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Writers: Working with Louise Cusack

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Writers: Working with Louise Cusack

Tag Archives: motivation

A self publishing adventure

03 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by louisecusack in Getting Published series, The Publishing Industry, Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

creative writing, erotica, motivation, psychology of writing, romantic comedy, romcom, self publishing, writing

DigitalPublishingTalkFeb2012Most of you will know me through this website as a writing mentor and teacher, but I’m also a writer. I began my career with fantasy twenty years ago, being published in a Harper Collins anthology, then with a fantasy series published by Simon & Schuster. Since then I’ve been published by the Pan Macmillan imprint Momentum Books, and I’ve dabbled in self publishing backlist titles. But my main focus as an author has always been traditional publishing.

For the last 2 years, however, I’ve been writing books in a romantic comedy series and trying (unsuccessfully) to crack the US market with the opening novel. I quite understand why it’s a hard sell. It involves infidelity which isn’t common in romance novels, and the combination of erotica and romantic comedy is also relatively new. Unfortunately, even well published authors can become demoralized, and when my rejections hit double digits, I found my enjoyment in the work and my motivation were slipping. All my reader feedback on the series, however, was positive, so at the start of the year I took the plunge and decided to self publish these books, and since then I’ve been excited, bewildered at times, but ultimately optimistic.

My reason for blogging this is that I’d like you along for the ride. I’d like to share my experiences with you if you think they’ll help your own writing career. There will be highs and lows, tips and tricks, pitfalls. Hopefully you’ll work out whether self publishing is a road you want to go down, and which path you want to take!

Here are the opening 4 books of my Husband Series (along with a quote I was kindly given by Romance Writers of Australia mate Amy Andrews who’s already a big seller in this genre):

HusbandSeriesAmyQuote

To begin, I’m releasing book one Husband Sit exclusively on Amazon Kindle (where 80% of romance novels are purchased) so I can access their pre-order function, and I’ve set the book at .99c US until its release date of Feb 17, at which point it will revert to $3.99. That’s my incentive for people to BUY NOW! My goal is to see a shirtload of sales go through on release day, which should bump the book up the charts. If a book reaches the Amazon best seller lists in the top #100 it develops a momentum of its own. So if you’ve got .99c US to spare, feel free to pre-order. I won’t complain about you being part of the experiment!

I’m also part of a few Valentine’s Day book hops (promotional opportunities where readers win prizes) and you’re welcome to join them as guests to see how they work. I’ve never done them before so I’m looking forward to finding out myself. Just click on either of the links below and join:

PageCurlValentineBookHop   KindleBookReviewValentine

To complete my promos, I’ve got my own Facebook Release Day Blitz party organized for Feb 17 which you’re most welcome to join. My beta readers are coming and they’ve invited friends. It’s on Facebook so you can wear pajamas! Just click on the picture below and then when you’re on the Facebook event page, select GOING. Facebook will remind you when it’s on.

ReleaseBlitzForHusbandSitFacebook

If you’ve got ideas for me, please share. I’m busily finishing book two so I can upload it in draft form on Amazon before book one goes on sale. That will allow me to set book two on pre-order. I want people to be able to finish Husband Sit and love it so much that they immediately click on the link in the back of the book to pre-order Husband Stay.

My longterm goal is to have twenty books in this series, and the first four will be released this year. Wish me luck!

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Motivation + Time = Maximum Productivity

20 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by louisecusack in Getting Published series, Uncategorized, Understanding Ourselves as Writers

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

creativity, doing the work, emotion, glass half full, inspiration, list, motivation, new year, process of writing, psychology, publishing, writers, writing, writing tips

I’ve chatted to writers all year, and some have had a fabulous 2013. Some, not so great. One of the things I’ve noticed (not just this year, but every year) is that those writers who have a strong motivation to write, seem to get more done.

It sounds like a no brainer. If you’re dieting for no good reason, mud cake looks good. If your wedding is in three weeks (or your book launch) and you need to fit into that special dress, carrot sticks are the new chocolate.

So motivation – for characters and for writers – is key. And at the start of a story when the idea is fresh and the potential sales appear JK Rowling-ish, delusions of grandeur can take you far. As a mentor, I never knock writers off their lofty fantasy pedestals. It motivates them to get up early and work late (creating the time factor of the equation all by themselves). In fact, I encourage writers to pick a fantasy moment: walking the red carpet, getting a big advance payment in the mail, opening the box full of advance copies of their book and loving the cover, and then milking that fantasy for five minutes every day, wringing every bit of happy/ relieved/ satisfied/ thrilled emotion they can out of it. That builds motivation too.

The reality may end up looking like this:

The Bentley you thought you'd be buying with your first advance

The Bentley you thought you’d be buying with your first advance

Here Bentley, Here, Bentley. Good dog!

Here Bentley, Here, Bentley. Good dog!

So reality can dent your confidence, and therefore your motivation. How do you pick yourself up when you’ve had rejection in the past, you’ve lost perspective on your story, and you’re starting to doubt that it will ever get published, and if it does, that anyone will bother to read/ like it? Perhaps life itself has dealt you a crap year and those muddy glasses are making everything look terrible, including your writing.

Dear Manuscript, you look like this...

Dear Manuscript, you look like this…

Sometimes you have to start back at bedrock and just work at making yourself happy. My experience as a mentor has shown me that happy writers are productive writers and I reject the cliché that starving/troubled artists write the best work. We all experience life’s ugly moments. Some writers unfortunately have had more pain than others. And yes we do draw on memories of those dark times to bring our stories vividly to life. But we don’t have to be experiencing that pain now to be writing our best. We simply need to be good at remembering what it felt like, and luckily for us, really bad moments seem to be engraved in our memories!

Publishers and agents want to work with productive writers, those who can create saleable novels year in, year out, building readership and thereby sales and profits for all. If you can get happy and stay happy, you’ll have your best shot at being that author. The delightful side-effect is that you’ll also be a fab person to be around, and family and friends will stop doing this when you walk in the room:

Has she made her word count? Is her eye twitching. For godsakes, Marg, whatever you do, don't mention the manuscript.

Has she made her word count? Is her eye twitching? I can’t look.

So here’s my tip for the end of the year, to wash away any unpleasantness from 2013 and set yourself up for a cracker super-happy ultra-productive 2014. Make up a list like mine (takes five minutes in Microsoft Word) and sit down with a pen and paper and fill it in. Honestly, I had thirty done in ten minutes:

One hundred fabulous memories from 2013As you remember each fabulous thing that’s happened to you in the year, no matter how small, it will trigger happy feelings, and before you know it you’ll be glass half full instead of glass half empty about everything, writing included. My list included everyday things like:

  • Standing on the verandah watching a thunderstorm
  • Eating a perfect lime slushy on that really hot afternoon
  • Watching the Aussies win the Ashes on tv (cricket, for those who don’t know)
  • Laughing at the cat that time he rolled in his sleep and fell off the chair
  • Watching Meg’s eyes light up when she talked about her new home

I also included some personal peak moments that really meant something to me. So you get the idea. Fill up the list, really feel the emotions, reliving all their splendor as you write, then make time with your morning coffee each day to have a glance through it again and let the happy memories make you smile.

I pinky-promise it will help you let go of the negativity that weighs you down and squashes your creative inspiration. Then you’ll be all set up for a fabulously successful, productive, satisfying and fun 2014.

Go for it!

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What cats can teach writers about getting published

06 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by louisecusack in Getting Published series, Uncategorized, Understanding Ourselves as Writers, Writer's Self Sabotage

≈ 21 Comments

Tags

behaviour, cats, contracts, entitlement, getting published, inspiration, motivation, passion, publishing, writers, writing

Winnie & Millie I’m cat sitting this week: two dear 18 year old ladies called Winnie and Millie, both of whom know and like me. Apparently these old girls have been together for most of their lives, and as they’re the same breed and size you’d think there would be some similarities in personality, but you couldn’t be more wrong. Winnie, the paler of the two, is like a timid little mouse. She makes no sounds at all, runs behind lounges when you want to pat her, hides out in the back shed during the day, and often misses out on food because she hangs back. Millie on the other hand is like a force of nature. She’s loud and proud! The darker of the two, she meows around the house in the middle of the night (in a Kathryn Hepburn voice) if she’s either lonely, hungry, bored or a bit achey. She stands beside the milk bowl until you put milk in it. She stands beside the sliding door to the upstairs deck and waits until you open it so she can sun herself – in both cases meowing if you don’t attend – and generally going through life with this amazing sense of entitlement.

I was having breakfast on the deck this morning, watching the two cats: Millie rolling around the deck admiring the ocean view, watching the Willie Wag Tails flit about, and warming her coat with some gentle morning rays. Then there was Winnie, hiding under a chair in the dining room, looking like she’d love a pat or a bask in the sun but not game to come out. What happened to her sense of entitlement? She’s just as deserving of love and sun and food as Millie. But she doesn’t get any because she’s scared.

As a writing mentor and author myself, I’ve met hundreds of writers, both published and unpublished, and I’d be an idiot if I hadn’t noticed patterns of behaviour in those who get published and those who don’t. Unfortunately it’s very much a Millie and Winnie situation. Talent is definitely not the deciding factor.

Millie in the sunMillie writers are distinguished by a sense of entitlement. They stand at the milk dish or the sliding door expecting to get what they want (read: submitting to publishers, agents & competitions and believing in their right to be published). If they get a rejection or are ignored, they don’t walk away, they meow louder (submit to more competitions, agents and publishers) knowing that sooner or later their needs will be met. Millie writers will eventually get published.

Winnie under the tableWinnie writers, however, are usually crippled by self-doubt and hide behind talk about how hard things are, how few people are getting published, how fickle the industry is, how crappy their writing is. Winnie writers don’t submit their work confidently and regularly because there’s a soundtrack in their head that says What’s the point. and how can they become published if no-one sees their work?

Now I’m not suggesting that any old rubbish will be published if you only persist. Of course you have to learn your craft and continue improving. This conversation isn’t for beginner writers, it’s for those who should be published by now. Beyond talent and writing skill, how do you develop a sense of entitlement? Firstly, work out why you think you deserve to be published. Have you been writing for ten years and have worked damn hard? Are you innovative? Talented? Fabulous at editing? Stir your ego up. Get it on the job. Be a little grandiose in your own mind. Then write that down an put it where you can see it all the time.  Mine is:

I’M THE MOST CREATIVE WRITER I KNOW

Purely my opinion but I believe it, and it gives me a sense of entitlement, particular in the fantasy genre. Of course I don’t usually advertise that because I don’t want people to think I’m a tosser. But I’m sharing it with you because defining why you deserve to be published will motivate you to write, to submit, to weather rejection, and to ultimately succeed in your career.

Don’t take no for an answer. When I was unpublished I had the Apollo 13 rescue statement pinned to my computer: Failure is not an option.  Get cranky if that’s what it takes, but beyond the anger define why you damn well deserve to have a book with your name on the cover. Get a little Millie swagger happening (in your own mind, don’t share it with others or they’ll think you’re a tosser too!). You’ll be surprised by the results.

And if you have twenty minutes to sit with a coffee and watch this amazing TED talk, I promise it will show you practical ways to become more like Millie and less like Winnie…

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Welcome Writers!

I'm Louise Cusack, an Australian author of fantasy and romance published by Harper Collins, Simon and Schuster, and Pan Macmillan. I also mentor and tutor other writers like yourself. Please avail yourself of the resources on this website, and happy writing!

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