April 18, 2016 – Writer's Treasure Chest

Welcome!

Please introduce yourself.

Hi there! I am Annette Rochelle Aben and I am living the dream of being a published author. My world is filled with scraps of paper, journals, notebooks, pens, pencils and magic markers all to ensure that I can capture what floats around inside my head. When I am not writing, I am blogging, cooking, hanging out with our cats, reading, making jewelry, taking pictures at the park and binge watching the Food Network on my computer. Thank you so much for this opportunity to share my books with everyone.

When did you start writing?

I have always written, as far back as grade school and just never stopped.

What motivates you to write?

Writing to me, is as natural as breathing. So I write every day and sometimes all day. In addition, I submit monthly to a digital magazine (as well as edit that publication) so I have between 3-5 pieces that are due like clockwork for them.

What genre do you write in and what made you chose this particular genre?

My favorite genre is poetry. It began with using poetry as a way of expressing my feelings when I was younger and grew into ways of celebrating the world around me. Funny, because I was thinking about this the other day. Everyone in my immediate family can draw, even my ex-husband was a talented artist. Me? Not so much. However, I found that I could use my words and ‘paint a picture’ and it gives me a tremendous feeling of accomplishment when someone tells me they can see what I am saying.

What is your goal in writing? Do you have dreams where your writing should take you?

Boy, I am having the time of my life putting together the books I self-publish, so I see myself always creating books. I’ve dreams of doing documentary film work and creating children’s books too. I am open to the options as well as the unknown as far as writing is concerned, let’s have some fun, right?

Do you ever suffer from writer’s block and if yes, how do you deal with it?

I don’t know it if is writer’s block as much as stalled progress. Let me explain. I storyboard my books, for me that process stems from writing television commercials, where I used to lay things out to get the final visual. I will actually create a homemade version of each book. When I find myself being unduly distracted it means there is a better idea about to hatch. Sometimes the better idea isn’t about changing the physical book; it’s about the release date. So how I deal with it is to do anything other than think about that book until the book jumps back into my stream of consciousness.

What advice would you like to give new, hopeful authors?

Wow, write from your heart. Challenge yourself from time to time. Find a mentor. Allow yourself to fall in love with what you are writing. Remember there are those who will not totally get you and be okay with that. Publish that book! And by all means, hold yourself in the highest of esteems!

Please, tell us about your work.

At this time, I have 6 self-published works available on Amazon in print and in Kindle format.

Choose, the 2-step plan is a self-help book which offers steps to take to reach very specific end results. This is actually the syllabus from a workshop I presented years ago and is filled with the steps that worked for me (and still do actually).

Perspective, it’s all about replacing one thought with another is the re-issue of the very first book I self-published in 2009. Filled with photographs, prose and poetry of an inspirational nature, I was seeking an outlet for creativity and someone suggested I create a book. In 2015, I was showing a friend the out of print original and she said that I should re-issue it so I did. It has all the original content along with some additional material.

A Haiku Perspective 2015 was born out of being introduced to creating poetry in a haiku format and not being able to stop. Had to do something with it and thought, why not!

Then I got the idea to put photographs and poetry together again but this time I used only haiku and digitally laid the poems over photographs I had taken. Not that I originated this, but I created a title for this presentation and PhoKu, visual perspective haiku came about.

Angel Messages, a wing and a prayer is a book I have been being asked to write for nearly a decade but couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. I had amassed thousands of messages from Angels over the years (and these were just those I wrote down) This is a collection of photographs of Angels in my home, prayers I have written, poems and messages I have received.

My most recent published work is A Haiku Perspective 2016 which I chose to release in honor of April being National Poetry Month.

Thank you for being my guest. It was such a pleasure to have you here!!

Connect with Annette:

http://www.annetterochelleaben.wordpress.com

http://www.amazon.com/author/annetterochelleaben

https://www.facebook.com/pages/annette-rochelle-aben-communicates/156789881019973

https://plus.google.com/117587381760910538120/

https://www.linkedin.com/pub/annette-rochelle-aben/104/55a/79b

http://www.pinterest.com/AnnetteRochelleAben

https://twitter.com/YouAreTheExpert

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfaRCXDZtEBks2PkYtyEAoA

Annette Rochelle Aben’s books: (Click on the cover to find them on Amazon.com)