Dream: Unpublished Writer to Published Author

Writing ignites my imagination and fuels my life. I'm an unpublished writer, but a writer nonetheless. Why? Because I cannot be anything else. I've been dreaming about, obsessing about, and dabbling in creative writing for almost ten years. It was the summer that my plans for my great career fell through and was struggling with figuring out who I was, like many college graduates. Enter the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I took my first class about writing for children and never looked back. Every class I've taken, every project I've started and killed, I have been determined to keep going. Determined to finish a project worthy of sending out into the world.

Now I have the project that has chance of living on the pages free from the confines of my imagination. I finished the first draft during National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and am currently rewriting it. I have no illusions that just because I finish a novel means I can land an agent or a publisher. But just because I'm not already published doesn't mean I can't be. The minds at Writer's Relief have written an article about exactly that topic and offer the steps we dreamers can take to reach our goals.

Can Unpublished Authors Get Literary Agents? You Bet! Here’s How

I've always been a huge believer in the "act as if" theory. The philosophy is that you act as if you have already achieved your goal. You mimic the choices of others who have already reached the goal you are pursuing. I first learned of this technique when I was a young professional entering the workforce. I was told to dress like the person whose job I wanted and to find out what they did to get where they were. Although I did not stay in corporate America, I did have a very successful career and can thank the motto "act as if" for many of my accomplishments. Practicing this theory gets you to push yourself out of your comfort zones and gets you to do the work while building your own self-confidence. Writer's Relief has outlined some of the traits of successful writers that can help us in our own journey towards success.

Markers Of Success: How Many Of These Key Personality Traits Do You Have?

So I'm taking the steps to "act as if" I am a published author although my stories remain on my hard drive and not on the shelves of local bookstores or Amazon. I love the entire tedious, difficult, stressful, and anxiety creating process of writing. But I also have to be realistic that I can't just write without building something from it. Not because there's anything wrong with writing as a hobby. It is just that I want writing to be my career. Writing, to be able to do what I love for a living, would be the greatest career I could hope for in my lifetime.

I'm writing every day. I've entered the world of Twitter. And put myself out there through the text of this blog. I can't say where any of this will lead me, but I know I will have no regrets for trying. After all the world is my oyster.

I'd love to hear from you if you have any incite on this topic. I'm also looking for a writing community in the Twin Cities to join. Also, what writing organizations do you belong to and would recommend?

Keep writing and good luck.

Every Writer Should Read Writing Down the Bones

My NaNoWriMo 2015 prep started with reading the fantastic work of Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones, which is celebrating its 30th Anniversary. Congratulations, Natalie, and thank you for sharing your wisdom with us. I must confess, Writing Down the Bones has been sitting on my shelf for about ten years next to my grandmother's old LC Smith typewriter. Unread and unloved. I'm still kicking myself for not pulling it off the shelf much, much sooner. 

It wasn't until last fall that I decided I needed guidance to keep me writing. Enter Natalie, her reflections, and her honest and pure incites on what it is to be a writer. With the help of her Zen practice and years of writing and teaching, Natalie Goldberg was the first person to ever really inspire me to keep writing. That I am a writer not just by title, but because it is my obsession, my passion, and my purpose.

"There is freedom in being a writer and writing. It is fulfilling your function. I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you want. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it." - Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones

Once I absorbed Natalie's every word I had to decide my next steps. It wasn't enough for me to dream, I also had to act. But those first steps are debilitating. Stephen King said it best - "the scariest moment is always just before you start." The horror king was right and if I had let Writing Down the Bones continue to collect dust I would have been frozen by my fear and probably never finished anything.

However, with Natalie's words of courage - "You will succeed if you are fearless of failure" - echoing in my head I took that first step. I grabbed a character that had been teasing me for a year, locked her into her front row seat, and took on and won NaNoWriMo 2015. 

I'm still scared when I put my fingers to the keyboard or grab my pen. I worry if my writing is horrible and not deserving of the ink. Those fears are real and I doubt they will ever go away, but I am no longer going to let them stop me because "obsessions have power," Writing Down the Bones.

How has Writing Down the Bones or Natalie Goldberg inspired you?

Pitch Possible: Resources for Writing the Perfect Pitch

The exercise of writing a pitch for your work in progress or finished manuscript can be daunting. Where to start? What little darlings to include? I know every detail of my story and every bit is important, right? Wrong. Every word in the pitch counts, but it shouldn't be bogged down with description like a book report. Thanks to the great minds of a few fantastic experts, I have managed to finally write a pitch for my story that weaves the tale I'm trying to tell without including every plot and pinch point. The pitch I wrote recently was for the NaNoWriMo Pitchapalooza being put on by the marvelous people at The Book Doctors, Arielle Eckstut and David Henry Sterry. Check out their January 12th blog post about the Sixth Annual NaNoWriMo Pitchapalooza for more details and a complete list of their 10 Tips for Pitching.

I have tried and failed to write a good elevator speech several times, but every time I had the same problem - I had no idea what I was doing. My least favorite question regarding my writing is "What is your book about?" How do I even start to begin? There's so much to tell and what if I don't express myself correctly. After all I'm a much better writer than I am speaker. I find comfort in the fact that several successful authors have admitted to dreading the same question. Writing is very personal and telling people about the wild things that live in a writer's imagination can be very intimidating. But, we are writers after all and we want to share our worlds regardless of the great risk of being rejected or worse getting "the look." You know the one that says "yeah, that sounds good" with a strong dose of sarcasm. Then that person never asks you about your writing again. Besides we need to master our pitches for when the time comes for us to wow our future agent and/or editor. So where to begin?

With the deadline for Pitchapalooza on the horizon I ventured out to write the perfect pitch with the help of the Book Doctor's 10 Tips for Pitching and the advice from Writer's Digest's editor blogger, Chuck Sambuchino on The Writer's Promise: How to Craft a Book's Pitch. I was finally able to see the path towards writing a pitch worthy of sending out rather than throwing into another black hole of failures. The three most important truths I took away from these great resources were:

1. Let your pitch sing. The tone should be poetic. Avoid at all cost being so descriptive that it reads like a middle school book report on the ancient Egyptians. (That was my favorite book report as a kid. I still remember writing all my bullet points on notecards and lining them neatly on my small fiberglass desk.)

2. Use your words to invoke emotions. No one wants to read a book that reads like the agriculture report. If your pitch only provides information without the meat that pulls a reader in than no one is going to ask to read the rest of the manuscript.

3. Reach out and grab the reader. A pitch is your first chance to make your reader lean-in. To make them pull your book off the shelf before the one next to it with the gripping battle scene on the front. The agents and editors we query are our first audience. Introduce them to the soul of the character, the truths of the story, give them something they can relate to, and then leave them with a cliff hanger that will have them begging for more.

As an exercise of humility, I've included below the first and last two sentences of the pitch I sent the Book Doctors. For the sake of self-preservation and privacy, I've omitted the middle of the pitch. I'd enjoy hearing what you think. And once you've carefully critiqued / judged my pitch, go try your hand at your own. Good luck and keep writing.

"Andy Holbrook lived most of her life in the dark underbelly of a secret world where monsters and magic existed. Now her parents are dead and she must be the one to solve their murders in order to avoid the exposure of the very secrets they died protecting." 

"...is a young adult fantasy thriller that encourages hope even in the darkness and raises the questions what if we were limitless? What if buried in our history was a time and place where anything was possible?"

Pinterest for Writers

I have been an avid user of Pinterest for several years. As a mother I have found it to be very helpful in finding fun activities for the kids, birthday party ideas, age appropriate science experiments that even I can do successfully, and healthy meal recipes even the kids will eat. I can't say all my Pinterest attempts have been successful. Some of my recipe and craft attempts would easily have qualified as Pinterest fails. But I will continue to try because this great tool saves me the time and frustration of scrounging around the endless resources of the internet. Instead I can enter a simple search and find recommended results.

What I didn't realize about Pinterest until about a year ago is how helpful it can be as a resource for my writing. I have discovered a world of fantastic articles about anything from plot and setting to common dialogue. It is also a great spot to find writing prompts to keep your writing moving. My writing board also includes useful infographics that clarify parts of a story in a simple document. Some of my favorite pins have been inspirational quotes from some of my favorite authors or anonymous quips that encourage me to keep writing. I also pin majestic landscape, animal, and human interest images that can inspire setting and characters.

One word of caution when using something like Pinterest to propel your writing is to consider the reliability of your pins' resources. After all you can't believe everything you read on the internet. And as with most rules pertaining to writing you have to take some articles with a grain of salt. For instance I recently pinned a blog post by Hannah Heath called 7 Cliche Characters in YA Fiction That Need to Stop. The article was enlightening in that it highlighted some great points about character development and what to stay away from when writing your own characters. However, having an orphaned teenage character that struggles with self-confidence as my current protagonist I had to appreciate Hannah's article for what it is - a personal opinion. I can't say I disagree with Hannah, but I'm also not changing my character just because I came across her article on Pinterest. My character, Andy, has her own unique story to tell that will help keep her from spiraling into the black hole of cliche characters.

Pinterest is also a great source for writers to be found. Take Hannah for instance. I probably wouldn't have come across her well written article if I hadn't found it on Pinterest. I've come across other helpful bloggers like K.M. Weiland's helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com and Joe Bunting and team's thewritepractice.com. Weiland is one of my favorite author coaches who I follow regularly. Recently I've been studying her infographics on the first, second, and third acts timelines as a way to structure my own story outline. I had felt something was missing in Andy's story and by examining each piece of the novel by using Weiland's timelines, I have found the holes of my story and am filling them with the best word glue I can muster.

No matter where you are in your writing or your goals, I highly recommend starting a Pinterest board to help you meet those goals. While writing is a mostly solitary objective, we cannot do it completely on our own. Helpful artist teachers, images that invoke a story, and motivational quotes are all at your fingertips with Pinterest. Good luck and keep writing.