UPDATE: When I set out to write this series of posts, I NEVER imagined it would be as popular as it has become. But in the almost year since I published this series, it’s gotten consistent traffic, and remains my highest trafficked post via Pinterest to date. So…
I have decided to publish this series as an ebook. 30 Days to Becoming aWriter will release on Amazon on August 25, 2014.
Click here to purchase your copy today!
No, that’s not a typo – The book is a 30 Day Guide, not 31 Day Guide. I condensed the material into readable chapters, and organized it in a way that gives readers a comprehensive guide to writing and publishing in an easily digestible format.
I will be removing the posts from this space in an effort to preserve the integrity of the book, but as soon as the book goes live, I will include the link where you can purchase these posts for your online library.
My hope and desire it that people will be inspired to continue to create, to write, and ultimately, to author the words that float in their heads and hearts. I’m so honored to have you all on this journey with me. I hope that you will benefit in your career as a writer from the tips offered in 30 Days to Becoming an Author. For more information on the book, and for more Pinterest-worthy images to promote it, go to KelliStuart.com.
Thanks for taking this journey with me!
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31 Days: The Dreaded First Draft
To Outline or Not to Outline
UPDATE: When I set out to write this series of posts, I NEVER imagined it would be as popular as it has become. But in the almost year since I published this series, it’s gotten consistent traffic, and remains my highest trafficked post via Pinterest to date. So…
I have decided to publish this series as an ebook. 30 Days to Becoming a Writer will release on Amazon on August 25, 2014.
Click here to purchase your copy today!
No, that’s not a typo – The book is a 30 Day Guide, not 31 Day Guide. I condensed the material into readable chapters, and organized it in a way that gives readers a comprehensive guide to writing and publishing in an easily digestible format.
I will be removing the posts from this space in an effort to preserve the integrity of the book, but as soon as the book goes live, I will include the link where you can purchase these posts for your online library.
My hope and desire it that people will be inspired to continue to create, to write, and ultimately, to author the words that float in their heads and hearts. I’m so honored to have you all on this journey with me. I hope that you will benefit in your career as a writer from the tips offered in 30 Days to Becoming an Author. For more information on the book, and for more Pinterest-worthy images to promote it, go to KelliStuart.com.
Thanks for taking this journey with me!
______________________________________________________________________________________
31 Days to Becoming an Author
UPDATE: When I set out to write this series of posts, I NEVER imagined it would be as popular as it has become. But in the almost year since I published this series, it’s gotten consistent traffic, and remains my highest trafficked post via Pinterest to date. So…
I have decided to publish this series as an ebook. 30 Days to Becoming a Writer will release on Amazon on August 25, 2014.
Click here to purchase your copy today!
No, that’s not a typo – The book is a 30 Day Guide, not 31 Day Guide. I condensed the material into readable chapters, and organized it in a way that gives readers a comprehensive guide to writing and publishing in an easily digestible format.
I will be removing the posts from this space in an effort to preserve the integrity of the book, but as soon as the book goes live, I will include the link where you can purchase these posts for your online library.
My hope and desire it that people will be inspired to continue to create, to write, and ultimately, to author the words that float in their heads and hearts. I’m so honored to have you all on this journey with me. I hope that you will benefit in your career as a writer from the tips offered in 30 Days to Becoming an Author. For more information on the book, and for more Pinterest-worthy images to promote it, go to KelliStuart.com.
Thanks for taking this journey with me!
______________________________________________________________________________________
*Ask and Ye Shall Receive! Several people asked me if they could subscribe to the blog to have it delivered to email and I finally figured out how to do that! (And by “figured out” I mean that I had someone set it up for me.) Enter your email in the box to the left to have posts sent straight to your inbox.
Yay technology! And Yay people who know how to use it better than I do!
Carry on, then…
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I am not a planner. I’m not really sure how it is that the personality cards fell as they did given that my mom is a planner times fifteen. She plans when she’s going to plan. It’s something to behold.
I’m assuming I got the fly-by-my-seatedness from my dad. Maybe? Dad, am I right?
(I’m pretty sure I’m right.)
Because I generally tend not to plan very far in advance, I always feel like I should get some sort of recognition or medal on the rare occasions when I am super prepared. Those moments are few and far between and quite frankly, I find it exhausting to organize for the future. It’s a wonder I get anything done at all.
I have been in a noticeable blogging funk lately. The blogging world has evolved and changed quite a bit in the last five years. People want their information faster, shorter, and much more visually than they did before. Niche blogs are the focus right now – Foodies, decorators, DIY-ers, and coupon-ers. Blogs that offer a short burst of information, helpful to every day life, and complete with pretty pictures are what the masses want when they open their computers.
It’s hard for the story tellers to keep up.
This year, between fighting depression, finishing my novel, editing my novel and now pitching my novel, I haven’t really been able to fuel the flame of successful blogging – particularly because I’m one of the story tellers who feels like she’s swimming outside the niche.
(SIDE NOTE: I’d like someone to create a band and name it Swimming Outside the Niche. Then make really cool, funky jazz with just a hint of coffee shop flare. And if you do, please send me one of your CD’s for free. Thankyouverymuch.)
Alright, so where am I headed with all this? For the past three years, my friend Myquilin, better known as The Nester, has done a 31 Days challenge. The idea is to stretch yourself and write one post a day throughout October on one topic.
I tried to do this last year, but I literally decided to jump in on October 1 without any clue of what I would write about. (Please reference the opening paragraph regarding my lack of planning ahead.)
Needless to say, I didn’t do a great job. My topic was difficult to define, a bit ambiguous, and I had no idea how to generate 31 posts out of it. By the end of the month, I chalked myself up as a failing 31 Day writer.
But time heals all failures, and it’s another year so I’m going after it again, and do you know what I did last night?
I outlined my entire 31 Day series!
Someone give me a medal, quick!
Now for some, I fear my topic may be a little dry. You might not be interested, but I hope you’ll still follow along because I think you’ll enjoy learning the ins and outs and tricks of the trade I plan to share. What is the topic?
At first I worried that it would be pretentious of me to write an entire series on becoming an author, but then I quit shaming myself for the skills and experience I’ve gathered on this topic and embraced the fact that I am indeed qualified to write these posts.
So write them I will, and I am ridiculously excited to do so. At this point in my blogging, I need something a little more concrete to write about. I need to focus less on trying to think of funny stories, and more about the business and art of creating story (although plenty of humor will be thrown in, because you know I can’t help myself…). I would love it if you’d follow along as we cover such topics as:
– What makes a writer a writer? And what makes a writer an author?
– Writing with Purpose
– The Mechanics of Fiction
– The Mechanics of Non-Fiction
– Character Development
– Setting Fees
– What To Do When You Hit the Inevitable Plateau
And there will be so much more. We’ll cover how to find an agent and how to find a publisher, manuscript lengths, and how to write a book proposal that publishers will want to read.
I was at this writing gig long before blogging became popular. Before I finished my own novel, I helped others develop and sell their novels. I’ve written book proposals that sold, and book proposals that got thrown into the mush pile because they stunk. I’ve ghost-written several books and co-authored a book, and I made countless mistakes along the way.
I love writing, and I love to see others reach their dreams of publication. So for 31 Days, we’re going to explore this topic together.
Well, what do you know…I think I just found my niche.
I’ll link up each 31 Day post as I put them up. I reserve full rights to change, edit or move these posts around because there’s a solid chance I’ll have to do that!
31 Days to Becoming an Author:
The Mechanics of Great Non-Fiction
The Mechanics of Great Fiction
Character Development: Creating Layered Characters
Come and Ride the Grammar Train
When You Hit the Inevitable Plateau
What if I Write and No One Reads?
A Writer is a Reader who Reads all the Books
The Art of Being Published in a Cut Throat World
Communities to Enhance Your Writing
Write for Yourself…And Also for Them
I think I can, I think I can, I think I can…
Ever so slowly, I chip away at my novel. Just like The Little Engine that Could, I find myself slowly chugging up the mountain, straining to reach the top. The problem with writing a novel (particularly a historical fiction novel, which relies as much on historical accuracy as it does creative license) is that it’s an up hill climb the whole time. And simply finding the time to write is proving to be the biggest hurdle of all.
I need another week in California to knock this thing out.
Just sayin’…
Whatcha think, Babe? Think I could sneak away for five more days?
You wouldn’t miss me…right?
*sigh*
Here is another sneak peek at the novel that I am fighting to finish. I hope you enjoy.
Set up: Maria and Polina have been sent from Kiev, Ukraine to Northern Germany to work in a slave labor camp assembling armaments for the Nazi’s. The conditions are poor, just a step above those in the concentration camps.
A deep, rattling cough has settled in Polina’s chest and I see her movements slowing down steadily. She is sick and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. Nothing but offer her half a piece of stale bread and a hand to hold on to in the dark.
It’s been a little over a year since the war began – since everything changed. I have nothing left of my former life but the memories that haunt my dreams – the echoes of laughter and sorrow that mix together in a swirl of black and yellow each night. I worry about Sergei and wonder where he is and what he’s doing. Is he alive? Is he well?
I have convinced myself that Anna is safe and refuse to consider the possibility that she might not be. I’ve heard from the other girls that when they examined our hands at the train station, they were looking for strong hands that could perform hard labor. If the hands looked too soft and the girls too dainty, they were sent to another part of Germany to work as housekeepers or nannies.
I pray this is where Anna is, because then I know she must be safe. In a house full of children with only the chores of cooking and cleaning, Anna will be in her element and it gives me hope for her survival.
I cannot think of Mama and Papa without my chest burning with sorrow. How frightened they must be with all of us gone and no hope for knowing where we are. It is the thought of them that gives me the most heartache.
It’s dark tonight and we are finally heading home. We work sixteen to eighteen hours a day and the labor truly is wretched. We stand the whole time, sometimes lifting heavy containers. My fingers are raw and rough from the long days of moving metal and turning and screwing on the caps that will seal the fate of one of my countrymen.
Polina wheezes steadily next to me, her chest giving off a deep rattle. She is so sick.
“You shouldn’t work tomorrow,” I say, my voice thick with fatigue.
“If I don’t work, they will kill me,” she responds.
“I thought that’s what you wanted,” I answer quietly and immediately regret my words. Polina labors forward a moment in silence.
“Yes,” she says finally. “It is what I want, but…” She grows quiet and I wait as a coughing fit racks her body. Stopping to lean forward, I hear her coughing up fluids and spitting bitterly in the grass at our feet. I cannot see her in the dark, but I can guess that she is spitting out blood and my heart goes cold.
Taking a breath and straightening up, Polina pulls hard on my arm. “Help me back,” she whispers. I hear the sound of the German boots coming up swiftly behind us.
“Walk quickly!” he snaps, jabbing me in the side. Polina and I stumble to catch up to the moving line.
“I don’t want to die at their hands,” Polina whispers, her voice tight and constricted. “I don’t want them to have the satisfaction of hearing me moan as they burn my body alive. I want to die on my own.”
It’s true, what she says. I know that it is. I haven’t seen the ovens where they burn the bodies, but I’ve heard of them. They are real and sometimes girls are still alive when they’re lit. Tears prick my eyes, hot and bitter as we step across the threshold of the camp, our home in hell.
“I just need to lay down,” Polina says and I nod. Most of the girls make their way to the bath house where they will wash off the grime of today’s work, but I turn with Polina and we slowly walk back to the barrack. I pull Polina through the door and set her down gently before heading to the lamp and striking a match to light the wick inside. The single, burning lamp gives a light orange glow which dimly flicks at each barren wall with a sorrowful shadow. I pick Polina up under the arms and drag her to the small pallet on the floor that is left for the sickest girls who are unable to climb into the bunks along the wall.
She is so light, her body nothing but skin stretched taught over bones.
©Kelli Stuart; October 2012
The Nester has issued a 31 Day Challenge in which we write for 31 days on a single topic. Over 1,000 people have joined in and the internet is ripe with learning and encouragement right now. I have chosen 31 Days of Believing I Can. Scroll down for more of what I’m learning as I embrace confidence. Today, I believe I can finish this book…by the time I die. Let’s just go with that.
Are you participating in 31 Days?
Sneak Peek #3
As promised, today I give you another sneak peek into the book that consumes my thoughts. Of all the characters in the book, this one is the most difficult to write emotionally. I don’t like tapping into his head. It’s ugly there.
This is a young man named Frederick Herrmann. He is a German. He is a Nazi soldier and his deepest desire is simply to be seen as a man by his father, who also happens to be one of Hitler’s confidants. Frederick’s story is sad. It is an inside look at the making of a monster and I have to force my imagination to go to places that are unnatural and dark. It is this character that I fear writing the most.
And so I give you a small snippet of my Antagonist – Frederick Herrmann.
As a boy, I often listened to my father speak with his fellow soldiers about the growing need to create a pure Aryan race. My earliest memories reside in the dusty garden of our home, my mother moving in and out of the house at the bidding of the powerful men. I moved the dirt in circles not because I enjoyed it, but because it gave the appearance of youthful ignorance. My play made me invisible to the men of stature and allowed me to listen and glean.
As I dragged my fingers through Munich’s hallowed Earth, I learned the ways of manhood. I listened closely as my father and the others spoke, their eyes steely blue. Thin lips organizing the mobilization of the masses. As a boy of only four, I knew of the shameful death at Feldherrenhalle that left true German Nationalists martyred at the hands of a misguided Bavarian government. I learned of a man who was to be greater than all others. I heard of his bravery, of the Putsch he ignited against the Beer Hall.
The night after I listened to my father retell the story, my mother forced me to wash the mud, my cloak of invisibility, off of my hands an feet. After the forced cleansing, I stood before the mirror in my small bedroom imagining what this man they called Hitler must look like. Grabbing the stick I’d brought in from the garden, I marched back and forth, steps of power masked in the body of a child. I was the great, brave Hitler…until my mother came in and ordered me into my bed.
“You must never pretend to be that man again,” my mother hissed, tucking the covers around me so tightly that my chest constricted with each breath. “This game your father is playing is dangerous,” she said, her breath hot on my cheek. “Don’t become like him.”
The last words were a vapor. They wafted from her lips to my ears and locked inside my memory.
That was the night I began to hate my mother.
Two days later, I would see him for the first time. When Hitler entered the room I stopped short. We were inside the house, which left me without the protection of the dusty Earth. The floorboards creaked and the hollow walls reverberated my heartbeat like a warrior’s drum.
After greeting my father formally, Hitler turned and locked eyes with me. I could not hide and so I stood still, awed by his presence. He was not a tall man. My father, in his great stature, dwarfed the mighty Hitler. But the confidence that the future Fuhrer possessed made him a giant to me.
“Hello, boy,” he said. His voice was stiff. It wasn’t warm or friendly. I made him uncomfortable. I knew it and so did my father.
“Leave us, Fredrick,” my father barked and I immediately obeyed. I learned quickly to never disobey my fathers’ command. As I hurried from the room, I heard him speak again. “Train him right, Tomas,” Hitler said evenly. “Train him right and someday he will be a part of history.”
He was right.
It never occurred to me that I might do anything else with my life. I am the son of a German Commander. My father stood in the presence of the Great Furher. Would I be anything but a soldier? Could I be anything else?
©Kelli Stuart, 2012
Like a marathon, only better
About once a month I like to convince myself that I could run a marathon. I read all manner of inspiring stories and for a brief moment of insanity I believe that I too could join the ranks of those who run 26.2 miles.
Then I go out for a run and a quarter mile into the jaunt my body starts hurling four letters words at my ambition.
This usually leads to phase two of my insanity, wherein I lower my expectations and convince myself that I could run a half marathon.
Then I go for a run and a quarter mile into the jaunt my body starts hurling four letter words at my ambition.
At this point I decide to accept my limitations as a runner, which usually lasts me a couple of weeks until I read the inspiring story of someone who’s muscles use to curse at her and she overcame and became an avid marathoner who wakes up every morning and without even thinking she accidentally runs eighteen miles and I think, “Huh. I could do that.”
And thus, the cycle begins again.
So listen, I’m not a runner. Clearly. Somewhere deep down I think I know that, but there’s always the hope of a miracle.
I also hope to meet a unicorn someday…
But there are other goals that loom before me and call to me every single day. Like the ever elusive marathon, though, these goals often feel so…hard.
Writing a book is my own marathon. It is the song that calls me from my bed early in the morning and taunts me in the late hours of the night. This weekend the Blissdom conference brought a bit of a revelation to me as I sat in Jeff Goins‘ session on falling back in love with the craft of writing.
See the thing is, I will probably never run a marathon because I don’t love running. I just don’t. I don’t even like running. I think it’s stupid.
And it hurts.
And it’s stupid.
But writing…I love it. I love writing. I love the sound of the keys tapping a rhythm. I love the hum of the pen moving in fluid loops across a blank page. The sound of a typewriter is so romantic it makes my eyes water. I simply and deeply love writing.
I’ve told you I’m writing a book. I even let you see a little sneak peek. Twice. This book that I’m writing is my race. It is the marathon that I simply must run. It’s the story I must tell. But it’s so very, very hard.
For the last few months, as I’ve tried to work on my book only to be met by a wall of resistance, fear and doubt, I’ve wondered why on Earth I chose such a difficult subject to write about. Like a marathoner in her 19th mile, I’ve begun to wonder…can I really do this?
But the revelation that hit me this weekend was this: I didn’t choose this book. It chose me.
It chose me when I was fifteen and I stood on top of the hill at Babi Yar listening to the story of survival that changed my life and forever altered how I view the world as a whole. In that very moment, more than half my lifetime ago, I knew that I would write this book. I didn’t understand the scope of what it would become or the enormity of the task that loomed before me.
I just knew it was mine to write.
And it scares me. It scares the crap out of me. It’s like running a marathon straight up the slope of a mountain knowing that failure isn’t an option because by God, I trained for this.
Jeff challenged us all to write something dangerous this week and to publish it. So here it is: I am going to finish this book by June 1st.
I have 94 days.
And along the way, I may give you all a few more sneak peeks here and there. Because you guys, you’re a part of this journey with me. You are the cheerleaders on the sideline telling me I can do this and throwing me a beer now and again.
Just kidding. I don’t like beer. Wine would be great though.
Come back tomorrow for the next sneak peek at the novel that chose me. I am going to introduce you to the character that depletes me emotionally each time I sit down to write. I loathe him. And I feel sympathy for him. I’d love for you all to meet him. Tomorrow.
For now, though, I’m going to head out for a run.
Just kidding. I’m going to go pet my unicorn…
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