~ THE FRUITS OF OUR FRUSTRATIONS ~

For the last two years, I’ve been working on my third book, The Last Tree, and I’ve finally gotten it to the point where I would normally go to a professional editor and then a proof-reader. But this time, I thought I would try an online editing service as the price difference was more than three thousand dollars. A friend, who is also an Indie author, recommended a particular service, and I signed up, paying $70 for a year’s worth of “premium service.” After two weeks of fruitless attempts trying to upload my manuscript to their documents file, and many emails back and forth, I am still unable to upload my story and unable to use their editing services.

I think of myself as reasonably intelligent, however I admit to being hopeless with technology. I find dealing with all the in’s and out’s and nooks and crannies of online services mind-boggling. Nothing is ever as straight forward as you’d like it to be. Everything requires a learning manual to figure out how to use the site: ‘Just watch these ten videos to show you how to use all the different aspects of our service.’

I may have to go back to the original plan of paying a small fortune for professional editors to do the job. I think one of the things about being an Indie writer is that these sorts of delays, the technological misadventures that happen along the way to publishing a book, are things you would normally talk about with other people, but as an Indie, the buck stops with you. The job can feel a little lonely, sometimes, because it doesn’t matter how big the problem is no one else is going to fix it.

When my grandmother was alive, she lived five minutes’ walk up the road from me. I used to visit her every Thursday, and she would have cooked for us the most amazing full three course cooked lunch. We would sit and talk for hours. And she would tell me the family stories. Every time I hugged her and turned to leave, gran would say some special saying to take away, to think about on my walk home. She’d say, “Remember to always look for the silver lining, and you’ll find it” or “Reach for a star and you’ll go far.” So, these days, many years after her death, I hear her wise words and remember them. She would know that any hitch in the proceedings was fine, and all was in order with nothing out of place.

I emailed the online editing service, and said, if we don’t get the issue sorted out this time I’ll get a refund and move on. In the meantime, I’m very happy to have another go at editing the material. You can never edit enough, that’s for sure. So I’ll happily run through The Last Tree two or three times more while I wait.

As I near these final stages of working on this novel, I have to figure out the cover, the illustrations, and the whole presentation. I have included a couple of my own pen and ink illustrations in each volume, so I knew I wanted to do a couple for The Last Tree as well. I hadn’t had a chance to look at them while I was still deeply immersed in the editing. You get onto a track of momentum when you’re editing and you want to see it to the end. I had to complete the polishing edits before I could contemplate art.

The last two weekends, I’ve spent hours at a time waiting as I tried to get documents to upload to the online editing service, and I spent that time wisely. I picked up my pencil and dusted off my art pad. It felt so liberating to leave the laptop. I sat down and started to draw the illustrations for the third book of the trilogy, The Chronicles of Aden Weaver.

By the end of the weekend, I had a template for two illustrations: one of the hero making a deal with the bird demons, and the other of two giants fighting. I see my given deadline of spring release for The Last Tree slip, slip sliding away. Yet, now, I have some illustrations I can work on during any further delays in production. I think they call that the silver lining. It helps to stay positive, no matter what.

“Remember to always look for the silver lining, and you’ll find it.”

Talk to you later.

Keep on Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

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Staying positive doesn’t mean everything will turn out ok. Rather, it is knowing you will be ok no matter how things turn out. – Unknown

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~ How to Handle the Silence of Self-Publishing ~

For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day. ~ Ernest Hemmingway

When you are “post book,” you exist in this strange no-man’s land where you’re not sure what should happen next, but in your secret heart-of-hearts, you’re hoping for applause in some form, hopefully financial.

What nobody can really prepare you for, when you start out as an author is the great echoing silence of self publishing.

A novel requires burning the midnight oil writing the story, and questioning every word, every sentence. After having put “bum-in-chair” for days upon weeks, after suffering the agonies of self-publishing, and the indignities of self marketing, to cross the finish line and release your fiction upon the world, it’s natural to expect reward. It’s natural to want to hear some noise in response.

There are more books being published every day now than at any other time in our history.

To gain traction, many motivated Indies will ask their “street teams” and friends to share about their release, to write reviews, to generate buzz in various ways. If you don’t dance up a storm, your books don’t sell, you might not be paid. Apart from that self-generated sound, however, there is nothing.

When I put out my first book in 2015, there were some lovely messages on social media from friends and well wishers. Apart from that there was…s i l e n c e. A great white-washed, sound proofed wall of nothingness.

Silence is something we’re not used to these days. In our hyper-connected present, we expect reactions to our every move. We wait with our self worth balanced on likes, loves and comments and shares. We’re conditioned to feedback.

As yoga-teacher and author, Claudia Altucher said, I find that ultimately there is a little side of me that still clings to the idea of being “chosen” (by a publishing house).

Any writer can relate. With the first book, there’s this great hope of being “discovered.”

“How are things going with your book?” asked well-meaning friends. “Have you sold many?” The mythology goes, all you need do is release work in order to get paid, to get recognition. The truth is the majority of self-published authors will sell less than a hundred copies.

Few authors write a second novel and even fewer a third once the fiscal realities become apparent. After an author visit to an Elementary School in the States, author, Ellen Warach Leventhal, said her favorite response from a fourth grader was, ‘You work hard, you don’t know if you’ll ever get paid for it, and you aren’t rich? Man, not sure I want to do that.’

The first book is like a trial by fire. If you walk through that flaming doorway without getting burnt, then you carry on writing but as a cleansed, reduced version of oneself with revised expectation.

Nick Ripatrazone’s sage advice to the author is, Share your work, but don’t wait for likes and retweets and mentions. Get off your phone. Get back to your desk.

I read somewhere, the traditional reaction to a book being published at any other time in history has typically been little to none. Authors wrote and released books and went on with their writing. They didn’t expect a parade.

In our digital present, it is easy to forget that silence has always been the most common response to literature and art. ~ Nick Ripatrazone

After I published my debut novel, ‘The Or’in of Tane Mahuta,’ (http://amzn.com/B015K1KF0I), I started developing the next story in the Chronicles of Aden Weaver. The narrative unfolded and it drew me into another world, where I got lost in the creativity. The firestorm was therapeutic. I remembered the most important thing was the art itself.

I understand now why authors advise to get on with writing the next book.

I published ‘The Sasori Empire,’ (http://amzn.com/B075PMTN2H) last week. This time round, I experienced it differently, with more realism. I didn’t expect mega stardom or even a conversation.

I was ready for the normal silence that surrounds any newly-released work.

I discovered it takes a certain amount of surrender. And, faith, that I can survive the fall. I was prepared for the sudden drop-off of adrenalin and commitment that follows on the heels of each book birth. I’d already bought the chocolate bars. I pampered myself with treats.

My process seems to have settled into a pattern of write-edit-publish-rest-repeat. I relaxed for two days after the book launch. I listened to music, weeded the garden, and I did some baking. For a minute, I thought, I’m free!

Now, I’m writing book three, the final book in the series, ‘The Last Tree.’

How do you handle the silence post-book?

Keep on Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

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Cherish yourself and wall off an interior room where you’re allowed to forget your published life as a writer. ~ Lan Samantha Chang

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The Or’in of Tane Mahuta

Book One, the Chronicles of Aden Weaver http://amzn.com/B015K1KF0I

The Sasori Empire

Book Two, the Chronicles of Aden Weaver http://amzn.com/B075PMTN2

~ Celery Grows in the Dark ~

~ I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery. ~ Aldous Huxley

When I started writing fiction as an adult thirty-five years ago, I did so for the love of it. I wrote because creativity wanted to pour out of me that way. My “certain set of skills” happened to lie with prose and that’s where I ran wild with the giddy rush of youth. I was not preoccupied or clouded by the need for publication. I wrote to explore the parameters of my imagination, to see where I could go, to travel to far-flung places and report back. The possibilities and the horizon were equally endless.

Five years ago, when I began my first steps into the world online and social media, I set up author pages, started making friends and finding out more about the online writing community. It wasn’t long before I felt the pressure to have something to show for my years of writing effort. I needed something to hang my shingle on. In 2015, I made the death-defying leap from unpublished to Indie author.

What I didn’t know then is that once you pass over that threshold, you leave innocence at the door. After that, the gloves are off; you have entered the arena of life. And life is brutal. It wants to eat you. Every move you make as an author or artist these days is public and hung out to dry in the open marketplace. Whether you make it or break it is global, everyone’s going to know. As the Indie author, you have become your own middle man; you manage everything from advertising copy, to every aspect of book production, to hawking copies at book fairs. The marketing machine never stops and you can never feed it enough.

If you’re a savvy Indie, every step you make after that has an angle. Every friend you make is a prospective customer. Every post, every tweet, every conversation is another way to sell your product.

What this does to my creative soul is like toxic gas, it slowly poisons the ground.

Author and teacher, Lan Samantha Chang, addressed this phenomena in her speech, Writers, Protect Your Inner Life*. ‘We are taught to believe that the publication of a book is the happy ending to a long journey of working and striving, but according to many new authors with whom I have spoken, publishing is only the beginning of the journey of learning to navigate the world as a public writer, which is the opposite of making art, and it requires learning to protect that inner self from which the art emerged in the first place.’

This is something I’ve really been thinking about a lot lately, is how to preserve and keep alight this flame of purity inside me.

How do I protect my dignity, my artistic integrity?

How do I maintain my ability to enter the shaded places of childhood, the secret inner recesses of my soul, in order to write the rough draft?

It pained me that in my reaching for public attention, I had forgotten the innocent joy of writing for the sake of writing, not for the buck. Not for the fan. Not for the “likes” on Facebook. Not for the bestseller list. Not for status updates. In my struggle to be heard, in my fight to get my book on the front shelf to be seen, I had lost sight of what was really important. Or why I started this journey in the first place, to ‘live with hysteria, and out of it make fine stories,’ as Ray Bradbury put it so eloquently in his day.

Like the celery that only grows in the dark, the artist, the creative soul requires time in stillness and solitude and retreat in order to gestate.

I have learned the only way to preserve and protect my inner life as a writer is to carve out regular prolonged time away from marketing and (if possible) social media. I call them ‘net breaks,’ and they’ve become as necessary to my creative spirit, as walks outdoors or glasses of water are necessary to my health.

Sometimes I need to turn off all my devices and get out into nature. I need to forget about the end point of the sale and refocus on the love of writing – that eternal spark. Only then, can I truly re-enter my own private Eden from which I can create worlds.

How do you protect your inner world?

Talk to you later.

Keep on Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

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‘Cherish yourself and wall off an interior room where you’re allowed to forget your published life as a writer. There’s a hushed, glowing sound, like the sound coming from the inside of a shell,’ said writer Lan Samantha Chang

*http://lithub.com/writers-protect-your-inner-life/

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Subscribe to my Newsletter by emailing me with “Newsletter Subscription” in the subject line to: yvettecarol@hotmail.com

 

 

 

~ A Writer’s Hiatus ~

Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

In the last week, I’ve had a revelation, thanks to a little help from a dear friend. I realised I’m spending way too much time on social media, at the expense of my writing.

I started out with the internet and social media about five years ago. At first, I had it all in balance, but somewhere along the line, the balance started to shift.

My friend pointed out that while I’ve been able to keep my blog and newsletter and Facebook and YouTube updated regularly  -‘You’re everywhere’ – I failed to finish and produce my second book, ‘The Sasori Empire,’ as I’d promised readers, last year.

Self-defence is the knee-jerk. I explained I’ve long adhered to Kristen Lamb’s excellent social media advice for writers. I was under the impression keeping up with the social media gambit was a necessity for all artists these days.

Yet, when I really looked hard at myself and my output, I knew my friend was right. I’ve maintained social media religiously, and let the writing of my sequel to *’The Or’in of Tane Mahuta’ slide. *http://amzn.com/B015K1KF0I

I really do appreciate my subscribers!

While I feel an obligation to continue to provide output, I also have had to admit that if I continue at this rate, I’m not going to produce ‘The Sasori Empire’ this year, either. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day. I spend a day at a time writing and producing my blog posts. I spend at least three days, even longer sometimes, writing and collating my fortnightly newsletter.

My friend said, ‘You do all of your social media well. Now imagine if you put more of that time into this book instead of rushing through it.’

Yes. Imagine!

Between raising my two youngest boys, and being on the committee of two different groups, something’s gotta give. Therefore, I’ve decided to take at least a month’s hiatus from social media (although I may pop onto Facie in the mornings while I have my first cup of tea).

My ultimate dream would be to publish ‘The Sasori Empire’ this winter and make a start on the third book in The Chronicles of Aden Weaver series in time for spring in the southern hemisphere. But, to do that will require a lot of work.

Therefore, I’ll be taking a writer’s hiatus for a month, or so.

After I have put nose-to-the-grindstone, I shall return! Hopefully, with the second book well in hand. Sometimes you’ve got to make the hard calls, and this is one of those times.

Thanks, for your patience!

Talk to you later.

Meantime, keep on Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

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A young writer is an explorer. She knows she wants to get somewhere, but she doesn’t even know if the somewhere even exists yet. It is there to be created. In the process of creating it we find out how varied and complex we are. ~ Colum McCann

 

 

 

 

~ ‘Are You Happy?’ ~

My youngest son asked me a new question on the drive home from golf, yesterday.

He asked, “Are you happy?”

I sat stunned for a moment or two. I thought, my boy’s growing up. This was the first time, as far as I knew, that his perception had gone beyond himself to thinking of other people. Then, I felt sorry for him. He’s the little worrier in the family.

Next, I felt incredulous that anyone close to me could think I was unhappy. I get to bring up my lovely boys, be with family and friends sometimes, and then I get to write, and be alone. What could be better than that?

To walk the path of the writer is not easy sometimes, because a lot of people just don’t get it.

I can see how in the “world’s” eyes, I might be miserable. I’m divorced. Single. A stay-at-home mum. A writer (the loneliest profession of them all!) and a “card-carrying” introvert!

In fact, there are more single women these days than ever before, in the U.S, single women account for half the female vote, 56 million, up from 45 million last year, and in Australia, single women make up 42% of the adult female population. Yet, there’s still social stigma around doing certain things on your own, like going to the movies or eating alone. The writer, Christina Ling, wrote a fantastic piece for the Huffington Post, Don’t Feel Bad For Me Because I Do Things Alone. It echoes my feelings exactly. I rejuvenate through time alone, that’s how I recoup my energy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/christina-ling/the-stigma-of-doing-things-alone_b_9239900.html?ncid=engmodushpmg00000004

As Christina puts it, ‘Being alone with your mind, however, is one of the best things for your soul. More importantly, I think we are perfectly entitled to simply not be in the mood to entertain someone throughout an activity or socialize, in general.’

 

After being mama to two rambunctious boys for five days of the week, I look forward to my 48 hours break, when the boys spend time with their father. Even though I work alone, I still crave that solitary time, in which to recuperate fully.

Carol Bainbridge, the Gifted Child Expert explains the need of introverts to withdraw, ‘Being with people, even people they like and are comfortable with, can prevent them from their desire to be quietly introspective.’

http://giftedkids.about.com/bio/Carol-Bainbridge-19284.html

The lucky thing is, my job is directly suited to the introvert. And, I can’t imagine a job I could enjoy more than I do mine. I get to write fiction for young persons and those of the eternally youthful mind. It’s so fun, it’s the best job on the planet, hands-down.

Murphy’s Law and the laws of randomness usually apply to most of us, and therefore, there may never be more than a penny or two in it for me. I may never build up a fan base beyond that of my family and pet fish. But that’s not the point. Doing what you love is the point, and as long as I get to write, then I shall still be the happiest mama within a five-mile radius of my son at all times!

I understand how my eleven-year-old looks at me, and he probably feels I must be miserable. Introverts only make up about 25-40% of the general population. There are not exactly a lot of introverted role models to look up to.

I had to assure him, “Yes, I am happy.” I don’t know whether it’s a “boy thing” or whether it’s the age, but that answer was enough. He took me at my word and carried on to the next subject.

I was still fascinated with the subject of happiness and what it means. He’d brought it up and I wanted to talk about it. However, I could see he’d already moved on. I let him take the lead, and we talked nonsense the rest of the way to his father’s house.

After dropping my son off, I drove home to my weekly respite, and I pondered further on this delightful question my son had asked, Are you happy?

No one is happy 100% of the time, that’s just not natural, however, would I say I was predominantly happy? Yes.

What I was left with, was the sensation that my son cared. It takes emotional health and depth to ask another person how they are feeling. Therefore, I had a sense of my son’s developing emotional wellness, and his humanity.

It was a lovely, poignant, parenting moment. One of those, ‘he may act banana-pants crazy half the time, however, he’s going to turn out all right’ moments. It was one of those reward moments, when all the hard work of parenting is blissfully worth it.

What about you, what great questions have your kids asked you? Would you say you’re predominantly happy? 

Talk to you later.

Keep on Creating!

Yvette K. Carol

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In a totally sane society, madness is the only freedom. ~ J. G. Ballard

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