M.X. Reo Kelly
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M. X. Kelly

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Write Naked, Edit Naked, Too. (With a Little Bit of Armor On).

8/5/2019

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I've found a supposedly secure online journaling website that lets you rant and rave and write whatever you want without worrying about prying eyes.

It's called Penzu. (https://penzu.com/)
    
I signed up for a journal on there, just because sometimes you need a place to rant and rave and holler at the moon. Facebook (and to a lesser extent, literally, Twitter) can only handle so much of my wrath and my disappointment in the world. I need a place to bare my soul and my mind, lay open my naked thoughts and hopes and dreams and yes, to, a place to fling cursing arrows at the powers in this world that live to crush my thoughts and hopes, and especially dreams. That live to crush us all.

It seems easy enough to post on there and I'm doing a lot of bitch-logging (what I call rant blogging) on there and so I thought I might go ahead and mention it as a possible distraction-free writing tool, and as a journaling tool for writers.

The layout is rather simple, unless you want to pay for a Pro account, which of course has more bells and whistles. The screen is not customizable to provide for different backgrounds, but again, if you upgrade from a free to a pro account, you can make it full screen. I don't really need that as if I want to, I can make the text bigger. I am only using it as a private journal, so I have no need of the fancier add-ons. I have Writer, the internet typewriter for my more serious writing that I may want to go fullscreen mode on. And it's free there.

 Since few people will be seeing my Penzu posts, if anyone does, I don't feel the urgency to edit the hell out of everything I write on there. So, I'm just letting the words fly...incorrect, type-o'ed, foul and furious...it doesn't matter. It's naked emotion and my hope is that it will be cathartic and also let me bring some of that raw naked emotion to my fiction and poetry.

Your Penzu journal is lockable with a password key. This is helpful in case you want to vent about your life or just keep your "secret recipe" fried-chicken recipe secret. It's like having a friend to whom you can tell your deepest, darkest secrets. It's online, so typing is involved, good for those of us whose hands cramp only after a few minutes of handwriting and whose penmanship is penmanshit. I confess I can't even read my own handwriting on a good day.

The theory here is that not being concerned about and concentrating too much on writing dazzling prose, and on editing while writing because I'm too much a perfectionist, will lead me to better writing overall in my work. That's the idea behind writing naked and editing naked. (Did you really think I'd be in the nude? Well, maybe sometimes I will be).

Penzu will let me write my innermost fears and rants, naked and free, with just a little bit of armor (password protection). This is the Dear Diary we all wished we'd had when we were thirteen years old.


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​A ShoStoWriMo Plan: Mind the Cooking on the Back Burners!

8/1/2019

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I kinda have a plan for ShoStoWrimo. I have a bunch of back-burner stories that I want to finish and edit so I can submit them to markets. I am going to start the month working on finishing these stories, especially "Don't Wake the Babies" (to submit to a western/dark frontier apocalyptic anthology) and "The Invisible Motorbike" (to submit to one of the big markets, possibly Clarkesworld or The Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy). I have another story I just started ("Waiting for a Ship to Bear Her Away") that I'd also like to finish, just because I'm still trying to figure out if it is an alien story, a mermaid story, or an alien mermaid story. Sometimes I work these things out during the process of writing. The character herself will let me know what she is. 

    I do have some new stories I want to write. I have a story idea about a little girl who takes on a demon in order to steal back a box of memories (a memento box full of photographs of family vacation, school photos, baby shoes, teeth for the tooth fairy, etc) because the demon stole the box and through it, possesses her parent's memories of her, which has caused them to forget her.  I don't have a good title for it yet. I've been tentatively calling it "The Memento Mori Box" and maybe I'll stick with that, unless a better title comes along. 

    Lastly, if I have time this month, I'd like to continue working on "Let Joy." It was a story I started writing for the Queer Sci Fi Flash Contest for their Migration anthology. It went over the 300 word count limit by several hundred words, and I decided to make a longer tale out of it. I'd also like to work some on another story I started awhile back. Here's the plot: A little girl suffers from pareidolia. She can see images of things in the grain or marble patterns in walls, and in the sky. With one weird addition: she has the ability to bring the images she sees out of the patterns, and bring them to life! This will be called “Pareidolia.” It's another horror tale. 

    I do have some plot ideas for new stories, but I am really determined to focus on getting some of these back burner stories finished. My big overwhelming problem from the time I first took up a pen (or laptop) to write is that I leave some great stories unfinished. I'd like to change that about my writing style. 

    And that's the great thing about ShoStoWriMo. This is what my dream and idea for ShoSto is, shorties! You are free to write new stories or work on older, unfinished stuff. I'm here in my office singing: "It's my ShoSto and I'll write what I want to... You can write too, whatever you want to do!" 
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