Tag: Writing

A Compliment

by eileentroemel, posted in Writing

I know I’m a good writer and editor.  While my books aren’t perfect, I know I tell a good story.  However, there are days when I feel like I can’t do anything right.

Writing is a tough job which requires dedication, concentration, and perseverance.  One of the things I struggle with daily for writing is marketing my books.  Really I need reviews – lots and lots of reviews.  Preferably positive reviews but always HONEST reviews.

On a regular basis, I send out requests for people to read my books and provide a review.  I send a lot of these emails.  I feel lucky if I get one or two responses to the emails and thrilled if I actually get a review.

I won’t say who but I got an email from a reviewer recently.  I’m always apprehensive about these emails – did they like my stuff; did they hate it?  Will they write a review?  Are they going to say what was I thinking?

I read this email – well written, professional but not giving an indication of how the review was going to go.  Each word holds me enthralled as I hope for a good review.

I’ve written reviews.  I’ve worked with publishers who want you to be snarky, harsh, and even mean (though I draw the line there unless it’s a really bad book).  I get the requirements and expectations.

I read this email.  It may sound dramatic but my heart in my throat and at the end of it, the reviewer says, “you’re a great poet, but you already know that”.

I hope I am.  I dream of being one but …  to hear someone else, a complete stranger say that to me.  In the moment, it made my day.  It was a small sentence which carried big impact.  I still have no idea of what the review says – can’t wait to read it.  But that small compliment lifted me from my cranky self to a place which reminded me I was on the right track.  Thank you to the reviewer.

A New Scooter!

by eileentroemel, posted in Life, Writing

I ordered my new scooter yesterday!  My DVR counselor pushed the paperwork and got all of it done so I could get my scooter on order!  The scooter should be here in a week to ten days.

I still have to go back to work with the manual wheel chair next week but there will be an end in sight for the pain I’ll have to cope with.

This morning I slept late again but am now tackling my to do list.  I’ve gotten a couple done and am now working on the computer.

Last night I finished watching Land Girls which is a BBC show based during WWII about the women who relocated to work on farms while the men went to war.  It was an interesting show and highlighted some interesting aspects of life in the 40s.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like there will be more seasons of this.  Now I’ll have to look for something new to watch.

I did get some writing done yesterday afternoon.  There’s a story I’m playing with which is coming in spits and spurts rather than waves.  I’m not sure it will amount to more than an outline / rough draft.  Normally I can see or feel where the story is going, with this one I can’t.  Time will tell on this one.

I made progress with some of my other projects.  One of the publishers got back to me with a tentative yes on two articles.  Progress all around on many things.

Quiet and Calm Today?

by eileentroemel, posted in Crochet and crafting, Life, Writing

Wedding present done!  Wedding was beautiful and fun.  Now today, I’m going to be a bum.  I have to go back to work tomorrow.  I’m feeling a bit worn out so today is a day of rest.

Tomorrow I have to call to find out more information on hitches.  Then I have to get quotes on receiver adapters in all likelihood.  I also have to check to see if the company I’m getting my scooter through has heard anything from the insurance company.

It will be an interesting week.  I’m getting through to the first week in August when I have a week off.  I’ve declared that a week for writing.  I’ve got a list of things I want to get done so I’m hoping for few interruptions and lots of accomplishments.

On top of the successes I’ve had in getting things accepted and published, I’ve also been getting rejections.  These are always difficult – part of me says, why don’t you like my stuff but I try to remember how publication works and let it go.  It’s when I get a lot in one day or week that it overwhelms a bit.

I’ve got two Goodreads giveaways going on right now.  One ends tomorrow and the other ends at the end of the month.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Collection of Four Scarves by Eileen Troemel

Collection of Four Scarves

by Eileen Troemel

Released March 09 2015
Giveaway ends in 1 day (July 18, 2016)
3 copies available, 380 people requesting

Enter Giveaway

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Defenders of the People by Eileen Troemel

Defenders of the People

by Eileen Troemel

Released September 17 2014
Giveaway ends in 15 days (July 31, 2016)
3 copies available, 86 people requesting

Enter Giveaway

On Smashwords, some of my books are on sale!  You should go check it out.  If you go to my page, you can look at my books to see which ones are on sale.  https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/kevvs229   It says on the right underneath where you add to the cart.  Some of my stuff is free and some is on sale.

I’m going to have a mellow day.  I’m sticking with jammies today and not thinking too much so it can be a mellow day.  I’ve been watching Madam Secretary which is pretty good.  I’m partway through the second season.

At the same time, I’ve got two stories in my head which need to come out so maybe some writing time.  It depends on my mood as I move forward with my day.  At this point, little effort sounds good but I can only do that for so long before my brain rebels.

Checked Off

by eileentroemel, posted in Crochet and crafting, Life, Writing

Last night as I’m trying to go to sleep, all I can think about is the scenes which are coming up in my new novel.  In my head, I’ve mapped out the rest of the book.  It will be interesting to see if I follow what I mapped out or if my characters will derail me.

Today I’m hoping to work on the list of things I need to get done.  Ken did the grocery shopping and I did the rebates etc once I got up.  In coupons we saved over $12 and in rebates we saved over $5.

Once the coupons were done, I made fruit salad while Ken got lunch in the oven.  Vicki got me a new purse so I swapped out purses today.  Normally Vicki swaps my purses for me but I did it this time.  She’ll probably steal my purse next time and reorganize it.  But this was on my list.

I was able to get half the scarf done last night.  I’m hoping to finish it today when Ken and I watch Criminal Minds.  Then it’s a matter of taking pictures and sending them to the editor.  Then I cross my fingers and hope they want to include it in their issue.

This still leaves me a few smaller tasks.  As I was waking up this morning, I was thinking about the wedding gift I need to make.  I think I’ve figured out what, how many of each and possible design for each item.  I’m looking forward to creating these and hope I can get the materials prepped for the project today yet but time is my enemy.

From my list, I’ve managed to finish 13 items but still have 5 items on the list.  It’s already 11 in the morning so I don’t know if I’ll get them all done today.  However, I’ll keep working on them this week.  I’m trying to balance out writing with all of its deadlines with crafting which also has deadlines.

Projects – Writing and Crochet

by eileentroemel, posted in Crochet and crafting, Life, Writing

So far, I have four spring scarf patterns and one shawl to publish.  I have probably two more scarves I’ll make up and then I’ll go into publish mode with them.  This will mean a couple of days of getting the files set up, covers made, and then publishing.  After I publish, I will post on Facebook, Twitter, here, Ravelry, and a few other places.  This all takes time.

I’m hoping to have the two scarves done shortly – maybe this week.  I meant to crochet last night but I had such a headache, I could not manage it.  Light was hurting my head.  I gave up and turned off the lights, put my chair back and watched Criminal Minds in the dark.  I couldn’t even text without the phone bothering my eyes.

Hopefully tonight I’ll be able to work on crocheting.  I’ve got three things I want to finish before the end of the week if my head will cooperate.

Once that is done, I’ll probably look at editing as I have the two novels done for the first draft.  I need to do the searches for all the words I overuse.  Then a spelling and grammar check before I print and do a read through edit.  At the same time, I want to work on writing and finishing two other projects I have going.

The craft room still needs finishing.  I need to make time to finish it soon.  I’ve got more things to go in there as I’ve finished some projects and need to put excess yarn away from it.

I spoke with someone who said they retired from their job years ago but within a year went back to work because they were essentially bored.  I really don’t understand this.  I’d like more non-work time to be able to try out more of the things I like to do.

I know everyone is different.  I’m fairly certain it would take me at least a year to run out of projects (probably two years).  At which time, my daughter would have more projects she’d like me to do.  I don’t have enough time to get all the things done I want to do.

No Shortage of Tasks

by eileentroemel, posted in Crochet and crafting, Life, Writing

The last two weeks have been rough for me with pain.  The weather is causing my arthritis to grumble (or scream).  Yet I don’t have time to wallow (well maybe a little).

May 2 I started a new novel.  I couldn’t get the words on the page fast enough.  By May 11, I’d finished the novel.  I love it when the inspiration hits hard and fast like this.  At the same time, I went back to add in a few more scenes for Wayfarer 11.  It’s on my need to be edited list.

I have a wedding shower to go to next Saturday and am working on the gift for that.  I have it about a third of the way done.  I’ll be spending some time this weekend watching movies and crocheting.  In addition to the shower gift, I finished off a gift for a friend.  I made her a bunch of dish towels, hand towels, and dish cloths.  Those went in the mail to her this week.

The day is gray and grumpy looking this morning but I have been at my computer since before 8 am working on different tasks.  I’ve paid bills, updated my spreadsheets, did a tiny bit of marketing, submitted three articles to paying publications.  I posted an preview for one of my books on Goodreads.  I need to figure out which scenes from each of my books and post them.

As is normal, my list is never ending for tasks I need to get done.  Shortly, I’ll be going to run errands.  Fortunately I only have a couple today.  I also need to clip coupons, check the apps for rebates, and write up the grocery list.  All so Ken will be able to do the grocery shopping tomorrow.

Last night I watched Age of Adeline which was quite good.  I also watched The Gambler which was depressing and annoying.  I got several inches done on the shower gift.  I’m hoping to finish this project this weekend.  I have several others I want to get done in a short period of time.  This means I’m letting my writing rest for a few days.

Having said that, I’ve gone back and added a prologue (possibly a new first chapter) to one story I’ve been working on.  I thought I had lost about 5000 words in the third Defenders novel.  I was cleaning my flashdrive and looked at a file I hadn’t looked at before.  It had the several scenes I thought I’d lost.  I was quite excited about this.  It saves me a lot of work in redoing.  Having found those scenes, I was able to write about another 1500 words in the story.

I’m hoping to finish both of these projects this summer.  With luck, I’ll have four books to publish over the next six months.  I also have several crochet patterns I’m going to work on publishing as well.  There is definitely no shortage of things for me to do.

Where did the week go?

by eileentroemel, posted in Life, Writing

This week sleep has been interrupted – I sleep for two hours and wake up; but writing has been fast and furious all week.  Starting last Friday, Ken and I have been busy.  We drove to Indiana to visit Vicki.  We spent Saturday with her and in the evening we drove home.

We got home about 11:30 and my legs were tired.  Sunday I meant to work on the craft room but my legs were still hurting.  I spent the day crocheting – finishing a scarf for Vicki and catching up on the shows we missed all week.  It was good to finish the project and worked on an afghan.

Sunday night I started writing on Wayfarer 11.  Since then, I’ve been writing every night this week.  I’ve added nearly 20,000 words to the novel and finished it off.  It is now out to my test readers which means, I sit back and wait for the feedback from them.

This novel will sit for at least a week so I can let go of the story enough to do the editing.  Meanwhile, I have to decide what’s next.  I have an article I proposed and need to write it.  However, I still have to finish the craft room, crochet a skirt and an afghan.  I’ve started reading this new book which has enthralled me.  So many possibilities – I just need to narrow it down and prioritize the list.  Really it’s a matter of what I feel like working on most when I sit down with some free time.

On the good news front, I had an article accepted and a layout copy sent to me.  It was a rush to see.  I always forget how exciting it is to see my work in print.  It’s more positive reinforcement for me to keep writing.

Errands, Bookwork, Snow, and Organizing

by eileentroemel, posted in Crochet and crafting, Life, Writing

This morning I got up much earlier than I wanted to but I paid bills, did budget, and placed an order with our butcher shop – Sorgs.  Ken and I ran out to Sorgs through snow and wind.  After Sorgs and bringing the stuff home, we went to Joann’s, Home Depot, and Wendy’s.  At Joann’s I bought material for gifts I’m making.  Of course I had coupons.  While I spent $29, I saved $32 in the process.

At Home Depot we priced out projects we want to do to the house.  I asked a lot of questions and the people were very helpful.  We picked up what we needed to finish my shelves for the craft room.  On our way home we picked up lunch.

Ken has since finished my shelves.  My next stop will be going to the craft room to organize and put away all my goodies.  For now, I’m working on catching up the checkbook and recording my sales for March.  I’ve also figured out how to automatically calculate a breakdown of my sales – so by month by vendor by book type – in January from Kindle I sold how many crochet patterns, or novels, etc.

Formulas and I in Excel don’t always work.  Stephanie helped me find the right one.  I got it set up, copied and now all I have to do is enter my sales by book and it figures out how to count it.  I can now easily tell which category of book is selling at what percent, percent of sales each month compared to the total annual sales.  I can tell you through which vendor I sell the most books.  Finally I’ve broken it down by category and vendor.  This should allegedly help me focus my marketing.  I might have to do some graphs to get a better handle on it.

In the last half hour, I’ve looked out my window and saw blue sky and driving sideways snow.  Welcome to Wisconsin’s spring!  Goofy weather.

On to organizing.  I am hoping to make my craft room look much more presentable by the end of the day.  I’m also hoping to have to ask for minimal help from Ken.  However, I shouldn’t be moving shelving units around so we shall see how things go.  

A Good Story

by eileentroemel, posted in Writing

I haven’t written a lot in the way of stories in a while.  I was beginning to feel like I couldn’t anymore.  I’ve been editing, writing patterns and so on but actually sitting down to write scene after scene, I haven’t done in months.

Last night I got lost in the telling of my story.  I started out grumbling to myself about how tired I was and how I wasn’t sure where I was going, and a variety of other things.  I had this whole mental dialog at the end of which I essentially told myself to quit whining.  I spent several hours writing and by the time I was done, I had written eight small scenes, about 4000 words.

As I was writing the flow just seemed to come to me.  I couldn’t type fast enough, as I was finishing one scene the next would pop into my head.  I could almost see them play out in my head.

Being a responsible adult – which not as fun as kids think it is – I turned out the lights at 11:15 to go to bed so Monday wouldn’t be MONDAY.  Instead of sleeping, I lay in the dark wondering if I had written good scenes, if they were too short, too back and forth.  Among a million other things, the book kept going through my head.

After a bad night’s sleep and a long day at work, I’m back at my computer.  I reread the scenes and they are quick but I don’t think too quick.  I think I’ve got the right mood, tone, and rhythm I want in them.  One or two of them might need to be fleshed out more with a bit of description but for the most part these are conversations so you get to know the characters better.

Wayfarer Expansion is out after I had my freak out about ten books in a series and thinking it was time to wrap it up or maybe not or …. I said it was a freak out.  I got in my own way with writing.  Granted I was doing a lot of crocheting and writing of patterns but still I got in my own way with story telling.  It doesn’t matter if it is book 1 or 100 (wonder if I could make it that far with this series?) as long as I’m telling a good and complete story, that is all that matters.

Ultimately that is the goal – a good story.  I want it to be one which will make you laugh, cry, and hold your breath.  I want you to hate putting it down and hate waiting for the next one.  I want you to love the characters unless they are bad – then I want you to love hating them.  I know this is asking a lot of my readers but I’m asking it of myself first.

There are still parts of books when I go back to read them (yes my own) where I still cry, laugh and so on.  There are books I hate putting down from other authors – ones I will stay up all night reading even if I have to work the next day.  On my own, I’m not such a good judge on this criteria.  I think that’s what makes a good story.   I think this is what keeps readers coming back – a couple of hours of escape into another world which involves you so much you forget about whatever is going on in your own life and focus solely on the story.

Only the best scenes…

by eileentroemel, posted in Crochet and crafting, Life, Writing

Yesterday I got another tentative acceptance.  I wrote a different take on the topic for an issue and the editor thought it was different and might fit in the issue.  She’s holding it until then.  

Last night I was tired.  My energy level was in the basement.  I wanted to write but my brain was not having it.  I sat and watched the Harry Potter movies.  Now I say that but I didn’t actually watch them all the way through.  I started the first one and watched my favorite scenes.  I did that for both the first and second one.  
While I was watching, I worked on a crochet project.  This is a graduation gift and I’m hoping to finish it soon.  This is a pattern of my own creation and a little different than I normally do.  At first I really doubted whether it was a good pattern but now as I’m about half done with it, I am really starting to like it.  It’s different making it unique.  I’m hoping she will like it.  
This weekend I’m trying to talk Ken into working on the craft room closet.  I’d really like to get it organized and settled.  I’d love to be able to walk in there and just grab what I need or put back what I’m done with.  I’m hoping he will be willing to work on it but I just never know.
I’ve got three or four scenes in my head for Wayfarer 11.  It’s a matter of getting them down on paper.  I had an “oh crap” moment yesterday when I realized I had one of my characters giving birth too early.  I tried breaking things up.  I tried rearranging.  I thought about rewriting but in the end I took the simple route and just added days to the contract day at the beginning of the chapter.  It solved the problem without causing major rewrites and had little effect on the story itself.
My plan is to do the closet and work on the crochet project this weekend.  If I can finish both, I’ll consider it an excellent weekend.  Now I’ve put this out in the world, let’s see what the universe throws back at me.