What if the ideas run out?

As a writer, one of my biggest fears is that one day I'll stop having great ideas, that the well will be dry, and I'll have no more great stories. This is especially scary because I've just now started to get better at putting a good story together. What if there are no more ideas to put into stories?

When I started my first novel, New Year's Revolution, in 2010, I expected it to be a fluke, and at the time I was totally fine with that. I just wanted to get Ella's story written. Eventually, the idea for City of Secrets came to me, and Pieces soon followed. These three stories have been keeping me pretty busy, so I haven't had time to worry about the idea well going dry. During that time, a number of other ideas have floated in and out of my brain, but none of them have given me that warm-fuzzy "this is it" feeling. Now, Pieces is almost finished and I'm not entirely sure what I'll be doing with the other two, which means it might be time to start thinking about a new project.

Guess when is a great time to start thinking about new projects? That's right, Fall is a great time for that, because NaNoWriMo is right around the corner. I had a brand new idea recently, but it's still just a tiny seed. I'm starting to worry that I don't know how to turn those little seeds into great stories. If I were a plotter, this would be fine. I'd know what to do. But I'm not a plotter. "The stuff" has to come to me naturally. Or at least, that's how it's worked in the past. But what if that magic won't happen anymore? What if I have to sit down and force it out?

What if I have to learn to plot?

Yeah. It's horrifying. 

Bright side: I wrote down a few more brainstorms tonight, so I think I might be able to do something with this idea. 

It'll be a romance. Say what?

I'm having a hard time believing it myself. 

If I'm lucky, I may even have enough of an idea formed to be able to write a crappy draft during November. I really like the idea of "beginning a 1st draft in November for NaNoWriMo" tradition. It worked great for 2015, when I wrote the 1st draft of Pieces. In 2016, I just started the 2nd draft of Pieces and started to write a lot, so it doesn't quite count as a second year of NaNo. 

While I'm excited about the idea, I'm wondering if this will always be my fear. Maybe it's a writer thing? If we run out of ideas, what do we have left?

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Way too much . . .

     Well, I've neglected my blog again. As is customary after neglecting my blog comes the post explaining why I neglected it and how I'm going to get back on track again. For some reason, I can't get back into blogging until I write this post. I guess it's like hitting the reset button.

     Wow. So, my last post was early September, which may be a new record for me as far as neglecting my blog goes. I'm sorry, loyal readers!

     Since July, I changed my writing "system", for lack of a better word. I began publishing my serial "City of Secrets" weekly, and while trying to keep up with that, I was also working on "New Year's Revolution." All while trying to keep up on my blog, which I was actually managing for a while. Also, I was spending a lot of time looking for freelance writing jobs which took up about an hour a day, though I'm setting this venture aside for now. All while reading research books for my literary mystery (the novel I wrote for NANO last year) which may be titled Broken Minds. Still not sure on this though. I have about titles four I like.

     Then came my first major writer's conference in early September. That was awesome, and there will be more about that in a later post. The conference took up a lot of time and energy. I'm also dealing with my ongoing injury/worker's comp case, which has been stressful and time consuming. Along with various other things, my stress level has been through the roof. Something had to give. Which meant the blog got pushed to the back burner.

     Things have calmed down a little, so I'm trying to balance my many writing ventures again, though with a few changes. Unfortunately, choosing to publish my serial weekly might have been biting off more than I can chew, but for the time being I'd like to see if I can make it work, while still working on my other novels. I really don't want to switch to a bi-weekly schedule, because the story is so long that it will never finish if I do it that way, but we'll see. I'm hoping that maybe now that I actually know how much work is involved, I'll be able to balance it better. Fingers crossed.

     Anyway, I'm back! You can look forward to more posts soon. Promise!

     If you haven't checked out my YA Paranormal Mystery "City of Secrets" yet, you totally should. It's free to read, and my friends tell me it's really good. ;-) Here's a convenient link for you. :-)

http://bit.ly/2a7FNDD

Clicking, Commenting, and Creating Celebrities

"City of Secrets" has been up on JukePop serials for about six weeks now. It's going pretty good so far. Unfortunately, it hasn't gone viral. The entire world is not talking about it. I haven't been hit up by agents and movie people and television guys or whatever. It's not the greatest thing since sliced bread. (Is that really the greatest thing, by the way? Why aren't cars, or airplanes, or modern medicine the greatest thing? Are we really so lazy about slicing bread that we have an entire saying about how great sliced bread is?) Not that I was really expecting any of these things to happen. But everyone dreams big. You have to, right?

My friends and family have been great. First, my wonderful writer's group who devoured and critiqued the monster first draft are happily devouring the web version (which will also be a monster) and giving me plus votes. Thanks guys. I've got some Facebook friends reading it, and my boyfriend (who for some reason doesn't read fiction) is reading it. Thanks, honey. I've even got aunts and uncles who hardly understand the Internet checking it out. Thanks. 

The greatest problem has been advertising it. It's been really hard to get traffic to my story. I've been on Twitter for over a year and have 2000+ followers, so this shouldn't be that big of a problem, yet it is. There are various sites designed to specifically advertise web fiction for free, which I've been using, but I don't think I've gotten a lot of readers from them. Most of my readers came from real life word-of-mouth and from interacting with other authors on JukePop. 

I've been bothered by the realization that few people on Twitter and Facebook click on external links. I think I already knew this to some extent since I've been sharing my blog, but I really figured it out once I started advertising my story. I get lots of retweets, which are great and I appreciate them, but they aren't enough. I think only a couple of people actually click on the links to blogs and stories.

I've been trying to figure out why this is. I haven't done extensive research or anything, so I'm just going to toss out a few of the thoughts I've come up with. 

I've only been using Twitter for a little over a year, and Facebook as an author platform for a few months, so I don't know if they used to work better for advertising, but I have a feeling that they might have. I'm thinking that maybe when Twitter first got going it was a great way to advertise, but then so many people started doing it, that people just got sick of it. I get that. I'm a little sick of certain kinds of advertising too. 

An obvious reason is that some people are very aggressive in their efforts, and are very insincere about it. I ignore those people too. Advertising is all they do. You follow them, and they tell you to like their FB page without even saying hi. No. That's not cool. You have to interact with people. You have to assist them in their advertising efforts as much as your own. I talk to a lot of people, and I'm not aggressive or excessive in my efforts. Yet I get only retweets. (Again, not complaining. Retweets are great, but they only go so far.)

Okay, so is it because when people are on Twitter they want to stay on Twitter? When on FB they want to stay on FB? Maybe they don't want to click on a link to be redirected to a blog or a story. Part of me says yes, another part of me says no. People hop on social media to read articles all the time, so this doesn't completely add up. Are they only reading professional articles, and not personal blogs/stories? Or are they clicking on blogs and just not commenting? My blog tracks how many views I get, so there might be some truth to that. 

The lack of comments is another thing that bothers me. I get views on my blog, but very few comments. Sometimes I'll get comments on the FB or Twitter link, but not the blog page. It would help me a lot more if they were on the blog post itself. If people see comments, the more likely they are to comment. That's just how we work. I'm guessing part of the reason people don't comment is that you have to put in your email, and not everyone wants to do that. It's the reason why I don't always comment on other people's blogs. But then I thought, does it really matter at this point? I've got a FB, Twitter, Instagram, tumblr, a bunch of emails, and random other accounts. Really, does one more matter? 

So, I don't know how to help myself. (Actually, I do have an idea, but I'm super, crazy busy right now, so I won't be putting this idea into action for about a month.) So, while I don't know how to get people to click my links, comment on my stuff, and like my Facebook page, I do know how to do this for other people, so that's what I've started to do. If I can't help myself, I might as well help other aspiring authors. Readers, you should start liking author FB pages, clicking a web serial or blog link from time to time, and even leaving a comment. Let's help each other out. 

And, speaking of, (yeah, of course this post was going to end with a link to my story), you should check out my web serial, "City of Secrets." It's free to read, and new chapters come out weekly (for the most part) on Tuesdays.

bit.ly/2a7FNDD

It's starting to get like the DMV up here...only much more awesome

Way, way more awesome.

Where is up here, you ask? Well, that would be the inside of my brain, of course. Beckyland. The place where ideas and daydreams are born. It's the place where my characters live while they are awaiting for me to finish their stories. . . . hmm . . . does that mean it's like purgatory? And if it is, what does that say about what happens to the characters when their story is finished? On no! They're not dead after that, are they?

No . . . wait . . . it's the opposite of purgatory. It's the before. It's like the womb. So, when their story is finished, they've been born, and they are out in the world.

Phew. That was scary.

Okay, none of that was actually the point of this post. The point is that my brain is getting to be like the DMV (only much cleaner, prettier--lots of purple--,more things to do while waiting, etc.). A while ago I wrote a post about how I was afraid that my first novel was just a fluke and I'd never have another story idea, but then suddenly the ideas started coming. Last night at 2:00 AM (almost on the nose; it's the magic time), another novel idea came to me. Thankfully, it's a standalone. The idea I had a few months ago was for a trilogy (or maybe a longer series, that has yet to be determined). And this new idea is for a romance novel, which is really weird because I don't do romance as the main genre, but I'm going to write it, because it's a good idea.

Where does the DMV thing come in? Well, while I'm no longer opposed to working on multiple projects, I am not going to start any new projects until at least one of the three I am currently working on is finished. And by that I mean, I am going to try very hard not to start a new project until at least one of the three I'm currently working on is finished. So that means these new ideas have to take a number. Right now, since I'm new to this publishing thing and don't have a lot of money, I just have one of those cheap little machines where the ideas pull a paper number out and a new slip moves forward. In the future, I'd like to upgrade to a fancy computer system where the ideas will see a touch screen and they can type in what kind of idea they are: what genre, memoir, stand-alone, series, novella, short story, etc. That way, they may get a different place in line depending on what kind of attention they need. But that may not need to happen until the ideas start getting backed up into the two-digits.

I don't know how some writers churn out twenty or thirty books. I suppose you get faster over time, but I'm still waiting for that to happen. At least I know the idea train is functioning.

Psst . . . Have you checked out Chapter 1 of my serial, City of Secrets, yet? You totally should:

https://www.jukepop.com/home/read/9558?chapter=1