Tag Archives: Writing

Trail of Worth – FAQ

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Before I head back to the UK for several weeks, I thought I’d share a Q&A about my book, Trail of Worth. Below are some typical questions I’ve been receiving!

How did you come up with the title?

The title came to me as I was halfway through writing the book. I knew I wanted something with three words that would reflect the themes of the book, namely that of self-worth, while also carrying a sense of mystery. “Trail” refers to not only the geographic location of the story’s setting and the significance of hikes and running in the book, but also to the main protagonist’s journey of finding her feet in a foreign country.

To work out a title, I wrote down two songs I not only really like but that remind me of the time being written about – River of Dreams by Billy Joel and Into the Mystic by Van Morrison. I then played around with some metaphorical phrases and Trail of Worth suddenly appeared in my mind!

How did you decide on the book’s front cover?

The cover of the book is actually a photo of me taken by a friend. The scene of the hike on which it was taken was initially featured in the book, but I decided to remove it during the editing process.

It wasn’t my initial idea to use this photo for the cover. I first provided the designer with an idea of an image and colours, but the result didn’t match my vision. It looked too much like a fantasy book. I then remembered this photo and thought it made sense to use it. It’s quite weird to think that a candid photo taken during the time written about ended up being used on the cover! As if it was all meant to be…

How did you come up with character names?

Creating new names was fun! I combined maintaining confidentiality with using names that I thought suited the personality of the characters. I used the name “Sara” for my character because I love the song by Fleetwood Mac. Its opening few lines seem to speak to me and a particular time and feeling in the story.

What were your favourite characters to write about?

I did enjoy the challenge of showing the personalities of both Harry and Will. Both are very interesting characters with unique traits. I also loved showing the friendship between Sara and Tyler. It was important to me that I highlight how possible it is for a woman to have great platonic friendships with males. Carrie is another character that was special to write about, because her introduction in the book signals a real sense of personal progress for Sara.

What was your favourite chapter to write?

Chapter 30 was my favourite chapter to write. It was admittedly bittersweet, but writing about falling in love was nice – those early stages where you get the flutters and it feels like a dream. There is also quite a bit of symbolism in that chapter when it comes to the hike and the surrounding wildlife. Interestingly, this symbolism wasn’t planned but rather was something I noticed during the editing process.

There are quite a few references to music in the book. What are some of the pertinent songs from that time?

There are a few scenes where references to music have been made to help set tone and convey emotion. For copyright reasons, musician names and song titles couldn’t be mentioned explicitly. I won’t give the exact names of the songs because it’s quite personal and I also think it’s more fun for a reader to try to guess what they are, but artists referred to in the narrative include Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Aretha Franklin, and Bob Marley.

Trail of Worth covers a range of topics. How would you summarize it in a few words?

I’d describe it as a love story – not just love with others, but love with self. I say this because at the centre of all the varied topics and themes is a person trying to achieve a sense of personal fulfillment and self-acceptance.

What were some of the most challenging things about writing this book?

In posts before the book was published I’ve talked about the challenge of being selective with content when writing a memoir. I wouldn’t say I struggled with writer’s block per se because I had the inspiration of real-life events to write about vs making up fiction. Probably the most challenging thing was reliving some of the very emotional events – setbacks, loneliness, witnessing the mental health struggles of a partner, etc. But overall, it was a cathartic experience as revisiting those events after a while helped me see certain things in a new light. I wrote this book for others but I’ve also written it for myself too.

What are you most proud of as the writer?

I’m really pleased with the dialogue. I wanted to include authentic conversations – messy, awkward and vulnerable moments vs cliche, surface-level dialogue. This is an aspect of the book that people seem to really enjoy, which is great. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed recreating dialogue because I’ve always thought of myself as being a more descriptive travel writer. But I do find human behaviour very interesting, so maybe that’s why I enjoyed it so much.

As the author, it’s also very fulfilling to know that the themes I wanted to portray have come across and resonated with readers. I’m really happy that people have been relating to certain details. Another thing I’m proud of is that fact that males are also getting something out of this book. I never wanted to target women only with this book, but it’s very much a female perspective and about the woman’s experience. It’s great that men are getting an insight into this and perhaps learning something or becoming more empathetic.

All this said, I haven’t read the printed copy of the book yet. I’m too scared to! As the author and a perfectionist, there are bound to be little things I don’t like that might make zero sense to anyone else.

Will you write a sequel?

I’m not opposed to writing a sequel but that likely wouldn’t be for a while. There are certainly some other topics and experiences since that time which would be interesting to write about. I’d like to write other books too – perhaps a little more fictional but still using real-life experiences for inspiration. I don’t feel any rush to do this though – when the time is right I’ll know!

If you’ve read Trail of Worth and have additional questions, let me know! I’ll keep updating this post as they come in.

If you haven’t read the book but are now curious to get a copy, it’s available online from Amazon (choose your country) and Barnes & Noble. If you live in Victoria, BC and would like to buy the book, I have some hard copies available! Please send me a message on the Contact page and I’ll arrange pickup/drop off or mail delivery.

For more commentary on the book, you can follow me on Instagram @shannelizabethco

Thanks for reading!

New Book Available for Purchase | Trail of Worth

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It’s been a busy couple of months balancing my full-time job with finishing up my book, Trail of Worth. After 18+ months of effort, I’m very excited to announce that this book has now been published!

In writing Trail of Worth, I’ve tried to:

  • Give an honest portrayal of moving overseas and the various challenges it entails
  • Take a candid look at relationships and their fascinating complexities
  • Capture the way people (especially women) can perceive themselves during their twenties
  • Provide a commentary of travel experiences
  • Demonstrate the importance and influence of family and friendships

In writing this piece of creative non-fiction, the most important thing for me was to be authentic – to show the main protagonist’s flaws and strengths, the mistakes and moments of vulnerability as well as the little wins. There is genuine dialogue and I have not catered to a “mainstream” narrative. I’ve tried to create something that is both realistic and relatable.

Trail of Worth covers many themes and topics – travel, immigration, careers, running, friendship, relationships, mental health, and self-worth. Some of the content will make you smile, some will make you think, some may trigger sad or painful memories, and some I hope will inspire. If you’re a member of a book club, this story would be a great choice for initiating meaningful conversations.

Trail of Worth is written from the perspective of a female, millenial expat. It’s based on actual events recorded from the time, but identities have been changed. Interpretations of events and behaviours in the story will be influenced by the readers’ own attitudes and life experiences. I would simply encourage anyone reading the book to try to read it with an open and reflective mind.

Here’s a summary of what my editor had to say when she read the manuscript.

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Something my editor mentioned when reviewing Trail of Worth was how relatable the story would be for women in their 20s-30s. However, she also said that as an older woman, she really enjoyed the story – it made her reflect on her younger years and the experiences she had.

I think you would enjoy this book if you:

  • Have experienced or would like to experience moving overseas
  • Like to travel or have travelled solo as a female
  • Have experienced what has felt like a quarter-life crisis or a loss of self-worth
  • Have been in a long-distance relationship
  • Have struggled with emotionally difficult relationships, including those impacted by mental health issues
  • Are a competitive runner or simply find fulfillment in this activity
  • Have worked in recruitment and HR
  • Have struggled with age bias and Imposter Syndrome in your career
  • Can’t relate to any of the above but are curious 🙂

Links for Purchase:

Trail of Worth is available to buy online in Kindle or paperback format from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and some other small online retailers.

If your country doesn’t have an Amazon site, you can get worldwide shipping from amazon.com

Amazon UK

Amazon Canada

Amazon US/EU/Worldwide

Amazon Australia

Barnes & Noble (US customers)

Book Depository

If you’d like to receive more commentary on the book and further insights into the topics discussed, you can follow my main Instagram page @shannelizabethco

And if you’re interested in completing and publishing a book review, please don’t hesitate to contact me!

Thank you in advance for reading Trail of Worth. I hope you enjoy this story that is very special to me 🙂

Publishing a Book | The Editing Process

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In my last blog post I shared that I am in the process of publishing a book. Since December, I’ve been working on editing my manuscript. Today I’m going to talk a little more about that part of the process.

The most challenging things I’ve found about the editing process are 1) being selective and 2) not being too much of a perfectionist.

I used journals to frame a lot of my manuscript’s content. Having these references was super helpful for dialogue and structure. The downside was that I sometimes struggled to decide whether something should or shouldn’t be included. I almost seemed to feel a need to do justice to something that had happened in real life. I might feel compelled to write about an interesting side-event, even though I knew it didn’t necessarily fit in with the course of the narrative.

It was this challenge that particularly influenced me to request an editorial evaluation from the book publishing company. This is where a professional editor reads your manuscript without making any changes on the document, and then writes a summary of its strengths and weaknesses.

It took two weeks for my editorial evaluation to come back, and I really appreciated the editor’s input. I’m fairly confident in my writing ability and had been pretty satisfied with my content, but hearing an external person’s perspective was really valuable. I really came to realize that some of the content I had didn’t add much to the story and its purpose. It might have been an interesting detail, but oftentimes it was actually disrupting the flow and pace of the story. Having the impartial eyes of someone I didn’t know really helped me cut out the needless content I felt committed to!

A highlight of my editorial evaluation was seeing that the editor felt the central theme of the book was clear and believed in the importance of its message. I’m sure a lot of writers go through moments of doubt during the process where they wonder if their story is “even any good” and worth sharing. After getting the editor’s feedback, I felt encouraged. I also felt like her feedback wasn’t given for the sake of being critical, but was given with my best interests and those of my book in mind.

One of the great things about an editorial evaluation when self-publishing is that you have the power to do what you want with the feedback. You might elect to request a substantive edit where the editor studies your content in-depth to suggest changes to the flow, voice and characterization etc., or you might just make a few minor changes and then request a copy edit, or you might not make any changes and just go straight to publish.

In my case, the editor recommended a copy edit (which is standard). She also recommended some changes to the content, and said that if I didn’t feel confident making these changes on my own, she’d be happy to help with a substantive edit.

I chose to work on the changes myself. I loved the challenge of it. I almost felt like I was back in school, improving a draft of a story an English teacher had read. It was a really fun project for me because it allowed me to test my skills as a writer while maintaining creative control.

I spent two weeks working on the edits while continuing to work full-time. Some of the edits were pretty quick and simple changes, while others took more thinking and a few tries of different approaches. Overall, it was a really rewarding process. I had a goal of finishing the edits in two weeks, but I also felt it important to be flexible. As mentioned in my last blog post, the editing process shouldn’t be rushed.

On the day I went to re-submit the manuscript to the publisher, I found myself having last-minute thoughts of “Maybe I’d better read that section one more time”. I would then find little things to change – adjective or adverb replacements, rephrasing of a sentence, removal of a word. That’s where the perfectionist in me comes out. Even after re-submitting, I’ve made notes of little things I want to change once I get the copy edit back. I don’t think this is a bad thing; I just hope I won’t be doing it once the final copy has been sent for interior layout design ;). There’s definitely a fine balance between putting effort into ensuring something’s quality and obsessing unnecessarily over tiny things!

Tips for Other First-Time Writers (from a Non-Expert!)

·  Be selective. Journals can be a great source of inspiration for creating content and dialogue, but it’s important to keep the content relevant to the narrative and purpose of the story.

·  Take your time. Having a deadline to work towards can be motivating, but be mindful that life happens and things can get delayed. Once you are finished writing, don’t rush to send the manuscript off to an editor. Take time to re-read and make revisions until you are completely satisfied.

·  Get an editorial evaluation. Even if you consider yourself a skilled writer, getting a summary of the manuscript’s strengths and some recommendations for improvement is really helpful. It gives you a base off which to make more edits that will only make your book better!

·  Before submitting your manuscript for an editorial evaluation, prepare notes for the editor. Explain the story’s purpose and your goals for the book, provide context behind the style and methods you’ve used, and summarize the key areas you’re looking for feedback on. This helps ensure you get as much value as possible from the evaluation.

·  Be open to feedback. Hearing the opinion of a stranger about something so personal to you, even if it’s constructive criticism, can be daunting. But the feedback is ultimately coming from someone who cares about quality writing and good stories. It could be extremely valuable to you, not just for a current project, but for future projects as well.

·  Get a copy edit. If you don’t want to pay much for editing services, it’s still recommended to get a copy edit at minimum. This helps ensure a polished and professional finish to your book. I consider myself a pretty strong writer, but I knew there would be grammatical or structural errors I’d made.

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Thanks for following my book publishing journey! I’m now waiting to get the copy edit back, after which the editing process will be complete. My next blog post will be about the cover design process!

If you’re a published author or are in the process of publishing a book, feel free to leave your thoughts and tips on the editing process below 🙂

I’m Publishing a Book!

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Many people seemed to spend their free time in 2020 making a baby. I spent it writing a book, and I’m excited (and nervous!) to share that I will be publishing it in the coming months 😊

I’ve been writing since I was a kid – pony stories, poems, journals, articles in the local paper. There was a time when I wanted to be an author, but it quickly got to the point where it didn’t seem like a realistic way of making a living. However, the dream of one day writing a book lived on. The issue was that I wasn’t sure what I wanted to write about. I had ideas for novels, but never one that really inspired a devoted effort. So, I just carried on writing my blog and journaling. Through journaling, I’ve always enjoyed the process of identifying interesting trends and themes from daily life.

Scribbling next to my childhood best friend, Tom

Then I moved to Canada at the end of 2016 and experienced a big life change that led to some interesting experiences and challenges. Some experiences were unique to my situation, while others exemplified life events and scenarios common to women in their mid-twenties.

In December 2019, I was home alone for Christmas. During a state of restless boredom, I felt a sudden motivation to write. I thought back to my first year in Canada, and the experiences in my first year overseas ended up giving me the inspiration I was looking for. So, I decided to write a piece of creative non-fiction. I opened up my laptop one evening and set myself a goal of finishing writing a draft manuscript by the end of 2020.

About the Book

An honest portrayal of moving overseas, this book creatively explores the various themes and challenges that accompany both an expat life and the general life of a woman navigating her mid-twenties. From adjusting to a new environment, seeking a fulfilling job, establishing oneself in an occupation, and handling complex relationships, the book’s theme centers around self-worth during a quarter-life crisis. It’s a story that will make readers reflect on their own experiences, with the purpose of inspiring and uplifting them.

The Writing Process

A year may sound like a long time in which to write a manuscript, but when you have a full-time office job and don’t want to spend all of your free time staring at a computer screen, it starts to feel more reasonable.

Before starting, I had a good idea of how I wanted to structure the book, the key content I wanted to include, and the main theme I wanted to be conveyed. Some people know what they want their book’s title to be right from the beginning. I personally didn’t have a title in mind when I started, but it came to me a few months into writing.

The social distancing regulations that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic became a strange convenience, because they gave more reason for me to focus on writing in my free time.

For some reason, I’ve always been secretive with my writing. Even as a kid scribbling pony stories, I would hide them away when my family came to look. I think it was because I was shy about others reading what I wrote. During this writing process, it was only my partner that knew I was writing a book. Our suite doesn’t have a separate office for work or writing, so I quickly came to appreciate how great he was at leaving me to it! The reason I decided not to tell anyone else was because I wanted avoid any requests for updates, and just focus on the book without feeling any intrusion or pressure.

One thing I noticed was how easy it was to get fatigued while writing, especially if covering a topic that was complex or emotional in nature. Sometimes my creativity seemed to be lacking. The longest break I took from writing was around 3 weeks. However, there were other times when the words just seemed to flow freely and before I knew it, it was almost midnight!

I met my goal of finishing drafting the content in December 2020, but then my own revisions and edits started. This is such an important part of the process. I found that there were many things I’d written almost a year earlier that I wanted to change, particularly with regards to content and structure. Some of the content no longer seemed to be relevant or add value. In some areas, there was a lack of flow, or I felt things could be written more creatively. I ended up re-writing several sections of the manuscript.

The revisions process took around two months until I was satisfied with the manuscript. In addition to content editing, I also did copy editing to the best of my non-professional ability. Sometimes during my work day, I would suddenly think of something that I felt could be edited or added, and I’d make a note in my phone for later. The revision process is something that really can’t be rushed. It’s amazing what a rested pair of eyes can see! Even if you plan on getting the book professionally edited (which I have), it’s important to ensure you have a relatively polished manuscript in advance.

Choosing a Publishing Path

The next step in the process was deciding how I wanted to publish the book – the traditional route or self-publishing. I’m lucky in that I had knowledge of two experiences. My brother’s book, The Rule (Jack Colman) was published by Harper Voyager in 2015, while my dad self-published his memoir, The Right Thing? (Dr. Richard Colman) in 2014.

Both routes have their pros and cons, depending on the writer’s goals. Getting published the traditional route still carries more prestige, while self-publishing is sometimes termed “vanity publishing”. I get why this term is used for some self-publishers, however, I think it’s also quite offensive to the talented writers who simply feel tired of waiting to hear back from agents, or worry that their book will lose its integrity if managed by someone with a different priority. Does “vanity publishing” mean that artists who sell their paintings at local street markets are “vanity artists”? Are people who turn their passion into a business “vanity business owners”? Frankly, it’s the “stars” of trashy reality TV shows who seemingly have no problem securing a deal to publish a book about their life that are the vain ones.

Here are the reasons I’ve decided to go the self-publishing route (in case anyone is debating the options for their own manuscript):

  • I like the idea of having ownership over something I’ve created (this book is literally my baby!) instead of having it be owned and managed by someone else.
  • Because the book is based on real-life personal events, it’s important to me that I maintain a large amount of control over the content. With self-publishing, I can maintain full creative control. I have the final say on any edits suggested, whereas traditional publishing can take away a lot of the writer’s control. I would hate for someone to try to change the content of my book to make it fit what they might see as a more mainstream (aka $$) narrative.
  • Self-publishing does not mean you’ll have a terribly written book that’s filled with typos. You can have your manuscript professionally edited with a polished design. You have to pay for this service, but if you believe the story is worth sharing, why wouldn’t you invest in its success?
  • It is extremely competitive and can take a long time to get a literary agent and/or be offered a deal by a publishing company. This isn’t a reason not to try, however I’m personally at the point where I don’t want to wait months to hear back from an agent (or not hear back at all!), only to then wait even longer for the work to be published.
  • I’m not writing this book to launch a new career as a full-time author. I’m writing it to share a story that I believe (and have been told my editor!) has an important message. I’m also writing it to tick off something from wish list. Perhaps that’s the vain part 😉
  • You get higher royalties when you self-publish. Who doesn’t like being rewarded more for their writing skills and hard work?!
  • One thing the pandemic has highlighted is the importance of supporting local.

If I write another book in future, I would definitely be open to trying the traditional publishing route. But for this particular story, self-publishing seems to work well for me. Plus, if I did want to write more books in the future, having an already published book could be helpful in securing an agent.

Side note: I recently learned that The Martian was initially self-published in 2011, before a traditional publishing company bought the rights a few years later. Then it was turned into a film! That’s pretty cool.

To get things going, I researched two local publishing companies in Victoria. I contacted both for more information. Ultimately, I opted for the one whose website content spoke more to my interests and goals, whose publishing consultants seemed less sales-driven, and whose publishing package offered better value for what I was looking for.

Journalling

I’m currently working on content edits, and am excited for the next stage! I’ll be posting updates on my Instagram page if you’d like to follow along 🙂

Have you written and self-published a book? What tips would you share?