Cynthia Harrison's Blog, page 52

Mad at my Underpants

This is not supposed to be a sexy post, unless you are a perv who thinks granny pants are sexy. I have other undies which we shall not discuss here, today or ever. What I’m mad about is that my comfy roomy baggie underpants, reliable for years, have now gone and changed. I might think I gained weight – this is the true reason for my pissedoffedness, how many poor women think they have gained — when the real problem that granny pants have gone the way of all supermarket products. Less material, same size, same price. Liars! I have a scale. I use it. I wore these undies with great comfort and joy when I was ten pounds heavier. So you can’t fool me. But this is a very cruel thing indeed for easily befuddled grannies. On behalf of us all, I protest.

Hello Old Friend

 I support indie writers. Some books, I go indie myself. But one thing I’ve noticed…I don’t see many indie “literary” novels. Terry Tyler comes closest. She calls her work “contemporary.” No labels for Tyler. Not even the literary label. And good for her.

Still, lots of genre in the indies. Maybe I’m not looking in the right places? One of the things that seems most wonderful to me as an indie is I don’t have to follow any rules. I’m not chained to my romance or mystery perch like Fabritius’s goldfinch. Or am I? Are we all?

That’s the type of discussion that goes on in some literary novels like Donna Tartt’s fabulous The Goldfinch which I just finished last night. The last twenty or so wonderful pages would have been slashed to nothing had I sent them to a genre publisher. And that’s a shame.

So indies, what’s going on? I could take a guess or two. Maybe indies want to be discovered and offered huge multi-million dollar contracts like that erotica author who started out writing fan fic about Edward and Bella. So the indie genre books are calling cards, of a sort. Maybe.

Or maybe the indies who write in a specific genre just really like vampire books. Maybe they’re not thinking HBO series material at all. All I can really say is this indie, me, likes coloring outside the lines, and publishing indie lets me do that.

Why not submit to literary agents and publishers, then? Ah, no. I’m no Fabritius, no Tartt either. I know my limitations. We all have them. And so what do I hope to achieve with these indie novels? Well, some money would be nice. Although it does not seem to be happening, at least not yet, and I’m okay with that.

In fact, not making money from my writing is probably a good thing, even though it’s bad. (This ‘good but also bad’ dicotomy is one of the themes in The Goldfinch.) It’s bad because of course I would rather make art than teach. It’s good because I’ve been teaching so long I’m due for retirement and pension soon:) It’s bad because if I put my work’s value at a dollar amount, then my work is zero.

It’s good because I found out that I will still write, even at zero. That’s something worth learning. Because it brings me back to the innocence I had when I was 16, writing in a notebook, trying hard to get the feelings right, with no thought to being discovered, published, or important. The work was important. And that was all, that was enough.

Twitter for Beginners

This is the basic format I intend to follow today as I help some friends get comfortable with Twitter.

First, sign up.

Now add a picture and bio. Make sure your bio links to your blog.

Follow some people. Use hashtags #writing or whatever interests you to find like-minded people. DWW conference hashtag is #aWritersWorth. I did a thing where you sort of claim the hashtag, but anybody can post with that hashtag attached. Whenever you see that hashtag or anything about DWW, hit retweet.

Follow each other.

Twitter is unlike Facebook in that it is considered polite to follow back. But you have to weigh the follow. Look at bio, check out blog, see what the follower tweets. Don’t follow bots. Don’t follow anyone who only retweets or only quotes. Don’t follow people who say they can give you a thousand follows for $10. Etc.

To follow, simply click the name @CynthiaHarriso1 and then click follow. Try to keep your follows and followers about the same number. “Just Unfollow” lets you see who is not following you and allows you to unfollow a certain number of folks for free.

Links are great. But with 140 characters to work with, sometimes links can be too lengthy. Bit.ly is great for condensing links. Twitter condenses links to some websites.

I spend the most time on Twitter on “connect” not on “home” ~ home is not really home-like at all. It is a bewildering stream of nonsense unless you understand Twitter.

Read blog posts on “What Not To Do” on Twitter. @bodiciasapple and @mollygreene are two of my favorite bloggers. Molly does a lot with Twitter and Bodicia is a book blogger. Writers need book bloggers, and Bodicia is the best. When I first joined Twitter, I read “The Tao of Twitter” and it was quite helpful.

Why tweet? It’s supposed to be a marketing thing. But I don’t do a lot of “buy my book” posts. I do link to my blog if I think the topic may be interesting. I do talk  about my books, but mostly I just connect to other writers.

I like to balance original tweets (or as my friend @JohnLacey says, carry on monologues with myself), quotes, books I’m reading, blogs I like, retweeting (RT) valuable or fun tweets or links. If you venture into home, you can always butt into a conversation. Most people will let you in. Sure, there are snobs on Twitter just like anywhere. Ignore them.

When I first met Linda Anger, I asked her to tell me the biggest marketing secret. She said “name recognition” and this is why I tweet, so people recognize my name, and maybe they’ll buy a book “Oh yeah, she’s funny on Twitter” or “She wrote that great post about bragging.”

That’s why if you are building a platform for marketing your work, you want to use your own name on Twitter. @CynthiaHarrison was taken, so I got @CynthiaHarriso1.

Check in daily with Twitter. Just to see who followed you. Follow them back. Who RTed you. RT them back unless they are a silly bot who RTed something stupid, like a line in the middle of a conversation that  makes no sense out of context. Check in with your friends. You can put people in lists, it’s pretty easy. Then you just go to lists and check on your pals. What are they up to? What are they blogging about? If it’s helpful to you, RT it. If you think it will be helpful to others, RT it.

Questions?

The Mysterious Series

 

There’s been quite a bit of activity on the part of my unconscious self, and I’m thinking today is the day I am reining in all that ‘intuitive’ business. I have tasks needed done now, rather than spending my days chasing down just exactly what I am doing with this paranormal series called “Traveling Girls.”

Everything I do with these books is out of sequence, disorderly, not my usual MO while writing a novel. First, I started putting up scenes from Gypsy, the mother of the series, on my blog. Then for Christmas, I put the entire book on my website for free. Happy Holidays! Next, I  once again interrupted the book of my heart, just days from its being finished, to indie publish Gypsy.  I haven’t done a lot of promo, but expected I’d give Gypsy some free days on Kindle at some point.

Then a chance meeting with my Gypsy cover artist the other day resulted in me telling him about what I’d heard regarding New Adult series. (If Gypsy is the mother book, the traveling girls are her NA offspring.) One of the things I heard about NA series is that readers like the covers the same, not exactly, but similar enough to be recognizable. James* said “I have the perfect cover for you.”

I didn’t even have a name for the second book yet, although I had pulled the manuscript out of the deep file it was buried in. So James and I did a bit of brainstorming and between us figured out how to fit “Traveling Girls” into the cover. I found my perfect title. The image is stunning, but really, a cover before a properly edited story? I just didn’t want him to sell it to anyone else. Once he sells a cover, he takes it off his “buy” shelf.

So I decided it would be fun to put the cover up as a blog post. Ha! I have this thing, I don’t know why, but many, many of my photos get cut off when I transfer them from my pictures to Word Press. I tried so many fixes, and my lovely friend Bodicia offered to help as hours were going by and I was not getting the image right.

I tried a few more things and presto! I had my blog entry. Just the new cover shot with the new book title, but I loved it. The title was at the bottom instead of the top, but that’s fine. Then I noticed my sidebar was blank. Oh dear. I went ahead and tried to correct it but when all came to nothing, took Bodicia up on her offer to help. She restored my book images and links as well as some other stuff.

I do have plans for this series that mysteriously inserted itself into my conscious mind, front and center, at a not-so-great time. Maybe it’s good cosmic timing. You will be hearing more about this paranormal series soon, but for now, I’m keeping it under wraps until I can wind up that book of my heart that I finally finished.

*If you’d like to inquire further about James and his work: aepbookcovers@gmail.com

New Series Cover

Empty Seats & Other Fears

The first time I walked into a classroom and realized that my job was to talk to these teens, every cell in my body wanted to run from the room and never return. And things stayed that way for a few years. Every day, I wanted to flee home to my writing room. Every day I did the harder thing. I taught those kids.

That was 1990. This is now. I handle English classes with ease, but any other type of public speaking makes me wish I’d popped a Xanax. Which brings me to next week and the dozen or so peers who I’ll be helping navigate the social media world. I’m no expert, but my love of Twitter has compelled me to learn its landscape.

Once again, for the love of language, I am putting myself in a place of massive personal discomfort. I’m not alone in my fear of the podium. More people fear public speaking than dying. This did not surprise me when facilitator Linda Anger said it yesterday in her public speaking workshop. I took the DWW workshop because I want to banish this fear.

As a writer who is trying to market her own novels, public speaking could be a big wand in my magic bag of tricks. I did it with my first book, back in 2007. Twice. To an audience who was way more interested in what I had to say that my students ever were. But my first book was non-fiction, about writing. My audience was hungry for answers. I filled the seats both nights, they all bought my book, they had questions galore. In other words, a dream audience.

Since then, I’ve published four novels. I did not line up any coffee shop/bookstore/library readings. Not a one. I’ve read so many horror stories about bookstore signing where one person shows up, only to ask where the restroom is located. Yesterday, Linda asked those of us in the workshop why we were afraid. My reason was easy: boring others. I teach English to jaded freshman college students who do a lot of covert texting and not quite so sly eye-rolling.

I fear boring you. I fear being judged. I fear you will judge me boring. I hide behind my blog and Twitter and call it marketing. My husband comes home from work and asks what I did all day. “Well, I wrote for a bit, then I did some marketing.” In fact, Twitter is not marketing for me.  I like making connections with writers and readers and other people, exploring links, trying to squeeze a cogent thought (plus a hash tag)  into 140 characters.

As for this blog, I’ve always kept a diary. All my life since the time I could write. And this blog is actually my diary. I write it for the same reason I write everything, to make sense of my place in the world. Every novel is a life I didn’t lead. I travel far and wide in my imagination, but I don’t leave the desk for marketing.

Real marketing includes hitting the streets of the real world. And after the helpful and fun workshop yesterday, I feel more prepared to do this. At some point in the future. If I don’t die first.

Content is Queen

My heart sank a little at last weekend’s conference the keynote speaker said he’d been writing, and steadily climbing the publishing ladder, for ten years.

I was first published in the ’80s, so that’s, uh, longer.

But he did say something valuable, something I’d forgotten. He talked about how there is so much about being a writer we can’t control. We can’t control how our writing will be received by agents, editors, publishers, or reviewers. We can’t control rejection. We can’t control bad reviews. Novelists, unless they’re indie, can’t even control the cover that appears on their books. Bloggers can’t control page views or Google ratings or spammers or negative commenters.

The good news from Chuck is that there is ONE thing writers can control and it is the most valuable thing of all: our writing. We control the words on the page and there is no more heady feeling than that. We also control IF we decide to write. IF we put our butts in chairs and do it without getting distracted by Twitter. Or is that just me?

I took heart with Chuck’s words and as I revise my novel-in-progress, I vow to make those words the very best I can, because if they are good words, and good stories, people will notice. Content is Queen. It’s our Ace in the hole. It’s all we’ve got and it’s under our control.

Something New

Alice is hosting a carnival, and this month’s theme is “something different.” This interests me because recently my life has taken a turn in a new direction. I’ve been a writer all my life, and finally, in the past few years, I found a publisher for my contemporary novels. I even started a series. Then, when I was almost finished with the second book in my series, something strange happened. I’ll call it intuition. Most people act on intuitive impulses at least once in a while, right? Or is it just me?

Following this inner guidance was difficult because it was anything but logical. Logic said I needed to finish that second book in the series, the book of my heart, the book that I’ve wanted to write forever and finally was writing, finally saw how it would end. So my head said, you’re just nervous. But you’re a professional. You know what you need to do. Get to work.

About this time, I became obsessed with an egg on Twitter. @gypsywriter was my first Twitter handle, and I’m sorry to say I abandoned it almost immediately for the story I was writing about a band of time-traveling Gypsys. I didn’t pick up Twitter again for another few years and when I did I chose a different handle. My real name, or close enough. No @gypsywriter for me. Still, I didn’t deactivate the account.

As @CynthiaHarriso1 gathered tweeps and spun tweets; @gypsywriter remained silent. She still remains silent. She cannot tweet. She can be followed but she cannot follow. She is an egg whose egg-ness cannot be rectified. For a few weeks, I asked people for help, I Googled, I tried things that had been suggested. Nothing worked. She’s an egg forevermore. Fine. I have a life beyond this egg thing. I have a perfectly fine Twitter feed sans the egg.

But this was enough of a wake up call to the Gypsy that had remained in a file for too long. I posted the first scene on my blog. I’ve been looking to change my blog anyway, and it seemed like a good way to revise. Scene by scene I did that for a few weeks. I even bought cover art that seemed to bring my book to life. Then it was Christmas and I put a link to my Word file on the blog as a holiday present to readers.

A few days ago, I went ahead and published Gypsy on KDP. The speed with which this happened surprises me even now as I sit here. I am also perplexed. Because Gypsy is a paranormal story and I write contemporary fiction with sprinkles of romance and humor. So, now what? Without quite knowing it, I have become an author who works in two distinct genres. I understand that not many people do that. It’s not smart in the business sense unless you are Nora Roberts or J.K. Rowling.

It’s like Stephen King putting out a book of poetry. Or Stephanie Meyer writing erotica. On a much smaller scale. Which is probably my saving grace. My work is not widely read. My name is not in any literary lexicon. I can get away with it. And I intend to, because I am always up for something new.

Marketing for Introverts & Other People

Are you an introvert? Many writers are. I know I am. Therefore I’ve made a list of easy things shy writers can do to help sell their work. As I said in yesterday’s post, if  you publish, you need to market as well. So here’s what you can do to improve your visibility as a writer:

1. Join a writer’s group. I did. It’s easy. Go to meetings and listen. I became a member of Detroit Working Writers several years ago and the organization continues to inspire me. DWW started with a dozen women in 1900. We’re still going strong. You don’t have to be published to join.

2. Go to a conference. The workshop leaders and keynote speaker do almost all of the talking. They bring you news from the world of publishing. DWW’s annual conference this year is May 17, 2014 at the Clinton-Macomb Public Library. You can sign up early and get a discount.

3. Enter a writing competition. At our conference, we conclude by announcing the winners of our writing competition. First prize in all five categories is $100, so check it out. You do not have to attend the conference to enter the writing competition, but it would be fun, right?

4. Start a blog and begin to build your platform. If you don’t know what a platform is, you can ask anybody in DWW. Seasoned writers are available to mentor beginners. And blogging, heck, you do this alone in your writing room. What could be easier? I love Word Press but Blogger is also user-friendly.

If you do these four things for your writing self, you will succeed. When I joined DWW several years ago, I had self-published one book, a non-fiction writer’s manual. Since becoming a member of DWW and joining in some of the many networking and critique groups they offer, I’ve published four novels. Proof, to me at least, of the value of stepping out of the shy box.

 

This Writer’s Worth

I just returned from a writer’s conference and the news is not good. Writers, say the workshop leaders, will not make much money. They need to keep their day jobs. Another item in the negative column is this: writers must do their own promotion. This means we need to learn how to market our work if we want anyone but our mother to read it.

These are two things I already knew. I have been writing for a long time and I’ve witnessed the landscape change. I remember one long-ago workshop leader saying that the culture rewards writers in some incredible ways. Well, those days are gone. Everyone now has the opportunity to publish their writing. The variety of ways to do this would take a weekend workshop. I’d attend that one, because I suck at marketing.

I have often moaned on this very blog that I’m a writer, damn it, and I just wanna write. Well, if the conference this weekend did nothing else for me, it made me realize that I have to stop thinking that way. I can hire someone to market for me, or I can do it myself. But do it I must. Because I do want more than just my mother (who is scandalized by the sexy bits) to read my work. And I would like to make money. Readers=money.

My publisher did a little marketing thing with Amazon Kindle’s “free” days for me a month or so back. I tried to help by hiring Book Bub to advertise my “free” book, plus tweeting and writing Facebook posts. Hell, I took my business card to lunch and passed it out to ten women I hardly knew, saying “hey it’s free!” People love free.

I looked at my numbers after that. I gave away 45,000 books. I also made it to #1 on the top Amazon lists. All books. All romance novels. All contemporary novels. I was #1 on the free list for all of those. And I stayed on the paid lists for a while. I made some  money, which is what marketing is all about. Selling books, making profit. The month I partnered with my publisher to market this way, I made more money than I had in any quarter at any time with any of my five books.

I know I’d still write if I didn’t get paid. I might write and decide not to market. I write, not just for money, (although money is nice) but because it helps me make sense of both myself and the world spinning around me. I feel lucky to have this thing in me that needs to write, no matter what. It has enriched my life in ways too numerous to mention. And that is the real worth to this writer.