Elowen ♡ Author 📚

ICE looking more and more like the American Gestpo.

Do certain aspects of your story stick with you beyond the pages? Sometimes I find myself carrying the grief of my novel's lead and my heart feels heavy.
I think that's when you know you love your characters. You feel them.

##booksky #writersky #indieauthor

Paying for assets I don't like just because I feel mean not paying when they put in the work to make it and then redoing it entirely feels so on-brand for me as a writer atp

#booksky #writersky #indieauthor

Your most ‘imperfect’ and amateur art made with soul and effort will ALWAYS be better than a generated slop image. A cover with a title and no art will always be better than a generated slop image. A few typos will ALWAYS be better than ChatGPT.

Give me your human art. Always.

Who knew being a self-published author meant knowing how to do things other than write. 13 year old me didn't when she chose this path. 27 year old me had to figure that out on her own.

#booksky #writersky #indieauthor

Oh no worries at all! It's actually not REGENCY in the traditional sense, just takes place in the time period (I would dread having to describe the Regency era, too overly detailed, doesn't fit my preferred writing style lmao)

Typical novel length so a few hundred over 44k words, something any editor should be used to 😔 Lol I'm not TOO mad about it, part of the self publishing cycle unfortunately, just gotta keep looking!

The story itself is set in Victorian London; I currently work in publishing and have come across so many AI Regency stories that it kinda sticks out like a sore thumb (thanks Bridgerton for making chatgpt have everything sound EXACTLY the same) 😭

It's a struggle out here 😭

Just got my final edit back and I'm 95% certain this editor used AI to do my copy edits lmao. Oh how I'm so very annoyed.

#booksky #writersky #indieauthor

Still gonna pay for it cause art deserves compensation but also because I'm too anxious to say otherwise ✋️😔

Whats it called when I pay someone to create a cover and then have to do half the work myself (fixing the back matter, pointing out that the text blends into the background etc.)? A waste of money? Like I like it but damn... coulda done this myself in canva atp 😩

#booksky #writersky #indieauthor

Had writer's block for a solid 3 days since I'm waiting for my manuscript to come out of its final editing phase.
Decided to make a fake publishing house for fun and now I'm flooded with ideas of books they'd publish. Creativity truly is the remedy for creativity.

#booksky #writersky #indieauthor

Does anyone else have a preferred writing style that you have to actively tell yourself "stop doing this in everything you write"?
Mine is unreliable narrators. I love writing liars, the delusional, and the disturbed.

#booksky #writersky #indieauthor

There's always that fear that you're writing a flop.

But you're okay. I like your book.

##booksky #writersky #indieauthor #writingcommunity

Really just spent a solid hour creating an unnecessary amount of lore for a fake publishing house in my novel because I thought it'd be fun to put on my author's website. They will now publish all of my novels and they don't even exist.
✨Self publishing is whimsy✨

#booksky #writersky #indieauthor

Why stop at writing the book? Bring parts of it to life. Make the fictional company in it real for funsies.

#booksky #writersky #indieauthor

Normalize fanboying other authors. Literary elitism is so boring, don't sap the fun out of being in a community of creators.

##booksky #writersky #indieauthor

Be a weirdo about it! Be a freak it's more fun!!

Self publishing is fun because I get to make my newsletters fun and interactive and because who doesn't want more whimsy in their life?

##booksky #writersky #indieauthor

I wish I could say I don't care if my book never sells, I'm just happy I finished it.
I want it to sell.
I want people to read it.
I want my hard work to be loved as much as I love it.

Today I realized I'm much more like my main character than I thought.

#booksky #writersky ##indieauthor

Life hack for writers:
Starting a second book doesn't kill your motivation for the first one if you've already spent too much money on it. I refuse to abandon it I'm already 1k in the hole 😭

##booksky #writersky #indieauthor

Sometimes I think "I should at least TRY to get trad published." Then I remember they can change the title of my book if they want to and I go back to learning how to format in InDesign✋️😔

#booksky #writersky #indieauthor

Be vain in your writing.
Love it.
Treat it like you're bestowing a gift on the world by creating it.
Assume no one could write your story better than you can.
Art is vanity, play God.
Love thy creation.

#booksky #writersky #indieauthor

Thank you so much!!

Thank you! I'm not gonna lie it has my heart going a mile a minute, best feeling in the world!

My book is currently in its final round of editing which is somehow scarier than anything I've written in it.

#booksky #writersky #indieauthor #horrorauthor

Horror always has an agenda. There's always a reason. There's always something the writer wants to say.
Horror has never simply been scary stories told in the dark for no reason.

#booksky ##writersky #indieauthor

Freezing cold take but using sexual assault as a motivational plot device in any genre shows me you're not a good writer, but ESPECIALLY in horror. The most shocking thing you can come up with is abuse? Lame. Boring. Yawn. You care about shock factor, not art. Try again.

#booksky #writersky

Don't tempt me I've been plotting it all day!