Long Story - Friendless and Ill Again

[shel]

MK have you done any drawing lately?

[Mea kakau]

Hi shel,

Not recently. I write quite a bit and that's my number one priority along with designing websites. I'm doing one for my son who's starting a new business.

My artwork is still in its carrying case. Just the other day I asked my husband if we could get it photographed and then printed on canvas to hang around our home. His and my son's sign business have the capability of printing on canvas in full color. Now I just have to decide which sizes to use for the artwork.

[shel]

On 4/21/2017 at 8:05 AM, Mea kakau said:

Hi shel,

Not recently. I write quite a bit and that's my number one priority along with designing websites. I'm doing one for my son who's starting a new business.

My artwork is still in its carrying case. Just the other day I asked my husband if we could get it photographed and then printed on canvas to hang around our home. His and my son's sign business have the capability of printing on canvas in full color. Now I just have to decide which sizes to use for the artwork.

i'd love to see some of your work when you do photograph it. I have 3 of my photos of my sons printed on canvas - done at CVS.

[shel]

Also, do you share your writing with others, or is it more of a journaling thing?

[Mea kakau]

Hi Shel,

I'm editing my novel which I want to publish either on Amazon or a publisher.

I've photographed some of my work already. My avatar is one of them I drew for Palm Sunday years ago. Here it is in full size:

 

 

 

[Mea kakau]

Here's a couple more pieces I drew:

 

[shel]

Wow, thank you MK. Very intense. I have self-published 2 books through createspace.com. I'd be happy to share any experiences, answer questions, etc. I give you a lot of credit for doing a whole novel. For my 2nd book my son suggested I do a fantasy novel and it turned out to be less than 80 pages, including several full-page illustrations.

[Mea kakau]

The first photo of the distorted face is called Forcing the Hand and represents how I felt after my father broke my left forearm when I was 10. The second one depicts an out-of-the-body experience I had at age three when I witnessed two murders. It's called Mind Altering Experience II. I drew both in 2000 to 2001, before I had the actual, full memories of those experiences. It took 10 years before I had full knowledge of what had happened. I slightly altered the two drawings in Photoshop to intensify the colors for websites as the colored pencil drawings were too light except for the metallic colors.

 

I never heard of Createspace before. I'm checking it out later today.

Do you have to pay to get published? I read years ago that paying to get published shouldn't happen for writers.

 

The novel I finished was started in 2003 and changed genres many times. I finally settled on a thriller.

When I started to put together my abuse in 2011 and finally understood what happened to me, I started writing novels to express the emotions within me. From 2011 through 2017, I wrote close to one million words (This doesn't include my novel for publication which went through several rewrites and revisions. With it I could add another 500,000 words for all the times I've rewrote it).

 

[shel]

OK so the writing poured out of you as your way of grieving, raging, etc? I used to journal pretty much every day, starting when a friend gave me a blank book for my 18th birthday. I still journal occasionally, but it's more of a chore now, where it used to be a necessity. I have maybe 25-30 volumes.

So createspace is amazon's free self-publishing tool/website. There is a community of very helpful veterans who will answer any questions you can dream up to ask about the entire process.

So your childhood was traumatic to say the least  

I do that with my art too to make it easier to see/more appealing online. I found that I had to revise my colors for creatspace's printing process - they were too saturated, esp. the reds. That was the only expense I incurred - purchasing a proof copy before final publication. My husband went through at least a couple versions of his before he was satisfied I think. It's amazing how many typos you will find when you see it in print.

[Mea kakau]

Hi Shel,

Sorry it took so long to get back to you. I've been gone grieving the loss of our dog Bailey who died of cancer on May 7, 2017.

I would like, and have prayed to the Lord, to use my writing to help others deal with their abuse. The story which I originally began in 2003 has now evolved, through much prayer, into the kind of stories I'd like to write. It's definitely a work in progress as I develop the characters. I have to develop them in my head first where they take on a life of their own. From there, I write down what I hear them saying and see them doing and that becomes the novel. I had been stuck with the novel and not getting the characters to come alive. After much prayer, that's finally happening. I changed the focus for three of the characters and their stories so that they reflected more of a Christian life.

One way you can see your novel in print before publishing is to download Amazon's ebook software. You post your story to your own ebook reader. No one else sees it. That's when I see all the grammar and spelling errors which need to be corrected.

Like you I have kept a journal since I was young. I purchased my first leather bound, 9 X 12 journal in 1976. There are 12 volumes and also in notebooks on my office bookshelf. I used to belong to abuse support groups through writing before the internet came about. So there are quite a few volumes of letters I wrote back and forth each month in three different support groups. Those are kept in huge binders. Plus I have additional journals and pages on my journal software I purchased years ago from Mariner. It's called MacJournal and comes in a Windows version as well, WinJournal. With the software you can blog, journal, and podcast.