A DANDY LITTLE PROJECT

I’ve got a dandy little project I am working on… or perhaps better stated collaborating on.

I’ve shared the idea here that I wanted to write a book about my brother-in-law who had a terrible accident last August. He had a wreck on his bike and was left with no memory of what happened.

Fascinated by a now fully healthy brother-in-law with no recollection of the most traumatic incident of his life, I volunteered to fill the gaps with some stories I would publish in a book. I started to sketch out some ideas but felt like the missing component would be a different voice, a different feel for each of these misadventures.

I decided to reach out to some of the authors I have met via social media to see if they would be interested in working with me on this book I’m calling Brain Tsunami. The idea is we each start with the same beginning and ending, but write a story with no interaction or involvement from the others.

I’ve been overwhelmed with the positive responses I’ve gotten from my online friends. I mean this has been so great, I think we need to drop the “online” moniker and everything that goes with that and just say these people are my friends.

The finished project will feature myself and nine other authors writing stories about what might have happened to my brother-in-law that fateful night.

This one’s just getting started, and we’ve got plenty of work ahead but I can’t wait to bring you BRAIN TSUNAMI (the all caps and bolding really increases the impact of that, right?)

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Write Steve Write! is a weekly blog by author Steve Akley. Typically it is posted on (most) Sundays and features insight about his writing… though there is an occasional movie review or random thought post. It should be noted it’s posted as a live feed… no editing, no planning beforehand, it’s typed out on Sunday morning and the “publish” button is immediately hit. Apologies for any errors but you get this just as Steve thinks it!

Coming Next Week: I have no idea what I’m writing about next week, but it will be something.

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THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY

I’m in pretty deep right now into writing my Small Brand America Special Bourbon Edition. I’ve got 17 of the 20 chapters I have planned in some stage of completion. They are all written, but need to be edited and in many instances I’m still chasing down photos to complete the piece.

Going through this process for the fifth time (this is the fifth edition in the series), I really got to thinking about what I like about this process and what I don’t like. Based on my evaluation, I think the categories of “The Good,” “The Bad,” and “The Ugly” is appropriate.

The Good

• Research – I like the aspect of looking into what companies might be a good fit for these books.
• The Interviews – I love speaking to the individuals who run the featured companies and finding out about them and their business.
• The Writing – Thankfully, I love the writing. It’s a pleasure to tell the stories of these individuals and the companies they run.

The Bad

• Editing – I’m sorry, it’s just not fun going over what you already wrote, line-by-line, multiple times. It’s a thankless job and it’s never truly finished. You could continue to polish your writing and making it better so it then becomes, when is it ready to go?
• Logistics – A big part of writing a non-fiction piece highlighting others is logistics. You have to schedule interviews, gather pictures, keep records of things like photo credits. It’s a challenge, for sure!
• Publishing – The process of self-publishing gets easier over time, but it’s still kind of a pain writing your descriptions and going through the steps of simply “getting your work out there.”

The Ugly

• Marketing – There’s only one “ugly” piece to self-publishing and that’s marketing. You know you’ve got work which as good as, if not superior than what people find on retailers shelves but you have to capture the attention of the reader to get them to buy. It takes time, effort and an unwavering dedication and it’s easily the area where I need the most work!

“The Ugly” aside, writing has been an incredible honor for me to do and it’s fun reaching an audience, even if you are literally building it one reader at a time!