The Story Inside

There is less than a month until Taming An Alpha launches. Are you as excited as I am? If you haven't gotten your copy of Taming An Alpha then you can get it here: http://goo.gl/USvAzw

But that isn't what I am going to talk about today. Yes yes I know I should be self promoting but I feel that I sometimes go over board and that's all I talk about. That isn't what I want to do. I want to reach out to my readers and let them know that I don't live on a pedestal.

I have a friend that I love like a sister and I've known her since middle school. She didn't think she was a very good writer, or could even write at all. But I told her that she needed to get her story out onto the page and then she could worry about grammar, sentence structure, and everything else. That all she needed to do was focus and get it out. I believe she was over thinking it and stressing herself out. I know I do this.

Getting your rough draft out is the first step. It isn't going to be perfect that's why they call it a ROUGH draft. Once that is done then you can begin the journey of polishing your jewel. But be careful not to over do it or you take the life out of your story. I have done this. I am sure that I did do this to Triple Threat. I over analyzed and took the life out of it. Good comparison: book 1 looked like it had been stabbed repeatedly and was covered in red markings, book 2 had a few cuts and red marks but didn't look like I had killed it and soaked it in red ink.

Why do both drafts look so different? Because when I edited Triple Threat I thought I had to edit it to the point of no return when in fact I don't. I sent out Taming An Alpha to my betas before I even began doing edits. You know what happened? They loved it. They pointed out minor fixes and places I needed to do a little nip/tucking but overall it was a good read.

Now that I have digressed lets get back to what I had been trying to say. To all the people that have a wonderful story idea but think they can't write or not good enough to get published. You won't know that you can do it until you try. That's part of the process.

You have to have confidence in yourself and tell yourself that you can do it otherwise you'll just let a wonderful story idea wither away. Even if the idea is just a fan fiction but you don't want to deal with all those horrible nay-sayers. I'm sorry to say that dealing with them is also part of the process. Am I saying have a stiff upper lip as they bully you? Hell no! But not everyone is going to like your story.

Should you just type up your rough draft and then throw it out there for everyone to read? No. You need to think of your story as a child. Would you send a child to school covered in dirt? No. Don't send your story out into the world before you clean it up. Edit it, revise it, have someone beta read it. Or pay someone to edit it for you if need be. But remember that you have to take the first step and get your story onto paper.