Writer
Welcome to the fifth installment of Year One – you can access the previous entries right here!
Last time we talked about the act of writing. Today I’m going to take a step back…
It’s time to write. And write you must or you won’t have anything to sell. You already know what you’re going to write and how you’re going to write it.
Now it’s time to sit down and pump out that first draft, re-write, publish it, and the whole world will jump all over it when it’s ready.
This is where I would insert the record scratch if I could.
At this point you should definitely be writing and writing every day, but stop and take a second to think about one thing:
Your work is not Field of Dreams! Once you’ve built it, they will not come. Because they don’t know about it!
If you are writing just to do it and not worried about people buying or ever really reading your work, then you can disregard this.
My biggest regret when I released Shady Place was that I started marketing it six months to a year too late. When you settle on and decide what you are going to write you need to start letting the world know and that’s where The List comes in.
Your biggest and best supporters are going to be the people you know. This is what helped make Shady Place a success in the early going in my opinion. I knew enough people who, as they say, know, like, and trust me to give my book a shot and I’m grateful every day for every one of them.
I could have made Shady Place a much bigger success if I had begun cultivating an email list a year ahead of the book’s launch instead of the week after it was already out.
That’s what I do now, if you’re reading this you likely are on my email list and get updates about what I’m up to, hopefully you feel like you are getting an opportunity to know me and what I’m all about.
Email is the best way to communicate with people, way better than all the noise we are bombarded with on social media.
I’ve got my list now, I touch people as frequently as I can without being a bother, and I hope I provide some value to those who receive my updates.
If you’re thinking about being a creator of any sort don’t wait, start building that list now, tell people what you’re up to. It will help give you the leg up that I wish I had figured out before I got so far in! Not sure how to do it or where to start? Email me and I’ll talk you through it.
BONUS/DISCLAIMER: Take your choice. If you start sharing with the world that you are going to be bringing something awesome into the world, you damn well better do it.
Use this as motivation or terrify you, either works:)
Welcome to the fourth installment of Year One – you can access the previous entries right here!
There are basically two types of writers when it comes to the approach to getting started.
Plotters and Pantsers.
Almost everyone falls into one of these categories.
Plotters are just what they sound like. They plan out the whole book, often with a lot pre-planning, outlining, and treatments. The Plotter has the entire book, beat by beat, ready before they ever put the first word down.
Pantsers don’t need no stinkin’ plan. A Pantser will take an idea or a character and simply write. Wherever the story goes, they follow.
The Plotter has a clearer path to a completed manuscript. When they map out the entire piece before they ever start, they know exactly where they’re going and can get there in a much timelier manner. But this can be a detriment, too. When you plot the whole thing out and you want to change something, it can mean having to go back and change a lot of different plot points you already meticulously set up.
The Pantser just lets it fly, but sometimes this leads to a meandering story that doesn’t really have a purpose. It can hurt plot and structure and lead to a confusing story or scenes that mean nothing to the plot or theme. But the freedom gives the Pantser the opportunity to take their story literally anywhere without concern for the constraints of an outline.
The biggest difference in the finished product usually comes down to the re-write. When a Plotter is finished, they should hopefully be able spend much less time cleaning up the story and focus instead on grammar and style instead of structure. The Pantser, on the other hand, will often find themselves with a lot of work to do during the re-write to figure out what the hell they just wrote.
If it wasn’t clear already, I’m a Plotter – an extreme plotter. I will think about a story for a long time, jot down notes, write a summary, a synopsis, an outline, a treatment, then I’ll write. It takes me a long time. When I write a comic, by the time I’ve finished the script I’m on what amounts to my fourth draft. The nice thing is that I do find I have less re-write time.
Shady Place and A Shadier Place were both thoroughly plotted before I ever started writing. Even Amara, which is on the shelf until after A Shadier Place is finished, is completely plotted out; I’ve even had some changes in the format/structure, so I did have to drop back and punt when writing it.
I think everyone has a story in them, but we all get there different ways.
Are you a Plotter or a Pantser?
