Writing Q&A

 

In todays blog post I thought I would answer nine questions related to writing and my career as a writer

1. What inspired you to pursue a career in writing?

My mother started writing her own book series when I was a little girl and I wanted to just be like her; and while my life hasn’t turned out how I pictured it would I am very happy that it has turned out that I can write for a living and share my stories with the world. 

2. How do you stay motivated when facing writer's block?

I work on multiple stories at a time so when I face writers block I just put a pin in that book and work on another. At a later date I will reread my story and if I am still stuck I will move on from that scene and come back to it after. 

3. What's your writing process like from idea generation to publication?

I address this in my book on writing An authors guide to writing by Phoebe M.C. But once I have come up with an idea I write a rough plan on what I want to happen; start writing. Put the book on stand down for three months then edit and self publish it. 

4. How do you balance creativity with the demands of running a writing business?

I will manage all my social media and the demands of advertising etc. through the day and work on my books with the creative side at night. 

5. Could you share a memorable writing success story or milestone in your career?

I think it’s he biggest milestone in my career was seeing the first book in The hybrid series get over 60 buys in the first six months of the book release. The most buys I had ever had in any of my books; and while it only had one five star review I knew that with more improvement I would make my dream come true. 

6. What are the most significant challenges you've faced in treating your writing as a business, and how did you overcome them?

Self doubt for sure; thinking my work isn’t good enough or that no one will like it. I overcome this by looking at my previous book sales; learning what I did wrong in previous books and work out a plan to get better with each book I write. 

7. What advice would you give to writers looking to self-publish their work and market it effectively?

My main advice would be to make sure your book is as good as you can possibly get it and don’t be scared when you don’t see people buying it immediately. On the front of how to market effectively; share the hell out of it. Talk about it whenever you can, make a tiktok and market it that way as well can lead to a lot of sales. 

8. How do you manage your time effectively to balance writing, marketing, and other aspects of your writing business?

I write 2-4 nights a week for around two hours a night and in that time I only focus on my book. Once a week I will bulk film/ write up promotional tweets and posts and then upload them throughout the week in the mornings. 

9. How do you measure success in your writing career, beyond just financial aspects?

While I haven’t actually seen a lot of money from my Amazon books (unlike my HiNovel books) I measure my success by any reviews I get, comments on my social media and just knowing that even if it flops that in writing and editing that book that I learned what to do better for my next book

What other questions do you have for me? If you want to start writing but don’t know where to start consider checking out my book on writing. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CHM7NBL6?ref_=pe_3052080_276849420

How I did with my 2023 writing goals

 My goals for 2023 were 

• write 100,000 words
• Publish all of my hybrid series
• Finish writing all unfinished books
• Edit 2 books 

How I did?

I managed to publish all of my hybrid series within the first month of 2023, I managed to write the only unfinished book I had sitting there waiting to be written and managed to edit it all by June 2023. I then started writing and editing another book which I just finished in November 2023. 

I didn’t manage to write 100k words I only hit 78k but that’s still good enough to me. 

tips, tricks and tools that help keep your writing career organised

 

Whether you write for pleasure, part time or full time it can be hard to keep all your work organised. 

- Having a place dedicated to your writing is beneficial because you can keep all your supplies in one place. 

- having your documents in files will be really helpful because then you can just click into the file you want and have all the information you need. Each writing project has a file with everything you need as well as files for ideas, writing, stand down, editing and published etc.

- have a writing routine that works for you

My best writing routine yet

 

Writing with a child is very difficult I find it hard to concentrate as well as find the time to be able to write. 

But with this routine I’ve managed to juggle being a mum and writing. 

i write when I can, Which means when my daughter is playing or watching TV I write on my phone.

which means when my daughter is playing or watching TV I write on my phone.

When my daughter is asleep I write on my laptop; and when she’s feeding I plan out books. 

It’s not great because I don’t get to concentrate for long periods of time only 10-15 minutes here and there throughout the day but it works for us and that’s all that matters. 

When it comes to editing I will edit a chapter a day while she’s playing, watching TV, eating or sleeping whatever she’s doing that doesn’t require me I will be editing that one chapter a day. 

An authors guide to writing

 Pre-order now

An authors guide to writing By Phoebe M.C.

An author's guide to writing is my book on all the things I wish I knew before starting to write my first book from how to world build, the pros and cons of self-publishing and so much more.

I started to write this book back in 2020 when I published my first four books and have been slowly writing it ever since. This book is literally everything I have learned about writing, self publishing, editing  and marketing over the past three years

How to get book ideas

 

Getting book ideas can be hard work especially if you have written all your ideas already but it’s not impossible to get more. 

- look at book covers: I find looking at sites that sell book covers can give me a few book ideas.

- Pinterest: I find scrolling through Pinterest images gives me inspiration to write a new book  

- writing prompts: writing prompts is a good way to start writing a book; you might not know where the book is heading but it’s a good way to start writing which leads to more ideas in my experience.

- look at what works: looking at what is helped me in the past with writing so another words looking at what box of mine sells the best helps me come up with more ideas like that which guarantees more sales. 

Self publishing pros and cons

 

Self publishing is an easy way for you get your book on the market but does that mean it’s the best option? I’ll be going over the pros and cons today so you can make the best decision for you when your book. 

Pros:

-Better Royalties: Traditionally, publishing houses pay authors royalties on the books they sell. For example, you might receive 10 percent to 15 percent of the list price of each book sold

-Faster Exposure: One of the benefits of self-publishing is that your book gets to market faster than it would via traditional methods.

-Longer “Shelf Life”: One of the biggest benefits of self-publishing over traditional publishing is that it gives your book a longer period in which to find its audience. 

-Every decision is yours: instead of having the publisher down your throat wanting to control the price of your book, the cover and everything else every decision is yours to make.

-Anyone can do it: anyone can self publish while it’s insanely hard to break into the traditional publishing world. 

Cons:

-Less Editorial Support: Of course, self-publishing is not without its downsides. One of the main drawbacks of publishing on your own is not having the benefit of an editorial team at your back. 

-Less Marketing Support: Just as self-published writers are on their own when it comes to editing, they have to take the reins for marketing and distributing their products. 

- Fewer sales: a lot of people aren’t willing to give self published new authors a chance. 

Interview with a book character

 

I thought I would give you a character interview with my newest book character Taylor. 

1. 1. Where were they born? 
2. I was born in Crystal Lake in Illinois
3. 
   
4. 2. Who are their parents? 
5. My mother is Janet Davis and my father is John Davis 
6. 
   
7. 3. Where do they live? 
8. my mum lives in Naples Florida and I don’t know where my father is 
9. 
   
10. 4. What is their greatest achievement?
11. My greatest achievement is getting out of Lockwood asylum as well as moving out of Florida 
12.  
13. 5. What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s happened to you?

The most embarrassing thing that has happened to me is when I pissed myself when I was arrested

1. 6. Who do they consider their closest friend or best friend? 
2. My best friend is George he is the only person who has ever stuck by me. 

1. 7. Do they have a romantic partner? 
2. I guess Mason counts as a romantic partner. 
3. 
   
4. 8. Which family members are they close with?
5. I’m not close with any family members 

becoming the female stephen king

Growing up, I was obsessed with Stephen King. When I started writing to be published, I soon began studying everything he has ever done because, unlike most people, I had an unhealthy obsession with becoming the female version of him.

i was always trying to get my writing up there with him and i got close at times while he doesn't say how many words per minute he can write by working out that he writes 2,000 words a day and spends roughly three to four hours writing a day. i worked out that his word per minute is around 11.1 words. this shocked me because i had always thought that it was way more than that especially since i was already writing 60 words per minute.

Stephen King published his first book when he was 26 years old, he had tried with many other books and never gotten there but Carrie would change that.

i published my first book by a self publishing website at 14 but later took it off the market due to thinking i could edit and sell my own book all by myself which i couldn't and actually left a large chunk of my book unedited (amateur move Phoebe amateur move)

My next book i published was actually though self-publishing at the age of 17 and that was the real start of my writing career in my opinion.

After I published my first I quickly wrote and published 9 more books meaning I was well on my way to becoming famous even if only one book took off. 

While I don’t know if I will ever become the female version of Stephen king it gives me something to work towards and to never stop fighting to get my books out there into the world. 

How to advertise a self published book

 

Writing and Publishing a book is hard work and an amazing achievement but it doesn’t end there you still have to advertise the book if you want to make book sales. 

Here are all my tips I personally use to get book sales. 

Free kindle book promotion: before I published the final books in my book series I ran a free kindle book promotion which gained me a lot of new readers and even led to a few books sales on my newer books. 

Use social media: I run a Twitter, Instagram, Facebook pages and tiktok for my writing and I post teasers and the book covers regularly with top trending sounds and hashtags. 

And finally run ads: running Facebook, google and Amazon ads can generate a lot of sales. 

How do you advertise your books?

How I edit my books

 

Because I don’t have a lot of money at the moment to reinvest into my writing I thought I would share with you how I self-edit my books. 

I start by reading my manuscript through and highlighting bits I want to rewrite for clarity, I also fix my spelling mistakes once all of that is done I run the book through Grammarly and fix all the suggestions they make that make sense for my book.

I leave my book for a few weeks before doing that all over again and fixing any other mistakes I find along the way and I will continue to this until I feel my book is finished. I then send it to my beta readers and I fix any edits they find. 

If you are on a tight budget do you do the same as me or do you do it differently? Let me know in the comment section below because I would love to improve myself. 

How to write a query letter

 Writing a query letter is always something I have struggled with. I find it so hard to put my books into words that will attract agents, but I think I finally have it down-packed, and I want to share it with you today. 

The elements of a query letter is something I always never understood until I did my research. 

You should Identify where your book would fit into the publishing industry. Mention the genre, sub-category, word count, title, and subtitle. Providing this information allows the agent/editor to quickly grasp what the manuscript is about, especially where the title fits in the big picture.

You can also include examples of best-selling or award-winning published books in that genre or category, but make sure not to sound overly pushy.

Next, include a hook, which is the meat of the query. Approximately 100 to 250 words will be sufficient and then a short synopsis of your book. Then add a brief author's bio. You also want to include any other books you have published and how you published them and close off with a greatful statement 

I like to use this template to help me structure my query letters and remember to always proof read and edit your letter you want to sound as professional as possible. 

How I wrote and published 10 books in 5 years

Wrongful Love

on the 24th of February 2019, I sat down and decided to start writing. not sure if it was going to go anywhere but I had to try. By may 24th 2019 I had completed writing a 23,528-word novella I set to editing and by June 30th I had finished editing and had sent it away to my aunt to proofread and do some editing. I came up with the name on 8th June 2019 when I was trying to think of a name for a Wattpad book. by 29th may 2020 all the editing was done. And I was sending it off to three publishing houses in hopes of getting published I, however, did get accepted to all three but realized that wasn't the direction I wanted to go with my novella so I self-published on November 17th 2020

Rejected mate

I started writing the rejected mate back in 2018 when I was only fifteen years old, the book landed up being 15k words long. In 2020 I got approached by HiNovel and they wanted to sign it on for an exclusive contract which I agreed too, the money from this book and the two others I signed paid for my book cover for Wrongful love. i edited the book abd made it 20k words now in 2023 its sotting at arpund 30k 

The gamer girl

I started writing the gamer girl in 2018 i then signed it with hinovel in 2020 where i edited it to 30k words

Double trouble

I started writing double trouble in 2018 with a grand total of 30k words hinovel then signed it on am exclusive contract. 

My hybrid mate

on the 1st July 2019, i sat down and started writing, i already had 6k in the story which i managed to do in 2 days. for the first 25 days in July, i managed to write the first draft of the story. i finished the story off with just over 50k words. on December 1st i went back and re-edited and re-read the book and made all the changes i had to, i then reread the story with all the changes and sent it to my aunt to proofread and edit. once that was done i sent the book away and included that the book was one of the books out of three in a mini-series all in a different point of views and different time dates and the average length of the other two books just in case they wanted to pick all three up which would save time. None of the agents wanted to take on my book or the series so I decided to self publish on the 25th December 2022.

The hybrid sisters

this book took from august 2019 to December 2019 to finish the first draft, on August 1st 2021 i started editing and doing all of that stuff. I self published on 11th January 2023.  

A wolfs choice gone wrong

On the 1st November 2019, I started writing a wolfs choice gone wrong for NaNoWriMo, by day 24 I had written 50k words and the first draft was complete, it went into its stand-down period and i started final Edit of the book on 4th  January 2023 i started to edit the book and re-read it and it was ready to self publish on 10th of January 2023

The banshee curse

On the 1st of April 2020, I started to write the banshee curse; with 5,000 words on the first day, I knew I could get this book written in the entire 30 days. on day 32, I had written the whole book at a total of 45,160 words. the book went into the stand-down period. I started editing it on the 1st of December, 2022. By the 3rd of January 2023, the book was ready to be published, and I did this by self-publishing on the 4th of January 2023. 

Endometriosis: a rude awakening 

I don’t remember when I started writing Endometriosis: a rude awakening but I started my edits at the start of 2022 and self published the book on July 21st 2022

Short story collection

I started writing short stories in 2020 and edited them the same day I wrote them after I wrote 14 short stories I compiled them into a book and published them on October 18th 2022