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 . . . .