Thoughts about real life as an aspiring writer, Part 1

Before I wrote my first book I thought that it would be easy. Somehow I had it in my head that I could quickly become a successful writer and be able to have a steady stream of extra income. Looking back now, I laugh and wonder how in the world could I have thought that writing would be easy or instantly successful. My experience with writing has been rewarding and has been a lot fun.

In each part of this blog post series I will share some of my experiences, thoughts and lessons learned.

One lesson I learned along the way:

Know you limitations and push them -

In my day job I am used to making software work. Both purchased software and programs I have written myself usually will eventually submit to my will and do what I need them to do. I knew I wasn't the best at the graphical side of things and I thought that I might have a little trouble with getting the images to look just right. I really had no idea how tricky it would be. My easy solution was to have someone do all of the images and split any profits from book sales with them. When this didn't work out I decided I would do the illustrations. I tried, but I don't have much skill at free hand drawing so my next idea was to try to use image manipulation software to alter photographs to make them look more like children's picture book illustrations. From here I started looking into the different software programs available and quickly realized the I was cheap and most image manipulation software is not. A friend recommended that I try a very affordable , aka free, called GIMP. This was exactly what I needed to finish turning high quality amateur photographs into the illustrations for my first children's book, Teddy Visits Mitchell Farms. Now I am almost ready to really start the process of taking a second book in the Adventures of Teddy series from first draft to published. This time I think I might push though my cheapness and hire a real artist to draw or paint the illustrations.

Quick Tip:

If you plan to put photographs in a book make sure the orientation matches the book format, before you finish taking all of them. Otherwise be prepare to do a lot of cropping.

The next part in the series will be "About Time"