Guest Post and Giveaway by Bryan Cohen. If you or someone you know is a writer or considering becoming one, I have some tips for you! Do you believe?

Belief

By Bryan Cohen

”When I’m talking about belief, why do you always assume I’m talking about God?”

Shepherd Book, Serenity

As I was growing up, my parents with the help of our Jewish faith, taught me the difference between right and wrong. They taught me to believe in God and that God was good and that if I behaved well that everything would turn out fine. I think that the religious belief system I learned growing up was a pretty good one and I would call myself a relatively moral person at least partly as a result of this upbringing. It tied into my beliefs of true love and destiny that I learned from books and movies.

Yay! I have officially finished the first draft of my manuscript!

I am so happy to be able to say I am finished! Kind of. In some ways, this is only the beginning of a long and winding road to getting published. But, I'll take my joy when and where I can get it. The first draft of my story is complete. Now the real writing begins. It is often said that the real writing comes in the rewrite, in the revision process. How true that is.

I now have to go through my manuscript with a fine tooth comb, deciding what works and more importantly, what doesn't. Working on my query letter actually changed the focus of my story. For those of you who are not familiar with the query, it's a letter that you formulate that succinctly tells a literary agent what your story is about. The goal is to make your story interesting and enticing enough that an agent will desire to read pages of your manuscript. The hope is the agent will like the story enough to offer the writer representation and try to get the story sold to a publisher.

There is a chapter I really like, but no longer truly fits the trajectory of where the story is now headed. I have to remove that chapter and anything else that slows things down. It's not as easy as it sounds. Writers really fall in love with things they've written and are loath to let them go, but go they must if they no longer fit.

These are the type of things I have to do now along with looking for general mistakes, typos, etc. I'm going to let the story sit for a while to "breathe" and come back to it. I need time away from it, so I can look at it with fresh eyes. You would be surprised at how different it looks and how many things you catch when you give the story and yourself some time apart.

Toodles!

So, you think you're a writer eh?

I've always had a professional reputation for being a skillful writer. Since beginning this adventure known as penning a novel, I've learned that creative writing-good creative writing is a different animal entirely. It requires different skill sets than  academic or scholastic writing.

Clinical/technical writing does nothing to enliven the imagination. It's goal is to transmit information-period. When you're writing a novel or a memoir, you want to bring the reader into the world of the story. Your goal is to make the story so engrossing, the reader is not conscious they're reading a book-they are there, in the story, right along with your protagonist. Maybe they even become your protagonist. This is a skill that takes time to develop. You have to practice. the more you write, the more you realize you need to write-and write, and write, and write...It's an ongoing process. Recognize that, accept it and be prepared to do what's necessary to get your character's or your own personal story told.

After many interruptions, I was finally offered a seat in a nursing program to take the clinicals. After much thought, I turned it down because I really want to work on my novel. The program is intense and there is no way I would be able to work full time, take the clinical classes, do the internship in the hospital and work on a book. I have to prioritize. I want to give my book the best chance possible and that means giving it the time it requires. I know I made the right decision, because I don't regret it one bit! I enjoy writing and I'm excited to see where I can go with it. If you have a passion for something, give it your best shot. Even if it doesn't work out as planned or as you would have desired, at least you know you did your best and you'll have no regrets.

Toddles!