Fresh Starts and New Beginnings featuring Renae Kaye

     Thanks to the WON Blog for having me on today – it’s a real honour.  My name is Renae Kaye and I’m a relatively new author.  My first novel, Loving Jay came out in April 2014 and is published through Dreamspinner Press.  This was followed by The Blinding Light, Bear Chasing, The Shearing Gun and Safe In His Arms, bringing the total to four novels and one short story in my debut year.

     I’ve been asked to describe how I got into writing as a topic, and it is a rather simple story.  The planets aligned and a huge zap of energy came down from the heavens and…  Okay.  The uninteresting truth is that I was bored with what I was reading.  There were a lot of entertaining books, but I was looking for a particular theme and a particular level of humour in my books, and I couldn’t find it. I looked and tried out authors, but the humorous twink books I wanted were rather thin on the ground.

     Then this little voice in the back of my head began taunting me:  Why don’t you write a story like that then?  I told the voice to go away, because I was no one who should have dreams of writing.  I was a mummy to two small children, a housewife, and I lived in a part of the world that hardly anyone visits.  But the voice was persistent.  I pointed out to him that I had no experience in writing (my background is maths and science) and people just don’t become authors overnight.  He didn’t shut up.

     I decided that I would show the voice just how wrong he was – so I opened up a Word document on my laptop and began writing.  I had no background, no skills, no plan, no plot.  I just wrote.  And do you know the most annoying part?  The voice won.  I wrote.  And wrote.  And wrote. 

     It took me about 10 weeks of tapping away on the computer between making lunches and taking the older child to school.  I worked at it nights after the kids were in bed, and days while they were watching TV.  Then I screwed up my courage, and at the urging of another author, I sent it off to a publisher for consideration.

     I knew it would never make the grade.  It had a bunch of things against it from Day 1.  It was based in Australia and I’d sent it to an American publisher.  It was humour (which not everyone likes) and it had characters that were not your common romantic leads in a book.  I was also completely unknown as it was the first thing I’d ever written.  I was hoping that the rejection letter would give me some pointers on how to improve.

     Instead they sent me a contract.

     2014 was a HUGE year for me – 5 releases.  I didn’t get a lot of time to write during that editing and the promo work I was doing, so 2015 is going to be quieter on the release front, but I’ve made it my New Year’s resolution to use the “down time” to write more.  And there are definitely a bunch of stories I need to write.

     As a mother, my days are often hijacked by sick children, or school excursions, or even family commitments.  Instead of a daily word count that I try to write, I keep a tally of my writings and aim for a monthly average.  Excel is wonderful at working out my averages for me.  Some days I write nothing, some days it is 5000 words.  My best days I can churn out 10k.  Then there are the days I’m busy editing.

I advise other writers who wish to trial this to make reasonable goals.  I know of writers who aim for 5000 words per day, plus promo work.  I don’t have that amount of time.  I aim for a monthly average of 1200 words per day during a month I don’t have edits or a new release.  If I have edits, I bring this goal down to 500 per day.  And if you don’t make it one month – then it’s not the end of the world.  The first of the next month is a clean sheet to try again.

      And remember – don’t give up.

Always laugh,
Renae Kaye

How to contact Renae:

Email:  renaekaye@iinet.net.au

Website:  www.renaekaye.weebly.com

FB:  www.facebook.com/renae.kaye.9

Twitter:  @renaekkaye