It’s also easier to see when something is not working before I’ve written an entire book. I’m still a seat of the pants writer, but now I’m more organized, capture my research in a single file, and have a fairly detailed synopsis before I begin writing. Words must be written in a timely manner. I no longer have leisure hours to spend dilly-dallying over the exact word that fits in a sentence. Now that I have two books out and a third in the editing process, what I’ve found is that time is more precious than ever. Time is not available in an unlimited supply. I still had edits and promotion and writing the next novel – but it was so much sweeter to be part of a publishing team. Things happened behind the scenes that gave me goose bumps. I had a fabulous editor who loved my book, a design team who loved to play with fonts and images, a marketing department who loved to write ad copy and sell things, a publicist who had all the inside tracks for reviews and interviews, and an agent who smoothed the whole process. I no longer felt solely responsible for the outcome. Suddenly I was part of a team with a common goal: Make my book the best possible product and put it out there. And I can’t help but think that the social networking overall makes the marketing and platform job easier.Īfter struggling to get noticed, to get an agent, and to get a contract, a drastic shift happened after my first book was contracted. No one needs to feel they are navigating alone.

The good thing is that there are lots of “helps” out there. I want to partner with my publishers to make the biggest impact with my books, but it’s a challenge that no one told me about. This aspect of the publishing world has been both daunting and rewarding. And in the early days of my writing, FaceBook and Twitter hadn’t even been invented. I had no clue that one day my vocabulary would include terms like technorati, stat counting, web presence, branding, networking, and marketing.

I’m not a technically savvy person, but not long into this journey, I realized I would need a website and a blog and a platform. My second book, Broken Wings, has just released. Almost ten years to the day from the time I began writing, I held my first published book in my hands. Seven months after I signed with her, I was offered a two-book contract with FaithWords.

After thirty seven rejections, a major edit, and several good showings in contests, it caught the eye of an agent. In 2004, I began the book which became Chasing Lilacs. While I wrote for them from time to time, I was also studying the craft and writing novels. In 2002, I was invited to the Guideposts Writers Workshop in New York which gave my career the jumpstart it needed.

Broken Wings by Carla Stewart