Writing anxiety

Photo credit: Cheerfully_lost on Pixabay

Hey guys, welcome back! I’ve been remiss in my posting and I apologize. I normally try for twice a week and I dropped the ball. But I’m back and hey, it’s September!

This is my favorite time of the year. From September 1st to New Year’s Eve, my soul is happy. The rest of the year, I’m just one of the pack. However, I never smile as much as I do during the ‘ber months. I know many are sad to see the Summer go and I get that. I hope everyone had a great time and appreciate that this upcoming time of the year isn’t for everyone. We all have our thing that makes us happy. If you’ve found yours, hold on to it as best you can. Whether it’s a season, a daily ritual of reading or spending time with family and friends, whatever it is, we all have that one thing that makes our soul smile. It’s what makes you…you.

Having said all that, let’s get to what’s been going on with the book!

If you’re new here, hello! I’ve been documenting my writing journey with my current book and have been inching along to the finish line. I started off strong. Sometimes writing one or two chapters a night. It’s how I roll. I don’t stop typing until a chapter is done and if I have an idea in mind or even when I don’t, I write until I’m done. I let my characters lead the way. Now that I’m in the final chapters, it’s the wrapping up of the story that I’m taking my time with. A lot has gone on with these characters and I want to give them the best ending that I can. These last chapters have been a challenge, but I do love a challenge.

I’ve been going through a cycle of reading and rereading and rereading again of the entire manuscript. I never tire of this story which is a good thing. If I found myself getting bored with it then that would mean that there are serious issues with it. What I’ve been finding doing all of these read throughs, is that I’ve been finding the occasional continuity errors.

Having started this book months ago, trying to remember where each character was at a certain point can be tough. I’ve been able to fix a lot, rewrite a lot and cut out a lot (ouch) but now the story is flowing much better. I know this will be a constant thing to keep doing until I finally submit this and I’m fine with that. The more I find now, the better the finished product will be. (I just need to actually finish it!)

Speaking of submitting, I’ve fully decided to submit my book to a literary agent. I’ve been doing a ton of research, looking very carefully at the acknowledgements at the ends of the books I really like and taking note of names mentioned and more. The one thing I am personally dreading is the query letter. I’ve been checking out sample letters across different writing resource sites and I’m so grateful that they have these samples available. I had no clue what was involved until I started doing this! Am I slow to understand it all? You betcha! But at least I know what is involved now.

The biggest struggle for me was writing out the synopsis of the book. Summarizing an entire story in only three hundred words. Why three hundred? Because from everything I’ve read and from talking with other authors, three hundred words is the sweet spot. That’s the number that will get your synopsis read. In rare cases, when they are written incredibly well, the publishers will even use the original synopsis as the summary on the back cover of the published book! Mine is not going to be done that way…trust me. I can write, I can not summarize. At least, I don’t think so. I have gotten some nice feedback from those who have read it, but I will always be my own worst critic.

To me, having to narrow down a full story in a few hundred words, is like trying to sum up your life in a few hundred words. (I mean, isn’t that what an obituary is?) Still, I found it humbling and while it, no joke, took hours to do, I needed it to be the best it could be so that when it lands in the inbox of a future agent, they read it and think, “I’ve found the next best selling novel!”

Again, I just need to finish the actual story. But hey, semantics, amiright?

Anyway, that is where I shall leave you for today. I hope you got a little something out of this and I will try to keep true to my posting schedule more. I invite you to check out the links across the site…whether it’s my past works, the shops I have linked to or even if you are looking for a little reading inspiration, there’s lots to see here. (Remember, there’s two ‘on the bookshelf’ pages. They are quite different from each other so be sure to check out both.)

Thanks again for being here and until next time…cheers!

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Hey all, welcome back and Happy New Month! Yes, I totally flaked out this week by not posting until today. That was of course, not the plan. I’ve been so proud of myself for keeping up with the whole ‘multiple posts a week’ thing. Creating content to bring folks here to my site and up until this week, it was going well. However, last week when I did my traditional Friday post, almost no one read it. My numbers dropped dramatically after going up over the last few weeks. To say I was discouraged would be an understatement.

I became obsessed with looking at the analytics across my social channels and here on WordPress. Then the internal questions started: Was it me? Was it the post itself? Was it the time I posted/reposted it? What was it from just days earlier when the numbers were up to just a few days later when my post seemed dead in the water? I got mad. I got angry. Not at my readers, far from that! I got mad at myself!

I used to do content creation for a company. I was so in tune with what times to post things and even had a chart on my desk for each platform. Instagram you post at this time, Facebook, this one, Twitter, etc. Blog posts went up at a certain time of the day as well and right now, I have NO clue when that is anymore! I thought I had a handle on it. It had seemed in the past that early Friday posts were the way to go and when I had tried to post later on in the day, I’d lose my audience. So I went back to an earlier post time last Friday and lost a good lot of you. Again, this is on me. This is ALL on me. And to those who were here? THANK YOU!!! You made my weekend!

After last week’s numbers, I went back and forth on what to do, when and what to write next. Then the week hit and will just say…it has been a rough one. So every night when I’d sit with my keyboard in my lap, I’d come to write something new here. Instead, end up adding another chapter of my new novel. I keep telling myself that is a good thing. I’m making progress on that story so why am I worried? I am also trying to remind myself that I am not HERE for the numbers. That my writing is my writing and I come here to be open, honest and that even if no one else reads along with me, that’s ok. Then I remind myself that I am kind of hoping this blog gets to the point where I can make some money off of it and I’m right back to where I started. I believe that the moment this begins to feel like work to me? That’s when I’ll have to step back and rethink things, but until then, let the rambling continue! Again, honesty.

Working on this site has become a lifeline of sorts to me. Not just, as I’ve included in several posts, that it holds me accountable on my writing journey, while a major help, that’s not all this is supposed to be. I wanted this place to become a sort of ‘destination’ blog where other writers (and readers of course) could come and see what I’ve been going through and think “oh good, it’s not just me!” We are in this crazy world together after all, we shouldn’t have to go it alone.

So now where does this leave me? I have no clue. I still love this site and of course will continue to write these rambling posts of mine. I just really need to start doing the research again, (and if you’ve been with me for a while, you know how much I can’t get enough of research! If you’re new here? I LOVE it!). I need to figure out how to reach more of you. I also need to calm my mind down a bit because it had been working overtime.

Enough of the numbers game, let’s get back to ‘writing is writing.’ When I opened my new Dashery shop (see link, right sidebar) I made sure to include in my social promotions that it is for writers (and readers) of all kinds and I sincerely mean that. I am a believer that whether you write books, speeches, news articles, blog content, hell even a tagline for a ketchup bottle…YOU ARE A WRITER! Are you writing? YES. Never forget that.

You are also a writer if, like me, you have a parallel story in your head going while you are doing anything else but typing. I was making my dinner tonight and the narrative of my next scene in Chapter 11 (yes, I hit double digits this week hooray) was playing out in my head. I knew where the conversation was going to go, how I was going to get the characters to their next destination, all of it. This story is so embedded in me right now, I feel that I am living it in an alternate universe. I was at one of my doctor’s offices yesterday trying so hard to focus on the questions he was asking me as this was a pretty important appointment. Yet in my mind, I kept picturing the scenery in the town my characters are living in. What was the weather like? Was it about to change? And ‘shit, I really need to change the name of that guy. It just doesn’t fit at all.’ I also consider this a kind of writing because after all, where does the story come from in the first place? Your mind! So keep having those thoughts, just maybe do better than me at the whole focus thing. And don’t do it while driving, that’s just asking for trouble.

While all this has been going on this week, I’ve also been hiding out in books again. I was waiting for my rather huge haul of books that I ordered during the Amazon book sale, (I went overboard) and was still in the process of rereading a few of my favorites just for pure escapism. I’m a huge Emily Henry fan. I’ve mentioned this before and no one is paying me to say it. I just love her books. Three in particular, are my favorites. The first two, Beach Read and Book Lovers being about writers/editors/agents has helped me get to understand the processes of others a lot better. After all, who better to write about writing than a writer?! Being new at the whole business side of it, while these are considered romance books, do go pretty deep into how they work and I love them for it.

The third book Happy Place just makes me laugh and who the hell doesn’t need that right now? I don’t do reviews. I’m very well established in saying this. I can only recommend what I like and I like, no LOVE this book. I think because it has to do with a group of friends that is very much like my own and it brings me back to the best time in my life. This is one has nothing to do with writing, just about being around those who know you the best. Of course the scene where they all take pot gummies and then ride the Ferris wheel just makes it that just better.

The book’s title is very much what I was thinking of when I was rereading it. It’s been a hell of a time in my personal life and having this type of book to escape to has helped a great deal. It lifted me up. It brought me joy and I don’t mean that in a cliche or corny kind of way. I think in rereading something you liked the first time, you see things in it you didn’t previously and that’s what happened while I read these three over again. I learned more. Not just about the whole writing process as in the other two, but about me as well. I very much saw myself in the characters and then took more notice of how they developed. It literally became my ‘happy place’ this week and I was really sorry that the book ended. Even as I was staring at this new mountain of books that arrived this week, I still kind of wanted to go back and have fun on that Ferris wheel all over again.

Books do that, don’t they? Give us that escape, that moment, that wonderment. The time to leave what is going on in our own lives to then live vicariously through the characters in front of us.

I started reading a new and much anticipated new release last night by a different author, but another I’ve become a big admirer of. I suddenly had another personal revelation. While I’m sure the rest of the world who reads has already come to this themselves, forgive me if I’m a slow learner here. Books have truly become my own personal happy place. I am grateful to all those who have created these characters that I just can’t get enough of. The ones who make me laugh, make me cry and in some cases, fall in love. I think my own story writing has become all the better for it, or at least I hope it has and I hope that one day my books will be found alongside these good folks.

The next question is, will it be under my own name or a pen name? But that is the subject for another post!

And it is there I will leave you for now. Thanks for being here, all of you and for making it this far in the post. I guess only writing one this week, I had a lot more to say than I thought I did. Hope you enjoyed it!

Until next time…Cheers!!!

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To find me on social including my shops and more: linktr.ee/promosocially

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To get your own copy of Happy Place by Emily Henry: Click Here

(If she sees this apologies to Ms. Henry for not getting her new one as of yet. But I will!)

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To read Viola Shipman’s new release, The Page Turner: Click Here

(Please note: this is the book I just started but have been waiting months for. I have not finished it yet but so far enjoying.)