Today the Dragon Wins

"Today the Dragon Wins" offers information from Fantasy Author and Professional Editor Sandy Lender. You'll also find dragons, wizards, sorcerers, and other fantasy elements necessary for a fabulous story, if you know where to look...

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Sandy Lender is the editor of an international trade publication and the author of the fantasy novels Choices Meant for Gods and Choices Meant for Kings, available from ArcheBooks Publishing, and the series-supporting chapbook, What Choices We Made.

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Saturday, May 12, 2007

Writers Guide
What Makes You Happy?
Or…check out this lime spot for some inspiration

I visited a site with one of those "Take-this-exciting-poll-now-and-see-how-closely-your-results-match-the-rest-of-society!" question things on the home page. The question was "What would make you happier?" I chuckled at it as I read through the options.
A) More love.
B) More time.
C) Better health.
D) Nothing. I'm as happy as can be.
E) Nothing. I'm too miserable.
Now, considering I pray for death daily, but I'm too chicken to risk damnation with suicide (yeah, working for those crazy uber-Catholics really screwed me up in the head), option C ain't my answer. What I found intriguing was the inordinate amount of time I spent debating whether my answer should be A or B. Come on. It's an online quiz on some freak-site homepage. I'm not getting graded on this. No one but Big Brother is capturing my information… What exactly does it say about my personality that I took in excess of five minutes to decide whether I would prefer more love or more time in my life?

Hunh.

I finally decided "screw love" and selected B—as did 25 percent of the 878 respondents up to that point. Turns out 40 percent of those people wanted more love. Poor sots. What was truly sad is 3 percent of the respondents answered E. Can you imagine selecting that? Eegads.

But the part of the site that perked me back up a bit, and which I thought writers might want to check out for some inspiration for their writing sessions, was this little survey on what makes you happy. There are six or seven multiple-choice questions that end up categorizing you. (Scientifically-based, I'm sure.) Turns out I'm an altruist. I found this odd because I answered one of the questions saying the person I'm least likely to miss an appointment with is an employer or future employer (thus leaving the friends and family and belly dance class in the dust). The result said I have a deep connection with doing well and being well and that nothing satisfies me more deeply than doing something for somebody else. Now, I'll go with "true" on these statements, but I feel awfully selfish at times, so I don’t know if the "what makes you happy" survey got it all correct or not.

So you guys can go check it out! Go to www.lime.com and peek at the surveys and questions and bizarre stuff there. Your warning: it's odd. Report back and let me know if the happy thoughts give you any inspiration for your writing session. I do pretty well working on the Choices Meant for Gods trilogy and its marketing when I'm happy, but I find that the third book (the one I'm currently writing) flows more easily when I'm in those "quiet desperation" moods.

"Some days, I just want the dragon to win."

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think I would have chosen more love. If I had all the time in the world I would fill it with a lot more love. This may sound cheesy, but you see the brighter side of things when you open your heart and spend the extra time with family and loved ones. This is coming from a 22 year old with all the time in the world! If you went back in time before you were married, you would have agreed.

8:13 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh, I forgot to say, it had to have taken you longer than 5 minutes to answer that lime.com poll question. By the way, I am sure a lovely character in your book must reflect some part of you. I plan on reading your 5 star rated book as soon as possible and get down to the nitty gritty. I have been in the south way too long.

8:46 PM  

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