There's an old saying that you don't know what you don't know.
As I have been progressing through my novel an odd thing happened. I had other book ideas come up! How does that happen, I don't know. Diane Gabaldon said in one of her signings that "an English woman just started showing up." That ended very well for her. Well, my pop up characters do not belong together. Oh that I were Christopher Moore or Terry Pratchett (may he rest in peace, the great man) where my characters could playfully trot from one book to another. No, these invasive characters annoy me and slow me down. Now if I do use them all, I will have 4 books written.
I have found that I am not really a blogger. I did not know that. It seemed like a great idea. I like social media, but particularly Twitter, because I like the brevity. A blog is real commitment and I commend anyone who has a blog with daily updates. I am working a much higher than 40 hour week and I just don't feel like blogging.
The problem is, I also have not been carving out time for writing. I believe that anything that you truly love you will find time for. I also know that writing is a job and must be treated as such. I am newly making a commitment to writing time.
We had an abbreviated trip to Phoenix comic con because we lost both of our precious kitties in the same week as the con. My husband was committed to teach a workshop, so we decided to attend a small amount.
In some ways that was nice, but the one writing workshop that I attended was "How to Market your Novel". Well, THAT was eye opening. I thought the big hurdle was to write a query letter and find an agent. Then to try to get published. Oh no no, apparently after that happens there is a tremendous amount of promotion that falls onto the author. In that same workshop one author helpfully told us how she had submitted over 100 query letters. I think it's better to prepared for that. I'm glad that I know what lies ahead.
