C.V. Sutherland's Blog, page 5

‘Holidays’

Candy canes and twinkling Christmas lights and presents and candles at night… I think we can all agree that the holiday season is one of the most festive and beautiful times of the year, no matter what holiday you celebrate.

But when I’m staring down at the sparkling little fake tree in my living room, and all of the ornaments with smiling little people and a cowboy Santa Claus and the Starbucks cups and the Coca-Cola refrigerator with the little polar bears inside, I only feel nostalgic. Maybe not even for anything in particular. I just need to ask myself if I’ve really been good this year, and all the feelings start to flow.

See, the little light pink tree that doesn’t quite stand up straight on my desk doesn’t make me reminiscent. It has no ornaments. It’s just a bunch of fake, dyed pieces of plastic connected to a metal rod and finished off with a “Made in China” sticker. There’s nothing nostalgia-worthy there, right?

In fact, it almost makes me happy, because for a moment I can forget about the big tree downstairs and all that it holds.

So ask yourself this, my reader, when you’re sitting down at the counter with a magazine and a mug of hot chocolate. Have you really been good this year?

If you’re not sure about the answer, I think you’ll be able to understand how I’m feeling.

- CVSUTHERLAND

Safety Zone

For me, writing is easier than talking. Really.

When we find peace in something, we take shelter in it – especially writers. Since writers are generally introverts (usually, not always), we tend to use our writing as just another excuse to stay indoors.

When I have to speak, I get uncomfortable, just because my words when they’re said aloud are easily manipulated and used against me or taken the wrong way. So I find it safer to write my thoughts, knowing I can say whatever I want with confidence because it’s harder to mess with the meaning of words when they’re on a screen or printed on a page. Because even when I’m having a regular conversation, that always seems to happen to me – people twist my words. So it’s generally a better alternative for me to sit alone and write.

Solitude can be good, but it can also be unhealthy. I’m trying to find a good balance and make myself feel comfortable talking to other, real, regular people – to escape the safety zone that can also be a prison.

- CVSUTHERLAND

#WDLungCancerMonth’s End + The Grand Total!

Hey guys! This is a super exciting post, because it marks the end of #WDLungCancerMonth, where 50% of all the profits from Wildflower Dreams sales during the month went to the American Cancer Society to honor Lung Cancer Awareness month, which is November, and to raise money and awareness for it.

First, I just want to thank everyone who participated and helped me with this project, because it’s because of you guys that I’m able to do stuff like this. HUGE cyber-hugs to you, and a bucketful of virtual love!

I also want to drop a few hints about upcoming fundraising months in the future – there might be a 2nd Lung Cancer Awareness month event!

Some of you have asked me why I didn’t do anything for October, which was National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The only reason I didn’t do something for it is because there simply was not enough time. My book was released nine days before the end of the month, so there would’ve been no time to start, promote, and complete anything. Trust me – there will DEFINITELY be something coming up next October – and hopefully something big.

So, we sold 16 copies (yay), which comes to about a grand total of:

$10.74!!

We successfully met and surpassed our goal of ten dollars and I couldn’t be more happy. The money will be donated specifically for lung cancer causes, and I am going to place it in honor of a good family friend that sadly passed away from lung cancer.

Thank you so much for participating and supporting this cause, and I will talk to you later!

- CVSUTHERLAND

I’d also like to quickly mention that I’ve been recognized as an official author on GoodReads, so you should definitely check it out! My blog posts appear there too so you can read them there as well. Have a great December!

if.

That little word with so much meaning, so much weight – if.

We could spend our entire lives thinking about ‘if’ scenarios that probably would never even occur in real life. Why? As humans, we like to fantasize. We like to think about things that we don’t have or haven’t happened.

Think. Another big word. ‘Think’ and ‘if’ go quite well together, because in order to fall into the ‘if’ trap, you’ve got to think first. 

For example, what if I’d never started this blog? What if the world ended today? What if I… 

Stop yourself right there. There’s no point in dreaming up all these ‘if’ things. Put yourself back down in reality and focus on the ‘certain’. 

Don’t get me wrong – sometimes ‘if’s are good things. After all, how do fiction writers get an idea for a book besides thinking “What if…”. You can become a successful, famous author just by using that one word. 

But it can get unhealthy sometimes. As much as we fiction writers and readers love to travel to these worlds inside books, we’ve got to live in our own world too. Balance out your fantasies with your realities, and that ‘if’ word will become a whole lot simpler to understand. 

- CVSUTHERLAND

Expectations vs. Reality

Expectations, essentially, are the basis of our moods. We expect something too high of someone else, and our mood falls. Expect too little of a person and be impressed. Reality is the other half of that – reality balances out our expectations of people and things and the world and life.

When you make goals for yourself, you’re subconsciously building that goal off of expectations and reality – checks and balances, so to speak. Your brain knows how much you should expect from yourself and how your reality meets with that expectation, at least for me, so that’s how you create goals for yourself.

So, it might always seem like expectations and reality are on the same team, right?

Wrong.

As Don Roff once said,

“Writers often torture themselves trying to get the words right. Sometimes you must lower your expectations and just finish it. “

This counts for anything, really, but especially writing, because we all just strive for perfection and perfection is something that no one has. Or has had, or ever will have, because we’re humans.

So why do we push ourselves so much? Good question.

We want to think that we can meet even the highest of expectations that people might set for us, so we push ourselves to the breaking point trying to get there. The truth is that no one will get there, because no one even sets expectations that high in the first place. You judge yourself more than other people judge you. Truth is, you’re your own harshest critic. Learn to be nice to yourself and both your reality and expectations will fall onto the same side again.

When you’re releasing your book, you already know that everyone is going to have different expectations for it – some higher than others. But you’ve already written the book, so what difference does it make if it doesn’t quite meet one person’s hopes for it? You’re not going to rewrite the entire book just for one person, right? It might sound a little ridiculous, but you can’t please everyone, even though your conscience wants to.

So, just set your expectations reasonably, and when people start to realize that you understand the limits of yourself, they’ll respect that and set their expectations reasonably too. Just be nice to yourself, learn to love the capacity of yourself, and everything falls into place.

Have a great Thanksgiving, be kind to yourself, and write to your heart’s content!

- CVSUTHERLAND

The Fear Factor

You’d be surprised at how big a player fear and insecurity can be in the industry of writing and publishing. Because it’s all about putting your work out there, and that takes a lot of guts. If you don’t have the guts… well, you can’t make it big. You can’t make it at all. But if you can overcome that fear of negativity towards you and release your book, knowing you worked hard and deserve everything that comes from it being published, you really can say that you overcame your fear.

A couple of years ago, when I wrote Assassin, which is not published, I was scared to show it even to my own mother. I thought she would judge me for it or tell me how to write differently. I didn’t want that – no one does. But at the end I somehow mustered up the courage to let her read it, and she liked it a whole lot more than I was expecting her too.

Sometimes it’s not even a fear that holds you back. It’s just an extremely low expectation of your readers. When you aren’t expecting them to LOVE it, then they’ll be able to sense that doubt. Writing and publishing is a teamwork between you and your readers. You have to keep producing work, and they have to keep loving it – which isn’t hard, if you’ve written something good. 

My point is, don’t give up, because you’ll just disappoint the readers and give them a bad impression of you. This is especially important when you’re debuting, because you don’t want to be a one-hit wonder. You want your readers to like you, right? And you want to like them.

Even with Wildflower Dreams I still get uncomfortable when someone is reading it in the same room that I’m in, because I’m kind of afraid that they’ll turn to me and go, “This sucks.” No one wants that. You won’t be able to ever completely overcome it, but if you try you can come pretty close.

In some ways, being an author can be even scarier than being a skydiver. You know why? Because writers have to cope with that fear long after their book has been published, whereas skydivers only experience a few moments of that fear, and then it’s over. I don’t know if it will ever be over, but when you can learn to make peace with it – that’s when you’ll start to feel confident. 

Basically, don’t let the fear factor control you.

Talk to you later!

- CVSUTHERLAND

National Book Awards!

Hey guys! As I’m sure my fellow avid readers might know, tonight is the National Book Awards! Unfortunately Wildflower Dreams is not a nominee  (haha) but there are a ton of great books up, soI I’ll be sharing a few of the nominees with you today! So here we go!

FICTION

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Good Lord Bird by James McBride
Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon
Tenth of December by George Saunders

NON-FICTION

Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin by Jill Lepore
Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields by Wendy Lower
The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America by George Packer
The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia, 1772 – 1832 by Alan Taylor
Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief by Lawrence Wright

POETRY

Metaphysical Dog: Poems by Frank Bidart
Stay, Illusion by Lucie Brock-Broido
The Big Smoke by Adrian Matejka
Black Aperture by Matt Rasmussen
Incarnadine: Poems by Mary Szybist

YOUNG PEOPLE’S LITERATURE

The True Blue Scouts of Sugar Man Swamp by Kathi Appelt
The Thing About Luck by Cynthia Kadohata
Far Far Away by Tom McNeal
Picture Me Gone by Meg Rosoff
Boxers & Saints by Gene Luen Yang

That’s all! Tell me who you want or think will win, and I’ll talk to you later!

Remember – #WDLungCancerMonth is still going on! 50% of all book profits over the month, from sales of Wildflower Dreams will be donated to the American Cancer Society to support and raise awareness for lung cancer. Check out the book on Amazon or CreateSpace estore!

- CVSUTHERLAND

Dangers of Self-Publishing?

As many of you know, I’m a self-published author – and I feel like self-publishing often receives a bad rap, just because some people assume that if you’re self-published, you couldn’t get published by a big company or you’re not talented enough to be ‘properly published’ or something like that, which is not true at all, because in this modern day and age people are more willing to handle things on their own and less willing to spend months searching for agents and editors and representatives of publishing companies to help them ‘make it big’. While there are many published authors that are famous, there are also many that are self-published – and you probably wouldn’t even know it! In many ways, self-publishing is just like getting properly published except you have to revise and edit and handle all the money business and social media business and stuff like that, so don’t think that if you’re self-published you can’t say you’re a published author, because you totally can!

So while it may seem like self-publishing is a much better alternative – and in many ways it is – there are still dangers to it that you have to be careful about and do your research with. I’m going to talk about a few of those things with you today, from the start to the finish of the publishing process!

1. Choose your company carefully. If you’re seriously looking into the industry of self-publishing, you’ll want to make sure that you do your homework on all the different companies that offer self-publishing – because trust me, there are a lot more than just one to choose from. You’ll need to make sure that the company you select is trustworthy, reliable, up-to-date, and offers everything you’re looking for as an author.

For my book Wildflower Dreams, I used CreateSpace, which is an Amazon company so I know that it’s reliable if it’s backed by such a large brand, and it also offers publishing for indie film-makers and song artists as well, so you’re not just limited to books if you want to branch out and use the same company. It’s very user-friendly and lets you keep track of how many copies you’re selling and your royalty balance right on the homepage. It also has a great selection of articles on everything from creating content to formatting that content to marketing it, all written by other authors or self-publishing company representatives. I had heard so many people talk about great experiences with CreateSpace, so I tried it out, and I’m so happy I did!

There are tons of other company options to choose from, however – Lulu, iUniverse, OutskirtsPress, and many more. I’ve provided you with direct links to all of the companies mentioned, so you can check them out for yourself! I personally don’t have any reviews on other sites besides CreateSpace simply because I haven’t used them, but you should certainly look into it and see what people are saying.

2. Prioritize and manage your time well. A huge difference between self-publishing and actually publishing is that if you’re choosing to go solo and publish on your own, you will have to take on many responsibilities by yourself. With traditional publishing, you’ve got a whole team of people to help you out, but when you’re self-publishing you have to constantly stay up to date with it even after your book is released, because you’ve got to be the one to manage everything on your own. Putting it into words here doesn’t make it sound that overwhelming, but trust me – it is! I’m not trying to discourage any of you from publishing, but just know that you will need to do some prioritizing and make sure that you’re operating on a beneficial timetable, to say, so that everything you need to do gets done. If you aren’t managing your time well, you’ll get overwhelmed by all the stress and pressure put on you from not completing what you should!

I like to check my CreateSpace account maybe twice a day so I am completely up to date if I sell more copies over the course of the day (it might sound a bit obsessive but trust me, you’ll know the feeling once you publish) and I have a PowerPoint graph/chart to organize copies sold per month, and I update it as soon as something new happens so I can analyze the data after a few months. And of course I have to stay up to date with my social media accounts, so I attend to that too! Finding your own timetable to work on is key to not feeling stressed, and the more time that passes, the better you’ll know how to handle the responsibilities and tasks you’ll have. (You can always have a family member or friend help you out if you’re not sure you’ll be able to manage it all on your own, but it’s worth a shot, because you’ll just get better at organizing everything the more you do!)

3. Marketing……. As a writer, of course, it’s hard to become super successful, so marketing is a key way to spread the word about your book. But you could be overloading on the marketing, and not doing enough writing, and finding a balance between the two is probably the most important thing you could do once your book has been launched for the world to see.

I could be writing my new book right now, but instead I’m typing up this blog post for you. I’ve set time aside later in the day for me to do some writing on my book, so that way I can squeeze in a little time for both things over the course of the day. Authors will have long nights and early mornings, trust me, so finding a way to do both (even if it’s just for a little while) is so important.

Doing things like attending author conventions, practicing your autograph, or doing live Twitter Q&A’s on your book is great, but not necessary. A writer’s job is to write, so just trust that if you’ve put out good-quality work, people will spread the word on their own. It won’t take much from you. The news of your book will still be floating around weeks after it’s been launched. In all honesty, once you’ve released your debut book, the most important thing you should be working on is producing a second, because otherwise you’ll be a one-hit wonder and will fade away soon. Content comes first – marketing that content comes second.

I hope these tips help you, and I’ll talk to you later!

It’s Q&A Time!!

Hey guys! Today I thought I would do a little question-and-answer session, because I get a lot of questions about what it’s like to be an author, and what it’s like to be such a young author, and all of that . So here we go!!

Q: What was it like to be able to hold a real, published copy of your book in your hands?

A: It was so surreal. I couldn’t swallow the fact that I was actually published, and could actually call myself an author now! I was kind of jumping around the room in quiet excitement when our copies arrived in the mail – it was a pretty funny sight. 

Q: What’s the strangest moment you’ve experienced about your book since it launched?

A: I was at school and sitting in science lab, and I just had my copy sitting casually on top of my stuff. The kid across from me also had his copy sitting casually on top of his binders and stuff. It was like a double-take for me – I thought I was looking into a mirror for a second. It was the strangest thing! I guess I’ll have to get used to stuff like that, though – and also my fellow students asking me to autograph their copies! I can’t even begin to process that!

Q: What was the first reaction and thoughts you felt towards you when the news of your book came out?

A: When I went to school that day and let the news out, there was a total mix of reactions. Some people seemed excited for me, some people were dying to read it, and some people seemed a bit jealous. I’ve had multiple people tell me head-on that they don’t believe that I wrote it on my own (which I did, obviously) and probably about 6 people tell me that they’ve had ideas for their own books and want me to help them edit it. You can imagine what that might feel like for me – but as they say, imitation is the highest form of flattery, I guess. Still can’t process why people would want me to sign their copies! It’s just absolutely crazy for me, being come up to and asked if I could autograph it. 

If you’re planning to self-publish your book, you have to be prepared not only for the long and tedious, yet rewarding, process of actually publishing but also that people’s views on you are going to change no matter what. You just have to keep your head held high and feel proud of yourself no matter what happens, because you know that you worked hard and you deserve everything that comes from it being published.

Q: What kinds of things are you responsible for doing as an author?

A: Even when you think you’re finished with the publishing process, you’re never really. Being able to say that you’re a published author comes with lots of responsibilities, like tracking sales, running reports, making charts to organize all the data from tracking sales and running reports… You also need to keep in touch with social media, like my Twitter, Instagram, and blog, of course, because you need readers to be able to find you wherever they are and they have to know that you’re active on those sites. You also need to be prepared to handle this all on your own, of course!

Q: Do you plan on writing more books and continuing your career as an author?

A: Of course! I’m playing around with a few different genres right now and trying to find a good plot I want to continue with, but you can bet that I’ll be back with another book! Writing is my passion, and to be able to share it with the world and get paid for just doing what I love is so insane for me, so why wouldn’t I keep writing?

 

That’s all for today! Leave me a comment down below or Tweet me @CVSutherland with any questions you have for me!

 

 

 

15 Copies Sold – Thank You!

Hey guys! Today I would like to send a HUGE thank-you to everyone that had the faith in me to purchase my book! We’ve now sold 15 copies of Wildflower Dreams, which is really exciting for me even though it might not seem like a lot to some. A year of blood, sweat and tears went into writing, editing and publishing this book, and I am so elated at the outcome and response to it (because you don’t see an 11-year-old girl publishing a book every day, right?). If it continues to be popular, I might even publish it for Kindle or something! Who knows what’s in store for me now?

So thank-you everyone! I hope you enjoy(ed) reading it, and I’m just really excited, because this is the first step in a long road of authorhood for me!

So thanks everyone! Talk to you later!

Remember – during the month of November, to raise awareness for lung cancer, I will be donating 50% of profits made from sales of my book over the month to the American Cancer Society, so purchase your copy now and help me support this amazing, worthy cause!