S.L. Vaden Author Buy Now

Tag: writing

  • Starting Again

    I’m still figuring out how to become consistent with writing again.

    I don’t think my way back is going to come from forcing myself to suddenly write thousands of words every day or pretending the last several years didn’t affect me.

    It will probably happen much more quietly.

    One paragraph.

    One scene.

    One conversation between characters.

    Maybe one day I’ll look up and realize that a paragraph became a page, a page became a chapter, and a chapter became another finished book.

    But I’m trying not to make finishing the book the only thing that matters.

    Right now, opening the document matters.

    Thinking about my characters matters.

    Writing badly matters.

    Writing fifty words matters.

    Because every time I do, I’m reaching toward a part of myself that I thought I had lost.

    And maybe picking up writing again isn’t really about becoming the writer I was before everything happened.

    Maybe it’s about discovering the writer I am now.

    She has been through more.

    She’s tired.

    She’s changed.

    But she still has stories to tell.

    And I’m beginning to think that might be enough reason to start.

  • Writing About the Things I Know

    When I look at my stories now, I can also see how much of what I’ve experienced has found its way into them.

    Many of my characters struggle with depression. They feel isolated. They lose people. They question their worth. They struggle to ask for help or convince themselves they have to handle everything alone.

    And yet, somewhere in those stories, someone usually reaches for them.

    Someone stays.

    Someone sees them.

    I’ve realized that’s important to me.

    I don’t write about depression because I think sadness makes a story deeper. I write about it because I know what it feels like when getting through an ordinary day takes more effort than anyone around you realizes.

    I want someone reading one of my books to recognize that feeling and think, Someone understands.

    Even if that understanding comes from a fictional character.

    Maybe a character can sit beside them for a few chapters. Maybe they can hold someone’s hand through the pages until things feel slightly less lonely.

    If one of my stories can do that, then there is meaning in writing it.

  • The Stories Never Really Left

    The strange thing is, I don’t think I ever completely stopped being a writer.

    The stories kept appearing.

    Characters still walked into my head at inconvenient times. Scenes played out while I was doing something completely unrelated. I would hear pieces of dialogue or suddenly know something about a character I hadn’t thought about in months.

    They were still there.

    I just wasn’t always able to put them on the page.

    I’ve started realizing there is a difference between losing your creativity and simply being too exhausted to reach it.

    Maybe mine wasn’t gone.

    Maybe it was waiting.

    That thought has helped me be a little kinder to myself.

  • Am I a writer?

    For a long time, writing was one of the easiest places for me to disappear into.

    I could sit down with an idea, meet a character, build a world, and suddenly hours were gone. Writing wasn’t simply something I did. It was part of who I was.

    Which makes it difficult to admit that I’ve had a hard time picking it back up.

    Over the last several years, life has felt like one loss followed by another. My health changed. I lost people I loved, pets who were family, jobs, friendships, stability, and pieces of the life I thought I would have.

    Every time things seemed to settle, something else happened.

    Eventually, survival started taking up a lot of space.

    And creativity needs space.

    I don’t think I understood that for a long time.

    I would look at my unfinished stories and wonder why I couldn’t just sit down and write them. I still had ideas. I still loved my characters. I still thought about their worlds and imagined conversations between them.

    So why couldn’t I write?

    That question came with guilt.

    If I was really a writer, shouldn’t I be writing?

    There are so many messages directed at writers telling us to push through. Write every day. Create a routine. Stop waiting for inspiration. Sit down and do the work.

    There is value in discipline, but I’ve also learned that sometimes the problem isn’t discipline.

    Sometimes you’re tired.

    Not the kind of tired that disappears after a good night’s sleep.

    The kind that comes from spending years dealing with grief, uncertainty, depression, and starting over.

    Writing asks us to reach inside ourselves and pull something out. Sometimes I simply didn’t have anything left to give.

    And perhaps the hardest part was that losing writing felt like losing another part of myself.

    I had already lost enough.

    I didn’t want to lose this too.

  • Writing worlds with diversity.

    The world I see around me is filled with so many different kinds of people. Different backgrounds, identities, experiences, cultures, struggles, and ways of seeing the world.

    Because of that, when I read certain books, especially some mainstream ones, the characters can sometimes feel a little too similar. A little too cookie-cutter.

    That is one of the reasons I make an effort to create characters who better reflect the world I actually see around me.

    I want my stories to represent more than just who I am.

    Of course, that comes with a responsibility. I only know the world through my own experience as a white woman, and I never want to pretend I fully understand an experience I haven’t lived myself. That is where connecting with other people becomes important, listening to their stories, learning about their backgrounds, understanding what they have gone through, and being willing to recognize when my own perspective is limited.

    Writing diverse characters isn’t about checking boxes for me. It’s about acknowledging that the world is bigger than my own experience.

    As a self-published author, I also know that some of the choices I make may make my books harder to market in certain spaces. My stories don’t always fit neatly into a box. They often deal with depression and mental health. They include LGBTQ+ characters. Their tone can be darker, quieter, or more emotional than what some readers expect.

    I’ve even had books returned because they included LGBTQ+ characters.

    And while experiences like that can be discouraging, they also remind me why I want to keep writing them.

    At the heart of it, I write the characters I do because I want to see the world become a more understanding and accepting place.

    Stories can play a part in that.

    Books, television, movies, and other forms of media allow us to spend time with people whose lives may look nothing like our own. They can introduce us to experiences we have never considered. They can make something unfamiliar feel human.

    And sometimes, yes, they can make people uncomfortable.

    I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.

    Growth can be uncomfortable. Being asked to look beyond what we already know can be uncomfortable. Seeing someone different from ourselves placed at the center of a story can challenge the ideas we’ve carried without ever questioning them.

    That is also one of the reasons I love writing high fantasy.

    Fantasy gives me the freedom to imagine worlds that don’t have to follow all of the same expectations as ours. I can create kingdoms, cultures, families, relationships, and communities filled with all kinds of people. I can write a world that isn’t perfect, but perhaps looks a little closer to the world I hope we continue becoming.

    It’s also one of the reasons I continue to self-publish.

    I have the freedom to tell the stories I want to tell and create the characters I want to create without worrying quite as much about whether they fit a particular mold.

    My characters aren’t meant to represent only me.

    They’re meant to represent a much larger world.

    And maybe, through fantasy, I can show a small glimpse of what our own world could look like when we become a little more willing to understand and accept one another.

  • How to write a book and all that goes with it.

    How to write a book and all that goes with it.

    Time, effort, research, and staring at a blank page, all of these are part of the writing process.

    When I started writing my first book, The Legend of Zelkova: Elementum, I didn’t know what I was doing.

    All I knew was that I was having fun.

    But as time went on and I wrote more books and articles, I began to see what all went into it. It’s more than just words; yes, that is the base of it, but the planning and endless hours of thinking about the plot and characters can make for sleepless nights.

    This is where writing notes and making outlines help. If you have an idea, write it down, no matter where you are, what you’re doing, or what time it is. Because once the idea is lost, it’s gone for good.

    So, keep a notebook handy or an app on your phone. Even if you might think the idea isn’t worth writing down, do it anyway. There’s no telling what other ideas might stem from it.

    Write down the major points of the plot, an idea for the beginning, middle and end. Keep in mind these might change as you write and the story takes form, that’s alright. Sticking too much to an outline can hinder creative flow.

    Once you write those down, make an outline of your characters and how they fit in the story and their connection to other characters. Again, this could change as you write.

    Side note: Never be afraid to write outside of what you have outlined. Let the story flow and your ideas run.

    What message do you have interwoven within your plot?

    Mine tend to be about nature and how to respect it before we lose it forever. Another is to go against racism and sexism. I do this by including many different characters, not giving them the stereotypes, they might label as in the world we live. I want the reader to see the world through my books, which have different cultures and peoples. To see that everyone is unique, and that’s a good thing.

    When describing different characters.

    There was one book I tried to read. But couldn’t get past the first two chapters. Mainly because of how the women in the book were detailed. They described their looks and how their bodies moved, unlike the men in this book, where their personality defined them. I understand this can be part of the character, but keep in mind how readers will see what you write and how they might take it. Always keep your target audience in mind.

    Have I lost you yet?

    With each character, you can make as detailed notes as you want or as little. For my first book, I didn’t know how Carya would look until the end, making me have to go back and add her details. My character’s personalities form more than what they look like. That comes as I write.

    How do I come up with names?

    Everyone has their own way of coming up with names. I research names that fit the personality of my characters. With the Legend of Zelkova, they usually come from nature and different languages. Take Kasai, in my first book, and it’s the Japanese word for fire. Or Jardin, the French word for garden. Why do I do this? Mostly because I want to bring other languages to the mind of the reader. To show that the world we live in is vast and has many languages. I also like to use Latin and many others. Find what fits you and your story, this may take time, but you’ll find it.

    Here comes the fun part (I mean that with all the sarcasm I can muster.), what I call the in-between story. It’s not the main story that moves the plot along. It’s the filler, the side stories. For me, these are the most challenging parts to write because I want to get to the main plot, where the action is. But the side stories are just as important as the main ones.

    I’ve found through experience that the side story can weigh down the book, making it stall out or lag. So, as you write your book, keep in mind there can be too much of the “in-between” story. Just enough to cover the story of the side characters and to keep the story moving along.

    During the writing process, you will hit lulls, and they can be long or short. These can be hard to get through. What helps is finding what inspires you. For me, that’s nature and music. So, I take walks, and hike, go to the park. Find new music to listen to, or relisten to my old favourites. Find what helps you and do that. 

    I’ve read a lot of people asking how many chapters a book should be. If you are looking to be published the traditional way, you want to focus on word count. That’s what the publishing companies ask for. How many words is your book?  

    1. What should my book word count be?

    The following are average word-count ranges by genre.

    General Fiction

    • Flash Fiction: 300–1500 words

    • Short Story: 1500–30,000 words

    • Novellas: 30,000–50,000 words

    • Novels: 50,000–110,000 words

    Fiction Genres

    • Mainstream Romance: 70,000–100,000 words

    • Subgenre Romance: 40,000–100,000 words

    • Science Fiction / Fantasy: 90,000–120,000 (and sometimes 150,000) words

    • Historical Fiction: 80,000–100,000

    • Thrillers / Horror / Mysteries / Crime: 70,000–90,000 words

    • Young Adult: 50,000–80,000

    Children’s Books

    • Picture Books: 300–800 words

    • Early Readers: 200–3500 words

    • Chapter Books: 4000–10,000 words

    • Middle Grade: 25,000–40,000 words

    Nonfiction

    • Standard Nonfiction (Business, Political Science, Psychology, History, etc.): 70,000–80,000 words

    • Memoir: 80,000–100,000 words

    • Biography: 80,000–200,000 words

    • How-to / Self-Help: 40,000–50,000 words

    All of these are average book word count ranges and should not be taken as the definitive word count you must reach in your book. We all know of outliers within each genre that have been published well under, or well over, these word counts.

    With the info above, you can set your word count depending on what genre your book is.

    When to end a chapter.

    This can be hard for many writers, knowing when to end a chapter. And many tend to end it with the word count in mind. Some like to keep each one around 2,000 words or 800. For me, I try to keep in the range of what I just listed. But I also keep the story in mind. I like to end chapters on scene change, a cliffhanger, or a suspenseful scene. This keeps the reading wanting more. Of course, keeping a uniformed look with your chapter length will make your book look cleaner and well put together. But think of what will get the reader to turn to the next chapter. 

    Thinking of more than one book at a time.

    This can happen when you have more than one book in your series. While writing the first one, you need to keep in mind the next one and even the one after that. You have to look into the future of your story and where you want it to go. To make sure they all connect. Many writers write their series all at once, but others like myself write them one at a time, publish them and write the next one. Either way, you have to think about the future. Keep your stories connected.

    How to end your book.

    Depending on how many books are in your series, you may want to end with a cliffhanger, keep the readers wanting to read the next one. Or end it happily and make something happen in the next one. The ending is up to you and where you want your story to end and the next one (if there is a next one) to begin. 

    Editing.

    Oh, the torture of editing. Before you start, there are a few things to keep in mind.

    When you’re rereading or editing your manuscript and want to delete something. Open up a new doc and transfer it there. Don’t get rid of it completely because the idea could be used in another story and might be forgotten if you don’t have a copy of it somewhere.

    Keep more than one copy of your work on two different devices. Never have all your eggs in one basket. If your computer or flash drive breaks, you want another copy of your hard work.

    Back to it, editing can be a challenging process. No matter how many times you read it, there will always be something that is overlooked. This happens because we made the story, and it’s hard to see flaws in what we make, no matter how much we look at it. And this is okay. It happens to even the best of writers, including best sellers.

    If you’re not seeking a publisher or publishing it yourself because you think it’s not good or needs to be edited more. Keep in mind this process can go on forever as long as you draw it out. Editing has to end at some point. Over editing can happen when you think about it too much.

    Get someone you trust or an editor to look over it for you. Two pairs of eyes are better than one. I’m not saying to not edit but don’t over-edit. Keep all this in mind when you spend long hours wanting to scream in frustration. ‘Tis, the life of a writer.

    You may ask, do I need an editor. I would suggest always get someone else to look it over at least once before you look over it one last time before sending it out. I had three different eyes on one book and still missed something. It happens. It’s all apart of being a writer. Don’t get discouraged. You will make it through this phase, just don’t overthink it.

    Do I need beta readers?

    That all depends on you. Finding beta readers can be easy for some, harder for others. They are good to have, but you don’t “have to have” them. I would much rather have an editor. But that’s just me. 

    Now that you’ve got your story going and have stared at your screen, blank or not. You are on your way. One word after the other, ideas flowing and lulls accruing. End the end, making a story, bringing characters to life can be very fulfilling. And most wouldn’t trade it for the world.

    No matter how far you are in your writing, keep going. There will be times where you feel like it’s not worth it, and you should stop. Don’t listen to those voices. Don’t listen to the naysayers. Only you can write the book the way you are writing it.

    Because you are unique, and so is your story. Be proud of what you have done and what you are going to do. Because writing a book is no easy task. It takes lots of hard work, long hours, and dedication. It may look easy on the outside, but it’s one of the hardest things anyone can do. 

    I believe in you and the story you are writing.

    If you have any questions, feel free to comment below or find me on social media. Thanks for reading.

    1. https://thewritelife.com/how-many-words-in-a-novel/

  • A writer goes by many names.

    A writer goes by many names.

    Writing is much more than putting words on paper or typing on a keyboard.

    As a writer, I’ve learned that many of us aren’t just one title. We are tellers of stories and creator of worlds that must be descriptive and original and have a vast vocabulary with good story flow. Writers must manage their time efficiently in writing, editing, proofreading, and researching. Characters must have depth, while the creator must remain flexible, adaptable, and have an eye for detail.

    All the while keeping up with social media, networking, advertising, blogging, and more. On top of it all is self-motivation, which can be a difficult task for any of us. But without it, there would be no story, no blog, nothing.  We are our own content creator, copywriter, researcher, proofreader, editor, blogger, time manager, social media manager, publicist, to name a few.

    We are also not our first drafts. Spending hours writing, editing, and creating. Being a writer isn’t just a hobby; it’s a lifestyle.