How My Books Get Made

How My Books Get Made: So when a mommy book and a daddy book love each other very much... hahaha lol. It's more like plant reproduction. It involves only one person, lots of time, and then suddenly where there was once a tiny seed is a giant, complex tree.

These are 100% notes I have written down lol.

Welcome to Imagination Headquarters where such great ideas as Computers Screens Snake Attacks are born. Each floor is full of hallways full of closed doors. I found one that says "Morland" and I opened. After exploring it for many years, three books were created or uncovered. But there are more doors...

I got an explosion of ideas. Scenes about best friends, or estranged lovers. Scenes about super heroes and space pirates. Each character and story wanting their chance, wanting me to choose that door.

This is too accurate. Sometimes I'm scribbling out the scene in my head and before I'm even done the next scene starts talking over the first and I'm trying to remember everything I'm seeing. One of the many problems with getting inspiration this way is that it's impossible to reproduce. Once I lost all my notes for the evening and I could not remember one word I had written. The doors had stopped talking and I couldn't even remember the conversation. So I try to be quick or I have to let that one go knowing I may never see it again. Butterfly catching: Can't catch 'em all.

 If you want to write a novel I don't know how it can be done without Story Mill. It's so easy to organize. Want to write a book? Step 1: Buy Story Mill.

I hate copy editing!! So much. I'm not good at it and I'm too poor to pay for it. So I wrangle all my teacher friends and everyone who has ever used a comma correctly and make them edit it with me. It somehow gets done. Or well enough because there is always, and I mean always at least one typo in the manuscript. 

I'm pretty happy with Kindle Direct Publishing. I'll post more on that detailed process later. But it works for me.

Why I HAD to write a novel about headaches

 

 It was so subtle. I'd forgotten that the tree hadn't always been there. Bitterness is sneaky like that. It takes root and holds on and fills everything with shadows.

Oh poor Elinor. 

 Elinor was somehow able to put the words to the feelings I'd stuffed down deep, deep, deep in my soul. It was upsetting to see what was down there. I've talked about it before. But I was grieving what I'd lost. The life I was supposed to how. And when I finally pulled it all out. When I categorized and named every feeling and fear and hope, I felt free and light.  It was a beautiful surprise.

Of course writing Magic Headaches was just a piece of my healing process. But I'm not sure I could have climbed out of the hole without out. 

To see what all the fuss is about, check out my book.

P.S. I just got a new cover made and it's so beautiful!

See.

😍😊😍

Writing is weird

Here is an inside look at my writing process and how cats and babies 'help'. All drawings are accurate lol.

P.S. As I was getting this together Poppet was sitting next to me with a paw on the computer.

"I helper cat" she says while rubbing the corner of her mouth on my forearm.

Here is the photographic proof...