Indie Life--Confidence, that Crucial Element, plus Ruby Tour Continues

Today for Indie Life, sponsored by the fabulous Indelibles, and which posts once a month, I’m talking about confidence. About moving forward with authority, without doubting oneself, and how I developed this… skill, really, over the years. As an indie author, one needs a sense of sureness. Yes, we all have trusted colleagues that we run big decisions by. That said, anyone in the arts must have a strong sense of intuitive intelligence about their own work. Is it well written? Is the characterization true enough? Is the piece done?

In my former career, as an artist, specifically as a painter who showed work in galleries in Manhattan, I had that in spades. I was raised to be an artist, expected to be an artist, and I always had that gut strength that I knew what I was doing, where I fit in, in terms of genre, whether what a random gallerist said was BS or not. I sent my slides around everywhere, and landed great shows. I also got rejected from some galleries, but it slid off my back because intuitively I knew that opinion is subjective, and part of the process. I rarely took it personally. Tearing myself away from a fairly lucrative career where I sold work and got reviewed in good art magazines was like tearing out part of my heart and sewing up the gash with crude rawhide. But I needed to move on to my second love: writing!

Fast forward to my present career as a novelist. When I started to send out manuscripts I didn’t have that same sense of sureness. When editors pointed out flaws in story I was devastated. I asked for direction from way too many writers—some who were not good mentors. It’s taken me years to reach that place of authority—trusting in my gut, knowing whether a piece is solid without having to ask dozens of people.

But I took those lessons from my art career along inside me, and I did rely on my previous learning experiences to talk myself through rejections, through periods of insecurity. It helped me immensely. Of course, your latest novel often seems like your truest love--perfection. But I can really say, with the completion of Ruby’s Fire, my new YA fantasy, that I’ve reached that point of intuitive authority that I had as an artist—knowing it’s good no matter what anyone says, knowing that I’ve created deep, amazing characters and crazy plot twists. I remember how it felt to have that inherent sense of knowing, and it’s a relief to feel it again. I know I’ll have future moments of insecurity, but I’ll think back to my art career, and remember those life lessons. Oh, and Ruby and Fireseed contain my interior illustrations, so I've been able to blend my two careers!

The Ruby’s Fire Tour continues 'til week's end. Here are the hosts for today, Thursday and Friday (Links go live on the day of). Stop by and say hi! For the entire lineup click here. Enter the Rafflecopter below for big prizes. Here's the link to read more Indie Life posts.
What helps give you confidence as an author?

August 14
Fae Books: Guest post: What Inspires me to Write?

Read Books & Live Green: Review

August 15

Mousehead & Tales: Review

August 16

Marked by Books: Sneak Peeks & BONUS mini-review!

Brooke Blogs: Review

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Indie Life Wednesday-the art of revision

Today, for Indie Life, I'm talking about revision, that dreaded word, or not. As for me, I love it. I'd rather be polishing a draft than banging out the first, rough one. You need to learn to love it, ESPECIALLY as an indie author, because anything you put out into the world needs to be flawless--the plot, the grammar and punctuation, the characterizations.

Tools to help in this regard:

Scrivener: I love their virtual corkboard where you can endlessly rearrange a set of virtual Index cards that you create. If your eyes cross while staring at the cards, you can toggle between this and a more traditional line-by-line plot outline.

Upload your daily revision to your Kindle and read it with new eyes: It looks like a book, it reads like a book (well, an ebook), and you'll notice errors that you never saw when you read it on your screen or paper manuscript.

Nanowrimo: National Novel Writing Month, where you bang out a novel length manuscript in 30 days. It'll either break you or make you super strong (Or both?). You'll be amazed at how much you can write. No really! Now they even have July and August summer camp with virtual bunkmates.

Your writing group: get in one, trust them, and run everything by them. Only choose authors whose work you love and respect.

I'll leave you with a few awesome quotes from authors on the revision process:

“By the time I am nearing the end of a story, the first part will have been reread and altered and corrected at least one hundred and fifty times. I am suspicious of both facility and speed. Good writing is essentially rewriting. I am positive of this.” — Roald Dahl

“Don’t look back until you’ve written an entire draft. Begin each day from the last sentence you wrote the preceding day. This prevents those cringing feelings, and means that you have a substantial body of work before you get down to the real work which is all in the edit.” — Will Self

“Mostly when I think of pacing, I go back to Elmore Leonard, who explained it so perfectly by saying he just left out the boring parts. This suggests cutting to speed the pace, and that’s what most of us end up having to do.— Stephen King, On Writing

Wishing you a productive and creative revision process!
What's your most helpful revision tool?