Indie Life: The Most Important Ways To Promote an Indie Book

This post is for the Indie Life blog hop, please visit their site!

Now, I'd like to make it clear that the 'ways' given in this blog post do NOT originate with me. I've only ever self-published one book--- a poetry book--- and I have never promoted it much and so haven't sold many copies.

This advice comes from a REAL writer, one who has been published traditionally and who has self-published. And what he says, essentially, is that these are the seven most important ways to promote your indie book:

1. Write a great book.
2. Write a great book.
3. Write a great book.
4. Write a great book.
5. Write a great book.
6. Write a great book.
7. Everything else--- web presence, reviews, publicity, book signings....

And sadly, numbers 1-6 are EXACTLY where the average indie writer falls down. This is how you can find out how badly go to Amazon.com and make like you are shopping for a new Kindle book. When you spot a book you suspect is an indie book, one that is big enough news to have 20 or more reviews, check out the bad reviews--- 2s and 3s, 1s, if any--- and see what they have to say.

Aside from complaints about spelling and grammar, I've seen complaints about boring story lines and flat characters, major plot holes, never-resolved issues, and, in one case, an author who confusingly calls important characters different names in different parts of the book.

The next way to find out where indie authors go wrong is to read the sample chapters provided. Often you will see that the very bad review you read about it was actually somewhat flattering as the book has flaws that weren't mentioned. Or you might find that it's not BAD, exactly. Just dull. Grading-school-papers-from-C-students dull.

The way NOT to end up one of those indie writers who makes readers resolve to NEVER read another indie book again, even if it's free, is to WRITE A GREAT BOOK. What is the first step to that? Write. Write lots. Write stuff you will never publish. Always have another writing project in the pipeline. You may need to write 10 bad novels before you write a good one, and 5 good novels before you write a great one. Do that writing.

To improve the quality of that writing, I'd suggest reading every how-to-write book you can discover that is written by someone who really knows about the writing business. Stephen King, Jerry B. Jenkins, Lawrence Block, Orson Scott Card, James Scott Bell, and Holly Lisle are among the writers who have written at least one book on writing. Donald Maass is a literary agent who has written a book on the subject. 

As a indie writer, you may lose a lot of readers because those readers believe indie fiction = badly written fiction. The number one way to fix that problem is not to self-promote like hell, but to deliver an excellent product that will GRAB the reader and not let go. Books like that don't need you to self-promote like hell. They cause readers to talk about your book to others voluntarily, and people will buy/download copies not because they've been urged to, but because they WANT to.

Have you ever cut into your writing time to promote a finished/published book in some way? Do you think that was a good decision or a bad one? How many indie books have you read that were as high-quality as books by a major publishing house author? Does finding a book like that make you more enthusiastic about being an indie author?




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Writing in the Crosshairs blogs about Discouragement

It was a discouraging day for me, what with discovering that my eating money for the month has been reduced by more than 1/2, and that the food bank I'd been urged to go to turned out to be too challenging and uncaring for an autistic bum like me to navigate.  And then I got home to check on my blog and saw this in the blogroll:

Writing In The Crosshairs: ARE YOU DISCOURAGED?

Yes, Writing in the Crosshairs, I am discouraged. There's this nasty voice in my head that keeps telling me if I can't even handle the little things in life that even people with Down Syndrome or schizophrenia seem to manage,  how can I possibly manage finishing a novel (or novella) and self-publishing it?

But the article on Writing in the Crosshairs was very encouraging to me. Particularly the references to Lord of the Rings and Vincent van Gogh. (I really like Vincent van Gogh since he may have had an autism spectrum disorder, and, according to Doctor Who, he's a friend of the Doctor.)

One of the best things in the blog post was the advice not to compare yourself to others. I guess that's good, to compare myself not to famous writers like Orson Scott Card or Karina Fabian but to last-week-me and last-year-me. (I don't want to think about two-decades-ago me who was younger, prettier, and could write without all the conflict, indecision and angst that I currently bring to the task.)

Anyway, I'd like to know, are you discouraged? Have you found good ways to cope with it? Do you think the Writing in the Crosshairs blog post is a help to discouraged writers and bloggers?

The kitty in the picture above is kitten Therese my dwarf kitten. I posted it here to remind me to wash the cat.

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Have You Tagged Your Characters Lately?

Character tags are the little things that make your characters more distinct. Harry Potter's scar is a character tag. So is Scarlett O'Hara's practice of deciding to think about some troubling matter 'tomorrow.'

A character tag can be something visual, or something the character says, or a mannerism or behavior, or even the reaction of others to that character when he walks into a room--- if everyone says a certain character 'looks creepy', for example.

The best character tags are ones that tell you a little more about the character. Harry Potter's scar tells about his tragic past, and his current unwilling connection to Lord Voldemort. Scarlett O'Hara's thinking about things 'tomorrow' shows something about her personality.

Other character tags are less revealing, but they help the reader to tell one character from another, which in turn makes it possible for the reader to build up a mental picture of the character.

Main characters have many things about them that serve as character tags. Since the main character is onstage all the time or nearly so in much fiction, there may be less need of the character tag for the purpose of telling that character apart from others. But to mention each character tag a couple of times helps build the reader's understanding of the character.

Secondary characters may be harder for the reader to tell apart from one another. They should have a few strong character tags that you use for them. If the character is onstage most of the time--- as in the main character's sidekick--- your use of character tags may be similar to the way you do it for main characters. If the secondary character is only intermittently present, you might need to use a character tag on each reintroduction. At least during the first half of the book.

Minor characters--- as in, characters even less prominent than the secondary ones--- are not deeply developed. They may be nothing more than a name, a function in the story, and a character tag or two.

Using a character tag can seem a bit repetitious. But as the character tag is a learning tool to help your reader learn the things he must know to enjoy the story, a little repetition is a good thing and can seem invisible to the reader if not overdone. And you can use your writer's creativity to find ways to use the same character tag in different ways when needed.

Race and Physical Characteristics in Tagging

Race and other physical characteristics can be used as a character tag, and they must be to ensure that your reader is aware of these things. Many readers skim-read and may not notice a first mention of such things. I did that with a book once only to find in the last 1/4 of the book the character I had been following throughout the book was a Black man and that this fact, at that point, was causing him a problem.

In the English-speaking world, the reader will tend to assume that a character is of the Caucasian race, of normal height rather than being a dwarf or a giant, not missing limbs or wheelchair-bound and without massive scarring, mutilations or deformities unless you, as a writer, mention that difference.

In the case of Black characters, race is such an explosive issue that many non-Black authors fear to mention the race of their Black characters at all, or mention it briefly, once, with a shudder, and then go on to write safer things. Worse, they may try to be subtle and say the Black character likes jazz, reads a book by Alice Walker, or have him use slang expressions derived from hip-hop culture, and assume he's told the reader the race of that character. This 'subtlety' limits your ability to develop Black characters beyond the stereotype, and it doesn't reveal the information you want revealed. That hip-hop slang can also be used by a 65-year-old Japanese-American news stand owner, and the Russian mafia boss is likely to be a jazz fan as well.

In older books people were franker about Black characters. They would say 'black' right in front of God and everybody, more than once. If Professor Jasper was a Black man, you might see something like this:

"Professor Jasper?"
The black man turned. "What do you want?"
"Could you explain the bit about the theory of relativity again?"
"What part don't you get?"
"All of it."

The main point is, we as writers, if we want to present a diverse world full of Black people and Asians and little people and men with artificial legs need to man up, eschew political correctness, and say what we mean to help our readers make an accurate picture of our characters.

 Twitchy tagging

Some writers, in their character tagging, tend to use nervous tics, hand-wringing, hair-twisting, and the like as tags all too frequently.  They think these devices make their characters more memorable.

But the problem is that tags not only help the reader tell characters apart, they also reveal things about characters. If you have a hand-wringing character and a hair-twisting character and a few more with nervous tics of different sorts, you end up with a twitchy group of characters, to the extent that your character group seems highly unrealistic. And in a major character, twitchy tags can be off-putting.

It's best, then, to avoid these types of tags unless you have a character whose personality is really expressed by them. Also to be avoided are excessively bizarre tags such as a character that starts taking off her clothes every time someone says the word 'and'. Stick with the more conventional tags nearly all of the time to best connect with your readers.

Posts about character tagging

Building Fictional Characters
Tags for Secondary Characters
Character Tags in Fiction
Character Tags: Michael Scott and Mustache Jeff


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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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Confessions of an 'Egotistical' Insecure Writer

A Hostile Critiquer

I've always known I have writing problems. My self-esteem is so low that I have a hard time getting any words out at all. Because if you don't write your stories down, no one can tell you they are dreck. I also give up on perfectly fine writing projects because I falsely believe they are no good at the moment, and then can't get back into them when I realize how wrong I was.

But until I was so informed by a self-appointed hostile critiquer, I didn't know I was egotistical about my writing. Egotistical because I won't post excerpts of my writing on his Facebook critique group for him to grind into dust. As he does everything I say in my own Facebook group which is NOT a critique group.

So, I'll own up to it. I'm egotistical. I have my own way of writing--- though I experiment with variations--- and one thing I am not is someone who can 'write by committee'. Some people are that way. They may need a critique group to look over every word and suggest changes before they can proceed. If they can't get a good critique group, they will settle for critiques from random internet strangers. I can't understand working like that, but if it works for them....

I have my own way. Perhaps it's because I have Asperger Syndrome. I write. I find my own mistakes. I fix them if I can. Sometimes I can't. I may know that a certain scene needs more bits of description, but I may have done as much as I can along that line at the moment. I work alone toward a goal that perhaps only I think of as worth pursuing.

I don't want 'critiques' or writing instruction from self-proclaimed-brilliant small-press writers. I probably couldn't process the input from a first-class critique properly, and critique from random sources of varying levels of expertise just doesn't seem worth dealing with, for me. And then there is always the problem of attracting someone who will crush my already-almost-non-existent self-esteem--- for my own good, of course.

What I want is something I can use: reactions. Feedback. I mean, I want to be able to share a bit of my writing and see how people react to it. For example, I shared the basic premise from my WIP 'On Tejas Trails', about a girl who uses an amulet to be transformed into a male guise, and I got some good feedback that mentioned some Shakespeare plays in which females pose as males. Great, that was something I will probably work into the story.

I also got a few people who said the story sounded interesting. Were they merely being kind to poor, autistic me? Maybe. But I took it as encouragement and it helps.

If you are also an insecure writer, I encourage you to be 'egotistical', like me. YOU are the one I might think, for example, that you really need to fix some 'as-you-know' dialogue in your first chapter. But maybe you are not yet ready to deal with that input right now.
writer who can best tell what kind of help you need right now.

Know what feedback you are looking for at this moment and very specifically ask for it. If you have specific issues that you plan to deal with later--- perhaps you are a poor speller--- mention that you don't want feedback in that area at this time. I mean, if your major concern is whether your relationship between Tristan the vampire and Isolde the dwarf is believable, 1000 comments on your spelling errors will just get in the way of getting the feedback you really want.

And do feel free, when someone ignores your specifications on the feedback you want and gives you a rundown of your spelling mistakes, to tell that person to go to hell. Even if it is me. YOU are the one who knows what you need, and what just makes you feel defeated. Don't be afraid to speak up for yourself.

But what if you are a writer who is really bad? Aren't you cutting yourself off from a chance to improve when you don't invite critiques from all comers? No. Let's face it, a lot of critique comments are useful only as comic relief. Some person has heard some obscure writing rule and demands that everyone bow down to it even when the rule is not only invalid, but bizarre. I knew a woman once who was dead set against the use of the word 'and'. Didn't have much problem with a string of 4 adjectives in a row, but hated that word 'and'. Trust me, your writing will not be harmed by ignoring critiques like that.

It will also not be harmed by not asking for critiques prematurely, or in areas you are not ready to deal with at this time. Maybe what you need most right now is just some encouragement to believe in yourself as a writer. Because if you keep trying, your writing will keep improving. Whether the hostile critiquers like it or not.



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5 Reasons Why As-You-Know Dialogue Doesn't Work

"As you know, my dear brother Edward Malloy," said Katterina, "in our world magic is real, and our magically gifted father, Andrew Malloy, is a skilled horse-talker. And I have inherited his skill."
"And as you know, my not-very-dear sister who is in fact only a step-sister," Edward replied, "I do not have any such magical gift, and since I am a nasty sort of man, that ticks me off."

Why doesn't that dialogue work? Well, I'm sure there are countless ways as I wrote it as an example of bad dialogue. But the chief flaw is something called 'as-you-know' dialogue.

Now, don't be mistaken. As-you-know dialogue doesn't need to have the words 'as you know' in it to be there, stinking up your Work-in-Progress. As-you-know dialogue is any dialogue in which one character tells another something they both already know. It's a device inexperienced writers sometimes use to fill in backstory and other information. But it doesn't work. Here are the reasons why.

Reason #1: As-you-know dialogue is unrealistic.
Think back to your real life. As a kid, did you ever come down and say to your mom, "Greetings, my 34-year-old German-American mother, married to my 33-year-old store manager father of Scottish extraction?" No. That would have been silly. Your mom already knew all that stuff--- heck, she's probably the one who told you. And in real life, we don't waste our breaths filling one another in on this stuff that we both know. Readers are very well aware of this, and are jolted out of the story by this misuse of dialogue.

Reason #2: As-you-know dialogue may be giving too much information.
Neophyte writers often feel that the reader needs tons of information about the backstory--- the history of the characters--- dumped in their laps as soon as possible. But the reader actually needs a lot less than you would think to understand the story. Giving information a small bit at a time rewards your reader for continuing to read. It's better than tossing it all out at once in the form of clumsy dialogue.

Reason #3: As-you-know dialogue hurts character development.
Your readers get to know your characters through two things: what they do and what they say. When you use dialogue clumsily for an info dump, you are saying that the characters involved are the type of people who chatter uselessly about things they both know. Is that really the direction you want to take your characters in? It's particularly fatal when you want to portray a character as the strong, silent type.

Reason #4: As-you-know dialogue is uninteresting. 
Normal dialogue is exciting to the reader because the characters are reacting to one another. In the sample dialogue above, if Katterina had been talking to a stranger, newly come across the barrier between her world and ours, the revelation about magic being real in the world would have been a surprise. We would have been curious to see the character's reaction to the surprise. But with two characters reciting things they both know, the only reaction they have to the information is ho-hum. Which leads the reader to regard this dialogue as the boring part, to be skipped over--- thus missing all that information you thought he needed to have.

Reason #5: Agents, editors and book reviewers react badly to as-you-know dialogue.
As-you-know dialogue is widely known as the mark of the beginning writer. When your book is being evaluated by the people that count, they will hit your patch of as-you-know dialogue and put your book down, rejected. They will write you off as a not-yet-ready-for-publication beginner.

Have you been using as-you-know dialogue? Check by asking yourself, at each patch of dialogue, why these characters are talking to one another--- what is their motivation to exchange words? Are they trading information, or expressing feelings? If the only reason you can find is because you, the writer, want to dump some information into the story, rewrite that passage. Dialogue is not the right way to do it.

Exercise: Find a book you like which has a lot of backstory and background that has to be given to the reader. Read through, notebook in hand, and write down the page numbers where bits of this information are given, and note down how they are given. This will make you more aware of how experienced writers give information to readers--- or withhold it.


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Why Writers Need Sabbath Rest

I have been reading some how-to-write books by James Scott Bell lately, and when I made up my writing work sheet for the month, I took two pieces of advice from him. One was to set my word count goals on a weekly rather than a daily basis. And the other was to take one day each week as a day of rest--- in my case, as in his, the Christian Sabbath, which is Sunday.

On my work sheet, Sundays are in red. There is a column on my work sheet where I put stickers to indicate I've done at least SOME work that day. On the Sabbath, however, I earn the sticker by NOT writing, but resting.

Ideally I'd top off my day-of-rest Sabbath by going to Mass, but because of my Asperger Syndrome (autism spectrum disorder), that's not as common as I would like. Most Sunday mornings I just feel utter panic at the idea of going into a church filled with other people and having to behave for an hour. Some weeks I don't go at all, others I take in the Saturday afternoon Mass instead. Going to the Latin Mass might be ideal since fewer people are there, plus one of my Special Interests is languages so a Mass in Latin fits in with that. But that Mass is LONGER, and VERY early in the morning.

How did the resting go this past Sabbath? I think it was kind of a relief, to have one day where I don't either have to write, or have to feel guilty for not writing. And in this morning's writing session, despite interruptions by phone call and by a cat unplugging the computer, I got more word count in than I have previous working days this month.

A Sabbath rest is not just for writers who are people of faith, however. It's just human nature that we benefit from having a day off.

Plus, not writing on your day off reinforces the idea that writing is your job, not just an idle hobby you take up when the mood strikes. It's a way of telling yourself that you are, indeed, a professional writer, even if you have not yet been accepted by a traditional publisher.

Might you consider trying a  writing schedule which gave you a day off from writing each week? How to you feel about the idea? Have you ever tried such a schedule? How did that work out for you? Let us know in a comment.

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In Medias Res: Jumpin' Right on In

How do you begin a scene? How should I begin one? Say, for example, a scene from On Tejas Trails? There's this scene that shows the main character Katterina and her family members in the parlor of their ranch home, and the important thing that happens involves a magical amulet.

Now, I might think like this: So the family is in the parlor--- why? I guess Katterina's Pa decided to call the family together. How? Well, maybe he sent the housekeeper to each of them with the message. Yeah, he did that because he wants them together when he unwraps the amulet that just arrived. OK, so we show each family member where they are when they get the message, and then   going to the parlor, and then they sit down and exchange pleasantries, and then....

Actually, there is a better way. Begin in medias res. Or, jump right in to the middle of things. The family is there, in the parlor. Pa unwraps the amulet and puts it on a table. And the action begins. Katterina, who has a magical Gift, reaches for the amulet, while dull brother Edward fusses over her manners and her clothing which riles Katterina enough that she snatches the amulet and tries it on, and is transformed.... Well, let us just say that is where some excitement begins.

You see, the thing is, when we start out writing we have this impulse to start everything off at the beginning. With the character getting out of bed and brushing his teeth, or taking the subway, or putting a saddle on his horse (or his dragon) preparatory to an adventure.

But that's the boring stuff. The prosy stuff. Want to keep a reader's attention? Skip that stuff.

The next time you read a cracking good novel, slow down a bit. Pay attention to how the scenes start. Do they begin with the transitional and routine beginning stuff? Or do they jump right to where the action begins? Make a mental note. And go thou and do likewise.

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IWSG: Fear of Writing Failure

Insecure Writer's Support Group

It's the beginning of a new month, and the beginning of a new writing project for me. But for me that brings fear of failure. I all too often start a writing project with high hopes, only to fail to finish it. And as time goes by with more failures I keep asking myself, why would I ever begin to believe there will be a success?

And so I don't mention my WIP to anyone since deep down I'm sure that in seven days time the project will be abandoned. Forgotten.

But this month I've decided I DO believe in myself. I WILL talk about my WIP: It's called "On Tejas Trails" and it's a juvenile fiction (YA) novel set in a magical realm called 'Empire Tejas' which was settled largely by Texans and cowboys from our own world's Old West. So, yes, it's a mash-up of Western and Fantasy genres. Plus being Catholic fiction and dealing with the issue of same-sex attraction, and probably the issue of Asperger Syndrome as well.

My main character is seventeen-year-old Katterina Malloy, daughter of a rancher who has inherited the family gift of talking to horses (and other animals). She takes a talisman meant to turn a commonplace, soft man into a heroic man of the frontier. Wearing it, she is perceived as a man. Her much-older brother becomes angry and is determined to take the talisman from her and have her taken away to an asylum. Warned by her elderly father, she flees the ranch with some ranch hands and a strongbox full of treasure to start a new horse-breeding ranch on the farthest frontier, a task which she will begin by the taming of a legendary dapple-gray stallion. I don't have a name for the horse yet. Which is bad because the most important thing in a Western is to have a cool name for the horse.

I am going to be posting a small description of my WIP on my sidebar as a token of my decision to believe in myself and my WIP, if only for this month. It's kind of like giving up on self-doubt for a month--- like the time I gave up having Asperger Syndrome for Lent. (My therapist gave it back to me.)

Have you experienced writing failures and fear it happening again? Have you overcome it? Are you trying to?

This is what the stallion in 'On Tejas Trails' looks like. Maybe mane and tail are lighter or darker than in this picture, I haven't decided for sure. Have any good horse-names to suggest?

My Ideal Reader: Is She Out There?

Currently self-studying Writing Fiction for Dummies by Randy Ingermanson and Peter Economy, and in chapter three have had to do exercises in discovering my ideal reader.

It seems rather odd to narrow down the type of readers I want. Shouldn't I try to please everyone? As my retailer father taught me, the customer is always right. Who am I to say that some customers are wrong?

But it seems that it helps to narrow your aim down to a core constituency, who will be your most loyal readers. Once you have that group captured and producing a good 'buzz' for your work, the other readers will come.

So I went through determining the gender, age group, politics, religion and interests of my ideal readers. Since I am somewhat of an outcast, an original, a person out of step with others, I put that in my ideal reader description, too.

This is my ideal reader:

"My ideal reader is an independent-thinking, Catholic (or Catholic-friendly), politically-conservative, prolife/profamily, brilliantly intelligent, very mature teenage girl (or youthful-thinking mature woman). She may consider herself an outcast or eccentric. She might have Asperger Syndrome or same-sex attraction/gay orientation. Her interests are likely to include cats, horses, farm critters, pioneering and exploring history, and foreign languages and cultures. She reads widely in many genres but likely has a preference for fantasy, science fiction, and/or western/historical books."

Well, that narrows it down. A lot. It was hard to do this, in a way it felt like saying to some potential readers that I was not looking out for them. But then, on the other hand, any reader who is mortally offended by elements in this reader description isn't likely to become a loyal reader. 

The readers who strongly identify with this description, on the other hand, are likely to become loyal readers, especially if I keep this description in mind as I write, and keep asking myself things like: what does this story have for the Catholic reader? For the politically conservative reader? For the teenage-girl reader? For the reader with Asperger Syndrome? For the cat lover? And so on.

Readers who don't strongly identify with the ideal reader description, but who are not mortally offended by it, might also become loyal readers if they find some of the things in the description interesting, or if they just happen to like my plots and characters. 

So: what do you think of my 'Ideal Reader' description? Do you think having an Ideal Reader description is a good idea for a writer? Have you ever written one of your own?

 

The Worst Advice Lawrence Block Ever Gave Me

Lawrence Block, he's a friend of mine. Well, in a totally fictional and fangirl way, he's a friend of mine. I've read his Tanner and Burglar books for years. And Lawrence gives me great writing advice, too, ever since that day many years ago when I first bought a copy of LB's book Writing the Novel:
from Plot to Print.

But in that book Lawrence gave me a major bum steer that I am only now getting over. You see, in that book he recommends strongly that the novice writer NOT bother with writing short stories. The market for short stories, he declares, is too small and too low-paying now for that to be very practical. He recommended that the new writer start out by writing a novel.

Is that the way Lawrence Block learned to write? No, he admits. He wrote short stories for years before he felt ready to tackle the novel.

Many other writers of Lawrence Block's generation learned the same way. At the time, there were a great many short story magazines, called 'pulps', in a wide variety of genres--- sci-fi, mystery, westerns, romance, adventure--- and they were available on every news stand. (Yes, there used to be these things called 'news stands' that sold newspapers and magazines. A newspaper was kind of like the evening news broadcast, only written down and printed on paper.)

At the time LB wrote the book, there were only a tiny handful of short story magazines left and they paid the same as they did a couple of decades back, even though the dollar had declined greatly over that time.

I will agree with LB that at that time there was no real financial incentive for the novice writer to write short stories. But the thing is, the reason most writers started with short stories wasn't a money thing. They did it for the same reason most of us learned to walk before we learned to drive a car or fly an airplane.

A novel is a complicated thing, and you can spend months on it before you discover you are driving it into a dead end. While a short story can be simple enough that you can hold the whole thing in your mind.

A shorter work is just more possible for the novice writer to do, and to do well. Short stories, being short, are also easier to revise and improve.

Lawrence Block said that you can write a novel in the same time it would take to write twenty short stories, and that the odds are better for selling that novel than for selling the twenty short stories.

But what if your writing, at first, is not good enough to sell at all? You will end up with seven utterly hopeless short stories, seven that are a bit better, and then you will have a few with potential. While if you had started with a novel right off the bat, you will have an utterly hopeless novel.

The changing world of publishing has made short stories more worth doing. No, there has been no revival of the pulps as a paying market for short fiction. But now, self-publishing is easier, cheaper and more respected. There is also the internet. There are e-zines to submit to, and web sites where would-be authors can post their stories, and the possibility of publishing your short story, in installments, on your blog. You can also turn a short story into an e-book and sell it or give it away.

All of these things can build you up as a writer. You will learn your craft, and you will get feedback. A tiny amount of that feedback will be things that are actually useful to you.

I have decided, for myself, that what I need to be doing now is to work on short fiction. Perhaps because of my Asperger Syndrome, which has some symptoms similar to ADHD, the complexities of a full novel are beyond me right now. But if I can get the short story right--- well, story stories have been known to become novels, as in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, or Hugh Howey's Wool. This just might lead to something.

Writing: It's all about the money....

Lawyers get paid to law, plumbers get paid to plumb. But writers?  Money is a dirty word, and expecting to get paid for your work proves you are no good, at best a hack.

But this is the thing: if you work for hundreds of hours on a book and don't even think about getting paid for it, you are telling yourself your time was worth nothing. Because your writing is worth nothing. And even a hack-work novel if written correctly is worth SOMETHING.

If part of your self-identity is being a writer, one thing you have to do is write. We all know that. Talking about writing, blogging about writing, that's all well and good. But the actual writing is where your writer self-identity becomes more real than your Klingon warrior identity.

But the other part of making the writer self-identity real is getting paid for your work. That may make you uncomfortable. But if you knew a guy who said he was a lawyer, and he never once had gotten paid for doing any lawyer work but got his income working at Kmart, would you take him seriously as a lawyer?  Getting paid--- or at least, doing writing for which you can anticipate being paid--- tells you that your writer identity has a basis in the real world.

So, starting today, resolve this: you are a writer. Your writing time is working time. Your writing is worth something in a dollars-and-cents sense. If you are a beginning writer, perhaps the worth of your current WIP will prove to be as basic training for a future work that is salable. But perhaps not. Write every word as a professional writer writing to put a bit of money in the bank, not as a hobbyist who can get away with any old thing so long as it feels good, or a dreamer who wants every word to drip literary quality and non-commercialism.

In other words, take yourself and your writing seriously.


Blog notes: I was going to discontinue this blog in favor of my new blog Let's Kill Hitler, but it looks like I'm not. That blog is going to be about science fiction, fantasy and western books and TV shows. (Western? It's my new obsession. I'm working on a Western/zombie novel.) This blog is about writing. Another blog is going to be about politics, religion, prolife, and gay chaste stuff. I need a new name for that one and am open to suggestions.

July Summary, August Goals

At the beginning of July I set for myself a number of writing and other goals. This is how I did with them.

1. I planned to finish my June Camp Nanowrimo novel, Esperanza/Zombie Dawn. I added some words, but then decided the whole thing needed to be reimagined yet again. I had only a few good working days the whole month.
2. I planned to work on learning Korean, particularly how to read the Korean alphabet. I have learned 144 words using BYKI (free language software). I also took up learning a bit of Latin as a break from the Korean.
3. I planned to get more exercise. I got a pedometer and write down my number of steps every night before I go to bed. I think I am increasing my activity level.
4. I planned to work on housecleaning and barn cleaning daily, and also to read Bible and Catechism more frequently. I did not do very well on these goals at all.

It was kind of a disappointing writing month, perhaps post-Nano letdown. The good news is that this morning I had some fresh enthusiasm for a writing project, and signed up for Camp Nanowrimo in August. My nickname there is nissalovescats, if you participate you might be able to request me as a cabin mate.

For July I had two worksheets I used to keep track of my many goals, one for writing goals and one for other goals. Given my poor performance, I decided to reduce my goals for August and keep track of them all on one sheet. Here are my August goals.

1. Work on Camp Nanowrimo with my novella, The Song of Making People Die. I got the idea from a TV show which mentioned a 1933 Hungarian song, Gloomy Sunday, implicated in a number of suicides. After I finish the novella, I will begin another novella or short story featuring the same main character as the first, a young woman who owns a spaceship and runs a transport/trading business among the planets. I plan to continue my ritual from last time of posting my word count daily at the Nano site, and also on a word count meter here, to keep me motivated.
2. Continue to learn Korean words, reaching a goal of 200 known words. 
3. Learn Latin words--- goal of 100 words total, and listen to the ecclesiastical Latin audios I've downloaded for my chosen Latin book, Lingua Latina.
4. Continue with the exercise thing, recording my daily paces and trying to keep it up to a good level. (I hope that my desire to keep my number of paces high will motivate me on the whole house and barn cleaning thing.)
5. NOT worry about daily blogging and other internet distractions.

So, what about you? Have you met the goals you set for July? Are you planning goals for August? How do you keep track of your month's work and how do you keep yourself motivated?

Remember, a zombie apocalypse does not excuse you from meeting your daily word count goal!

July Summary, August Goals

At the beginning of July I set for myself a number of writing and other goals. This is how I did with them.

1. I planned to finish my June Camp Nanowrimo novel, Esperanza/Zombie Dawn. I added some words, but then decided the whole thing needed to be reimagined yet again. I had only a few good working days the whole month.
2. I planned to work on learning Korean, particularly how to read the Korean alphabet. I have learned 144 words using BYKI (free language software). I also took up learning a bit of Latin as a break from the Korean.
3. I planned to get more exercise. I got a pedometer and write down my number of steps every night before I go to bed. I think I am increasing my activity level.
4. I planned to work on housecleaning and barn cleaning daily, and also to read Bible and Catechism more frequently. I did not do very well on these goals at all.

It was kind of a disappointing writing month, perhaps post-Nano letdown. The good news is that this morning I had some fresh enthusiasm for a writing project, and signed up for Camp Nanowrimo in August. My nickname there is nissalovescats, if you participate you might be able to request me as a cabin mate.

For July I had two worksheets I used to keep track of my many goals, one for writing goals and one for other goals. Given my poor performance, I decided to reduce my goals for August and keep track of them all on one sheet. Here are my August goals.

1. Work on Camp Nanowrimo with my novella, The Song of Making People Die. I got the idea from a TV show which mentioned a 1933 Hungarian song, Gloomy Sunday, implicated in a number of suicides. After I finish the novella, I will begin another novella or short story featuring the same main character as the first, a young woman who owns a spaceship and runs a transport/trading business among the planets. I plan to continue my ritual from last time of posting my word count daily at the Nano site, and also on a word count meter here, to keep me motivated.
2. Continue to learn Korean words, reaching a goal of 200 known words. 
3. Learn Latin words--- goal of 100 words total, and listen to the ecclesiastical Latin audios I've downloaded for my chosen Latin book, Lingua Latina.
4. Continue with the exercise thing, recording my daily paces and trying to keep it up to a good level. (I hope that my desire to keep my number of paces high will motivate me on the whole house and barn cleaning thing.)
5. NOT worry about daily blogging and other internet distractions.

So, what about you? Have you met the goals you set for July? Are you planning goals for August? How do you keep track of your month's work and how do you keep yourself motivated?

Remember, a zombie apocalypse does not excuse you from meeting your daily word count goal!

Starting your Novel out 'Too Catholic'

On today's episode of EWTN Bookmark, Catholic novelist Marcus Grodi suggested that the reason many Catholic novels don't have many non-Catholic readers is that they start out 'too Catholic'. That is, they throw out too many specifically Catholic things at the beginning, which can be off-putting or mystifying to the non-Catholic Christian reader.

It occurred to me that this idea has a more general writing application. I remember one time my sister-in-law, who was raised in an Assemblies of God church, told me about something they were doing that seemed a bit odd to me--- not like something I'd seen in churches I'd ever attended. I can't remember exactly what it was, so let's use the hypothetical example of speaking in tongues, which seems to be a routine part of the Assemblies of God Sunday worship service.

Imagine if a writer from an Assemblies of God background started off his novel with a typical example of someone speaking in tongues at Sunday worship. Many Christians, both Protestant/Evangelical and Catholic, would be put off by that scene. We don't do that at our Sunday service!

The same would go if an LDS writer started off a novel writing about temple ordinances, or a Catholic started off with Eucharistic adoration. It would put off readers from other faith backgrounds who don't do that sort of thing.

This doesn't mean that one has to write something bland and generic that doesn't touch anything that Christians don't agree on. Marcus Grodi's own novel, Pillar and Bulwark, is about a Congregational minister whose life is turned upside down when he begins to believe that the Catholic Church might have the truth on its side--- a story that is bound to have some Catholic content.

The idea, I think, is to start off with some common ground. If you are seeking a general Christian audience, start off your story with content that Christians in general can identify with, rather than with things that are denominationally specific. Later in the story, when the reader has gotten to know the characters involved, things specific to one denomination or Christian group can be introduced without as much risk of alienating the reader.

Of course, you can't always do that. The Left Behind series by Tim Lehaye and Jerry B. Jenkins has a plot specifically centered around a controversial doctrine--- the pre-tribulation Rapture--- that not all Christians share. Not even all Evangelical Christians share it. And since the story-action doesn't start until the Rapture hits, this non-universal doctrine has to be introduced very early in the novel. And it didn't work out all that badly for Lehaye and Jenkins. They won over a lot of readers who did not believe in the pre-tribulation Rapture. I became a loyal fan myself, even though I was a Norse Pagan at the time.

Another thing I might suggest, along the line of handling specific denominational doctrines in Christian fiction, is that the writer needs to trust in the Holy Spirit. You do not need to bore your reader with  a list of proof-texts or compelling arguments for every doctrine you mention in passing. You don't need to waste time defending against the doctrines you think are false. You can handle these things with a very light touch and let the Holy Spirit do the heavy lifting in the reader's heart.

On an even broader level, the Christian writer with an ambition to evangelize non-believers would start out with things that are common to us all, whether we are religious or non-religious, Christian or pagan. And then, gently, as the story progresses, gently introduce a bit of Christian content.

Of course, there are some writers that do the exact opposite. They throw out the very specific parts of their denomination, religion, or world-view from page one. While this alienates many readers, it may be a way to gain an intense following among readers who share your views. If you, as a writer, realize that you are sacrificing readers by taking an intense Catholic/Baptist/Lutheran/Marxist-atheist approach from day one, and you are OK with that, go ahead and write for the audience you want to write for.

Question: when you read an author whose faith differs from your own, have you ever been put off by too much 'difference' too soon in the story? 

Having a 3/30/10 Writing Day

Chris Baty, founder of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), wrote a book called No Plot? No Problem!: A Low-Stress, High-Velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days.

In the chapter dealing with the third week of a writing month, he teaches the 3/30/10 technique--- he calls it 'the jet-pack under your seat.

This is how you do it:

• Set a timer for 30 minutes. Write like mad.
• Take a ten minute break for stretching, complaining, folding clothes... whatever you can get done in ten minutes.
• Set the timer for another 30 minutes. Write. Take another ten minute break.
• Do another 30 minutes, then do something fun.

Baty recommends doing the 3/30/10 3 times on a free day--- morning, noon and evening. This rapidly adds to your word count.

I have not done this 3 times a day--- or even two. But timed writing works for me. The first time, my three 30 minute sessions racked up the following word counts: 579-552-628. And the second time: 465-681-791. Each time I reached my daily word count goal by the end of the three 30 minute sessions.

Don't fail to meet your word count goal!

Before I tried this, I had a hard time meeting the writing goal in one session. This way works for me. It's a bit hard on the wrists, but I think I'm adapting.

I'm thinking of trying for another 3/30/10 session today. If I don't, I at least hope to have a mini-writing session where I dip back in to my session for at least 10 minutes.

I think one reason this works for me is that I have a thing about timers. I use a timer every time I brew a cup of tea. It's silly, but it sure makes the tea come out consistently. And I never wander off and forget the steeping tea until hours later. It may be just a part of my Asperger Syndrome weirdness, but timed writing sessions work for me.

How about you? Have you ever done the 3/30/10? Or have you tried some similar timed writing method? Does it work for you?

How Stephen King uses the Head-Hopping Point of View

What is head-hopping? When I first began reading how-to-write books, there was no such thing. Or at least, nobody had a name for it.

But now it's the Worst Thing Ever that a writer can do. Head-hopping happens when you are writing in the third person point of view, and instead of limiting yourself to the thoughts and feelings of one character, you shift into the thoughts and feelings of another.

Recently I was reading a Stephen King novel, Under the Dome, which is pretty much like The Simpsons Movie without Spiderpig and the Boob Lady, and there it was. Head-hopping. Now, since Stephen King isn't an unpublishable amateur writer, I guess this means that head-hopping is indeed a tool we can use.

The scene was about a shooting rampage being carried out by a young man with a brain tumor. As the scene begins the young man is our viewpoint character. Now, inside this young man's head is not the most comfortable place to be. He kept looking at people he knew, thinking bad thoughts about them with swearwords in them, and then shooting them dead.

For one short paragraph of the scene, however, we experience the thoughts and feelings of one of the victims, from the point she sees the gun pointed at her to the time, after she is shot, that she fades off into the 'nothingness' of the non-afterlife. (Don't worry, folks, elsewhere in the book we learn that even though there is no afterlife, we do become ghosts that can communicate with dogs after we die. Yes, the godless are illogical.)

After this paragraph we are back in the shooter's head for the rest of the scene. The question is, why did Stephen King choose to use the head-hopping point of view here?

The young shooter had been the viewpoint character in a great many scenes and we got to witness him doing many horrible things, including other murders. Most readers, we would hope, were not too comfortable in this young man's head. Most knew they weren't supposed to be. But if you had gotten too comfortable vicariously whacking people along with this young man, Stephen King has a surprise for you.

The shift into the victim's head gives you another very different point of view on the action. You comfortable hanging out in the killer's head? Stephen King asks us. Step right over here, and I'll show you what it's like to be in the head of one of his victims! And we get to experience everything: seeing the gun, being shot, and fading off into nothingness.

If a reader had been getting complacent about the deaths--- of which there are a great many in the story, many of them children--- this is what restores the horror. We get to see what it's like to be one of the victims that didn't get away.

This, I believe, is a good use of head-hopping. First, the viewpoint character of the scene is a bad man victimizing others. If your mind had gotten dulled to the tragedy caused by any human death by the previous carnage in the book, hopping into the head of one of the random shooting victims wakes your sense that each death in the scene is an individual horror.

Now, this was a giant book in which King slaughters most of the population of a small town in Maine, and he frequently let readers inside the heads of characters about to be killed--- in fact, the first viewpoint character of the whole book is the first to die. I think by the end of the story most readers have become indifferent to the deaths just because there were so many (and the characters were weak, and some hard for normal folks to identify with, such as the lady Congregationalist minister who was an atheist, but somehow not guilty of fraud and hypocrisy for keeping her job.)

But head-hopping, done right, can be a tool that the ordinary writer can use in similar circumstance. In the book Writing Fiction for Dummies by Randy Ingermanson and Peter Economy, head-hopping point of view is treated like any other point of view, as something a writer might choose.

Create a One-sentence Summary of your Novel

In the Snowflake method, your first task is to write a storyline--- a one-sentence summary of your novel. Other writing teachers call the storyline something else. I forget what the something else was. No matter.

This storyline--- which you may revise from time to time--- is useful to focus your story when you are writing, and when you are done, it's useful in marketing. Here is an example storyline of a novel by Randy Ingermanson, creator of the Snowflake method: "A rogue physicist travels back in time to kill the apostle Paul."

Isn't that great? It sums the story up and makes me, at least, want to read the book. In Writing Fiction for Dummies by Randy Ingermanson and Peter Economy, there are a number of example storylines.

Pride and Prejudice: "A young English woman from a peculiar family is pursued by an arrogant and wealthy young man."

The Lovely Bones: "A young girl watches the turmoil in her family from heaven after being raped and murdered by a neighbor."

Contact, by Carl Sagan: "A young female astronomer discovers radio signals from alien beings in a nearby star system."

Perhaps because I have Asperger Syndrome and have a hard time seeing the forest for the trees, I have a hard time writing storylines. And when snowflaking you not only have to write one for your novel, but one for each major character. Like this:

Harry Potter/Lord Voldemort: "A fallen Dark Lord's efforts to regain power are thwarted again and again by a boy wizard and his friends."

For one of my WIPs, which has the exciting title Kirinia Book One at present, I actually came up with three storylines, from the point of view of various characters:

1. A Waypeople cultist girl must choose between her faith and saving her family's life.
2. A noble Kirinian girl loves blood-sports until she falls for a girl condemned to the arena.
3. A Kirinian emperor discovers the demographic threat to his nation posed by the rapidly-growing Waypeople cult.

I picked 1. when I decided who the main protagonist of the story was. Although if I were to pitch the story to a secular publisher, I might go with one of the others.

I'm also working on a second WIP at the moment--- both are in the snowflaking stage. This one actually has a title: Esperanza: Zombie Dawn (or Zek Dawn, I'm not wholly sure I won't switch.) The storyline for this was easier to come up with even though I didn't have that much of a plot planned out, I just knew it was about a militia group fighting Mexican zombies at the border.

Here is the storyline: "A priest and a band of militia men fight against a zombie virus capable of infecting humans and certain drug plants."

If you are a writer or would-be writer, have you ever reduced your novel or short story idea to a storyline? If you haven't, try creating a storyline now. Post it in a comment here, if you like.

If you aren't a writer, one thing that the storyline concept is good for is when you are writing a book review, or perhaps just recommending a book to a friend. Think of the last good book you read. Can you write a storyline for it? Share in a comment, please.

Writers of the Future will Work for Free

Johanna Spyri, writer

In the past the neophyte writer served his apprenticeship by writing for genre magazines, sometimes called 'the pulps' after the low grade paper they printed on. There were mystery, sci-fi and fantasy, romance and western pulps. They paid pennies per word.

For about 50-70 years, they paid the same pennies-per-word rate as at the beginning, so by the end, it was the prestige and not the money which motivated. And the pulps have fallen out of favor as radio dramas and then television provided the major entertainment source for most people.

So, how does the neophyte writer serve an apprenticeship today? By writing for free. You are of course writing for free anyway on your initial short stories--- in the absolute beginning stage it's better to write many stories one after the other, rather than revising your first precious jewel endlessly in hopes of making it good enough to publish. But I'm talking about a different kind of 'writing for free'.



In the beginning, your writing-for-free will be centered around your blog. Since you are not ready for a full-fledged author blog until you have a few published novels under your belt, your blog theme should be about your chosen genres (if you've chosen one yet) and perhaps about writing--- in order to attract other neophyte writers, and perhaps more advanced ones looking to promote their books. (You might even share some of your writing on your blog.)

Your blog is a free sample of your writing. It gives potential readers the chance to evaluate whether you can write a correct English sentence without a net. (Or a correct French, German, Nepalese or Esperanto sentence if you are a native speaker of those languages and will thus be writing in them.) That's why it's so important to use correct spelling and grammar.

If you have started out writing fan fiction, another form of writing-for-free might be to post your fan-fic short stories on a website that specializes in this. I don't know of such a website, offhand, though I'm looking for one (I have a short story in the works where Captain Kirk and Doctor Who are kidnapped by a Really Bad Dude, possibly Lord Voldemort or Mr. Burns, and must be rescued by Idris and some Enterprise crew, and perhaps Romana.

There are other sites for original short stories. Both of these kind of sites, I'd imagine, are homes of the most amateurish writers imaginable, and they will give you insincere praise in order to get you to read and promote THEIR fiction. But it's a place to get your work looked at. And if it is original fiction, publishing it on a password-protected story-site such as these does not count as 'publication' and so you can, at a later date, sell the fiction to a paying publisher. (Publishing it on an open blog does count as publication. And password protecting your blog means you'll have virtually no readers.)

Another form of writing-for-free is to write a story or novel and make it available as a free ebook on Smashwords. (Note: be very clear to let the audience know if it is a short story or novel so they won't be resentful when it ends too soon.)  Catholic author Amanda Borenstadt has two free short-short stories at Smashwords featuring characters from her novel Syzygy.

Even well established authors benefit from the writing-for-free thing. Baen books had the Baen Free Library, in which Baen authors were permitted to offer some of their older books as free ebooks. Often these were the first novels in a series--- which might encourage readers who liked the free first book to buy the next book in the series. Authors who have participated in the Baen Free Library include one of my all-time faves, Mercedes Lackey.

Mainstream publishers are also looking in to the idea of making a book temporarily free. I got a free copy of Jerry B. Jenkins' novel 'Riven' that way. I picked it up because it was free, and when I read it, I really enjoyed it. If I hadn't already been a fan of Jenkins from the Left Behind series (in spite of the theology mistakes), I would have been more likely to try other Jenkins books after reading this free-sample novel and finding out, yes, the man can write.

Warning: just because I've said writing for free is now part of a writer's life, don't be taken in by the vanity presses who want you to write for less than free--- they want you to pay to get your work published. Sometimes they will claim they publish for free--- but you are required to pay for services such as editing, marketing and the like. A vanity-press book looks very bad on your writer's resume--- you'll be best off never mentioning it to a real publisher. (A self-published book is also better off not mentioned unless it sells well.)

The One-Page Method: Before You Snowflake

Lately I've been doing the Snowflake Method to plan my new novel Kirinia. I've even bought 'Writing Fiction for Dummies' which was authored by the Snowflake guy, which helped me understand I shouldn't have been so rigid the first time I Snowflaked--- the steps do NOT have to be done in that order. Which is good.

The first step in the Snowflake is to sum up your book in one sentence--- a storyline. Like, for the Harry Potter series: "A fallen Dark Lord seeks to regain his power but is thwarted by a bratty kid wizard." (There is a more normal example on this post at Fortnight of Mustard.)

My current storyline/elevator pitch sentence for Kirinia goes something like this: "A Kristan cultist girl, condemned to fight in the arena, must choose between her faith and saving her family's lives."

This was actually the third one I wrote. I wrote the first from the viewpoint of a different character, and a second from the viewpoint of the villain. I thought it was weird to write storylines for three different characters until I got to Step 3 and found I was going to have to write storylines for all of the characters.

The hard part for me was getting to the point where I knew enough about the story to write storylines. Because I not only had to create characters and bits of story for them, I also had to do worldbuilding.

The problem with doing these preliminaries is that I tend to get bogged down, ramble and such, and then never get things done. But I am good at writing short things--- poems, blog posts, and so on. So I invented the One-Page Method.

This is how you do it: you take something you know about the story--- a character, a bit of the storyworld's history, an event from the story--- and write about one page about it.

By 'one page' I mean the maximum is the amount of text you can get on one computer page. You can write part of the page as well.

What I do is I write the topic of the proposed page in boldface on the left top, and on the right top write the title (or working title) of the novel. If it is more of a worldbuilding topic, I write the name of the world and the name of the kingdom/empire within that world that the page is concerned with.

This is a very unstructured way to get started. You only write pages for the stuff in your story you already have worked out. My early One-Pages were about the settlement of the empire in the story, called Kirinia, about the Twelve Cities of Kirinia, about the enemies of Kirinia, the Eaters-of-Men, notes about some of the main characters--- Mija, the Kristan cultist girl, Kamilla, the girl from a patrician family who loves Mija, Tiberio, the emperor, who finds out that the Kristan cult is growing at an alarming rate, which he believes threatens the ability of his empire to defeat the Eaters-of-Men....

Once I had a bunch of One-Pages (which I keep in a binder) I was ready to start doing the early Snowflake steps. (The early Snowflake steps have the advantage of being compatible with One-Page, some of the later steps, such as the Long Summary, I intend to break down into One-Page portions.)

As I'm starting to do the Snowflake steps, I'm continuing to turn out One-Pages as well. I'm also updating One-Pages and Snowflake steps as I discover more about the story. For example, I had to change certain character names when I decided that characters who were slaves would have the affix -el- in their names (Markelo, Lukelo). I decided that names which naturally had an -el- in it would modify it--- so Aurelio, the family name of the current emperor, becomes Aurilio.

I hope some other writers, particularly those who have problems being organized, will try the One-Page method and see if it helps. In my own case I've been able to sustain my interest in and belief in my current writing project for a much longer time than I usually do. I hope it works for other people as well.