Be On The Lookout, Fall 2019,          

For My First Two Novels!

New novel writer, S.B. Middlebrook, PhD, a former university professor of marketing and communications, is a writing coach and an independent publisher and marketing and communications consultant.

Want to Write a First Novel? Are You Scared? Ready to Be Committed?

Yes, the pun in the line above is intended, and no, you don't have to be crazy to want to write a novel. But, being crazy in love with writing is a prerequisite. So, with this thought in mind, welcome to my blog for writers who want to know what it takes to start, and to complete, a first novel.

This blog contains a discussion of my ten hard-learned steps to getting my first novel started and completed, and these steps might help you if you're still dreaming about writing and perhaps self-publishing your first novel.

In this blog, I've also shared parts of my own journey, my biography, that helped to prepare me for my novel-writing journey. I've found that it can help to look at life (and commitment) from another vantage point, and I hope that at least something about my long journey to commitment will help you find your own path to the commitment you'll need to write, and perhaps to self-publish, your first novel.

I am beginning the writing of my sixth novel in the collection I call “Color of Love.” I chose this name for the series/collection because I decided that each romantic story should be color-coded in the book title. Since the issue of "color-ism" still plagues our community, and since there are so many beautiful and rich skin colors and tones associated with the magnificent and resplendent African diaspora, many of my stories take a look at skin color privileges and stigma, as they exist/manifest in the U.S. With these things in mind, I wanted to place emphasis on color by giving each book a "colorful" title. You can look forward to reading books with heroes and heroines with skin tones ranging from the lightest of light brown, to the darkest of dark brown, and all the amazingly lovely colors in between. The richness, the variety, the bountiful bouquet of color variety we represent makes each and every one of us uniquely stunning.

Writing and Publishing My First Novel: The Road Was Long ... With Many a Winding Turn

For around 20 years, I worked as a college professor teaching courses in areas of journalism, mass communications, advertising, and marketing. Then, after working as a professional in my career fields of marketing/ journalism/ advertising/public relations--for a lot of years, about ten years ago, I made the same decision you've made: to become a writer of novels.

In addition to having conducted a national research study as the foundation for writing my doctoral dissertation (which is book-length), in more recent years I've also written about seven of a ten-novel collection. I chose to self-publish the first book in my collection in December of 2011 (Silver: Currents of Change), and I self-published Book Two (Gold, The Heat of Refinement) in 2015, through another company. My plan, however, is to re-release both of my first two books, soon (with new covers), using either Amazon.com's self-publishing platform, or Ingram Spark, another print-on-demand company. I want to own my own work, so I'm choosing not to go the traditional publishing route for now. Maybe one day in the future (but maybe not).

The drawing you see to the left is a sketch of the cover of my third novel, which I have completed and will be publishing later this year. I have been writing articles and books and telling stories my whole life, either in my head or actually putting them down on paper. And, even though I've known my whole life that I wanted to become a writer of fiction novels, it took a while for me to actually commit to doing it.

I grew up in Mississippi, and at age 18, I went to college. I studied journalism as an undergraduate and earned a bachelors degree in mass communications. Although I was committing myself to writing, it was a different kind of writing from what I'd always dreamed of doing. Still, it took full commitment of time and effort to learn what I needed to know to become a journalist. After getting my B. S. degree, I worked for a several years in magazine publishing, as a writer and editor. Then, I went back to school to work on getting a masters degree in English, preparing to focus at least some of my time on writing fiction. But, a lack of commitment to these plans soon came between me and that degree. What happened? After completing about two-thirds of a masters in English, I caught the "copy writing bug" and decided to get my masters degree in advertising, instead of English.

I left Mississippi and started pursuing a new masters degree at the University of Illinois, in Urbana. There, I was among a blessed group of graduate students called James Webb Young Scholars (we were recipients of the competitive James Webb Young Fellowship). James Webb Young (1886-1973) was a "Mad Man" way before advertising professionals became so popular on television. The very first chairman of the Ad Council, Young was voted Advertising Man of the Year in 1946, long before I was even born. He wrote several books, and one of them became part of my reading material when I was studying advertising (A Technique for Producing Ideas, Waking Lion Press, 2009). That little book gave me a whole new way of viewing the creative process, and I'm glad my study of advertising gave that to me. In fact, I enjoyed everything about my years at U of I, and there I not only completed my masters in advertising, I also took courses in literature, once again fueling and feeding my dreams of becoming a writer of novels. (Link to read my short story pictured below)

As it turned out, even though I loved (and still love) advertising, I wasn't all that committed to the idea of becoming an ad agency copywriter. After getting my masters in advertising, I became a college professor of mass communications. Then, after a few years of doing that, I took some time away from teaching and worked for a few years as an ad agency researcher and a copywriter, but soon went back to teaching. However, a connection I made while working for a Dallas ad agency became an important part of my future. Still, for many more years, I worked as a college professor teaching courses in advertising, public relations, and marketing communications, at three different universities (I couldn't even commit to working at one school!). After teaching full-time for more than a decade, I decided to go back to school, again, to complete a doctorate in business (with a specialization in marketing). Whew!

Several years after getting my doctorate, I decided to leave full-time teaching. You see, even though I was good at teaching, and even though my students and I won several national advertising and marketing competitions with very big and impressive prizes and recognition, it turns out I was never fully committed to the idea of being a college professor. So, I started working for corporations and businesses in areas of marketing communications where I held jobs as a marketing and/or communications manager or director. I even worked in international marketing for one company. As a sideline, I also spent many years working in magazine publishing as a writer, editor, and graphic designer. I also started writing for Hub Pages, and I've published several of my short stories and a lot of other types of non-fiction articles there. Hub Pages is owned by Maven, and my profile site is: https://hubpages.com/@drmiddlebrook.

 I'll tell your more about my journey in my next post.

Ten Things That Helped Me Finally Commit to Starting and Completing My First Novel 

How I Found My Way ...

Working as a publishing consultant, it turns out, was an important "turning point" for me. Remember that ad agency connection I told you about in my last post? Well, while I was working as a publishing consultant, through a network of people associated with that work, I got "reconnected" with that same Dallas agency. I was hired to become a screenwriting consultant, to help an already published novelist who wanted one of her unpublished books adapted into a screenplay. So, in 2004, I moved to the Los Angeles area where I worked for six months on that screenplay. I was fortunate to be able to hire to help me another consultant, a man who was a real live, Emmy-winning, Hollywood screenwriter and film editor. (Link to read my short story pictured below)

And, although confidentiality agreements prohibit me from being able to talk about the screenplay, after six months of hard work, I completed it. Those six months involved total focus on and commitment to that project, and once I completed the screenplay, I knew well the meaning of true commitment to a project. Competing that project, in fact, is what made me know I could commit to putting together an interesting and exciting story from beginning to end. I knew that if I could adapt someone’s novel into a 120-page, well-written screenplay, I could darn well commit to starting and to completing my own first novel!

Here are the ten things that helped me finally commit.

1. Stop waiting to find the time to write. Make the time you need to do it. No matter how full your life is (family, job, dog, house, responsibilities out the wazoo, etc.), if you really want to write a novel or a non-fiction book, you will find a way to do it. Do whatever you need to do to manage and/or delete those distractions, and get busy writing your novel!

2. Put your writing goals in writing! You're a writer, or you wouldn't be planning or dreaming about writing books. So, as a writer, use your skills to write down your writing goals. Why? Because committing your thoughts to paper will help to clarify them, and with clarification comes focus. You cannot commit without focus, and you cannot focus without clarity. You can easily start to feel "intimidated" and "overwhelmed" thinking about needing huge chunks of time to be set aside for writing your book. Don't think of it like that. Think of it as a project you can complete by setting and meeting daily goals, weekly goals, and monthly goals. Then, set and keep those goals. (Link to my short story pictured below)

3. Don't just say you're going to do it, do it. If you truly love writing, that means writing is something you enjoy doing. It comes easily to you. If you don't really love it, and if it doesn't come easily, chances are you'll abandon your book project soon after starting it. But if you know you love writing, and you love the idea you've come up with for your book, then once you set your goals all you really have do is to act on those goals. What are you waiting for? It's not enough just to put your goals in writing. You must learn to think of the goals you've written down as your plan, your declaration, your mandate to commit to completing your book. Once you've clarified your goals and your intentions, revisit them daily until you actually begin working to achieve them.

4. Once you've started, insert into your life what it takes to commit, to keep the momentum going. Don't worry so much about the "quality" of your writing, or even the "quantity" of what you're producing, in the beginning. Just begin, and be sure to devote time to your project every day. Some days, you might have only a few minutes to write, and other days you might find an hour or two to do what you love. And that's fine. Just write while keeping your eye (and your mind) on the prize—completing your book. Remember: Every word you write takes you a step closer to another sentence, every sentence gets you a step closer to completing another paragraph, every paragraph inches you closer to having another chapter done, and every chapter brings you closer to the "finish line" of completing your book.

Lets face it. It's very difficult finding a way to devote, regularly, eight, five, three, and sometimes even one hour a day, to writing. I understand. Best-selling authors may be free to spend countless hours a day writing, but most of the rest of us don't enjoy the luxury of having that much time that we can spend writing. That means the rest us must make the most of the time we can make. We have to write all we can when we can, and we must always have a goal of getting to the next paragraph, the next scene, the next page, or the next chapter as quickly as we can.

5. Allow yourself to become excited and energized by any progress, no matter how small. As you continue committing yourself to writing, every day, be proud of the fact that you're making progress toward accomplishing your goal. Acknowledge your progress. Read and re-read what you've written. Make notes about changes you want to make, and if it will get your writing engines going, go ahead and make those changes the next time you make the time you need for writing. Allow your writing project to become a "seamless" part of you; an important part of your life. Don't spend any time lamenting time lost. That's the past, and you live in the present. So, don't beat yourself up for not having started your project sooner. Learn to be thankful for the present day and the opportunity you've carved out in your life for writing. Be thankful that all you have to do now is to make more progress toward achieving your ultimate writing goal. (Link to read my short story pictured below)

6. Give yourself permission to take "baby steps," as needed. Writing a book takes big commitment. And, even though it is a very big project, one that can ultimately take months or even years to complete, you can look at it as a series of smaller projects. You can give yourself permission to take "baby steps" in the writing of your book, and doing that will help turn what can feel like a huge, seemingly unmanageable project, into a series of smaller, much more manageable projects.

7. Tackle your smaller projects one at a time. Don't allow yourself to become overwhelmed by thinking about all it will take to complete your book. After learning to think of your big writing project as a series of smaller projects, tackle each smaller project as a task in and of itself. That way, all the writing, revising, editing and re-writing that is required to get your book ready to publish will be organized into much smaller goals that won't seem so huge and overwhelming. The key is to keep working, and to stay committed to starting and finishing your book. Never forget that your "mindset" is more than important, it's crucial. How you think about what it takes to write a novel makes a world of difference—and that difference is between completing and not completing your book. (Link to read my short story pictured below)

8. Be creative in finding ways to get you to stick to your goals. Do your best to hang in there any way you can! One way is to give yourself deadlines. However, when you set deadlines, you have to try your best to meet them. After all, a deadline is no good if you simply ignore it. I found that, for me, a good way to practice meeting a novel-writing deadline is to join and participate in Nanowrimo, National Novel Writing Month (http://nanowrimo.org). Even though I had worked on my first novel off and on before signing up, I started writing it fanatically in 2009 after signing up for Nanowrimo. In fact, it wasn't until I participated in Nano that I completed the first draft of my first novel. The idea of writing almost nonstop for a whole month (Nano takes place in November, every year) is what worked for me. And now I'm challenging you to do your own research, to find that something that might work best for you.

9. Stop requiring/expecting "perfection" in everything you write. Remember, you are writing a first draft of your book, and you cannot perfect your first draft until you have a first draft. So chill out, and write your first draft. Keep in mind, as you are writing your first draft, that now is not the time to worry so much about grammar, sentence structure, or even dialogue that might be "challenged." That's all okay for now, and now is not the time to start editing your book. Accept that it doesn't have to be good yet, it just has to be. You have to get it written so that you will have something to edit and to revise, later. But for now, it's all about getting it written. Keep telling yourself that you'll make the time you need, later, for all the editing and revising and rewriting that you will want/need to do.

10. Stop worrying about what other people might think of your novel. The best way to keep yourself from achieving any goal in life is to allow "what others might think" to become part of your mindset. That's what I call "stinking thinking." The way I see it, if you feel strongly enough about an idea to want to commit the time and effort it takes to write a novel about it, then you should do it, no matter what. Sure, there might be some who will not like your book once it's published. Even Shakespeare, "The Bard," has critics who don't like his work. Such is life. Personally, I think it's wonderful that people (including you) have a right to their own likes and dislikes.

The truth is, you shouldn't need everyone to like your book. But, just as there will be those who won't like it, there will also be many (perhaps even more) who will love it. The point is, you cannot allow the thoughts of unnamed and unknown "others," or even those of people you know, to keep you from writing your book. Don't place what others might think about your unwritten book above your own thoughts about it. Don't relegate your thoughts to "second place" in your own mind. Take charge of your thoughts, and after doing that, spend your time and energy on writing your book, and finding the right audience for it.

On Quality Writing and Self-Publishing

I am committed and devoted to the idea of helping myself and other writers improve the quality of self-published content. This topic offers me many opportunities to learn more about all the aspects, agony, and awesomeness that self-publishing can be as I write to help myself and others. So. If this article is about quality in self-publishing, why are you seeing a picture of a cute ladybug? Because just as gardeners welcome ladybugs--since these tiny beetles devour the most problematic plant pests, as self-publishers, we have to be gardeners of writing. We must welcome editing and re-writing, and we have to be eager and ready to devour any and all writing "pests" that can take down the quality of our content.

There are many who believe all self-published content is of poor quality. Is it true? Of course not. But self-publishing is frowned upon by many people in academic and non-academic settings. Even though times and ideas about self-publishing are changing (as many self-published authors’ books are becoming best sellers), there are still a lot of people who believe self-published writers are people who simply cannot write well enough or produce content that is of high enough quality to be published any other way. They feel that if it were not for self-publishing, those of us who self-publish would not be published at all. Of course, this not true. Lots of self-published content is of the highest quality, and some traditionally published authors also self-publish some of their content. Yet, all self-published content still suffers from the myth/belief that if it’s self-published, it cannot be of high or even good quality.

Writing this blog is giving me a chance to present topics on anything related to writing and self-publishing, but many of my blog posts will focus on quality content. I will be encouraging new self-publishing novel writers/authors to take “quality” seriously when preparing content intended for self-publishing. This way, you will only learn as you write and as you grow as a self-publishing new novel writer. 

I will be using my blog to become part of the driving forces that can help new self-publishing novelists change at least some “naysayer” beliefs about all self-published content. It might always be true that some self-published content will always be of poor quality, but that does not and should not mean all self-published content will always be of poor quality.

As a self-publishing writer/author, where do you begin in your quest for creating quality content? For me the answer is to always begin at the beginning. That means at the idea stage, since the heart and soul of any form of written communication is the idea upon which it is based. Ideas are what will drive creation and/or development of theme/subject, as well as development of content.

How do you know when you have a good idea? There are probably millions of things I could mention or talk about here and each thing would probably be something that might help you determine whether or not you have a good idea or a good topic to write about. But, even though there might be millions of things to consider when it comes to what constitutes a good idea, for me, there are about six or maybe seven “most important things” I need to consider. Today, I’ll present my first two considerations, and in my next post, I’ll continue the list/discussion about how I know when I have a good idea.

Before deciding whether I want to spend my precious and rare “spare time” fleshing out a particular idea, what I decide to write about must be able to “pass” the following tests:

·       The idea must be about something important to me. Serving as the foundation of my topic/subject must be something important to me that I can see myself spending hours, days, weeks, months, or even years—if that what it takes, doing the research and the writing that is needed to begin and to complete the writing project. It doesn’t matter if I’m writing a fiction or non-fiction book, an article, or something else. The idea must make me want to spend time thinking about it, working with it, fleshing it out, and turning it into something that I believe prospective readers will want to read.

·         Writing on a particular idea must offer an opportunity to learn more about topics I’m interested in while also helping me solve some type of problem that will help/benefit a lot of people. Take this blog post, for instance. I decided that the topic of quality in self-publishing is so important to me—as a new self-publishing writer and author, that I can see myself spending whatever amount of time it takes to do what I can to increase my own knowledge while helping other self-publishing writers and authors—and our readers. I decided that I will provide, through my blog posts, some of my personal experiences, help and advice I've found on other sites, and hints for self-publishing writers and authors who intend to hold their content to high standards when it comes to considerations about quality.

Before choosing an idea, I must feel that the idea is one I am uniquely qualified to write about. It must resonate with me, for many different reasons. Maybe it is an idea that is linked to some experience or adventure from my life, or from the life of someone I know. I must feel “close” to the idea, and it must “speak to me.” It must say to me that I have to write about it, for one or more reasons. For example, I am now beginning the writing of my sixth novel in a collection I call “Color of Love.” I chose this name for the series/collection because I decided that each romantic story should be color-coded in the book title. Since there are so many beautiful and rich skin colors and tones associated with the magnificent and resplendent African diaspora, and since many of my stories take a look at skin color privileges and stigma, as it exists in the U.S., I wanted to place emphasis on color by giving each book a "colorful" title. 

     Other ideas I allow to become the foundation of my books, or grist for my muses, are inspired by physical and personal challenges I have either faced in my life, or that are faced by people I either know or have read about. I've found I do not have to have had personal experience with something in order to write about it, but I do have to feel I can “identify” with the primary aspects of the idea, or else it will not resonate with me. And if an idea does not resonate with me, I feel I am not uniquely qualified to write about it.

     Be sure to see my next post for more on the top of self-publishing quality, developing ideas, and other writing topics that I hope will help you become the best writer and self-publishing author that you can be.

      As always, I’m interested in your ideas about writing, self-publishing, and about how you know if/when you have a good idea. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section under this blog post. Thanks!

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