Writers On The Move: Writing the Second Book: Is it Easier?: Ten years ago, if someone had told me I would have two books published by now, I would’ve laughed—longingly of course. My first novel, Cowgirl Dreams, was released in December 2008, almost ten years after I started writing it. The sequel, Follow the Dream, came out two years later.
People say to me, “The second book must be a lot easier than the first one, right?”
Well, yes and no. I guess I could say that I cheated, in a way. I wrote the two books as one long book to begin with. But when I began researching publishers, I found that the word count for the “western” genre was generally shorter. It just happened that I found a place in about the middle where I thought it could be easily divided. But then I had to make sure the second book could stand alone and fill in some of the back story without resorting to the old “telling” versus “showing.”
Read more here http://www.writersonthemove.com/2011/10/writing-second-book-is-it-easier.html
There’s something happening in animation right now that’s worth paying attention to—not because it’s simply nostalgic, but because it’s deeply human. As someone who works in the mental health and creative storytelling space, I can’t help but see these conversations about art, AI, and hand-drawn storytelling as part of a bigger theme: our collective hunger for authenticity. We live in a time where AI-generated content is everywhere—convenient, efficient, and often soulless. It’s not surprising that artists and audiences alike are looking back toward something that feels more tactile, more imperfect, more human. That brings us to 2D animation, an art form that has shaped generations and now, it seems, might just be making a comeback. Here’s what Language of the Soul podcast host, Dominick Domingo, had to say on this trend: There’s been a lot of industry talk lately speculating about 2D/traditional ANIMATION making a comeback. Recent articles confirm that although Disney has not greenlit...