Category Archives: Writing Journey

Where Do They Come From? Part I

Posted on by
Reply

In the middle of writing a sentence in the first draft of my current project, I have the thought that I should just stop, erase it all, delete it all, unpublish my five self-published works and forget I ever thought this could be a thing.

What?!

Then my stomach starts balling into knots. Is this a panic attack coming on?

Not quite. I can still breath though my stomach has this lead ball filling it up.

What is happening?! I haven’t skipped a workout. I haven’t eaten any sugar. What evil spell is someone casting?

I walk away from my computer. I attempt to stay passive with the thoughts, not over-analyzing but neither ignoring. Let this moment pass, whatever it is, let it come through and out and away.

But it doesn’t pass. So what do I do?

My instinct is to go into hiding. Bury myself in a favorite book with headphones around covering my ears to create a wall that makes the world seems a distant dream.

But I’m supposed to make new choices this year. I’m supposed to stop being a cowardly fuck.

So, I dip my toe, test these swirling feelings centered in my gut, consider where they might have come from.

Maybe I did just eat something weird…

Ugh! Fine! I’ll analyze…

Do We Like ‘Happily Ever After?’

Posted on by
Reply

Working towards finishing up draft one of this new project, I’m caught by the fact that I haven’t decided on the ending. Very easily, I can give each character a fantastic end to a long journey, a place in their world that makes it all worth it, that makes their sufferings and losses culminate to finality in contentment.

But is that a good ending? I loved HUNGER GAMES because of the harsh edges Katniss‘ life left her with. I appreciated Tris‘ death because I believe ultimate sacrifice is necessary for the big changes. To give less cheapens the story and teaches a certain lackness in our real lives. It’s more real, more visceral for my heart to break than to simply smile, close the book, and move on. These stories left me numb, unable to put the book out of my head after the last page was turned. THAT is what makes something spectacular over great.

This was what was missing from Maas‘ THRONE OF GLASS series IMO. That everyone, especially as there were several characters to receive it, got their happy ending was cheap. Cassandra and Brannon reconciling was lame. Some things you can not take back, and the unsatisfied longing for something creates a more lasting impression than giving it.

But I feel public opinion sways more towards handing out this latter ending than the formers. While I don’t want my words swayed by popular opinion, I do want to make money from my work, which suggests leaning towards how the masses might more like something. This is pressure I’m unused to, and unsure how to handle. Pressure I try not to let leach into my brain, but find impossible to ignore one-hundred percent.

In this case, I’m sure I’ll end up writing both endings and leave it to my beta team to decide, or at least allow their opinions to weight my own.

What do you think? How much weight do the fans (or just a general public) get in manipulating the path of art? How do you deal with this in your own work, or how might you expect an artist to react?

Tell me your thoughts! Leave comments or email me directly. I’m so curious to hear how you handle this! 🙂 cindy_martens@ymail.com.

featured image painting by Sage Barnes; “Self Portrait #3”

So much love

Posted on by
Reply

Thank you to all the readers gobbling up The Fool’s Path series this weekend: Kindle Unlimited subscribers, and downloaders alike.

There are still two more days to grab Stumbling and Falling Forward for free, and Crashing Down is only 99 cents today, and $1.99 Sunday.

Check out what people are saying:

Stumbling; book 1

Falling Forward; book 2

Crashing Down; book 3

Experience Dee’s adventure for yourself

Click pic to go to the Amazon buy page

…plus thirty pounds

Posted on by
Reply

So many accomplishments!

Last June, I (self)published my first novel. Since then, I’ve published three more (one under a pseudonym). Four total novels in less than a year. Yay me! Sure, two-and-a-half of those books were the split of a project I’d been working on for twenty years, but I don’t think that takes much away from this.
FOUR BOOKS!!

Pat on the back complete

In that time, I also managed to gain thirty pounds. Well, I was up fifteen from when I quit my gym life, than add another twenty. Add the weight I lost and gained back, well with that math it’s much more than thirty, so lets just keep this PG.

It’s great that I finally found the courage to put my stories out in the world. I love the days of falling into my creations, of spending hours at my keyboard crafting adventures. But I crashed, hard, into the downside of this life. There were days I got less than five hundred steps IN THE WHOLE DAY. I just stopped wearing my FitBit. Who needs that kind of negativity in their life?

I’ve been trying to be better. Trying to make sure I don’t skip physical activity time. I’m a month ON. I started in January- that lasted three weeks. I re-started in February. Was it even a day? This last attempt is good. Real good (I know, my way with words astounds you).

Much of this success is due to pictures of myself I saw after a recent trip to Disney. I can’t even look at them. When did I get so chubby! Oh yeah, this past year…

That did it though. Rather than share my great time with my visiting sister at Epcot and Animal Kingdom, I buried the pictures in the deleted folder of my phone. I don’t like that. I don’t like that I had to get rid of most of my wardrobe because I couldn’t wear it anymore. You’d think that would have been my first motivator. Eh. For a few seconds, but cookies…

How do you stay on track?

What’s your biggest struggle with spawning fiction? Do you let your work overwhelm you?

The Hardest Part

Posted on by
Reply

Breaking it Down

Why is writing a synopsis the hardest part? I guess that’s why I’m not a poet. I couldn’t even get a whole story into one book…

But, I didn’t take that much time with it either. I wrote a quick blurb and just went with it. I didn’t do that with the book- why do it with the part that will hook readers into wanting to spend their time with my story? Why think that makes it “hard” because it didn’t just appear on paper? The human brain really is curious and absurd.

Remedy

So, I’m working on it. Trying a few different versions. Upgrading over time. Book three is “sent,” so I’m back to book 1- to look a little closer at the nitty-gritty of getting it into more hands.

How do you deal with writing book blurbs? Is it a time-consuming process that develops over weeks, or do you just “go-with” the first thing you come up with? Maybe you hire a service to deal with it. Which one is your favorite?

Here’s the Newest Blurb For Book One:

Quiet life in small town USA is fine. Everything’s fine. Desiree takes one day at a time. As long as those days don’t ask her to face the questions buried in her faded memories, life is good. Simple. Quiet. The weird strength, speed, and agility she somehow acquired aren’t worth digging into a pain-filled past to figure out.
But the past has a way of catching up, whether we want to face it or not.
When a creature she can only label vampire attacks, Dee knows her avoidance has come to an end. Especially when, coincidentally, Hamal arrives at the same time. He has answers, and Dee doesn’t care how dangerous he might be, she wants what he knows. With her augmented strength, she can take him, right?

With a tenuous trust in a man she is sure knows more than he lets on, Dee stumbles down a path she never dreamt possible. However, there’s so much more to her story than even Hamal knows. As the truth of her world becomes harder to understand, she’s forced to accept help from the very beings that are after her. Running from faceless enemies, whom can she trust? Is there a path that will lead her from the fray, or do all roads point towards more questions?

The Fool’s Path is a series about making sense of a world that doesn’t make sense, about learning how to trust and love, especially yourself and that even among enemies, there are things to be discovered. Author C. M. Martens brings a new kind of paranormal world to life in this stunning debut.

What do you think?

Read Stumbling Free