Writer's block got you down

I was thinking about writer's block this past week. I have been busy writing blog posts with prompts for people who might be suffering from writer's block on my author site. While this has been a lot of fun, I started to wonder if there were books out there on this topic.

Of course, I already knew there would be. However, I wanted to see what those books offered and if I could offer something similar. I was also looking to begin some monetization of the site and wanted to post an Amazon link to a good resource. (Which I did!)

Within that post I was reminded of something I used to do when I was a teenager and young adult. I used to have what seemed a boundless imagination. I had so many ideas in my head for stories and books that I started making lists of book titles. I had thousands of them. All about different things. I even categorized them into genres.

The main two genres ended up being "horror" and "post-apocalypse" titles. Later, that list would grow to include stories about "zombies." I put zombies separate from horror just because I felt like they were their own special kind of scary!

No matter where I was or what I was doing, I had kept adding to the list of titles. I didn't realize it at the time, but those were writing prompts!

After I had published the post on my author site, I thought I should create my own story starter book. So I did. It took about 8 solid hours, but I got it done.

It is part writing prompts and part journal (which makes the e-book a little tricky because you can't really journal in an e-book—at least I don't think you can!). I also did a paperback version. That one is about 170 pages about half of the prompts have a blank page for writing if the person desires to do so. I only did this for about half of the prompts because with 300 prompts the book would have been close to 400 pages!

I've sold one so far and I haven't publicized it yet!

Ambitious...

Still feeling rather ambitious, I stayed up late last night (until 2 a.m.) and updated another e-book that I had published in 2021. I had updated the chapters of which there were 14 and enjoyed the challenge. Once I start something I feel the need to finish them. This has been my biggest push in my writing career since—well—since ever.

I have one more book that I want to update that I initially published in 2019.

After that, I would like to finish editing my children's book and get that one published, as well.

Marketing

Because I am still dipping my toes into the marketing of my books, I am not sure what I am doing, so I have been listing them on my author site and also making posts on my social media (which right now only consists of Facebook).

I wanted to have a better feel for what I needed to do in a concise way without reading an entire book on marketing and still not being sure what to do.

I asked my Buddy (ChatGPT) how to market a book that has already been published. and it gave me a very detailed list of ways to market the book with a timeline! I love timelines! They give me something to focus on.

So there you have my weekend starting with Friday afternoon! (I even skipped work on Friday afternoon so I could work on these things. Of course, now I have to work tomorrow, but I'm okay with the sacrifice!)

I hope this post encourages all who read it. There is so much technology to make our lives easier. Yes, we still have to use our brains to do things and our emotions to give our writing heart and soul, but being able to nearly effortlessly publish a book on Amazon (after the task of writing it), sure beats the old days when you had to pay thousands to self publish. Now it is virtually free and you can make royalties that beat most publishing houses. (Although you do not get an advance from Amazon. You only get paid if the book sells!)

Well, back to the grindstone. I have to listen to a meeting now and write that for the newspaper. That way I can get back to what is really important—my granddaughter, my dad, and my business.

Karin😎