The difficulty with writing a book–one of the many difficulties–is that once you begin one, you must keep going. And eventually, you need to draw it altogether so you can confidently type The End…at the end. I’ve been at this stage for several months now. I refuse to call it Writer’s Block, because that’s so cliche’! But, as I mentioned to some friends recently, I’m “back in the saddle” on the second and final book of the Lost Stones of Argonia series. The end is truly in sight and I’m excited!
In this day and age, writing the book is only one part of the process. Agents and editors won’t even look at your work if you don’t have a website, and they want you to have thousands of social media followers on your “platform.” Why would someone follow you on social media? Well, because you’re writing all kinds of cool stuff that people will want to read. You also need a newsletter to keep those rabid fans salivating for news of your next publishing breakthrough. All this takes time, and for someone like me–we graciously call ourselves “pre-published”–it’s hard to know what to do first. How much time to spend on it all and in which order to release it to the world.
As you can see–I’m working on it. 🙂 The website is finally up and running. Now I just need to keep running and keep up with creating new content for it. While finishing the book. And figuring out the newsletter thing and how I can find more social media followers, who will, I hope, BUY MY BOOK, if and when it ever comes out! Do I sound whiny enough? When I get like this, I remind myself of J.R.R. Tolkien who typed the many drafts of The Lord of the Rings himself (on a manual typewriter!) because, in his words, he could not afford the talents of “the ten-fingered”! Can you imagine, two-fingered typing that huge and wonderful work?! Multiple times? A good reminder, eh?
The important thing is always the work–the story itself. And for that, we need inspiration. Food and drink for the soul, as it were. That’s why I put the image of Edinburgh castle at the top of this page. I was blessed to visit Scotland recently and believe me, I was inspired! In my own writing, though, I’ve often been most inspired by other authors’ written works. So, while I stumble on toward the magic words The End for my own book, I’m going to share with you some of the places I’ve been that have inspired some other pretty famous authors. I went to those places, hoping I, too, would be inspired. And I was, actually. So I hope you’ll follow along as we journey on to Scotland, Oxford, Paris, and that major metropolis just south of Canada, Forks, Washington! We’ll have a blast!
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