Huh? Did you say something?

Hi kids,
 "You must be willing to do the work, grasshoppa..."
These words (I just made up...) have haunted me for a number of years. When I was younger, things, some world class, came easily and I became spoiled and entitled and when it got difficult I just jumped to another one. I never really realized just what "professional" meant because even though I had the goods and aptitude(sports, acting, design, etc.), I just didn't have the mindset, and, even more sickening: I didn't even realize it. We may cause our own failures and our own bitternesses and never know it. It wasn't until I got older and by some miracle of revelation that I understood and immediately panicked because I knew it was getting late in the game.
Writing is one of the trade-crafts here on earth that require work, hard work, and a learning curve that never really ends, even though you may be paying your bills with book sales. No amount of song and dance or fist pounding tantrums or schmoozing can replace the day to day grind of learning to write, and then writing. For me, mainstream commercial fiction, thriller genre, is where I hope to plant my flag and hopefully the hurricane force winds of fate will once again lift me to that mountain top in my soul and I can rest knowing I really was, finally, "willing to do the work."
I recently released a short story that I have lost all objectivity with, in terms of possibly editing it, which it still needs. I look back at it now a month or two later and I cringe. Someday soon I will rewrite and re-release it. I think essentially it's a good storyline and has a few decent sentences.
The book I'm working on at the moment is a high action thriller starring a guy who's life suddenly changes radically and people are ending up dead all around him and he finds himself on the run living on instinct from moment to moment. I can relate, and hopefully translate my own blood and guts, life and death experiences to this guy without him becoming the face of vengeance.
Sometimes our lives change in ways we do not welcome or want. But, when we travel down a road, let's say The Writers Road, we cannot expect the familiar faces and places and security of home to follow us or be set into the moving landscape hurtling past us continually, or where we might waylay for the night or a season. Time moving forward, or at least in a linear direction, keeps moving whether we like it or not. Moments savored, all too soon disappear like a mist. The one constant we are granted is the fruits of our labor, and it is to that end I now endeavor to persevere and in fact treasure the chance to do so.
Thanks to everyone who reads this and/or follows me in social media, I appreciate it and will try my best to be a friend back to you too.
I highly recommend reading Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, blog and perspectives for authors, especially new ones.    Mark's Blog
Look around at his other posts too. He has some really good ideas and many writers may not realize just how much of a techie he is.
I'm at just over 50 thousand words into my thriller and I'm writing some very high action scenes, that's why I haven't been around as much. Then it will be onto the finding the money to tap into editing process on a high level.
 

 ...you know where to find me...


LUVU

Update: The Horror...

I'm working on uploading my little short story to Smashwords, in, hopefully, the premuim listing. After a few days of "WHAT?!?! type stuff I decided there was too much of a learning and sidebar issue curve to take the time to do it and I opted to enlist someone's help. Thanks God for social media, I found someone who works for, or is, a publisher and she says she'll format and upload it for me for $25.
Works for me.
I have enough tech skills and experience to learn this stuff, it's mostly figuring out Word,  then adjusting the way Word displays and then being able to adjust the "settings" for the appearance of the piece when it's splashed onto the Smashwords page. Otherwise known as formatting. I cannot imagine doing this with an 80K word story. No way.
Here's the thing, and this is something for YOU to think about too. We've all heard the phrase that speaks to, "picking our battles", right? For me it's the same thing and that reality has been graphically brought home to me having spent 3 days trying to master the process of upload and tweaking and photo adjustment and a bunch of other stuff my ego wouldn't let me let go of. If I told you how many hours a day I spend, already, on the computer, or netbook(on my nightstand in my room), or laptop or iPhone(if I'm outside or in the bathroom or at Target) you might not believe it. I don't mind, in fact I love learning, but some things just don't ring my bell. Like formatting and book covers.
Excuses?
Look, I don't give a damn, I'll do what I 'gotta' do to pull this off but again PICK YOUR BATTLES.
 My point is that I'm prioritizing my time, I have to and so do you. I was absent the day someone etched in stone the imperative to learn Word so I use Works and Notepad to tweak and layout my stuff, even when I was blogging to a million or more people. It irks me that Word becomes so invasive to my system and that it costs so much.

I focus on the two peak things I need to do, every day. Write and Network. I put in biz class high speed Wi-Fi in the house. Speed, capacity and access. And, YES I actually keep in touch with the people I follow, bloggers and writers, reviewers and readers and people I just want to follow(THIS is why SPEED is paramount, both download AND UPLOAD). Learning the craft of writing came behind my blogging and radio stuff because I could do those things on the fly. I traveled for almost 3 years nonstop. Almost a year later I'm still feeling the effects of 20 hour days for 3 years, with little time or energy to write during it all.
Writing on a high level is very serious business, I'm sure you know this but I'm just saying - I take it seriously and am working on it all the time and it takes a LOT of time. So, I'm sure you too make choices, every day about all kinds of things on a lot of levels. Self publishing means self promotion and that means WORK. Building a "platform"(I'm still not sure what that means and I don't think anyone else does either even though you see it used all the time) or network, is a major element and will take time to build and maintain.
Anyway I think you get the point.
Evaluate, re-evaluate and focus on the elements you need to, stay flexible, loose and know it's a blessing for anyone in the publishing industry to give you the time of day and a miracle for someone to take an interest in you.
Technology is the horse you rode in on, nothing more.

The HORROR of it all hits me when I look back and realize I should have spent my time more wisely on the things that matter most to me at this point in the struggle. It's about WRITING  and PEOPLE.


YOU KNOW WHERE TO FIND ME....


LUVU

When the Thrill is Gone....

    You're excited about the book rolling around in your brain. (For me it's more like a bag of rocks in a dryer on HIGH) Notes everywhere, an outline maybe fills the pages of a spiral notebook. Compelling images of characters and their plight, or, hero escapades  play and replay in your mind. [You've done your research so some expert doesn't call you an idiot when the book comes out.] Finally, the moment comes when you sit down to begin composing your breakout novel, the book that will make you a household name and put an Escalade in the driveway.
You are inspired and thrilled to be a writer.
You wonder if it will be good enough as you slog through the sentences, paragraphs and pages, but you press on. The family, in the next room, is listening to Wheel of Fortune. They have no idea what the agony of artistic endeavor does to a future bestselling author such as yourself. But, in their ignorance, you love them anyway.
Your drifting. Back to the writing Einstein.....
Are you adding the elements the writing books and blogs and author vids you've read and watched tell you to? Have you practiced enough? Is this book practice? WHAT?
Commas. Dear God, watch the commas, and SHOW Don't Tell!
Make sure you ratchet up the tension like Donald Maass says in his great books on writing fire and creating breakout novels.
Right. Got it.
Modifiers, verbs and adverbs. Ok, I was absent that day.....
AND you don't want the story to appear too amateurish so you read aloud and look for rhythm, or rather LISTEN for rhythm. Gotta have rhythm....Side margins, double spacing, oh yeah.
Do I need cover art with some good looking young guy with killer abs and a haircut like the singer from Def Leopard, on the cover? Sure. Even if it's a story about redoing the driveway? Absolutely.

Bio. ( for the back cover)
 Can I use a photo of myself just after I woke up or do I need one that makes me look like an accountant with a "edge"? How about the one I took awhile back, you know, with a hip three day growth and pissed off look? Works for me....

Moving right along.

Occasionally, as you labor at the really noisy keyboard you peek through the grungy blinds to see if the news crews are stationing themselves in your yard yet, in anticipation of the book of the decade. Nope. Not yet. But they will.....
Hour after hour, day after day you write, and write, and write. You try not to go back and revise the previous chapters, but you do sometimes. Some mornings you dread sitting down at the computer, you just don't feel the "mojo" and no one will notice anyway, right? Yes, right.
Sometimes you wonder if you'll pull this off, if you have what it takes, then you read a runaway bestseller and think to yourself: Yeah, HELL NO..... 
Not knowing what else to do you plow forward through rain and sleet and hail and snow. (cue the soundtrack from the film Exodus please....someone...)
As the words and chapters pile up, you sneak a look by reading what you've written thus far and realize this novel is taking form, shape. A story, a really good one is unfolding from your finger tips.
Suddenly one day you understand. You get it. Yes, it's work, maybe even hard labor. But something now pulls you forward. Something else.
Someone from the living room yells; "Watermelon Festival in Iowa!" in answer to a "phrase" puzzle on WOF. Pat Sajak, in the background, almost sounds as if he's even interested in his own show.
You smile and refocus.
Forged in the furnace of fire you are.
When your daughters psychotic kitten leaps onto the keyboard erasing 3 hours of work in an instant and then you twist your knee trying to catch the little sh....darling...to rationally discuss the matter.
Yes grasshoppa......Forged like iron you will be.

True, the initial thrill is gone....but it has been replaced by a steel will and confidence borne of determination, a new and better kind of thrill. The willingness to do the "work" is something you now are a partaker of.
For love of the game....or craft....or art....is why you do it.  Not the thrill. Not the thrills that you once did it for, anyway. They are now gone. You don't even look in the rear-view anymore. Your lazer gaze is now fixed on the writers road, ahead to the horizon. You grit your teeth and smash the gas pedal.
The awareness that you may be way to theatrical crosses the mental field of vision like a rabbit darting across the interstate, but you dismiss it, allowing yourself a little useless drama and paying no attention to the puffs of fur coming from under the back end of the car as you zoom onward.
Amused, you sculpt the novel of your dreams, word by word and page by page.
The thrill isn't gone....you smile knowingly.....

You know where to find me....

LUVU

I'm writing I'm writing

Usually I take Sunday's off, from writing that is, but yesterday I felt compelled (<--- I get headaches when I use big words....) to finish and tweak a themed short story for an elder care group, so I did, or tried to anyway. We'll see what happens, I hope they and YOU, like it.
While I was online I also did a little networking too.
Today I'm back at it trying to put myself in the poet mood to finish a piece I started last week for a poetry site and do a non-fic piece for one of the new writer sites. 500 words, should be a breeze....yeah right....hopefully I can go back to my second short story, third actually if you count the one I finished yesterday - "Mrs. Murphy Rocks". My first recent effort, a short called "The Magic Whistle" will appear somewhere soon, I'm looking at the best showcase opp's for it.
On Twitter you may find me posting in my usual wise-ass mode or promoting fellow authors, most of whom are a lot further down 'the writers road' than I am, but it's all good since I truly love this biz and the better the writing gets the more fun it becomes and I've made a LOT of good friends both in and out of the writing/publishing community.
Heidi Ayarbe is a great find, she's a YA author with great creds.
Look for me on Goodreads, whether you're a fan of books or an author it's a great place to hang and put your 2 cents in. Readers shouldn't underestimate the value of their input and reviews of books written by authors who are also members of  Goodreads . Alex Berenson, James Patterson and Steven Gore are members.

The fundamentals of writing, for me, have not become second nature yet, though I think about them a lot less these days and focus more on the depth and scope of my own translation, from my mind to the page to your mind. I can't tell how someone will reconstitute the story for themselves but I CAN make sure as much feature is there in tight sentencing. I love writing dialogue, even though, to me, narration and description are just other forms of it and come from a different angle, just not spoken, but "voice" is an element of them all. I love to blabber and oddly, so do my characters. Some of them.
(In real life, whatever that is, I'm more the strong silent type who, secretly, always wanted be Jerry Lewis.)
Blogging has helped me a lot in that department, of voice and the fundamentals that is, and I've written under the pressure of knowing many thousands of people will be reading what I write, so, though they are vastly dis-similar in some ways, yet, in others, they have the same effect on how I go about writing.
I'd better get back to it, before I wear myself out.
I'll see you on Daniel on Twitter or My Facebook Page or Goodreads, and, I'll let you know when something happens with my work and where it will be, in case you want to read it.

LUVU