Word Posse

A couple of days ago, I spotted an article on the web about the 10 habits of creative people. I can’t tell you what the other nine were, because I got stopped at #1: creative people wait around for their muse to show up.

I believed that 30+ years ago. I thought I’d write a book one inspiration at a time. I’d wait until I felt like writing, write a few hundred or even a thousand words, and then wait again. Time in between writing jags: weeks to months. Needless to say, that book never got written. I bet if I looked around my backup files long enough, I might find a few thousand words do still exist. They will remain safely trunked, however. Unlooked for, and unmourned.

As any Word Posse member can tell you, some days you do feel inspired, almost as if you are a mere conduit for words coming straight from some mystical source, as if something semi-divine is trusting you with their very own words. Other times, writing is just what you do. And sometimes, it a chore, more like wrestling a greased pig than gently guiding heaven-sent words onto the page. The weird thing is, no matter how little or much “inspiration” you had when you wrote the words, you won’t be able to tell later which ones were painful to write, which were just blah, and which were rapturous. They all read the same.

You don’t become a writer (or designer, or painter, or concert pianist…) by waiting around. You become something because you worked at it every day. Perhaps you take your birthday off, or you don’t work when you’re sick, but almost every day, you did something. You wrote. You sculpted. You sketched out some hemlines. You worked on the harmonies to go with the melody you jotted down last week. Whatever it is, you worked on it. And you went on the next day and worked some more. And the next day. And the next…

Sooner or later, you had a sculpture, or a play, or a dress pattern, or a poem, or a song. It might be terrible. It might be good. It might be fantastic. But it won’t be there unless you put the work in.

Are you working on something right now? Did you work on it today? If not, perhaps you should put down the internet slowly, back away, and get back to what’s really calling you.

Sometimes, you have the title even before you write the book. Sometimes, what’s even harder than writing the book is coming up with the title. Each project is different, and I usually don’t have an issue coming up with a title (the publisher often changes them, anyway—ask any Word Posse member!)

For some reason, the horror/dark fantasy anthology Word Posse will be putting out for me (Marella Sands) this autumn remains sans title. During ConQuest, I even put the current working cover on our dealer’s table and asked for suggestions. I’m now doing so online. You can email me a possible title, and if I pick yours, you will get a free copy of the anthology when it comes out. Make sure you email the complete name and address of where you want the copy to go.

The anthology will have between 10-13 stories in it. They will include:

• A young woman whose mother has died discovers her mother was on a quest for immortality, and just may have found it.
• A ghost hunter with a successful TV show finally gets the evidence he wanted, but not in a way he ever expected.
• A poet lives on the beach for a few months on a quest for inspiration for his next project. But the sea, and what lives in it, has other ideas.
• An angel mysteriously shows up in a London garden with a horrific message from God to humankind.
• A peeping tom can’t quite figure out what her neighbors are doing, until it’s too late.
• And others!

Here are two working covers with titles. Perhaps they may give you a bit of inspiration.

Note: As you can see from our 2015 releases list, this book eventually got the title Restless Bones. 

So this graphic was going around Facebook recently (at least, that’s where I saw it), and I was immediately struck by how true it is. Not just for writing, but for any project, really. The work that goes into a project isn’t evident once the project is finished, whether that’s a novel, a statue, an album, a huge marketing campaign, or whatever else.

But the fundamental misunderstanding that is being highlighted here is one that beginning writers get tripped up by a lot. I’m sure I am not the only author who has been approached by someone who says some version of the following:

“I have a great idea for a book, and someday, when I have some time, I’m going to write it down!”

Instantly, I’m confident that this is one book which will never get written. Why? Because this person clearly thinks that coming up with the idea for a book is the hard part, and with that out of the way, they can just “write down” the novel at some time in the future when they have a few minutes. And that’s skipping the assumption on the speaker’s part that writers somehow have oodles of free time which they use to laze about and write novels, because clearly, they don’t have anything else to do like the speaker does.

This is cousin to the other utterance authors hear a lot:

“I have a great idea for a book! You write it, and then we split the money.”

Again, we have a fundamental misunderstanding on where the work is going to be on a novel-length project. If you’ve barely reached what is described in this graphic as the “dreaming” stage, you have done perhaps 0.000000001% of the work. And that’s forgetting the assumption that, once you write a book, someone just hands you money for it!

Sometimes I wonder if people involved in other creative endeavors ever meet someone who says, “I have a fantastic idea for a symphony, and someday, I’m going to write it down!” or “I have an idea for a statue—you carve it and we’ll split the commission!” Somehow, I don’t think so, though I don’t know for sure. But it seems writing is dismissed as something everyone does, and therefore, it requires no training or special skill or development. When, of course, writing well is incredibly difficult. If you do it right, then, like the graphic depicts, your finished work will only represent the tip of the iceberg. Few people will know how much work actually went into the project from start to finish, and, chances are, no one is standing around just waiting to pay you for it.

So if writing a novel is something you really want to do, you should. But be realistic. Having an idea is nice, but now you’ve got the other 99.9999999999% of the work left to do.

Deborah Millitello had her signing for The Water Girl today in Alton, IL. She was joined by shop owner and fellow author John J. Dunphy, as well as one of his friendly shop cats. Hope you stopped by to get a book, pet the cat, and eat a cookie!

Fortune’s Daughter is available on Amazon and here’s one lady who’s delighted: Rachel Sullivan, cover model.

Today’s the day for our first launch of 2015! Follow the links on the right to purchase Deborah Millitello’s newest book, The Water Girl, available in print and Kindle editions.

And remember, you can sign up for our monthly newsletter, The Scoop, at the top of the left column of this page. This month’s Scoop features an article by Debbie on locoum, also known as Turkish Delight, a sweet treat that features prominently in her novel.

The Water Girl is suitable for adults, teens, and even younger readers who like a good adventure yarn and charming characters. Buy your copy today!