Putting it out there...

We all know the scary side of going Indy is putting your real name out there with a big bold sign that says LOOK WHAT I DID.  When we were real little most were anxious to show our artwork or newest creation to the world. We vied for attention of adults. Then getting older we were suddenly too cool to care. Shrugs, head  flips, acting out in other directions, and, for some, hiding replaced our anxiousness to share.

Stephen King never seemed to have this problem. He wrote in his book, On Writing, that he was sending stuff out to magazines even as a kid. He had a big nail in the wall over his desk and used to spike the rejection letters onto it. I find this brave stuff for someone of such a young age. 

I had good parents. We were on the poorer side of life but happy. My parents went the extra mile to talk with us and be active in our interests. When the teen years hit I was mostly a hider. I hid my stories and most of my art work but for the life of me I don't know why. Even after high school I wouldn't show my work to anyone. I got married, never shared. Had kids and made up stories just for them and let the adult stories fall by the wayside.

Then I met Leni. Our kids were in kindergarten and we'd sit outside by this big tree waiting for them to come out of class and talk. She was one of the smartest people I'd ever met. A voracious reader, Leni was the kind of person who believed we were capable of anything. Eventually, I told her about one of  my stories and her first reaction was: PUBLISH IT! I stared at her. Never in all my years of writing had I thought of publishing anything. I wrote because I couldn't not write. But Leni was a do-er. She saw something and did it. She was amazing and encouraging and I decided to write something aiming to publish.

The story was about a woman who went back in time to the days right before the Civil War. It went into how a woman from the 80's  adapted to life without all our modern conveniences and how she dealt with the climate of slavery, suppression of women's rights, etc. It was a hard write. I'm way too liberal to be able to survive that without a fight.
That story is in a box somewhere and will probably never surface again, but I have to thank Leni, my dear friend, for giving me the power to put it out there. Without her I'd still be hiding. Leni passed away from MS but her spirit has never left me. She was all that was good in the world.

My question under all this is when did you decide to put it out there? How did you find the courage?

Marketing....the other side of Indy work

As in any art things are a work in progress. Even after the book is written and rewritten and rewritten there's more to do. Once the story's told we move on to preparing it for publication/formatting, cover art, and then correcting the formatting.
When I first put Soul Mates up for some reason in the first paragraph (and only the first) all the "o's" turned into zeros "0". Very weird. Then I saw all my other typos! Yikes! How embarrassing.
All corrected...hopefully.

Moving on to marketing (Yuk!) Marketing is like stripping naked and running down Main Street. You want people to notice you but actually putting yourself out there is intimidating.
So you Facebook your people, email your friends and then attack the web.
I'm just starting the attack and am in the process of building a website. Scary putting your real name on a website. Here in Aimless land I'm pretty anonymous, but out there I am who I am.

www.jeannedonnelly.com

For better or for worse.
But like the tiger and life in general: Its a work in progress. 
Now where should marketing go from here? I have a few ideas and I'll be blogging them later. Where did you go with it?

Punctuation!

I see the story unfolding and suddenly someone yells. Woof! Woof! Woof! (It makes sense in book, I promise)

So since I've been warned by writers and an agent that we should never use exclamation marks. So I stare at the page...what to do, what to do....
I need to read some more. I usually read constantly, two or three books at a time, but lately I've been painting. When my soul is sad I paint. All other emotions I can write through, but not sadness. For some reason slopping paint on canvas works. Its like blanking my mind out in a way nothing else does. Time ceases, paint heals.
I miss reading. This has gone on way too long. I need to get over the losses and find a way back to what I enjoy.
Maybe then I can see what other writers do about the woof.

Blogging, Facebook, and time...

I love bloggers. I have a list of blogs I used to visit daily, but I'm sad to say I've drifted away from blogging. It seemed like a giant slow down on all the bloggers and I know we all have real lives that take us away from all this, but I think when I was blogging all my writing moved better. It was almost like morning pages (see The Artist's Way) that were meant to flex the writer's muscle in a way to clear the clutter.
Then there's Facebook that can really chew up time. It's entertaining and keeps us in touch with friends and relatives we don't get to hear from on a daily basis. I love seeing what my nieces and nephews are up to even if I haven't seen them in a while. Then two hours fly by and I realize I've done nothing. Facebook is a time-sucker.
Finally there's this job I have to go to everyday because I need to earn money. Even when I do have down time (and there's a lot where I work) the other people in the office are always chattering so I find it hard to concentrate enough to write. I tried head phones but people get upset when I tune them out. They have nothing important to say to me, but want me ready to answer anyway.
I used to get up an hour early to write. I made it a job I went to everyday. Where did this determination go? 

To get back to writing on a regular basis I'm trying to start with getting back to blogging. Flexing the writing muscle that I hope will get me writing regularly again.