Where Normal Need Not Apply
People tend to like nice round numbers like 5s and 10s, so reaching the five-year point on my blog feels like a major milestone. That means now might be a good time to look back at what I’ve learned over those five years, and share what those lessons might tell us about the rest of our writing career.
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Some writers can find themselves paralyzed by the thought of needing to get their first draft “right.” That’s crazy-making, however. A draft—a first draft especially—is a tool to help us discover the story we want to tell, the characters we want to meet, and the themes we want to explore. That’s it.
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Holding your book in your hands can make “being published” feel real, but self-publishing in print can require us to make countless decisions. Let’s walk through the process.
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Those of you who have been following my publishing process might be wondering why the one book I have out so far is free. After all, it costs money—potentially lots of money—to publish a book. Let’s take a look at a publishing plan for when it might make sense to give our books away for free.
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Everything we write should be intentional—the words we use, the events we emphasize, the emotions we evoke, the themes we build, etc. But when our writing doesn’t match our intentions, we might need trusted feedback that forces us to justify our choices.
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There’s no “one right way” in publishing. We can probably all think of ways that don’t work, but there are often several paths that do lead to success. The same applies to encouragement advice. We often see two kinds of encouragement in the writing world: pushy and sympathetic. Either way can work, depending on who we are at this moment in time.
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Last week, we talked about the different kinds of editing and editors, and we also talked about how to evaluate editors. Now let’s dig deeper into some of the variations we might encounter when evaluating editors. By understanding these variations, we might better be able to find our perfect match.
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When we’re ready for professional editing, we want to make sure our editor is good, especially if we’re opening our wallet. Here are some tips, questions, and processes that will help us evaluate editors for our needs.
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All writers, especially those who self-publish, have to decide: Are we writing and publishing just for ourselves? Or to get customers (readers)? Depending on our answers, we can prioritize “fast, cheap, or good.”
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I’m a perfectionist, so I had to get over a lot of my own issues to be able to publish my stories. Many steps along our writing path can make us uncomfortable, as we’re not perfect, not ready. But I never would have been able to publish if I hadn’t pushed myself to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.
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