Learning the Ropes
By Bernadette Marie
This morning I had the opportunity to sit down with a young
man who just last week graduated from high school. He wants to be an author and
get into publishing. I sat down and showed him how I published.
Okay, I sat and
showed him all the apps and sites I used to make my dreams, and those of other
authors, come true.
As I explained certain things to him I realized that I had
learned the ropes of Indie and Small House publishing from trial and error.
What a great way to become an expert on something.
Those who fail and think they have failed…well they have. If
you fall down and don’t get back up how will you ever keep walking on your
journey?
Failing is a great way to learn. Taking every instance in
your life, which didn’t quite go your way, only opens the door for more great
opportunity.
If you want to be an author, you have to send your
manuscript out into the world. There are many ways to do this. You can give it
over to a beta reader and hope they give you good feedback. (By the way, having
them say, “Wow, that was good,” isn’t helpful. You need feedback.) You can send
it out to an agent or a publisher. That is one of the quickest ways of getting
rejection and hopefully they will send some reasoning!
Take their reasoning and
learn from it. When you self-publish, giving your work to the world to
criticize, you’re going to learn a lot! You’re going to learn the process (the
rights and wrongs of how to get the story out there.) You’re going to learn everything that is wrong with your
manuscript, because people love to tell you that. And you’re going to learn how
to fix it.
Are these failures? Nope they are learning experiences.
A book will go through a thousand different shapes from its
first word through publication and the author will too. Perhaps you’re not a
good speller, you’re a head hopper in POV, or your tenses mix. This will be
brought to your attention and you will have learned a new skill. Formatting is
a crazy thing! The first time you format your book for publication (assuming
you might try this yourself) it might take you the better part of ten hours,
the first time. In time, with enough emails from the printer telling you what
didn’t work for publication, you will learn how to format. In time the process
will take, perhaps, an hour.
We’d all like to be perfect right from the start. And even
if you’re one of those people who reads every direction and follows it to the
word, chances are you’re still taking the time to learn the ropes—and you still
might make a mistake. Well, that’s just one more opportunity for growth.
Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. Whether that’s
because you’re working so hard or you’re in the dirt praying for the strength
to make it through, you will learn the ropes. And, you will probably become an
expert at a few things. One will be failing with the intent to get better. The
other—getting up and using your new found skill.
About Bernadette Marie:
Bernadette
Marie has been an avid writer since the early age of 13, when she’d fill
notebook after notebook with stories that she’d share with her friends.
Her journey into novel writing started the summer before eighth grade when her
father gave her an old typewriter. At all times of the day and night you
would find her on the back porch penning her first work, which she would
continue to write for the next 22 years.
In 2007 –
after marriage, filling her chronic entrepreneurial needs, and having five
children – Bernadette began to write seriously with the goal of being published.
That year she wrote 12 books. In 2009 she was contracted for her
first trilogy and the published author was born. In 2011 she (being the
entrepreneur that she is) opened her own publishing house, 5 Prince Publishing,
and has released contemporary titles and began the process of taking on other
authors in other genres.
In 2012
Bernadette Marie found herself on the bestsellers lists of iTunes and Amazon to
name a few. Her office wall is lined with colorful PostIt notes with the
titles of books she will be releasing in the very near future, with hope that
they too will grace the bestsellers lists.
Bernadette
spends most of her free time driving her kids to their many events. She
is also an accomplished martial artist who will earn her conditional second
degree black belt in Tang Soo Do in October 2012. An avid reader, she
enjoys most, the works of Nora Roberts, Karen White, Megan Hart, to name a few.
She loves to meet readers who enjoy reading contemporary romances and she
always promises Happily Ever After.
Author Contact Info:
Website: www.bernadettemarie.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/authorbernadettemarie
Blogspot: www.authorbernadettemarie.blogspot.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/writesromance
