When Do I Find Time to Write? (Tips on Writing Tuesday #1)

Over the last two weeks the question I have received the most, by far, is:

“When do you find the time to write?”

That’s a great question, and a question that anybody that is serious about writing needs to ask.  But more important than just asking the question, any serious writer needs to find the answer.

It takes time.

It takes patience.

It takes above all else, diligence and commitment.

How bad do you want to have the idea or the story that’s rolling around in your head on paper?  How intense is the feeling inside of you to share part of you with others?  Do you want to really bring your characters, your places, and other worlds to life?

If your desire to see a finished product is not strong enough, you will always be busy.  There will always be something else to do.  The things that you fill your time with will usually be good and worthy and things that need to get done, but it won’t be writing.  A day turns into a week, turns into a month, turns into a decade and the story you have “always wanted to write” is a nice dream that you tucked away.

But if you had set aside, say, 15 minutes a day, a few days a week, to write a hundred, two hundred, or five hundred words…the results are amazing.

The average page of a 6×9 book contains roughly 250 words.  If you are just typing away on your normal Word document without any special formatting the average page will have about 500 words.  That’s a lot of words!   Every book, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, you have ever read has a story with A LOT OF WORDS!

So what is the answer to the question: “When do I find the time to write all those words?”

TODAY!

(and tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after…)

If you wait until tomorrow, then you will wait until next week, and then it will be next year.

Don’t wait.

Writing is methodic.

Writing is practice.

Writing is about being able to forgive yourself and commit to keep moving forward.

Above all else – when you make the time to do it – writing is rewarding.  Not just for you, but for those who want to read what you have to say.  I promise, there are others that want to read what you have to say.  The fact that you are reading this post proves it.

Start writing and keep writing, a little a time.

When are you going to find time to write?

PS – When do I find time to write?  Monday through Friday from 6am-7am and then I can usually fit in a few days from 4pm-5pm, right after work (yes, my REAL job).  This post is exactly 466 words, took thirty minutes to write, and about ten minutes to polish.

The Importance of Remembering (On My Mind #1)

Last night I started writing out my entry for this blog post today.

It was about ice cream.

Then I woke up this morning to finish the post and remembered that it was September 11th.

How soon we forget!

Not that I have to write something about September 11th, or should feel forced to write something.  But the more I thought about it I realized I want to write something because I don’t want to forget.

I’m guessing anybody in their mid-20’s or older has certain feelings associated with this day.  At the very least, you remember where you were when it happened.

I was in college.  That morning I was sitting in class waiting for the professor to arrive.  I remember we were all excited because of the “10 minute late rule” – if the professor was more than 10 minutes late, we could leave.  It was about eight minutes after the hour.  He came in, fairly disheveled, and said that he was cancelling class because “something happened in New York…some planes hit some buildings” and then he walked out of the room.  That’s a way to get student’s attention.

I quickly walked to the main student bookstore, where there was a large selection of TV’s to choose from.  I walked in, turned left and made it about ten feet into the clothes aisle before I saw the first tower smoking.  Me, along with dozens of others, just stood, watching, periodically looking at each other.  Complete strangers with feelings of empathy, concern and confusion.

I continued down to the basement where there was a massive TV screen.  There had to be 300 people huddled around.  I listened to the conversations around me of people who thought they knew people in New York, or, more specifically, in the towers.  After about 10 or 15 minutes, the first tower fell and it is a feeling that anybody that watched it happen live or has seen it sense cannot describe.  The wave of emotion was overwhelming and people started to hug each other and started to cry.

I left the crowd and went back upstairs to one of the two courtesy phones in the building.  I called my wife who was eight months pregnant with our first child.  At the time we didn’t know if it was a boy or a girl.  More than anything I wanted to tell her I loved her.  Looking back it seems silly – I was 2000 miles away nestled in the Rocky Mountains – but at the time it made sense.

As I write this, I want to call my wife and tell her I love her.  It seems silly, but right now it makes sense.

It’s 11 years later and we now have five children.  I want her to put my youngest two children on the phone so I can tell them I love them.  I want to drive to the elementary school that is two miles down the street and tell my other three children that I love them.

Our oldest child is a boy, his name is Michael, and he was born a month after September 11, 2001.

It’s important to remember.

Where were you the morning of September 11th and what were you feeling?

Sentence to Start – Week #1: Submit Away!

Off we go!

I am excited to see what everyone has to share.  Click on the ‘Sentence to Start’ link above to get the details, but basically all this week I am collecting sentences as writing prompts.  You can leave me sentences in the comments below, on Twitter, Facebook, or GoodReads.

Next week you – the readers – will vote on the top 10 sentences, narrowing it down to 5 winners.  The person who submitted the sentence who gets the most votes will win an ecard to Amazon or Barnes & Nobles (winners choice).

The top 5 sentences will be my writing prompts for the following week.  This will be a fun way for you to put my writing to the test.  Who knows where your sentence may lead?!  Below is an example of one I already received:

  • “Toshiro was mad at the earthquake for smashing his life flat.” (entered by Shomeret on GoodReads)

Fun, no?!

So enter away, share with friends, and be sure to check back next week to vote.

Thanks again for your help and I look forward to reading everybody’s sentences!


Disclaimer:

By submitting a sentence(s) you agree that the sentence(s) submitted become the property of Christopher Sorensen to be used and/or altered in any manner whatsoever.  You also acknowledge that you have no copyright claim whatsoever in any work derived from the sentence(s) you submit.

What Have I Been Working On? (Maiden Update #1)

In 2008 I was working on a middle-grade adventure series.  I had been working on it for roughly three years.  It was very much different than my first two books, which are more serious in tone and for an adult audience.

But in the fall of 2008 I hit a road block.  We (I use that term very loosely) were pregnant with our fourth child, I had just received a promotion at work giving me more responsibility, and my writing was more work than it was fun.  When something you do on the side stops becoming fun, it doesn’t take long for it to fall by the wayside.

So from September until the end of November I don’t remember writing much.  Life was busy and I focused on family and work.  If anything, I had relinquished the ‘writing’ weight that was hanging around my neck. Writing was something I would get to…someday.

Then two things happened in December of 2008 that changed everything.  The first was that our daughter, Andrea (or Andi), was born.  The second was that, because of her birth and the feelings associated with it, I had the desire to write again.  But the big difference was that for the first time ever, I had the desire to be a “writer”, not just a guy who wanted to turn stories into books so I could make a lot of money (who wouldn’t want to do that, right?).  And there is a BIG difference between a ‘writer’ and ‘somebody who just wants to publish a book’.

You see, the reason I was working on a middle-grade adventure series for three years is because my two previous books didn’t make any money, nor spurn the fancy of any agents or editors to get a book deal.  So I desperately tried to force a story that I thought was sellable and tried to force myself to write it.  The end result…it didn’t work.

But after Andi was born, I received my ‘aha’ moment.  I finally got the idea to write a story…just to write it.  I didn’t need to worry about what other people thought and I didn’t need to worry about selling it to an agent.  I was going to write a story for my daughters that I want them to enjoy.  Period.  And a whole new world opened up because of it!

So what is this story for my daugthers?

Ultimately, the feelings associated with daughter’s birth (and how I feel about all my daughters) is that they are queens.  They are royalty in every sense of the word. They are born with the essence of greatness in them.  They have the potential to become anything and everything they desire and to have amazing joy in their life.  That’s what I want the story to convey.

I started by looking up great women in history.  As I studied, I kept coming back again and again to Joan of Arc and I was fascinated by her history.  A simple farm girl who changed the tide of war for her people.  But there is so much more, it is awesome (except for the part where they burn her at the stake at the end…that kind of sucks)!

So the idea for my story is very much inspired by Joan of Arc.  It is not a retelling and it is not historical fiction, but it is inspired.  I like to think of it as, “What if a Joan of Arc type character had to save the kingdom, but also had to deal with your typical teenage angst and boy troubles?”

It’s been fun, hard, but utlimately rewarding.  More than anything else, I look forward to sharing it with my daughters.  But I also look forward to sharing it with you.

Right now I foresee the story as a trilogy (one book for each of my daughters).  I am done with the first draft of the first book and will be done with the first edit/revision sometime in the next couple of weeks (that’s a lot of firsts):-)

If there is one thing I have learned…don’t give up.  For you, whatever you have been inspired to do, keep moving forward.

As I mentioned, my inspiration for this book is my daughters.  Is there something in your life you are working on (a story, a piece of artwork, a song, etc.) and if so, what is your inspiration?  I would love to know!  Leave a comment below.

As the weeks and months progress, each Monday I will share more about the story and be looking for your thoughts and insight.  Be sure to back next Monday as I give a small tease and share the first few paragraphs from the book!!!

Win a Free, Paperback Copy of the ‘The Greatest Choice’

UPDATE: Saturday, September 8 (1:24pm)

Congratulations to Melissa J. for winning the giveaway!  Thanks to all those who entered and everyone for the continued support.

——————————————–

Response to the re-release of The Greatest Discovery as an ebook has been so much more than I expected.  I was thinking maybe a couple of dozen might get downloaded, people who had read it before that would want it digital or new friends that might be curious.

In the last week there have been over 100 downloads!

As a very small way to say thank you (a very big thank you), I am giving away an autographed, paperback copy of my second novel, The Greatest Choice.

The Greatest Choice – a prequel to my award winning first novel, The Greatest Discovery – was first published in 2007, but it has been revised, edited and relaunched just last month.  Paperback copies are available on Amazon.com for $7.99.  Ebooks are available for download on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords for $1.99.

Enter the giveaway below using Rafflecopter.  (NOTE: I have used Rafflecopter before on other sites to enter giveaways, but this is my first time using it for a giveaway of my own.  Hopefully there are no snags.  If you have a problem, please email me or comment).  Giveaway starts on Tuesday and goes all the way through Friday night, midnight.  Winner will be announced on Monday.

The only requirements for entering the giveaway are that you have to login to Rafflecopter using your Facebook account or email. It’s not a requirement, but you are more than welcome to “like” my Facebook fan page and subscribe to my blog if you haven’t already (I’m sure your friends would like to know about the giveaway as well).

Thanks again for all the wonderful support and best of luck!

Content, Content, Content

As my journey as a writer grows and I interact with more readers and writers online, I feel I am coming to a very small realization of the importance of ‘content’.  I’ve heard that word a lot, but feel like I am starting to grasp it…even if it’s on a basic level.

What I’m noticing about the sites that I personally frequent:

1) Their content is well written.  You can tell that they care about the subject enough to take it seriously.

2) Their content is consistent and up-to-date.  They provide enough of it that it keeps me coming back to hear what they have to say without feeling overwhelmed or that I’m reading the same stuff over and over again.

3) They have a personality that is likeable.  They don’t have to be funny, or serious, or dramatic, or over-the-top, or crazy…they don’t have to be any of these ALL the time.  They just have to be…likeable.  Whether it comes out through pictures, or their blog setup, or in their writing style, there is likeable interaction that attracts readers to them and makes them want to come back.

Good things for me to keep in mind as I move forward!

Back to Revising

I’ve been so caught up in getting the site together, getting my old books into ebooks, etc. that I didn’t really revise much last week – so it’s back to the grindstone.  I have learned a TON as I have been preparing to launch this site, re-launch the old books, and prepping to build my readership, but nothing can compare to sticking with the writing.

So off we go!