About Lauri Sellers:
L.S. Young resides in Florida with her husband and daughter. After spending several years as a childcare worker and secondary English teacher, she turned to writing full-time.
She enjoys exploring the Suwannee River State Park, hiking in the Appalachian Mountains, swimming, and writing nature poetry. She’s an enthusiastic reader of fantasy, horror, Victorian literature, and historical fiction. She has an extensive collection of coffee mugs and bookmarks. Like Lizzie Bennet, she is fond of a walk and dearly loves a laugh.
Young is a member of the Historical Novel Society. A Woman so Bold is her debut novel.
What inspires you to write?
My initial love for writing romance grew from the inspirational romance novels I read as a teenager. It has grown and changed quite a bit since then as I’ve broadened my horizons. I experimented with nature poetry and blogging for a while, and I’m interested in writing fantasy one day because I love to read it. Contemporary is the only genre I can’t seem to get into. The past is what enthralls me. The manners, customs, clothing, speech, simplicity, even the oppressive issues of the past are fascinating to me, something for characters to overcome. I write because I have a restless brain and an overactive imagination. Once I begin a new story and get into plot and characterization, it becomes a compulsion and an obsession until I’m completely finished with it.
Tell us about your writing process.
I have a messy brain and a messy desk, so as one might guess I don’t do much in the way of outlining. The most I do is write down a general timeline of the plot, including conflict and resolution. I leave it open to change. Someone, maybe it was Stephen King, said some writers are architects, while others grow a garden. I’m definitely a gardener.
I am a stay at home mom with a toddler, so my writing process is pretty simple. In the morning, I drink my coffee and work on promo stuff like Twitter and Facebook content, and planning future blog posts. (I’m a new author so this is something I’m still learning.) I revise while my kid is taking a nap. Once my husband gets home I go for a walk to clear my head, then write for an hour, and start dinner. At night, if there’s something really bugging me, I scribble it down before I go to bed. Most days I get anywhere from 500-1500 words this way.
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
I listen to my characters and then I pretend to be them, looking at things through their eyes, thinking like them. I’ve been known to wander around my yard mumbling dialogue, or act out a gesture in a scene. The shower is a great place to think about character motivations.
What advice would you give other writers?
Keep writing and reading. I spent a few years in my early twenties thinking about writing and mourning a writing career I hadn’t put much effort into, but I didn’t read many books or write very often. Eventually, I started posting stream of consciousness stuff on tumblr, which led me back to an old manuscript. During my teaching years, I wrote primarily during the summer and on holidays. Thinking about writing and feeling bad that you don’t get to do it won’t get you anywhere, writing regularly will.
Also, share your work with anyone who will read it and give you feedback, good or bad! You can’t be self-conscious. I definitely didn’t share my first novel enough. I’ve already sent my new work in progress to four or five people.
How did you decide how to publish your books?
After I had received a few rejections I toyed with the idea of self-publishing, but ended up researching different publishers and submitting to ones where I thought my novel would be a good fit. I chose Soul Mate because their submissions page said they were looking for original novels that blur the genre lines and I thought, “That sounds like my book!”
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
Although it’s true that not as many people read now as in the past, I think publishing is alive and well and likely to remain so, especially considering how saturated certain markets like YA and Romance are. I hope the next generation loves to read. My one year old already associates books with love and comfort as I read to her in my lap, and that encourages me.
What do you use?: Professional Editor, Professional Cover Designer, Beta Readers
What genres do you write?: Historical, Romance, Magical Realism
What formats are your books in?: eBook
Website(s)
L.S. Young Home Page Link
Your Social Media Links
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
All information in this post is presented “as is” supplied by the author. We don’t edit to allow you the reader to hear the author in their own voice.
