Learning As I Go – Aren’t We All?

So I’m going to throw a question out to you all, okay? Do you think it’s a good idea to combine your Author Website with your Freelance Writer Website? I am curious about your thoughts on this, but I am also (as I hit PUBLISH on this post) doing it anyway.

This site has been my Freelance Writer business website. I provide blogs for businesses. It has been very helpful to refer potential clients to when I apply for writer job ads. It has been great not to re-write a bio and find writing samples every time I answer a job ad.

But the other side of my writing life is as a book author. I am working on my first book. I could create a new website based on the title of my new book, but I have recently learned that it is better to base it on yourself as a writer, not on a single book. In this way you are building a stronger platform that can reach farther and into more varied areas.

I think I will simply add another page to this site that is dedicated to my book and then figure it out from there. See, you’ve helped already…just thinking out loud here.

What kind of book am I writing, you ask? It is a short nonfiction inspirational and I feel like it will make a huge difference in the lives of those who read it. (See, right there? Saying stuff like that is so so very hard for me! I really want to delete that line…but will step away and leave it alone.)

I will save the book description for another day. I get excited when I talk about it because the subject has become my life message and I want to explain it clearly and with a fresh mind.

For this post I will say that my word count on my book is only 33,000 so far and most nonfictions need at least 50,000. That is a very small little book at that count. So I am on a journey to see if I can do this and I invite you along. I hope you will join me if you think it will be informative and interesting. I am also completely open to advice and ideas along the way!

Thanks for reading,
Susie

Writers Are Open Books

I enjoyed a long phone chat with a good friend today that gave me much to think about. A portion of our 90 minute conversation was regarding my writing pursuit of the last 2 years. I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, for my own private pleasure. In my thirties I loved seeing my thoughts on the church page of our local small town newspaper twice a month.

Now, in my fifties I am chasing the dream of being a professional writer for more than just satisfaction, but for money. The recent income of our home has been helped by the articles and devotionals I have had published online. But it is not enough, either financially or emotionally. I have more to give and what I offer is worth payment.

This morning my friend asked if my view of the book I am currently working on is different from the first book idea I had two years ago, and gave up on. Do I feel differently this time around? What feels different about it?

I answered in the affirmative, that yes, this felt different. I can “see” it this time, I can imagine what I want to hear about it from others, I can picture who it will help and how it can make a difference in lives. There is a tighter focus and outline this time. I even have ideas about a cover and I have consistently worked on it for a few months now.

So then, my astute friend asks,

“Do you think that you needed to go through the last two years in order to write the book that you now see in your heart?”

“That is a really great question!” I told her.

I have been beating myself up over wasting the last two years NOT writing the book I had in mind. I felt like a failure and have been too embarrassed to even tell anyone about this second book attempt. So many hours here alone in my house NOT writing! There are writers with busy, jam-packed lives who dream of having all the time I have. But these empty days are not by choice and they are not bringing in the finances that we so desperately need. These hours are not delightfully full of creativity and production.

The last two years have been full of research, exploring and gleaning great advice from writer groups, forums and some amazing new writer friends. I have been schooling myself in the process of publishing, writer proposals, blogging and much more. The last two years have been a journey with God that has altered my view of life and those around me. There are dark mood days and “I can conquer the world” days and I am a different woman than I was two years ago.

My gentle phone-friend asked a beautiful question that transformed my view of myself. There is no wasted time for a writer. Yes, of course we can procrastinate better than anyone and we know it. But every minute can be reinvested into our writing. Every moment is material and inspiration and useful.

Thank you Dear Stephanie for asking the question, to which you already knew the answer. Thank you for loving me enough to make this call across the many miles and states that separate us. I know that God was there in our laughter and words, as we updated our life’s news to one another. So this little blog-post on an obscure writing website that no one reads is quietly declaring that I am trying again to write a book. (It feels like everyone around me is pushing them out like crazy and they make it look so darned easy!)

Thank you friend for allowing me to spill my heart and hopes out all over you and then having you hand them back to me all prettied up and turned into a gift.

Susie

The Written Word is a Living Thing

Last night as we sat in comfy chairs and munched on good cheese, crackers and wine, one of the many topics my girlfriends and I mulled over included the power that a beautiful painting can carry into an environment. The one who supervises a maternity ward is also an artist and she is exploring the subtle ways that she can “lift” the atmosphere of a labor room by including strategically placed significant paintings.

Bits of our conversation are coming back to me this morning…”Feelings and prayers expressed while I painted the picture have infused it so that when others see it, they are affected in some way that makes the painting alive.” …”Music also triggers a response in the hearers. It can bring back memories and with the memories come the emotional experience we had in the past associated with the song.”

I watched the faces of these women I love and applied the ponderings to my writing, to anyone’s writing. I had already been exploring the idea that the written word can be a living thing, so this conversation blended into my private mullings in a way that made me smile there in the cozy room surrounded by good friends.

The written word is infused (good word huh?) with the thoughts, mood and experience of the one doing the writing. When I sit here with a heart overflowing with gratitude to God for His love for me, that truth gets sent out, almost imparted to you, the reader. Not just empty letters that are lined up in a precise order to tell you a fact. The newspaper can do that.

Even the words of a stay-at-home writer who dresses like this can be alive.

My words, your words, written on paper or screen have a certain weight that transcends their tiny size. When you pick up a rich book and take it in, you will not be the same person you were when you picked up the book or read the online article. We are affected by the written word more powerfully than we know.

Words put down are thoughts captured. Like a photo of a moment, the life and experience behind the words have been caught forever and can distribute the experience to others for years to come. In this way written words are alive. They are breathing and metamorphosing into a transfer of feelings, attitudes, moods and beliefs.

My mom’s Bible with a marker I cross-stitched for her while in my teens.

The Bible is a couple of leather covers with paper and ink in between. But most would agree that it is alive, that it changes the reader and that when we read it at different times in our lives we see and hear what it is saying differently. That happens because the ink on paper mixes with what is already in us, with who we are at that moment and it reads in a whole new way. Alive and moving and carrying weight and power.

But the Bible is not the only collection of words that are living. Your words and my words hold power and beauty, and can transform those who take them in. We can impart what we have learned, lived and walked through with these little tap taps on the keyboard. Writings from generations past are still awakening new thoughts and sensations in us as we read them. How can this be? It is because the words are living things. Will ours do the same for future generations? Can our words today make a difference in the current day-to-day lives of people?

I believe they can and do and will.

Even though we are all being constantly barraged with more of the written word than any other time, through the Internet and it’s unending stream of news, persuasion, how-to’s and entertainment, I believe that there are a few words in that barrage that will hit spirit to spirit and affect a life, lift a head and give someone new hope.

You and I can author those words, paint that painting or compose that music that will bring life and significant change into an atmosphere or a lone heart. Beauty is not wasted effort, it is worth the cost. Tap out those letters that create words that have life. Put paint to canvas and music into the air. They are alive, living and transformative.