Sunday, August 3, 2008

Writing



A fellow Barry friend came up with a wonderful idea yesterday to start a group on the Manilow Network for writers.

I have been working on a manuscript, and I finished my last chapter last night. I was doing a happy dance UNTIL I did my word count. Well, I am NOT finished, and need to squeeze out about another forty…yes forty (4-0) pages.

My friends who have been reading the story are enjoying it, and are definitely my cheerleaders.

“Are you going to do a sequel?”
“How many more chapters will it be?”
“Have you contacted a publisher yet?”


They are reading it and on the easy end. Those words are not always easy to come by.

There are so many options out there now: Publish? Self-publish? What genre? Which publishing house?

I decided with this manuscript to submit to a publisher before trying the self-publishing route. Book promotion is time consuming and can get expensive. On the upside, you have total control, but you are responsible for everything - cover design ($), editing ($$), printing ($), and advertising ($). For my first work, I would like to really see how it is done, then I will know what to do. It is really a personal choice of each author.

This has been such a dream of mine for so long. I have loved writing for as long as I can remember, but not until recently have I ever allowed anyone to read my words, except me. I have notebooks of stories, some terrible, and others not too bad.

Writing allows me to escape the craziness of the real world. There, I can control everything and everyone; I love happy endings which is probably why I enjoy writing romances. Each publisher has different guidelines but one consistent is there must be a happy ending. The real world does not always have those, but in my world, it is a given.