Speaking of Writer's Block . . .

I've never had "writer's block" because I'm an author.

And here's the distinction in both my mind and as paraphrased from the words of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary: An author creates, like God (check out Webster's yourself). A writer . . . writes.

Think of the terms "ghostwriter, screenwriter, copywriter." All these wonderfully artistic souls are for hire in general. Not that they can't also be authors, but these three terms are strictly for when they are working under someone else's direction, writing around someone else's creation.

For ghostwriters, they take the idea from the source (the person who hired them) and carry it to fruition. For screenwriters, they usually take a novel (again, someone else's baby) and reduce it to a 120-page script for the big screen. For copywriters, they are instructed (by their employers) to write ads for their customers, for instance.

Okay, the previous spotlighted generalities. This paragraph deals with specifics. You could order me, a romsus author, to "write like Stephen King" and my brain would freeze. Same as if you commanded me to write about death in gory details or child porn or concentration camps. First, not my genres. Second, even if you dictated that I write in my own genre--now at this very instant--a romantic suspense short story about a prince and a barmaid, I'd be a petrified, brain-dead, wordless individual.

Because I don't write on demand.

Because I'm not paid by the hour or in flat fees per job.

Because I generate my own ideas.

Because I create from data I am constantly gathering with all six senses (yes, I'm counting intuition).

Now granted, I could write something if forced and it would probably read that way . . . forced. Lifeless. No emotion. Because it didn't have the verve of a story idea that I cultivated and picked myself.

Thus, if I don't happen to be creating at the moment, I don't call it "writer's block." I call it gathering info, letting things marinate, allowing thoughts to percolate a while longer. Research. 

So, be careful what you name things.

Take Abram in the Bible for instance. When God wanted to change Abram's destiny, he changed his name, WHAT HE WAS CALLED. That is why we know him better as Abraham. God changed his wife's name, too. Sarai became Sarah for the very same reason.

Beware what you call things.

So if you think you are experiencing "writer's block," ask yourself these questions:

1. Am I working with a subject or theme or premise I chose myself, which I love, that inspires something in me, whether enthusiasm and goodwill or rage about wrongs to be righted or something in between?
2. Am I on the wrong side of the writer-author line? Like me, I work better solo, in full control, as an author. While I could function in the write-about-this role, I would not be happy and my creative genes would go on strike.
3. Am I affixing a derogatory label (writer's block) when I really need downtime, some influx of new data/scenery and my mind-body-soul are just working off that bad input?
4. Change "can't/won't/no" to "choose not to/maybe later/not now as I've decided to do something more important." Watch for those automatic responses we all tend to replicate.
5. Stop saying "I have writer's block" and that may cure a lot of ills--ha! 
6. Am I working by formula instead of being moved by emotions?

Hope something above stirred your heart as you read this. As always, take what resonates, toss the rest.

Denise Barker, author + blogger + copy editor

http://bit.ly/DeniseBarkerBlog

http://bit.ly/AMAZONDeniseBarkerEbooks

http://bit.ly/BNDeniseBarkerEBooks

http://bit.ly/SMASHWORDSDeniseBarkerEBooks

http://bit.ly/KOBODeniseBarkerEBooks

Dreams DO Come True . . .

I made a major career move almost five years ago.  I had been a well-paid legal assistant for decades.  Felt very comfortable with my duties, very pleased with the manifold jobs completed, very self-satisfied with the fast pace.  No clock-watching at this job.  Yet . . .

I was not fulfilled.  Not so much with the legal environment as it was about the rigid work atmospheres:  driving to work in the dark and home again, in the dark; glass high-rises with windows that did not open; "dressing for success" but it was my brain earning a living;  any commute farther than five miles from my house, preferably none!  This is evidence how you can be really good at your job--productive, efficient, accurate--and all the while, in the wrong place for you.

Not only did I yearn to be an entrepreneur, but I demanded to be creatively unleashed.  To save "me"--the one inside, dying a slow death.

Freedom to work from 2:00 a.m. to 6:00 a.m., take a nap, and resume again with a workout, breakfast, then charge into creating novels.  My own stories.  With gifts that served me well in my former career, but will let me soar into my second--fully engaging my soul, my heart and my mind.

My first dream-come-true was landing a freelance copy editor position four years ago with a big NYC publishing house.  THE publisher that I felt best matched me and my reading preferences.  In line with my own writing, whether short stories or novels, from years long ago, and not-yet-unpublished back then.  It still makes me smile and gives me goose bumps as I recount "falling" into this blessing.

My second dream-come-true was uploading the first of now six e-books.  Wow! I AM PUBLISHED!  You have no idea how fulfilling this is for me and my goals as an all-Indie author.  Plus with my book-reading love discovered long before I attended any formal school, it was an obvious direction for me.  Which gifts-encompassing talent the copyediting and the creating both utilize.

My third dream-come-true is one still-in-progress.  I wish to be a self-sustaining author.  Making enough money from just my e-books to pay all my bills--which have been pared down greatly since the inception of my author career.  Then my copyediting fees would become the extra monies that elevate me from paycheck-to-paycheck status to the enviable more-than-enough plateau.  Can't wait!

And in the spirit of that, I'm redoing my To Do list from a sad rendition of all the glitches that prevent me from uploading about six projects to date, to become a Research Reminder of the answers I am sure to find within the wonderful realm of the World Wide Web.  It's all in the mind-set, right?

Wish me good hunting!

Denise Barker, author + freelance copy editor
Good Ole Boys, a love story (e-book)
A Copyediting Checklist for Novelists (e-book)

Andy Rane's Blog with "The Same Six Questions"

This morning, having bumped one of my four threads within KB’s Book Bazaar, I had the happy accident of posting just a couple minutes before “Come Meet Indie Authors.”  Since the Book Bazaar has 405 page loads, and each of those contain 25 threads each, I have not read all of them, not near half of them. So this was my first encounter with this particular post within the Book Bazaar.

For those of you unfamiliar with KindleBoards or Kindle Boards (whichever is correct, although the internet shows both versions), this particular one, the Book Bazaar, is for self-promotion.  I check it daily.  And each week, as my placement among my fellow authors differs and changes, I can do some market analysis and compare my book’s hits against another.  I compare my Week Three hits to some other author’s Week Three hits, for example.  If he has higher numbers, I see what genre he’s writing.  Or check out his title--is it catchy or entertaining or imaginative?  I try to see what it is that he (or she) is doing that could be bringing more people to their thread.

Now, remember, just because you have more hits does not mean more sales.  Still, getting someone interested enough to click on your link is a good thing, right?  I do this all in the vein of marketing, hoping to find what works to pique a potential reader’s curiosity.

So this morning I find that a blog can be among the Book Bazaar’s self-promo.  This particular one, “Come Meet Indie Authors,” works off Andy Rane’s blogspot, found at http://andyrane.blogspot.com where he poses the same six questions to each author and, if I understand his process correctly, two are highlighted within his blog each week, and then are posted within Book Bazaar.  He states it is a first-come, first-serve operation.  It is free publicity to us Indies and I’m all for that.

However, his “submissions” are closed until late February.  Still, I am posting this blog to let my other author friends know and plan ahead.  Plus, it is a great writing assignment for each of us to get to know ourselves a little better.  A little encouragement, a little insight into what makes us authors.

Besides, as I’ve posted about earlier, we are all basically nosy.  We love to see inside another person’s life.  So, here’s my answers to Rane’s Six Questions with an intro.  And I’ll hopefully be supplying them to him at the end of February.

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Hi, Andy!  I am a freelance copy editor for a big NYC publishing house when I am not writing both fiction and nonfiction and Indie-publishing same under my DBA, Living the Dream Publishing, plus blogging at LivingTheDreamPublishing.blogspot.com--which caters to authors, newbies or established, with helpful grammar tips and such for even the traditionally published, but leaning more heavily with info and instructions for the Indie-publishing author.  In my previous career, I worked for attorneys, but I took my attention to detail and grasp of English grammar and came on over to the creative side.  Love it!

The Same Six Questions

1. Have you published a book yet?

Yes, six e-books to date.  All Indie-published by me.  Five are found at both Barnes & Noble and Amazon, with the sixth, my debut e-novel, Good Ole Boys, being exclusive to Amazon until mid-March 2012.

My nonfiction e-offerings are:

1. A Copyediting Checklist for Novelists
2. Before-You-Indie-Publish Checklist
3. Living the Dream Checklist:  How to Quit Your (Current) Day Job
4. Words Rule the World ~~ A Collection of Quotations, Volume One
5. How To Indie-Publish:  Tips, Instructions and Inspiration

Of course my debut fiction e-book is Good Ole Boys, a story about love and relationships.

Its e-prequel is coming out soon, as well as a Southern e-cookbook.

I hope to have more fiction e-books uploaded later this year.

2. When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

I should have known since childhood or during my teenage years when I was fixated on reading more than being with my friends, when I asked for a Dictaphone for Christmas one year and when I easily composed a short mystery for my seventh grade English teacher who gave me kudos in front of my classmates.  I misinterpreted it as a calling to be a secretary which quickly morphed into a legal assistant position.

3. What was your first lengthy piece of fiction (say, >1000 words)? What was it about? When did you write it? Do you still have it?

It was that homework assignment mentioned above.  And I wish I still had it.  I regret that I don’t.  But I do remember it was about finding whatever was hidden behind the fuse box, which our heroine stumbles upon one night as the lights blow out in a storm.  In her attempt to open the cover in the dark, she instead pulls out the housing, finding the whatever stowed behind it.  Amazing how the mind works, huh?  I remember that all these years later.

4. When was your first indication, "I can do this (write)"?

Always.  With every book I’ve read.  Sometimes my reaction was "I can do this better."  And I’m carnivorous, a cannibal to the written word.  It is not unusual for me to read 365 books in a year.  I don’t get to every year as sometimes I do have to resort to a day job on top of my own writing and my freelance copyediting projects.  Still, even during those periods with the three jobs taking the bulk of my time each of those days, I can easily read one book a month, while daily inhaling articles and blogs and emails about the writing craft.

I guess I brushed off all that early bravado as being too naive, too impractical to become a career in which to support myself.

However, I first called myself an author—albeit an unpaid author—when I completed a short story of 6,000 words, submitted it to a contest, and failed to win.  (Which in hindsight was a good thing.  I now focus strictly on writing novels, or nonfiction, not contests. Makes me efficient, prolific even.) 

In high school, I was an Honors English student, loving the whole school process and learning new stuff, enjoying homework and writing term papers, happily engaging in the research and carrying around heaps of composition books.  Which skills all translate easily into a writing career.

5. If you could meet one of your characters in real life, which would it be?

I’ve completed three novels, started another eight, but only have one Indie-published to date.  So, limiting myself to my sole e-novel as of this writing, Good Ole Boys, I would choose Holt Seville first and, if allowed a second, Pops, his grandfather, who was such a cantankerous, loveable character that I gave him his own novel, the soon-to-be-released “Good Ole Boys:  The Prequel.” 

6. It's a dark and stormy night...you're alone in the house...there's a knock at the door...you open it, look out, and proceed to scream like a little girl. What's on the doorstep?

Since I don’t submit those Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes entries so they would have no reason to be on my doorstep, I guess it would have to be my all-time favorite novelist, Nora Roberts aka J.D. Robb, standing at my door to say she elects me to carry on her standard.  Either that or Ryan Gosling and Johnny Depp both asking to portray the male lead in the movie based upon one of my books.
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