Season of rest

Me speaking at The Cinderella Story: The Power of Shoes women's conference, Overland Park, KS
Me speaking at The Cinderella Story: The Power of Shoes women’s conference, Overland Park, KS

I haven’t been here for awhile. Just life happenings. 

This year I did what I believe God wanted me to accomplish:

  • Just Write! No Excuses Summer Virtual Bootcamp for aspiring authors. A 4 week virtual training in the summertime. Nineteen students signed up. They loved the support, prayers and accountability in the Facebook private group and sharing their writing on the live calls each week. I’m thinking of having this bootcamp quarterly each year since it was such a success. I can’t wait to read their books after they write them! This bootcamp was for beginning non-fiction and fiction writers. I loved reading what they were working on and seeing them connect and get to know each other better, encouraging each other, in the Facebook group. 
  • The Cinderella Story: The Power of Shoes women’s conference. When I flew to Manitoba, Canada to speak at my friend Doreen Penner’s women’s retreat, I shared about the story of Cinderella and her glass slippers – walking in your unique shoes. This is now my signature talk. This year I hosted my own women’s conference in Overland Park, KS doing this speaking presentation. Fifteen women in all, and God’s presence was there. It was so much fun. It’s the first time I’ve had vendors at an event (Origami Owl, Thirty-One Gifts, and an authors’ book table) The DoubleTree Hotel in Overland Park was a beautiful venue and I plan to have more events there in the future. Their staff was wonderful and the lunch they served us was delicious. Ray saw some cute shoe chocolate and vanilla cupcakes online and our daughter Heather ordered them at HyVee -yummy. The women were blessed and encouraged.
  • The Advanced Writing Camp. This 4 week virtual training in October was the follow-up to the Just Write! No Excuses Virtual Bootcamp. My job was to motivate the writers to FINISH their book, conquering the 3 P’s that hinder or stop writers from writing or finishing their book: perfectionism, procrastination, and other pitfalls (distractions, social media, entertainment, busyness, writers’ block, writer’s envy, etc.) I may also offer this training every other quarter in 2015.
  • Wrote and self-published my book Promises In The Dark: One Woman’s Search for Authentic Love. The world promises you so many things, but leaves you empty. Sex. Success. Money. Alcohol. Drugs. Education. Entertainment. Being the best spouse or parent. You’ve tried many different things that the world offers and promises to give you happiness, but they’ve left you unsatisfied. always searching, never finding what you’re looking for. But there is One whose promises you can count on and who will fulfill you: God. His promises are for real and forever. Click here to learn more and buy the book. Get Christmas shopping done early; give the gift of my book to your family and friends. It will bless them!

 I’m now taking Doreen Penner’s 3 week coaching group, Finding the Real You, to reveal and release what God has placed inside you to do and to step into your potential. It’s about discovering your brilliance, what makes you unique and have to offer the world. I’m excited about being part of it.

Doreen Penner
Speaker/Author/Coach Doreen Penner

 

Our first call was last night and I was taking lots of notes. Doreen is an anointed speaker, and she always makes you think with her questions. She is a “heart-interpreter,” able to sense and draw out what is in your heart. She also happens to be my prayer and accountability partner each week – I just love her. It’s not too late to sign up. Last night’s call was recorded, so you’ll get it in an email. Just click here

Yesterday I sent in a chapter for a new book writing project, in which I’m a contributing author. I’m waiting to hear back from the editor. I can’t wait to tell you more about it!

Other than that, I’m now in a season of rest. Just being still and listening to God, and allowing Him to refill and refresh me and to tell me the next step. 

Woman writing in field with mountains
Woman writing in field with mountains

What are you working on now in your writing? Leave your comments below.

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Promises In The Dark book getting closer to release

Promises In The Dark photo
Promises In The Dark photo

I’ve been working on a new book since last year, Promises In The Dark. The book is about God’s promises versus the world’s promises. Had major writing resistance to this one, because I’m sharing much of my painful past. But it’s getting closer to the time of “the baby’s birth.”

I bought my cover photo at Istock. The photo is pictured at left. I buy almost all my pics for my books, ebooks, and blog posts at Istock. They also offer a free photo, video, and audio each week for you to download. Don’t you just love freebies? 🙂 You can also get pictures for your book at Shutterstock.com, FreeDigitalPhotos.net, and more places online.

My wonderful Graphic Designer!

I’ve been praying to work with a certain graphic designer to design my front cover, back cover, spine, and ebook cover, Christine E. Dupre. I’d seen her covers for other authors and she was highly recommended to me. She’s amazing. She does BEAUTIFUL work!

Recently I hired her and I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE my cover! I knew she was the right person to do it. You can find Christine on Facebook. She’s also creating an ecover for me so I can have the book in ebook format to upload on Amazon.  

Christine is expanding my vocabulary by asking me things like, “What is your spin width?” What the heck is a spin width?! It’s how wide the spine will be. You can calculate your spin width by clicking here

I’m using Create Space Self Publishing Company as my POD (Print on Demand) company to physically print the book, so that I can “hold my beautiful baby” and when I have speaking engagements, I can sell them on a back table.

I also have to buy an ISBN and barcode at isbn.org for my book.  You can buy a single ISBN, 10 ISBN’s, or more. The more you buy, the greater the discount. You can also buy a barcode with your ISBN’s. Bowker has several packages available, depending on what you want. 

Why do you need an ISBN?

From their website: “Bowker is the official source for ISBNs in the United States. An ISBN uniquely identifies your book, and facilitates the sale of your book to bookstores (physical and digital) and libraries. Using ISBNs allows you to better manage your book’s metadata, and ensure maximum discoverability of your book. Your book is listed in Bowker Books in Print®, which is used by all the major search engines and most bookstores and libraries.”

If you want to be a serious writer and professional author, sell your book in bookstores and ebook on Amazon, and have your book found by others, I highly recommend buying an ISBN and barcode.

The ISBN for your book will be different for your ebook. It’s best to buy the package of 10 if you plan to write more than one book (and I do plan to write more!). 

My next goals

My next goal/step (hopefully THIS week!) is to buy my ISBN and barcode and to finish writing my book. So far, I have 92 pages, with a goal of at least 100 pages. 

Please keep praying for my self-discipline to finish writing this book. My deadline (once again moved) is THIS month, April 2014.

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Creative Christians Network on writing

Woman at laptop
Woman at laptop

I was recently honored that my recording artist/speaker/minister/author friend Naima Johnston Bush invited me to join her Facebook group and share about motivation to write your book.

I wanted to give you the tips I shared in the forum this morning:

How many people have you heard say, “I want to write a book” (including yourself)?
How many of those people actually write a book? Very few, if any, right?

It’s not because they have nothing to say. I believe everyone has an exciting story inside
of him or her, just bursting to come forth! Your story matters!

One way to do that is to write a book.
You can write a book about your life story or anything, on any topic you desire.

The book can be fiction or non-fiction. It can be short (a 20-page ebook, which only
takes a few weekends to write) or it can be a novel (at least 50,000 words that takes a year to write).

The book can be traditionally published (like with Thomas Nelson Publishers) or
self-published, which is a rapidly growing industry that is changing the face of publishing.

Your book can be a printed book (there’s nothing more exciting than holding your “baby” in your own 2 hands!)
or a downloadable ebook which people can view on their Kindle Fire, Ipad, smart phone, or laptop.

You have many options to get your important message out there and for your unique voice to be heard.
But that will never happen unless you actually WRITE YOUR BOOK!

Naima asked me to share about motivating the people in this forum to write his or her book.
I’m honored she invited me to be here and thought it was a great idea, to motivate myself, too! 🙂

How do you get started to write a book? Recently I hosted a webinar on this topic. First, you get
a vision for your book.

Ask yourself – and answer – these questions:

*Did God tell you to write this book? What is your motive for writing it? If you want to write
a book to get rich and famous, then choose another career! :O There *are* some writers who
become rich and famous, but overnight successes are rare. It can take years to build a
successful writing career.

*What do you want to write about? The story of your childhood abuse, and how God has used it
to minister to many women? Your family’s history? A fiction story about a girl who’s a drug
addict and prostitute, who becomes saved and rescues drug addicts? An ebook for event planners?

*Will the book be fiction or non-fiction?

*Will the book be printed or in a downloadable ebook format?

*Who is the book for – your audience?

*Maybe you are a very creative type or extremely busy.
Do you want to write the book yourself or have a VA or other assistant write (type) it for you?

Now you can get started. Just start braindumping! JUST WRITE. As Nike says, JUST DO IT!

Write down ideas about your book – thoughts swooping at you like a hawk with sharp eyes.
Character names. That intriguing comment you heard at the coffee shop that struck you and you knew you
had to use it in your book. Descriptions of the ocean waves, salt smell, and warm sun on your face the
summer you were 15. The smell of bacon and coffee in the morning when you had breakfast with
your husband. The terrible fight you had with an in-law. An amazing quote. Ideas, like chocolate in your mouth.

Just write and don’t edit it.

Use a journal, cute stationery, Hello Kitty sticky notes, a napkin at a restaurant, the back of a bill’s
envelope, anything to just jot down those creative ideas brewing in your mind. Braindump. Yes, dump it all out
until you’re empty and spent. Keep pen and paper by your bed, when the ideas suddenly wake you up at 3 a.m.
Use your smart phone’s recorder to record your thoughts as you’re running errands or driving somewhere.

You can use bullet points, lists, mind maps. Just keep writing ideas for your book. These will form the
skeleton, or framework, of your outline later.

This should get you started.

 

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