Tag Archives: Publishing

What fiction is to me.

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The thought of what fiction is to me and what it means to me has been on my mind this week.

It’s the little spaces in between paragraphs when I’m considering what to write next. The moments when I write something well and amaze my self.

Most of all it’s freedom.

Freedom from distractions. Freedom to find purpose in the lives of the characters I create and the ability to try and scare them.

I used to write to impress people. I thought it would but most people don’t care.

When I write it’s to scare myself and maybe my wife. She’s my first reader and if I can scare both of us, I feel accomplished.

I gave up writing for others. There’s no satisfaction in it. There’s no reward in it. They won’t come to you frightened. Most of them won’t read what you write anyway so what’s the use.

Fiction to me is being myself. Finding purpose within the words and trying to make something memorable.

I may not be published but writing for myself is rewarding as hell.

I’m tired of being unpublished.

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I’ve reached a point where I’m tired of being unpublished.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

Finding my way to publishing this year.

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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.

How to get past the narrator.

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As I said in the last post: when it comes to the narrator’s voice I have a fear of it.

On the surface this fear was founded on show don’t tell and info dumping. In hindsight, there’s more to it and it’s about me personally.

I’ve always had a fear of giving too much away about myself. This led to problems with parents and my wife.

I didn’t want to let a side of me out. We are the narrator of our lives and if we don’t control the narrative others will through lies.

I had this fear of people not understanding who I was, what I wanted out of life or whether I was the type of person who would do horrible things. Then I realized, people will judge me no matter what I say.

When it came to narrating a story, I began to look at it similarly.

If I control the narrative of my life and people think what they want anyway, why should I care what they say? Why should the narrator in my novels and short stories be any different?

I shouldn’t!

Before, I would write a story worried about what someone thought about it. Now, after dealing with the narrator issues, I understood I can’t make someone like what I wrote so I should enjoy the process more.

I began to write better.

I put in better detail and stopped caring whether what someone would think about it.

My writing flourished and I started a new novel in the beginning of December 2018. I destroyed my word count because the fear I had vanished.

How has your writing flourished in the past year? What did you do different to improve? Tell me in the comments.

Not Giving up on what I want.

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There are dreams in the world that happen because we take a chance.

We’re capable of doing great things, but there are moments when we falter.

The truth is, for most of us, fear runs our lives.

It keeps us from achieving greatness.

I used to be one of those people.

I feared people would read my writing and hate. But they’d judge me based only on my writing, not on who I am.

A year ago I sent off my first short story to a magazine. The rejections have come in ever since.

Not one of my stories has been picked up. I don’t know why, but I’ll keep going. I’ll keep improving. The only way to get published it to improve every day. The only way to do that is to write every day or if you’re not writing, at least be reading.

This year I sent off a novel. It’s been seen by three agents. Two of them still have it. The third sent a form rejection.

But I’m not stopping.

I have eight more agents on my list.

When I get rejections from all of them, I’ll shelve it and work on the other one.

I have a goal. It won’t be achieved until I’m published.

I’ve written seven novels, over 100 short stories.

Some of them good, some bad, but I keep writing.

I won’t accept being unpublished.

This year I’ve improved more than any year. My focus hasn’t wavered.

I’m starting another novel next month, another novel I’ll be editing, and few short stories I’ll be submitting.

This road doesn’t end until I’m published.