How to be Confident with Abigail Prigge

Welcome to #FriendFriday, an interview-style guest post series every 1st and 3rd Friday of the month. Want to be the next interviewee? Send me an email!

Happy Friday, my pretty little friends! This week, I'm happy to host new friend Abigail Prigge, a writer, coach and card-maker. She's a multi-tasking queen, and I'm thrilled we got to catch up and chat about her success.

Let's get acquainted!

Here's your intro question. Tell me about yourself in less than 70 words.

I romanticize everything from moonlight to ice-cream and over-utilize my snooze button. If I were to pick 7 people to camp with, my siblings would win. I’d choose my friends to drink mochas and play volleyball with, and my parents for a good conversation. I enjoy teaching/mentoring—I’m my writing students’ biggest fan. I love dresses and old books. I’m intrigued by life stories and obsessed with my favorite words.

You're a blogger, writer, personal writing coach and card-maker. Tell us how you got started.

I think the roots are in my beloved dollhouse world. My sisters and I made sure that our “characters” had very exciting, conflict-filled lives. When I grew out of dollhouses, I channeled my love of storytelling right into fiction. My dad signed me up with a professional writing coach. Before I was even out of high school, I discovered my love for sharing what I’ve learned by coming alongside and mentoring other young writers. My writing coach encouraged me to pursue that passion and thus A Time2 Write was born. This journey has taught me so much about marketing, entrepreneurship, customer service, blogging and teaching. I co-wrote the recent release Charlotte’s Hope, and am in the process of producing the second edition of my teen-fiction novel One Summer’s Desire.

I discovered card-making in my mom’s well-stocked craft room. It’s just another outlet for creativity . . . and sometimes companionship (when I can convince my sisters or friends to join me).  I’ve found it’s a little addicting (and therapeutic) to tear paper.

Psst.. she made this little number for us! How cool? 

Let's put you to the test. What's the most important advice you have for future clients?

Develop your written communication skills while you are young. No matter where you go or who you’re with, you are communicating to the world around you. Whether you are writing an essay, journal entry, Facebook post, poem, a response in a debate, email, letter to a Senator, skit, or novel—your message should be heard loud and clear. Learn to articulate and construct your written words so that nothing distracts from that message.

If you could be the author of any novel in history, which novel would that be and why?

Yeah, Jenny, you successfully stumped me. I have decided not to over-think it and go with a cliche but classic answer—Pride and Prejudice. Why? Because Jane Austen is a mastermind. Her novel is truly timeless wit. The charm, scandal, modesty, chivalry, agony and passion of this saga are portrayed in the most whimsical way I could ever imagine.

And finally, before we let you go, what's the best advice you've received and how did it get you here today?

I’m the girl that had three secret blogs before the A Time 2 Write blog. It took all my courage to let my mom read my first novel back in 2007. I like to hang onto some mystique . . . so every time I let others read my work (aka see a piece of my heart), I am tempted to shrink away in the background. I know I can’t please everyone, and that’s hard. I heard some random advice and specifically applied it to my writing: OWN IT. Own that rejection. Own those characters. Own that business. Own the young-writer thing (I’m 22!) Come what may—be honest, transparent and real with your readers. If I’m truly called to writing, I can pursue it with confidence.

I would like to say thank you so much, Jenny, for hosting me today--it was a delight. You definitely inspire me.

Thanks to Abigail for spending some time with us! If you’re interested in being interviewed for the next #FriendFriday, send me an email. 

Personal Branding for Writers by Kayla Hollatz

Welcome to #FriendFriday, an interview-style guest post series every 1st and 3rd Friday of the month. Want to be the next interviewee? Send me an email!

Welcome back to #FriendFriday! This week, I interviewed my friend, Kayla Hollatz, an amazing poet and PR guru who runs not one, but two blogs. She's in the self-publishing club, and I couldn't be happier to have her visit us today to talk about personal branding for writers.

Take it away, Kayla!

Here's your intro question. Tell me about yourself in less than 70 words. (It's tougher than it sounds.)

I’m Kayla Hollatz, a twenty-something blogger with a fierce love for writing. By day, I’m a PR professional and by night, I’m a short-form poet. I’m self-publishing my first poetry collection, Brave Little Bones, this spring. I’m passionate about helping others make a killer impression online and tell their stories. I value creativity, adventure, authenticity, transparency, and most importantly, community. Hot chocolate is my fuel.

I love your Twitter party, #createlounge. Tell us about your blog and how you got started.

Thank you! #createlounge is a community of inspiring creatives that come together every week on Wednesdays at 7 PM CT to chat about topics that affect our creative process. We talk about community building, collaboration, blogging, social media, branding, and more. It’s a really fun group that lights me up all throughout the week. I’d love to have you join us.

Let's put you to the test. You're a PR master and a poet. How do you combine both of your creative interests in your blog?

This is one test I know I’ll ace. I started my poetry blog in my sophomore year of college before my PR blog. My poetry blog is a mix of my original poetry and an online inspiration board with a myriad of beautiful photos, quotes, and writings from other sources. Simply, it’s my happy place.

With being in PR, I knew having an established blog with a personal brand to match would be instrumental in my success in the field, and it has been. I love creating content on blogging, branding, social media, and my personal favorite, community building.

My blogs truly come together on social media. On Instagram, I’ll post excerpts of my poetry as well as what’s happening with the blog and in my professional life. On Twitter, I’ve created hashtags like #thehaikuproject and more recently #kaylawrites in order to segment my poetry on a platform where my audience is predominantly PR and blogger base. The response has been incredible.

It’s important to me to include both poetry and PR in my personal brand online because I wouldn’t be me if I left one out. I also enjoy connecting more with other professionals who have side hustles and practice their passions outside of work. My final words would be to share all of what you do. People will admire (and love) you for it.

If you could be the author of any novel in history, which novel would that be and why?

This question gets the award for being the most clever question I’ve ever been asked in an interview. My answer would be either 1984 or To Kill A Mockingbird. I love the classics for highlighting social change within each time period. 1984 showed the dangers of big government and having virtually no privacy, and To Kill A Mockingbird was (and still is) one of the most influential stories of the civil rights movement.

Also, The Great Gatsby would be on my list just because of the incredible symbolism. All of the imagery is so unbelievably smart. The green light? Breathtaking. Kudos, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

And finally, before we let you go, what's the best advice you've received and how did it get you here today?

My mum has always had great nuggets of wisdom throughout my life and uses many of them frequently. One of her most popular is “You can’t make decisions based on other people.” This has always stayed with me, even though sometimes I need reminding. I think it’s important to go after what you desire regardless of what others think.

I’m a natural people pleaser, which is hard for me to admit, but I try to combat those tendencies every day. You can either be buried in the “shoulds” of your life and let them control what you do or you can rise with the “musts” and follow what you need to do. The only one who lives your life is you, so live it well and to your own satisfaction. Cheers!

Thanks to Kayla for spending some time with us! If you’re interested in being interviewed for the next #FriendFriday, send me an email. 

Advice for Writers by Kristen A. Kieffer of She's Novel

Welcome to #FriendFriday, an interview-style guest post series every 1st and 3rd Friday of the month. Want to be the next interviewee? Send me an email!

Welcome to the first #FriendFriday post on the Blots & Plots blog. How does it work exactly? I send questions to my new friends and post their answers here. I'm happy to host Kristen A. Kieffer of She's Novel as my first guest. Once you're finished reading, hop over to her blog for some amazing writing advice.

And now, without further adieu…

Here's your intro question. Tell me about yourself in less than 70 words. (It's tougher than it sounds.)

I’m just a girl that loves obliterating expectations. I’m a college-quitter, a do-it-yourself learner, and a pursuer of high-reaching dreams. My greatest passion in life is story-telling, followed swiftly by helping others to do the same. I’m also the biggest Lord of the Rings nerd there ever was (next to Stephen Colbert, of course!). I love Medieval Europe, black coffee, vintage dresses, and Oxford commas.

It's no secret that I've fallen in love with your blog. Tell us a big about how you got it started.

I had my first taste of blogging in high school, when I fell in love with fashion and lifestyle blogs. Over the next four years, I began and quit countless of my own, culminating in the creation of Book Jacket in summer 2014. Book Jacket was first a lifestyle blog with the tagline, ‘Style. Literature. Life.’, until I finally had my grand epiphany: I disliked blogging about myself, but I loved teaching others. 

I quickly rebranded Book Jacket as a creative writing blog, wrote some positively awful articles, and began to realize that I wanted to go bigger. I needed to do one final blog overhaul, and that’s where She’s Novel came in to play. 

After months of rebranding, I launched She’s Novel on January 31st, 2015, and it has been such a massive dream come true ever since.

Let's put you to the test. What's your best advice for writers trying to complete their first novel?

Don’t strive for perfection. Just write. 

I know this sounds like awful advice, but hear me out. Just like my first piano recital was riddled with mistakes and my first blog was more embarrassing than messing up the National Anthem at a baseball game, my first novel was positively cringe-worthy. 

And that was a good thing! As a writer, your first novel, or at least the first draft of it, is your baseline work. It reveals to you your strengths and weaknesses, becoming a springboard for far greater work. So let yourself make mistakes. Just get that novel down on paper, and never forget that your best work is yet to come!

If you could be the author of any novel in history, which novel would that be and why?

I spent days mulling over this question! I was tempted to go with more generic answers like Pride and Prejudice or The Hobbit, but they didn’t seem quite right. Finally, I settled on The Princess Bride by William Goldman. 

The Princess Bride is a fantasy novel that has it all: adventure, romance, political intrigue, and general hilarity. It was also made into a movie that quickly became a cult classic and one of my personal favorites. The book itself sweeps you up in its magic, pulling you along on a journey of friendship, sword fights, kidnapping, and true love. As a reader, I lost myself in that book, and that’s all I could ever hope to achieve with my own writing.

And finally, before we let you go, what's the best advice you've received and how did it get you here today?

I’m not sure if the best advice I’ve ever received was even meant to be advice. Nevertheless, it has given me confidence time and time again over the past several years.

In my senior year of high school, I took an advanced placement English class. I wrote countless essays and research papers on literature throughout that year but never a lick of creative writing. At the end of the year, I asked my teacher to sign my yearbook and was shocked by what she wrote. 

“To one of the best writers to ever come through my classroom-I will miss you dearly, and I look forward to reading your novels some day! I’m only half-kidding, you could do it!”

She had no idea that I was immensely interested in doing just that. To have her see that potential in me at a time when I was extremely private about my passion for novel writing has encouraged me in my lowest times and motivated me at my highest. Because of her, I will always remember that believing in my own potential is the first step towards achieving my dreams.

Before I go, I’d just like to give a HUGE thank you to Jenny for being my blogging soulmate, for encouraging and inspiring me in so many ways over the past month. I have had so much fun getting to know you, and I’m honored that you’d have me here today. Stay amazing! -Kristen

Thanks to Kristen for spending some time with us! To find out more, visit She's Novel. If you're interested in being interviewed for the next #FriendFriday, send me an email. 

New TATM Scene: Wendy's Blind Date

Happy almost Valentine's Day! On Monday, you voted from a choice of three new scenes and your voices were heard. Today, I give to you the Wendy blind date scene, in celebration of the novel being in my editor's hands.

This scene takes place in the present timeline, when Wendy's best friend Reese encourages her to try to find a date for their other friend's wedding. And without further adieu….

Wendy's Blind Date

Wendy didn’t know how to date someone she didn’t know. She realized this halfway to the restaurant, mid-lyric of a country song. She wasn’t quite sure where to put her hands. Clasped together in her lap made them sweat, crossed over her chest sent the I’m pissed off message and she had no idea how to make herself look like an actual human being. Since when were hands so awkward?

Everything about Gray Fulton screamed man. He smelled like aftershave; and in his hair, he wore a gel or a mousse, which made it Ken doll stiff and shiny. There was a slight lean in the way he drove his car, a kind of cool comfort.

He took her to Sander’s, a fancy steakhouse that Mom and Dad took the family to for special occasions. On cue, Dad would always say, “I really need to teach y’all how to make hollandaise,” which he promptly forgot by the drive home.

Gray Fulton did all of the gentlemanly things boys are supposed to do: door-opening, chair-pulling and jacket-taking. Wendy knew girls were supposed to want these things, but it always made her feel like a show horse, like something to parade around a group of judges. Look at her, isn’t she a byoot?

“Wine?” he asked her.

“Absolutely,” she said.

Boys who bought her wine received high marks in her book. She loved wine. Red, mostly. But even though she loved wine, she still felt strange ordering it, like she was breaking some kind of rule. She wasn’t, she reminded herself. She had an ID to prove it.

What did one talk about on a date? Did you start with light conversation about your job or did you start even simpler with a nice weather type of comment?

The waiter brought the wine. Good, Wendy thought, Something to hold.

“So tell me about yourself,” Gray asked her.

This was most likely the hardest question he could have drawn from the question hat. She laughed uncomfortably and countered with, “What do you want to know?”

He didn’t know what to do with this response. He straightened his tie. Oh yeah, he was wearing a tie. “The basics, I suppose.”

That’s when Wendy realized that Gray Fulton, despite his gentlemanly check marks and quaffed hair, lacked an essential component to any and all Wendy contenders: a personality. Namely, a sense of humor/an awareness of social cues.

“Well, I work at a law firm,” she started. Basics only. Simplistic personality traits. “I graduated with a double major in art and business. I live with my parents.”

He kept pulling at his tie, like a dog with a collar. He coughed a little. “Cool.”

One word. No elaboration. Another observation about Gray Fulton: he had no propensity for conversations with females. Or maybe conversations at all.

“How about you?” she asked.

He muttered something about being in IT, then something else about living in New Orleans. He said all of this while biting on his bottom lip, nay, chewing, and the words had to maneuver themselves around this impediment, making them sound more like grunts than actual syllables.

Wendy nodded, gulping down her wine. “That’s great.”

She had no idea what was great, but the silence was a jarring. She was dating silence, and it just sat there sprawled out on the table in front of them, naked and awkward.

“So, I’m a painter. Watercolors, mostly.”

Once Wendy opened her mouth, she couldn’t close it again. She started talking about work, about Donald, about the storyline of the most recent series she’d started watching. Gray nodded along with her, playing with his fork, swishing the wine around in his glass, whatever it took to lose himself in her jabbering, to distract himself from the fact that he was out, on a date, with a very chatty girl.

So, this was how it was going to be. Wendy: the egotistical, self-obsessed loudmouth.

And all before 8:30.

“Can I just say something?” Gray interjected, finally allowing Wendy to catch a breath. “When Reese set us up, I had no idea how attractive you would be. You are seriously a beautiful woman.”

Gag me, Wendy thought. His words actually sounded sincere, but maybe that just made it worse.

This statement freaked her out more than anything else. A beautiful woman. Were they allowed to say that? She would never tell her friends, “I went on a date with a gorgeous man last night.” She wasn’t a woman. Women had rents and suits and titles like Mrs. or Dr. or Ms.

Women did not watch Saturday cartoons and drink their coffee out of Disney princess mugs.

She excused herself to go to the bathroom. She didn’t say she had to powder her nose or wash her hands. She straight up told him she needed to use the restroom.

“I’m not cut out for dating,” she said hurriedly when Claudia picked up. She wasn’t sure why she called Claudia.

“Oh no, are your teeth all stained like they always get when you drink red wine?”

Wendy gritted her teeth at the mirror. Purplish. “Add that to the list. He called me a beautiful woman. After I talked his ear off for a straight forty minutes. And he wears hair gel. And he bites his lip. And I hate this so much, please please bail me out.”

“I think you should stay,” Claudia said, “If you bail now, you’re just going to keep making excuses not to go on dates.”

“I’m not…”

“However,” Claudia continued, reveling in her power, “I’ll bail you out this one time. Because of all your recent emotional turmoil and whatnot. You owe me, though.”

“I owe you big time,” Wendy said.

At home, supposedly caring for her sick sister, Wendy set herself up to paint. She ran her palm over the paper, and dipped the brush into the water. When she closed her eyes, she could almost smell the air bouncing off the pond water. She could see the field of swaying grasses. She could picture herself there, her hand through his, standing in the wind.

She would date, eventually. Just not now.

For now, she would paint, and she did just that.

Greetings from the #TATMtent

photo

Good morning, jitterbugs. At this moment, I'm hanging out in the #TATMtent, and if you don't know what that is, you haven't been following me on Twitter and now I'm sad. Kidding. You could never make me sad. The #TATMtent is a magical place where all things #TATM are born. I set up camp last weekend, finishing the final touches on the book before sending it off to beta readers and my life-saver editor, Tanya Gold.

That's right people, Operation Self-Publish is in full swing. And let me tell you a little secret: this ish is hard. Okay, not like climbing-Mount-Everest-hard, but definitely stranded-on-a-lifeboat-hard. Thankfully, I have cool friends like Ashley R. Carlson to answer my 'help, I don't know what I'm doing' emails. That girl's the best.

And now, a little about the future:

What I Know for Sure

Keep in mind, I'm learning this as I go along. So the list of things I don't know is drastically more involved than this one, but I'll spare you. I know that the book will go to developmental editing on February 11th. I know that I will receive this back after a couple of weeks — around the same time I get my beta's responses — and have scheduled two weeks for more revisions on my part.

Then, it's off to the proofreader and cover designer. I'm still kind of hashing these details out. I also know that I will be publishing using CreateSpace and KDP, but I'm definitely open to exploring other avenues, if y'all request it!

What I Don't Know for Sure (an abbreviated list)

I do not know what the release date will be, but I have a fairly good idea. I'm not telling! It's more fun this way. Promise. There are definitely small details I'm not 100% sure about yet such as the print copy size or the fonts or the pricing. However, I do at least have an idea of what I want. I'm ahead of the game, I swear! Famous last words. 

In the next couple of months, I plan to gear the majority of my posts toward self-publishing: what I'm getting wrong and tricks I learn from people who are much smarter than I am. If you have any specific questions, please let me know. I'll be happy to help/bond over a shared crying session!

Now, back to the #TATMtent. Five of my favorite people are about to read my book. Eeeeeek!