This past month, I have been able to produce a lot more art. I’m trying to improve my skills in a more painterly style. I am focusing on subtle backgrounds and love to paint animals. The art prompt I joined is called #FlightsofFancy2018 and has been a blast! I am learning to paint much faster! Please check out my bird paintings! I hope you like them!
Since I last posted about my decision to self-publish, a publisher I had been wanting to work with opened their submissions back up to unsolicited manuscripts. I HAD to submit mine, one final time, for review. I am still presently waiting their return. Also, I had submitted a children’s book to an emerging artist contest back in July, and am still waiting the results. All of these things should drive me mad, however, I am too busy to notice! Once I hear back, then I will be able to move on in some way, or another. Let’s hope the magic happens for me.
A lot of magic has been happening in other areas of my life, and I feel a huge part of that is because I have finally found a groove that works for me. With transcription, yoga, and art, something clicked. I hope it continues because it feels really good. I have a sneaking suspicion that yoga started the whole change! If you’ve been interested in my journey, I appreciate it. Thank you for staying tuned. I hope to have exciting news in some form, very soon!
Namaste.
Hello friends!
For the past few months, I have had the honor of working with the OmStars team in a marketing internship. It has been a lot of fun getting a behind-the-scenes look at this company, and learn more of the yoga lore I love. This internship wasn’t just about adding more cool stuff to my resume. Yoga has become a great addition to my life, and I felt that this would allow me to surround myself with unique teachers. I love to learn, and will always seek more knowledge.
OmStars is an online yoga TV network, created by Kino MacGregor, specifically for teaching yoga to the world! Kino’s passion to share the spiritual practice of yoga drew me in, and has made me feel at home within myself. What impresses me the most about OmStars is the amazing, diverse group of teachers that get added to the instructors list every day. There’s a perfect course out there for everyone whether you’re like me, and can’t get enough of Ashtanga, or you want to learn how to meditate. Perhaps you’re strictly into trying new classes all the time, well, you can’t go wrong there either!
This past week I was given a promotion to start helping out the social media team, and I could not be more thrilled! I have been wanting to expand the social media e-commerce experience I have from my own business, and put it to use in the yoga world.
To celebrate the fun, I wanted to remind my friends that you can get a free month of OmStars, access to all the amazing classes by my Guruji, Kino, and more, by using the coupon code: JODIYOGA.
And feel free to check out @omstarsofficial as well as @kinoyoga on Instagram so you can participate in some absolutely amazing yoga challenges that are put together to support charities. I hope to “see” you there!
Namaste.
After my post yesterday, I am thinking it might be a lot of fun to document the process of self-publishing my first EVER book.
There are a lot of tools I am going to be learning to use because the book I am working on presently is the first of a series. I will need to know how to do everything for the following books, so why not do it all myself.
I do not know how long this will take.
Right now, I am working on the art for the cover. I love it. This is exactly why I decided self-publishing was the best route for me. I get to do all of these exciting things to make the book happen.
Because of my sewing pattern design background, I already know how to layout pages, but I really want to learn Adobe’s InDesign because it looks like a lot of fun. So, I will be learning that. Who knows, maybe I could post some tutorials along the way to help others like me–one of my favorite things.
We have the ability to make our books our own in entirety…why not? That said, I am having others proofread and/or edit my manuscript. It’s pretty clean as is, but that doesn’t matter. You need other people looking over it too. Also, read it out loud to a friend or your cat. It works. I polished my novel that way. I saw all of the problems out front like they were on a billboard! It was awesome. Now, the person editing it for me will hardly have anything to do. ;o)
During the querying process, I already wrote barf-text trying to sell the novel so that’ll work great for the back cover copy. The synopsis I wrote will be helpful, too. Mostly for myself. I am not going to post that anywhere because it has major spoilers.
When you work on a project of this size, you have to look at the entire process and appreciate what you went through. Sure, I spent a lot of time querying, but because I set my limit, I only spent the amount of time I needed to see what I truly wanted was self-publishing. Maybe I needed that to feel confident going into it. I’m SO beyond excited about this right now. I am sitting here with Clip Studio Pro opened up on my other monitor with, what I feel, is one of my best pieces of artwork, for the front cover. ;o)
I hope many of us who are working on our own books, from cover to cover, can come together and share the fun. Please, let me know if you, too, are working on your own. It’d be fun to chat with you.
Om.
The time you take to query agents is valuable. I am sure this post will not please some in the writing community, however, no one should let it get to them too much. This post is coming from a positive place. I am really happy right now.
I decided to self-publish my work, and I would like that valuable time back. I believe in my work, am passionate about my world, and do not want anyone else telling me what to, or not to do, with my characters. Self-publishing feels good.
When querying, I did everything I was “supposed to” and it felt terrible. One thing I gained from it was pressuring myself to write a synopsis. So, at least I have that. It’ll come in handy, but I could have accomplished a lot more than what seemed like sending out over 100 resumes to just continually be rejected and waste time that I could have been writing Book II. If done well, sending a query letter takes time adjusting each one to the agent’s liking to avoid being auto-rejected.
Twitter seems like a great resource for authors who are querying, but after seeing all of it, I’m leaning toward disagreeing with that thought. Just remember, the trendy people are on there. The ones who will tweet their MSWL while watching a new movie they are excited about. What happens next week when another movie comes out? The people who put together the official MSWL website are very sweet, and I am thankful for their helpful information. They try to make the process the best it can be.
If you follow the writer hashtags at all, you’ll know exactly what I am talking about. I get what’s happening, there. Popular stuff sells. I have always gotten bored with what’s popular. After the self-inquiry one goes through while seeking representation, I remembered that I have never been the popular kid because I followed the trends. People knew who I was because I did exactly the opposite.
I have always felt it was silly to create something that already existed. Even when I was a kid, I would color birds rainbow in coloring books simply because I wanted to see a rainbow bird.
For a long, long time I would not let myself even think about self-publishing. Somehow, I was influenced to believe it was cheap. Many people online, in the industry already, made self-publishing seem generic, and acted as though self-published authors were “not real authors.” Many have proved that wrong!
Once I officially decided to self-published, I felt transformed. The passion and excitement that has come over me is exactly what I wanted to have happen out of my book(s). Right now, my mind is buzzing with ideas for the cover, chapter art, character art, and so much more. Buzz! Buzz! This feeling is exactly the result I wanted from finishing my first book. <3 I don’t care if this creation takes 10 years. That will be 10 years of joy.
The reason I wanted to write this out to the world has to do with others who may feel burned out from querying. Don’t let anyone influence you to do the opposite of what feels right for you. Do your research, and see how great things can be. We have the option to self-publish now for a reason. People got tired of waiting, tired of being controlled, and sought the joy of living in their own worlds. I am not telling others to not query at all, but limit it. That’s what I did. I always told myself, ‘if I do not have representation for my book by May 2018, then I am self-publishing, and not looking back.’ The seed had already been planted. My soul already hinted to me that self-publishing (full control) was what it wanted. The fact that I knew to set a limit should have told me I wanted to self-publish all along.
This post goes out to others who are feeling funky about querying. I was told over and over that most people give up before they would be able to attain representation for their books. I am here to disagree with that, too. People don’t give up, they get burned out. Every represented author tells writers to, ‘hang in there, because your time will come.’ That’s really sweet of them, because they know the struggle. Or do they? Some do, some don’t. Either way, I do not actually know, for a fact, how much time I have to spend waiting around. I believe in living in the present. I do not like to wait around to make magic happen. Especially when we no longer have to! So, yes, my time came when I WOKE UP and realized traditional publishing was NOT for me right now. I’ve never done anything traditionally. Who knows, perhaps even this could lead one to the traditional route of publishing.
My main point here is to know yourself, and let that passion run wild. It’s within you for a reason. If you keep getting rejected, and worry that agents or publishers will change your manuscript so much that you’ll hate it, move onto self-publishing. This decision has made me so entirely happy I am glad I gave myself a time limit on querying and, honestly, I should have made it sooner. Just something to consider.
There are a lot of awesome people in the industry, too, that’ll help you. I met a couple agents that I am truly inspired by. You will, too. I hope others will get to feel THIS excited over their projects, because it is what I feel life is all about.
Ask yourself what you want to achieve out of your work. If you’re like me, self-publishing is really okay. :o)
<3
Yogi out. Om.
