What To Do When You’ve Written the Worst Book Ever

There you are, sitting down to start writing your novel. It’s exciting, but you’re scared too. You want to know what you’re capable of, what ideas you can portray and what ideas you can tell, so you lock that apprehension away and start typing.

As you’re going along, you begin to think to yourself, “hey, this isn’t so bad! In fact, I think I’m a halfway decent writer!”

And so you keep writing. Every once in a while you hit a snag in the story, find places you’re not quite sure what should happen next and you sometimes skip around from one part to the next. But no matter what, you keep focused on the thought of how good it feels to be writing and you struggle through. You push on to the next paragraph, the next page, the next chapter.

Until finally you’re done! You sit back from the keyboard after hours and weeks and months and years and years of sweat and tears have been poured into this story. Now, you set the story aside for a while, because that’s what the experts say to do. You go out and celebrate as you get some distance from your story.

Then it comes time for the first read-through.

“Oh, this won’t be so bad,” you tell yourself, remembering the story you were trying to write.

But then you actually read it with fresh eyes. And you feel like crying. Maybe you actually do. Because your story didn’t quite come out as you wanted.

Congratulations.

You’ve just written the worst.

book.

ever.

The Semicolon Project

Today I took part in The Semicolon Project.  

On April 16, 2013 anyone who self-harms, is suicidal, depressed, has anxiety, is unhappy, going through a broken heart, has lost a loved one, etc. was instructed to draw a semicolon on their wrist to raise awareness.
The event is sponsored by the Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention - Save A Life Facebook group. I'm a vocal supporter of this group because I have known too many who have taken their own life. Too many tears have I cried for those lost, yet others have cried more than I and their loss is so much greater than mine.

Knowing and seeing first-hand the resulting pain brought to friends, family and loved ones has stopped me from causing myself harm on more than one occasion. It is through God's grace that I have always been lifted up at the right times, kept from sinking too far into the void of darkness that is fear, self-pity and doubt.

I beg of anyone who has ever considered taking the easy way out to seek help. You will be a stronger person for doing so.

A semicolon was chosen as a symbol for this day because it represents a sentence the author could have ended; but chose not to.

The author is you and the sentence is your life.

Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

The Liebster Blog Award!

The awesome G.A. Albrethsen, author of the Age of Restoration series, has nominated me for the prestigious Liebster Blog Award! I have to say, the Liebster award is one of the first blog awards I ever saw floating around when I started blogging, so this means a great deal to me that I’ve been nominated for the award.

Be sure to check out his blog!

 

In accepting this award I must share 11 random facts about myself, answer 11 questions from my nominator and then nominate others.

 

Here we go!

Author Interview with Patrick O'Scheen

Hey everyone! I’m here today to tell you all about this incredible book I just read called Dreamer – Chronicles of Marithe, Book One by Patrick O’Scheen. It’s the debut novel of a very talented author. I got the chance to read an advanced copy of this book, which will be released on Amazon from Tate Publishing May 7th.

When Patrick asked me if I’d be interested in reading and reviewing this book and helping generate some interest, he described it to me as fantasy fiction – right up my alley. Then while reading Dreamer, I was pleased to discover that it was basically about a dragon.

How, I thought to myself, can you go wrong with dragons?
 

Publisher’s description: We all have a little Dragon inside of us, something that struggles to find solace… Dreamer is the first book in a series that portrays life as a mixture of fantasy and reality. The main character, Magic, flows between the worlds, often preferring one more than the other. Both of his lives are fraught with their own dangers. He must struggle with illness and alternatively with the life of a Great Red Dragon.

A warning: this is an adult book with a higher level of sexual content. More than I like to read, but the rest of the book was great. You can see my review for Dreamer on Goodreads here.

Please help me welcome the author of Dreamer, Patrick O’Scheen!

*hoards of adoring fans screaming as he comes out*

ME: Hey Patrick! Thanks for stopping by my blog! First off, I want to say how I was swept away by Dreamer and the storyline, its characters and the beautiful descriptions you use. For the duration of this interview, I consider myself a student – here for the sole purpose of learning what I can from you about the craft of writing!

To start out, can you tell a little bit about yourself?