IT'S IMPORTANT TO KNOW WHY YOU WANT TO WRITE.
E
veryone writes for a reason. Knowing why you write is important, especially as a beginner writer. Writing a book is not hard, but it can be a long process. If your purpose for writing is clear, this will give you the energy and inspiration to spur you on if and/or when the going gets a little tough.
Are you writing for pleasure? Are you an avid reader and you want to write the books you never found? Do you want to write around some social commentary you have a desire to share? Writing is a form of sharing. What is it that you want to share? Your wit? Maybe Satire? Have you always been told that you're funny? Do you have a unique take on society that you think people would like?
I love stories and movies that have a backdrop of Catholicism in them, like The Godfather saga, or The Supranos, or even Ray Donovan. The Catholicism in these stories felt familiar to me and I believe it gave the story a layer of depth as it tapped into religion and culture which tends to anchor a group or family. So I write novels that have either a backdrop of Catholicism or a ribbon of Catholic sensibility passing through it. Of course, I leave out the blasphemy that Hollywood loves to toss in there on occasion!
I also write as part of my legacy. I began to write in 2018 when I moved to Central Florida, which I considered my pre-retirement. Now I have retired and I write full time. I feel that my books will be part of my legacy. I'm clear on my purpose for writing.
ARE STORIES JUST BURSTING TO COME OUT OF YOUR HEAD?
Some people are what I call natural-born writers. They do have stories bursting out of their hearts and heads. Often, these people fell in love with reading as children. Reading was an adventure. It took them up, up and away. Some people have always had a desire to author their own stories. If this sounds like you, you are a natural-born author.
This is usually a sign that you have been given the gift of authoring. These gifts are Heaven-sent, and predate schooling and other influences in your life. If this is the case, embracing your fate is probably the next best step to take.
DO YOU WANT TO WRITE AS PART OF YOUR LEGACY?
There are trades and arts that seem to fall by the wayside in each generation. But often, how to do certain things is lost to history. Do you know how to do something that you feel you need to leave behind? Do you want to write about how you did something that is now fading from the world?
There are young people who don't know how to write a check anymore. They don't know how to address an envelope for the mail. Some don't even read cursive writing anymore.
Listening to a lecture by the learned intellectual and researcher Thomas Sowell, he stated that when Rome fell, the western world lost the art of making bricks. Then when the western world got back on its feet, they had to import brings from England because the art of making bricks died with the civilization. Cement was invented in Rome. They made all of those brick arches -- but the art was lost. What is it that you know how to do that you feel compelled to record for prosperity's sake?
I'm old enough to remember 'phone guys' that worked for Bell South or whatever the phone company was called back then. These men -- they didn't have phone women back then -- would show up with big toolbelts and gaffs or lineworker boots on. These boots had cleats or little metal spikes in them that was a safety feature. These men know everything about the phone system. They would climb the wooden telephone poles and they could fix phones outside on the pole or inside in the houses. They were familiar with the entire system. That is one group of technical workers that have fallen away.
Is there something about an art form or a job that you knew that you want to pass on for prosperity sake? You can write a novel around it and it will serve two purposes: It will be a way for you to tell the story of your industry or job and you will be documenting how life was at a certain time in history.
DO YOU HAVE A BURNING DESIRE TO SHARE A UNIQUE EXPERIENCE?
Very often life dishes out some hard times to some of us. Did you experience, survive and prosper through some difficult times that you feel compelled to write a memoir about? You don't have to have been a famous celebrity or someone with a Moses-like mission. You may have fell on hard times and you want to share your experience, strength or faith that kept you going. People love inspirational stories.
Writing a memoir can also be part of your legacy. Someone three generations down the road may be curious about how the family was back in your times. By having a published memoir, you can share your perspective on things during the times you lived.
Today people no longer write letters. Most photos live on phones that may be lost or stolen. Even photos in the cloud could easily be lost to history without the right username and password. By writing a memoir, you may be someone who is documenting the present in a way that historians in the future may be very grateful for.
SO WHY DO YOU WANT TO WRITE A BOOK?
What do you think? Do any of these reasons resonate with you? Make your first writing assignment to list the reason or reasons why you choose to write.
Here is a video where I had a few more words to say about finding your reason to write!
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John Walsh is a successful funeral director with a loving family but he has a weakness for other women. The modern world thinks cheating is a victimless crime, but is it?
When I self-published my first novel, I finished it and uploaded it and waited. That's when I learned how important marketing the book is. I also learned through the next several books how important it is to take advantage of each tiny phase of a book launch for marketing. That's what this blog post is about.
A gun silencer, also known as a suppressor, is a muzzle device that reduces the sound of a gunshot. It does this by slowing down and cooling the expanding gases that are released from the barrel when the gun is fired. Silencers do not completely silence a gunshot, but they can reduce the sound level by 20 to 30 decibels. This can make a significant difference in the loudness of the gunshot, making it much less noticeable to people nearby.
A ballistic report is a record of the characteristics of a bullet, such as its caliber, weight, and velocity. Ballistic reports are used by law enforcement to identify the type of gun that was used in a crime. They can also be used to determine the range from which a shot was fired.
Here are some of the terms that are commonly used in the field of gun silencers and ballistics:
A silencer can leave markings on a bullet. These markings are called "tool marks" and they are caused by the rough interior surface of the silencer rubbing against the bullet as it passes through. The tool marks can be microscopic or macroscopic, depending on the type of silencer and the type of bullet.
Ballistics experts can use these tool marks to identify the silencer that was used in a shooting. They can also use the tool marks to determine the distance from which the shot was fired.
Although I follow a detailed outline of the story before I even start writing, each novel presents its own issues and/or problems. In this novel, I had several timelines I had to keep straight.
The second thing I do in Layer 5 is to fill out the Synopsis section. This section is in the upper right-hand side of the Scrivener platform.
Now, because I had to kind of abandon the full subplot in Layer 4, I will be finishing the subplot while I'm doing the descriptions and the synopsis box. Once I'm done with this layer, then I'll be back to discuss what happens in Layer 6!
Turn these Scrivener features off, especially if you plan to move your finished novel draft into Microsoft Word for final formatting. Because I self-publish and I need to upload in ePub and PDF manuscript, I use Word for a final proofread and formatting. I find Word is the best choice for me. The smart quotes do not translate well between Scrivener and Word. If you turn off the smart quotes, Scrivener will replace them with straight quotes and these translate better.
I'm writing my fourth novel in the Jack Nolan Detective Series. The book is still unnamed. This is Level 4 in my Eight Levels of Writing a Novel series. This first draft is down and dirty. It is the hardest lift of the entire project. At least for me, the first draft is the hardest. The characters all seem like stick figures. I find them unlikeable -- even if I liked them in the last book! Any humor doesn't seem to work. Everything just seems awkward. I have to literally force myself to keep typing. So this tip is to just keep writing. Don't check on any spellings or grammar. Don't even look back. Just keep going until you have the crime down, the main plotline down and the subplots at least in place. That will complete the first down-and-dirty draft. Every other layer will be easy compared to this one.
With bard.google.com, now it's possible to do research on the fly when writing fiction. Simply open a browser window, type in bard.google.com and start asking it questions.
Scrivener allows you to highlight text in any color you want. I use this highlighter in the Level 4 Draft to make a mental note to myself to check on things. For example: If I say that someone is coming home from a hospital in four days, I highlight this. This makes sure that this lines up with the plotline, or the crime line, or the subplot lines.
Like I mentioned earlier, I'm in the first draft of my novel and each scene begins with the same Scene Template as seen to the left.
When writing the first draft, I use the Scrivener Synopsis section in the Inspector Pane to list the clues I have dropped in that scene. Once I've finished the first draft, I can open the project in Outline View and this will give me a bird's eye view and chronology of the clues that have been dropped.
I am knee-deep in Level 4 of writing the next book in the Jack Nolan Detective Series. I thought this would be a good time for me to take a break and reflect on what happens when I'm 'in the weeds' writing a novel.
When you first sit down to write a novel, everyone is filled with enthusiasm and creative energy. It's exciting. It's new. But as the manuscript begins to grow, before it feels finished -- or even ready to be polished, it feels cumbersome, heavy, and overwhelming. At least for me it does.
It's possible to get paralyzed by a fear of failure at any point during the writing of a novel. It's not a one-and-done operation. No one sits down, starts writing, finishes writing and ta-da, there's a book. Writing a novel doesn't work that way. It's a long process. It's a multi-layer process.
Writers block is another common problem among authors. This often sets in after that initial period of excitement about the novel wears off. At some point the writing of the novel shifts into a project requiring some heavy lifting. There's always a phase or two where the author has to tough it out. We have to keep at it.
Will my readers like the book? Will the book be good enough to get a literary agent? What happens if my book gets bad reviews? There are any number of fears of rejection that can cause us to stop writing. Decide ahead of time you won't allow these fears to stop you. Like I said earlier, think of your writing as a mission God has given you. This is your life's work, along with your other worldly responsibilities. Your writing could be an opportunity to pass on things you have come to learn in your life. That's a purpose. Or maybe writing is a way for you to share the gift of storytelling that you know you were born with. That's a God-given purpose. Whatever the reason, it's important to not allow fear of rejection to get in the way.
Distractions are one of the biggest obstacles to completing a novel. One reason is because life does serve up constant small and big emergencies that have to take first priorities in our lives. So an emergency distraction can throw a whole well-planned writing schedule up into the air in a heartbeat.
Most novels require at least some research. The internet can be a blessing with research but it can also be a curse. It's a blessing because the days of having to travel to a public library are over. It can be a curse because the research can suck you in and you can use up all your valuable writing time doing too much research.
Another trap to finishing a novel is to get caught up in a never-ending edit of the book. This usually hooks in with perfectionism problem in some way.
Once you complete a novel, there is a little sadness that sets in. This book is no longer your baby. It's no longer your little pet project. Once you hand it off to an editor, it becomes a shared work, so to speak.
I'm assuming all writers have doubts as they are writing the first draft. I know I do. Something happens between the feeling of knowing I have a good plotline and writing out the first draft.
So the antidote to self-doubt is to keep writing. Trust your plotline. Know too that you can always add clues, rearrange some scenes, add a bit more intrigue into your subplots. Eight layers of writing leaves a lot of room for beefing up a story, deepening a story and polishing a story.
Most new writers want to get to the writing already. But in this layer of writing, all plot holes or inconsistencies will show up. Any clues that won't work when adding more suspects and motivations will show up in this layer.
n order to prevent head-hopping, which is very common among new writers, you need to be constantly reminded that each scene is in one perspective. Some writers write in first person and that's easy.
I don't know whether I am an author who is obsessed with time, or whether I use time as an element to put pressure to solve on my characters, but I have always tracked time. I find this helps me balance the story and make the story more realistic.
Location is important for two reasons. One reason is casts the scene in cement. You have chosen a stage for the scene to take place. I don't write any scene or location descriptions in this layer of writing. But I can write the action of the scene in context of a location.
In the first installment of the Peek Behind the Novel Series, I wrote about working four different plotlines before choosing one. By working on four of them, it helps me 'improve' on some storylines and when I have four to choose from, I am able to go into the project knowing that I have chosen the best one. It's a technique that I use to build my author confidence.
In the first layer of writing, I focus only on the crime or mystery. I make a list of the chronology of the crime. How it happens, who it happens to, how the detectives are assigned to the case. I focus only on the crime. I don't think of subplots, or dialogue or even the outcome. Only on the crime itself, almost like a Forensic Files show.
I mentioned writing in layers above. This is a secondary technique that I will blog about as I move along in my present book. I'll also give you a sneak peek behind the novel to see what levels I write in.