What's inspiring you?

 

Stephanie here! I had a great weekend up in Chicago for the American Library Association conference. Traveling alone kinda stresses me out, so I was actually surprised by how relaxed I felt most of the time. I had no stress headaches. No times when I was hungry, but too nervous to eat. Just a lot of fun conversations with friendly librarians, editors, authors, and other lovely industry people.

For me, a lot of the fun was being in CHICAGO. I've been dying to go back ever since I started writing The Lost Girl of Astor Street. My first night in town, I was invited along on a dinner cruise to celebrate the upcoming release of Solo by Kwame Alexander and Mary Rand Hess:

Me and fellow Blink author Heather Maclean. I was so relieved to see someone I knew!

On Saturday, I spent some time signing copies of The Lost Girl of Astor Street in the HarperCollins booth. (My line wasn't exactly as long as Veronica Roth's...) I had a meeting with the marketing team, and some great hang out time with other authors.

VERONICA ROTH!! The line was ridiculous, but she was being super nice and taking time with everyone she signed for.

I also got brave, hailed a taxi, and went up to Astor Street! I was a complete dork and took tons of pictures. Some nice ladies who were there for an architectural walking tour helped me out my taking a photo of me so I didn't have to do the selfie thing:

For an introverted homebody, it was a very full weekend. I'm happy to be home!

Today we're continuing our summer panel series where Jill, Shan, and I answer writing-related questions--just as if we're sitting on a panel at a writing conference--and we hope you'll take the time to answer the question as well so we can all learn from each other.

What's something that has inspired you recently?

 

Jill Williamson

I’ve been intrigued lately by self-publishing. I’d really like to self-publish a whole series as an experiment. Don’t get me wrong, I love working with publishing houses, but I’ve found that after three or four years, when my book falls onto the backlist, publishers no longer focus on trying to sell it. So the book gets stuck without any focused sales and marketing attention. If I owned a series of books, I’d be able to play around with sales and marketing continually. That’s no guarantee that books would sell better. And it’s no secret that marketing and publicity is not my favorite activity. So I might discover that I hate that side of self-publishing. But I’m still enthralled by the possibilities, and I think I will be until I give it a try. 

Shannon Dittemore

Other authors. Reading about the journeys of writers I know and those I simply admire from afar is incredibly inspiring. No one has it easy, friends. This is a rough industry with a lot of negativity, but those who can cut through it and keep writing motivate me to do the same.

Stephanie Morrill

Story Genius by Lisa Cron. This is a craft book I learned about on a podcast about 6 months ago. I checked it out from my library, and about halfway through it--when I was wishing I could underline ALL THE THINGS--I ordered a copy for myself. 

This book broke down the story building process in a different way than I had seen before. It made me think differently about character backstories, and how to build effective story lines, and it gave me a process for doing that. 

I don't use every single tool suggested in the book, but her process really helped me with brainstorming my current novel.

What about you? What's something that has inspired you recently?