I wonder

I wonder... is it really possible to become a bestselling author?

I've been thinking about that for the last hour or so... that's kind of a dream of mine. However, there is a huge possibility that it will never happen.

Why? Well, 1) I'm lazy 2) there's a lot of competition out there and 3) because... I'm afraid that I don't know what I'm doing and everyone will read my book and think that I'm a complete idiot.

That third reason probably scares me more than anything.

Even so, I'm still going to risk looking like a fool and try and get my spy novel written and hopefully published.

Honestly, I would love to make my living being a novelist and a freelance writer. I'm fine with my day job for now, but I would really like to make writing my one and only profession one day. But it's going to be hard. Freelance work is always scarce, and you have to hustle to get it. And just because you write a novel, doesn't mean that anyone besides family and friends will read it and it will become a bestseller. Hell, there are no guarantees that your family will even read it! I'm still trying to get my mom to read Freakonomics, and I bought that book for her SEVEN years ago, lol.

Writing (or anything in the arts, for that matter) is a tough profession to make a decent living in doing. It's interesting how I've only really wanted to partake in professions where I would have to hustle or get lucky to succeed in (talent matters too, don't get me wrong)... at first, I wanted to be a professional athlete as a kid (I dreeeeamed of being a gymnast... sadly, I was too tall, and then I wanted to play major league baseball.... sadly, I was a girl). Then I wanted to be an actor (my mom talked me out of it). At one point in time, I wanted to be a psychologist, which would have been reasonable, but I got deterred by the schooling (10 years of schooling... I couldn't handle the thought). And now I want to be a novelist... couldn't I have just settled for wanting to be an accountant? Me and my pipe dream artistic aspirations... damn.

For now, I'm dreaming of what could possibly be one day. I may never make it as a successful novelist, and that's kind of scary. But I guess there is no harm in trying, right? I don't think I can be an analyst forever. And I'm striking out hard in the tech writing field, due to no experience. My career prospects have reached a brick wall in the gov't contracting arena, you could say. It seems like there is no time like the present to just take a leap of faith and pursue failing at something that couldn't be any worse than what I'm failing at right now (I'm not exactly failing, I'm just kind of cruising on a linear path, which is ok for now, I guess).

I'm ready to suck it up and work at it. At least if I fail, at least I can say I tried. And trying is better than not doing anything at all.

PS - I didn't hit 10,000 words for National Novel writing month, but I did get over 4,500. Not bad, but I could do better. Back to work!

What happens when you write in a bar

No, I am not shopping for a gun. However, I did spend some time this weekend looking up the type of guns that the CIA carry for my spy novel, so it can be as accurate as possible.

Funny story... Serena and I were busy writing our novels for National Novel month at Rio Grande Café in their bar area this past Saturday when I realized that I needed to find a gun for my protagonist, Colton, to carry with him. I didn't want him to carry a PPK, like James Bond, since that would have been too cliché, so I googled "what type of guns are carried by CIA agents".

The gun, pictured, is a Springfield 1911. It looks like a pretty fierce gun, and I figured that Colton could do some damage with that bad boy. I then clicked on Google Images and brought up several pictures of this type of gun. As I turned away to talk to Serena about it for a bit, a guy sitting next to me suddenly asked me "Hey, are you shopping for guns?"

I turned to him, mortified, and said "Oh no! I'm just looking up the type of guns that are carried by CIA agents. It's totally for the spy novel that I'm writing. I'm just trying to make it accurate. Please don't think I'm out in the open looking for one."

Serena laughed when I said that. The guy then let me know that he had a job where he was some type of gun expert (he looked like he was in the military), and recommended that I consider having Colton use a Mue soc .45 or a Springfield 1911. He said that's what agents usually carry, since they can unload and reload them pretty easily.

"Oh wow, thanks so much!" I responded to him, still mortified, especially since I didn't want this guy to think I was a loon. I chatted with him and his friend that was sitting next to him for a little bit, and then they paid their tab and they left.

Serena said to me not too long after that "Well, that's one way to meet guys."

Hee hee. I was embarrassed, but the incident was kind of funny.

Still working on the novel... I may hit 10,000 (I'm only at 3850... good luck to me) words by Saturday evening. We'll see.

Novelling

Yes, I'm writing a novel.

I'm doing it for National Novel month (or whatever it's called... click here for the link) and I'm about 2500 words in.

I've actually been writing my spy novel (hence the James Bond photo of my favorite one, Pierce Brosnan) for about 2 months and counting now. I'm kind of stuck. My protagonist has been in his hotel room thinking about his life for awhile now. I need to get him off and running so that he can save the world from the chemical attack that my antagonist is planning.

Ambitious? Yes, I know. I hardly know anything about the CIA and spies outside of James Bond movies. I did do a little research last Saturday and realized that I know a lot more than I thought I did, however. I actually know that spies don't kill people every five minutes and that most of what they do is track down leads and pass information from their informants to their superiors. It made me happy to know that I haven't been busy writing a novel that is completely unrealistic. Whew.

My protagonist's name is Colton Lane (I love his name). He has a love interest named Katerina, and she's like, the femme fatale to end all femme fatales. Ok, I may be a little over the top with that statement, but she's pretty cool. They team up together to take down The Master, an elusive figure who's trying to sell off a chemical device to the highest bidder and prevent him from creating chaos in the world. Or something like that. I'm still ironing out all of the details, about The Master's end game, but that's my novel in a nutshell.

I've been really excited to write this novel, but I've seemed to hit a brick wall at 10 pages. That's how all of my writings go. I hit the 8 to 10 page mark, and forget about it for awhile (and awhile equals years, sometimes). I'm really trying not to do this this time around, but old habits die hard.

Anyhoo, I'm going to try and get going with my story in the next 2 weeks. I don't anticipate on having 30,000 words down, but maybe 10,000? That would be a huge milestone to reach for me.