I’ve been going round and round the same issues with my WIP for months. My infamous critiquer and I are making progress, but in some ways seem to be going in circles. To be honest, I’d rather be going in a straight line!

A few weeks ago Kitty took a look at my beginning pages and I told her the sticking points I was struggling through. She asked me:

What’s holding you back?

Great question!

One example: my critiquer suggested I raise the age of my character, making my book YA instead of MG. *gulp* I entertained the idea for a few weeks, but after checking out the bookstore, scurried right back to MG.

Then my critiquer brought it up again. I still haven’t convinced her it should be MG.

What is holding me back?

My excuses reasons: I wrote an upper MG book. I like upper MG books. MG is where I see my comp titles. Have you SEEN the YA section? Black covers everywhere! Angst. Dystopia. Death. So not my book.

And yet…last week I was on vacation and visited several bookstores and browsed their YA sections. Not every cover was cold and foreboding. My book could end up on a shelf like that and not get beat up by the books around it. I found some updated fairytale books which are more like what I’m writing. And a new hot book out: The False Prince was shelved in YA, but online, people are calling it MG. Perhaps a book could be both.

So I did it. My character is now older. Strangely enough, her voice is easier to hear. It feels more natural to write her thoughts and emotions without feeling like I’m going overboard on being in her head.

I really hope this change will bring about the other changes that I need to get me out of this editing circle.

How about you? What is holding you back?

If you are following this series, you’ve written down your Table of Contents and named all your source texts, files, mp3’s etc. It’s now time to start the actual work on our own personalized Book of Writing Routines.

I knew the “work” part would catch up to me. That’s why I’ve been putting off doing this for so long!

Oh, wait. We can avoid work one more week. Let’s decide how to tackle the beast first.

There are several ways to approach the work:

1. shortest vs longest chapters first
2. easiest vs more difficult chapters
3. start at the beginning and work chapter by chapter, or start at the ending and go backwards
4. skip around to whatever is most interesting to you at the time: either completing chapters, or touching on all the chapters a little bit at a time
5. let the source material dictate the chapters you work on: for example, compile all your online files into their respective chapters, then move on to your notes, then to books, etc.
6. start with the process you are currently working on and are therefore most in need of knowing what works for you, for example: editing or drafting
7. start with the process you are the farthest away from using because then you can be more objective

All of the above—just pick one to get started. And if you have time, begin! Cut and paste. Photocopy. File in a binder. Gather your chapters together.

This might take a few weeks and as I blog about other stuff, I’ll put in reminders to keep working on the Book of Writing Routines. Then later, we can inch our way through smoothing out the content into cohesive chapters.

And, of course we should have an end goal in mind. I’m setting my goal to be done before summer vacation. How about you?

As self-publishing gets more and more interest and press, I’ve begun to see more talk about content as well.

It seems everyone has been using the quote “Content is King” the last several years. I believe the phrase is a truism, though I also believe in the power of advertising, marketing, promotion and good old-fashioned manipulation.

But a few days ago I downloaded the Kindle free sample of Skeleton Crew by Stephen King. I read it in college, but John reminded me of a short story that I’d like to read again, “Word Processor of the Gods,” and I wanted to see if it was part of the sample. It wasn’t (so I’ll have to go check the book out of the library), but…

Oh. My. Gosh.

Talk about the “King” of content! While reading the first several pages of his short story “The Mist,” I stopped time and again and thought, “Wow! That’s how he does that!” Stephen King’s writing evokes emotion like few other writers I’ve read.

Life has been a little crazy around here, and it’s not calming down. I often feel like there is no time for reading for pleasure. But I read for at least a few minutes every night. The last several nights, it’s been “The Mist.” It’s made me realize again the huge difference between reading whatever book is at hand, and reading seriously well-written books whose quality I want to emulate.

As much work as I have as a self-publishing author, my biggest job will always be writing high quality books that people will want to read. Kristen Lamb has some great blog posts on craft and improving your content, as do Bob Mayer and Jen Talty. Check out their blogs if you haven’t already.

But I postulate that if you want to be a brilliant writer, you need to have a strong reading routine in addition to your writing routine. Not just any books, either. Read the best of the kind of work you’d like to create. In my case, the best commercial fiction.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go read a story that is much better than anything I’ve ever written. Yet.