Celebrating the Best of Royalene Doyle

and her fantastic Conversations

The “Trees” Series

• Conversations: 5/1/2015

Last week, we examined one of Royalene’s all-time best series–on connecting with experts–and this week we’re back with another one of her banner collections. This time, the subject is … wait, what? Trees?

Ah, but you see, Royalene had a way with metaphor, and a personal dedication to craft which focused on growth and opportunity, rather than all of the negatives and trials and hardships which might plague lesser humans (and let’s face it, we all live in fear of Writer’s Block … except for, magically, Royalene!). When it comes to envisioning a metaphorical framework for the discussion of growth, what better image could there be than a tree?

In this, the first entry in this series, Royalene starts with the beginning–and by that, we mean the beginning of every project. What is its seed? How does it germinate? How can an author plant and then successfully cultivate a new work? As always, Royalene is not just ferociously positive, but also thoroughly practical, and here she provides several tips and tricks for getting started.

• Conversations: 5/8/2015

In this, the second installment in the series, Royalene continues to track the progress of a work from seed to harvest, with a special emphasis on growth patterns. How do we measure the progress of a work? And how do we survive both the rainy and the dry seasons when it comes to our writing?

• Conversations: 5/15/2015

If you never expected to discuss tree life expectancy as a parallel to your work on your next book, well, that makes all of us. But as unexpected as this framework for discussion is, it’s also thoroughly brilliant! Royalene’s advice? “Research the details.” And of course, she provides a checklist for doing just that.

• Conversations: 5/22/2015

What happens when character development and plot lines intersect? Well, several things can happen, some of them good, and some of them challenging. Not every intersection may prove a fruitful one for your particular work, and Royalene has some thoughts on how to parse and structure your book so that this intersection is a real, organic, and powerful space for development and beauty.

• Conversations: 5/29/2015

Last but not least, Royalene wraps up her series with a reflection on the nature of perspective. Trees, the central metaphor of this series, happen to have rather a lot, and to provide a convenient imagistic parallel as you wrap up the creation of your next book. For Royalene, as with many others, trees provide or provoke an intense emotional reaction. They’re the locus point of a number of different thought processes. And they’re real and physical objects which exist outside of our conversations about metaphor! When it comes to the insights which this seemingly–perhaps deceptively–simple image can provide, trees will always have a lot to offer. Many thanks to Royalene for teasing out such a fine and robust line of reasoning!

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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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ABOUT ROYALENE DOYLE: Royalene has been writing something since before kindergarten days and continues to love the process. Through her small business—DOYLE WRITING SERVICES—she brings more than 40 years of writing experience to authors who need “just a little assistance” with completing their projects. She developed these blogs for Outskirts Press (OP) a leading self-publisher, and occasionally accepts a ghostwriting project from one of their clients. Her recent book release (with OP) titled FIREPROOF PROVERBS, A Writer’s Study of Words, has received excellent reviews including several professional writer’s endorsements given on the book’s back cover.

Royalene’s writing experience grew through a wide variety of positions from Office Manager and Administrative Assistant to Teacher of Literature and Advanced Writing courses and editor/writer for an International Christian ministry. Her willingness to listen to struggling authors, learn their goals and expectations and discern their writing voice has brought many manuscripts into the published books arena. December 2017 marked the end of Royalene’s tenure at Self Publishing Advisor. and we will be spending the next few weeks celebrating some of her all-time hits, her most well-received articles for our blog, in thanks for years of generous service.

Celebrating the Best of Royalene Doyle

and her fantastic Conversations

The “Connecting With Experts” Series

• Conversations: 10/6/2017

Those of us who’ve spent much time in the world of self-publishing will understand instinctively just how difficult it can be to scrape by unassisted. The same is true for many of those who publish traditionally, of course, and who find themselves neglected by publishing houses who tend to focus on their blockbuster successes and not their struggling midlisters. No matter whether you’ve pursued a traditional or a self-publishing path in the past, this series by Royalene may prove revolutionary as you set out to publish your next book!

Here, in her first post for the series, Royalene examines the topic of Ghostwriters and other assistants to the writing process, including Editors and Coaches. As Royalene goes on to explain, plenty of people have great ideas for books, but not everyone has the desire or the confidence to write it alone. For those people, there are experts ready and eager to help–and they can mean the difference between no book and a beautifully-written, finished manuscript ready to publish! How do you know if you’re ready for an editor, a ghostwriter, or some other form of writing assistance? Royalene walks us through some of her own story and some of her own past partnerships as she explains just what makes for the ideal writing relationship.

• Conversations: 10/13/2017

In this, the second post in her series, Royalene takes a look at Publishing Consultants. When do you need them, and what do they do? Royalene goes on to share some of her own publishing story, a story which showed her she needed “a personal guide who would explain all the publishing options (services) their company offered—someone who would hear what I told them about my book and the audience it could reach—and then help me select the perfect combination of services to achiever my publishing goals.” That person, as it turns out, was a Publishing Consultant (in her case, someone at Outskirts Press)! But this is only the first post in her series ….

• Conversations: 10/20/2017

In her third post in this series, Royalene zoomed in on Book Cover Designers, those intrepid few who know how and why certain covers make us tick, and how to make more covers which both reach their readers and reflect the content, spirit, and the individual needs of both book and author. That’s a lot of work! And it requires a great deal of skill, skill which truthfully often deserves compensation. A good book cover can be the difference between poor and good book sales, and Royalene walks us through why that’s the case.

• Conversations: 10/27/2017

Last but certainly not least, Royalene dug into the thorniest of all issues in which writers often require assistance–marketing. How will you know you need help? Well, sales figures have something to do with it. But so too will your own desires and attitudes, and here as always Royalene demonstrates that she truly understood the needs and hopes of those many authors she has walked through the publication process. Marketing is hard, and knowing when and how and who to reach out to for help is even harder. Luckily, we have Royalene’s words to guide us, and in this closing installment of this particular chapter of her writings, we may have one of the most useful guides to seeking marketing assistance out there.

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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! ⚓︎

---

ABOUT ROYALENE DOYLE: Royalene has been writing something since before kindergarten days and continues to love the process. Through her small business—DOYLE WRITING SERVICES—she brings more than 40 years of writing experience to authors who need “just a little assistance” with completing their projects. She developed these blogs for Outskirts Press (OP) a leading self-publisher, and occasionally accepts a ghostwriting project from one of their clients. Her recent book release (with OP) titled FIREPROOF PROVERBS, A Writer’s Study of Words, has received excellent reviews including several professional writer’s endorsements given on the book’s back cover.

Royalene’s writing experience grew through a wide variety of positions from Office Manager and Administrative Assistant to Teacher of Literature and Advanced Writing courses and editor/writer for an International Christian ministry. Her willingness to listen to struggling authors, learn their goals and expectations and discern their writing voice has brought many manuscripts into the published books arena. December 2017 marked the end of Royalene’s tenure at Self Publishing Advisor. and we will be spending the next few weeks celebrating some of her all-time hits, her most well-received articles for our blog, in thanks for years of generous service.