The End

This has been a year of incredible highs and even lower lows.  My sixth novel did gangbusters--at least on the scale that I use--and my seventh novel found a publishing home.  Since then, however, things have not been so great.  I wrote four more novels over that time period, which have received varying levels of interest.  The latest one has yet to sell a single copy.  With the end of the year, however, and the beginning of a new one, I am always looking for means of self-improvement.  Lately I have been going through the process of updating and re-pricing my paperback novels, to provide a more professional, uniform appearance.  So far, so good.  I also started growing a beard, which anyone who knows me well will find completely bizarre and out of character.  But it's a new year, and possibly a new me, so we'll see how it works out.  I don't make resolutions, nor do I set impossible goals for myself.  However, I hope to improve this blog as the months pass.  I'm trying, anyway. 

Dark Horse

Way back in July-August of this year, I tried my hand at writing a romance novel with elements of mystery and suspense thrown in.  The book was written in a little under thirty days, but in spite that short timeline, the story was the result of a great deal of thought, effort, and writing.  Thus far no publisher has been interested, however, and therefore I have put together the book for sale on my own.  I recently learned how to “style” a document—a debt of gratitude is owed to the Smashwords Style Guide—and it was much easier to put together the book after going through this process.  For the first time, one of my print novels looks like the genuine article.  I wish I had known earlier how easy the process truly was.  I have already reworked the interior of one novel, and am considering doing the rest.  It is a simple cut-and-paste job; the most difficult part is redoing the interiors on CreateSpace.  Anyway, for readers who might be interested, I am including links to the e-book and paperback versions of Dark Horse at the close of this blog.

Dark Horse

 

Round About Way

In the past I have complained about being rejected from both jobs and publishers and receiving either a form letter response, or none at all.  I will never do that again.

As an author, I have to say that the previous month has been by turns rewarding and draining.  I wrote an entire novel for NaNoWriMo that I am extremely proud of, but I have also received too many publishing rejections to count.  Most of them were innocuous enough, and I quickly moved on.  However, I am prone to pinning my hopes on a certain thing:  a job that I really want, a vacation that I want to be amazing, or a book that I really feel needs to reach a wider audience.  As such, I had entirely too much emotion invested in a novel that received a crushing rejection.  This rejection did not come in the form of a brief missive, however.  It was a lengthy, detailed email of several paragraphs, spelling out in comprehensive terms why this book was not only unacceptable for their line but also focusing on flaws in my story and its execution.  I will be honest and tell you that I did not read the entire email.  The breadth and scale of the rejection was more than I could take, and I decided to move onto the very next thing:  an email from a friend, letting me know that she was enjoying another of my novels, and that I was a very good writer.  It’s funny and interesting in hindsight that these two messages were received in the same batch.  It was almost as though some power greater than me knew that I needed encouragement and positive feedback in the wake of something negative and discouraging.  At any rate, I am editing two novels and readying another for publication, so hopefully my audience will stick by me—and hopefully I will be able to stand by my writing.

In Too Deep

I have embarked upon every author’s favorite task—editing.  Insert sarcasm here, please.  So far I have uncovered one continuity error that I knew was there during the entire writing process but didn’t bother to fix.  It has now been altered.  I found the usual amount of typos, but also a first for myself:  places where the word is so far off the mark that I have no clue what I originally intended to write.  Anyway, in those cases I had to look at the context of either the sentence or the passage and hope for the best.  I’ve never written anything—yet—that turned my stomach afterward and required a complete deletion, but I have to say that I really like the chemistry between the characters in this novel.  It’s fun to watch their story unfold yet again.

NaNoWriMo, Week Four

At Day 21 of this month, after a writing marathon that spanned the better part of twenty-four hours, I completed my novel at 72, 406 words—far past the NaNoWriMo challenge of 50,000 words.  This amount of writing marks a personal best for me.  I had previously written a 70,000 word novel in thirty days—the book which provided the seed for this most recent one—but I blew through all of my expectations for NaNoWriMo.  I hadn’t written in close to three months prior to beginning this novel, and I had an irrational fear that I wouldn’t even remember how to form a sentence, much less an entire book.  Throughout the course of the project, I pushed myself to write past my limits, to think critically about my characters and further explore what went on inside their heads, what made them tick, and what they were afraid of.  In the course of this, I think I discovered something about myself:  for as long as I enjoy writing, I will do it, regardless of the number of readers I reach.  Writing is a task that fosters creativity, personal growth, and introspection, three things I need in my life.

NaNoWriMo, Week Three

Last night I blasted past 62,000 words, but I couldn’t tell you whether or not this is a good thing.  We tend to have a jaundiced eye toward lack of quality when it comes to our own work.  As my friend and fellow Nano participant, Amanda told me, we are so involved in the process that it is difficult to actually see anything but the novel.  In my case I blasted through the 50,000 word challenge so quickly that I literally wasn’t seeing anything else.  As I have emphasized before, finishing a novel becomes a challenge, because you want every single thread, every drop of paint, to form a tapestry, a masterpiece of words and emotions.  And as with everything else in life, this is much easier said than done.  You may have to complete the work and remove yourself from it, stepping back out of the pond and letting the ripples fade to nothing, before you can truly see your work for what it is.  When I next post this blog, I hope to have completed the novel’s rough draft.  We’ll see how it goes.

NaNoWriMo, Week Two

As of this writing, I have completed more than 45,000 words of this novel.  My standard operating practice involves no going back and editing until the work is done, and I plan to do the same here.  My goal, again, is to blow past the 50,000 words that are required and get at least 70,000 before I put this one to bed.  Writing this novel with such speed, at such a torrid pace, was completely unexpected for me.  As I try to rake leaves and dodge snow, and do laundry and clean house and get myself ready for Christmas, I leave ample time every day to work on my novel. I continue to learn that writing is about pushing yourself and cranking out story even when you’re not feeling one-hundred percent.  When you push yourself past your limits, to the edge of your expectations and over the cliff, you find out how bad you want to cross the finish line and what you’ll do to get there.  As far as the novel is concerned, I have altered some plot points since I wrote my summary, but the basic story is unchanged.