Q&A with Kristen Hamilton | This Writer’s Journey
Welcome Kristen Hamilton, author of 31 Days of Prayers for the Busy Woman momma to three fabulous little girls, and contributing blogger at Fancy Little Things. Today she’s sharing her writing journey and tips and tricks to keep writing well in a special two-part edition of the Everyday Author series. You can read her introductory post here, and part 2 of her Q&A interview here.
Connect with Kristen – Kristen{at}onwingsandwaves{dot}com
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What has your road to publishing been like?
After my three miscarriages, my purpose, passion, and vision for writing became clear. I invested hours supporting women in online support groups. I had visions for writing a book and curriculum for in-person support groups.
Being blessed as a mom, I didn’t have much time to write, and for a while, I was paralyzed by fear and the enormity of the task. I purchased a copy of The Christian Writer’s Market Guide and began doing research into agents, editors, and publishers. I set up a free website on Weebly that told my story and the premise of the book.
In 2008, I contacted Jennifer Saake, who wrote the book, Hannah’s Hope, and founded, “Hannah’s Prayer Ministries”. I shared my passion with her and she mentored me.
It was on her advice that I began to establish an online presence to build a platform. She told me how publishers were beginning to take notice of aspiring authors if they already had a following established.
She told me that I should probably start a blog so I could get writing experience and help build the tribe that I would need. I honestly bucked against starting a blog for some time.
Finally in February of 2011, I launched my blog. Social media has been awesome for networking with experienced bloggers and authors. I’ve attended webinars, read books, hired a graphic designer, and hired a blog consultant. After about a year, I “got my geek on” and taught myself how to do my own blog design and how to self-publish an eBook.
I wrote, designed, edited and formatted my eBook, 31 Days of Prayers for the Busy Woman. I offer it as a free PDF for subscribing to my blog via email. This is a helpful tool as a gift to my readers and an incentive to subscribe.
The eBook is now for sale on Amazon for Kindle, for several reasons. First, I am using the proceeds for fundraising for an orphan. Second, some people may want to read the book but not subscribe to the blog. Third, it may extend the audience of the blog by bringing people who are browsing on Amazon to the blog.
I was amazed at how easy the whole process was to self-publish an eBook. I was able to do it all for free, unless you count the $10 I donated to the PDF hosting service I am using.
Last summer, I got really serious about making the miscarriage book a reality. I purchased Michael Hyatt’s eBook about writing a non-fiction book proposal. I used it as a template to set up a proposal with everything except for the three sample chapters.
I became friends with another blogger who had plans to write a miscarriage book. I had the idea that perhaps we should team up and write the book together. We began collaborating. We have three chapters written and are currently composing our proposal. Once our proposal is complete, we will be sending it to agents and then hopefully land a contract.
What did you wish you knew when you started this work?
When I dove into blogging I wish I knew all of the facets there are to having a blog and building a platform, like setting up feeds, promo on social media, editing photos & creating graphics, links, formatting, editorial schedules, advertising, responding to comments, trying to build community, networking and supporting other bloggers, etc. The bulk of my time is spent on all of these blogging tasks. Don’t get me wrong, my “geeky” side loves the technical parts, my artistic side loves the designing parts, and I love writing posts. It just takes up more time than I had imagined. For me, writing for the book is actually much less demanding than blogging because I only have to type text in a word processor. There are days when I wish I could hire an assistant to take care of those things to free me up to just write.
Click to read the second half of Kristen’s interview, Focus on Your Writing.