Showing posts with label writing is scary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing is scary. Show all posts
Friday, February 26, 2016
Milestones
It's taken me a couple of days to decide what to post for today. I was trying to be proactive by coming up with a topic in advance and jotting down the bulk of my thoughts before tweaking for the final posting, but a true milestone happened yesterday and so, that's what I'm going to share. :)
I'm going to be a (self) published author by November! That's the goal, anyway.
But that's not the milestone. Not yet anyway...
Last December, my writer peeps and I were sitting around Cotton Patch for our after-the-meeting get-together and my dear friend Clover said, "Anyone interested in doing a box set for Christmas next year?" Pretty much everyone at the table said they liked the idea and we moved on to other varied and random topics. But that question and the possibilities stuck in my head all through the holidays, and ideas percolated.
When we reassembled in January, I asked if Clover meant it and if everyone was serious about participating. Everyone agreed and we brainstormed how we wanted things to work. I started writing my contributions at the beginning of February and yesterday morning, I sent it out to the other participants! It was pretty exciting.
That was the milestone. My first major for-publication effort was sent out into the world for the opinion of others. Yikes. YAY!
So this is it. I've danced around the idea of being published for years--like twelve of them, but the route of traditional publishing never appealed to me. Luckily for me, the romance publishing industry began growing and changing back when I first joined and now the options are much more to my liking.
The next milestone will be to finish and publish a book. I want to have something else available should someone enjoy my storytelling in Christmas thing so much they want to see what else I've got out there. It's not going to be much. One book, possibly two.
One's in a completely written first draft state and waiting for me to start reading the paper copy I printed. The other's not quite done and will be in a similar state once it is. I have a lot of work ahead of me. Hard work. Energy-sucking work. Energizing work.
So that theory of mine that things are going to calm down after my trip to Atlanta...yeah--maybe not so much. :)
WHEEEE!!
Friday, May 22, 2015
Pushing Past the Self-Doubts and the Fear
For the past two months I've been hard at work on a brand new book. My track record is abysmal when it comes to actually finishing, I will admit, but I really love these characters and really do want to share them with the world.
The last two weeks have been a struggle for me and this is probably the point at which I've given up and quit in the past, but I've continued on even if I only worked on it for half an hour, fifteen minutes, five minutes...
(This is how I feel--overtaken by doubt and fear...)
It probably wasn't the best timing to take a particular online class either as now I'm worrying about that aspect of my book. I will admit to not working on it at all for a few days here and there, and reading when I should have been writing/revising. It definitely helped get me back to work to have writer friends encouraging me to stick with it and asking to read the book. (Well, that also a little scary, frankly.)
So I've put on my big girl panties and gotten back to work with determination to get the story to a good enough state to send to one of my critique partners. (She's not too scary.) She keeps asking for it. I'll see what she has to say and then make yet another pass at it and see where it stands.
I thought this was appropriate--end of story, you know THE END...
Anyway...
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