I’m not getting very many correct answers to my question: What blogging milestone is coming up for the Matilija Press Publishing Blog? Here’s a hint. I’ve already reached the 1,000 blog mark.
Remember the prizes are:
- Free manuscript evaluation by Patricia Fry
- A $5 Amazon gift certificate.
- A copy of “Publish Your Book” (print or Kindle)
- A copy of “Promote Your Book” (print or Kindle
- Both “Catnapped” and “Cat-Eye Witness” for your Kindle. (Klepto Cat Mysteries)
- A print copy of “Catnapped” (A Klepto Cat Mystery)
(All books offered are by Patricia Fry. To learn more about me, go to http://www.patriciafry.com or http://www.matilijapress.com)
The first 6 people who guess correctly receive the above listed prizes and they can choose their prize in the order their email or comment with the correct answer is received. So email me directly or leave a comment here with your answer. PLFry620@yahoo.com
I finished another book yesterday. I have my pre-publication readers checking it over and will send it to my proofer as soon as she returns my email. This is the fourth in my Klepto Cat Mystery series and I only started writing these in June of 2012. I guess you’d consider me driven, focused, maybe obsessed… I am motivated.
Motivation for Authors
Hopeful authors come up to me often at writers’ conferences and other activities and events that attract them and ask how they can make themselves sit down and write. They want to write their memoirs or a novel that’s been rattling around in their heads for years. But they can’t find the time or the inspiration to actually do it.
I suggest that their level of motivation isn’t strong enough to spur them on—they don’t have a passion for this project. In fact, most of these people are probably following their passion, which is taking them in a totally different direction. If they truly had a passion for writing a book, they’d probably be doing it—unless something else is getting in their way. What could that be?
Are you a hopeful author? Do you want to write or finish a book and you just can’t find that “round tuit?” Perhaps you can identify yourself among the following:
- You are afraid of something—failure maybe? Or success… Success can change a life to an even greater degree, sometimes, than failure can and most of us are not willing to rock the boat of our life.
- You don’t think you deserve the pleasure you would derive from finally sitting down and writing.
- You genuinely don’t have the time to spend at this period in your life. Look more carefully. Perhaps you simply don’t want to make the sacrifices necessary to create the time to write—get up an hour early every day and write or write after the children go to bed, give up clubbing on Friday and Saturday nights, stop watching those TV shows you’ve become addicted to, etc.
Forty years ago, I made the sacrifices and the commitment to become a full-time writer. Millions of other people have managed their sometimes complex lives so that they can write the book of their dreams. And if you are motivated by the right things, you can do it, too. If you’re not motivated, you don’t share our passion for this work, then maybe it is time you stop talking about writing a book. Perhaps it’s something you will never do in this lifetime. And if that is discouraging and disappointing, then maybe that fact will spur you on to find your genuine motivation.
As a first step, I suggest reading “Publish Your Book, Proven Strategies and Resources for the Enterprising Author.” Available at Amazon.com in print, Kindle and audio and at most other online and downtown bookstores, as well.
Not only will this book help you to get off dead center and start the process of writing that book that’s in your head or your heart, it will clearly show you the way to avoid the hundreds of costly and devastating mistakes new authors tend to make along their writing/publishing journey.
I’m Patricia Fry and I’m on your side.