At the beginning of the year, I began writing a book. Except, instead of writing said book the normal way, I jumped into this project with three blank sketchbooks and began illustrating and hand-writing it.
Every day for months, I wrote four pages a day. I wrote until I had those three sketchbooks filled to the brim.
And then I stopped.
My initial thought had been I would scan all of those pages and add color spots to them as I had done for some of the pages in The Creative Retreat. The problem was, have you ever scanned hundreds of non-related pages? And the thought of color-correcting each and every one of them . . . Oh. My. Goodness.
Turns out, there’s something to be said about things like outlining. Or market research. Or typing a book out.
What I now had was a lot of pages of rambling information. (I literally changed the subject back and forth nearly every day. Ah me.) It was such a mess, I couldn’t find my way out of it.
My husband suggested outlining.
Ugh, I hate outlining.
But after months of sitting on this book, I decided to pull it out and try again. In the meantime, another book idea had popped into my head, and I began sketching out ideas for that one.
Does anyone else do this? Simultaneous projects? I do this with reading too. Anywho . . .
I’m sharing all of this because I recently took the plunge and enrolled in an online school for self-publishing. And one of the exercises they have you do is to tell everyone you know what your goals are for the class.
As succinctly as possible, my goal is to finish one of these books by December 2017.
I have my writing plan down, and I’m mind-mapping these books like crazy. The shorter book is looking like it will be finished by the end of this month. Whoohoo! (P.S. I finished the book! And it was an Amazon bestseller too—yay! You can check it out here.)
My question for YOU is, would you like to join me? Is there a book inside of you that needs to be written? Have you always wanted to be an author? What would it be like to see your name on Amazon or to begin making a passive income from YOUR book?
Gulp.
I can tell you, it’s pretty amazing!
I’ve self-published a paperback and several eBooks so far with minimal training. It can be done. The internet is a vast treasure trove of resources.
But like the first draft of the book I started earlier this year, it also takes A LOT of TIME to research and troubleshoot your way through the self-publishing world.
But this time, I chatted with my husband and said, “Let’s try something new.” We did a lot of research on this particular course, read reviews from others who had taken it, and learned a bunch from the free webinar they offer.
My kiddo is back in school which will give me more time to dedicate to writing. I decided to take the plunge, and do the thing.
This is when I insert a sob story about how much I’ve learned so far and I haven’t even finished the course.
I called my husband and started sharing . . .
- How I’m refining the ideas I have using a method that I wished I used for The Creative Retreat. (I will for new editions!)
- The method I’m using to writing 1,000+ words a day within an hour.
- How I haven’t had a writer’s block moment so far (which used to be regular occurrence.)
- And how this community is so amazingly smart and supportive.
I could go on and on.
I particularly like how this course is very action-oriented and how it doesn’t spend huge amounts of time sharing a single point. I’ve passed on other courses similar to this one because I don’t have time for hour-long videos on how to outline a book. #momlife
Anyway, I’ll stop rambling because I need to be writing my book. If you’d like to join me, feel free to comment below. The more, the merrier!
And even if you’re not ready to commit to Self-Publishing School, you’d really benefit from the free webinar. I have three typed pages of notes I took from it. It’s definitely worth your time.
You can sign up by clicking the image below:
Hope you all have a wonderful {and creative} day!
