Category Archives: author

When you’re not ready for the story, try anyway.

Posted on by
Reply

I haven’t traveled as much I would like. This has destroyed some of my writing.

When I write real world cities that I haven’t experienced I get a flustered and feel like faking it won’t work. When this happens I don’t want to continue with the story. I worry about people from those cities reading my stories and saying, “ah, its not like that.”

This has come into play with the recent story as parts are set in London, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and the Orkney Islands. These are places I intend to visit in the future. Today our finances don’t allow me to go gallivanting across the U.K.

This presents a quandary I’m trying to puzzle out.

I’ve written about Paris, Prague and other places in stories before, but this book is different from the others. It has more of my soul in it.

I have Scottish ancestry and its somewhere I’ve wanted to visit since I was a little kid, I’m 43.

I’m fighting with myself on this one and I don’t want to get things wrong.

My hope is that when I finish this, I would’ve been to those places.

Although I’m apprehensive about it, I’ll continue to write. Its one of those ideas that shouldn’t be tossed in the bin. It needs to be finished.

Being in love with the story helps with this one. I don’t want to give up on something I’m in love with, regardless of the issues my mind has with it.

Happy writing.

I’m tired of being unpublished.

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve reached a point where I’m tired of being unpublished.

I’ve written eight books and haven’t published a single one.

There are many reasons for this. But they boil down to not editing and not giving as much time to editing as I do to the first draft.

This caused me, at times, to hate writing.

After trying to edit one book, I got tired of it and wrote a couple more short stories as well as a novella.

So with every screw up a plan is born.

This plan will allow me to write something new as well as edit. I tried editing at night. It took away from time with my wife.

I love time with my wife. Sure, most nights were sitting across the room from each other reading. In Las Vegas I was lucky to get that.

I have two novels I’ll be editing for the year. I want to make sure they’re as perfect as possible.

Last summer 13 agents said no to one of my books. After having my writing group go over it, they noticed glaring issues only a different set of eyes can give a story.

I’ll be giving my writing group one of these. The other I’ll post in various places.

I will publish this year.

Happy writing!

Keep writing.

Posted on by
Reply

There are moments as a writer when you have to ignore the world around you.

This is related to my post on Tuesday.

I often consider going quiet on social media, in text messages, and everything else.

I want to take this break to finish projects.

There’s a worry, especially as an unpublished writer, that going offline for long amounts of time you’ll lose eyeballs.

I feel this is true and if I leave all my social media I’ll lose everything I’ve built.

Being that I’m publishing on Amazon later this year, I know I won’t leave my blog or Twitter and I may have start a new Facebook account.

I don’t want to but in order to get eyeballs on my writing I may have to.

I’ll keep going on the blog because I’m enjoying talking to all of my readers.

I hope you’re having a good day!

Stop caring about other’s perceptions.

Posted on by
Reply

Over the last year there have been more moments where I felt alone in my process and journey.

Where, other than my wife and one or two others, I didn’t feel there was the support I thought I’d get.

Those moments grew throughout the year. They led to decisions in my writing as well as in my social media activity.

As a writer working towards publishing, especially in the past year, I felt it was time to address this.

I went off of Facebook a year ago. Have taken breaks from Instagram and Twitter, as well as this blog.

I learned a lot from those breaks. One of things is, there are a core group of people who want me to succeed in writing, then there are those who don’t care.

A few years ago, this would have hurt like hell. Today, it burns a little, but that’s all. Those who don’t support my writing are not necessary for me to write. Nor are they necessary to my every day life.

It may sound like a rant, which I don’t do often, but maybe it is. I’ve reached a point as a writer where approval isn’t necessary for my mental health , that’s good right?

The last few days I’ve been writing something different and it’s been hard. It goes against a lot of who I am. It’s also a great story idea. When we, as writers and humans, reach a point where the approval of others is no longer necessary. That’s when we’ll stop caring what people think about us. It’s freeing and scary.

Today, I put some words on the page on this story. I’m not sure what I’ll do with it once it’s done, but its fun as hell.

Hope you’re having a good Tuesday. Make sure to take care of yourself today and I’ll see you on Thursday.

Happy Writing!

Finding my way to publishing this year.

Posted on by
Reply

There are times when life warrants taking a break.

With the completion of an eight book I’m pulling the trigger this year on publishing.

This decision stalked me for the last couple of years. I knew I needed to do it but I also didn’t understand publishing very well.

I listened to various podcasts through the last couple of months to improve my knowledge. Now it comes to finding a copyeditor.

The financial means are there, but its by a skin of our teeth situation.I want to publish something others will enjoy. I also don’t want to put my family at a financial disadvantage.

When it comes to creating covers, I’m searching for affordable. Like I said, I don’t want to put my family at financial disadvantage to publish.

These are what haunt me at night.