Welcome back for another one y'all, I hope everyone is well. Today I wanted to talk a bit about my experience writing my book, the good, the bad and the ugly. I will start by giving a big thank you to those who supported me over the long two years that it took to complete it. Without the great support system it would never have gotten finished. Also a big shout out has to be given to all the haters as it just made me work even harder.
I will admit that in the beginning just the thought of doing this scared the hell out of me. I have never been a great writer, in fact my punctuation skills leave something to be desired. But despite all of that I went ahead and got started. In the beginning I did have a dilemma on what to write about, as I had so many ideas. But in the end I stuck to what I know which was crime fiction/mystery. I was finally able to put my degree in Criminal Justice to work for something haha.
Having the knowledge from my degree really helped me to keep everything as period correct as possible, which saved lots of time on google. I really did not write an outline for the book, I mean I did keep a list of the important things such as character names, jobs, locations and small things like that since I knew I would have to refer back to it eventually. But as for plot outlines and such I really just went with what felt right in the moment or made the most sense at the time.
Another thing that helped me really get the story going was I based some of the main character after my own life. For example I gave him my first name Matt and I based his past off of mine as well we have the same college degree, went to a big University and grew up in a small farming community. By doing all of this I was able to make creating the rest of the story much easier. Tapping into the things that I knew best in life and just changing some small details in places to avoid issues down the road.
If I would have buckled down and put more time in I probably could have finished the book sooner but life got busy and it just kept getting put on the back burner for a week or two at a time. There were days where I would get 100-200 words down but that wasn't much. It ended up going from a novel to a novella since I ended with a little over 22,000 words and I really did not want to stretch the story with a bunch of meaningless fluff. However I am sure after the first edit and a few beta reads I will have a little more to add to the story, but we shall see.
As of the time of writing this I am currently saving some money so I can get the first edit done. I have 4 or 5 people who are willing to read it and give me some honest feedback once that is done. I am still debating if I want to try and get it published. It has been a big debate for me if I'm honest. At this point I am just focused on getting both edits and revisions done. Then later down the road if I want to get it published I will.
One thing that I want to tell people if you are debating on writing a story or book go for it. Don't let fear or what other people say deter you! The worst thing you can do is get inside your head like I did. Go with your gut, write about what you know and are passionate about that will make the process a bit easier. Looking back although stressful I did have a lot of fun writing it and putting some of my creativity to use on a more consistent basis. With all that being said I want to thank each and every one of you for taking the time to visit the blog today and I hope y'all have a great day!
