Blog a Virtual Question

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and Belly of the Whale is on Virtual Tour for the month trying to help fight-the-fight. There will be reviews, posts, interviews and a podcast for anyone wishing to come aboard.

I was asked many questions but one I’d like to share is included here: “What is the most important thing in your life right now?”

The most important thing in my life is my family. Family has been, always will be and is the most significant part of my life. My dreams and aspirations have been realized because even on the darkest of days I keep them at my center, close to my heart.

Remember to stay healthy and aware: Hope begins with Us. Please stop by the Tour over the next few days and say hello:
October 1 - The Book Czar
October 3 – Zensanity

Blog what you think, see, hear and feel…

Linda Merlino, author, Belly of the Whale

Meet Some Talented Friends

If you’re lucky enough to find a supportive and helpful critique group, you’re well ahead of the publishing game. The writers in this photo represent about a third of the members of our Kyle Centre Critique group and everyone is this photo has published a new book this year, from April to September alone! It’s been great fun to watch these works develop over the months, and even years in some cases, or to hear snippets of work brought in simply to read during our windup at the end of each season.

From left to right, these writers are: Julie Ferguson author of Book Magic: Turning Writers into Published Authors; Eileen Kernaghan (this is her 8th book!), author of Wild Talent: a Novel of the Supernatural, Marja Bergen, author of A Firm Place to Stand (a helpful nonfiction work about being bi-polar while maintaining her Christian faith. Yours truly is next, and on my left is Casey Wolf who’s releasing her first collection of short stories called Finding Creatures & Other Stories, and is already receiving terrific reviews. Their books are available on amazon.com.

Congratulations to everyone, and let's keep going!

For excerpts of Fatal Encryption and Taxed to Death visit: http://www.debrapurdykong.com/

Balancing work, life and self as an author

Yesterday I wrote about the warning signs and prevention of author burn-out. I mentioned that balance is the key.

Ironically, last night I received a motivational message from my friends John and Patrice at Higher Awareness, a site that I just love.

In their Inner Journey message, it talks about being open to change.

The following is printed here with their permission:

Be open to change

“Balance is a dynamic process; it changes with the days, the seasons, the years.” -- Sherrill Sellman

How rigid are your routines? Do you exercise for 30 minutes, three times each week no matter how you feel?

Routines and structure can provide a valuable framework to bring discipline to our lives. At the same time, we are always changing and it’s wise to be sensitive to our physical, emotional and mental states so we can ensure that our activities truly meet our needs. We need to be willing to change our patterns when our practices no longer serve us.

“Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found.” -- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“The smallest change in perspective can transform a life. What tiny attitude adjustment might turn your world around?” -- Oprah

The physical, emotional and mental realms are all effects! Shift into working with cause by developing your higher mind, heart and spirituality and then your lfe will significantly change for the better. Get in touch with your spiritual nature.

I agree that we should be sensitive to what our bodies need. If it is screaming for a break, take one. Not doing so will result in a longer recovery of energy. Life is always changing around us, so we must adapt and change with it.

Thank you to my friends John and Patrice Robson at Higher Awareness for allowing me to pass along this message.

I invite you to make one small change today. Sign up for these inspiring messages at: http://www.higherawareness.com/. John and Patrice have personal development plans that are encouraging, empowering and life changing, whether you're an author or not.

~Cheryl Kaye Tardif,

author of Whale Song

Warning signs and prevention of author burn-out

In response to fellow author Debra Purdy Kong's previous post on author burn-out, I left this comment and then decided it needed to be an actual post here.

Writing can indeed become an obsession, as can promoting one's book. I always suggest to authors (and often remind myself) that we must find a balance between writing, promoting, other jobs/chores, family, friends and fun. Each needs to be a slice of the pie for authors to feel completely successful and not burnt out.

Over the years I've witnessed author burn-out many times. I've come very close myself a few times. I've known authors who have given up writing; some have continued to write but no longer do book signings. I've seen some who barely promote their books at all.

Why do they burn out? Usually because they put so much time, energy and money into writing and promoting their most recent book and have experienced little money, reward or feeling of success. Sometimes they burn out because they had no idea what they were getting into, that writing and promoting is a fulltime career. Being an author doesn't mean instant success; we have to work very hard for it.

All authors must be very wary of burn-out, and there are some warning signs:

1. Do you dread turning on your computer to write or even answer emails?
2. Do you make excuses not to write?
3. Do you make excuses not to blog, hold book signings, write articles etc that promotes your book?
4. When I say "book signing" do you immediately go into whine mode and say "aw, not again"?
5. Do you feel your days are spent on the computer, nights too?
6. Have you turned down an evening or afternoon out or even a few hours this week with a friend, husband, wife, child because you're "too busy"?
7. Have you watched the sun come up from your office window in the past month?
8. Does your agent, publisher, editor, husband, wife, friend, child irritate you?

If you've answered yes to 4 or less, you are doing well, right on track and coping with your obligations.

If you've answered yes to 5 or 6 of these questions, be on guard for burn-out. It is looming around the corner. Take a break now to prevent it.

If you've said yes to 7, you're at the verge of a burn-out melt-down. Time for a break. Take a day or two or 7 off now. Don't wait. Take a break now, or break down later.

If you've said yes to all 8, you are seriously burnt out and this makes you useless to everybody, so go take a 1 week holiday in Mexico or Bermuda and start fresh afterward! :)

Here are some tips to preventing burn-out:

1. Pace yourself! Set limits per day and goals. Prioritize and take each deadline one project at a time. Don't overbook or overcommit yourself.
2. Learn to say no. Learn to pick your projects; say no to ones with urgent deadlines if possible. Just say No.
3. Schedule your day each morning, allowing time to have a break. Have lunch while watching Days of Our Lives.
4. If feeling exhausted, take two days off and do nothing but watch soap operas or On Demand movies all day long.
5. When you have a good, well-balanced day of work and play, reward yourself that evening. Chocolate works well...or margaritas...or mohitos...

Cheryl Kaye Tardif,
bestselling author of WHALE SONG

Blog Real Life

Nothing in fiction can top real life and I confess that I prefer fiction to memoir and biography. The sprinkling of imagination like spices on a gourmet dish can turn boring history into explosive fiction. Reality as the back drop for fiction needs to go outside the boundaries of hum-drum.

Belly of the Whale is the fictional account of twenty-four hours in the life of a young woman with breast cancer; a disease whose reality is lived everyday by so many people. If you look at statistics the numbers are staggering. Age forty, that mid-life crisis birthday, is when having mammograms should begin. Breast cancer occurs at any age, but more often as women get older. Your chances of not ever having cancer are slim, very slim. For most; it will happen.

Breast cancer is the nightmare turned real in the ordinary life of my character, Hudson Catalina. Bringing the quality of emotion that I felt was needed to depict a situation so grave and where all hope was lost began with the intention not to focus on the cancer but instead on what happens at an over-the-top level; when one person’s life is broadsided by bad news on a beautiful day.

Given previous experience and the fears that follow, how does someone cope with this type of diagnosis? How does the woman in my story maintain her ability to keep hope alive? Extensive research produced one common thread, family. The love, kindness and patience of a spouse, boyfriend, life companion, children, siblings, and friends are crucial to quality of life. Caregivers can have the opportunity to be the best they have ever been, the best husband, the best daughter, or the best brother.

Many people have been touched by cancer, as victim and as witness. Others have been touched by tragedy and by loss. What kind and how each are defined does not matter. There is darkness in every life. The challenge: can we come out on the other side spirit intact? We can because hope belongs to everyone. Without hope, there is nothing.

Blog what her hear, see, think and feel.

Linda Merlino, author, Belly of the Whale

It's All In The Details

How to fill in the details of a story?

As I was considering this question for Write On Wednesdays, my five-year old was coloring in her Disney coloring book. I am in awe of how specific she is about coloring. How she will match the color of the necklace to the hem of a dress. No one taught her to do this. She just looks in her box of crayons and makes these choices. And now, to my word-loving delight, she asks me to read the name of the crayon color. Purple Pizzazz. Red Violet. Midnight Blue. Tickle Me Pink. Mango Tango. And I can see she is just as excited about the descriptions, too. So it got me to thinking that writing the details of a story has a lot in common with coloring. You begin with the thick black sketch of an idea, and then you look in your box of crayons and begin filling in the image.

When it comes to writing about details, two things come to mind that I learned in college about my own writing. You see, I am a sprinter. I can get that black sketch outline on the page with no problem. But to be a writer of details, you must be prepared for a marathon. My writing professor chided me for always writing horizontally. He told me to write vertically, to write down. And this was sage advice. When I stop and slow down inside a scene, I understand what it means to write down, to write vertically, staying with a specific image or idea long enough to stretch it out from north to south, instead of being concerned with going so far east to west. And when I do this, I find this is the real joy of the writing process.

Now, when I begin a new novel, I still give in to sprinting through the action. I still have to do this and maybe that’s because I was a screenwriter before I began writing novels. But I’ve learned to trust this process. Once the rushed blueprint is written, I return to the beginning and spend most of my writing time going back and filling in the colors and the details.

The second lesson I remember about details was when my professor made an example of me in his class. I had written a scene about a housewife ironing. I wrote something like, “She did her work in solitude, moving the iron back and forth as if it was her dance partner.” Nothing brilliant here. But the lesson my prof illustrated was how this sentence made an inanimate object come to life, personified it in a way that revealed how this woman might be lonely, how she might be underappreciated. This example has stayed with me to this day. I like noticing how characters, and all people, are constantly revealing themselves in tiny, dramatic ways like my lonely housewife.

The way a husband always hits his teeth with the tines of a fork when he eats.

The way a grandmother puts two Sweet N Lows in her coffee and stirs counter-clockwise three times, every time.

The way a woman rubs her thumb across the cool metal of her wedding band. Why? To check if she’s still married? Or, to check if she’s STILL married?

It's all in the details.

--

K. Harrington

www.karenharringtonbooks.com