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Hi, folks! Welcome to a brand new year! This year I'm starting out with a series on novel craft. This week I hope I offer you some good advice about how to start your book. That's right, your book is like no other. Your start is like no other. A good novelist has come to trust her mojo. Books start in a myriad of ways: some with dialogue, some with backstory, some jump into the action, some blather on inside the main character's head, some start with character waking up, some begin with the sunrise.  Regardless, a good beginning will spill some of that writer magic on the page--the I've-got-this-attitude.

Where does this attitude come from? There is no magic formula but here are three practices that will infuse your beginnings with your mojo. First, write and write and write. Next learn how to take charge and be your own boss. Finally give yourself pep talks. I will chat about these three hallmarks of a great beginning. (A hallmark is an invisible stamp that shouts this is one authentic book.)

First, you must write, not think about, not talk about, not plan about writing, but actually write.  This involves at least a million words before you reach minimally competent. So whatever it takes begin to write. Type page after page. Fill journal after journal. Write failed story after failed story. You have found the road to a good beginning!  Kudos!

Next you must own your writing. If you are a writer, you should be receiving regular critiques of your work. That is awesome. Now you must learn to learn what to listen to and what to toss. This will take hundreds of critiques and hundreds of misses.  Take the big risks. Go to that craft workshop you've been thinking about. Read the competition and then compete. Own failure and define it is a stepping stone to success. The thing you must realize -- you are the Boss. Expose yourself on the page, take the risk. You may fail. You may go broke. Regardless, exercise your exclusive rights, own your writing. Ownership will infuse your beginnings with you.  Good stuff.

Finally, learn how to pep talk yourself.  Here's the deal, the awesomeness must come from within. This is where your voice is. The self talk needs to work like this: I can do something awesome. Why not? I will write something that will shake the foundations. This beginning will blow my own mind, and it will totally transform everyone's universe. I will make this better, faster, stronger. I'm going to totally six-million dollar man this! (Note: if you are not doing 1 and 2, and doing 3, you are not looking like a genius...)

Take a few minutes every day and give yourself the pep talk. Do not neglect this step. Don't try to get this juice from others. If you are like me, call on the grace of I AM. No, no, you don't deserve unmerited favor, but ask for it (somebody out there really loves you), and then give the glory to the Architect of all things.

I just dropped a teacup of useful stuff in your brain: Work hard, be the BOSS, and finally pep talk yourself. All this will build beginning inertia for you. Inertia is all about getting you in a tendency of writing AWESOME beginnings. If you tend to write awesome beginnings, you will continue to write awesome beginnings.  This is something you can trust.

I hope you come back next week for more Novel Craft.  If your resolution is to finally write your novel, follow the steps.  (P.S. this advice works for every creative endeavor.)  Good luck!

Here is a doodle.

Almost two years ago I wrote an article titled, “Do You Really Need an Author Website?” In that article I explained the need for a website and included a couple of statistics proving that need. Since then, social media has exploded. It’s become more powerful than ever, and more and more people and businesses are using it as an integral part of their marketing strategy. In fact, social media

A quite lively discussion has blown in from space on a friends Face-postcard about something I forgot because it went a completely different way in short order and is now a history lesson on indigenous peoples.

It was said the “Native “”American”” people” were here first and that they claim to be “Indigenous” and that they have their traditional stories to back up their claim to properties etc.

That got me to thinking (usually leads to minor disasters) that just because someone in your past lived some place and told creation stories doesn’t always mean you have any more rights than the guy who was born there after you lost the battle, in my case way after.

I know, growing up, my mother used to tell me, when I asked how I got here that I came from heaven and perhaps, if I’m a good boy, God will give me land there again though I think he may balk at the casino I want to build even if it is to take all the sinner’s money or credits or what ever the currency of his realm is.

And further more if in the past there was only one super continent, Pangaea or what ever they really called it, then we all have a claim to everywhere cause we are all descendants of the original inhabitants and I’ll bet a dollar to a doughnut there aint anywho who can tell me where they thought they came from even after the break up.

I thought perhaps we are all from Mars via the Pleiades star system but had to leave cause the Marshonians wanted the place back so we moved on as they had come from the Hercules system to Mars first.

To send every one back to where they came from is stupid, you can’t fit that many people on Ellis Island let alone grow enough hemp there to have a trade economy with New York.

I don’t know the answer other than if we don’t start being natives from “EARTH” the little grey men will boot us out and wipe out the myths of our origins from then to eternity.

It’s a race none us may win …