Do You Understand WHY You Write?

Do You Understand WHY You Write?

Rolling over in the middle of the night from another restless sleep, I grab my smartphone and start going through my twitter account, which has become horribly addictive.  This is about the only time I can actually look at other people’s twits.  So I click on links for books and posts and retweet what I think is appropriate.  Keeping my eye on the time on my phone, telling myself I need to go back to sleep, I run across a twit entitled: Why I Suck at Book Marketing (& WHY You Do Too) by Shah Wharton.  She had recently seen a post called I Hate Self-Promotion by Tim Grahl at Out:Think. 

Basically the premise is that you can holler until you’re blue in the face through your Author Platform, but until you understand WHY you are writing, what theme is behind your books, you will never reach the readers you are looking for.  Shah went through her books and made a list of her reoccurring themes so she could understand WHY she was writing and what she was trying to tell her readers.

Hmm.  As you know, I’m publishing my late husband’s books.  So as for the WHY he needed to express, I can’t ask him.  But being a reader and having gone through the birthing process with each of his stories and characters, I gave it a stab in the dark.

Bear Of A Storm:  This is a man who one fateful night, has his girlfriend taken by a four-foot Teddy Bear into a large ball of light.  The other Teddy Bears could have picked anyone on the block, but it was his girlfriend they wanted.  He then has to live through the fear and helplessness of the consequences.

In Memory of Michelle:  A man is fishing along the Missouri River and one fateful day, he encounters an aquatic humanoid creature he calls Michelle.  Due to an accident beyond his control, he fells hopeless at his inability to help her and comes back year after year to find her.

Chip Off the Old Block:  Unknown to Michael, he has a destiny to the Keeper of the Unicorns, Grizelda.  He pays the price when he chooses to ignore his destiny.

It Lives In The Basement:  This is about two Detectives, who were partners, but at different times were in the wrong place at the wrong time.  They are both faced with the same creature and fighting for survival.  Again, Fate.

Arthur Merlin: The One and Only:  I am currently working on this novel, but Arthur is a man, who due to an accident suddenly has various psychic abilities.  And as the story progress’, he discovers that it was his destiny. 

There are several other stories that I have started but quit, for now, with the same reoccurring themes.  Fate and Destiny.

Fate:  The development of events beyond a person's control, regarded as determined by a supernatural power.  OR, be destined to happen, turn out, or act in a particular way. 

Destiny: The events that will necessarily happen to a particular person or thing in the future.

Ah ha!  So now I have found my theme, but what to do with it?  Supposedly I can use this knowledge to attract my tribe of people.  We shall see.

For those of you that don’t believe in Fate/Destiny, when Bob and I first met, he told me he knew me by the 7 moles I have on my back

Also, I don’t drive due to a congenital birth defect involving the central nervous system in my eyes.  So Bob was the sole driver.  We had bought a small three acre house in the country.  We spent 7 wonderful years before we lost it to a flood along the Missouri River.  He passed away 1 1/2 years later.  If we hadn’t lost the house and moved back into Omaha, I would have been stuck in a house in the country that I had no way to get back and forth to work from.  I would have had to go through the emotional loss of my house and Bob at the same time.  I don’t think I could have dealt with that.  So Fate took our house and gave me Bob for 1 1/2 years and a way back to Omaha. 

And last, was it Fate that made me stop at this one twitter post in the middle of the night?