Milestones in My Life As an Author

First but not acted upon, or even thought of AS a milestone, was my mystery short story, a homework requirement for a junior high English class.  (It wasn’t called middle school back then!)  My teacher singled out my work as an honorable mention in front of the whole class.  The only one, too.  I thought, yeah.  And moved on.  I didn’t even save a copy of it.  Where would my writing career be today if I had taken the gift I had from the beginning of my life and started working on developing it and marketing it right away?  Well, I’d be further along.  Still no reason not to continue on now. 

This one event proves how dismissive we are about our unique skills and talents.  Don’t do that with yours.

However, I am not sure my writing career would have done too well back then, before the advent of the Indie-publishing avalanche we are in now.  Timing.  My time seems to be 2011 and into the future.  I am one happy woman to participate in, to belong to, this inventive and creative amalgamation of authors who have additional freedoms to invoke.

In my twenties, in the interim between that first and the upcoming second milestone, I wrote some short stories (or more correctly, I wrote stories that stopped at page twenty-five, not ended, but stopped)—none of which I saved apparently, ARGH!—and I was also reading like crazy.  Couldn’t get my fill of other peoples’ books.  But I often had the response to these stories, “I could do that too” or “I could do that better” or even more amazing and hypnotic, "I don't want the story to end yet.  I want to live in it.  I want to be surrounded by these people and call them friends."  I yearn to write those kind of books.

Second milestone was when I finished a short story and submitted it to a contest.  My one and only contest submission.  I did not win.  Still, I finished a story.  Do you know how many people wish to write a story and never do?  It may be the number one career goal out there (per one goals coach whose uplifting emails I receive daily).  I wish I had written down the exact date of that contest.  I may have it somewhere.  My best guess is March 1997.

Third milestone for me was finishing a novel-length book in NaNoMo 2009.

Fourth milestone was finishing a second novel.  That feat erased the fleeting worry that I was just a one-book wonder.

Fifth milestone was uploading my two nonfiction books to Amazon on March 27, 2011.

Sixth was uploading both nonfiction books to Barnes & Noble on April 27, 2011.

Seventh was receiving my first royalty check on May 27, 2011.

I am working on my eighth . . . .

You should be working on yours as well.  Time passes whether you reach for your goals or not.  The difference is, just during the first six months of this year, I already have accomplished three milestones.  How fantastic is that?  By the end of 2011, I hope to add a few more. 

Join me.

Where do I get my novel ideas? And other mental wanderings . . .

As a novelist, I know it may not seem like “work” when I watch a movie, read a book for pleasure, study an author’s work by reading and rereading and dissecting and evaluating and diagramming, or while flipping through a catalog or magazine.  Or just by staring out my window at the beauty of nature.  But it is.

However much my career is not “work” to me but pure pleasure, the above motions feed my imagination.  I fall in love with a movie and I want to know:  Why?  What about that movie touched my soul?  I need to know this so I may replicate that emotional pull on my readers in my own stories.  Ditto for books I read that move me and engage my feelings.

Studying the masters or having a mentor is key to learning, improving.  I happen to be an avid J.D. Robb / Nora Roberts fan.  In more than one of my personal library’s How To books on writing, a common homework assignment is to take your favorite author and actually copy down by hand a passage from his/her book.  This is NOT to endorse plagiarism.  This is to get your mind and fingers in tune to great writing.  Sometimes I have to listen to an audio book twenty times before I begin to see a little glimpse into Nora’s patterns in her usage of the English language, because no matter how often I read her stories and know them by heart, she swallows me whole into her tale and I’m lost in it.  I yearn to be able to do that with my writing.

As far as catalog cruising or magazine meanderings, I get great ideas for characters that way as well.  Same goes for people watching wherever you are.  I remember taking the DART express bus downtown to work one day and an athletic-looking young woman in an open Jeep dressed in safari gear drove by with the sunshine raining down on her flawless natural tan.  THAT book that she initialized is still percolating in my mind.   One story idea of mine came from a paper ad with a full-page photo of a woman in a flannel shirt sipping coffee in front of the open door of her cabin high in the snowcapped mountains. 

Sometimes I just write about people I would love to surround myself with, in a world that I would like to inhabit.  It is okay to let your imagination run wild and consider various scenarios.  I also love mysteries and will write at least one in my lifetime.  Research into Stonehenge or the Holy Grail or the Bermuda Triangle would be great fun and I would love to tackle any of those subjects and see what kind of a tale I could wrap around those wonders.

Anything that interests me is fair game:  cell memory, transplant recipients taking on new habits and loves, our sixth sense, other dimensions, powerful forces we cannot see—just to name a few.

Speaking of powerful things not visible to us, I am overwhelmed with a sense of good tidings coming my (and your) way.  It’s been with me for three days.  I can’t wait to see what it is . . . .