Thread: 10 Tips on Becoming Published

darkangel76 said Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!!!!!!! for this. Very helpful indeed. Do you have any tips on the writing front as well? Meaning, what sorts of things do you do to help keep yourself motivated to write, how do you deal with deadlines and does that affect how you write or the quality in which you typically write? What sorts of things inspire you? Do you find it hard to finish up a story especially if other ideas pop into your head andor if you hit a spot in the story that might be harder or, yes, somewhat boring to write? How do you cope with that? XD Yes.... I have lots of questions. . Click to expand... LOL, I'll see if I can answer all your questions. If I miss one, remind me and I'll be sure to answer that one too. What keeps me motivated to write? I suppose, right now, it's being able to pull up my book on my publishers website. Knowing I've achieved it helps me want to do more. Before I was published? The knowledge that if I don't write all these book ideas in my head down, no one will. I guess I approached it like an assigned duty from the realm of dreams and fantasies. How do I deal with deadlines and does that affect how I write or the quality in which I typically write? Fortunately, most of my deadlines have been self imposed. If I take on an anthology, I only write for ones which I feel comfortable. The one time I've actually had a deadline was for my edits, and my publisher gave me a week to rewrite the ending of my book and change a couple of words. Plenty of time. As for quality, I try to assure each piece is the best I can honestly do. I know I'm judged by even my shorter pieces. When someone reads my story in an anthology, I need to make sure they like it enough that they are interested in reading a whole book by me. What sorts of things inspire me? Its cliche, but the best answer I can give is 'everything'. A line from a song, a dream, my urge to be different. Yeah, I spend a lot of time thinking What has no one else done or, at least, done to death? Do I find it hard to finish up a story especially if other ideas pop into my head I have so many stories in my little black book of ideas that it's almost sickening to look at. I try to set a two story limit. One novel, one short. Take, for instance, right now I'm currently working on a novel titled Wings of Obsidian . I've written four chapters in four days. Time to change things out before I get burnt out. So this morning I started on a short story 10k words max called Maybe, Baby . Anything else that pops into my head gets wrote down in the black book with a titlelight description of plot and has to take a number. Andor if I hit a spot in the story that might be harder or, yes, somewhat boring to write? How do I cope with that? So far I haven't had to deal with boring sections. If I'm bored, the reader is probably bored too. I'm sad to admit that writing sex scenes is the hardest for me. I need to be certain I'm not writing the same old 'insert tab A into slot B' stuff that has been read so many times its skim-over material to you all. So I do ahem research...until I find a position, setting, etc that works with my book and characters and, hopefully, turns my readers on. Did I cover everything?