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I often speak at libraries, schools, conferences and signings and inevitably someone comes up to me and utters those words. I love their enthusiasm, their joy in sharing something they’ve created and their eagerness to publish a real book. My first response is to give them a little bit of information on how the publishing process works including commissioning art.
How to key in to what inspires you and extend it to become the foundation for your writing using "Mapmaking" outlining techniques.
Who is my character, what shall I call him, or her? What is the story about? Where should I start? These are the questions I ask myself when an idea lands in my head. Get to know your character from the beginning.
Ideas are everywhere, including in our own lives. Personal and family experiences can provide the raw material to be molded into publishable stories and articles. By mining real-life experiences, authors can find many gems of setting, character, plot, theme, or emotion that make for powerful fiction or nonfiction.
At conferences we’re taught how to write, how to find agents and editors, how to blog and talk about our books. But unless kids are taking home our labors of love, the communication cycle is incomplete. I’m on a journey to learn how indie booksellers put our wares into the hands of readers, and what (if anything) I can do to help that process.
When someone asks you who you are, how do you describe yourself? And how do you feel when you tell them who you are? It is crucial to develop our own self image that is based on our own evaluations rather than how we believe others see us.
