Fumbling My Way Through This Maze
by Tina Pollick
I know I know you were promised a real live author. Where is she? *looks around* Oh wait it’s me! Seriously though it’s still hard to believe I’m an author. My first novel was published in January so I’m still showing off newbieness <- Not a real word, but I’m going to keep it, I kind of like it. 🙂
Let’s get to it. One of the questions I’m asked most often is how did I become an author? Let’s talk about that, and if you have any questions or comments post them below and I’ll answer them.
I started writing this past summer. I was fortunate enough to be able to take the summer off to spend with my kids. They were outside playing with their friends having a good time and I was… well sitting there… watching. I needed to find something to do or else it was going to be a long, long summer. I’ve always wanted to write a book, so I decided that’s what I was going to do.
It wasn’t easy, but anything worthwhile usually isn’t. Unfortunately I didn’t have a dream about characters or storyline. The characters and storyline for GABRIEL were all formed with a series of ‘what if’ questions. What if they could do this and what if this happened? I drove my family nuts asking them if they thought this would work or if that would work. It’s pretty funny now, then… not so much. *laughs*
When I had the idea solid in my head I started searching for pictures of the characters. I’m a visual person so it really helped me to make them ‘real’. Next thing was to put the characters into the story.
I’m not a complete pantser I had a very thin outline. More of a timeline of what I wanted to happen. And a ton of notes about the characters, their past, and some other information that I thought was relevant to each of them.
I like the freedom to be able to let my characters take me where they wanted to go, but the timeline kept me on track. This was crucial, because I really wanted to finish the novel and knowing there would be end, helped a lot.
A lot of days I would get stuck, so what did I do? I threw rocks at my characters. Well not literally, but I’d add an obstacle and see how they responded. That was usually enough to get things rolling again. And I did this over and over every time I hit a road block.
Next I joined a critique site and started posting chapters as I wrote them. This was really scarey. Strangers would be reading my work for the first time. What if it was crap? What if I sucked? I waited patiently, okay I’m not really a patient person so patiently is a bit of a stretch and I think it could even be called ‘site stalking’ waiting for someone to write a critique. 😆
I would read the critiques and after rewriting the chapter instead of writing the next one, I stopped reading the critiques until I finished the entire novel. That whole cycle can be a bit overwhelming. Once I stopped trying to rewrite the writing process started to move forward again. When I finished the whole novel, then I went back and read all the critiques and revised from beginning to end. I had a lot of support and it made the writing less frustrating, because lets face it, characters do not always cooperate. I know hard to believe right? *laughs*
Once I was kind of happy with the final product I started sending it off to agents. Turns out there were a lot of paranormal romance out there and getting anyone interested was really hard. After a few dozen rejections or no response from agents I decided to submit directly to a publisher. I sent it off to three and had a yes within two weeks. Then I had another yes a few days later. I chose the publisher that I thought fit me and my novel best. The rest is history. 🙂
—————————————————————————————————————————————————–
About Tina Pollick When Tina Pollick isn’t writing paranormal romance about Heavenly hunks, and smart, sassy women. This RN enjoys a quiet home life with her husband, children, two horses, two dogs, cat, chickens, guineas, well sort of quiet. Tina has just finished her first Paranormal Romance novel, GABRIEL, A Kematian Hunter Series and is working on the first book of another Paranormal Romance series, SOUL BROKER. www.tinapollick.com