What Stops You From Writing?

This is a picture of me and my husband at the top of Quandary Peak, one of the higher 14’ers in Colorado. I did a post not too long ago likening a writer’s journey to climbing a mountain. When my husband and I hiked this mountain at the end of last week, I thought at lot about that post and the internal and external struggles that were trying to keep me from making it to the top of this mountain.

You see, I’ve tried to climb Quandary before, several years back. Circumstances made it impossible and I’ve wanted to climb it again ever since. To prove I can. To say I’ve done it. To not always wish I would have made it to the top.

I feel the same way about writing sometimes. There is often a lot of opposition. Internal and external struggles that try to get me to step away from writing, try to stop me from getting to the top of that mountain.

During the first hike up Quandary the external opposition was time. I had to be back by a certain time and we were just not going fast enough to make it all the way up and all the way down. Then there were internal struggles. It was hard. I was tired. My legs hurt. Who in their right mind wanted to hike three thousand feet at this kind of elevation?

And I didn’t make it.

This time, with my husband, there was more opposition. The weather was closing in and we had to rush. There was a lot of snow, it was slippery. All external struggles. And inside…I was scared. I worried the weather would turn, a storm would come in. I started to think we should go back, even at those last 100 yards. Even at those last 100 feet. (To the right, that's me standing before the first false summit of Quandary wondering what I'd gotten myself into.) But my husband encouraged me.

And we made it!

Struggles like this are going to hit us at various times in our writing lives. External and internal. A rejection, no market for what we’re writing, a bad critique. And inside we feel like perhaps we’re not good enough. Like perhaps we’re not strong enough to continue. For me, oftentimes those internal struggles are the hardest. If I don’t keep my chin up and persevere I can manage to do a very good job convincing myself how hard this writing thing is. How difficult the competition is. How I’m just not good enough. But ultimately I know I’m going to keep going. I’m going to “make it to the top.”

What struggles affect you the most? External or internal? Does the “mountain” challenge you at every turn? What do you do to get through it?

P.S. I really, really want to thank my husband for keeping me going. When the clouds loomed overhead, the wind rushed past us and the top looked so far away, he grabbed my hand and prayed with me to make it to the top. That the weather would hold and we’d be strong enough to do what we came for. Thanks, honey!

A Precious Lily and a Tenacious Writer

When my family moved into our townhouse several years back, I enjoyed planting a miniature garden in the corner of our tiny yard. Most everything I tried did not work. Roses bid adieu, daisies would not even bloom. Sadly, I am a terrible gardener. I did, however, plant some lilies from bulbs and watched in amazement as they thrived in their modest area.

Last summer we did a backyard makeover and ended up having to remove the flowers that had survived to put down rock. We shuffled up the soil and removed all the bulbs and weeds. So the backyard looked new but still lacked color. Once again this summer, I wanted a garden and found myself lamenting over the memory of deep blue morning glories and the lilies that had grown as high as my two-year-old daughter. So I marked out my garden again and found something was already growing. The lilies! Now, this is before I knew lilies could reproduce themselves. But I was stunned not only because they’d reappeared but because they’d survived the soil demolition and sprung up once more right in the corner of the new garden I was planning.

Like these lilies, true writers cannot be destroyed. During one season we may thrive and then another get our roots removed because of a rejection, a terrible critique. And yet, year after year, true writers will return. Perhaps stronger than before, more beautiful, with old roots mixed in with the new.

True writers are tenacious, like the lovely lilies from my garden. They settle into the background if they need to regroup but never, ever die. They wait out the rough season, building strength, and then reappear at the right time. They claim their spot and flourish.

Are you a tenacious writer? Are you a lily?

Here are some more pictures from my happy garden :D

Success!

I've just completed my first Unplug Week and let me tell you, I think the adjustment of returning to blogging is harder than the adjustment to stopping for the week. That said, it was very productive and I learned a lot.

What I Accomplished:

* Most importantly, time spent with family. It was wonderful.
* Critiqued and revised a few chapters.
* Wrote three more pages of marketing ideas.
* Pretended I was a rock star on my new guitar for about ten minutes until I realized I don't know quite enough cords yet to claim stardom :)
* Wrote 10,500 words on my WIP. Excellent!

What I Wish I Had Accomplished:

* A bit more housework.
* Rockstar status.
* Website updates.

What I Learned:

* I really enjoy blogging, but it's more about quality than quantity.
* Family is invaluable and making time for them is soooo important.
* I really miss you guys when I'm not around!

All in all, a great week. I only cheated once or twice to peek on my Dashboard and laugh at how behind I was getting on reading other people's posts. Oh well, life goes on! I hope you all were productive last week. There is so much exciting news going on out there, with new agents and new contracts and new critique groups and support groups. I look forward to reading all about what's been going on.

Unplug Week!

Awhile back, B.J. Anderson came up with the wonderful idea of unplug week. You can check out her blog to read more or check it out anyway because it’s lovely. But basically unplug week is an entire week (or however much time you feel you can devote) to getting writing done. This means no blogging, e-mails, Facebook, that kind of thing. I check my e-mail all the time and (shhhh) I think I might keep that up for reasons COMPLETELY related to writing.

But I am definitely going to be using all that blogging time to get writing done. So, if I don’t comment on your posts, it’s nothing personal. And if you want, please join in!

New posts next week! Get some writing done!

Book Trailers

Some of you have expressed interest in hearing more about book trailers. I intended to do a post all about the process but discovered a fellow OakTara author, Lynnette Bonner, just started a book trailer series over at her group blog. If you’re considering doing a trailer or are interested in a bit of the specifics, you should definitely take a look.

So I am only going to give you some of my experience with book trailers and point you in the direction of a few resources that might help if you are planning on creating one in the future.

I started with taking a look at other book trailers to see what style I wanted to use. I’ve only used still pictures, combined with music and text, but I really enjoyed the result. You can view the two I’ve created on my website, or here on my blog.

If you’d like to create one of your own, I found that Windows Movie Maker was very user friendly. Many other bloggers I’ve come across have used OneTrueMedia.com. If you’re just starting out or want a trailer for a book that hasn’t been published yet, I’d definitely recommend this route.

I started with an idea in my mind of the general feel I wanted to give off with the trailer. Did I want it to be somber? Sweet? Did I want it to start off slow and then have a building urgency? Then I wrote the text with this in mind. Usually short bits of text that won’t overwhelm but make an impact.

I also decided to use music to accompany the feel. I got both my pieces of music from PodSafeAudio.com, which had a wonderful variety, particularly in the classical section. These ended up being perfect for my trailers and all I had to do was attribute the music at the end of the trailer in the credits.

After this I chose images that went with the text. I also went with photos I could use for free, only having to attribute them at the end of the trailer. I got these at flickr.com in the creative commons section. You can also get some at Morguefile.com. There are other sites that will let you use their pictures for a fee if you choose to go that route.

For both music and images, remember to make sure you have permission to use them. The sites I mentioned above are safe to use as long as you attribute the pieces (covered under Creative Commons licenses). For other sites, unless they say music or images are available for free for personal or commercial use, you need to make sure you either pay for the pieces or get permission. With photos, most sites will tell you if there’s a fee or you can contact the photographer for permission to use the photo. With music sites, you will typically have to pay a fee or for more recent or well-known popular music, you will have to contact the record company to apply for permission (there is sometimes a fee for this as well).

Putting all these pieces together takes some time, but I enjoyed the creative process. And the more I used the programs, the easier it got. To make your trailer more interesting and more visually appealing, you can transition between pictures or text with a fade in or fade out options. There are a good deal of other options to create different looking text or images. On the second one I did, I also found some background patterns to add to the plain text to give it a more antique feel.

For book trailers, you can check out youtube.com. Christian book trailers can been seen at Godtube.com (which I believe just changed their name to Tangle) or christianbookvideos.com. You can also upload your trailers to these places when you’re finished if you’re trying to promote your book. I also saw that CBD is starting to add trailers beneath book synopsis on their site.

I know many people out there wonder at the benefit of book trailers. I’ve found that I am more drawn to music and images combined with text that I am with simple text. I’ve read a blurb for a book and thought it sounded kind of interesting (not enough to make me want to buy the book) but then viewed the trailer and decided I definitely wanted to buy the book.

So what do you think? Are trailers effective for promoting a book? Would you use one or have you used one?

Balance Proves Elusive

I keep wondering when stress is going to take over and I’m either going to rip my hair out or spontaneously combust. But somehow God has instilled in me an insane but much appreciated amount of peacefulness as I deal with copious amounts of tasks in my life. Praise God for that! Still…it’s hard to find a balance between what I need to do and what I want to do.


A little update on what I’m working on:

A revision of a contracted novel (what I NEED to do)
My new WIP because I really, really want to finish this series soon (what I WANT to do)
Fine tuning my website (what I NEED to do)
Practice my guitar :D (what I WANT to do)
Take care of the house and the kids (what I NEED to do)
Sleep (what I WANT to do)
Create a marketing plan (what I NEED to do)
Freelance writing (what I SHOULD do to help with the family income—yeah, I added in a new category)

How about all of you? Are you in the midst of dealing with a lot? Can I send any prayers your way?

Oh, and forgive me if I blog a little less for the next several weeks. I’ll keep you posted as I catch up. I also stopped my Writing a Novel series (you can find previous posts listed on the right side of the page) before I reached the query/publications stage because there is already so much good information about there. But I thought I’d ask if there were any topics anyone wanted to see added to that list. I know some of you mentioned book trailers earlier and I am taking baby steps into marketing right now. Just let me know!


*photo from flickr.com

Winner Announcement and Link

Last night was the official end to the contest for the book giveaway. For those of you who entered to win Sharlene MacLaren's autographed book Hannah Grace, I have the winner! This time my oldest daughter picked from a hat that looked like it belonged to Indiana Jones. Cool! Then my other daughter picked (she's two) because she wanted to, and then my older daughter picked again because it was fun...Yeah, but we went with the first name that came out. So, here we go...

The Winner IS.......JOYCE!!!!

Yay, Joyce! Just e-mail me through my blog to send me your snail mail address. For everyone else, if you're still interested in this book, click on the image to read another synopsis, reviews, or purchase the book. If you do soon, you'll have just enough time to read it before book #2, Maggie Rose, comes out in July.

Tell Me About It!

Well, I've been talking about creating a website for months so I finally broke down and did it. Keep in mind, it still needs some editing. I have to add a few more books I've written on there and there's a whole page that's still "under construction". I know, that's probably a big website no-no, but it's a WIP. Also, I'd like to make the home page a bit more colorful, even if it's only to put a picture next to the text.

But I'd really love some feedback. I know some of you out there already have websites (I've checked some of them out and they're wonderful!) and some of you are planning for one. I wanted something really basic, easy to navigate and not distracting. But I also don't want it to be boring.

So check out my website if you feel like it (I also included a link at the side of the page) and I'd love to hear your thoughts. What should I add? What should I take out? What should I do different? What do you like?

Also, don't forget today is the last day to enter to win an autographed copy of Hannah Grace by Sharlene MacLaren. If you haven't already signed up, you can do so here. I'll announce the winner tomorrow. Have a lovely weekend!

Who's Your Favorite MC?

I’ve been thinking a lot about characters lately, about who they really are. About the journey they take through the course of a novel. And it occurred to me some of my favorite characters are the ones who have gone through the most opposition and come out stronger because of it. Or even if they didn’t grow considerably, they remain consistent and touch other character’s lives because of it.

So I got to wondering who my favorite MC’s are in my own novels. I often write from both male and female POV’s so I had to choose one of both.

For a male, I’d have to say Wesley is my favorite. He’s the hero in Through It All. Wesley is an art teacher at the local high school. He used to coach the baseball team, helps his sister take groups out horseback riding on the weekends and is helplessly in love with Shannon, the heroine. But his faith and hers are on two levels so far apart, he does not know if they can be reconciled. Wesley is a character of great faith, so much so that I found myself admiring him even during the lowest parts of his struggles. He perseveres all the way until the end of the story and…well, I can’t give away the ending.

As far as a female…this was really hard. I can’t believe it was so hard for me to decide who my favorite female is. I suppose it would have to be Kara from the Wishing Star series. Kara Jensen is also Elise Bombay, famous suspense novelist. Her necessity for a pseudonym shows the definite split between her old life and her new one. Other than writing, Kara is more willing to run away from a task than commit to it. She’s a superb chess player, knows how to juggle (and even does so in a dinner scene with some dinner rolls), and goes through one of the most dramatic changes of all the characters I’ve written.

So, for all you writers out there, who is your favorite MC from one of your novels and why? For all you readers, the same question—who is your favorite main character in a novel and why?

Historical Book Giveaway!

I am so excited for today’s post! I read Sharlene Maclaren’s historical romance Hannah Grace recently and thoroughly enjoyed it. I don’t often read historical fiction, or if I do I usually can’t make it through to the end. But this book kept me turning pages and falling in love with the characters.

Sharlene was kind enough to offer an autographed copy of her book for this week’s giveaway.

Here’s a bit about the book:

Hannah Grace is content with her life in turn-of-the century Michigan in a lovely town called Sandy Shores. Along with her two sisters, she helps run her father’s general store in addition to being courted by the town physician.

She’s well on her way to a proposal when Gabriel Devlin, the new sheriff, comes into town. Despite a flicker of attraction, the appearance of a young runaway boy puts them at odds.

As the two enter a mutual agreement to take care of the boy, trying to coax him into trusting them, they discover his past is more complicated than they thought. Criminals are on their way to Sandy Shores and suddenly a random death joins the mystery of the lost boy.

Hannah and Gabe work together, drawing closer in their concern and mutual faith. Suddenly, Hannah sees a whole new possibility for a future and Gabe has decided to pursue her love. In the wake of suspense, adventure and romance, Hannah and Gabe must figure out the history behind the missing boy and keep the town safe.

Hannah Grace is a wonderful story, start to finish. The characters are humorous and believable. I will definitely read more Sharlene MacLaren novels.

Hannah Grace is book 1 of the Daughter’s of Jacob Kane series and I have already preordered my copy of Maggie Rose, the second book which comes out this July.

Any of you who would like a chance to win an autographed copy of this book, please enter below in the comments section. You will have until Friday night to enter to win and I will draw a name for the winner on Saturday. All you have to do is tell me that you’d like to win a copy of this wonderful book. And thanks again, Sharlene!