Cindy Dees's Blog, page 10
March 18, 2015
WRITING IS A HABIT
I fell out of the writing habit. And may I just say, man this sucks. There's a reason I religiously sit my butt down and write every single day in my regularly scheduled life. Getting back into the writing habit is worse than trying to establish an exercise regimen. At least I can bribe myself with good music in the headphones while I sweat or a treat after a workout.
But forcing myself to write again is like giving myself a root canal without anesthesia.
Here's the thing. I love the book I'm working on. It's completely outlined, so I know what comes next. I need to to get this thing turned into my publisher who's eagerly awaiting it and being totally nice about when they get it. I enjoy creating this story.
But I've allowed bad habits to creep into my life in place of actual writing. I built an awesome website to go with the fantasy novel franchise I'm writing on. I got caught up on my fave TV shows and found a couple of fabulous shows to binge watch on Netflix. My house is clean. Well, clean-ish.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: WRITING IS A HABIT.
There are any number of ways to form a habit, and some of them may make you completely crazed and do nothing to help you write. I encourage you to find your own methods to get yourself writing consistently. For me, I've had to resort to a timer and forcing myself to stare at my computer and do NOTHING else until that stingy little bastard of a bell finally rings. I bored myself into actually producing new words.
I've had to forbid myself from editing any previous part of the current manuscript. I've bribed myself with chocolate-dipped frozen bananas. I've stayed up late to write, I've gotten up early to write, I've left the house to write. I have written long-hand, I've written in my favorite leatherbound journal. I've outlined, I've used writing prompts, I've written scenes out of order. I've disconnected my laptop from the Internet.
I've resorted to every trick I know to get my butt back in the chair, my hands back on the keyboard, and words appearing on my computer screen.
I'm not back to anything near my usual level of productivity, but I know that will come with time. Until then, I'm trying to be patient with myself. I'm managing to get anywhere from three to ten pages a day written. But I'm finally doing it again every single day.
Writing. Is. A. Habit.
WRITING IS A HABIT
Whether we want it to or not, life intervenes from time to time to stop your writing. In my case it was an unexpected surgery and an even more unexpected reaction (or non-reaction) to any pain killers afterward. I’m fine now and the surgery was a success, but back to my point.
I fell out of the writing habit. And may I just say, man this sucks. There’s a reason I religiously sit my butt down and write every single day in my regularly scheduled life. Getting back into the writing habit is worse than trying to establish an exercise regimen. At least I can bribe myself with good music in the headphones while I sweat or a treat after a workout.
But forcing myself to write again is like giving myself a root canal without anesthesia.
Here’s the thing. I love the book I’m working on. It’s completely outlined, so I know what comes next. I need to to get this thing turned into my publisher who’s eagerly awaiting it and being totally nice about when they get it. I enjoy creating this story.
But I’ve allowed bad habits to creep into my life in place of actual writing. I built an awesome website to go with the fantasy novel franchise I’m writing on. I got caught up on my fave TV shows and found a couple of fabulous shows to binge watch on Netflix. My house is clean. Well, clean-ish.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: WRITING IS A HABIT.
There are any number of ways to form a habit, and some of them may make you completely crazed and do nothing to help you write. I encourage you to find your own methods to get yourself writing consistently. For me, I’ve had to resort to a timer and forcing myself to stare at my computer and do NOTHING else until that stingy little bastard of a bell finally rings. I bored myself into actually producing new words.
I’ve had to forbid myself from editing any previous part of the current manuscript. I’ve bribed myself with chocolate-dipped frozen bananas. I’ve stayed up late to write, I’ve gotten up early to write, I’ve left the house to write. I have written long-hand, I’ve written in my favorite leatherbound journal. I’ve outlined, I’ve used writing prompts, I’ve written scenes out of order. I’ve disconnected my laptop from the Internet.
I’ve resorted to every trick I know to get my butt back in the chair, my hands back on the keyboard, and words appearing on my computer screen.
I’m not back to anything near my usual level of productivity, but I know that will come with time. Until then, I’m trying to be patient with myself. I’m managing to get anywhere from three to ten pages a day written. But I’m finally doing it again every single day.
Writing. Is. A. Habit.
March 13, 2015
February 21, 2015
THE SLEEPING KING Excerpt
THE SLEEPING KING Excerpt (Tor, Sep 2015)
“What is it, Oretia?” Ammertus snapped.
Anton’s eyes widened. Oretia? The oracle of the Imperial Court? It was said the powerful Child of Fate had never been wrong in centuries of prophecies. Supposedly, it was she who foretold the death of the first Emperor, she who predicted the mysterious disappearance of the second Maximillian. It was also rumored that she was a key power behind this Maximillian’s throne for the almost thirty-two hundred years of his reign.
Given her age, Anton expected her to look old. He expected wrong. She was born of the extremely long-lived race of janns, her skin swirling with the colors of the elements to which janns aligned themselves. However, if the rumors of her age were accurate, the Emperor himself must have gifted her with exceptional longevity. At a glimpse—and that was all he dared allow himself out of the corner of his eye—she could pass for a woman of middle age, the sort who worked hard at preserving herself. Her bare arms were firm even if the mottled skin covering them looked somewhat leathery. Fine wrinkles crisscrossed what Anton could make out of her face, but as her scowl eased, her skin smoothed into a falsely young mask.
“A prophecy comes,” she announced in a surprisingly lush and throaty voice.
Ammertus retorted, “Write it down and show it to His Majesty later. We are busy now!”
Anton gaped at her scornful gaze, locked in anger with Ammertus’s. She dared defy one of the archdukes, only exceeded in power by the Emperor himself? Did she have a death wish? Belatedly, Anton remembered himself. He hurled his gaze back to Maximillian and missed the rest of the silent battle of wills raging around him. But the air fairly crackled with it, a faint, metallic smell of ozone abruptly permeating the golden room.
Oretia snarled, “Your petty politics can wait. The power building within me is unique. Olde magicks touch me this day!”
The Emperor’s eyebrows twitched into a momentary frown—a mighty loss of control for him. So. Olde magicks worried him, did they? Interesting.
Maximillian leaned back casually on his throne, whereas Ammertus leaned forward aggressively. “Is this prophecy about His Resplendent Majesty?”
“Would I be here if it were not?”
Maximillian ordered in a bored tone, “Tell me, then.”
“It comes an-o-n . . . ,” her voice trailed off, taking on a singsong tone as she drew out the last syllable. “Ahh, the power of it. Perhaps I shall not share this after all. . . .”
Ammertus moved faster than Anton would have believed possible, launching himself off the dais and across the room to the oracle. The archduke embraced her head in his hands, shoving her up against a golden wall, staring into her eyes as if he would suck her brains from her skull. A visible field of energy built around the two of them, pulsing with almost sexual intensity.
“Sing for us, little Oretia,” Ammertus crooned.
Anton shuddered at the depravity and power in that voice. Gads, and to think the Emperor surpassed that power by orders of magnitude.
The oracle moaned, her body arching into a taut, vibrating bow, only her head still, trapped between Ammertus’s clutching hands.
“The end,” she gasped. “I see the end.”
“Of what?” The archduke was breathing heavily, something repulsive throbbing in his thick voice.
She spoke in bursts torn from her throat. “A nameless one . . . wakes in the wilds . . . shackles break–” Her voice broke on a hoarse cry and she sagged in Ammertus’s grip, clawing ineffectually at his hands on either side of her head.
“What?” he shouted, shaking her violently. “Show me.”
The force of that mindquake drove Anton to his knees, buffeting him nearly unconscious. His thoughts scattered, ripped asunder by that awful voice. Struggling to hang on to his fragmenting sanity, Anton stared up at the Emperor sitting at ease on his throne, completely unaffected by the massive mental energy flying through the air. His ageless face was devoid of expression, his eyes reflecting only bland disinterest.
Even Starfire seemed to be experiencing metal distress, and a look of concentration wreathed his features as he shielded himself from his father’s psychic assault. Iolanthe and Korovo did not appear mentally overly distressed by Ammertus’s outburst, but they did look mildly annoyed by it.
Of a sudden Oretia straightened in Ammertus’s grasp and, to Anton’s amazement, tore free entirely. She paced the width of the golden room, sparks flying from her hair as she whirled to stalk back. She paused before the throne, staring at it and the man on it, nodding to herself. The guards on either side of the Emperor tensed as she stalked up the stairs to stand directly in front of Maximillian, who might have been carved from the same obsidian as his throne for all that he reacted.
Her voice, preternaturally deep, resonated off the walls like a terrible storm. “Hear this, for I speak true. A nameless one comes. From the depths of the untamed lands to destroy us all. Olde magicks returned, change born of earth and stars. Greater than thee, Maximillian, Last Emperor of Koth. When Imperial gold is bathed in blood, your fate is written and cannot be undone. The end of Eternal Koth is anon.”
Sleeping King (really) up for pre-order now!
The migrating problem with my website has been repaired, thereby dumping my last post and the broken links to buy THE SLEEPING KING. However, all is fixed and the links below do, in fact, work now. So, without further ado…I’m delighted to announce that, at long last, THE SLEEPING KING is available for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, both in hardback print book and e-book!
January 28, 2015
FEVER ZONE Buy It Now!
My latest romantic thriller is finally on sale, and I’m so excited about this book I could shout! Oh, wait. I am. It has a scary, double terrorist attack, a pair of agents with an inconveniently sizzling attraction between them, and an American city in the crosshairs.
January 8, 2015
WHEN NORA SPEAKS, I LISTEN
Throughout my writing career, Nora Roberts has not used her immense power and position within the publishing industry often to speak out about something. But, every single time she has taken a stand, I have found myself standing up and cheering.
When she sued Janet Dailey for plagiarism (and won tens of millions of dollars, all of which she donated to literacy causes). When she refused to be the emcee at an awards ceremony the day of the event after seeing the script written for her. Later that evening, I as a former military member was so offended by said script I ended up walking out of the ceremony. You get the idea.
When Ms. Roberts speaks, I listen. Here’s her latest spot on commentary, aptly titled, “BITE ME”:
December 27, 2014
UPDATE YOUR E-TOOLBOX!
As an author, it's extremely helpful to keep up at least a little with various software, apps, and services available to make your writing and marketing time more efficient and effective. NOTE: I doubt any of us can truly keep up with emerging technology and programming AND actually ever finish writing a book. The idea is to periodically integrate new gadgets and widgets that have come along recently into your repertoire.
A good place to hear about handy-dandy stuff that has come along to help writers is on writer's chat loops online, blogs, or pages like this one. It's also not a bad idea to cultivate some tech savvy friends and ask them if they've seen anything recently that might make life easier for you as a writer and marketer.
Sometimes, you're forced to find new tools out of necessity. You injure a hand and can't type for a while, and you're forced to research a voice recognition software (I lurrrve Dragon Naturally Speaking. I recommend it highly.) Or, a fan writes you a note and asks you to autograph an ebook for them. Which happened to me this morning.
Which leads me to my next point. Sometimes, you just have to dive in and start playing with a program or application or social media platform and figure it out as you go. Look for FAQ sections or help buttons and just poke around. Any decent application in today's world should have fairly clear basic instructions embedded in it. It's scary, I know. But give it a try. I'm as bad a Luddite as the next technology hater, but even I can figure most of this stuff out. If I can do it, you can DEFINITELY do it!
In my case, I entered electronic autographs in a search engine this afternoon. Turns out a free service called authorgraph.com is out there. Free to use, and easy enough that even I was able to figure out pretty quickly how to sign up and load my books into it.
Furthermore, it had a one-click button that loaded an authorgraph link onto this very Facebook page. If you click the "More" drop down menu at the top of this page, you'll see a link to authorgraph. You can find all my ebooks there and ask for a personalized e-autograph for your copy. You can even buy a book on this website and get it e-autographed. Very cool.
I would never have dived in and found out about the service or figured out how to use it had a lovely reader not very sweetly kicked me in the butt. I was lucky this time that someone gave me a nudge in a direction I should have gone long ago. But it made me ask myself how many other handy and time-saving apps are out there that I haven't found.
My last suggestion for updating your e-toolbox is to schedule in a little time every few weeks to just poke around and see what's out there in the world of marketing tools, writer's tools, search engine optimization tools, website widgets, organization and scheduling tools, and any graphic tools that might help you if you self-publish and/or create your own covers or book packaging.
It's tempting to hunker down in a writing cave and just write books. But the reality in today's publishing world is that we all MUST keep learning and adapting and finding ways to be more efficient and productive if we're going to stay competitive in a very tight market. And by the way, if you find a great tool that has helped you a bunch, share!
UPDATE YOUR E-TOOLBOX!
We have an extremely tech savvy friend visiting us this week, and I’m forcefully struck by just how rapidly technology and the capabilities of computers/tablets/phones et al are advancing.
As an author, it’s extremely helpful to keep up at least a little with various software, apps, and services available to make your writing and marketing time more efficient and effective. NOTE: I doubt any of us can truly keep up with emerging technology and programming AND actually ever finish writing a book. The idea is to periodically integrate new gadgets and widgets that have come along recently into your repertoire.
A good place to hear about handy-dandy stuff that has come along to help writers is on writer’s chat loops online, blogs, or pages like this one. It’s also not a bad idea to cultivate some tech savvy friends and ask them if they’ve seen anything recently that might make life easier for you as a writer and marketer.
Sometimes, you’re forced to find new tools out of necessity. You injure a hand and can’t type for a while, and you’re forced to research a voice recognition software (I lurrrve Dragon Naturally Speaking. I recommend it highly.) Or, a fan writes you a note and asks you to autograph an ebook for them. Which happened to me this morning.
Which leads me to my next point. Sometimes, you just have to dive in and start playing with a program or application or social media platform and figure it out as you go. Look for FAQ sections or help buttons and just poke around. Any decent application in today’s world should have fairly clear basic instructions embedded in it. It’s scary, I know. But give it a try. I’m as bad a Luddite as the next technology hater, but even I can figure most of this stuff out. If I can do it, you can DEFINITELY do it!
In my case, I entered electronic autographs in a search engine this afternoon. Turns out a free service called authorgraph.com is out there. Free to use, and easy enough that even I was able to figure out pretty quickly how to sign up and load my books into it.
Furthermore, it had a one-click button that loaded an authorgraph link onto this very Facebook page. If you click the “More” drop down menu at the top of this page, you’ll see a link to authorgraph. You can find all my ebooks there and ask for a personalized e-autograph for your copy. You can even buy a book on this website and get it e-autographed. Very cool.
I would never have dived in and found out about the service or figured out how to use it had a lovely reader not very sweetly kicked me in the butt. I was lucky this time that someone gave me a nudge in a direction I should have gone long ago. But it made me ask myself how many other handy and time-saving apps are out there that I haven’t found.
My last suggestion for updating your e-toolbox is to schedule in a little time every few weeks to just poke around and see what’s out there in the world of marketing tools, writer’s tools, search engine optimization tools, website widgets, organization and scheduling tools, and any graphic tools that might help you if you self-publish and/or create your own covers or book packaging.
It’s tempting to hunker down in a writing cave and just write books. But the reality in today’s publishing world is that we all MUST keep learning and adapting and finding ways to be more efficient and productive if we’re going to stay competitive in a very tight market. And by the way, if you find a great tool that has helped you a bunch, share!
December 26, 2014
Pre-Order FEVER ZONE!
My thriller novel, FEVER ZONE, is up for pre-order on Amazon two weeks early–Merry Christmas to me from Amazon!! If you liked the movie, MR. & MRS. SMITH, or you like non-stop action that’s both deadly and sexy, this is the book for you. Two operatives, two terror plots, one American city in the crosshairs. A race against time, a fight against sizzling attraction, an explosive page-turner that will leave you breathless…
