Birthing A Book: A Writer Delivers

GROWING A BOOK GARDEN
By Jessica Haight & Stephanie Robinson

— Once you’ve planted a story seed, it will grow with the flow of your attention. Just like how gardeners prepare the soil, writers plot pages. Both are excited to experience the fruits of their labor, but first, they must create.

A good gardner knows the manifestation of fruit requires focus. Your favorite author would say the same about books. Rows of sentences plant scenes in readers’ minds, linking meanings and ideas. Words connect worlds, and writing books is like having a direct line to the head boss. Catching the reader's mind's eye shapes their reality in that moment. 

Reading a story that moves you is similar to devouring delicious food, and hungry minds like to eat. When a writer delivers, the reader feels full and satisfied. 

Tips for cultivating story seeds

Step One: Tend the Story

This is important! When a seed isn’t fertilized, it will lay dormant, just as a story won’t develop if you don’t pay attention to it. Writing comes first. Validation is found in the process of honing your craft. When an author compels words onto a page, they’re driven by a force of insight, and the reward is watching a project evolve through success and failure, or rather, trial and error— the main two ingredients in progress.

Step Two: Fence in Creative Space

You can’t write without a comfortable place to work. External forces thrive in a literal ocean of information. They are distracting, and it’s easy to forget about your project. But, if your wish is to bring a book to life, it’s important to maintain self discipline and keep a sacred space where you can create in peace and comfort.

Step Three: Thicken the plot

Writing a book is realizing a dream. Stories are clouds of inner vibes before they’re scribed onto the page— this is raw, creative magic. But conjuring the right words into fluid scenes is the key to delivering a story; here is where you’ll need two real eyes, and the will to perfect spelling.

You may be a brilliant writer, but no author can edit their own book. As the creator, you know who the characters are, how they arrived on the scene, what the setting smells like, but no one else does. It’s vital to get reliable feedback from readers and digest their critique with the understanding that a new perspective will expand your story’s horizon.

If you take your writing seriously, and work with professional editors, you’ll feel confident that your message will have a good reception, and you will have successfully delivered a book!

Now, you just have to publish it, but that’s a whole other story.

Tune in for our next article in the “Birthing A Book” series:

Raising Your Book Right: Seeking a Story Home

Writing Resources

Editors 

Betsy Thorpe

Nicole Ayers

Writing Tools

Google Drive

Google Docs

A Writer

Moments that arise may be a book birth in disguise. There are those with eyes to see all a scene can really be. They ask, "what if?" or "where'd it go?'- this person will imagine it so. A blank page is the space where they'll shave the story's face. Stringing words in lines, meanings point to signs. Inner space cosmonauts, creating with inky thoughts. 

Book bugs can be very helpful when they eat stories. They thrive in the garden of your mind, so feed them well. 😀

Catch our feature articles on 
WRITING MYSTERIES

I See Dead Quotes

Critique, Editing your MS

Weaving in the Backstory

Working with editors, Collaborating using Google Docs

BOO-K Bones

Skeleton's poetic interpretation on formatting a book

Story Seeds

Origins of a story, Creative process