This is a brief account of the approach I took when I decided to write and self-publish a novel. What I’ll mention first is perhaps the most important part of finishing and self-publishing a novel. It is something I’d not given much attention. It is the need to manage all those things that constitute your personal life, outside of writing related matters. As of the beginning of 2017 I became a stay at home husband, retired early. I became the master of my own schedule. Now, almost a year later I am aware of how much time I’ve spent dawdling. When you are working full time and also have family, friends, and a home tossed into the equation – your schedule runs itself. Go, go, go. When you get out of that sort of cycle, there is a void present. Expectations and deadlines are no longer imposed by the exterior environment. Time management is your own job. You now have time to take care of all those personal tasks and pleasures that you couldn’t get to when life was busy. It is a daily temptation to do all sorts of things, other than your writing. I needed to learn how take my new boss (myself) seriously. I still haven’t managed to whip myself into shape in that regard. But the new year is on hand. Letting go of the old and bringing in the new. So there is hope. (more…)
Category: Writing Advice
Sometimes a person can find themselves in a dilemma. The magnitude of the dilemma could be very small or of Herculean proportions. But regardless of its size they remain bamboozled as to how to go about addressing it, how to find the right answers, how to resolve it.
People will lose sleep, tell others that they’ve tried everything, or that they are at their wit’s end and just don’t know what to do. All the advice they are given never seems right – seems like square solutions to problems made of round holes.
Then one day the sun comes out. The idea of going for a walk and to abandon all their problems for an hour or so seems very attractive. So they go. And for the first time in weeks, they see that the trees have lost all their leaves. That the neighbour’s cat is out hunting mice, and that the nearby mountain is still so majestic.
Then taking a turn down a ramshackle back lane, they find an old concrete wall with these words spray painted on it, ‘Sell the house and forget her’.