Inspiration

I've been spending a lot of time looking for new inspiration over the last few weeks for my Tiny Tales of Terror. My goal was to put up a story a day until Halloween (which I haven't quite done). I chose this as a stretch goal for myself because I knew it would be more of a challenge to find new subject matter everyday. But I was excited at the same time because I knew that at the end I'd have a ton of new material to chose from and expand into longer stories.

Inspiration hasn't been as difficult as I thought. I've purposely been watching scary movies (even the bad ones), freaky TV shows, reading mystery/thriller books, looking for unsettling images on the web just to spark my imagination. I've also been able to weave in some real details from my own life which has been fun. Often the stories are coming from just one phrase or image that I explore further in the story.

I've been getting some questions from friends wanting to know more of the back story, but the purpose of these stories are meant to be just scary snippets. I haven't been able to spend enough time with the characters to really know more than some initial impressions that I can share.

I think it is very cool how images can just strike a chord. Something like this:

I've been meaning to write a story about this lighthouse for years. I just haven't found the right story yet, but I know it is going to be scary and it probably will take place in the early part of the 19th century. But most of my stories come to me easily, and I love exploring where the journey takes me.

What inspires you in your writing?

Writing: The Business

I've spent several pleasant hours this afternoon reading all about indie publishing. I am a huge fan of April Hamilton's. I followed her on Twitter prior to seeing her in person at the Writer's Digest Conference, and her Publetariat site is a MUST for anyone thinking of going at publishing on your own.

Now I have two completed manuscripts- one is still in its rough first draft form, and the second is the one that I have been working on revising since early August. I am "close" to being at the point where I need to make a rather critical decision. Do I start down the path of traditional publishing, or do I look at indie publishing options?

One thing that never occurred to me, that I just read about tonight, was the idea of starting my own indie publishing house. Intriguing... I am a big DIY person, and all of this information really resonated with me. I like the idea of controlling my own destiny. I like the idea of being able to connect with readers sooner rather than later. I like the idea of setting up a structure that would not only allow me to publish my own work, but publish other deserving work as well.

Lots of options to consider. Lots of things to think about. And in the meantime, my writing continues with my Tiny Tales of Terror. This is truly a great time to be a writer!

Walk Before You Run

I've learned a few valuable lessons over the last week: time is not my friend, and I have to set reasonable expectations for myself.

I have a working manuscript that I like, however it isn't truly the genre that I always envisioned I'd write. I somehow ended up with a paranormal romance when I want to write horror. (This is the part where I mention for the tenth time that I have always wanted to be Stephen King.) Chris Baty talks about this in his book No Plot? No Problem! that is the basis for National Novel Writing Month. He recommends making lists of what you do and don't like in stories, because you may find yourself writing what you don't like if you aren't careful.

Now it's not that I don't like paranormal romance. I don't think writing romance is a strength of mine. I decided that I needed to go back and rework my manuscript and darken it up ALOT. I could keep the romance, but as a subplot. I needed to focus on the main character, and rewrite it so that it kept me up at night. If the writing isn't scaring me, then it won't work.

Deborah Riley-Magnus (@rileymagnus on Twitter) wrote a great blog post on deconstructing a novel right at the same time, which I took as an omen that I was on the right path.

Horror being my genre focus, I also saw an opportunity to leverage some inspiration with my favorite holiday right around the corner: Halloween. Wouldn't it be cool to launch to a podcast series based on another story that I'm working on in honor of Halloween? So I did some more research on podcasting and with my husband's studio set-up I thought "well this can't be THAT hard". I put together an insane writing schedule for the remainder of September and October with an end goal of 10 podcasts and 1 reworked manuscript by the end of October.

Are you laughing at me yet? Let's just say that I was a bit overly ambitious.

It didn't take me long to find out that one 25-minute podcast for me is running about 5000 words. 5000 words!! So 10 podcasts would be about 50,000 words. That's a NaNoWriMo novel, not including some serious editing. Hmmm- maybe I needed to think about that some more.

I should also mention that I do have a day job. You wouldn't think so with the schedule I put together.

After one week, I wasn't close my goal and I was okay with that. I did have some great accomplishments:

1) My podcast concept came from a 750 word story that I put together for the Your Story Writer's Digest contest. In 2 days I turned that 750 words into over 12,000 words. I've created an episode framework and writing prompts for each of the podcast episodes. I do need to finish the story before I can record it, so the earliest that would probably happen would be November- December.

2) I wrote a completely different opening scene to my manuscript. It turns the old one on its ear. I honestly don't know how much of the old manuscript I could use if I go that direction, and that would mean I'm really starting from scratch. (A new NanoWriMo novel from an old one perhaps?) I need to think about that some more.

3) To get my Halloween fix, I decided to go smaller, but still have fun and offer up something to my readers. So I am introducing my Tiny Tales of Terror blog series on my new author blog.

All in all, I've had a great week, learned a lot, and even gave myself permission to put my Halloween decorations up.