Katharine Sadler

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June 29, 2016 By Katharine Sadler Leave a Comment

Six tips for finishing your novel (or achieving your dreams)

There’s nothing I’ve ever wanted to do but to be a writer. Even so, it’s taken me years to learn one of the most essential tools for any writer: discipline. Sitting down every day and putting words to paper isn’t easy. Not when there are about a hundred and one other things that need to be done or could be more entertaining. Not when there’s the internet at our fingertips just begging us to click and read the latest celebrity gossip or news article. Not when our friends are posting about their lives – we don’t want to miss that, because what kind of friends would we be? Once you’re sitting down and typing, it takes time to get into the flow and it’s easy to make excuses. Then there are the plot twists that make you crazy and middles – middles are hard. And the endings. Endings should be easy, but there’s so much riding on a good ending and the pressure . . . oh, the pressure. It’s tempting to give up.

But you can’t give up, because at the end of the day what separates writers from non-writers with a dream is who gave up and who kept going. Time and time again, I’ve read that if you just keep going, just keep writing, just keep honing your craft, you will make it as a writer. You don’t have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun the person next to you. I don’t know if this is true, but I do know that if you give up at writing, or any other dream you might have, you will definitely never succeed. Here are the things I’ve found to be my most helpful motivators.

  1. Have a cheerleader
    My husband is my biggest supporter and he never lets me slack off. Not because he’s mean or pushy, but because he knows how important this is to me and he understands and supports my goals. Self-discipline is important, but having someone to answer to can make a huge difference.
  2. Set goals and Prioritize
    You can’t get anywhere if you don’t know where you’re going. I’ve always wanted to be a writer and I’ve always understood that I would have a very hard road to any sort of success. Very early on, I established a simple goal: I wanted to publish a book and I wanted one person to read that book and enjoy it. I wanted my book to lighten the mood, the day, the load of one person. I figured that was a somewhat achievable goal. When I got my first good review from someone who wasn’t friend or family, I decided I’d reached that goal and I set new goals. What is your goal?
    Writing a novel takes time and it takes hard work, so you need to have daily goals as well. When I’m writing, I have a daily word count goal. Sometimes that goal is easy to reach and other times I’m exhausted or in a bad mood and that goal feels like climbing Mt. Everest, but I plug on and I meet that goal every day. Meeting that goal means giving up other things I might enjoy or that suck time. I don’t watch T.V. any more and I rarely watch movies, because my writing goals come first.
  3. Don’t let the naysayers get you down
    There will always be people who think you’re wasting your time or that your goal is too unrealistic or impossible. Believe in yourself first and never stop working toward your goal. Keep plugging away at it a little bit every day and you’ll get there.
  4. Accept Critiques
    Not all people who criticize your work or your dream are wrong. If someone offers you constructive criticism, take it in and consider it. If what they’re saying feels right to you, or several people are making the same criticism, they’re probably right. Good criticism is a gift, because it makes you a better writer.
  5. Never Stop Learning
    There are tons of wonderful books out there on the craft of writing and on editing and they can help you make your writing more polished and professional. Take writing classes and participate in critique groups. And read everything you can get your hands on. Read fiction and nonfiction, genre and literary, classic and modern, read it all and take from it what you love and what can inform your own writing. It doesn’t pay to be a snob. For the better part of my life I was a snob about romance books and I never read them, but when I was trying to incorporate romance into my own work I realized I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. I’d read lots of books that had romantic scenes, but I needed more. Romance writers are the experts on writing love stories and romantic scenes, and by reading their books, I’ve learned to be a better writer (and I’ve become a die-hard fan of romance novels).
  6. Don’t Stop
    Something I’ve heard from a lot of different sources is this advice to writers: If there’s anything else you think you might enjoy doing other than writing, do it. Writing is a tough profession and it’s nearly impossible to make a real living at it, but if you decide you want to be a writer, despite the difficulties, don’t give up. If you’re like me, you go a bit batty if you go too long without writing and you’d write even if you could see the future and knew you’d never be successful. Even so, there are days that I wonder what the hell I’m doing and want to throw in the towel, but I don’t. I push everything else away and just focus on meeting those goals I’ve set for myself. Keep writing, keep pushing, keep doing the hard work. I can’t promise you’ll ever find success, but I can promise you’ll finish that novel. I can promise that if you give up, you’ll never make it as a writer.

Filed Under: Publishing, Writing Tagged With: Writing

October 11, 2014 By Katharine Sadler 1 Comment

Confession of a Former Book Snob

I’m a pretty open-minded person about most things, but when it comes to books and grammar, I have always been a shameless snob. I once refused to babysit for a family because the father spoke with improper grammar when he called to offer me the job.

I am the worst kind of snob because I myself don’t always speak with proper grammar myself. I grew up in the rural south and I still sometimes say “used ta could” and “might should.” I sometimes slip and pronounce ambulance just like it’s spelled and very slowly. Commas have always baffled me, despite years of attempting to learn their proper usage. (All the new rules don’t help either. Oxford comma haters I’m talking to you.)

When it comes to books, I’m even worse. The lengths and varieties of my snobbery are innumerable. I’m a long-time lover of literature, particularly from the Victorian period. After my eighth-grade English teacher told me we only read books written by and about white men because “little girls read whatever you tell them to and little boys will only read books about little boys,” I read almost only books written by women. I’m a lover of all three of the Brontës, George Eliot, Edith Wharton, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Carson McCullers, and, after I got to college and realized not reading any books by men was hurting me, Jack Kerouac, Charles Dickens, Ken Kesey, Thomas Wolfe, Henry James, Walt Whitman, and on and on. I could list all of the great books I’ve read and tell you about my favorite books, but this blog post is about my snobbery, so I’m going to admit that, while I loved all of those authors and sneered at anyone who read romance or genre fiction, I devoured every Christopher Pike and R.L. Stine book could find. Those books kept me up late at night, and it was those books I read between classes instead of talking to my friends. I also loved fantasy, particularly Ann McCaffrey, but here my snobbery acquired a new twist, because I didn’t consider fantasy genre fiction.

Even through college and well into adult-hood, I maintained this snobbery. Then a year ago, at the age of 36, I had an experience which made me realize my own hypocrisy. I read a romance novel and I (gasp) liked it. Not only did I like it, but I loved it. I read the book because I was about to attend a workshop taught by the author. I felt a bit guilty about actually enjoying the book, but I brushed it off as a fluke. I was tired that day and surely most romance novels were awful. That author, Virginia Kantra, said something I’d never before considered. She said that the romance novel is a feminist work because it teaches women what they should expect from a man in a relationship. I agree with her argument and would go on to say that the best romance novels also teach women that it’s okay to stand up for themselves, to assert themselves, and to enjoy sex, all of which are important in any healthy relationship and are values too many women aren’t learning in their homes or anywhere else.

Shortly after reading and enjoying my first romance, I read in a book on craft that romance is the hardest genre to write. I accepted that argument without really considering it too deeply, until I tried to write a romantic scene in my own book and realized I had no idea what I was doing. This bumbling ineptitude of course gave me the excuse I needed to read more romances. As a result, I have fallen in love with love stories. I enjoy reading romance novels. There, I said it. I’ve learned a lot from them about pacing, about craft, and about characterization. I may sometimes still be a bit embarrassed about what I’m reading, but I’d like to believe my days of book snobbery are behind me. My new philosophy is that it doesn’t matter what you read, if you enjoy it and it makes your day easier, it’s a good use of your time.

Filed Under: Publishing

September 23, 2014 By Katharine Sadler Leave a Comment

Why writers should really care about reviews

Lately, I’ve been hearing and reading authors, both indie and traditional, advising against writers reading reviews of their own work. I assume this advice is given to avoid the reviews that are just blatantly blasting your books, but I’m not sure why we should blindly ignore all reviews. As a writer whose advice should you listen to? A handful of beta readers? A reviewer who writes reviews for a living? A professional editor?

All of those are great sources but readers who are willing to tell the world in great detail what they love and hate about every book they read is a resource that shouldn’t be ignored. It is gold in my opinion. If you’ve got thirty-five out of fifty reviewers saying they couldn’t connect with your protagonist, I think you should be taking a hard look at why. Then use that information to make your next book or novella or short story better.

I’ve known I wanted to be a writer since I was too little to write. Before I started writing stories, I made up songs and wanted to be a songwriter. I was planning to marry the adorable little boy next door and write the songs he’d sing. Neither of those plans worked out, and probably for the best, but I didn’t stop creating with words. I attended a creative writing summer camp and every writing class I could, and every instructor I had told me I was wonderful. That’s the rule, right? Teachers tell kids they are wonderful writers so that the kids keep writing. Then we all go to college. The creative writing course in college was brutal. My classmates all attacked each other mercilessly – at least that’s how I remember it- and I figured out that I could toughen up and work harder or I could quit. Over the years, I’ve had praise and criticism in equal measure and I’ve learned to tell good critiques from bad. After writing so long, when someone points out an area of weakness it’s not painful, it’s like they’ve shone a light on something that was dark. As writers we get so caught up in what we’re creating that we sometimes miss the obvious. Good critiques are priceless and difficult to find, until sites like Goodreads were created. Now, you can get critiques from as many people as you can convince to read and review your book. People who love to read the genre you write and look upon reading your work as a pleasure and not a chore. Why would anyone ignore the gift of a well-written and considered review?

I haven’t received a lot of reviews, yet, so maybe I shouldn’t write on this topic, but I have read a lot of reviews and have found them to be extremely useful to me as a reader. I hope to get more reviews in the future and, when I do, I plan to look at all of the reviews and focus on the flaws the majority of reviewers are pointing out. Criticism should not be feared but embraced.

Filed Under: Publishing Tagged With: Reviews

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About Me

Katharine Sadler is an urban fantasy and romance author. Here you will find updates on new releases, free sample chapters, and the latest news. Read more...

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How to Lasso a Billionaire: The 1st book of the Vegas Billionaires Series. A new adult romance series. Released in April 2020 and available now in digital format. Read more...

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