Chris Dietzel's Blog - Posts Tagged "lessons"
Things I've Learned
Although I’ve been working toward my dream of being a writer for almost ten years now, it’s only recently that I have been trying to get my writing out to an audience. In these past few months, I’ve learned a lot of lessons. Some of those are captured here:
Be patient –Every part of the writing process takes a hundred times longer than it should. Do not try to hurry things that are outside your control. I finished my debut novel, THE MAN WHO WATCHED THE WORLD END, about four years ago. It took all the time since then to find an agent, have publishers review it, have final edits made, decide on a self-publication approach, and finally make it available to everyone. Four years is a very long time—long enough for me to complete two other novels and be half way done another. The time was invaluable, though, because along the way I received helpful feedback from friends who had gone through the same thing I was going through. By the time I did finally publish my novel, I had a better book to put out to everyone and I knew the mistakes other people had made so I wouldn’t make them myself. If I hadn’t been patient, I would have put out a weaker product four years ago and I would be stumbling over myself now. Patience pays off.
Be willing to leave your comfort zone – I have always had a difficult time asking favors of other people. In any other part of my life, I wouldn’t dare ask someone to mention something I did. But with my writing, it’s a necessity. Indie Authors depend on word-of-mouth. Because of this, I always ask people to mention my novel to anyone else they think might enjoy it. And as a very private person, I have a difficult time putting myself out there on social media. But I do it because it helps people learn about me and my novel. I could still publish my book without doing these things, but it would mean that I was half-hearted in making it successful. To achieve their dream, people should be willing to not only step away from their comfort zone, but go running from it.
Don’t make everything about you – There are millions of other people trying to get their Indie books out to the masses. It’s very difficult to distinguish yourself. That’s why you constantly see Indie authors promoting themselves on every possible platform. But what I’ve noticed is that people respond more when you aren’t constantly promoting yourself and take time to ask them about their own books. Some of the best interactions I’ve had, which in turn have led to some of the most unintended readers of my novel, have come from me discussing their Indie projects, not my own. Whether it’s karma or human nature, people respond more openly when you don’t make everything about you. If you offer support, people are more willing to support you.
Be patient –Every part of the writing process takes a hundred times longer than it should. Do not try to hurry things that are outside your control. I finished my debut novel, THE MAN WHO WATCHED THE WORLD END, about four years ago. It took all the time since then to find an agent, have publishers review it, have final edits made, decide on a self-publication approach, and finally make it available to everyone. Four years is a very long time—long enough for me to complete two other novels and be half way done another. The time was invaluable, though, because along the way I received helpful feedback from friends who had gone through the same thing I was going through. By the time I did finally publish my novel, I had a better book to put out to everyone and I knew the mistakes other people had made so I wouldn’t make them myself. If I hadn’t been patient, I would have put out a weaker product four years ago and I would be stumbling over myself now. Patience pays off.
Be willing to leave your comfort zone – I have always had a difficult time asking favors of other people. In any other part of my life, I wouldn’t dare ask someone to mention something I did. But with my writing, it’s a necessity. Indie Authors depend on word-of-mouth. Because of this, I always ask people to mention my novel to anyone else they think might enjoy it. And as a very private person, I have a difficult time putting myself out there on social media. But I do it because it helps people learn about me and my novel. I could still publish my book without doing these things, but it would mean that I was half-hearted in making it successful. To achieve their dream, people should be willing to not only step away from their comfort zone, but go running from it.
Don’t make everything about you – There are millions of other people trying to get their Indie books out to the masses. It’s very difficult to distinguish yourself. That’s why you constantly see Indie authors promoting themselves on every possible platform. But what I’ve noticed is that people respond more when you aren’t constantly promoting yourself and take time to ask them about their own books. Some of the best interactions I’ve had, which in turn have led to some of the most unintended readers of my novel, have come from me discussing their Indie projects, not my own. Whether it’s karma or human nature, people respond more openly when you don’t make everything about you. If you offer support, people are more willing to support you.
Learning and Perservering
Everything that happens to you is, depending on your mindset, either an opportunity to give up or a chance to learn and get better. Nine years ago, I decided I would try to achieve my dream of being a writer. Last year, I published my debut novel, The Man Who Watched The World End. It was a very long road to get to that point. As I prepare for the release of my next novel, A Different Alchemy, I find myself reflecting over all the things I’ve learned.
I started out creating short stories. After revising each one a couple times, I would send them off to see if a magazine or literary journal would accept them for publication. But no matter how many times I revised them, the rejections kept pouring in. My short stories were turned down an astounding 190 times before the first one was accepted for publication. Yes, 190 times. But the important thing is that instead of giving up, I finally achieved my goal and a story was published. And I was only rejected sixteen more times before my second short story was published. For my third story, only five times. A lot of revising and learning occurred during that time. Lesson Learned #1: It takes a long time to become a good writer. A lot of the rejections could have been prevented if I had slowed down and focused on the writing instead of trying to get my stories published.
Only a fool would think the rejections would end there, though. Because while I was creating short stories, I was also looking for an agent to represent a book I was writing. I wrote a query letter and began to send it out. Most agents rejected it without comment. Every couple weeks I would notice some changes I could make to the query letter to make it better. No matter how many times I revised it, when I revisited it a couple weeks later, I would always find a few more things to tweak. Finally, with a finished query letter, I found an agent! Lesson Learned #2: No matter how many times you revise something, you need to put it aside and come back to it with fresh eyes. Only then will you see if it could be edited, and it shouldn’t be sent out until it’s absolutely perfect.
From the beginning, my agent was very straightforward: it was going to be difficult to find a publisher that would take a chance on an extremely bleak novel written by an unknown author. Although I was prepared for the day when each publisher passed on it, it was still a low point in my journey. The only option was to publish it myself. But I didn’t know anything about self-publishing, and I wasn’t good at selling myself. What was I going to do, though, give up on my dream? So I began to learn everything I could about Indie publishing. Lesson Learned #3: It’s not the amount of rejection you face or the amount of success you garner that matters, it’s your response to it that defines you.
It wasn’t easy getting my debut novel out to potential readers. In fact, it was pretty brutal at times. But instead of giving up, I did my best and kept learning from my mistakes. Along the way, my book garnered some incredible reviews. I can’t believe some of the things people have said about it on Amazon and GoodReads. It was even featured on The Science Fiction Spotlight and voted as one of GoodReads Top 10 ‘Most Interesting Books of 2013.’
And that brings me to today, getting ready to publish my second novel. After everything I learned during the publishing of The Man Who Watched The World End, I have no doubt that A Different Alchemy will be an even greater success. How could it not? After all, I’m still here, I’m still working toward my dream, and I’m still choosing to learn from adversity rather than letting it deter me from my goals.
I started out creating short stories. After revising each one a couple times, I would send them off to see if a magazine or literary journal would accept them for publication. But no matter how many times I revised them, the rejections kept pouring in. My short stories were turned down an astounding 190 times before the first one was accepted for publication. Yes, 190 times. But the important thing is that instead of giving up, I finally achieved my goal and a story was published. And I was only rejected sixteen more times before my second short story was published. For my third story, only five times. A lot of revising and learning occurred during that time. Lesson Learned #1: It takes a long time to become a good writer. A lot of the rejections could have been prevented if I had slowed down and focused on the writing instead of trying to get my stories published.
Only a fool would think the rejections would end there, though. Because while I was creating short stories, I was also looking for an agent to represent a book I was writing. I wrote a query letter and began to send it out. Most agents rejected it without comment. Every couple weeks I would notice some changes I could make to the query letter to make it better. No matter how many times I revised it, when I revisited it a couple weeks later, I would always find a few more things to tweak. Finally, with a finished query letter, I found an agent! Lesson Learned #2: No matter how many times you revise something, you need to put it aside and come back to it with fresh eyes. Only then will you see if it could be edited, and it shouldn’t be sent out until it’s absolutely perfect.
From the beginning, my agent was very straightforward: it was going to be difficult to find a publisher that would take a chance on an extremely bleak novel written by an unknown author. Although I was prepared for the day when each publisher passed on it, it was still a low point in my journey. The only option was to publish it myself. But I didn’t know anything about self-publishing, and I wasn’t good at selling myself. What was I going to do, though, give up on my dream? So I began to learn everything I could about Indie publishing. Lesson Learned #3: It’s not the amount of rejection you face or the amount of success you garner that matters, it’s your response to it that defines you.
It wasn’t easy getting my debut novel out to potential readers. In fact, it was pretty brutal at times. But instead of giving up, I did my best and kept learning from my mistakes. Along the way, my book garnered some incredible reviews. I can’t believe some of the things people have said about it on Amazon and GoodReads. It was even featured on The Science Fiction Spotlight and voted as one of GoodReads Top 10 ‘Most Interesting Books of 2013.’
And that brings me to today, getting ready to publish my second novel. After everything I learned during the publishing of The Man Who Watched The World End, I have no doubt that A Different Alchemy will be an even greater success. How could it not? After all, I’m still here, I’m still working toward my dream, and I’m still choosing to learn from adversity rather than letting it deter me from my goals.
Self Publishing Lessons Learned
One of the first blog entries I ever wrote was about how publishing novels is more difficult than fighting mixed martial arts (MMA) in a cage. Almost two years have passed since that blog post and I’ve learned a heck of a lot about the world of indie publishing.
1. When writers start out, they have a vision that some massively popular national book critic will review their novel and propel it to bestseller status. I know because I had that same fantasy. But that book critic doesn’t give a damn about your indie book or mine or anyone else’s. The indie book revolution was propelled by people who were willing to feature and review indie books, and those same people are the driving force behind each indie author’s success.
2. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a good book discussion come to a screeching halt after an indie author jumped in to talk about his or her own book. The desperate need to let people know about the book you’ve worked so hard on can certainly be enticing, but what I’ve found is that a good book, with a good cover, is what’s really important. Readers like to read good books. That’s obvious. But readers also like to tell their friends about the good books they’ve read. It might take a while, but if your book is too good to put down, someone will read it and tell their friends to do the same. It’s a lot less likely that a reader will give your book a chance, though, if all you ever do is talk about yourself and your novels.
3. Whether it’s kid magicians or zombies, there will always be a hot genre. But rather than trying to get in on the trend, write to what you actually care about. Readers are smart people; they can tell if you care about your characters and your story. Even if you’re writing about elderly werewolves while everyone else is writing about teenage vampires, if you’re passionate about what you’re writing, readers will pick up on it. I’m so glad I stuck with telling the types of stories I would like to read myself. My books aren’t for everyone, but if I wrote a story to make everyone else happy, I’d be pretty miserable myself.
The past two years have been incredible. And while I’m sure I’ll have even more lessons learned in another two years, I wouldn’t change a single thing.
Happy reading and writing, everyone.
Originally published on TheNextBestBookBlog.blogspot.com
1. When writers start out, they have a vision that some massively popular national book critic will review their novel and propel it to bestseller status. I know because I had that same fantasy. But that book critic doesn’t give a damn about your indie book or mine or anyone else’s. The indie book revolution was propelled by people who were willing to feature and review indie books, and those same people are the driving force behind each indie author’s success.
2. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a good book discussion come to a screeching halt after an indie author jumped in to talk about his or her own book. The desperate need to let people know about the book you’ve worked so hard on can certainly be enticing, but what I’ve found is that a good book, with a good cover, is what’s really important. Readers like to read good books. That’s obvious. But readers also like to tell their friends about the good books they’ve read. It might take a while, but if your book is too good to put down, someone will read it and tell their friends to do the same. It’s a lot less likely that a reader will give your book a chance, though, if all you ever do is talk about yourself and your novels.
3. Whether it’s kid magicians or zombies, there will always be a hot genre. But rather than trying to get in on the trend, write to what you actually care about. Readers are smart people; they can tell if you care about your characters and your story. Even if you’re writing about elderly werewolves while everyone else is writing about teenage vampires, if you’re passionate about what you’re writing, readers will pick up on it. I’m so glad I stuck with telling the types of stories I would like to read myself. My books aren’t for everyone, but if I wrote a story to make everyone else happy, I’d be pretty miserable myself.
The past two years have been incredible. And while I’m sure I’ll have even more lessons learned in another two years, I wouldn’t change a single thing.
Happy reading and writing, everyone.
Originally published on TheNextBestBookBlog.blogspot.com
