Good afternoon everyone. I'm here to welcome Camille Pagán, author of Life and Other Near-Death Experiences and The Art of Forgetting as a guest author on Just Commonly today.
Eight Things I Didn’t Know Before Becoming An Author
1. Writing a novel is a lot like running a
marathon or birthing a child. The further along you are, the more it hurts. But
the only way out is through.
2. And then you finish and forget all the pain,
and it’s amazing. There are few things more exciting than seeing your name on the
cover of a book for the first time.
3. Every writing milestone is worth celebrating.
New book idea? Buy yourself some chocolate and a good cup of coffee! First
chapter written, and it’s actually good? Time for champagne! First draft
finished? Nice dinner and more champagne! The thing about writing is that you
may spend months or even years on a book that never sees the light of day. But
that doesn’t mean it’s a waste. It’s all good if you approach it that way.
4. Half of everyone you’ve ever met will assume your
protagonists are really you in disguise. And even though you know they’re not,
it is true that there are little
pieces of you in every character you create.
5. The
other half will assume you’re writing about them. Stealing people’s lives feels
like cheating, but nothing you say will ever convince anyone otherwise.*
6. *Your cause will not be helped by the fact
that you accidentally use a childhood acquaintance’s name in your first novel
and don’t realize it until another childhood friend points it out to you.
7. There are mean-spirited people out there, and
they will write cruel reviews—about your book, and maybe even about you as a
person. But here’s the thing: if you met these people in real life, you
wouldn’t like them very much anyway. They’re not your people. So you learn to
ignore them and keep writing.
8. This is made easier by the fact that your
people—that is, the readers you are writing
for—will email and approach you at readings and say things like, “Your book got
me through a hard time in life,” or “Your novel made me feel less alone.” They
will remind you that you do have something worth saying and that someone out
there is waiting to read it.
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—Camille Pagán is a journalist, the health editor
at Real Simple magazine, and the
author of the #1 Kindle Bestselling novel Life
and Other Near-Death Experiences.
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For Just Commonly's full review of Life and Other Near-Death Experiences and a giveaway to win your own print copy, click HERE or on the image below.
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