I'm pleased to present Cynthia Sax. Cynthia was one of the first author friends that I made starting out. Being an author is sometimes a lonely business, but when you surround yourself with good friends (and sometimes good wine) it makes the lonely go away and sometimes invites the crazy in, ahem.
Below is an open letter that I think can benefit any author, new or old...
I’m thrilled A.M. Griffin and the Cabal of Hotness invited
me to visit them during the release week for He Watches Me! I’m on that new
book high! Weee!
And I LOVE this exercise. I’ve learned quite a lot over the
past four years. I wasn’t clever enough to learn from other people’s mistakes.
I made most of the mistakes myself.
You’re not quitting. Accept this now. You’ll struggle through
stacks of rejections, to-the-bone rewrites, bad sales, edits gone wrong,
horrible reviews, reader vents, and you’ll think about quitting. You’ll
threaten to quit. But you won’t. You can’t. This isn’t a job. This is part of
who you are. So stop the moaning and groaning. Put on your big girl panties and
redirect your energy into becoming the best dang writer you can be!
If you can’t sell the story with one short line, you won’t
be able to sell the story to readers. You might be able to sell the story to
publishers but truly, the readers are the people you should want to please.
They’re the people you’re having your stories published for. Go ahead and write
the story if you feel you absolutely have to write it but don’t submit this
story to a publisher until you can sell it with one line.
You have a long list of story ideas. When you’re choosing
the next story to write, look at this list and write the story readers are most
looking for now. If vampires are hot, write your vampire stories. If
billionaire heroes are hot, write those zillion billionaire stories you want to
write. Don’t write anything you don’t feel passionate about writing. This will
show in your writing (no secret baby stories for you!). But, as your farming
granddad would say, you might as well “Make hay while the sun shines.”
Start blogging now. You know you love blogging. You’re
already blogging on business sites. Don’t listen to the people who say blogging
is dead. It isn’t. And if you start blogging now, in four years, you’ll have a sizable
readership AND a wonderful record of your publishing journey.
This is a marathon, not a sprint so enjoy every small
victory, every book release, every great review, every piece of happy reader
mail. The joy never goes away.
Older And Not Much Wiser Cynthia Sax
What would you tell your younger writing self?
***
Blurb:
She desires to be seen. He wants to watch.
Anna Sampson has a naughty secret. Every night, she slips
into her neighbor’s yard and swims naked in his pool. She fantasizes that the
dynamic young billionaire watches her nightly nude aquatics, his brilliant
green eyes gleaming with lust.
She discovers this isn’t pure fantasy. Gabriel Blaine has
been watching her via his security cameras, and now that he has returned to
L.A., he doesn’t plan to stop. That’s all he wants—to watch. Anna knows she
shouldn’t allow him and she certainly shouldn’t want more, but she craves
Blaine’s attention, needing his gaze fixed on her body.
Blog: http://tasteofcyn.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cynthia.sax
Twitter: @CynthiaSax
Thank you for inviting me into the Cabal of HOTness (grins)! I love being here!
ReplyDeleteOh and I just checked this morning and He Watches Me is still selling for the ridiculously low price of 99 cents. Yeah, that's bonkers pricing but I kind of like it (I'm freaky that way).