Celebrating the Best of Royalene Doyle
and her fantastic Conversations
Seasons. They mean a lot to us: harbingers of change, or renewal, or death, or growth, or transformation, the seasons play vital roles in everything from Shakespeare to the Metamorphosis to our very own blog posts here on Self Publishing Advisor. (Did we just put ourselves in company with Shakespeare? Well, maybe he would have self-published too if he’d had the chance!) Many of Royalene’s finest posts tapped into timely conversations about the seasons and how they inform our work–from conception, to the written manuscript, to the final publication and distribution. Her first truly seasonal post for us came back in 2015, when she wrote about the “seasons of creative development.” These seasons provide a useful metaphor for framing the work that lies ahead, and we can’t think of a better foundation for today’s retrospective than this.
Royalene continued her 2015 conversations about seasons by writing a series; you can read the other posts in the series here, here, and … here, with part IV, the conclusion and second post we’ll be looking at today. Why part IV and not some other part? First of all, there’s something fitting about writing about a sense of resolution and hope after writing about seasons and how they inform our work … and more than anyone else who’s ever written for us here on Self Publishing Advisor, Royalene understood how to provide readers with tangible and actionable ways forward. Here, in the conclusion to her incredibly popular series on seasons (as determined by the analytics), Royalene reminds us that as authors we will face seasons as well: seasons of productivity, and seasons which might be called “fallow.” Seasons where we feel frustrated, and like nothing is happening. The good news? Everyone goes through them, so there is nothing wrong with you for feeling down on your luck or discouraged. Authors like Laura Ingalls Wilder get started late in life all the time; Authors like CS Lewis write steadily throughout their lives and into old age; authors like Alice Ann Munroe only receive due recognition in old age; and authors everywhere go through seasons. Just like the rest of us!
The seasons have other connotations, too, don’t they? They’re elemental. They speak to the workings of the world. In a wildly popular post from 2016, Royalene wrote about another set of rich metaphors which often intersect with those of the seasons: the elements. Not the periodic table of elements, although that too is a beautiful thing and worth mining for creative fuel, but the elements as perceived by the ancients in various cultures, and used as metaphors for describing and informing human relationships to the natural world … and each other … and so much more! Earth, fire, air, water, and aether. Who knew that they could help inspire authors throughout the ages, and maybe even you? Well, apart from Royalene, who is brilliant? In this, our final retrospective for the week, we wanted to leave you with a typically “Royalene-y” post, one which provides a fun and useful exercise to help you keep generating the words you need in order to complete your writing project.
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That’s all for this week! We’ll be back next Friday as we detail more of Royelene’s greatest hits, as determined by our blog’s analytics. You can follow Royalene’s further adventures by checking out her Twitter feed (her handle is @RoyaleneD) or her website at www.DoyleWritingServices.com. We miss you, Royalene! ⚓︎
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