Guest Post: Writing For My Life by Laura Howard
/As a writer I have a process for how I go about my writing. Basically it involves lots of snacks, music and yelling. I will detail my crazy process for you eventually but for now I have something even more special...
I sat down and asked other 2013 debut authors to do guest posts for me on how their process has been. I basically gave them free will to write anything that described a bit about becoming a published author.
Today I have
Laura Howard
You’ll often hear stories about authors having a dream or some other inspiration and they sat down and wrote their entire story in a month of sleepless nights.That was so not the case for me.
The Forgotten Ones has been living with me for three and a half years. I’ve gone through sickness and health, deaths and births, yet still I got pulled back to the characters who just never left my thoughts.
Some days I was able to just write, where everything flowed and the hours flew by. But others where I eked out the words one by one until I had sentences. Then paragraphs. Maybe even a full page.
When I started writing The Forgotten Ones, it was just for fun. This was in 2009, before the huge surge in self-publishing. I saw the chances of it ever being traditionally published as incredibly slim. I just wanted to write the story that I thought about so often.
Things have changed so much since then. We’ve seen so many ups and downs in the publishing industry lately, it’s been a wild ride. I’ll never forget the day I decided maybe self-publishing wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all. It was about a year ago.
I had spent a lot of time turning my nose up at the idea of putting my book out on my own. But, once I saw authors like Jamie McGuire and Tamara Webber who were self-publishing and just killing it on Amazon, I knew that not only could I do it, but I absolutely SHOULD. There hasn’t been a moment since then that I’ve regretted that decision.
One thing that I promised myself was to never settle for less than top quality work. I never took a college writing course, and although some people are able to write a decent novel in a couple of drafts, I couldn’t. And I had promised myself that I wouldn’t publish anything but the best.
So, I’ve done my homework on every aspect of self-publishing. When the time comes to upload my book, I’ll have a basic idea of what I’m doing. But, the most important thing I’ve done, in my opinion, is several rounds of developmental editing. Like I said before, I didn’t have the ability to write a novel without improving my craft. I’m still learning, and always will be. But, I feel like I’ve come so far since that first draft.
I love Laura's post! I think it gives hope to others who maybe have been toiling over a story "forever" and haven't been able to get it out there.
I know sometimes I am discouraged when I see someone on Twitter say,
"I wrote 8K words today!"
I am all like "what the what?!?"
I think at the most I've done around 4K in a day and that was just an epic day.
I don't type extremely fast and I get distracted easily...
It's okay if you don't write it all in one month, publish it in the next and go on to writing book #2 in month three!
Every process is different.
What really matters in the end is that you just keep writing!
This pin has kept me in check through my process:
Cheers, my friends! I will have another fabulous interview next week so please be sure to follow me to keep up with these great authors and my own book...
