Kelly's Writing Rules

Look! I'm doing a blog post!  I've seen countless other writers, self-published or no, come up with their own set of writing rules or reiterating ones they hail as absolute truth.  You know, Stephen King says the road to hell is paved with adverbs, right?  I wanted to come up with my own.  I'm not a fan of those type of writing rules, like the one Mr. King gives us, because I believe they're so limiting.  I suppose we'll find out when I publish Archer how well MY writing rules work.  If they don't, then feel free to taunt about how wrong I was for not listening.  I was a very stubborn child.

Anyway, I posted these on Twitter, but I'll make a collective blog post every now and then on some and explain.

1. Don't choreograph your fight scenes to Carmen's Habanera. Unless you're awesome.

Should be self-explanatory.  Habanera, while I LOVE the piece (particularly by Maria Callas), does not go well with action or climactic scenes.  I'm at the point of developing the final climax of Archer, so as I was driving home one day, my radio played Habanera and I began visualizing the scene in my head.  While interesting, it just did not fit the mood.  I think, given a different scene or situation though, the result would be awesome.

2. Showers are a good place to think on plot development. But watch that shampoo. Quarter-sized dots come quickly.

I have a LOT of hair, and I do ruminate on many things whilst in the shower, plot development included.  Since I have a lot of hair, I've always taken the recommended amount of shampoo needed on the bottles lightly.  However, pay attention when applying soap or shampoo because after blinking at the amount I poured into my hand the other night, I realized I had way too much.

3. When writing in the employee lounge, avoid eye contact with every familiar who would approach you.

This is a problem I face quite often.  A good portion of my writing is completed while on my lunch break.  To allow myself enough time to concentrate on this task, I scarf down my food in a semi-timely manner and pop in my headphones to write, trying to look as unfriendly as possible.  Sometimes, I am caught before I put my headphones on, or I look up at the wrong moment.  Then people approach me and stay however long they feel they should which either cuts into my writing time or eliminates it completely.

4. When working with sharp instruments, do not slice your thumb that would make it uncomfortable to hold a pen.

I work with sharp instruments.  I cut open a spot on my thumb yesterday, and since most of my writing is done by hand, it has been very uncomfortable to support my pen while writing.  Overall, it becomes an unnecessarily uncomfortable experience.

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So, I would like to believe these writing rules are useful, and I've no doubt I'll come up with more as time goes by.

In the way of updates, I've created a new outline for my next project:

The Runewell Fairytale Outline

 I've purposely edited it this way so most of the text becomes unreadable.  Also, my handwriting!

Finally, if you would just look up at the list of tabs, you will see I've added new ones for my upcoming projects.  Runewell is still in the outlining process.  Under each tab you will see promotional covers, a term I've coined to mean as "viable to change."  Also, the Archer one will be ten times better, I'm sure.

The model for Archer is a friend.  I picked out the costume and I took the pictures.  I have over a hundred pictures total and I plan to use some of the amazing ones for more promotional things--banners and a book trailer.  Be excited!  More to come!

Domain Time!

I now have a domain!

Which means, if you go to the URL box and type in "www.ikellymichael.com", it will bring you here!

Why do I have this, you ask?  Here's the answer:

I see other indie authors with their own domains for their blogs, and I desperately craved one as well.  However, I thought by going ahead and purchasing one would be quite too ambitious for me.  So I waited.  I told myself I would finish my draft before I begin investing in marketing.  Then, today happened, and I was doing some searching, browsing through other indie communities and something from godaddy.com popped up and I saw that they had a marvelous sale for a .com domain for $0.99 for a year's subscription.  Compare the price to then normal $14.99 a year, and you will see it was an opportunity I could not resist.

Why the "i" before Kelly? It was the same for my Blogger username.  Mostly because "kellymichaels" is always taken.  I wanted some sort of originality: I, Kelly Michaels... My Twitter username is the same.  And it could also mean "indie" as in, I am in indie author, publishing independently.

In other news, I am very close to the end of the book.  I've begun steps for the cover design.  I've already been generally given an image for the cover and I'm in the process of discussing typography and formatting with a graphic excited.

Needless to say, I am excited!

How I Started

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who had problems falling asleep.

That girl was me.

I'm not sure if I suffered from too much caffeine consumption or childhood insomnia.  Whatever it was, it was only a phase in my childhood, because I certainly have no trouble now.  The point is, when I was younger, I would often lie in my bed and stare at the ceiling, because I could not go to sleep.  I thought perhaps I was doing it wrong, that there was some magical sequence you had to undertake in order to fall asleep.  But I was never tired and eventually it was causing a large amount of stress for my parents because my younger brother had a similar problem.  (Although, he needed to sleep with my parents nearly all the time.  I rarely slept with them, mainly because he stole away all of their attention).

Most nights, I would just wait for myself to pass out.  To do this, I would sometimes sneak back into the living room and watch television with my parents until I was too tired to keep my eyes open.  (This was how I was introduced to the movie The Mummy.  When my mom 'officially' introduced it to us, she was largely surprised that I could quote a good portion of it.  Well, mom, if you're reading this, now you know why).

When my parents knew I was having trouble sleeping, my dad would often sit up with me at night to read me stories until I was tired.  It would help if he stayed with me long enough.  Though, usually, he was running back and forth, trying to help me and my brother at the same time.  And because siblings hate each other, we couldn't be in the same room when our dad was trying to put us to sleep.

One night in particular, I noticed how exhausted and stressed my dad was as he continually peeked in my room to see if I was asleep.  I remember his disappointment when I wasn't, and went begrudgingly to do something about my brother, enlisting my mom's help in this.  It was then I realized I should no longer be dependent on my parents for sleep.  They had enough problems than to worry about me.  I would have to start helping myself for once.

So, I began telling myself stories.

I didn't read from a book, like my dad did. I began by taking bits of movies I had secretly watched with my parents and some of the stories he told me and combined them. I planned a basic plot or setting, did some mental outlining, and let the story play itself out in my head.  The mental exertion worked, rather well I might say, to make me tired enough for sleep.  I did this every night, even until I was creating my stories, my own characters instead of borrowed ones.

Around the time I was in eighth grade, I started reading Christopher Paolini's Eragon.  I quite enjoyed it and soon found out that he began writing it when he was fifteen.  Fourteen at the time, I had an epiphany.

I could write my own stories.

If Paolini was only fifteen when he started, why could I not start when I was fourteen?  It was brilliant and it made sense. I was excited.  I began writing and haven't really stopped since.

I still tell myself stories at night.  Borrowed ones, original ones, they all help my fall asleep to this very day.  I sometimes develop the ones I actually put to paper with this method.  And I think it has attributed to my many dreams of story ideas.

So I began writing to tell my own stories.  Some of these stories, from when I was younger, will never see the light of day.  Some will be adapted.  But the thrill of writing for me is making the movie reels in my head come to life, hoping they will be turned into pretty books with glossy covers.

New Ideas & Current Progress

Forgive my infrequent posting as of late.  I've got two finals left to prepare for, plus two quizzes, a video + 1,250 word paper to write in the coming few days, plus graduation on May 11th.  Safe to say, I've been a bit swarmed. 

But I'm still working and this is just to reassure any who may chance across this blog that I am.  I've reached over 76,000 words and counting on my manuscript.  All that is really left is some transitionary scenes, big CLIMAX, then the ending.  It's sort of hitting me rather hard to have over a year's work wrapping up and so close to the end now.

And of course, in the midst of stress, where I've had another night of consecutive nightmares about graduation, I had a very inspirational dream where I let simmer for half of a day before writing something down.  I'm rather pleased with the culminated result.  I believe once I finish the original manuscript for Archer I will do some work with this, perhaps publish it indepedently as a short story.  It's not a particularly long idea and it does have the idea of a fairy tale.

I've shared the small piece from the smaller, second project with a select few audiences on my personal Facebook.  I'm going to wait to see what sort of feedback it garners before doing any other sort of sharing.

But I have many other ideas--continuing with my fantasy arc, the short story fairytale, and assassins.  More on that in due time, once other projects have been completed.

I know I said I wanted to have the manuscript ready for publication for the summer, but I'm looking more at a Fall 2013 release date.  Once I finish the manuscript and some basic edits, I'll be printing (out of pocket, mind you) a few ARC types to send a few people for reviewing.  I'll take their edits and feedback into account and hopefully have a polished-enough project to self-publish.  Meanwhile, during the process, I hope to be querying some agents, to see if I do have a shot for traditional publishing.

But for now.  Finals, then graduation.  Hopefully this summer I'll be presented with many opportunities and time finish this work.

Another bit--I'm looking into commissioning a digital artist for a book cover.  I'm really quite interested in Phatpuppy Creations who did the covers for Amanda Hocking's self published works.  If anyone has any other recommendations, I'll gladly accept them!

Later, I'll be asking who would be interested in winning an Advanced Reader Copy.