by Sarah Gribble |
Today I want to talk about fear. Fear of writing, fear of sharing your work, fear of publishing—and how you can overcome it.
Writers face fear on a day-to-day basis.
The self-doubt. The fear of failure. And, oh, the vulnerability.
Writing is hard enough with all the self-evaluation and doubt about your abilities. But then sharing your work with other people so they can critique or review it? CRINGE.
When you sink into that fear it debilitates you. If you let fear hold you back, you’re ensuring you never achieve your goals. You’ll never write that book and you’ll never get published. All because you were too scared.
by Sarah Gribble |
I’m going to be honest. When I first started writing, I thought keeping track of my writing progress was ridiculous. How many words I wrote in a day or how frequently I wrote depended on my mood and whether that elusive muse showed up. Besides, wasting time tracking and analyzing how much I’d written during a week seemed like just another way to procrastinate and not get any writing done at all.
I don’t say this often, so listen up:
I was wrong.
Writers need to track their writing progress, period. It’s that simple. Read on for why and how to get tracking today.
by Sarah Gribble |
Whew. Yesterday, I launched my novel, Surviving Death. The launch went well, and it couldn’t have done so without my book launch team. They were awesome helping me spread the word about my book!
How do you build a book launch team? I’m going to share some strategies that I did with this launch and offer some ideas for other things you could do.
by Sarah Gribble |
If you’ve looked into the process of publishing a book, you might have heard the term “beta readers.” But what are beta readers? Do you really need them? And when do they come into the writing process?
A couple hints: yes, if you’re going to publish a book, you need beta readers. And no, they’re not a replacement for hiring a professional editor.
Even if beta readers aren’t technically a part of the editing process, since they’re not editors, they are essential to impacting positive revisions.
Beta readers can—and will—do wonders for your book. If you know where to find good ones, and how they can positively contribute to your stories.
This is how I found knockout beta readers. Ones that made a big difference in making my story it’s best draft.
by Sarah Gribble |
As a writer, when you move from whipping up short stories to tackling the beast that is a novel, the cracks in standard word processors start to show. I needed book writing software, and I wanted something powerful but simple to use. I tried a number of programs, but Dabble has been my favorite. Check out my Dabble review and see if it might work for you too.