Practical Tips for Surviving the Road to Publication by Sarah Raplee

Hi, I'm Sarah Raplee, author of Paranormal  and Steampunk Romance.

In order to smooth your seemingly-endless trek to Author-dom, I’m sharing some tips I’ve learned The Hard Way.

Time Management Tips

If you must have a perfectly clean, quiet area to work, buy earplugs and go to the local library or coffee shop to write. 

I own a sign that says, “An immaculate house is the sign of a misspent life.” The writer’s corollary is, “An immaculate desk is the sign of a procrastinating writer.”

When writing in a coffee shop or other public place, never tell a stranger you are a writer. Chances are they will spend the next hour or two telling you all about the story they will never write, but you should. Or they will have written a story they want you to read and tell them if it’s any good. (Believe it or not, once someone gave me a notebook detailing a story they’d “thought up” that had an amazing plot, which unfortunately was already the plot of a bestselling author’s book.) 

Avoid eye contact to avoid conversations. If directly asked if you are a writer, LIE. It’s best to plan and rehearse the lie ahead of time, just in case this situation arises. "What, me? I'm working on a class assignment."

Never Leave Home Without…

(These are pretty self-explanatory.)

Earplugs

Spare mouse batteries

Your computer glasses

Your (fully charged) laptop or notebook computer

Chocolate

Eye drops

Pain reliever

Keeping Your Sanity Tips

SARAH AND FRECKLES

Never leave your cat alone in your office. My cat steals shiny metallic objects like paperclips and thumb drives. He also loves to send cryptic messages to my friends (&*’7poitionnnn). Sometimes he decides to lay on my keyboard when I’ve left a document open (aszxzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz).He’s also been known to hold down the backspace key long enough to delete a half hour’s work.

Never leave your child alone on your computer. Your work is, to quote Golem, “Precioussss.” Treat it as such. Avoid unnecessary risks.

Never give your cat or your child your password. See above.

Always save frequently. There’s no terror greater than the panic of losing a day’s work. Sooner or later bad computer magic happens to every writer. Saving is like a protective spell.

Always back up your work frequently. Computers get hacked, infected by viruses, stolen, burned in house fires. See above and multiply the panic by a thousand.

Fail Safe

If you DO lose a chunk of your work, take a brief moment to feel terrified, but then DON’T PANIC! I once lost a whole chapter of a novel. I had no idea what happened to it. Searched and browsed but couldn’t locate the blasted thing anywhere. After a week, I bit the bullet and wrote the chapter a second time.

Fast forward three months. While accessing a research file folder, guess what I found? My original chapter! No idea how it ended up there. Out of curiosity, I compared the two versions of my chapter. They were nearly word-for-word identical! So if you lose some work and have to recreate it, chances are your second version will be very similar in awesomeness to your first.

I hope you find these tips helpful on your writer’s journey. Do you have a practical tip to share?