Tag: writing

Goals

Day after tomorrow, I’m going to speak to the first of three Rotary Clubs that have invited me to present a talk involving my journey with Hurricane Baby: Stories. If you aren’t familiar with Rotary Clubs, they tend to be members of the business community that have come together to do service projects for their town, county, etc. These particular clubs meet once a week. I’m doing one on May 5, another on May 21, and another on June 11.

I’ve decided to give my talk on the process I used to set and achieve my goals for Hurricane Baby. I’m going to open with a question: I’m not asking for a show of hands–but have any of you ever had a dream/vision/goal for your life that was ridiculous? Something where you wanted to do it but talked yourself out of it–because it was ridiculous, frivolous, or impossible?

Then I’m going to go through my goal-setting process.

SET A VISION! Decide what you want to do. You can have several visions over the course of your life. As you achieve one, find another.

STUDY UP! Learn everything you can about what it will take to achieve your vision.

SET MINI-GOALS! Break down the process into parts–and while doing those parts, only focus on those parts.

SET A PLAN! What are you going to do to meet those goals?

PLAN TO SUCCEED! Know what to do as you go.

PLAN TO FAIL! What will you do if you don’t succeed?

EXECUTE! Carry out the plan you’ve set to accomplish the first mini-goal, then the next, then the next.

FOCUS! on your plan and your goal every day. Always be working!

HAVE GRACE! Handle frustrations. If the plan isn’t working, change the plan to one that does work.

WHEN YOU SUCCEED, CELEBRATE! Celebrate each mini-goal as you complete it and then celebrate when the total dream comes true!

Then I’m going to read the first few pages of Hurricane Baby, then do Q&A if there’s any time left. I’ll have my books there to buy and sign if anybody wants one.

Pray for me doing this. I am not quite a bundle of nerves about it, but I can use all the encouragement I can get. Thanks!

Checklist Time

I am composing a list of revisions that need to be made in my manuscript, now titled Our Little Secret. Action items range from rewriting entire sections to a new point-of-view to perusing the menu of a local seafood restaurant and seeing what dishes the characters would order on their visit there. That list is what I plan to accomplish during the next month.

Committing it to paper is one way I make sure each item gets accomplished. I can check them off as completed. If needed, I can add new action items to the list.

I am a list-maker by nature. Helps me keep organized.

Wish me luck!

What Happens When You Try to Force Things to Happen

Back last year in the wake of getting a contract for Looking for Home (that was sadly cancelled), I decided to go ahead and start on Book #3. I wanted to revise another old manuscript, so I pulled it out and reread it.

While reading, I realized it was such a fundamentally different kind of book than Hurricane Baby and Looking for Home. Southern, yes, but only Southern because it was set in Mississippi. The theme of the book was very different from the other two; it was a very contemporary story as well. No deep, dark, past secrets to explore, etc.

So I wondered if I needed to work to make it more Southern, more gothic, and more spooky. I decided I did. I went to work on the POV, the setting, the chain of events. I introduced a supernatural aspect to the book; I changed the fundamental theme; I changed the struggles of the characters drastically.

And a voice in the back of my mind kept telling me that it wasn’t going to work this way.

But I ignored it. For months.

I probably wrote fifty pages of new material. I started a new document in my computer called RANT just to dump all the angst I was having doing this work–talking about what I wanted to do but talking about how much trouble I was having doing it, too. I thought I was just suffering from writers’ block again.

After not fooling with it for the past three months while I wondered what I was going to do with my creative life and after taking the initiative to cut about two-thirds of the material, I now realize I was just trying to force a new vision on a book out of fear. I had wondered if I built a fanbase on historical fiction if I could pull off a move to something more contemporary. Wondered if what I had tried to do then would work for the market now.

I finally realized I was just trying to make the story something it wasn’t.

Each story is its own creation. I was not the same writer I was back in the late 2000s, but that didn’t mean that every book I wrote had to do what I had done in revising Hurricane Baby, either. I was allowed to write whatever I wanted to write. And if I wanted to still do a story exploring those themes that were issues in the 2000s, that was fine. Did that mean I could do it differently to account for changes in society? Yes. But it did not mean I needed to chase a “brand” at this stage of my writing life.

If the story wants to be something different than what you normally write, let it. That’s how you grow as a writer. Challenging yourself to do something you haven’t done before.

Book #3 (which I’m currently calling Our Little Secret as a working title) is going to be different from the other two. And now that I’ve accepted that, I feel excited to work on it again. Don’t write scared. That’s the takeway.

Happy writing!

Stripping the Work Down to Basics

So I have actually been thinking about Book #3 quite a bit lately. (I know. I know. I said I wouldn’t work on anything until Looking for Home sold. I also reserved the right to change my mind.)

On Friday night while I was out of town, I remembered one of the guiding principles I used when revising Hurricane Baby–cut all the boring parts! For this rough draft, I figured out that meant to cut every part of the book where the two main characters weren’t directly interacting with each other.

Well.

I set to doing that this afternoon after we got back from the conference.

And that process cut the manuscript from 321 pages to 115.

Yikes.

While doing it, I realized that much of what I was cutting was extremely wordy setup for the next interactions between these two main characters. I was using a lot of words/dialogue/description/character thoughts to explain everything that was happening behind the scenes–then summarizing all that action in the next encounter between these two main characters.

So. What’s next?

I’m going to let it sit for a week or so–until April 1. Then I’m going to go back and re-read the stripped-down version, looking for what may need to be done to further develop their relationship. Because their relationship is where the heat is, the smoke. The action.

So we will see what happens.

Decision Time

So since I hate indecision more than anything, I’m making the decision that feels the most right for me right now.

I’m not going to work on another longform fiction manuscript until Looking for Home sells or I exhaust all avenues to get it traditionally published.

I’ve been trying to work on What Lies Ahead in fits and starts ever since the beginning of January after I got word that my deal for Looking for Home was cancelled. And that has been really painful and stressful for me. I’m sure you can imagine the stress–the primary thought that goes through my head at this point is WHY BOTHER?

I know all the very good reasons to bother writing–I enjoy it, it’s fun for me, I can’t know if it will be good or not until I actually write it, etc., etc.

But I also need to take care of myself and my own mental health. And right now, writing a longform fiction manuscript is neither enjoyable nor fun. I need to be in a place where I can regain my perspective on why I write and where I know that I am not hurting myself with my process or my words.

This is the pattern I took once I finished Hurricane Baby: Stories and started shopping it. I did not begin work rewriting Looking for Home until I got the offer from Madville Publishing for that first book. Currently Looking for Home has 12 rejections and is still out to 19 publishers, with plans to send to 10 more presses.

So we will see what happens.

I will continue to post here weekly about different thoughts on writing, my adventures in book events, craft articles, what it’s like being a debut author still, etc. I also have my Substack I also plan to continue posting on once a week about what helped make me a writer in the first place.

So I’m not stopping writing altogether. Just stepping back a bit. Please continue to visit and drop a note in the comments when you feel led with encouragement, questions, or requests for information about my upcoming schedule or my availability for any event. Thanks for understanding!

Keeping Records

I watched a college baseball game this weekend and marveled yet again at how absolutely every action on a baseball field is recorded and quantified for the record books–every ball, strike, error, hit, at-bat, catch–every movement has a statistic associated with it. It’s one of my favorite things about the sport–no action ever goes unnoticed.

(Did you know it’s possible to get no hits in a baseball game against the pitcher and still win? It’s happened once in MLB–on April 23, 1964, Ken Johnson of the Houston Colt .45s became the first pitcher to throw a nine-inning no-hitter and lose. In fact, he is still the only individual to throw an official nine-inning no-hitter and lose. The one run was scored on two fielding errors, a stolen base, one ground-out, and one fly-out.)

What does this have to do with writing?

I like to keep records of my writing life. I keep up with daily word count when I’m actively writing. I make lists of what scenes I want to revise when I need to work on a draft. I make lists of what presses I have sent manuscripts to and when and note when I hear back from them.

That tendency comes in handy for two reasons: 1) keeps me from going back over my tracks so I don’t send to the same publishing company twice, etc. and 2) gives me a sense of accomplishment in a trade that so rarely scratches the itch I have to feel like I am accomplishing ANYTHING.

I am wondering though if this recordkeeping is adding to my anxiety around writing, though. I try not to have word count goals, but I definitely set deadlines in my head to be at a certain point by a certain day on the calendar, etc. And I have definitely let myself get incredibly anxious about missing a self-imposed deadline or letting a few days go by without racking up words.

Anyone else have ideas or opinions around such quantifying of writing or any other creative endeavor? I am just trying to sort it out for myself but would appreciate others’ perspectives as well. Drop any insight into the comment section if you would–I’d appreciate it!

Happy writing!

2025 Numbers

GOOD NEWS!

I got my royalty statement for 2025 from Madville Publishing, and . . .

Hurricane Baby: Stories made some money last year, y’all!

I’m not going to get into exact numbers in this post, but sales were over what they were last year, and while I had returns, the number was lower than I expected. Miscellaneous sums for printing, etc. aside, I earned a chunk of change for the publisher, and my percentage of that was high enough that the publisher can actually cut me a check for it (which was not the case last year).

Do the royalties cover what’s been spent traveling to various events, publicizing said events, etc.? No. So as a total endeavor, I’m still not making any money. But the hole isn’t quite as big at this point.

But I still need to fulfill my pledge to the church to give them my first royalty check, since I didn’t get an advance for this book. I will gladly do that once I get the funds in my bank account.

A good day on the author front all around!

The Land of Ice

So we are just a little too far south in Mississippi for the ice storm as of right now. No telling what’s going to happen in the next twenty-four hours, though.

I was envisioning myself shut up in the house with nothing to do.

Then I remembered the last time I was without power for an extended period–August 2005 after Hurricane Katrina blew through.

An idea for a story hit me a day or so after the impact.

I got out a pen and a spiral-bound notebook. I wrote a story of heartbreak, pain, and decisions with far-reaching consequences, created in longhand on real paper with real ink in moments between caring for my family and watching society crumble into exchanges of gunfire over the last bag of ice at the gas stations.

Those scribbles eventually became the opening story of my 2024 book, Hurricane Baby.

I still have pens, pencils, the ability to write in longhand, and over twenty empty paper journals people have given me over the past twenty years.

I’m going to be fine.

The 100 Men Hall in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi

I went and spoke at this venue this past Saturday–they have a writer-in-residence, Ellen Morris Prewitt, and a writers’ group that meets once a month there for three hours. So I talked about my publishing journey to Hurricane Baby, then we wrote for a while. After we did some reading of our writing, then I talked about setting a vision for writing, setting goals, making plans to meet those goals, and about how those words all mean slightly different processes that give us a roadmap for accomplishing what we want. Then we wrote more about that and wound up the session with sharing what we felt comfortable with about all of that.

I felt very good after the event. I had wondered if I would feel rusty after spending less time doing events after this past August. But I did my regular talks and read from the book for the first time in a while without any trouble. So that was a confidence-booster. And the organizers and writers were so kind and attentive and responsive. I appreciated that.

My next event is back on the Coast–I’m on a panel for Homegrown, the Mississippi Gulf Coast’s literary festival. I will be reading from Hurricane Baby and doing Q&A as far as I know right now. That’s on January 31 at the University of Southern Mississippi-Gulf Park campus. I’m looking forward to the energy of seeing so many folks I know for that event. I’m hanging in there. Hope you are, too. Happy writing!

Got Some Good News

Back in June of this year, I entered a chapbook contest. A chapbook is a very short work of prose or poetry, about 20-40 pages worth. I had put this chapbook together a while back, but when I saw this new contest, I revised my little five-story manuscript, retitled it, and sent it in.

Finally heard back last week–I’m not one of the finalists that was sent to the final judge, but I was in the group they selected the finalists from. That was encouraging!

So I think for the next little while I am going to make revising and submitting this chapbook around my next creative endeavor. I have a list of 12 outlets to send to, spaced out from now until September 2026. I can have something to work on while I try to sort out what I want to do next with my third book–do I want to continue to revise what I have, rewrite the whole thing from scratch, move on to another manuscript, or what. Give my overstimulated brain a little time to relax from creation.

Done with events this year, but I start right back up again in January 2026 with three speaking engagements. That’s good. Soon I’ll be getting cover designs for Looking for Home, and all of that excitement will be in motion. I feel good about this plan to submit while the planning for Looking for Home is going on.

Thanks to all of you for your continued support of my work and my stories!