Ruth Ann Nordin's Blog, page 39
July 24, 2018
I Guess Tastes Change Over Time
When I was a freshman in college back in 1993-1994, I read a trilogy from an author I loved. I remember loving that trilogy for one main reason: the romantic subplot. This was a YA thriller. I didn’t really care a whole lot about the main storyline. I was only interested in whether or not the female character ended up with the male character I was rooting for. And I was excited when she did. Over the years, I had forgotten most of the actual story. I only remembered how I felt about those two characters ending up together.
So, fast forward to last week, and I was telling a friend about the trilogy. I got the inkling to revisit the past and read through this romantic subplot again. Keep in mind, it’s been 24-25 years since I last read it. Add to that I’m now a romance writer. So my perspective has changed much more than I had expected it to.
When I read through the story again, I was disappointed. The actual story was good, but it wasn’t the story I wanted. I wanted to be swept up in this totally awesome romance that had once thrilled me so much. When I read it, I realized there weren’t that many romantic scenes. The two characters kissed, and some of it was great, but there was little follow up to this in Book 3 when they finally ended up together. And I kept wondering, “Why? Why did the author do such a great job of building up this romance only to let it flounder at the end?”
Then I had to remind myself this wasn’t a romance. It was a thriller. The romance was a secondary issue. The writer part of me is tempted to take the same elements and write my own book to do the romance the justice it is deserves. Here are the elements in this romantic subplot:
the forbidden bad boy who believes no one will ever accept him so he reluctantly does the right thing
the female character who sees the good in him that no one else does
the struggle the female faces on whether she’ll pick the super good guy who offers a “comfortable” love to the forbidden bad boy who offers her a “passionate” love
Isn’t that an awesome foundation? That kind of story can go many ways while keeping those elements intact. I don’t see myself writing it, at least not any time in the near future, and I certainly wouldn’t write anything like the actual story of the series I read. That storyline didn’t interest me all that much to begin with, and it still doesn’t. If I were to take those three elements, I would probably use it for the YA pen name I have if I used it at all. And guys, I’m talking about the “elements” of the romance. My characters would be different, so the actual romance wouldn’t be the same. But I would take the bad boy, the female who can make him believe in himself, and the conflict between comfort vs passion. Those are common tropes. They’ve already been done a lot. Those are fair game.
I would also love to read a book that can deliver this type of romance with a powerful punch. I would love to see the ending of the book or series to be way more intense than what came before it. This series’ best romantic moment happened in Book 2 and at the beginning of Book 3. Then it fell off a cliff and gave a lackluster conclusion. But the main story did end in a fantastic way. As I said, this wasn’t a romance, so it’s really not fair to judge the series based on the romantic subplot. It’s just that the romance is why I read it again.
Also, I’ve changed. I’m now a married woman with four children. I’m not the virgin college student who thought a kiss was a huge deal. I have a better understanding of the physical aspects of a relationship. I suppose it’s like anything else when we mature over time. Sure, ramen noodles were good when I was in college, too, but these days my taste for food has matured. When I was a little kid, I liked the single kid jingles. Then my taste in music required something more complex. The older I get, the more I appreciate layers to things. I don’t know if that makes any sense, but it’s the only way I can think of to describe it.
This morning when I was talking to my youngest son who’ll enter the seventh grade this year, and he said, “People’s best days are in their 20s.” I gave him an amused smile and said, “When I was in my 20s, there was so much I didn’t know about life. I was mostly insecure, too. I would rather be 44 because I’m more confident, I have some life experience under my belt, and I’m happier with who I am. Sure, my body isn’t as ‘beautiful’ as it used to be. I have had four children, and that takes its toll on a body. But I feel great. I exercise, I eat better than I ever did in the past, and I get to write what I love. I wouldn’t want to go back to being in my 20s again. I expect to enjoy life more and more as the years go on because I’ll get even better.”
I’m currently writing books that I believe are my best yet. Why? Because I’ve learned from my past books. I’m fine-tuning my storytelling craft with every book I write. I’ve ditched the whole “write to market 100%” thing. I’m embracing the passionate side of writing like I haven’t since I got started. I expect my future books to be better than the past ones. I am in love again with writing, and I especially love romance.
So yeah, tastes do change over time. I’m not the same person who fell in love with that trilogy, and when I think about it, that’s for the best.
July 22, 2018
The Perfect Duke is now Available!
It’s here!
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Here are the books in the Marriage by Fate Series:
The Reclusive Earl (Book 1)
Married In Haste (Book 2)
Make Believe Bride (Book 3)
The Perfect Duke (Book 4)
Kidnapping the Viscount (Book 5) (which I’m writing)
Maybe another one (we shall see)
Description:
This book follows the events that started in Married In Haste continued on in Make Believe Bride. The social group, Ladies of Grace, is in turmoil, and the remaining members are struggling to undo the damage Lady Eloise did to it. Miss Tara Webb, the heroine of this book, is one of them.
When the gentleman Tara had planned to marry ditches her for another lady, she is left without a solid plan on making Ladies of Grace look good to the Ton. Fortunately, the Duke of Ravenshire comes along at the right moment and proposes marriage. He needs a wife, and fast, in order to avoid debtor’s prison. Tara agrees to marry him since he has a way of charming prominent members of the Ton. Her brother tries to stop the union, but, being twenty-one, she runs off with the Duke of Ravenshire anyway. And, naturally, this stirs up the wrath of her brother.
For those of you on my email list or in my private Facebook group, I sent out a special bonus scene with information on how things progressed for Ladies of Grace five years later. If you don’t want to miss these special scenes in the future, I suggest signing up for the email list or joining my private Facebook group.
Here is where you can find The Perfect Duke:
July 12, 2018
Somewhere in the Middle
Looking back on things, it becomes obvious the answer wasn’t write for passion OR write to market. The truth is, you need to find a balance between the two. You can’t do one to the exclusion of the other.
This past week, I experienced something of a crisis moment in a writer’s life. I’ve never been in this particular situation before, so I wasn’t prepared for how to handle it. When I started down this road of writing and publishing my own books, I wrote whatever came to mind. I never thought other people would read the books. I had written them so I could have a paperback copy on my shelf. Then I got into ebooks because I was going to get a Kindle and a Nook.
I’ve never been a plotter. I’ve always written whatever came to me, and somehow, the story just wrote itself out. Things were always neatly tied up, or, if there was a series, I knew something left unanswered in one book would end up answered in another. This method lent itself to writing for passion. I was like a kid on the playground. I didn’t give any conscious thought to what I was writing. I was just playing and having a good time. That is what writing for passion is. (Writing to market is having boundaries set up on the playground.)
Once I realized people were actually reading my books, I panicked. Suddenly, I had a responsibility to other people. It wasn’t just me I was writing for anymore. These days, most new indie authors assume they’re writing for other people. Their mindset is different from what I went into this writing gig with.
I don’t know how many authors who chose the route I did back in the “old days of publishing in 2008-2009” were thinking of book sales when they published their books on their own instead of going with a publisher. Back then, publishing your own books was seen as the option of last resort. It guaranteed you’d sell no more than 200 copies in the book’s entire life, which could outlive the author. Not selling means no one is reading the book. This means, there is no audience to write for. We were told indie publishing was doomed to failure.
So we flash forward to 2010-2012 when authors who were publishing their own books could actually find an audience. Suddenly, we had readers. And that meant when I sat down to write, I was now aware that other people were looking over my shoulder, judging what I was writing. I started to think about the market. I soon discovered that if I wrote more for the market, I got better reviews on my books. If you look at my early stuff, you’ll see a lot more 1 and 2-star reviews. I did learn what upset people and what pleased them. The more I wrote to market, the better the reviews got.
It was a natural progression that I moved more and more to the writing to market side. I didn’t want to disappoint people who read my books. I still don’t. No author sets out to piss off anyone who reads their book. It is, however, impossible to please everyone. That was a lesson I learned when I tried to change the Virginia Series from a historical romance genre to a contemporary romance genre. It turned out, I got emails and messages from people who preferred the series as in the historical genre. That was one of my biggest lessons learned: the people who matter most are those who I can please with my books. People who can’t be pleased because my writing doesn’t resonate with them are not the people I’m writing for. So I switched the Virginia Series back to historical and moved on.
In 2016-2017, I was in another state of panic (for reasons I already went into in other posts), so I went full over to the writing to market side of things. And in doing that, I realized that was burning me out. To sum up, I learned that writing for passion is very important. I hadn’t realized just how much until I started to actually hate writing.
So then I go full back over to writing for passion a couple of months ago. Yes, I feel like a ping pong ball in going from one extreme to the other. This writing thing is not as easy as some people make it look.
Anyway, my latest finished book, The Perfect Wife, went off to the editing team at the end of last month. These ladies look out for me. They do what they can to make my books the very best they can be. And a couple of them came back with the same concerns. I went into crisis mode because I’ve never been in this situation before. There’s usually something someone doesn’t like. Half the time, I’ll adjust it. If I happen to like it, I’ll keep it anyway. But this time more than one person had issues with the same things. And, to be fair, deep in my gut, I knew they were right. After getting over the shock, I sat down to revise the story so it’s more suited to the market. The changes turned out to not be as involved as I originally thought they were going to be. In fact, I had it all smoothed out within five hours (once I figured out what I was going to do). I thought it was going to take a lot longer. I’m actually much happier with the book now.
Yesterday afternoon as I finally had a chance to sit back and process everything that had just happened over the past week, I realized that there needs to be a balance between writing for passion AND writing to market. You can’t exclusively write for passion or write to market if you want a writing career. And I further suspect that each book will be different. Some books will be more toward one side of the aisle (writing for passion) while others will go more toward the other side (writing to market). All books, however, should be somewhere along the spectrum. The Perfect Duke is more toward the writing for passion side, and The Perfect Wife is more toward the writing for market side. I now realize each book will stand on a case by case basis. So that’s what I’m going to do. I will mix both approaches for what will make for the best story possible.
July 7, 2018
Simplifying My Publishing Life
Today while I was re-formatting the Marriage by Scandal Series to put on Google Play, I decided to take those cleaner updated versions and make a Smashwords version for them. That way they would also be distributed to Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Scribd, and other channels Smashwords distributes to.
While I was doing this, I realized I hadn’t gone in to update anything in the Kobo dashboard in forever. I have been updating covers of older books and revamping some old interior files over the years. It’s easy to do it through Smashwords because Smashwords will send it out to the other retailers for me. I’ve been doing this on Amazon, too. But I couldn’t remember which books I had directly up on Kobo. Out of the 80 books I currently have on Smashwords, I had put 24 of those up directly through Kobo.
Before I cause any confusion, all of my books have been up on Kobo all of this time. But instead of going through Smashwords to get 24 of them on Kobo, I went directly to Kobo and published them there. What happened was that I kept forgetting which books I had put directly there and which I hadn’t.
I don’t know how familiar you are with distributors like Smashwords or the fact that retialers have their own platforms to upload books direclty to their store. But this has led to a common debate in the writer community. Is it better to use a distributor or to upload books directly to each retailer?
The main reason authors go direct is to make a little more money. Smashwords (and other distributors) take a small percentage out of the profits when a book is sold. I have no trouble with this. The distributors need to make money in order to keep operating. But some authors figure they could use the extra money. I don’t blame them. I have no trouble with an author who wants to keep a little extra in their pocket.
What I have learned, however, is that I am not the most organized person on the planet. It is way easier for someone like me to use Smashwords to distribute all of my books to other retailers for me. The only expections are Amazon and Google Play. Smashwords doesn’t offer distribution to Google Play. It’s easier to publish directly on Amazon since I would have to use a representative at Smashwords to distribute there for me, and I have a hard enough time remembering to keep my editing team updated on when they can expect my next book (thereby securing a slot in their busy calendars). So remembering to contact a representative whenever I had a book to publish or update on Amazon wouldn’t work well for me.
So anyway, I’m currently looking for ways to simply my life so that I can be more efficient. I had about ten or so books directly up on Barnes & Noble via their Nook Press site. A month or so ago, I had decided to remove those and use Smashwords to upload the books over there for me. I forgot to mention that on this blog when I did it, but I’m sure the books are all over there by now. Kobo was the next logical step.
I’m going in small steps so that I don’t get overwhelmed.
I wanted to give everyone a heads up on what is going on in case you are at Kobo and see some of my books not there. They will be there. If you notice something that isn’t there in two weeks, let me know and I’ll look into it.
The good news is that it’ll be easier for me to make updates to older books so you should be able to download the new versions. On Apple, I do this on my iPhone by going to the the “updates” thing in the top of the iBooks page where books I have purchased are listed. Kindle seems to do this automatically in about a month’s time. It’s been ages since I used a Nook, and I don’t yet own a Kobo device. I want to get a Kobo device after it connects up with Walmart. I’m not sure how updates are done on the Nook or Kobo devices.
I will say one good thing about uploading these books to Google Play. It’s given me a reason to reformat my older books so that they look a lot better. I don’t do anything fancy when I format. My motto is keep it simple, especially since I don’t know what other people’s reading devices look like when they open my books. As long as my books are clean and neat, that’s what counts.
I will continue to work on updating older books so that the formatting is better and the covers are better. I’m not going to touch the covers a wonderful reader had done for me back in the early days when I was just getting my feet wet in publishing. That person really blessed me by making those covers for me, and I’m keeping them because whenever I look at them, I think of her.
As a side note, I am keeping the pen name Barbara Joan Russell. I like to dabble in other genres from time to time since it keeps my creativity going. I don’t plan to do a lot of books under that name, but when I get an itch to write YA thriller/dark fantasy, that name will satisfy it. I use Draft 2 Digital for that one because it helps separate out what I do under Ruth and what I do under Barbara. I know it’s another frying pan in the fire, but it helps me keep the two different names organized. My first focus will always be on Ruth since I love writing romance the most.
July 5, 2018
Updates
I figured I should do an updates post since a lot is going on. 
June 29, 2018
Some Books Now Up on Google Play
I’m slowly working my way through adding more books to Google Play. I decided to start with the newer books since those require less formatting and will be quicker to get up. If you happen to read books on Google, here are the books with the links!
The Reclusive Earl (Marriage by Fate: Book 1)
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Married In Haste (Marriage by Fate: Book 2)
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Make Believe Bride (Marriage by Fate: Book 3)
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The Perfect Duke (Marriage by Fate: Book 4) – on Pre-Order
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The Marriage Contract (Marriage by Fairytale: Book 1)
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The Bride Price (Misled Mail Order Brides Series: Book 1)
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The Rejected Groom (Misled Mail Order Brides Series: Book 2)
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Please Note: I will be getting The Perfect Wife (Book 3) up soon for pre-order.
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The Convenient Mail Order Bride (Chance at Love Series: Book 1)
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The Mistaken Mail Order Bride (Chance at Love Series: Book 2)
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The Accidental Mail Order Bride (Chance at Love Series: Book 3)
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The Bargain Mail Order Bride (Chance at Love Series: Book 4)
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His Convenient Wife
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Google Play link (mentioning this in case you didn’t see it in my last post)
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I’ve already had books up there via Parchment & Plume, LLC (a wonderful publisher I use from time to time). In case you haven’t seen these over there, I’m going to link to them while I’m thinking about it.
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Bride by Arrangement (anthology with Janet Syas Nitsick)
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A Groom’s Promise (anthology with Janet Syas Nitsick)
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Bride by Design (under pen name Barbara Joan Russell; an anthology with Catherine Lynn)
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Wagon Trail Bride (Pioneer Series: Book 1)
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The Marriage Agreement (Pioneer Series: Book 2)
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Groom For Hire (Pioneer Series: Book 3)
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Mitch’s Win (Montana Collection: Book 1)
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Boaz’s Wager (Montana Collection: Book 2)
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Patty’s Gamble (Montana Collection: Book 3)
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That’s all I have up right now. I’ll keep adding books over the next few weeks. My average is 1-2 books a day. When I get to my older stuff, I might end up doing 1 book every other day due to having to reformat them.
June 22, 2018
More Updates
I’m so excited! I have a lot of fun things I’m working on, and I’m having a hard time focusing on just one thing. You guys know me. I write more than one book at a time. Since finding my passion again, I found I needed to expand. I’m doing this by lowering my word count for each book on my writing days.
A quick tangent about how I write more than one book at a time:
People have asked me how I can do this. I don’t know. I guess it’s a byproduct of multi-tasking for years. I started seriously writing when my kids were still in diapers, and I have four kids all about a year or a year and a half apart. I could never sit down and write for any one long length of time. Writing has been broken up into 15-30 minute bulks. I still write this way even though my youngest is now going to be in the 7th grade and my oldest will be in the 10th grade. During the school year, I still stop every 15 or 30 minutes and do something else. It has become a way of life for me to work this way.
Anyway, because I take these kinds of breaks, I use those as transition periods from one book to another. I aim for 250 words for each 15 minute blocks of time I write. If my goal is 1000 words in one book, I’ll lump two of the 15 minute blocks together. So after 30 minutes, I’ll do something short like get more tea or go to the bathroom. After the second 30 minute block, I’ll do a longer chore, like laundry, dishes, the floors, etc. The longer break helps to transition my mind to another story.
And I just recycle this until I get between 3,000 to 3,500 words done for the day. Sometimes I get more done, sometimes less. But the average is in that range, and I do this five days a week.
It also helps that I work on different series at a time. I find doing so helps me stay creative and fresh. I could not work in only one genre at a time. I would get bored. Also, I can’t work on Book 1, 2, and 3 in one series at the same time. What happens in Book 1 will impact Book 2, etc. Being a panster, it’s impossible for me to tell what will happen from one chapter to the next. There’s no way I could tell what Book 2 is going to look like until I end Book 1.
As a side note: on my non-writing/editing days, I try to catch up on emails and such. I don’t write or edit anything.
Now, I don’t write on days I edit. If I edit, I only edit. And I do between 4-5 chapters on an editing day. I have found that editing breaks my creative flow.
Back to what I’m doing now:
I just finished the initial edits of The Perfect Wife!
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And I just sent it off to my wonderful editing team! I struggled a lot with how to end this one. The main story between the couple is resolved, but I had to get an “in” to the next book in this series. That was wrapped up within a subplot I had running through this book. I did add an epilogue to help tie things up nicely, but be warned this one ends with a heavy teaser for the next book (The Imperfect Husband). I don’t usually do something like that, but it’s what the characters finally settled on after a month of stalling out.
I’ve gotten most of the edits back from The Perfect Duke, so I’ll work on that this weekend.
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I’m waiting for the book description and remaining edits to come in before I upload it to Amazon. It’s already on places like Kobo, iBooks, and B&N in pre-order. I’ll set a definite release date at that time.
I’ll continue working on these books starting next week:
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and
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and (very loosely)
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If I run out of time, this is the book that gets dropped for the day.
Here’s what I’ll start this week:
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This is Annabelle Larson’s romance, and I expect this one to be a lot of fun since it’ll be a comedy. The last two chapters of The Perfect Wife was a blast. I expect this book will be just as funny.
I didn’t announce it earlier, but I have started Shane’s Deal.
(I’m currently revamping the covers in the Montana Collection, so the cover reveal will wait. I’m putting this one with my publisher.) I’m aiming for this to be a novella, but we’ll see. I’m also taking my time on this one. I have the first chapter done or almost done.
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Non-writing related news:
Google Play
I finally bit the bullet and got a Google Play account. My publisher already had one and was putting the books I had with them on there for me. But as for the books I’ve done myself, I haven’t put them up. I was hoping Smashwords or Draft 2 Digital would start offering distribution to them, but that hasn’t happened. So I finally got an account set up. I am waiting for some tax information to be verified. In the meantime, I have put up this book in order to test the waters over there:
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I picked an older book because if something goes wrong, it won’t be a heartache to anyone if I have to remove it.
I have a backlist of about sixty romances to put up there. If things go smoothly, I will put them up. But I’m not going to do this all at once. It’ll drive me crazy. I’m only one person. I don’t have an assistant. (Can’t afford one.) So it’s all up to me to get this stuff done. So be patient with me as I do this.
Also, if you are on Bookbub:
I have a profile over there if you want to follow me. They will send out an email when I have a new book out. If you don’t want to be on my email list and you want an easy way to know if I have a new book out, this would be a good place to follow me.
Here’s the link if you’re interested.
I think that’s all the updates I have for now. Have a great weekend, everyone! I’ll be answering comments from the pervious blog post in a day or two.
June 18, 2018
Updates on What I’m Doing
Books in the Misled Mail Order Brides Series:
Book 1: The Bride Price
Book 2: The Rejected Groom
Book 3: The Perfect Wife
Book 4: The Imperfect Husband (This will complete the series.)
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And to be honest, I hate editing. Editing is not fun at all. The fun is in the writing. It’s finding out what new twists and turns the characters take me on. Editing is necessary. I do believe it’s important, but it’s not the fun part. But what this means is I have finished the first draft of The Perfect Wife, so that’s good news!
Once I finish up with this edit, I can get back to writing, and one of the books I’ll be starting up is Book 4 in the Misled Mail Order Brides Series. I’ve been itching to do this one as soon as I finally decided on a plot. I’ve never done a book where the hero disguises himself as a woman in order to figure out what his wife likes so that he can set about wooing her. So this will be something fresh and exciting to delve into.
I spent the last two chapters of this book setting the stage for Book 4. I had to do that in order to resolve a plot point I had in The Perfect Wife. Don’t worry. I gave an epilogue to this book that let everyone know that things turned out okay for Annabelle and Ben. (I write romances. Things always work out. But Book 4 shows you “HOW” it worked out. And that’s the part I’m excited about getting into.)
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Annabelle might not be happy right away in this book, but she will be soon enough. The smile on her face doesn’t lie. 
June 10, 2018
True or False? (A Quiz Featuring a couple of my Regency Characters)
I got an idea the other night to do a post where you get to guess if something is true or false about some of my Regency characters. I thought it might be fun.
May 26, 2018
The Socially Awkward Author
The author I mention above is me.
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ID 60606770 © Vassilis Anastasiou | Dreamstime.com
The other day, I was reading a book on book promotion, and while doing better covers, book descriptions, keywords, and such are doable on my end, I hit a brick wall when the author mentioned frequent emailing to people on my email list.
Unless I have a new book out, I honestly don’t know what to say. Even when I write a blog post or post something on Facebook, I have a terrible time coming up with something I think might be of interest to people. I personally know authors who write about their personal lives in a way that is so interesting I have to read each and every word. Also, there are authors that come up with great topics, and they make these topics sound much more interesting than I ever could. They have such a gift for these things, and I can see why they attract a lot of people.
Unless I’m writing a story, my mind goes blank on coming up with anything that sounds fresh and exciting. It’s like when I write Christmas letters. I hate doing them. In fact, I broke down and ended up just sending cards with a sentence or two because it didn’t seem like anything that interesting happened in my life. Things just seem to be business as usual. Probably the biggest news I had over the past few years was moving, and that didn’t take long to say. Other than that, not a lot has changed in my life.
This must be a personality thing. Some authors are great at social mingling. I’m not one of them. If we were all at a party, I would be the person sitting in the corner of the room talking to maybe one or two people. No one would notice me. I know this because in real life, I’ve never been the center of attention. I’m a socially awkward person. You know those people who try to tell a joke but no one thinks it’s funny? That’s me. It’s not that I don’t have a sense of humor. I manage to write some funny lines in my books, but in real life, I just can’t seem to do the same thing. I know because when I’ve tried to tell jokes, my family (even my kids) look at me in sympathy. They want to laugh, but they can’t manage to bring out a chuckle.
I think the “email and engage your list frequently” thing is great for people who have a natural charisma. They’re often the leaders. They go up to people and make them feel comfortable. I’m the type of person who follows. I’m much more comfortable responding to a thread or topic someone else started.
So, after doing some thinking over this, I realized something very important. Authors can’t all promote the same way. It’s impossible. Some just don’t have the personality for being entertaining in emails. The best way I can possibly entertain in an email to my email list is to say, “Here’s my book, and here’s a special scene or research I did to go with it.” Those things take me a week to come up with. I spend a lot of thought on them. So it’s not that I don’t care about the people on my email list. I do. I care about everyone who’s still with me, and I don’t take them for granted.
So even if I don’t email until I have a new book out, I hope you know it’s not because I’m not thinking of you or that I don’t care. I do think about you guys, and I do care. Whether you’re following this blog, on my email list, following my newsletter blog, friended me on Facebook, or are following my Tweets, in the back of my mind, I do think of you.
I know we’re told that we must break out of our comfort zones, but sometimes that’s not good advice. I don’t care how many lessons I take on public speaking. I am not going to be good at speaking in front of an audience, and I’m not about to go through it again after failing two times. Thankfully, Janet Syas Nitsick was there to save me from total embarrassment. I was so stressed out over those times that I was physically sick for a almost a week. I would much rather be in a group and participate than be the leader at the front of the room. So why would telling someone like me to do a speech be good advice? It wouldn’t be. Likewise, emailing every week or two weeks to engage people in a conversation wouldn’t work for me. It would stress me out because I don’t know what to say, and I sure couldn’t keep up the momentum long-term.
I think the most important thing for writers to do is to figure out who they are. What are their strengths and weaknesses? There’s no point in trying to work on a weakness (unless it’s for your physical health). I was weak on eating sugar, and I’ve been cutting it out. So sometimes, it makes sense to do something like that. But if you’re weak at public speaking, why torture yourself doing it? If you’re not good at making You Tube videos (like I am), why do it? If you’re not naturally inclined to engage people in frequent emails to your list, why do it? Also, if you’re not naturally good at writing by the seat of your pants, don’t do it; plot instead.
I think authors should find what they’re strong at and do that. My strength is in participation in a discussion. My strength is in setting down a routine to write and sticking with it. My strength is in sticking with a story I’m writing, even when I get to the middle where ideas start to slow down. I press through it. (I rarely stop writing a story. It’s happened, but not often.) I’m not a sprinter. I am the turtle. I check in almost every day to write, and though I might not write a lot that day, I usually get something done. I do take days off, and those days will be more frequent this summer when my kids are home all day, but I’ll probably still check in to do a few hundred or so words before they get up.
So anyway, after reading that part in the book on promotion about successful authors emailing frequently, I felt bummed out for a couple of days because I knew this was something I just can’t do, but I’ve since come to peace with that. We all have our limitations. Being aware of them can also help us realize we have some strengths that wouldn’t be possible without those limitations. Sometimes you just have to flip something around to see how a hinderance in one area is a strength in another.
I don’t know if this is inspiring for anyone else, but it took a huge weight off my shoulders to realize it’s okay to do things in the way that is most comfortable for us. It’s okay to not follow the crowd and do it their way. Sometimes you just have to be true to yourself.
