Don't Stop Believin' !
They say a journey starts with a single step...

Nancy Wakeley
Nov 01, 2024
So, yes, I’m stealing the title of an iconic song by Journey—but as I relistened to it just now, I thought it would be a nice lead-in to what I want to say today.
If you are just starting out on your writing journey, or any other type of creative passion for that matter, “Don’t Stop Believin’”! Take that first step and you will get there.
My writing journey did start with a single step, a single AHA moment when I actually thought I might be able to do this thing…but before that…way before that…came the love and the simple joy of reading. I am dating myself but the first authors I read as a teenager were books by Mary Stewart, Phyllis Whitney, and Victoria Holt. Mysteries, romance, exotic locales, and beautiful prose. Even the titles of Stewart’s books take me back to those days of searching our small-town library for the latest offerings from my favorite authors and being mesmerized by every word when I got the book home: Madam, Will You Talk; Wildfire at Midnight; Thunder on the Right; This Rough Magic. Is it any wonder I recall these books fondly with titles like these?

Fast forward, thirty-some years later, when my daughter went off to college, I thought, why don’t I give it a try…I have nothing to lose, right? I never lost anything. But what I gained by writing—and learning the craft of writing—was more than I could have ever expected.
Follow me for more of the Writing Inspired journey!

“Turning the Page”What I’m reading now and what’s next!
I usually have two books going at once—one will be my “upstairs” book and the other is my “downstairs” book which is all pretty self-explanatory but the “upstairs” book is for reading before I turn out the lights and the “downstairs” book is for —well, for any other time of the day that I can get a minute to read!
Rhys Bowen—Four Funerals and Maybe a Wedding (Her Royal Spyness #12)This week my upstairs book is a wonderful mystery by Rhys Bowen; this is the 12th book in Her Royal Spyness Mysteries (and my first book by her) so I have started at the wrong end of things, but I am enjoying it anyway. I don’t think I have lost anything by starting here—I’ll definitely go back and read the others!
C.J. Box—Storm Watch (Joe Pickett #23)See a trend here? I haven’t read all of the Joe Pickett series either—I brought some home from the library for my husband to read and I like a good story with a strong lead character, adventure and it takes place out west which I like. My taste in novels runs eclectic so I can manage a light cozy and thriller at the same time!
What’s next? I’m sure I will be on the lookout for more cozy mysteries since that is what my next book will be (more on that soon!)
And....
Where you can find me…..You can find me on social media, but I’d love to have you subscribe to my Substack where you’ll find even more content than on X, IG or FB. And my website has everything you need to know about my books and where to get them! So be sure to check that out. (My third book Secrets at Deep Lake is on $.99 special during the month of October!)
‘Tis the season for live book signing events so watch for the details in upcoming posts on social media and here on Substack.
Click here for my website:
X: @nancy_wakeley
Instagram: @nancywakeley2
Facebook: @authornancywakeley
Substack: @nancywakeley1

When we ask ourselves “why (fill in the blank), the answer doesn’t often come easily. Why should I consider a career change? Why should I move? Why should I start a diet (for the third or fourth time when it never worked before)? The answers to these “whys” are hard because they usually have bigger consequences. And that’s okay. Take your time with the big ones!
What was my “why?” for writing? I wanted to see if I could do it, basically. I love reading, I’d been told “you write well” (whatever that means!) and I’d read enough bad writing to think, very confidently, that I could do better than what I was seeing on the page! I didn’t have a particular story to tell at the time—that came much later when I began to write my first published novel. (By the way, I couldn’t write better…at first…)
Your “why” might be that you can’t imagine NOT writing and I applaud you for that! You have a story that must come out and the only way for you to do that is to put it on the page. I get it. I also hear from many people that “I’ve always wanted to write but don’t know where to begin.” That’s okay, too. I thought I knew where to begin but I quickly found out that I had a lot to learn about the craft. And, if you are not sure where to begin, THAT must be your first step. If you want to learn to play the piano, you might sit down and plunk out a few notes but eventually, you will want to learn the craft of playing the piano. However you go about that, you are developing a skill that builds on itself until you can either play chopsticks or Mozart. It’s up to you where the ending will be.


The same goes for writing. A lot of you reading this are already on your writing journey. Some of you have published already. Some are struggling to get even the first sentence out and some can get 50,000 words down easily. Wherever you are in your writing journey, and after you’ve answered the question “why” you want to write, I believe that studying the craft of writing is imperative. No matter what genre you write in and no matter what your goals are, there is something to be gained by understanding the basics of storytelling—and that’s what writing is all about—telling a story. Whether it’s poetry, short story, novella, sweeping multi-generational saga, romance, or mystery, it is a craft, and a writer should be engaged in an ongoing process of learning, understanding, and improving. If storytelling is intuitive to you, that’s great! Think of it this way: for an intuitive writer, studying the craft of writing can be an editing process where you can learn to ‘tighten’ up your prose or your dialogue, or help you work through a plot that is going off course or not going anywhere!
As you can see from the picture above, I own a lot of books on the craft of writing. I’m going to be delving into it more in the days and weeks ahead, so I hope you’ll take this trip with me!