The Act of Writing

I'm amazing at how difficult it can be to write.  It is of course a simple matter of typing or writing down your thoughts, the story in your head.  However, it gets to be so much more complex when you are writing for an audience.  Of course there is the grammar and punctuation to consider, but even more than that it's about making sure the story is readable, interesting, and makes sense. It has to be believable within context, meaning everything must follow the same rules within the same story.  Otherwise it just becomes nonsense and most people will not bother to read it.

I sit reading over what I have written, the first draft, the prewrite.  The story is good but the writing isn't, yet.  When I write the prewrite, my goal is just to get the story down, to get it finished so that I don't get lost or forget.  So while I'm reading what I have wrote, I know that parts are really bad writing and that I need to fix them...that's where it gets hard.  How do I make it better? How do I tie in what is written on page 10 with what's going on with pages 12-20?  I have rewritten one section, only to have another one no longer make sense with the new change...How to reconcile the two.

I have a hard time deleting parts of a story I worked hard on, removing phrases or sentences that I thought were particularly.  So editing is a lot of fits and starts.  A lot of staring off trying to picture what I've wrote, what I want to write.  A lot of rereading the same lines over and over, hoping the answer will come to me.

I love to write, but I have to say this process is frustrating sometimes.  Usually when I am faced with a problem and I don't know how to fix it I will Google it.  But this is something that can't be Googled.  This is something that I can only do by myself.  There is a lot of frustration and doubt that comes with it, but I have to say, once I have solved the problem and really great writing sits in front of me, I am incredibly proud of myself. 

Marketing my Book - Revenge Unknown

Gotta say, this marketing stuff is hard...and really time consuming.  I was never a big Twitter or Facebook person, never really saw the point in it, since I'm not the kind of person to give people minute to minute updates on what I ate, watched on the TV, or did in the bathroom.  But I can see the benefit of it for marketing...although I haven't yet seen the rewards.  But it's only been a couple of weeks, so I'm being patient.

I mean...it's not like I'm checking my book sales everyday, certainly not two or three times a day.../guilty.  Hey, I'm excited to have a book published.  I'll admit to many a headache though, in trying to get my stuff out there.  Between signing up for this website (about.me) and that website (klout.com) and posting excerpts here (tumblr) and there (twitter) and over there (facebook) and trying to keep up with everyone else's stuff so I can show that I'm interested in them so maybe they'll be interested in me, I just feel worn out.

This is why you pay for a publisher.  But I just don't want to hand the rights to my hard work over to someone who plans on telling me who I can and can't sell it do.

I'm not ready to throw in the towel yet.  Although lazy by nature, I am also extremely stubborn.  I am determined to make this work, so next step is to get out the business cards and start giving people stuff to throw away...hoping they'll at least glance at it first!

Oh, and I've got another book in the works, a completely different style but still a good read...and two others I'm doing research for that will be tied to Revenge Unknown.  I've got a lot of fun hard work ahead of me.

Revenge Unknown