{Lygia's Journey} Building A Successful Author Brand

[Lygia]

Hi there! I’m officially starting my journey’s thread so I can update it monthly with what I’m doing at the moment.

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I’ve written this post detailing my goals and this one talking a bit about my personal and professional background.

Today’s post is rather short; I’m just sharing what I’ve been up to these past weeks.

The good news is that I’m still ahead of my schedule: I finished an 80k+ word story in February, and I’m currently finishing another one. The first few months of 2023 will be dedicated to basically writing a lot of stuff, so I can have some sort of backlist ready to be edited and revised by the end of the year.

Also, the other story I’m posting online has managed to gather more readers and consequently more views. I intend to later monetize it, and I’m still translating this one to English.

With regard to my small store, there’s going to be a big event related to its market in the middle of the year, so we’re in the process of building new products to be sold exclusively there.

Oh, and I’m still happily following the routine I talked about here. Reminding myself daily of my goals is helping me keep on track.

See you next month and thank you for reading!

 

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[BizyDad]

I read everything you linked to. I'll simply comment here.

I'm glad you're on the forum. I'm happy there is a new author that will be contributing here. We've had other authors, but they all seem to have gone silent lately. They're probably all having adventures and preparing their next works of art.

To repeat what you already know, you have a gift with words. I enjoyed reading your stories. You gave me an idea to photojournal my process. Thank you for that.

I don't know that I can offer you any help at this moment, but I'm commenting on this thread so that I could at least continue to cheer you on.

 

[Lygia]

I read everything you linked to. I'll simply comment here.

I'm glad you're on the forum. I'm happy there is a new author that will be contributing here. We've had other authors, but they all seem to have gone silent lately. They're probably all having adventures and preparing their next works of art.

To repeat what you already know, you have a gift with words. I enjoyed reading your stories. You gave me an idea to photojournal my process. Thank you for that.

I don't know that I can offer you any help at this moment, but I'm commenting on this thread so that I could at least continue to cheer you on.

Thank you so much for taking your time to read my posts! I truly appreciate your kind words and encouragement to keep going. They are helpful on their own! Thank you again!

 

[Lygia]

Hi there!

The great news is that I’ve already achieved one of my main goals for this year—I finished writing four stories!

This means I can begin the next part of my plan: deal with the nonfiction, technical stuff. These next months will be dedicated to producing a year’s worth of content for my newsletter and social media accounts and learning more about developmental editing and other revising techniques. It feels refreshing to give the creative side of my brain some rest after tapping into it for four months straight. Ironically, though, the more I allow myself not to think about my stories or characters, the more details and ideas for new scenes seep into my mind. Oh well. Guess I can’t shut it down completely after all.

I’ve had great moments and not-so-good ones these past weeks. Sometimes I think my biggest obstacle in all of this is my own mind.

I’ve had glimpses of joy. A night when I kept writing for almost five hours straight and went to bed past midnight because the words came so, so easily to me and the scenes were so vivid in my mind and everything was pure bliss for a moment. A day when a new reader discovered one of my stories, read all 40+ chapters in a day, and later sent me a message saying how much she loved it.

I’ve had glimpses of fear. A night filled with self-doubt and anxiety. Questions looming over my head. Questions I don’t have the answer for. What if all of this is a colossal waste of time, what if this is a bout of insanity, what if I’m being foolish and delusional, what if I’ll never get to where I want to be, what if what if what if.

Thought I could share this to show that, naturally, there will be good and bad days. And maybe… some bad days only exist because your mind created them in the first place.

I always remember what my mother used to say before I had to give a presentation for my entire class in high school: It’s okay to be nervous. It’s okay to be afraid. You just can’t let it paralyze you. So I let the fear wash over me, come at me like waves. Let it come. Let it go. Then I go back to work.



Until next month. As always, thank you for reading!

 

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[Lygia]

Hi there!

This month I managed to write the posts for my newsletter as I planned to last month. I also ended up writing one more story! 2023 has been a great year so far.

I’m still focusing my attention on learning more about how to edit novels and writing that story I’m posting online, which keeps gathering new readers.

Thank you for reading. Until next month!

Lygia