We have all stepped into an insane alternative universe in which I have a book releasing in 2 days! It doesn't feel real to me at all, but here we are! Shadow Work, a book that introduces readers to Carl Jung's concept of the shadow self and provides prompts to help readers start their own journeys of healing self-liberation is the first book I'll have ever published. This is the most exciting thing to ever happen to me and I am so grateful for all of the support I've received during production.
As soon as I realized that books were still being written, I've wanted to be an author. Telling stories has always been second-nature to me. Telling my story, however, has been difficult. The fact that the first book I'll ever have published is, in part, telling my story is incredibly humbling.
When you're the writer-type, naturally you attract other members of your community who are also interested in writing and sending their creations out to sea. The amount of questions I've received asking me about my process has been amazing. The author in me honors and is delighted by the author within you!
The Writing Part
The best and worst part about writing a book is that you actually have to write the damned thing. For probably every writer ever, there comes a point (many times) in the creative process where you have this brilliant story so clearly pictured in your mind, but there's a traffic jam moving the ideas from the brain to the page. It's torture!
My views on nearly everything have been permanently stained in the best way by Irish mythology, and my views on writing are thus; It is no mistake that the goddess associated with creative endeavors is the very same associated with childbirth and midwifery.
Whether your creation was another human being or a masterful work of art, the labor pains are real. There's a lot more work in creating art of all kinds than we tend to realize. From conception, to planning, to editing, wrestling with self-doubt and imposter syndrome, feeling like your work will never measure up...on top of all of that are the mundane demands of life, the distractions, your fluctuating motivation and faith in the dream, and wondering if there will ever be a return on the time you've invested into your work.
The only thing I've learned gets you through that is pure grit and determination. You have to decide which means more to you; your fear, or your goals (ew, please forgive my inner-gym-bro voice). For me, I knew that I would never be truly happy until I had books on the market. I knew that writing was non-negotiable for me. It's a deep part of my identity, not a hobby. Nothing's real to me until I've written about it. So, I forge forward and write.
For those of you whom writing is a hobby for, my best advice for you is to take it as it comes. There's no point in stressing yourself out about a project if you have nothing to lose. Just take a break, go with the flow, and see where it leads.
As a writer with multiple autoimmune diseases, one of the biggest battles I have is getting through the brain fog so I can focus and think clearly. Illness and chronic stress can make it especially difficult to work in any field, this one maybe more than a select few others. When I'm in the middle of an awful flare up, I do what I call the "caveman approach".
I write out the chapter title. This doesn't need to be that chapter's final title, just something that clearly declares the vibe for now. Then, I carve out a space on the page to write down what I want the chapter to be about, and I break it down from there as far as I can stand to go before my brain starts twitching (literally).
For example: Say I'm writing a pirate zombie book. We're in chapter 1. I would write:
Chapter 1: When Zombie Meets Pirate
In this chapter, I'm writing about my main character, Captain Rooney, who's been retired from pirating for five years due to the Port Royal tsunami. He thought all was well until he caught wind of talk that groups of pirates had been spotted sailing near the coastline at night. He decides to go to his private lookout to see for himself what's been going on, only to recognize a ship in the night that had been demolished by a sea monster right before his eyes not long before he gave up pirating.
So there's your chapter outline. From there I'll start to flesh out more scenes. If I had thought of a piece of dialogue but no context to place it in, I'd literally write, "somewhere in this chapter I want Captain Rooney to say, 'The sea is no friend of man, boy. You keep to your dogs'". Just let it out and write it as you need to. It's more important to get the ideas out of your head in some form than it is to keep unpublished pages looking clean.
As far as the logistics of writing go, everyone is different. Some people are planners. They get the idea, they start writing outlines. Others are "pantsers", where they fly by the seat of their pants and learn what's happening in their books as they type. Most people are some combination of the two. Different stories might inspire the same author to use different approaches. For my non-fiction work, being blog posts like this and my most recent book, I usually plan. I need my thoughts to be precise and organized so I can make my writing as comprehensible as possible. I'm always writing non-fiction in my voice with my own natural inflection, but not every reader of mine will be accustomed to my style of communication. If I plan, I can spot where I'm getting a little cloudy and fix it.
Outlines will usually look like:
Part 1: ______
Goal: ______
Notes to self: _____
Writing fiction, however, is frequently a different story. In my younger years, back when I was a stronger dame, I was shooting out books like a mad woman and had absolutely nothing planned. Nada. And it worked for me. My audience was vibing with everything I produced and I had the freedom to experiment with various writing conventions on a whim. Now that I'm older and ambition has a different taste, I find that I'm reserving the pantsing for my stand alone works. If it's a short fiction, for sure there was no plan, and you should know that I'm not responsible for anything that comes onto the page. Whatever I write during unplanned creative sessions is entirely carnal and all complaints should be directed toward Satan, who made me do it.
If you're looking for an example of pantsing, you can also reference the last writing example I provided with trusty Captain Rooney. Captain Rooney and zombie pirates existed only milliseconds before they found their home on this blog post.
I always described the pantsing writing style as going into a trance. It's like the characters are telling their story through me, a glorified psychic medium, and I get to have the day off from being alive. It's like you're writing, but you're also relaxing and reading a book all day. Fun, right?
If you're trying to write something that is masterfully done, intricate, with all kinds of important details, like a Lord of the Rings level project, you're going to have to be a planner. Prepare to have notebooks full of character details, maps, language keys, the whole nine yards. However, if you're writing something more ambiance-driven than plot-driven, you can definitely get away with more pantsing. Every project will have different demands for you as a writer.
Memoir-adjacent projects will have already written themselves out for you in many ways. Your biggest task with those will be fact-checking to verify your memory/structural details and emotional labor.
The Editing Part
Editing. 'Nough said. You either love it or you hate it, but it's just as integral to your work as the initial writing part, if not more. Again, every writer will have their own unique approach to editing, and different projects being different sizes and scopes will demand different levels of rigor. It's something that's done intuitively, for sure.
Circling back to my struggle with brain fog, editing is something I really do enjoy, but is quite the task for me. You really do have to be paying attention to everything. Watch as closely as you can for typos, grammatical errors, missed words, and so on. You have to have a sense for when something is too wordy and when the wordiness is serving a purpose. There's a lot of thought that goes into the editing process.
My first task is to break it down into chunks. The less area I have to cover during an editing session, the better off I'll be. If I work for too long, I'll settle in like I'm reading a book and my brain will fill in the corrections for my eyes, but not the document. I find that 20 page intervals (about 4 chapters) broken up by 45-minute breaks is the sweet spot for me. Start editing and see what feels right for you. Make it a point to pace yourself!
Some people will edit looking for a particular kind of mistake. I absolutely support this approach. First you read through looking for punctuation errors. Then you read through looking for misspellings. I don't personally employ this approach (and frankly, I'm questioning why that is), but I think it's incredibly smart.
Self-monitoring how you're responding to your work is an essential part of the editing process. Often when I'm reading what I've written, I completely forget that I'm the one who wrote it. I get completely swept away and find myself enjoying it rather than scrutinizing. Yeah, you will have to go back and re-read everything to make sure you were paying attention, but having this type of reaction to the manuscript is a fantastic sign!
The rest of the editing process is just re-reading, honestly. There's no set limit on how many times you should re-read and edit, but my guidelines for knowing you're finished editing are as follows:
-You absolutely must read through the manuscript multiple times.
-When it gets to the point that you're physically trying to resist reading your manuscript again, it's probably time to move on to the next phase.
-Keep your notes close. Pay close attention to things like setting and character descriptions to make sure everything is consistent. You don't want Henry O'Keefe to be blonde and blue-eyed in chapter 1 and then dark-haired and scruffy in chapter 10 (unless there was an incident involving coal or shoe polish, perhaps).
The Beta-Reader Part
When you've finished your self-editing phase, you really should get a second, third, and fourth pair of eyes to look at your work. Listen, you're a writer, so you're probably an excellent reader, too. And excellent readers know that just as we can go nose-blind to our own fumes, we can go...eye-blind?...to our own mistakes. You're close to the project in every way you can be. You know it from the inside out and you've been staring at it for weeks, months, maybe even years! A fresh perspective can help breathe new life into your story. They can catch the tiny things you're missing, point out how well things are flowing, and help you create a story that's not too self-gratifying, but also unique and exciting!
Close friends and family, strangers you've hired, fellow authors looking to exchange works, the world is yours. Pick someone, anyone, a few of them, and have them read what you've written. It's such a necessary part of the book-writing process.
The Self-Publishing Part
Raise your hand if you think self-publishing is an easier alternative to being traditionally published!
If you raised your hand, congratulations! You're criminally insane, but it's okay! From the outside, self-publishing really does look like a breeze.
Different routes for publishing exist to serve different kinds of projects. It's all about what your goals are for what you're trying to sell. I would recommend self-publishing to people who:
-Just really need to have something on the market by a specific date for any given reason.
-Are self-motivated and willing to do all of the work.
-Have money set aside for advertising
-Are prepared to do most of their self-promo and design a whole marketing plan
-Want to have the most control possible over their work
I chose this path for Shadow Work because this book was a special one for me. Even though it's relatively low-content (somewhere between a quarter and a half of it was simply prompts that I crafted...P.S. "low-content" in the writing world doesn't mean poor-quality), it also contains important pieces of my life story. If I was going to share those parts of my life with the world, I wanted to make sure that I had full creative control. This book, ultimately, is my property. I have full ownership over my work. That was so, so important to me.
Self-published books are not always cheap to make. If you want the same advantages other books receive such as professional editing, you have to pay upfront. To design the book cover, the promo, buy the ads, it's all coming out of your bank account. Some people can afford that, others will find it's just a little too risky.
Attracting an audience can be difficult. You have to have the well-made ads, the support from your family and friends who are willing to buy, read, and then write reviews and share your work with others, have connections, there's so many key elements to getting your book to be seen so that people can read it!
Then you have to do research and figure out how you're going to publish. Are you going to publish directly to one site like Kindle Direct? Do you want to use an aggregator to publish your books on a variety of platforms? Do you want to do Print On Demand publishing? What do those methods cost? What information do they need from you so they can publish your book? Do you live somewhere near civilization where you can request the book be sold to your local library or bookstores? There's a lot to learn. Do your research to pick the best path for you.
All that said, it is 100% possible for you to be immensely successful going the self-published route. Some people have become straight-up millionaires from self-publishing. A lot of people approach self-publishing with no expectations, they just want to make their work available to the world, and the next thing they know they're making a living off of their work. Anything can happen. Just look at Andy Weir's The Martian!
The Traditional Publishing Part
This option has lost some of its luster as more writers are enticed by the higher royalties, the ownership opportunities, and the control over when and if your book is actually published and selling that self-publishing offers. Let me tell you though, traditional publishing absolutely comes with its perks.
For one, traditional publishing demands less of the author. Yes, you still need to write a good book...generally (just, you know, ignore Stephenie Meyer's entire career. She was the exception, not the rule). And you still absolutely need to thoroughly edit your work. No, traditional publishing won't always grant you the same ownership rights (though you'll still have some, the extent of which varies from contract to contract), you have less control over a handful of things like the cover art, price, etc. (again, completely varies), but there is a trade-off:
-Depending on the agency you get published through, there is usually some sort of up-front payment you receive. Indie publishers don't have this luxury, but the bigger publishing houses do! To be paid an advance can make a giant difference for an author and may enable you to continue writing.
-You have a team to support your work and get it to sell. These people don't make money if you don't. They're helping to get your work seen, sold, and read. This means they'll take care of the advertising, negotiations, etcetera.
-You don't need to worry about most of the rest of production. If you're asking me if that's worth the lower royalties on a day like today where I'm living off of no sleep and my breakfast looked like 2 extra strength tylenol and a large iced coffee, my answer is "hell yes".
To get traditionally published, you will likely be utilizing the help of a literary agent. This is yet another cut into the money you'll be making off of your books, but if you need the help selling, the royalty percentage change makes sense. Self-publishing you'll get about 40-80% of the royalties made off of each book, but will they get as much exposure and sell as many copies? Traditional publishing could land you with only 7% of the royalties, but attract a far wider audience, therefore increasing sales. Which makes more sense for you?
It's possible in most cases for self-published books to be picked up by traditional publishing houses. You'll likely be required to de-list your books and some minor changes may need to be made, but it's not unheard of. If you started out self-published and found that route wasn't quite serving you the way you'd hoped, look into how you might transition your work over to traditional publishing.
The Writer's Identity Part
This is something that will likely be an on-going process for every writer. Who do you want to be? How do you want to present yourself as an author? What will your workload be like? Do you want to stay in one genre, or write at-will? Will you represent a particular stance or message, not unlike Margaret Atwood, or will you write for entertainment's sake? What's important to you when it comes to your career? How will the story of you inspire people?
You have plenty of time to consider these questions and uncover the answers for yourself.
One thing I would recommend when it comes to your identity as a writer is to consider using a pseudonym. Reason for this simply being, it's an additional layer of privacy. It doesn't matter if you make it big or you attract a moderate audience, a little bit of privacy is nice to have. Maybe you want to write what you need to write without your great-aunt's bowling team getting too nosy. Maybe a pen name would allow you the type of freedom you'd need to fully switch between genres. Give the power of a name some thought.
My Final Word of Advice
I personally believe the key to writing a great story is knowing the book's purpose. What are you trying to do with this book? It's a means, but to what end? A book doesn't need to be serious to have a clear objective. There are plenty of fantastic books on the market today which are nothing more than a spoof, but they serve their purpose well (to make readers laugh).
The biggest problem I see today with writers is they are writing books that have no direction. They're copying the rhythms and patterns of the books they enjoy reading, but they have no idea what the point of their book was or what to do with it. Get clear on why you're sitting before that blank page. The story is all the same, young girl who's "not like other girls" because she's a tomboy or introverted or reads, every guy in the story is attracted to her despite her plainness, her sense of humor is aggressive, verging on insulting, likely has a dragon sidekick, surprised to find this grand mystical destiny or ability, conveniently unaware of her feelings for the arrogant sex-god male character who's way too obnoxious to read...WE GET IT. Please. Tell us a different story. Write something from the heart. I beg of you.
If you're like me and have to write like sharks need to swim, I hope you create the most rewarding writing career! If you're a hobbyist, I hope you know there is a place for you in the literary world. Regardless of what drives you to write, I hope you find happiness in your craft, and may you find plenty of inspiration along the way!
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