My name is Nonnie Jules and I am the author of The Good Mommies’ Guide to Raising (Almost) Perfect Daughters, 100 Tips On Raising Daughters Everyone Can’t Help But Love! and the upcoming, highly anticipated, novel Daydream’s Daughter, Nightmare’s Friend.
I will offer a little insight into my journey to becoming a published author and some of the ups and downs of that journey, while touching on each aspect of it. What you are about to read will not always be pretty, I’m not one of those who everything I do is glorious, so I won’t even pretend. You are about to find out what is fun and easy for me as well as what makes me break into hives (figuratively speaking). So here goes:
Writing
I wrote my first piece of published work The Good Mommies’ Guide… in April, 2013. It took me only 17 days to write this piece and although I’ve been told by one that most authors frown on work that has been penned so quickly, I will be the first to give an unbiased opinion of that work…it’s good!
I know that sometimes it takes a lot longer than 17 days to put out great work, sometimes even years. The reason I could move so quickly to the finish line with this one was because I lived each and every bit of the book, so it all came down to me just sitting down and putting it all on paper. I am a strong believer that if you are a true writer, you can write anything, in any amount of time, and it still can come out to be some of the greatest work ever put out into the universe.
Writing for me, some might say, comes a little too easy sometimes. I tend to get an idea and once it’s in my head, you will see me driving down the highway, speaking into my iPhone recorder each and every word so I don’t forget them before I have a chance to commit them to paper.
My children’s book Kirsten and the Big Blue Tree was set to release in June but has been delayed due to illustrator issues, I wrote while I was exiting the highway on the way to my child’s sports class and was halfway done by the time her class was finished. I did have to tweak it here and there, change some things, but the basis of it was done in a very short amount of time.
Although I can’t say how long that piece took me, I can assure you my novel, which has a release date in August has been in the works for several years now, so you must realise and accept that each written work you put out will be different. Writers are very creative people and our minds tend to operate on a different plain from most others. It’s a gift and a blessing that we must welcome and be very grateful for.
Editing
Editing for me is pretty enjoyable. People laugh when I say that but I truly have no idea why. I have an author friend who says she hates editing her work and any other work, so she pays dearly for this service. I am of the mindset that if you’re good at something, why pay someone else for the service?
I will write, and then step away from that writing for a few hours, or even a few days, then go back to it with a fresh set of eyes. In doing this, I have cleared my mind of what I have written and am now ready to go in to clean up those things that I may have missed while writing.
I simply love this process and unless one day I get so extremely busy with writing, I don’t think I’ll be passing this on for others to do for me. I may miss some things sometimes, but I’ve read bestselling novels where I have found mistakes and errors which a proofreader should have picked up on, so, that being said, we all do make mistakes at times because we are all human.
Publishing
Now here is where I would definitely pull out the checkbook and pay someone for a service. I don’t like the publishing process. When I published my first piece of work to Kindle Amazon, it stressed me out for days.
When I look at something and it looks as if it might be a tad complicated, I walk away and say “Nope, not for me” and I’m done with whatever that may be. I ended up turning that Kindle process over to a friend of mine who formatted it for me.
With my paperback, I published to CreateSpace and found it to be extremely easy and am looking forward to the next time. Can you believe it though…here I am an author and I am admitting there is a part of the process that freaks me out. And although I get anxious each time it gets close to me having to do it again, I know that it is something that I have to do and should become very comfortable with.
I have vowed that I will take some time to fully learn each process, thereby eliminating the anxiety it causes me. I don’t want to scare anyone away from this, this is just my issue because I feel that my old brain is too lazy to learn new things. This is not just the way I feel about the publishing process, this is in every area of my life, something at my age I’m not going to try to change except in the area of publishing.
My time here is up now but before I leave I would like to share a bit about me and my work. I am a married mother of two wonderful (almost) perfect daughters. One is a young adult and the other a teenager and they are the joys of my life. There’s a song that goes “Mama said there’d be days like this…” and I attribute that to mean difficult days, but with these two, every day is a pure holiday. And let’s make that holiday Christmas since it’s my most favorite one. When I decided to become a published author (because I have been writing for years now), it was because of my daughters and the fact that people are always, always asking me “How did you get them to turn out this way?” So what better to write about than how I did just that.
The Good Mommies’ Guide to Raising (Almost) Perfect Daughters is my gift to those parents of daughters who are unborn and also to those who have daughters now and want them to turn into awesome, positive contributors to society and loved by the masses.
This book is turning into a parenting bible for parents and the reviews and email that I receive on the tips that are included are nothing short of miraculous. I truly believe that if every person, parent or not, shared this book with someone, the world would be a much better place to live.
If you watch the news, it’s very disheartening to see it’s not always our sons that are being arrested, in trouble, fighting, killing…now, it’s the daughters as well. They are becoming gang members at a faster rate, just like the sons and a lot of times, they are more heartless and vicious than any boy could ever be. Our prisons are overrun with women and young girls.
Some of these women started spiralling down when they were teenagers. Had their parents taught them from The Good Mommies’ Guide, I believe our prison system would look a whole lot more different today and it would be a whole lot less crowded.
Don’t let the title of this book fool you. Although it was initially written for Moms, anyone, male or female who has been blessed with the task of raising daughters, needs to have it in their possession. This is a carefully laid out blueprint to an (Almost) Perfect Daughter. These tips have been tested, they’re tried and true and you can start today, right now, implementing them with the girls in your life.
Now I’m hearing from readers these are tips that can also be applied to the rearing of boys. I don’t have sons but if the parents of sons say so, I believe them. Anyway that it can help us to make a better world for our children and others, I’m all for it.
You can get your copy or you can gift a copy to someone who you think might benefit from these teachings from www.amazon.com as an ebook or you can get the paperback edition at www.createspace.com.
My upcoming novel, entitled Daydream’s Daughter, Nightmare’s Friend is about an (Almost) Perfect Daughter who through her experiences of being raised by an alcoholic, abusive mother, ends up on the wrong side of the road and the law. You can read an excerpt at www.wp.me and be sure to follow my blog so that you’re able to follow her journey to see how she fares in the end. As the name of my tour implies, I’m still writing all about daughters.
You can find me on Twitter @nonniejules, on FaceBook (Nonnie Jules) as well as my blog WATCH NONNIE WRITE! at www.nonniewrites.wordpress.com. I love hearing from my readers and I respond to each and every one.
Thank you all for allowing me to share with you today. If you guys keep reading it, I will surely keep writing it! See you on the other side…of a book, that is!