Lonely on the Mountain, part 3

Now, years later and far out on the grass prairie, I was remembering and wondering what I could do that I hadn't done.

No matter which way you looked between you and anywhere else, there was a thousand miles of grass--- and the Sioux.

The Sioux hadn't come upon us yet, but they were about, and every man-jack of us knew it. It could be they hadn't cut our sign yet, but cut it they would, and when they did, they would come for us.

Lonely on the Mountain
Louis L'Amour
1980

This is the third installment of the beginning of Lonely on the Mountain, a western by Louis L'Amour, one of the most popular of American writers.

At this point the first-person narrator, Tell Sackett, brings us from his memory of troubled times of the past to the troubles of the present. He's out on the prairie--- we later learn his mission is to drive a herd of cattle to another Sackett in Canada--- and he is going through Sioux Indian territory--- and the Sioux are not feeling peaceable.

Putting the three sections of the beginning together, what most impresses me is the strong voice of his character. This is essential when you are using a first-person narrator. Such a narrator must show forth his personality and his individuality in the way he speaks. A bland first-person narrator just will not do.

Another interesting thing about 'Lonely on the Mountain'. The first section is first-person POV will Tell Sackett as the POV character. The next section is third-person POV with another member of the Sackett family as the POV character. He keeps hearing that Tell and the others on the cattle drive were killed by Indians. Later in the novel when Tell Sackett is found, we return to his first-person POV.

While this is not a common way of handling point-of-view in a novel, it works very well. Of course, L'Amour was a very experienced writer when he did it.

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Lonely on the Mountain, part 2

 Two years before, pa had set us to diggin' a well. "Pa?" I asked. "Why dig a well? We've got the creek yonder and three flowin' springs on the place. It's needless work."

He lifted his head, and he looked me right in the eye and said, "Dig a well."

We dug a well.

We grumbled, but when pa said dig, you just naturally dug. And lucky it was, too.

For there came a time when the bed of the creek was dust and the springs that had always flowed weren't flowin'. We had water, though. We had water from a deep, cold well. We watered our stock, we watered our kitchen garden, and we had what was needful for drinkin' because of that well.

*~*~*

Lonely on the Mountain
by Louis L'Amour
1980

This is the second installment of the beginning of this novel. L'Amour has his first-person narrator, Tell Sackett, give us a short word-picture of an incident from his boyhood. It shows what kind of person Pa Sackett was, which explains a lot about how Tell and the other Sackett brothers turned out.

This mini-flashback is risky at the beginning of a novel. L'Amour was at that time a very experienced writer. His first novel was published about 1950. The first book in the Sackett series was published in 1960, so he also had fans eager to hear some Sackett backstory.

But I think even if this had been the first Sackett book, this mini-flashback would have worked. In the voice of the first-person narrator, this mini-flashback is in a way a short description of the character--- not of his looks, but of who he was as a person.

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Lonely on the Mountain, part 1

There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.

Pa said that when I was a boy. There was a hot, dry wind moaning through the hot, dry trees, and we were scared of fire in the woods, knowing that if fire came, all we had would go.

We had crops in the ground, but there'd been no rain for weeks. We were scrapin' the bottom of the barrel for flour and drinkin' coffee made from ground-up beans. We' had our best cow die, and the rest was ganted up, so's you could count every rib.

from
Lonely on the Mountain
Louis L'Amour
published 1980

I've been doing a writing exercise that involves copying out about 300 words of the beginning of novels. This is the first 1/3 of the portion that I copied.

Louis L'Amour had a series, the Sackett series. The first book in that series was written in 1960. This one came along 20 years later. By this time Louis L'Amour was one of the most popular writers in the country. His skill with words can be seen here.

I found this section to be a very powerful opening, which I used for a model in my own WIP. The main character is William Tell Sackett, called Tell. He is featured in several of the Sackett novels and is a character I love.

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IWSG: From Insecure Writer to Insecure Facebook Author-Page Admin

This is my post for The Insecure Writer's Support Group, and the topic is how I went from being an insecure writer to being an insecure Facebook author-page admin.

We have all heard about how modern writers have to have a platform. And evidently that wooden platformy thing in my back yard does not count.

Many writers now have author Facebook pages in addition to their Facebook accounts. It's the kind of page a fan can 'like' rather that having to send in a friend request for. I knew I would make one some day. But I started a few other Facebook pages before I got the courage to make one for me-as-author.

One rule for Facebook page success was hard for me to learn: being controversial gets attention and so is good. My most successful Facebook page has the following title: We Support Traditional Marriage--- And We're Gay. Just listen to the sound of heads exploding over that one! And for all the controversy--- and the occasional hate troll who calls me a liar, moron and fraud and a few other words we won't get in to here--- I got some 545 'likes' on that page and a lot of supportive new friends.

An author Facebook page is harder especially if you don't have much published yet. I came up with the page-name: Nissa Annakindt, writer, Aspie, cat person. I decided that in addition to stuff about my writing, I would put up cat pictures--- I'm well supplied with cats--- and stuff about Doctor Who. And also stuff about Western fiction which is my current obsession.

One thing I do is post quotes from a book I'm reading, and then give the author and book title, and perhaps a bit of reaction. I thought that might be attractive to people who enjoy books and reading.

The hard thing about a new Facebook page is getting new 'likes'. It was SO frustrating at first! What I did was I 'used Facebook as' the page, and 'liked' a lot of pages I was interested in so I would have a good newsfeed. I then commented--- as the page--- on items of interest.

But it went so SLOW! I was stuck at 6 likes for the longest time. I complained that even my much-neglected Facebook page in Esperanto took off more quickly than that.

I keep working at it. I find new things to share, and comment on others' pages. I make memes--- like the one at the top of the page. I added my page to a list of author Facebook pages and blogs on a writer's group on Facebook. I'm up to 28 'likes' now.

But I've learned from my most successful Facebook page that it doesn't always start out quickly. You work at it for a long time, and it seems no one notices. And then, overnight, someone with clout does, and shares it with others, and things start to take off. And that can be scary, too. You have to learn to deal with trolls, among other things--- mentally troubled people who visit Facebook pages in order to hurl abuse at people. The first time that happened, I felt like crying. Now when I see the troll-fairy has left some hate-comments overnight, it's like taking out the trash--- just one more chore to deal with.

I would like to recommend, at this point, that when YOU have a Facebook page you set a strict troll policy--- when they resort to swearing and name calling and abuse, they are banned and the comment removed. The same with the persistently hostile. If people go to your page to disagree with you, expect them to be civil.

Anyway, that's what I have to say about my adventure into having a Facebook author page. I hope I've said something you can use. :)

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Young Writers and the Self-Publishing Trap

Before the internet age, the common trap for the young/beginning writer was the vanity press. A vanity press advertised in magazines, saying they wanted writers to submit to them. They accepted all novels, no matter how flawed. And then they ask you for money.

They claimed that was how publishing worked. You had to pay to get published if you wanted to be the next Norman Mailer.

So young writers paid, and ended up with a garage full of books that didn't sell because bookstores didn't carry vanity press books, and libraries wouldn't even accept them as gifts. And if the young writer mentioned that vanity press book as a writing credit, he was written off as an amateur.

Self-publishing today is not the same thing. They don't, as a rule, lie to you in order to sell you on publishing with them. And there are respected traditionally-published writers who self-publish now, such as Holly Lisle who has used self-publishing to get some of her old novels back into print. A very few writers have even found self-publishing an entryway to a writing career, as in Hugh Howey, whose self-published book 'Wool' won a traditional publisher's contract for a print book version.

But for the young/beginning writer, self-publishing can be a trap. Perhaps you participate in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and you finish a novel. Then you find out you can get it self-published. Perhaps people tell you that no one has a chance with the traditional publishers, you HAVE to self-publish.

Then it gets expensive. The self-publishers tend to sell you editing and proof-reading services, cover art services, perhaps special book promotion services. So even with a 'free' self-publishing option you end up sinking hundreds into self-publishing that first novel. And it doesn't sell, except to your mom and your cousin Bill.

So you panic and read a few articles on using social media to promote your book. You end up being a book-spammer--- putting your book promo up on message boards and internet groups, causing many to vow never to buy anything you write because of your rudeness. And you sell a few more books. Only your self-promoting is taking up all your writing time and you don't know when you will start your next book. Your energies are absorbed in selling this one.

This is a special problem for the teen writer. The teenager simply doesn't have the life experience to avoid making some glaring mistakes. And the skills of the teen writer are not what they will be after a few more years of practice. The teen-written first novel rarely can compete with books written by more mature writers.

This isn't to say that what the teen writer produces is worthless. Fantasy writer Marion Zimmer Bradley wrote a story as a teen that went on to become the start of her Darkover series--- a wonderful series she went on with for the rest of her life. But the teen-written version was not what got published. She re-wrote extensively at a more mature age, and this became one of her first published books. Years later when she had improved her skills still more, she was so embarrassed by the lack of quality of that version, called 'Sword of Aldones', that she retold that part of the Darkover story in a new novel 'Sharra's Exile'.

So--- you have your just-finished Nano novel in your hands. What do you do? Now, I'm not saying you can't use a firm like Lulu.com to make a few copies of the book, either print or ebook, to share with your writing friends. That can be fun. But DON'T at this point decide you are a published writer.

Your next task is to put that novel away for a few months and begin your second. Check that first novel again. How does it compare to what you are writing now? If you still think it measures up, look up some traditional royalty-paying publishers and submit. You will be rejected. Your second and third and fourth novel will be rejected too. But the rejection letters will get nicer.

As well as continuing to write, you must continue to improve your writing skills by reading the best books on writing, and doing writing exercises. 

When should you self-publish? I firmly believe that you ought to have something published in a traditional way before you are ready to turn to self publishing. It doesn't have to be a novel. In my case, I published a story in a national 'confession' magazine, several poems in small press periodicals, and a column in a local humor newspaper. I then had confirmation that I was able to judge accurately when something I had written was polished enough for publication.

 To get that publication experience you may have to experiment with writing forms that aren't really your writing goal. You may have to try out some small press publishers. You might have to do as I did and volunteer to write a column somewhere. Write thoughtful letters to the editor of your local paper and see if your letter gets published, and what the reaction is. Just find SOME way to get your writing tested by the real world.

The main thing is, DON'T fall into the trap of publishing an unpolished, beginner's novel through self-publishing and then self-promote the hell out of it. That is self-defeating. Be patient, and in time if you choose to self-publish, your self-published novel will stand out from the others in a GOOD way.


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Before you write, read

You may have heard it as 'A writer WRITES, always.' At least if you've watched the movie 'Throw Mamma From the Train'.  Only before you can write anything you need to put in many, many hours of reading.

Think of it like this. Writing is a foreign language. In order to speak this foreign language you must spend hundreds of hours listening to that foreign language being spoken. Only then will you be able to speak it.

Reading books is your way of listening to the foreign language. How many books have you read in your lifetime so far? A hundred? A thousand? Two thousand?

Think about the next hundred books you will read. What genres will you include? What authors? What non-fiction subject? What books will you read more than once? And how much more fluent will your writing be when you are done?

Nearly every successful writer out there was a compulsive reader of books before they ever thought of writing one of their own. This should serve as a caution to those who've decided they will be writers--- since it's a nice, indoor job and all--- even though they don't care to read on their own. You CAN'T get there as a writer by watching movies based on books, this isn't a grade school book report we are talking about but a way of life. And a way of life can't be faked.



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