Five Year Goals

This is the last Friday of the month, which makes it time to review my goals as part of the Five Year Project hosted by Misha Gericke. Thanks Misha for putting this on each month.

My five year goal is to have a world-class publishing company. I figure dream big or go home, right? So how’s it going? Really, really well. I’ve finally gotten the grove back with my writing. After 2084 it took me a few months to get back into the habit of writing every day. Life got crazy, I guess. But now I’m back to writing 1,500-2,000 words a day, and I’ve been researching/prepping for my next novel, Pathfinder, which I’ll be posting more about next week. I hate to say I have a plan, because you know how that goes, but right now my plan is to publish the following books: Bloodbrothers this September, Pathfinder early next year, and then Letters from War, which should be my final book. After that I plan to focus solely on the works of others, which is actually right on track. I don’t want to offer to publish someone else until I have something to offer; I figure after nine books of my own, I should be just about there.

How about you? Any long-term goals you want to shout-out?

The Making of a Novel

The Making of a Novel

I know most of the readers of this blog are aspiring and/or present authors. You know how all this works; you don’t need me to spell it out for you. So forgive me that I am. And maybe when you hear the reasons you’ll understand. 1. I wish someone would have done this for me. I had to figure all this out the hard way, through many, many mistakes. 2. I want to keep track of the process. When I first started dating my husband, I kept three journals, marking down all we said and did. I just knew it was something I wanted to remember. It’s the same with this.

So here I go; I plan to write weekly (in addition to my regular posts) from the very early stages of crafting a novel to its (hopeful) completion.

The name: I always come up with a title for my novels before I write them. That doesn’t mean that will stay its name until the end, though. I’ve changed more names than I’ve kept. Right now, the name of this novel is Pathfinder

The genre: The inspiration for this came from a picture of my thirteen year-old nephew, so it will be a middle-grade fiction.  I plan on incorporating the picture in the cover somehow.

The preparation: I’ve never written middle-grade before, so I’m reading that genre like crazy. I’m also watching. I watch how people that age speak, interact, what they’re feeling, what they’re afraid of. I spend time each day remembering myself, my own life, what I was like when I was that age.

The plan: NaNoWriMo has always been a wonderful tool for me. I’ve used it multiple times to motivate/spur on my work. I’m doing camp NaNo next month to finish up Bloodbrothers, which I hope to release in September. After that full time work will begin on Pathfinder. I plan on writing the outline over the next couple of months, which I will share here on this blog. November NaNo is when I hope to get most of the writing done for this.  But you never know. If I’ve learned anything in this whole writing thing, I’ve learned to just go with it. Formulas almost never work.

Next week I’ll talk about character development. At this early stage, I’m getting to know the main characters; who they are, where they live, what makes them tick.

I hope you decide to join me.

-Mel

Back

No, I did not fall off the face of the earth (although it did feel like it there for a while). I've been in bed with pneumonia for the last couple of weeks, which made things like thinking and writing almost impossible. But the sun is shining today and I'm on my two feet, so I should be back on schedule with my posts and visiting all of you.
Missed you!
-Mel

IWSG

 

Today is the first Wednesday of the month, which makes it IWSG time. Thanks to Alex J. Cavanaugh and co-hosts for putting this on each month. For those of you who don’t know, IWSG stands for Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a once monthly online gathering that discusses what makes us insecure as writers and gives support for those insecurities. In a word; it offers encouragement, knowing others out there are struggling with the same things you are.

My insecurities this month are the same they always are: 1. What makes me think I can be a writer? 2. If I am a writer, what makes me think people will actually read what I’ve written? And 3. What if someone else has already written what I have and I just don’t know it yet? This last one was fed by going to writer’s conferences. Someone would inevitably ask what my books were about, and then inevitably say they just read a book just like that.

But I’m not a rookie at this, so here are my answers to the preceding insecurities: 1. I write because I have a story to tell. 2. It doesn’t matter how many people read my books; that wasn’t the point in writing it (Although it would be a nice bonus).  And 3. No one else can tell my story, because it comes from inside of me.

How about you—what are your insecurities? What have you learned along the way?