Category: Uncategorized

The Author Jitters

I’ve been focusing too much on the novel. Ok, maybe not too much. I have the cover properly sized and titled and the like, I have copies both for hardback and e-book, I have formatted and proofread (again!) and I’m still worried about whether it’s good enough.

I’m dropping the novel November 1 (not November 15 as I said before). I am way ahead. Once I get my favorite beta reader’s notes in, I could finish the submission. All is good, but I’m still panicking.

I have other things to focus on (besides work, of course). I could start plotting for NaNo in November. I will be writing the sequel to The Kringle Conspiracy, known as Kringle in the Dark. NaNo has a prepping self-guided class that will get me into November in good shape. I just need to focus on them.

I have to be a bit less antsy with this writing thing. 

I live to create

 In putting together the parts for the book-to-be, I discovered something important about me — I like creating things. Not just for myself, but I like what I create going out to the public in tangible form.

I don’t have the talent to draw, build, or knit. People keep me away from sharp objects like power drills and saws. (With good reason; I once had a power drill fall on my foot.) My kitchen is not organized enough to bake for others, like the woman who makes macarons in town. I can write. 

And now it looks like I can publish.

I don’t know if I will put everything I’ve written into self-publishing. I need to see if this book can get traction. I need to see if my queries (now improved) can get traction. But I have time, because I am satisfying a most basic instinct of mine — creating and putting forth into a hopefully irresistible package.


Getting excited about self-publishing



I’m excited about this new book thing.

I think it will be ready for a November launch.I have a cover for it, I have some blurbs to go on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. I have other things to do, but I think I can get them done in time.

I know I will probably not get too many readers. But self-publishing a little book like this breaks a curse I have in my mind that I will never get published. It also breaks me in on how to publish on a low-stakes book. (I consider my more serious books, the fantasy novels, high-stakes.)

And this particular book … Kris Kriegel, the young toymaker with a Santa sensibility, has been with me as a character since high school. The first scene of The Kringle Conspiracy is basically the story I wrote in high school for my creative writing class. That was 40 years ago, and it’s still as relevant now.

So I’m excited, and I’m looking forward to a Kringle Christmas.

I wish I could write modern poetry

 


I wish I was better at poetry.

If I believe the critiques I get, I quit writing before things get good. That’s not my feeling at all. I don’t want things to drag on; I don’t want to put words in just to put words in. I’m writing moments more than histories.

I cut my teeth on Emily Dickinson, who didn’t even end her poems except with a dash. But that’s not fashionable anymore; poems wander for pages now, and I don’t know how to do that.

I wonder how I can learn to write modern poetry without shelling out a lot of money for a master class or, worse, having to take a real college course. 

Poetry, ironically, is what I thought myself the best at, and it’s now what I write the least.

Today is my 57th birthday.

 


Today is my 57th birthday. I tend to celebrate birthdays by making observations of the previous year, and this time is no different:

  • I don’t feel 57. I have the heart of a thirty-year-old. Unfortunately, I have the face and body of a 57-year-old.
  • Writing-wise:
    • I still have room to improve especially cover letters.
    • I have options: I can self-publish if I want.
  • World events:
    • I knew we were going to have a pandemic; I didn’t count on being this emotionally settled with it.
    • It truly seems as if the world I had grown up with: women’s rights, minority rights, gay rights — in other words, true equality — is crumbling. I need to find the right way to fight.
  • Personal life
    • I broke a curse that I had lived with all my life. I can’t explain it all here, but the situation had all of the hallmarks of a curse. End result: I accept that I am loveable as I am.
    • It’s really not bad being in one’s fifties — It makes me nervous that I’m closer to 60 than 50, and I can’t believe my high school graduation was almost 40 years ago. 
    • I’m on a pretty even keel emotions wise, for which I am grateful.
In-between the disruption of COVID and the crimes of this political administration, beyond feeling overwhelmed by the changes in the world, the little crumbs of life are good — laughing with my husband, playing with Chloe the kitten, watching Poirot, interacting with students (as strange as it is with small classrooms and Zoom meetings).

Tonight I will go to dinner at William Coy’s with my husband and contemplate how I can make next year a better one.

A lull — and jitters

 


I’m waiting for my favorite beta reader to react to my book. What she says will determine my final actions — do I put the book out this November or do I hold it back to show to a dev editor?

I’m pretty confident about the book not needing a dev editor, because I read through a number of times for flow, for sense, for proofreading. 

No, I’m not confident, but I can’t afford a dev editor right now. I’m excited about putting it out. I haven’t had momentum like this in ages. In a perfect world, I’d have a quick and inexpensive dev editor. Maybe if I go through it one more time …

How do people go through all this publishing a book? 

In the Flow

 I’m happiest when I have something to work on, something that catches my fancy. When that happens, I can give it intense focus such that I float within the bubble of my attention and time flies by without me.

This, in the psychological literature, is called flow. Flow takes a person out of time and place, and becomes almost a type of meditation. It requires tasks that one is competent yet challenged in. Flow is good for creating happiness. 

I’ve been creating book covers (both e-book and traditional) for The Kringle Conspiracy, which (depending on whether I feel it needs a dev edit) will be coming out in time for Santa. My favorite beta reader (Hi Sheri!) is on it, and my husband has already given it a good look through. Because it’s so short and so simple for something I write, it may be ready. In the meantime, the cover is ready.

So designing that cover gave me flow. What else gives me flow? Writing, at least in the drafting stage. Reading. Sometimes teaching, but not lately with all the equipment I have to sling around. 

It’s important to have flow, to take one away from worries and stress (like COVID) and the like.

What are your flow activities?

Maybe not a Christmas Present

 


 

 

So I’m editing Kringle Conspiracy, a book I’d put in a drawer for two or three years. My natural pessimism is setting in, and I stew about whether it will be good enough to publish. On the schedule I’m on, I’m going to have to do without a dev edit, and I’m rather uneasy about that. On the other hand, it’s a pretty simple book.

The thing is, I want to get it online in time for the Christmas season, which means October. I don’t think anyone can dev edit in a week, giving me two weeks to fix. I could save it for next Christmas and get a dev edit, which would be the great thing to do if I were patient. I’m working on being patient.

I’ll let you know. I’ll do this rewrite and let it sit for a bit, then decide if I need to hold back for a dev editor. So maybe you won’t see this by Christmas.

Look! I might be self-publishing something!

 

 


Yesterday, I was trying to figure out what I would write for NaNoWriMo, which is in November, but it’s never too early. Richard, my husband and partner in crime, suggested rewriting a Christmas Romance novel I put aside in despair thinking it wasn’t romancy enough. 

I thought about that, and then looked for a tool to help it be more romancy (it’s now a word, deal with it) and found Jami Gold’s romance beat sheet. Walking through the beat sheet, it seems that there’s not a huge amount of work I need to do — emphasize some points, make sure the timing is right, fix a subplot. This can be done.

Then I stepped into Facebook and asked my friends if I should be fixing a novel that read a bit like a Hallmark Christmas movie. I got a resounding “Yes” with one of my friends, Heather, suggesting I self-publish it. 

And the bubble up giggle of delight broke out. Maybe this, a low-stakes publication, would be my entry into self-publishing! I don’t think of myself as a romance writer, so I don’t have much ego invested in this if it doesn’t do well.

 So guess what I’ll be doing today? Rewriting, daydreaming, and shooting for a mid-October publication date. 

 

Any of my self-publishing friends out there, please check in with me!