What Do I Write About

What Do I Write About

Every one asks a writer what they write about and how they come up with ideas. The answer to that question can be as varied as the writer. But we all started somewhere. The first things that I wrote were personal essays that I only had the courage to show to a few close friends. The first articles that I wrote that were published were about domestic violence, education and articles related to family concerns. The first article that I was paid to publish was about domestic violence and was published in The Evangel Magazine for the Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee. That was in the year 2000, three months after I first became a grandmother and three months after my mother died. My one regret was that neither of my parents lived to see my publishing success.

In the years since then I have written many articles. I have been published in several newspapers and church magazines. Then, after years of research, college courses, interviews, and volunteer training all my notes and articles began to form a book. At first I didn’t have the courage to think I could actually publish a book. But, there was no denying that a book was coming together, whether I had the courage or not. As I seriously worked on a book project that would not allow itself to be denied I also began to study and learn how to submit book proposals and how to obtain endorsements. I studied publishers and the difference between traditional and self publishing. In the end I decided to self publish for a variety of reasons but mostly because I knew the material needed to be published and I wanted as much control over my book as possible.

I formally self published it in 2009 and finally self published it with the ISBN, etc in 2012. I knew God was in this book because of all the blessings he provided in the production of it. I was able to hire a good friend who is a professional writer and editor to edit the manuscript. One of my best friends and co-worker created the cover art. One of my newspaper editors referred me to his graphic designer who I hired to combine my cover layout with my friend’s cover art into a wonderful book cover that has been commented about repeatedly at book fairs. That same editor referred me to my first book packager to have the book printed. The last blessing came to me quite unexpectedly. One of the writers in my writers group offered to do the text formatting as her contribution to the book project because she supports domestic violence awareness. With everything else in place I finally purchased my ISBN number and went back to my graphic designer and had it incorporated into the book cover. Up to this point I have been selling my book personally to individuals, at book fairs in various communities, whenever I gave domestic violence awareness presentations and in my church’s bookstore, as well as on my website,.

Tonight I made the next step in my book project. I submitted my book, Home Should Be Safe: Hope and Help for Domestic Violence Victims, to the Writers Digest Self Published Book contest. Now I patiently wait until the contest is over and put myself into newer projects, new articles, new subjects, and new books.

What do you write about and what fuels your desire to write about it? Tell me about it here.