This is about that "last chapter" in the first draft manuscript of a book. It's that chapter that ties all sorts of events and thoughts together. It's where the conflict (or a subconflict) continues to crescendo, climaxes and then resolves (one way or another). However, even though I'm calling it "the last chapter" it is really my second-to-last chapter and the action will be spilling over in part to actual last chapter.
You might wonder why I am talking about the second to last chapter as if it is really the last chapter. That's because I've written the ending - that bit I like to include that transitions from the subending in my book in the series to the continuation of the story in the next book. That ending is the promise of more to come but also helps keep the reader from feeling annoyed or frustrated by the lack of at least some finality to the immediate conflict at hand. Or at least, that's what I intend it to be.
As a reader, I like things to be somewhat tied up at the end - although in a series, it can't fully be over. If it was, why would I read the next book? At the same time, if the book ends with the army in front of the castle, and I have to read the next book to find out if the characters I love survive, I get quite upset - unless of course, the next book is already out and I don't have to wait. In my case, since I have only a few paragraph started in that next book, and it might be up to a year before I finish it and release it, I wouldn't risk my readers getting mad at me. :)
In any event, why does it seem like this "last chapter" is so much harder to write? When I wrote the other parts, I wrote through the inspiration of the moment knowing that later I would likely rewrite it anyway. That might mean rewriting how I express the events, adding new ideas, or replacing existing ideas with freshly created ones. But this "last chapter" has been different. I have the general idea of what is to happen, but it's the details that are hanging me up. The character I am focused on right now will be doing something very clever and I want to get it just right. And it feels like I am so close, but just need to ponder a little bit more.
In the meantime, maybe I'll put some space in the draft for her role, which I know the ending of, and then write out what the contributing characters will be doing in this conflict. That way, I can keep progressing but still ponder these details that I am working out. In any event, I know that when it "clicks," it will come out fast much like that "AHA" moment.
If you've read this, thank you for listening to my "musings."
Friday, December 23, 2016
Thursday, December 22, 2016
The Library Game and Other Musings
While I was driving from store to store today for my holiday errands, I started to think about how readers find the books they read. But I'm not writing about that topic in this post. It's about a side trip that my mind took that I am about to share.
It was about what I will call "The Library Game." That name is really a misnomer because it's not really a game. It's really a random way of finding interesting books in the library.
The "game" starts with selecting a random section of call numbers in the library. First, you go through the general choices such as fiction vs. non-fiction and the like. When you've done so, you choose a random shelving section and go there to peruse the shelves. You look at every title and pull out the ones that catch your eye. If you do this, you may be very surprised by what you find.
I have taught my two children to do this because it opens up the horizons. A person doing this may find something this way that he or she would have never thought to look for. I know my kids have and I think we're going to be doing it again soon. When we do, I'll report our results here. If you play it, please share your findings in the comments below.
When I thought of the game today, I recalled a situation in which I had browsed a randomly selected group of library shelves and found surprises. It was in the basement of a Catholic College that I had attended. My mother worked at that college and needed a ride home. But I had arrived early and thus had some time to kill as a result. So, I headed over to the library with no particular purpose in mind. What I found in that basement was the occult section, and the books I found went back to the 1910s and 1920s. It was surprising to me to find early 20th century books on ghosts and the paranormal. I don't recall what I read, but I remember that while flipping through one of the books, I discovered some very odd and amazing theories on ghostly apparitions. Whether or not you believe in such things, it was a window into the past about what the so-called experts of the time thought about such matters. Now that I am thinking about it again - maybe I'll go back there sometime and find inspiration to write a story line for a new novel.
Also, in my thinking about the library and interesting library exploration, I thought of something not related to the Library Game. I recalled the time I went to the law library at Oxford. I had taken the train from Sheffield to Oxford expecting to be able to walk into the law library. It was only when I arrived that I learned that I needed special permission to enter the library. Fortunately, I was able to obtain that permission, but I was required to read an oath that centered around me respecting the library and using it with the utmost of care. The most memorable part of the oath that I can recall was that I would not introduce any source of flame into the library. Obviously, it would have never occurred to me do anything of the sort. But the fact that it was in the oath at all was astonishing.
If Wikipedia is to be believed, the oath is a historic one (which has been modified over time) and is thus:
I hereby undertake not to remove from the Library, nor to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document or other object belonging to it or in its custody; not to bring into the Library, or kindle therein, any fire or flame, and not to smoke in the Library; and I promise to obey all rules of the Library.
In closing, as you might guess, I could write endlessly about my love of libraries. And, I am sure I will do so in future posts.
It was about what I will call "The Library Game." That name is really a misnomer because it's not really a game. It's really a random way of finding interesting books in the library.
The "game" starts with selecting a random section of call numbers in the library. First, you go through the general choices such as fiction vs. non-fiction and the like. When you've done so, you choose a random shelving section and go there to peruse the shelves. You look at every title and pull out the ones that catch your eye. If you do this, you may be very surprised by what you find.
I have taught my two children to do this because it opens up the horizons. A person doing this may find something this way that he or she would have never thought to look for. I know my kids have and I think we're going to be doing it again soon. When we do, I'll report our results here. If you play it, please share your findings in the comments below.
When I thought of the game today, I recalled a situation in which I had browsed a randomly selected group of library shelves and found surprises. It was in the basement of a Catholic College that I had attended. My mother worked at that college and needed a ride home. But I had arrived early and thus had some time to kill as a result. So, I headed over to the library with no particular purpose in mind. What I found in that basement was the occult section, and the books I found went back to the 1910s and 1920s. It was surprising to me to find early 20th century books on ghosts and the paranormal. I don't recall what I read, but I remember that while flipping through one of the books, I discovered some very odd and amazing theories on ghostly apparitions. Whether or not you believe in such things, it was a window into the past about what the so-called experts of the time thought about such matters. Now that I am thinking about it again - maybe I'll go back there sometime and find inspiration to write a story line for a new novel.
Also, in my thinking about the library and interesting library exploration, I thought of something not related to the Library Game. I recalled the time I went to the law library at Oxford. I had taken the train from Sheffield to Oxford expecting to be able to walk into the law library. It was only when I arrived that I learned that I needed special permission to enter the library. Fortunately, I was able to obtain that permission, but I was required to read an oath that centered around me respecting the library and using it with the utmost of care. The most memorable part of the oath that I can recall was that I would not introduce any source of flame into the library. Obviously, it would have never occurred to me do anything of the sort. But the fact that it was in the oath at all was astonishing.
If Wikipedia is to be believed, the oath is a historic one (which has been modified over time) and is thus:
I hereby undertake not to remove from the Library, nor to mark, deface, or injure in any way, any volume, document or other object belonging to it or in its custody; not to bring into the Library, or kindle therein, any fire or flame, and not to smoke in the Library; and I promise to obey all rules of the Library.
In closing, as you might guess, I could write endlessly about my love of libraries. And, I am sure I will do so in future posts.
Saturday, December 10, 2016
Book 3 - The Peerless Seer's War Update
The Emaleen Andarsan Series, my fantasy book series for children 10+, is intended to include five books. I am currently working on the 3rd book in the series, entitled "The Peerless Seer's War." The draft manuscript currently has 78K words, with two chapters left, and a big event to occur.
I hope to finish the draft before the holidays, during which time I will prepare for the holidays, enjoy the company of my family (my husband and two children), and steal away time here and there to work out the kinks and do rewrites, where needed, in this manuscript. My hope is to provide the draft to my editor for the first of at least two rounds of editing.
I am also hoping to do the cover reveal in early January. I am currently thinking out how I would like the cover to appear.
I hope to finish the draft before the holidays, during which time I will prepare for the holidays, enjoy the company of my family (my husband and two children), and steal away time here and there to work out the kinks and do rewrites, where needed, in this manuscript. My hope is to provide the draft to my editor for the first of at least two rounds of editing.
I am also hoping to do the cover reveal in early January. I am currently thinking out how I would like the cover to appear.
Dozen Observations (Part 2)
I'm a little late posting the continuation of the original post. But finding time is difficult between working full-time outside of the home during the day, mothering my two children (which includes homework duty), and trying to find time to write. Adding to matters in this interval was the distraction of reading many books of other authors and the posting of reviews for some of them. I'm actually still working on the project as there were many, many books that interested me. However, a break to address my own needs is necessary.
So to continue my dozen observations --
4) The easy part is writing the book, and writing a book is not an easy task. To what am I referring, you may be wondering - unless you are a writer and you know? I'm referring to the challenge of promoting a book.
Unless the author is a household name already, these days publishing a book is like being a small fish in the ocean. This is true whether you are self-published or you have a traditional publisher behind you. But with a traditional publisher, based on what I have read, the author's ocean is the shelving spaces in the bookstore and the decisions on how many copies of the book are printed.
So, either way, the author is a fish (except Stephen King and the like, who are dolphins jumping gracefully out of the water to the oos and aahs of the sea world visitors who have come to see just that). The unknown author fish might have beautiful stripes and a zip in its swim, but except for predators, he or she is mostly lost in the large body of water among numerous other fish. That works well for the little fish that wants to hide in the crevices in the rocks and between the plants. But an author wants readers and you can't get those by hiding.
That being said, in getting "noticed" there are numerous contradictions to manage. The common advice available all over the internet tells you that you must market through social media. Yet you aren't really supposed to market in the traditional sense. If you do, you might annoy people and turn them off from reading your book. At the same time, when you step back and just interact without even mentioning your book, how does anyone actually notice you have a book for sale, or know why they might even be interested in your book.
There are those that say an author needs to build "social capital" before you can post a "buy my book type ad." But how much social capital do you need first and what does that look like? So an author might spend hours searching for or making content that might not be seen by many people anyway, trying desperately to market without marketing. Then maybe the person viewing it might stop and then click on my profile and then from there click on my Amazon and Barnes and Noble link and actually buy the book.
But when I think about how I last picked a book to buy (before I was author and interacting with other authors), I realize that I went to the bookstore and browsed the shelves for something that caught my eye, or I did a search on Amazon or Barnes and Noble for something that jumps out as interesting. But an unknown author will likely not be found in the local bookstore (or at least no easily), and will likely be buried so far down the search results list, that the average reader will never find the author's book. To rank higher, the author needs many sales. But to get sales the book has to be discoverable. So, there you go - the chicken and the egg problem of being an unknown author.
So what do we do when we get frustrated with this problem? We go on the hunt for inspiration memes to post on our Twitter accounts. If you're like me, you do this for at least two reasons. One is that all of those blogs that tell us that we need to be social on Twitter and other social media places seem to recommend the posting of inspirational memes. The other is that the memes we find uplift us enough that we can jump back into the fight to get noticed. At least they do for me (dream big, never give up, etc.). After all, you can't be successful if you give up when the going gets hard.
Finally, in this item - my last contradiction. Some of us authors find our creativity not by being extroverts and social butterflies, but by being at least somewhat introverted and more comfortable in own creative imaginations than we might be at a party. We might be nerds, or intellectuals with few peers, or the person at the party who would rather be along the walls observing the more amusing, outgoing people - you know, the ones who frequently get told, "You're so quiet. Are you sure you're having fun?" Thus, the contradiction is that we're told we have to be social extroverts on social media in order to sell our books. But although most of us would love to talk about our books with readers and would have no problem socializing for that reason, I get a sense that many of us would rather be writing, rather than conversing over other topics just to market indirectly. But as I said above, we're told that if we talk too much about our books, then we are marketing them directly and that's a bad thing.
All that being said, I love to interact with readers. In fact, I welcome feedback from readers and would be more than happy to answer questions. And, if I get comments to the comments, communications, or other material I put out there, I would love to engage in discussion. What's hard is trying to create the topic that starts the dialogue that's nothing about my book series hoping that it gets the books noticed.
5) Speaking of predators - Remember, I mentioned the little fish and the risk they have from predators. Those of us who put our hearts and souls into writing stories that we hope readers will enjoy (and tell us so), and then we can't get attention to ourselves so that we can find the readers, we are prone to be preyed on.
Who might prey on us you might ask? That would be the many professional and marketing services that need to be vetted for legitimacy.
Among those are marketing services that tell us we shouldn't be so frustrated with marketing our books on our own. We should just give our money to them so that they can market the books for us. It sounds great, and it's so tempting. But it's very difficult to determine which marketing "services" would just pocket the money and do nothing, which services will try in good faith to market the books but are no more effective than the author could already do for him or herself, and those services that are like finding diamond in a pile of boring, old, worthless rocks. I'm fairly certain the diamonds are out there but it's hard to tell who they are. Perhaps, though, I am also just overwhelmed by all of the choices.
The message here is that authors do need help and can't do everything (at least most of us) but we do have to be careful who we give our money to and we need to carefully evaluate whether there is a good chance of a return on investment.
Btw, I wouldn't be surprised if this post doesn't lead to numerous emails from some of those marketing services with bright claims of being the diamond that I just said exists. Then I'll be even more overwhelmed.
Then there are the numerous companies offering professional services for publishers/writers. I have used some, too, as authors do need professional services to success - editing, proofing, cover design, etc. But it is necessary to research carefully to make sure they are worth the money. Luckily, I have found service providers for all of these services with whose work I am very happy.
I have, however, received letters and emails from "publishers" who claim to have seen my work and have been impressed by it and want to publish my self-published books. But when I've looked them up, I have found evidence that they might not be as they want me to believe. They often turn out to be advertising services they want us to pay for. So, we independent authors have to be very careful to check anyone and everyone who wants to offer us a service to ensure that the service is legitimate and worth the money.
6) Something positive - I have learned that although I love being an attorney - my day job - I have found great fulfillment in the writing of stories. Some day, I suspect that I may want to quit my day job and write full time. And, despite all of the challenges/hurdles along the way that must be faced to be successful, I enjoy the creative work so much that it's all worth it.
That's enough for now. If you've read this and you've reached the end, please feel free to leave some comments. If they are kind, I shall respond. :)
So to continue my dozen observations --
4) The easy part is writing the book, and writing a book is not an easy task. To what am I referring, you may be wondering - unless you are a writer and you know? I'm referring to the challenge of promoting a book.
Unless the author is a household name already, these days publishing a book is like being a small fish in the ocean. This is true whether you are self-published or you have a traditional publisher behind you. But with a traditional publisher, based on what I have read, the author's ocean is the shelving spaces in the bookstore and the decisions on how many copies of the book are printed.
So, either way, the author is a fish (except Stephen King and the like, who are dolphins jumping gracefully out of the water to the oos and aahs of the sea world visitors who have come to see just that). The unknown author fish might have beautiful stripes and a zip in its swim, but except for predators, he or she is mostly lost in the large body of water among numerous other fish. That works well for the little fish that wants to hide in the crevices in the rocks and between the plants. But an author wants readers and you can't get those by hiding.
That being said, in getting "noticed" there are numerous contradictions to manage. The common advice available all over the internet tells you that you must market through social media. Yet you aren't really supposed to market in the traditional sense. If you do, you might annoy people and turn them off from reading your book. At the same time, when you step back and just interact without even mentioning your book, how does anyone actually notice you have a book for sale, or know why they might even be interested in your book.
There are those that say an author needs to build "social capital" before you can post a "buy my book type ad." But how much social capital do you need first and what does that look like? So an author might spend hours searching for or making content that might not be seen by many people anyway, trying desperately to market without marketing. Then maybe the person viewing it might stop and then click on my profile and then from there click on my Amazon and Barnes and Noble link and actually buy the book.
But when I think about how I last picked a book to buy (before I was author and interacting with other authors), I realize that I went to the bookstore and browsed the shelves for something that caught my eye, or I did a search on Amazon or Barnes and Noble for something that jumps out as interesting. But an unknown author will likely not be found in the local bookstore (or at least no easily), and will likely be buried so far down the search results list, that the average reader will never find the author's book. To rank higher, the author needs many sales. But to get sales the book has to be discoverable. So, there you go - the chicken and the egg problem of being an unknown author.
So what do we do when we get frustrated with this problem? We go on the hunt for inspiration memes to post on our Twitter accounts. If you're like me, you do this for at least two reasons. One is that all of those blogs that tell us that we need to be social on Twitter and other social media places seem to recommend the posting of inspirational memes. The other is that the memes we find uplift us enough that we can jump back into the fight to get noticed. At least they do for me (dream big, never give up, etc.). After all, you can't be successful if you give up when the going gets hard.
Finally, in this item - my last contradiction. Some of us authors find our creativity not by being extroverts and social butterflies, but by being at least somewhat introverted and more comfortable in own creative imaginations than we might be at a party. We might be nerds, or intellectuals with few peers, or the person at the party who would rather be along the walls observing the more amusing, outgoing people - you know, the ones who frequently get told, "You're so quiet. Are you sure you're having fun?" Thus, the contradiction is that we're told we have to be social extroverts on social media in order to sell our books. But although most of us would love to talk about our books with readers and would have no problem socializing for that reason, I get a sense that many of us would rather be writing, rather than conversing over other topics just to market indirectly. But as I said above, we're told that if we talk too much about our books, then we are marketing them directly and that's a bad thing.
All that being said, I love to interact with readers. In fact, I welcome feedback from readers and would be more than happy to answer questions. And, if I get comments to the comments, communications, or other material I put out there, I would love to engage in discussion. What's hard is trying to create the topic that starts the dialogue that's nothing about my book series hoping that it gets the books noticed.
5) Speaking of predators - Remember, I mentioned the little fish and the risk they have from predators. Those of us who put our hearts and souls into writing stories that we hope readers will enjoy (and tell us so), and then we can't get attention to ourselves so that we can find the readers, we are prone to be preyed on.
Who might prey on us you might ask? That would be the many professional and marketing services that need to be vetted for legitimacy.
Among those are marketing services that tell us we shouldn't be so frustrated with marketing our books on our own. We should just give our money to them so that they can market the books for us. It sounds great, and it's so tempting. But it's very difficult to determine which marketing "services" would just pocket the money and do nothing, which services will try in good faith to market the books but are no more effective than the author could already do for him or herself, and those services that are like finding diamond in a pile of boring, old, worthless rocks. I'm fairly certain the diamonds are out there but it's hard to tell who they are. Perhaps, though, I am also just overwhelmed by all of the choices.
The message here is that authors do need help and can't do everything (at least most of us) but we do have to be careful who we give our money to and we need to carefully evaluate whether there is a good chance of a return on investment.
Btw, I wouldn't be surprised if this post doesn't lead to numerous emails from some of those marketing services with bright claims of being the diamond that I just said exists. Then I'll be even more overwhelmed.
Then there are the numerous companies offering professional services for publishers/writers. I have used some, too, as authors do need professional services to success - editing, proofing, cover design, etc. But it is necessary to research carefully to make sure they are worth the money. Luckily, I have found service providers for all of these services with whose work I am very happy.
I have, however, received letters and emails from "publishers" who claim to have seen my work and have been impressed by it and want to publish my self-published books. But when I've looked them up, I have found evidence that they might not be as they want me to believe. They often turn out to be advertising services they want us to pay for. So, we independent authors have to be very careful to check anyone and everyone who wants to offer us a service to ensure that the service is legitimate and worth the money.
6) Something positive - I have learned that although I love being an attorney - my day job - I have found great fulfillment in the writing of stories. Some day, I suspect that I may want to quit my day job and write full time. And, despite all of the challenges/hurdles along the way that must be faced to be successful, I enjoy the creative work so much that it's all worth it.
* * *
That's enough for now. If you've read this and you've reached the end, please feel free to leave some comments. If they are kind, I shall respond. :)
Friday, November 18, 2016
A Dozen Observations I've Had Since I Became an Author (Part 1)
It's been almost a year since I published my first book (December 9th, 2015). Over the last few days, I have been musing over the past year's events. To my surprise, I've realized that since I started my journey to become an author, I have learned a few lessons and made a number of observations.
This is the first of a series of post in which I will identify 12 such lessons/observations. I will address them in no specific order of importance.
1) Inspiration is everywhere if you allow yourself to be open to it. It is amazing how many experiences I have during the day that inspire the next event in my current book or a storyline for a future book, or that generally inspire my creative spark. It could be a conversation, a photo, a television show, a song, or a negative event that happened.
Have you seen that t-shirt that communicates that it is not wise to anger an author because you might end up a murder victim in the author's next book? It's similar in message to the t-shirt that warns persons not to annoy a dragon because "you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup." But in all seriousness - I don't write novels with murders in them since I currently write children's books.
Whatever the source of the inspiration or the product, the surge from inspiration and the pride from producing is an uplifting and empowering feeling.
2) It's amazing of how often I think of analogies now. I find myself constantly finding analogies to illustrate my points at work. A hard project brings to mind the pushing of an eight-foot high boulder up a steep hill. The possibility of not succeeding at the project conjures the image of the boulder rolling back down the hill as I run away as fast as possible to avoid being crushed. I wonder if this just me or if other writers experience it too.
3) There are many people who are fixated on certain rules that they say must be followed in order for a writing to be considered worthy. The conundrum, however, is that each of these rules has an opposite rule which has its own staunch followers. The Oxford comma serves as a perfect example. I abstain from mentioning any others in order to avoid fights in the comments section.
It grows late. So, I am wrapping up for now. To be continued another day . . . .
This is the first of a series of post in which I will identify 12 such lessons/observations. I will address them in no specific order of importance.
1) Inspiration is everywhere if you allow yourself to be open to it. It is amazing how many experiences I have during the day that inspire the next event in my current book or a storyline for a future book, or that generally inspire my creative spark. It could be a conversation, a photo, a television show, a song, or a negative event that happened.
Have you seen that t-shirt that communicates that it is not wise to anger an author because you might end up a murder victim in the author's next book? It's similar in message to the t-shirt that warns persons not to annoy a dragon because "you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup." But in all seriousness - I don't write novels with murders in them since I currently write children's books.
Whatever the source of the inspiration or the product, the surge from inspiration and the pride from producing is an uplifting and empowering feeling.
2) It's amazing of how often I think of analogies now. I find myself constantly finding analogies to illustrate my points at work. A hard project brings to mind the pushing of an eight-foot high boulder up a steep hill. The possibility of not succeeding at the project conjures the image of the boulder rolling back down the hill as I run away as fast as possible to avoid being crushed. I wonder if this just me or if other writers experience it too.
3) There are many people who are fixated on certain rules that they say must be followed in order for a writing to be considered worthy. The conundrum, however, is that each of these rules has an opposite rule which has its own staunch followers. The Oxford comma serves as a perfect example. I abstain from mentioning any others in order to avoid fights in the comments section.
It grows late. So, I am wrapping up for now. To be continued another day . . . .
Thursday, November 17, 2016
Introduction
Welcome to my blog. I am a mother of two, a lawyer during the day, and author by night and weekend.
My first novel was The Peerless Seer, the first of the Emaleen Andarsan Series for children ages 10 and up. This idea for this series came to me in a dream. After discussing the idea with my two children, a girl who was 11 at the time and a boy who was 9. They agreed to be part of my creative team, and we began to discuss story ideas. Although I wrote the story myself, they have participated in many of the decisions required for the development of the book, including cover design decisions. They have also been my beta-readers, and my daughter has attended author events with me.
Last August, I released the second book, The Peerless Seer's Gambit. I am currently working on the third book, The Peerless Seer's War. In all, I plan five books for this series.
This blog is about my journey as I strive to complete the book series, learn all I can to continue to improve as an author, juggle my mom duties, and survive my day job.
My first novel was The Peerless Seer, the first of the Emaleen Andarsan Series for children ages 10 and up. This idea for this series came to me in a dream. After discussing the idea with my two children, a girl who was 11 at the time and a boy who was 9. They agreed to be part of my creative team, and we began to discuss story ideas. Although I wrote the story myself, they have participated in many of the decisions required for the development of the book, including cover design decisions. They have also been my beta-readers, and my daughter has attended author events with me.
Last August, I released the second book, The Peerless Seer's Gambit. I am currently working on the third book, The Peerless Seer's War. In all, I plan five books for this series.
This blog is about my journey as I strive to complete the book series, learn all I can to continue to improve as an author, juggle my mom duties, and survive my day job.
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