You Say I'm A Dreamer, But I'm Not

I loved Dinner for Schmucks. Hilarious movie. Steve Carell's character was loveable yet drove you nuts at the same time.  There was one scene in the movie that although it makes me laugh because he misinterprets a great John Lennon song, it also makes me think.

"You say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not."

Really the line from the song is "You say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one." While I love this song. Maybe the schmuck got it right.

I've been trying to prep myself for this headlong dive into finally publishing. It seems surreal, exciting and at times somewhat terrifying. I remembered I had downloaded Smart Self-Publshing: Becoming an Indie Author by Zoe Winters a while back. And while I had read a good portion of it, I went back this past week and started re-reading it. She has some great advice and is definitely someone I find to be a decent role model in this indie world.

Among all the good advice Zoe has managed to pack into this book one thing stuck out in particular. Something that really can be applied to anyone, not just a writer.

Dreamers are those that think about all the what if's and wouldn't it be nice. They don't actually DO anything, but dream...

But those that set goals...well they work toward them. Not to talk about the all-mighty roller derby again but, I set a goal to be able to play in games. I passed my tests...and now I will probably be playing in a game soon!

For the longest time I always said I wanted to be a writer. I wanted to publish something and have people read my books. Dreaming about it didn't get me anywhere.

It wasn't until I got off my lazy ba-donk-a-donk, finished my drafts, finished all the initial edits and started actually working towards publishing it that anything got done.

I know this is sort of a well  DUH post, but I just thought sometimes we need a reminder to stop dreaming and start setting goals. Things feel so much harder to obtain when we are dreaming about them. But they become a reality when we start striding toward them.

So my goals right now are finish the final edit, get Mistaken to the publisher and formatted and uploaded for electronic sales.

As I finish reading her book I plan to set some more goals as well as figure out more my road map.

It is sometimes hard for us to actually grasp when one of our goals is within our grasp, and I feel like that is where I am now.

Just a few more steps...

Check out Zoe winter's blog here  .

Critiques & Improvements

I finally got up the nerve to join a writing group. I got my first critique today and I have to say it was helpful and really insightful. Some of the things I was told, I had sort of been aware of but all in all it was nice to get an unbiased opinion on my writing and to hear it wasn't completely horrible. Though, as a writer I think we usually have some level of confidence in our abilities, otherwise we would never try.

I just purchased "How Not to Write A Novel" so that I can read it on my kindle. I have heard so many good reviews about this book so I thought I'd give it a shot. I will probably post some of my thoughts and comments from it on here.

Speaking of writing tips, there are tons of great writing blogs that I have been lucky enough to find. In the list of blogs I follow you should definitely browse through some of them.  One of my particular favorites has to be Jodie Renner's blog. She is an editor and a retired teacher. She has great advice and tips on her blog.

I don't have much to say today, I have been a little bit under the weather this week, so you may not hear from me til Episode One of  Tales In Midtown. I can promise this first episode should fun....twisted fun.

-Rayvenne