Tag Archives: novels

How to read like a writer

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Reading widely and deeply.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com.

How to read like a writer.

By David Joel Miller, writer, blogger, and mental health professional.

Writers need to read widely.

As a beginning writer, I frequently saw the advice that I needed to read widely. I’ve really been trying. Honest. You would think that with all this isolation taking place the last few years because of Covid, we would all have had plenty of time to follow that advice. It didn’t work that way for me. Did you get it to work that way for you?

Reading widely has introduced me to many new authors and some very different writing styles. However, I’m not sure that’s really helped my writing. First of all, I’m trying to write in my own voice. When I say writing in my own voice, that’s both literally and figuratively. For me, writing means dictating.

While I thoroughly enjoyed reading a lot of these new-to-me authors and their unusual styles. But were it not for the high recommendations from writing coaches, these books are not the kind of thing I would usually read and, therefore, not the kind of thing I would normally write. Does that mean this was wasted time? I certainly hope not.

One thing I’ve learned to avoid is getting so caught up in enjoying the story that I stay up late at night finishing books, and when I’m done, I know how it ends but I have not learned much about how the author did what they did.

I’ve also learned that I need to read deeply.

Reading deeply involves slow reading and really paying attention to the techniques the author uses. I rarely get that kind of insight the first time I read a book. Reading deeply means picking up the same book and reading it again. This time with different eyes. Once you know what will happen and how it will end, you can pay more attention to how the author creates the mood, the suspense, and all those other techniques that beginning writers need to learn.

Reading deeply also means reading multiple books by the same author. You don’t get the full sense of how J. K. Rawlings crafted her books by reading just one of them. I’m in the process of reading the entire series of Harry Potter books. And to really understand the techniques, I’ve had to read some of those books more than once.

Does that mean I will turn into another J. K. Rawlings? Definitely not. I don’t know that I could write the way she does, no matter how many years of study and how many drafts of the manuscript I would go through. And I’m quite sure that wouldn’t take me where I want to go as a writer. What I’m looking for are ways to improve what I write, not ways to write like someone else.

I have followed that same process with a couple of other authors who write in totally different genres. The reading deeply process has taught me a lot about writing. Unfortunately, studying craft by studying other authors’ books reminds me of trying to become a basketball player by watching replays of a lot of Michael Jordan games. I may learn to recognize how people are doing what they do, but I still have to practice what I’m going to do repeatedly until I become better at doing what I do.

The challenge of reading both widely and deeply is that both activities consume a lot of time. Time that I’d also like to be spending writing and that I need to spend coping with my everyday life.

I’m also supposed to read a lot in my genre.

That’s another one of those things that’s harder than it looks. I’m not sure about the book I’m working on. What genre is it? I know I had the idea. I know it’s kind of like some other books I’ve read, but it’s also kind of different.

So I launched into a program of trying to read widely, hoping to snag the genre I’m after in this wider net. Unfortunately, selecting a genre is more like wading through the swamp than struggling with the two edge sword. You can put your feet in a lot of places in your writing efforts along with all that reading and still not make much progress.

Reading widely and reading deeply are two very different things.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller.

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now! And more are on the way.

For these and my upcoming books, please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For more information about David Joel Miller’s work in mental health, please visit the counselorssoapbox.com website.

For my videos on mental health, substance abuse, and having a happy life, please see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Writers start by learning to read

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books

Writers start by learning to read.

By David Joel Miller, writer, blogger, and mental health professional.

Writers are usually voracious readers.

One of the reasons that I had always wanted to write a book was that I had been a lifelong learner and a voracious reader. But my becoming an enthusiastic reader almost didn’t happen.

I’m not one of those people who fell in love with books in kindergarten or even the first grade. We moved around frequently, often in the middle of the school year. So my memories of those early years are fragmented and probably inaccurate. I’m sure we had textbooks in the schools I attended, but it seemed to me that by the time I got issued a textbook, it was time to turn it in and move to the next town and the next school.

I don’t remember there being many books in our home, at least nothing that would’ve been age or grade-appropriate for me. My parents had planned to be missionaries, and my father had briefly attended seminary with the idea of becoming a pastor. We always had a Bible in the home. I also remember us having a commentary on one of the Gospels and a small handbook on learning Greek. None of these were particularly interesting to me, nor did they encourage me to take up reading.

My interest in books began quite by accident.

I remember our class going to visit the school library. I think it was the fourth-grade level; I really can’t be sure. I wasn’t familiar with reading books for pleasure. Each member of the class was supposed to look around the library and choose one book they wanted to check out to take home and read. Most of my classmates picked their book right away. I hadn’t a clue how to select a book.

After waiting for me for quite some time, the teacher lost her patience. Finally, in frustration, my teacher reached over onto one of the shelves, pulled out a book, and handed it to me. I can’t be sure whether she knew what the book was and selected it because she thought it would interest me, because it interested her, or her selection was purely a random gesture.

Suddenly I was hooked on reading.

I remember quite clearly that that book was one of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House on the Prairie series. I read it alone in my bedroom, filling the hours during that time before a television made its appearance. Reading, rather than playing with other kids, finished off a book in short order. After finishing that book, I went back to the library every chance I got, reading all of that series and then exploring many others.

I do remember in elementary school and then in middle school reading continually. The frequent moves and the comings and goings of the few friends I made meant no one was in my life for very long. Being an only child with two parents who had their own emotional issues, I spent my childhood largely alone. My constant companions were the books I read.

Daydreaming is an important part of the creative process.

I recently came across an idea recently while listening to a podcast about writing that a major part of creating a fictional story involves putting together the plot. Whether you’re a hardcore outliner or the pantser type of discovery writer, it’s important to be able to imagine exciting things that will take place in your story. Daydreaming about your characters, the setting, and the events that will happen is a valuable part of the process of creating a readable novel.

I didn’t know that back in my high school days. What I did know was that I quickly lost interest in many of my classes. A considerable part of my time in class was spent daydreaming. I created a phenomenal number of adventures for the characters that inhabited my head. As with most creative people, the characters are in some respects reflections of myself, but in a great many other respects, they are the people I wish I were rather than the person I am.

What the writer part of me needs to learn to do is to hold onto those daydreams long enough to get them down on paper and create a first draft of the story I’m telling myself in my head that I can share with other people.

Reading widely is useful for writers, but it’s not enough.

When I began actually trying to craft novels, I discovered that all those books I had read, hundreds of fiction and also hundreds or more nonfiction books, still didn’t give me the skills I needed to be able to write my own books.

Enjoying the daydreams of another author is a far cry from creating and recording your own daydreams in a form that someone else would want to read. So in an upcoming post, I want to discuss the difference between how readers typically read and writers should be reading.

I hope you are enjoying some of these posts on creativity and my writing journey. Eventually, we’ll get to the point where I talk about the books I’ve written and the ones still in my head waiting to be written. If you enjoy these posts, please like them. If you’d like to find out what the next installment of this story brings, please subscribe to this blog. Thanks for reading.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller.

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now! And more are on the way.

For these and my upcoming books, please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For more information about David Joel Miller’s work in mental health, please visit the counselorssoapbox.com website.

For my videos on mental health, substance abuse, and having a happy life, please see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

When are you going to finish that book?

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By David Joel Miller, writer, blogger, and mental health professional.

When are you going to finish that book?

I had been struggling to write a book for several years. In fact, I tried writing various books off and on for about sixty years. But none of those books ever made it to the finish line. I could get the idea, and I could start writing, but I somehow couldn’t seem to finish the project. Maybe you’ve done that also? I thought that was all part of the process.

That “going to write a book someday” is a bit of a family tradition. I recall my father saying that he was going to write a book someday. He even took a class or two in writing. If he finished those classes, I never heard. But I do know that when he died, he hadn’t finished his book.

Then I get a nudge.

I was having lunch with a colleague. We had gone to graduate school together and tried to find time to sit down and talk about our journey toward becoming better therapists. Just to be clear, we didn’t talk about specific clients. That might violate the client’s confidentiality. But we did talk about ourselves and our struggles, both professionally and personally.

So, one day the two of us were having lunch, and I mentioned that since I was well on my way to writing my blog, I was going back to working on my book. My friend looked me right in the eye and asked, “when are you going to finish that book?”

When am I going to finish that book?

So, I told her I didn’t know. There was still a lot to do on it. Her response startled me. “Can you promise me you will finish the book by the end of the month?” At the time, that question flabbergasted me. I thought books were supposed to take years to write.

I now know that there are writers who specialize in rapid writing and release. Writing rapidly is a skill, and it doesn’t always equate with producing a lot of usable material. NaNoWriMo is an excellent exercise for learning to write that first draft quickly. I’ll tell you about my experiences with NaNoWriMo and rapid writing in a future blog post. That experience was one of the stops on my journey, but it wasn’t the final destination

I told my colleague that no, it wasn’t possible for me to finish the book by the end of that month. I thought that would put an end to that conversation. But she was not to be deterred so easily.

“Can you promise me you’ll finish it by the end of the year?”

That question really took me aback. At this point in my life, I was approaching seventy, and I was getting ready to put in for retirement. Something about that point in your life makes you stop and take a second look. I had to consider if I didn’t finish the book now, when would I?

One of the things I had learned from my mental health research was that as people get older and their abilities start to decline, regrets weigh on their minds. I had learned that what people regret is rarely the things they had done, even when those things had caused them problems. What many senior citizens regret are the things they’d always wanted to do but hadn’t done. While I wasn’t prepared to write myself off as a “senior citizen,” I had to consider whether I would regret never having finished that book. And the answer was a resounding yes.

I accept the challenge.

After thinking it over for a moment, I gave my friend an answer. Yes, I would finish my book by the end of the year. And I took out a piece of paper that was in my pocket, my to-do list for the week, and wrote: “finish my book” at the end of the list. I had learned from my work in substance abuse counseling that you can think about doing something, but that doesn’t make it a reality. But writing it down and telling someone else that you were going to do it really improves the chances you would take action. Since my usual habit was to cross things off my to-do list and recopy the list, I knew I was going to keep seeing that item on the list until I finished my book or gave up on it forever.

My rough draft becomes a finished manuscript.

Later that year, just before my seventieth birthday and my impending “retirement,” I finished that draft of my book. The question was, what was I going to do with the rough draft? I knew there were a lot of problems with the draft, but I just wasn’t sure what they were, so I started work on a system for polishing a first draft.

My apologies to readers who think that that’s all there is to it.

After completing that first draft, I thought I had a finished book. It turned out that the process of taking a first draft all the way to publication is a lot harder than just completing the first draft of the manuscript. You have to have a first draft, or you can’t publish anything. But as I was to learn, there were many more challenges ahead.

So far, my journey has been kind of like deciding to become a mountain climber and taking a hike from my house to the foot of the trail that leads up the mountain. Getting this far was hard, but it was only the beginning.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller.

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now! And more are on the way.

For these and my upcoming books, please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For more information about David Joel Miller’s work in mental health, please visit the counselorssoapbox.com website.

For my videos on mental health, substance abuse, and having a happy life, please see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

My writing journey – the blog.

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My Writing Journey
photo courtesy of Pixabay

By David Joel Miller, writer, blogger, and mental health professional.

My writing journey – the blog.

In the last installment of my writing journey, I left off with the story of my discovery; there was such a thing as a blog. I had been working as a substance abuse counselor, and the years had been ticking bye. Along the way, I completed my MS degree in counseling and began working with people who had both substance abuse problems and mental health issues.

While I was working towards my license as a marriage and family therapist, I kept running into problems, issues, and things that clients wanted to talk to me about that hadn’t been covered in my graduate program. I was also studying to take the license exam. As a result, I ended up reading more books and more research after graduate school than I had in the process of getting my degree.

Don’t worry now; I’m coming to the part where I actually start writing things.

The next thing I knew, I had gone to work for the county behavioral health department as an unlicensed clinician, and shortly after that, I passed my license exam. The next step in my progression, logical or not, was while working as a therapist. I took a position as an adjunct faculty member teaching substance abuse counseling to beginning substance use disorder counselors.

One of the best ways to learn things is to teach them. I began teaching counseling in 2008 and, by 2011, had accumulated quite a list of questions about substance abuse, mental health, and having a happy life.

I began counselorssoapbox.com in 2011.

I started the counselorssoapbox.com blog. After a little bit of investigation, I discovered that WordPress made it very easy to get a domain name, and I began publishing my blog. In the beginning, it was a slow start. It took me two years, 2011 and 2012, to get that blogging thing figured out. At least, I thought I had figured it out.

In 2013 I made a strenuous effort to turn out one new post every day and ended up publishing 366 posts and receiving almost 83,000 views. Between 2013 and 2022, the number of posts grew to nearly 2000. Despite that frantic pace and all the challenges, those posts from 2013 continue to be some of the most-read posts.

In those early days, the spelling and grammar checking programs I was using did not catch a lot of the mistakes. Working full-time, teaching, and still trying to write didn’t leave a whole lot of time, and unfortunately, I sent out a lot of posts with errors in them. Slowly the spellcheck programs got better, and then I discovered Grammarly.

Three times during those years, I went back through all the old posts and re-edited them. I’m afraid to take another look at them because I fear there may still be typos and errors I haven’t caught.

I can’t say that I ever got clear on why I was writing all those blog posts. I didn’t start my private practice until much later, and I really didn’t have anything I was trying to sell beyond sharing the knowledge that I was accumulating and giving myself a good reason to continue reading and researching. I found blogging a lot of fun, but I can’t say it was a highly productive use of my time.

In 2017 I received over 300,000 views despite having cut back my time commitment and writing only 128 posts that year. Sadly, Google changed its algorithms, and my readership declined significantly. Despite my having two licenses and one of those little cards that allowed me to diagnose someone with a mental illness and put people on 5150 holds, it would appear that Google decided only MDs who prescribed medication were qualified to talk about mental health and particularly about talk therapy. I think not including other licensed professionals was an error.

With declining blog readership and my declining enthusiasm for writing those blog posts, my writing career took a sudden shift. Then, late in 2017, something happened that shifted my focus from writing blog posts to other creative endeavors.

I’ll tell you about that change and how it came about in my next davidjoelmillerwriter.com  blog post.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller.

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now! And more are on the way.

For these and my upcoming books, please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For more information about David Joel Miller’s work in mental health, please visit the counselorssoapbox.com website.

For my videos on mental health, substance abuse, and having a happy life, please see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Book sale

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Book sale

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Counselor.

I just discovered that Amazon has put paperback copies of several of my novels on sale. I think this is a wonderful gesture on Amazon’s part. It means you get a bargain while I, as the author, still get my full royalty. If this interests you, please take a look at my books on Amazon. You will find them at David Joel Miller I’m not sure how long this promo will last.

In keeping with this spirit, I have put all the Kindle editions of my novels on sale in the United States for $.99. If you’re in one of the other markets your prices will be translated into your currency at an equivalent price.

For what it’s worth.

My new website davidjoelmillerwriter.com devoted to my fiction writing and other creative endeavors, has launched. It is complete with a blog dedicated specifically to writing. I decided to separate posts about creating characters, plots, and genres from my posts about mental health, substance abuse, and having a happy life.

Temporarily I will mention the sales and the new books on both blogs. But if you’re interested in more information about my writing and being more creative in general, please check out the new blog davidjoelmillerwriter.com  and consider subscribing.

Does David Joel Miller see clients for counseling and coaching?

Yes, I do. I can see private pay clients if they live in California, where I am licensed. If you’re interested in information about that, please email me or use the contact me form.

Staying in touch with David Joel Miller.

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For more information about my writing journey, my books, and other creative activities, please subscribe to my blog at davidjoelmillerwriter.com

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available on Amazon now! And more are on the way.

For these and my upcoming books, please visit my Amazon Author Page – David Joel Miller

For information about my work in mental health, substance abuse, and having a happy life, please check out counselorssoapbox.com

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

My writing journey.

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By David Joel Miller, writer, blogger, and mental health professional.

My writing journey.

I started this blog to separate out the posts I write about my writing career, my fiction books, and my other creative endeavors from my work in mental health. Just to let you know where I’m at now in this writing journey, I’ve been publishing a blog on mental health since 2011. In addition, I have self-published seven books on Amazon, and I have a YouTube channel. Being creative has not been easy, and I wanted to share a little bit with you about where I started, the struggles I’ve had, and where I see myself going in the future.

There’s a difference between scribbling and writing.

The purpose of this blog post is to share a little bit with you about my writing journey. It’s taken me a long time to get to where I am, and I’m not to my final destination yet. When I mentioned some of my struggles, please don’t think that I am feeling sorry for myself or asking for sympathy. I’m frankly quite happy with all the things I’ve accomplished in my life, and I mentioned my challenges, hoping that that will encourage you to follow your dreams the way I have followed mine.

I have always been an avid reader. As a child, I spent a lot of time alone, but books were always my constant companions. We moved a lot, and I seem to have missed out on some of the things other people say they learned in their early education. In my seventies, I’m still filling in some of those missing pieces.

My very early years are still fuzzy. Not because of any emotional trauma but because of extremely poor eyesight. At age 8, I was prescribed glasses, and suddenly the things the teachers were writing on the blackboard became considerably clearer.

That last sentence reminds me of how much our culture has changed across my lifetime. I fully expect it will continue to change at an ever-increasing pace. So, while I write on the whiteboards at the school where I teach, my memories of childhood are inhabited by boards that were, in fact, black or sometimes dark green.

I struggled academically all the way through high school, and then suddenly, during my first semester at the community college, things changed for me. While it was never diagnosed, I suspect I have more than one learning disability. Spelling remains a mystery to me. I learned to spell phonetically and can spell the same word several different ways in one sentence. Thank goodness for Grammarly, spellcheckers, and other writing programs. Without them, this blog post would be unintelligible.

What is a blog?

My first real exposure to modern creativity came during my graduate program to become a marriage and family therapist. Some of my fellow students were discussing resources and the word “blog” came up in the conversation, and I had to ask one of my fellow students the very simple question, “what is a blog?”

I want you to know that despite my advanced age, I’ve always considered myself an early adopter of new technology. I bought one of the very first fax machines. I almost installed one of those gigantic satellite dishes, but the man who was supposed to be coming to give me a quote couldn’t find the house, and that satellite dish never materialized.

My first computer was a RadioShack TRS-80 model two, with a whopping 64 K of memory. My first experience with a portable phone was one of those large brick phones. Unfortunately, it proved so inconvenient that I gave up on it and delayed getting a cell phone until after I was licensed as a therapist and told that I needed one to stay in communication with the office and my clients.

I have transitioned to a smartphone and have mastered the fine art of answering texts with the help of one of my interns, who was patient in teaching me how to respond to her text messages after I told her to call me.

I tell you all of this by way of background so that you can understand how writing a blog felt like exploring a strange continent, and publishing my first book was my personal equivalent to signing up to ride a rocket to the moon.

That seems like a good place to stop for today. I’ll pick up the story in my next post, and we will see where it goes from there.

If you’ve enjoyed reading this post, please give it a like or, even better, share it.

If you are wondering where my story goes from here, please subscribe to this blog.

Either way, this old guy would appreciate any encouragement you send my way. And yes, at seventy-four, I am entitled to say, “old guy.”

Staying connected with David Joel Miller.

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now! And more are on the way.

For these and my upcoming books, please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For more information about David Joel Miller’s work in mental health, please visit the counselorssoapbox.com website.

For my videos on mental health, substance abuse, and having a happy life, please see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

News and Thoughts

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By David Joel Miller, writer, blogger, and mental health professional.

Welcome to the new davidjoelmillerwriter website.

I have created this website to share with you some of the things I’ve learned on my journey as a writer. When I first began writing a blog, I had no idea which directions my writing or my other creative endeavors would take.

In future posts I want to share with you some of the things I’ve learned along this journey. Feel free to ask questions or share with me some of your creative endeavors.

Right now, this website is under construction but I expect to have a great many things to share with you shortly.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now! And more are on the way.

For these and my upcoming books, please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For more information about David Joel Miller’s work in mental health please visit the counselorssoapbox.com website.

For my videos on mental health, substance abuse, and having a happy life, please see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video ChannelEdit

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