First Post
About 3 or 4 years ago, I was listening to the song "Blue Ocean Floor" by Justin Timberlake. It is a very long, very beautiful song. It wasn't quite clear to me what exactly the song was about, but I knew that it made me feel sad. I enjoyed listening to the song over and over, while singing along to it. As I was listening to it one evening on my way to work, I began to create a story in my head. I imagined a woman who had lost the love of her life, and wanted nothing more than to be with him again. I imagined her sinking to the ocean floor to be with him, and wondered what that meant. I imagined her lost in an ocean of dreams, and came up with the idea of someone becoming addicted to sleep, or more specifically, to dreaming, in order to live the life that she wanted to. I also was inspired by the movie "Inception." You know, it's that movie where someone could get lost in a dream within a dream? I especially loved how that movie ended, where you weren't really sure if he was stuck in another dream, or if his real life really did end up the way that he wanted it to. I loved the idea of someone being able to control their dreams, and them being so realistic it was like their real life. Some of the characters in that movie began to favor their dream life over their real life. I used that inspiration, and began to write.
I started off with a prologue about depression, and I wasn't really sure where I was going with it at the time. Over the course of a few years, I started and stopped a lot. I struggled with writer's block, and I struggled with making a decision of which way I wanted the story to go. Do you remember those books that you would read when you were young, where it would give you a choice of which direction you want to go? They would end with a big event, then say if you want the character to make this decision, go to page so-and-so. If you wanted this other decision, go to this page. Sometimes you would choose one direction and find out that the story ended right there, and you would wish that you had gone the other way. That's how I felt with writing this story. I would get to a major event that I knew I wanted to happen, then I just didn't know where to take it. I lost my inspiration and quit writing sometimes for months to a year at a time. But then the inspiration would come back and I would work on it furiously. I even stopped once just because I looked at all of the requirements it took to submit a work for publishing, or to a literary agent to review, and I became so overwhelmed that I gave up. I knew that it would never happen. Then I read a bit of advice that said to only look at one step at a time, not at the long list of 30 steps. Just ONE thing at a time. Write now, edit later. I decided to have a couple of friends read my undeveloped story to get feedback. I wanted to know I wasn't completely wasting my time with a story no one would ever be interested in. The feedback I received blew me away. It gave me the confidence and motivation I needed in order to finish.
And I FINALLY did. I finally decided on the ending i wanted, the twists i wanted, and the side stories in between. I had a book cover made. I had it edited.
And now here I am, about to self publish my completed novella. What's a novella, you ask? A novella is a work defined by its word count, essentially. It's too long to be a short story, but too short to be a novel. Websites offering advice on getting published called it a No Man's Land for an unestablished author, stating it would be extremely difficult to get it picked up by any literary agent; and if you miraculously did, you would get somewhere around 5-8% of sales. Now don't get me wrong... I'm not doing this to get rich. But someone else taking 95% of anything my story earned was insulting after all of the work I put into it. That's why I chose to self publish on Amazon. It would be up and ready within DAYS, not months, and without dozens of rejection letters. It would give me a platform. AND... I can receive prints of my book at a very low cost.
Even if it's only read by friends, family, and my mama book club, I'll be happy. So please stay tuned for my announcement of my book's debut on Amazon. I'll keep this blog and Facebook page updated with the latest info (if anyone cares).
If you read this far, thank you. I hope you'll support me in my effort to get Dream Ocean some exposure, but mostly I hope you'll get lost in the story and enjoy my writing.
Email: dreamoceannovella@gmail.com
https://www.facebook.com/Dream-Ocean-A-Novella-by-Alyson-Overall-541686492860538/
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