It seems like a stupid thing to have to write about. Are you kidding me, Hope? How can I not be excited about my book? I just got this idea last night about what would happen if a character was transferred to his rival school because his previous one burned down. How can you expect me to need to get excited???
Well, first I would warn you against plagiarism since that's the premise of my novel Den.
But second, a fire for a book burns for about the first 10,000 words.
Problem: you have at least 50,000 to go . . . most likely in the 60,000-90,000 range (and some genres go longer). You haven't even broken the 100-page mark by now, and you realize a marathon . . . means 26.2 miles, not 3.1 (sorry 5k runners and short story writers).
So you procrastinate.
I do it, too. So while you scroll through Pinterest to avoid those characters tap-tapping on your shoulder, why turn the P in Procrastination into Productivity?
Build Pinterest Boards For Your Books
(A pin from my board for Den)
This helps you to envision what your character looks like through pictures. Think of ways to promote your book (including merchandising ideas) and pin plenty of motivational quotes that help you (and your characters) to keep going through that inciting incident.
Create a Spotify or YouTube Playlist
(Click YouTube above to see what I pulled together for Den)
This helps in a number of ways:
1. You now have a list of music you can listen to when writing the book/working yourself up to write the book.
2. Whenever you hear that song on the radio or in a movie, you'll smile and think about the character or situation it represents.
3. When you do get a book contract, you can share the songs with your readers. In turn, while they peruse the chapters, they can listen to the soundtrack.
4. In the rare instance they turn your book into a movie, you have suggestions for a soundtrack. They'll ignore you. But suggest it anyway.
Draw Your Characters
Granted this does depend on how advanced your fingers work with a sketchbook. Mine turn out a mean stick figure (I call it abstract . . . or postmodernism), so I made avatars for my characters instead on a website.
This helps you to help others understand those in-concrete figurines that dot the pages of your book . . . and if you reach Stephen King levels of success, those things could sell millions (just sayin').
Create Merchandise
Not only do you have wearable marketing for yourself, but odds are a handful of friends will want to purchase one of these as well. Word of mouth without even having to open yours.
Craft Book Covers
This has a two-fold purpose.
1. You get to share mock covers on social media and get people excited about the book.
2. When the publisher asks you for ideas for the book cover, you can show them images to give them a general sense of what you would love to see in bookstores and on Amazon.
Excited yet?