Distraction, singular, is loosely defined as a thing that prevents someone from giving full attention to something else. Make it plural, distractions, and now you have me. Admittedly, I am easily distracted. However, I am always open to a new challenge. Something that would be difficult to achieve. For a woman from the suburbs to find a horse that could be competitive against the best two and three-year-olds in the world, it should be at the top, at least, on my list of unobtainable challenges. And history answers that question of the unattainable. When you take on a challenge, and it gets hard . . . very simply put, you have only two choices: give up or try harder. I’d like to say I always try harder, but I often embrace a third choice—distraction.

A very good friend of mine, George D. Cramer, publishes a blog highlighting a different author each week. He is booked out well into March of next year, and when the current writer still needed to send their responses to the list of questions George supplied, he asked if I could write something for the post. What I wrote follows and is a perfect introduction to my most recent publication.

Question: What is the most challenging part of your writing process?

My answer: Finishing.

When everything is covered in dust.

No, seriously, I’m a died-in-the-wool procrastinator. I have any number of ways to distract myself from the hard work that goes into finishing a novel. My first and most frequently employed method is writing the first sentence for a new story idea. Sometimes, I make it as long as an entire paragraph. On occasion, I’ll get as far as a few thousand words.

Therein lies the problem for me: some of those first lines are fleshed out enough to make the beginning of an intriguing story that needs to be written. So, what happens to them? They get stored away on my laptop in a file named Novel Ideas. There are currently twenty-one ideas wasting away in the wilderness of the Novel Idea folder, each collecting its layer of metaphorical dust. And who knows what tomorrow will bring? Ideas tend to strike at the most improbable times. I’ve been chewing on a new one since yesterday—Leopold.

Examples abound:

     First example:

Twelve bodies and no accountability! How could the justice system have gotten it so wrong? Detective Gideon Key, grizzled on a good day, sat at the back of the courtroom looking more like a vagrant than a decorated homicide detective.

Second example:

Unheeded, a shadow searches the night, darting through the crowds. The street lights fade, only to brighten upon its passing. However, the shadow doesn’t go unnoticed, for there is one who knows what to look for and hunts the hunter.

My newest ploy to distract from the current YA novel I have been working on for longer than I like to admit, represents a soirée into the highly competitive Children’s Picture Book arena. The following tale exemplifies how a distraction can get expensive and far faster than you might think.

First, I needed to write a story; fortunately, one already existed in the Novel Ideas folder. I took it out and dusted it off. Next, I needed to envision the characters, their appearance, and how each page would be laid out, i.e., cartoon, anime, or realistic. Now, the vision is ready to be rendered. Finding an illustrator should be easy. Right? Nope. I started with Fivver, where I’d found the artist I used for my middle-grade book, Labyrinth of Ruin. A Romanian student who was putting himself through college. It was a bit of a process, but it worked out in the end.

It soon became apparent that this twenty-one-page book with fourteen illustrations would cost between $850 and $2,500. Other sources quoted an illustration package costing between $4,000 and $60,000.

Well, that was an eye-opener. Undaunted and armed with a modicum of artistic talent along with a closet full of art supplies that had also been collecting dust, I gathered what I thought I would need and sat down to create some of the most beautiful and colorful cartoons that could catch the eye of any three-year-old. Almost immediately, as I sat staring at a blank white page, I found myself looking for a distraction. . . I found one: Procreate Illustrator, and it was only $12.99.

Great idea, right? I would do it all digitally, even though I’m a point-and-click kind of girl. Resolutely, I picked up my sixteen-year-old, first-generation iPad, which still occasionally works, and prepared to buy and download Procreate for iPad. However, it can’t be done; my iPad is so old that it’s only suitable for . . . you guessed it, collecting dust.

I would have to purchase a new iPad Air and all the accessories, including the Apple PencilPro, OtterBox iPad cover, and Procreate Illustrator for iPad. Let’s not forget the extended warranty and twenty-four-hour Apple support.

Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Spending money is the best distraction of all.

A week has passed, and I have rediscovered that my point-and-click aptitude needs vast improvement to conquer this challenging program.

I hope this distraction brought a smile to your face.

And a few weeks later, we have this:

I DID IT! I didn’t even call Apple Support. Though considerably longer than first envisioned, it looks great, and I am super chuffed. Take a look inside at Amazon. You can’t see the link right below, but it’s there. Give it a hover with your cursor, and it’ll pop up. Now you can see why creating this book was such an accomplishment on my part. I am not a techi.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DQ8MD1JH/

Once again, thanks for reading. Please don’t ignore your great ideas; act on them.

The post December 12, 2024 My Thoughts & New Challenges appeared first on Shelley Lee Riley.