N.B. Austin's Blog, page 14

The Adventure Begins… (Pt. 1/2: Writing Crimson River)

In a lot of ways, I feel like I’m in the same place as a lot of my characters at the end of book 1: evolved and, though a bit exhausted, more ready than ever to face what’s ahead!

[image error]

However, since I didn’t regularly document any of my experiences working through Crimson River, I want to take the time to look back on and summarize how it came to be. Hopefully this will help to highlight some of my failures/triumphs as a first-time author.

Since it was a long process this first go around (about 9 months from first words to published), I’ll break it down with a separate post on the writing and editing phases. Since I’m only just scratching the surface still on production and marketing, I will hold off on those for future, “My Writing Journey,” posts. For now, these first two topics are what constitute making the story so will start here.

I also want to start with two really important points before we begin:

1. These are my experiences, habits, and thoughts. It is entirely possible, and in certain places even likely, that yours or those of other authors are different. If so, please respect this and understand that no approach to art of any kind is or should be universal.

2. I need to give a special thanks and a serious recommendation that any prospective authors check out The Creative Penn and read any or all of Joanna Penn’s very specialized books on all phases of authoring! They were a tremendous help to me, especially as a first time author.

So without further adieu… let’s begin with writing!

Writing Crimson River

[image error]

I first considered writing a book in the summer of 2016. Having become so engrossed in TV shows, I really got into the idea of telling a story of my own. Since I didn’t know how to write a TV show, I decided I would start with a book.

One day I sat down and brainstormed general genre and plot ideas, thinking that would be a good place to start… it wasn’t. Again, this might not be advice for each person, but everything I came up with sounded silly to me and I tried too hard to come up with some epic tale everyone would love.

So, in utter defeat after that brief attempt, I abandoned the idea of writing a book for about a week until one day it just hit me: It wasn’t a genre or a plot or a theme, it was just a scene in my head. A scene I pictured playing out as if it were opening on HBO (minus the fuzzy credits and cool intro theme song… for now!). I saw a young girl being chased through the snowy woods by men with hounds at their side.

That’s it. That’s all I started with, but from there I just kept typing and naturally it kept flowing because I wasn’t thinking anymore of what kind of story I wanted to write. At that point my mind was simply a projector, with my fingers translating what was on the screen like a courtroom stenographer. From that humble beginning it took me about 2 full months to finish the rest of the first draft of my first book. While I did do some very general outlining of chapters and scenes for placement, I saved most of the fine-tuning for the editing phase and mostly just let the story unfold.

To summarize my most important takeaways here, which as usual expand beyond just writing and apply to any pursuit one might attempt:

Take 5 times as much action as you do planning/learning
Don’t ever attempt to fit a mold in art
Worry about molding your work into a masterpiece only after your vision of the story is on the page

With subsequent books, I hope to get into more detail about how what I learned from book 1 shapes my future writing habits. For this post though, I attempted to describe my past experience from the perspective I had as a first time writer.

If you have any thoughts or questions, feel free to reach out on social media as I would love to hear about your own experiences. For now, thanks for your time and I hope you enjoy Crimson River!

The Adventure Begins… (Pt. 1/4: Writing Crimson River)

In a lot of ways, I feel like I’m in the same place as a lot of my characters at the end of book 1: evolved and, though a bit exhausted, more ready than ever to face what’s ahead!

[image error]

However, since I didn’t regularly document any of my experiences working through Crimson River, I want to take the time to look back on and summarize how it came to be. Hopefully this will help to highlight some of my failures/triumphs as a first-time author.

Since it was a long process this first go around (about 9 months from first words to published), I’ll break it down with a separate post on each phase: writing, editing, production, and marketing. While I’m only just scratching the surface still in some of these (production and marketing in particular), these four topics are what constitute authorship so they will come up quite a bit as I continue to document, “My Writing Journey,” in the future.

I also want to start with two really important points before we begin:

1. These are my experiences, habits, and thoughts. It is entirely possible, and in certain places even likely, that yours or those of other authors are different. If so, please respect this and understand that no approach to art of any kind is or should be universal.

2. I need to give a special thanks and a serious recommendation that any prospective authors check out The Creative Penn and read any or all of Joanna Penn’s very specialized books on all phases of authoring! They were a tremendous help to me, especially as a first time author.

So without further adieu… let’s begin with writing!

Writing Crimson River

[image error]

I first considered writing a book in the summer of 2016. Having become so engrossed in TV shows, I really got into the idea of telling a story of my own. Since I didn’t know how to write a TV show, I decided I would start with a book.

One day I sat down and brainstormed general genre and plot ideas, thinking that would be a good place to start… it wasn’t. Again, this might not be advice for each person, but everything I came up with sounded silly to me and I tried too hard to come up with some epic tale everyone would love.

So, in utter defeat after that brief attempt, I abandoned the idea of writing a book for about a week until one day it just hit me: It wasn’t a genre or a plot or a theme, it was just a scene in my head. A scene I pictured playing out as if it were opening on HBO (minus the fuzzy credits and cool intro theme song… for now!). I saw a young girl being chased through the snowy woods by men with hounds at their side.

That’s it. That’s all I started with, but from there I just kept typing and naturally it kept flowing because I wasn’t thinking anymore of what kind of story I wanted to write. At that point my mind was simply a projector, with my fingers translating what was on the screen like a courtroom stenographer. From that humble beginning it took me about 2 full months to finish the rest of the first draft of my first book. While I did do some very general outlining of chapters and scenes for placement, I saved most of the fine-tuning for the editing phase and mostly just let the story unfold.

To summarize my most important takeaways here, which as usual expand beyond just writing and apply to any pursuit one might attempt:

Take 5 times as much action as you do planning/learning
Don’t ever attempt to fit a mold in art
Worry about molding your work into a masterpiece only after your vision of the story is on the page

With subsequent books, I hope to get into more detail about how what I learned from book 1 shapes my future writing habits. For this post though, I attempted to describe my past experience from the perspective I had as a first time writer.

If you have any thoughts or questions, feel free to reach out on social media as I would love to hear about your own experiences. For now, thanks for your time and I hope you enjoy Crimson River!

The Adventure Begins… (Writing Crimson River)

In a lot of ways, I feel like I’m in the same place as a lot of my characters at the end of book 1: evolved and, though a bit exhausted, more ready than ever to face what’s ahead!

[image error]

However, since I didn’t regularly document any of my experiences working through Crimson River, I want to take the time to look back on and summarize how it came to be. Hopefully this will help to highlight some of my failures/triumphs as a first-time author.

Since it was a long process this first go around (about 9 months from first words to published), I’ll break it down with a separate post on each phase: writing, editing, production, and marketing. While I’m only just scratching the surface still in some of these (production and marketing in particular), these four topics are what constitute authorship so they will come up quite a bit as I continue to document, “My Writing Journey,” in the future.

I also want to start with two really important points before we begin:

1. These are my experiences, habits, and thoughts. It is entirely possible, and in certain places even likely, that yours or those of other authors are different. If so, please respect this and understand that no approach to art of any kind is or should be universal.

2. I need to give a special thanks and a serious recommendation that any prospective authors check out The Creative Penn and read any or all of Joanna Penn’s very specialized books on all phases of authoring! They were a tremendous help to me, especially as a first time author.

So without further adieu… let’s begin with writing!

Writing Crimson River

[image error]

I first considered writing a book in the summer of 2016. Having become so engrossed in TV shows, I really got into the idea of telling a story of my own. Since I didn’t know how to write a TV show, I decided I would start with a book.

One day I sat down and brainstormed general genre and plot ideas, thinking that would be a good place to start… it wasn’t. Again, this might not be advice for each person, but everything I came up with sounded silly to me and I tried too hard to come up with some epic tale everyone would love.

So, in utter defeat after that brief attempt, I abandoned the idea of writing a book for about a week until one day it just hit me: It wasn’t a genre or a plot or a theme, it was just a scene in my head. A scene I pictured playing out as if it were opening on HBO (minus the fuzzy credits and cool intro theme song… for now!). I saw a young girl being chased through the snowy woods by men with hounds at their side.

That’s it. That’s all I started with, but from there I just kept typing and naturally it kept flowing because I wasn’t thinking anymore of what kind of story I wanted to write. At that point my mind was simply a projector, with my fingers translating what was on the screen like a courtroom stenographer. From that humble beginning it took me about 2 full months to finish the rest of the first draft of my first book. While I did do some very general outlining of chapters and scenes for placement, I saved most of the fine-tuning for the editing phase and mostly just let the story unfold.

To summarize my most important takeaways here, which as usual expand beyond just writing and apply to any pursuit one might attempt:

Take 5 times as much action as you do planning/learning
Don’t ever attempt to fit a mold in art
Worry about molding your work into a masterpiece only after your vision of the story is on the page

With subsequent books, I hope to get into more detail about how what I learned from book 1 shapes my future writing habits. For this post though, I attempted to describe my past experience from the perspective I had as a first time writer.

If you have any thoughts or questions, feel free to reach out on social media as I would love to hear about your own experiences. For now, thanks for your time and I hope you enjoy Crimson River!

Halfway Through May

[image error]This is a historic day for me because today is the REAL first day that Crimson River (my first ever published book, or really full-length work of any kind for that matter) is available online. Even if people may not know it yet (or care), it’s still a beautiful and partially terrifying thing. For me though it is way more beautiful than terrifying because this book and this story needed to be told. Which brings me to the biggest lesson I’ve learned in writing it:

EVERYONE needs to tell their story in one way or another.

In a recent Instagram post I talked about this feeling of overwhelming freedom I have experienced having been able to write and publish my first book. The thing about it is though, that telling your story doesn’t just have to be about writing at all and for most it won’t be. Many friends of mine experience the same feeling in other areas entirely. Some examples of things I’ve seen light people’s eyes up include poker, art, and even beer!

I won’t go too much deeper on this for now, but I will end it by expressing my sincere hope that you will actively search for your passions and invest in them. Whatever it may be that makes you want to shout and cheer like a crazy person while you create, I hope that you find it. I promise it will be worth your time and, if necessary, your money. Also, if you already have found it, please make sure that no matter how busy you get in life, you never suppress it.

The world truly does need what you have to offer, but more importantly, you yourself will benefit in more ways than you can imagine for offering it.

Thanks for reading and hope you are enjoying the beginning of the Civilands series!

My Writing Journey

Every week or so I’ll be sharing my writing process/progress for that time period. In these posts I will provide insight into my writing habits from word #1 to finished manuscript, how I handle the editing process, and any other steps involved to reach publication. It is my sincere hope that this might assist aspiring writers in some way and/or just give some interesting ‘about me’ type info to non-writers! As always, please feel free and encouraged to leave comments below on your own process or any other thoughts!