Getting Back to Creating Books

In my early days of writing and publishing, I might have looked at this week’s writing time and thought it lacked passion and serious progress. But I’ve learned over the years to step back from feelings of not doing enough and accepting the project as it emerges. So, I spent Monday and Tuesday organizing my spiral notebooks and leafing through some of the story starters and notes I had already made regarding the genre(s). It would be very easy to be overwhelmed by the 15 spiral notebooks stacked by my right elbow. I ordered them according to stories that were in the middle of completion, series that needed one more book to finish the main part (novellas or short stories to be added later… perhaps), and ideas I’ve had for years but have yet to complete the first chapter.

As with most of what I do, when returning to an activity after a long time away, I decided to begin with the easy step first. For the last fifteen years, I’ve wanted to publish my master’s thesis. I created a counseling program where students are taught problem-solving skills to decrease the number of discipline referrals and increase a student’s self-esteem. Much of my thesis is straight from research, as expected, with several citations. Because I want teachers and parents to use what I created, I summarize the one-hundred page document in ten pages, including what was discussed in the sessions and the steps to problem solving. This will be combined with the forty-eight posts I’ve published on an education blog I’d done in the past. All in the effort to publish one more project I created years before and remind myself of the many steps to indie publish a book.

I have notes on sections in which the blog post content falls into and how to set up those sections, including questions for the reader. I don’t have a title, and I have no ideas on what to put on the cover. Since most of the book is already done, I think I can publish it in about a month.

This would go a long way to getting me back to creating books. The excitement of publishing something creates momentum to carry me forward to the next project. I think I can finish one of the short stories for the illustrated collection and get that to the illustrator as well in the next month. Then there is just one more nonfiction project I plan to do from a yoga blog I had for several years. Nothing to add to that book besides the blog posts.

I think in writing short stories, novellas, and novels from my story starters, I’ll likely find ones that, like the classroom materials I had, will make their way to the recycle bin. No spark or interest or scene on the movie screen in my head means it’s not time or there’s not enough there. And like the peace I made with my classroom materials, peace will come with my fiction, too.