows things down, the second because when the comment has to be approved first, you can't see if your comment came up right and it hampers the commenting conversation.
So, what I've done is set up that comments require approval only if the post the person is commenting on was posted more than two days ago. (You can do this in your blogger settings.) This has helped tremendously because most spammers (sneaky bastards) go and comment on old posts so they can slide in without you noticing. Changing the setting prevents that because those comments then need your approval before posting. Just thought I'd share since it's helped a lot with my spam issues.
Okay, that's it. I know it was a bit of a random day, but every blogger needs those once in a while, right?
How's your WIP going? What do you do to deal with spam? And for those of you who didn't see last week's post on websites, what's your opinion of having an official website before you have a book deal?
