Oh no you don't!
October 2020
I ought to have done this years ago - setting up a blog, I mean. There's millions of people in this world with a blog, but not me - an author of five novels plus short stories. I always thought "What shall I say? Who'd be interested?" But if I were giving tips on how to get an idea or your work noticed I'd say "set up a blog" as one of the must do items on a long list. So, finally, I take my own advice and here is the beginning of my blog.
I published my latest book in the summer and thought I'd give myself a couple of months off, see the family and sit in the sun and read books - oh to have the time to read, read, read. Well, that happened! What a good start. October arrived - and that is the date in my diary to start on my new book. Unfortunately, Life sometimes has a way of saying, "Ha, ha, oh no you don't." Not only did October arrive but storm Alex arrived. To cut a long story, strung out over several days, short, many tiles shifted on the roof and allowed the rain in here, there and everywhere. Buckets, jugs and pudding basins were strategically scattered, furniture moved away to safe spaces, and various men in overalls came to assess the damage. No writing was done. No planning even.
I'll start next week. Hmm... I see my diary says I might be required to puppy-sit for my daughter at her house for a whole week. Yay! I love dogs and who cannot love a doe-eyed puppy? OK, I know they're not everyone's cup of tea. She's likely to be lively and need a lot of attention and loving. Planning? Writing? Hmm...
So as not to waste a moment of time, I'll start to do a bit of marketing - well, perhaps a mass of marketing and this is a good time to start. Yes, I'll start a blog. (Well, I've got that far!)
I moved the start date for my new book back to the end of October.
Anyone else have a life like this?
I ought to have done this years ago - setting up a blog, I mean. There's millions of people in this world with a blog, but not me - an author of five novels plus short stories. I always thought "What shall I say? Who'd be interested?" But if I were giving tips on how to get an idea or your work noticed I'd say "set up a blog" as one of the must do items on a long list. So, finally, I take my own advice and here is the beginning of my blog.
I published my latest book in the summer and thought I'd give myself a couple of months off, see the family and sit in the sun and read books - oh to have the time to read, read, read. Well, that happened! What a good start. October arrived - and that is the date in my diary to start on my new book. Unfortunately, Life sometimes has a way of saying, "Ha, ha, oh no you don't." Not only did October arrive but storm Alex arrived. To cut a long story, strung out over several days, short, many tiles shifted on the roof and allowed the rain in here, there and everywhere. Buckets, jugs and pudding basins were strategically scattered, furniture moved away to safe spaces, and various men in overalls came to assess the damage. No writing was done. No planning even.
I'll start next week. Hmm... I see my diary says I might be required to puppy-sit for my daughter at her house for a whole week. Yay! I love dogs and who cannot love a doe-eyed puppy? OK, I know they're not everyone's cup of tea. She's likely to be lively and need a lot of attention and loving. Planning? Writing? Hmm...
So as not to waste a moment of time, I'll start to do a bit of marketing - well, perhaps a mass of marketing and this is a good time to start. Yes, I'll start a blog. (Well, I've got that far!)
I moved the start date for my new book back to the end of October.
Anyone else have a life like this?
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Lexi
(new)
Oct 07, 2020 01:13PM
Yes! I do - only fewer leaks and no puppies. I envy you the foster puppy.
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A foster puppy, what a good term. Yes, it must be like being a foster parent or a grandparent: it'll be wonderful and exciting to have a puppy around, taking over my life and then I'll give her back, have more time, and miss her.
Well done on getting through Storm Alex and don't worry about putting things back. I'm so busy that everything is moving back, but I'm so pleased to be this busy; it beats the living daylights out of not having enough to do. Good luck.
I couldn't agree more, Laura. I love being busy but I like looking forward to a day when I have nothing to do. It never comes. I put a line through one Saturday a month declaring it to be a 'day off'. It just doesn't happen. I have managed a morning sometimes and I snatch up my Kindle and try to remember what the story I'm reading was all about! Sundays are slow days though.Laura is the heroine in the first book I published. Good luck with your first book.
Yay! Great first blog post! I set up a blog a while ago but haven't posted anything in quite a while! 😫 Keep it going!
Thank you, Eugenia. I've just popped over to look at your blog on here and there's this great big panda staring at me. Isn't he gorgeous? Or is he a she?
Anna Faversham wrote: "Thank you, Eugenia. I've just popped over to look at your blog on here and there's this great big panda staring at me. Isn't he gorgeous? Or is he a she?"Hahaha! Really? I've never checked out my blog from Goodreads - will go look! The panda (if it's an illustration) is a he - named Xiao Ming! Thanks for checking it out!
Congratulations on your blog. You're right, life has a way of getting in the way of writing. Sometimes those experiences lead to story ideas or background, however, so they can be an advantage. Everything is grist for our writer's mill.
I've had a blog since 2012 - ideas keep coming, and I figure no one else is writing about those topics (right now it's writing and life under lockdown in a retirement community).
Ah..., Kathleen, how right you are. I tell myself this regularly because I know it to be true. In my latest book, in chapter one, there's a weird few paragraphs about the conversation the protagonist has with a camel. It actually happened to me. I have photographs to prove this camel laid his snout on my knee for practically the whole hour's journey in the desert - and it rained. I have a witness! I fell in love with this camel as I discovered they have lovely long eyelashes which it batted at me while it rumbled away. I was amazed to find it left gaps for me to say something. And when I stopped, it started mumbling away again. I've always said it's not a good idea to tell anyone as I might get put away... But what a gift for a writer! So yes, life is a gift in many ways.
Alicia wrote: "I've had a blog since 2012 - ideas keep coming, and I figure no one else is writing about those topics (right now it's writing and life under lockdown in a retirement community)."Hi - how lovely to hear from you. I must take a look at your blog.
Anna Faversham wrote: "I couldn't agree more, Laura. I love being busy but I like looking forward to a day when I have nothing to do. It never comes. I put a line through one Saturday a month declaring it to be a 'day of..."You're so right, Anna, the trouble is that when the 'nothing to do' bit comes I feel wrong somehow. And I used to be so good at having nothing to do! But I'll get used to it, when it comes round again. I guess I've kept busy at home in the face of being locked-down and what's going on in the world. I'm lucky.
Many thanks for the good wishes and the same to you.
We moved house just before the lockdown so we had plenty to do for some long time after and we are still wondering what is the best place to put things. Soon I'll have to think about Christmas... It doesn't look like we can have a big family party.
Wow! Life happens while we are making plans but keep on writing. I started a blog before I published but I'd feel pretty good if I had as many novels as you have but no blog as a two year old blog and a just published novel. No matter how we slice it we can't do everythingl. Sounds like you've accomplished a lot. Good luck and enjoy the puppy.
Thank you, Belynda. I hopped over to see your debut novel and it looks good, I see you've also sold some in the UK as well as your home country. I remember so well my first novel being released. The day before I was due to publish, my internet went down. In short, after 11 days of no internet, I dashed over to my daughter's and pressed that 'publish' button. When I returned home, I could not access the internet still and had to wait several more days before I could see how my little baby was faring in the big wide world of Amazon. She was swimming for all she was worth but it took about four years before she finally made it to #1 in her time travel romance category.
I hope your new, first novel does very well and I hope it doesn't take as long as mine!
And I shall hang on to your words 'we can't do everything'.
Getting started is not for the faint of heart - and just one more step in the process when you're stuck being a writer because nothing else is as good.
Yes, Alicia, I can't think of any hobby that I would enjoy so much. I have enjoyed ordinary work (you know, that thing where you travel there and travel back - remember that?) but writing is compelling, totally absorbing and you don't have to spend time commuting :o)
Which is why, when we can't write for whatever reasons, it is so devastating. You lose everything at once, in many senses: identity, work, meaning.It seems exaggerated, but ask any writer committed to a legacy book and having trouble.
I hope that is not happening to anyone you know, Alicia. I think a good place to start when a writer gets stuck is to look back over their own life and see how it played out. What if...? What if that hadn't happened? And so on. I haven't written a book like that yet but it's a ruse I've stuffed up my sleeve for if/when I get stuck.
Of course, it might not work for some stories but I'd apply it to the protagonist or even the dog if I had to.
The protagonist in Immortality: This Is Probably a Novel hit a spot in his life where his identity and the work he loved had to be shelved. It was during this time that he started to keep a diary and that diary led to a whole new pathway.
Anna, regarding getting stuck...Ordinarily I ask myself what the characters would react or what they'd do next. Wasn't working this time. I've been mulling over what to do to wrap up my current work-in-progress for a week or so. Last night I realized that if I switched two events at the point I left off, whole new vistas of complication, conflict and comedy would ensue.
My characters seem to run away with me (or perhaps from me) and I have to type frantically to keep up. Sometimes, just sometimes, I have to rein them in and do what you mention above, Kathleen.
As an extreme plotter who is working on that legacy trilogy vouchsafed in one piece in the year 2000, I'm in a different position from most of the writers I am friends with. Oh, well.In many aspects, it's easier: things either are plotted in already, or contribute to the plot as I write. I write thousands of words around the words, but I don't have to chop off whole side stories. I'm not recommending people write my way - but that's what has emerged that worked so far for the first volume, and has the second one half finished in the same mode.
It's just very linear, and I don't get the luxury of going off to solve different problems for a while if the current scene isn't quite doing what it has to, yet. So I keep picking at it, asking myself why, until it does. It keeps the scope small (for my damaged brain), but can be slow when I'm not getting what the current problem is. And then it resolves, and the sun comes out, and it's off to the next. Like a hurdles race. Suits me, but even I recognize it's a weird way to write.
Anna Faversham wrote: "My characters seem to run away with me (or perhaps from me) and I have to type frantically to keep up. Sometimes, just sometimes, I have to rein them in and do what you mention above, Kathleen."In large part, mine direct the story. In this case, they just flat did not care whether Character A arrived unannounced first, or Family B did--so tacky to show up uninvited at an earl's estate. My way will turn it into a French farce, which will be fun, I hope.
Isn't it great to see the many contrasting ways writers go about bringing stories into the world and they all turn out to be different, just like human babies!As readers we have so much choice!
I never even thought about it until I started to write seriously, and by then the brain was damaged and I could only make it work the one way.That it might be my preferred way anyway could be true. It feels right. But I don't know for sure.
Creativity makes itself felt in many ways, I suppose, and we master it the best way we know how, sometimes wrestling, sometimes flying and in my case there's the flopping.I'm just glad I don't have to write with pen and ink.
I try to manage my time every day so that I have time to cover all bases. I retired as a CPA at the beginning of the year and published my first musical novel. Being a CPA for 40 years, and running my own firm for 27 years, I learned how to accomplish a variety of things every day (including coaching Little League, help building sets for the high school plays, etc.). Now that I retired from accounting and ventured into writing, the skills have helped me to do a lot of things. I am unusual in that I can switch my creative juices from writing to composing, so I don't seem to get stale. Every morning I sit outside from at least 9-12 and write, only having a general story direction. I don't know how a scene will end until I finish writing it. This has been a lot of fun. I am always interested in reading comments from those who have done it longer.
Hi Rick, I cannot imagine how you combine composing and writing - that must surely be doubly exciting and extremely rewarding.I think one thing that all those 'who have done it longer' would say (just writing) is that a lot of time is spent tweaking. I read and tweak each time I settle down to write; it serves two purposes: to remind me what I've written (!!!) and to spot things that need altering like taking out too many exclamation marks!
I do my own editing and so that leads to a lot more tweaking even after I've written The End. I love spotting a mistake and shout 'gotcha' every time.
There is no way I'm going to be sitting outside and writing (you lucky thing, Rick) the maximum temperature yesterday was 9 centigrade/42 fahrenheit.
I'm glad to know another author who does her own editing.I put HOURS into mine, and still get dissed (American 'disrespected') by people who think 'everyone needs to be edited by some random professional.'
Editing yourself rigorously means you force yourself to admit and improve your own bad habits.
I like the idea of 'gotcha!' and will steal it.
Alicia,If you have the gift to edit, go for it! I use an outside editor, but I will try to move in your direction of self-editing. I catch a lot as I go through rewrites, only to have my wife catch more. Ugh! I appreciate her comments.
Rick wrote: "Alicia,If you have the gift to edit, go for it! I use an outside editor, but I will try to move in your direction of self-editing. I catch a lot as I go through rewrites, only to have my wife cat..."
I do my own editing, but I do feel that people should used an external editor if they don't feel up to it themselves. It really puts me off in a book if there are mistakes of grammar, spelling etc, and I was mortified when a couple of mistakes passed me by and had to be corrected post-publication. It looks so amateurish, and if you're going to write professionally then you owe it to yourself and your readers to do it as well as possible. I sometimes think I ought to be editing professionally myself, I've seen many books that need it.
Rick wrote: "Alicia,If you have the gift to edit, go for it! I use an outside editor, but I will try to move in your direction of self-editing. I catch a lot as I go through rewrites, only to have my wife cat..."
I'm afraid it's not a gift. It is a skill, acquired by studying and practicing (that's how editors learn), and rigorously developing self-awareness and applying it to my own writing.
I'm sure many people can't learn, and more believe they can't, and I would never argue with them.
It's the same with many skills: innate talent is only a part of it, putting in the time and effort will take most people very close to the finish line. I happen to like the improvement and the freedom and the results.
If your wife catches more problems, your skillset isn't complete yet. A mechanical program can help, if you control it, rather than the other way around. And pick the right program. My choice is Autocrit - and I use it because it counts all kinds of things and displays them for me to make choices. I don't use its suggestions on writing - voice, word choice, style, grammar, flow.
The system is time-consuming and includes a marvelous beta reader - nothing goes out before she has passed on her observations and gotchas.
Laura wrote: "if you're going to write professionally then you owe it to yourself and your readers to do it as well as possible..."Couldn't agree more.
There are many paths to good results. The author is responsible, or should be, for finding one that produces them. I wish more authors held higher standards, but that doesn't let me squirm out of mine.
Alicia wrote: "Laura wrote: "if you're going to write professionally then you owe it to yourself and your readers to do it as well as possible..."Couldn't agree more.
There are many paths to good results. The ..."
I totally agree. I do wish Amazon would do more, as they claim to. I reported a book once with grammar so bad that anyone who'd paid would want their money back (I had it on KU). They did nothing, and even suggested it to me later as a possible read!
Amazon offers you the Look Inside or the sample. I can tell from a couple of pages whether the author is competent, sometimes from just the first page.They can't police everything - and you'd miss good stories or memoirs by some interesting people out there. I still marvel that I was able to go through a delightful book about an American working in a zoo in Central America for a season - lively and well done, except that every its and it's was backward. Nearly drove me mad! That was a rare exception for me.
I've bought books, supposedly professionally edited, and found too many mistakes for me to enjoy reading.If you edit and format and upload your own work, you're really in control which helps a lot. After publishing my carefully edited latest novel, a very kind friend pointed out that I had spelt a word in two different ways. What? Why? Where is that sneaky rat? Gotcha! So I reuploaded the book. I'm not going to tell anyone which word was treated to my creativity in case you've bought the older version and it might spoil your reading experience.
I used Autocrit for my first published book. Autocrit was much cheaper and simpler at that time but it taught me to look out for repetitions. It's more expensive now and I'm determined not to spend more on producing a book than I get from sales. I can spot them better now.
A keen-eyed wife sounds like a good idea.
I wonder if people enjoy golf more than we enjoy writing?
I have a very short list of things I will correct when I fix the first book in the trilogy prior to publishing the second. I won't tell you what they are, either. Not a soul has pointed one out, but I still want to make sure I keep perfecting the manuscript, because it is possible to do that without introducing new errors, if they are small and you are very careful.Autocrit offered a Lifetime membership one year - and I had the sense to grab it. I don't use a lot of the functions they are happy to provide, and won't, but the ones I do use make me so much more certain that I've done the best I can. I'm not sure what I would do if I hadn't acquired the license when I did.
Three of my sisters are avid golfers. I've never seen the charm. Which is why they don't write fiction, and I found even walking around the course with them tedious. Different strokes for different folks!
You bring up a very good point, Alicia. It is very, very (repetition) easy to tweak and mess up the whole meaning of the sentence or, usually, the grammar, or even the sense of the story.
It's MY name on the cover.I've corrected the pdfs a couple of times already; it takes time, and you wonder if there will be problems elsewhere in the system because you had the temerity to want to upload a better version!
If I have repetition, I want it to be very deliberate, or completely unavoidable.
Alicia wrote: "Amazon offers you the Look Inside or the sample. I can tell from a couple of pages whether the author is competent, sometimes from just the first page.They can't police everything - and you'd mis..."
A fair point; I usually just download on KU and get rid if it doesn't measure up. As you say, it doesn't take long to find out.
If the writer's first language is not English and the story is good then I'm OK with that. The story has to be good though.
Laura wrote: "I usually just download on KU and get rid if it doesn't measure up. As you say, it doesn't take long to find out..."KU is a subscription service you are paying for, and it doesn't hurt anyone if you read a couple of pages, and decide the book is not for you. That is a sane way to go if you have KU, and the book you want is in KU. The Look Inside! would take longer, and you'd still have to click if you wanted the book.
And for authors, at least you tried their book, and could have continued easily if you'd liked it.
I don't have KU as a reader. My first trilogy novel is there. I've set it up so that it doesn't matter to me if you buy the ebook, borrow from KU, or buy the print version - I make the same few bucks. I will continue with this as soon as the second is finished.
Anna wrote: "If the writer's first language is not English and the story is good then I'm OK with that. The story has to be good though."Funny how we can tell, isn't it? Voice and story come through - if the book is good. If it isn't, beautiful presentation might fool a reader into reading more, or even finishing the book (some readers make it a point of pride not to quit reading), but it won't sell the next book from that author.
And some of us have better things to do with our time. Amazon has the Kindle First offerings every month, and for a while I tried a couple from each batch, but I never like them enough to continue, and I've stopped trying.
Disappointing, as many of these have managed to get into an Amazon imprint somehow, something I dearly wish I knew how to do. The free advertising from that positioning as a 'book of the month free offering' is staggering.
I've noticed, though, that being there is not a guarantee of good ratings: the books usually have few reviews (they're mostly new), but they go from 1-5* in ratings. I'd still take that offer in a second if I had the choice.
Those storms, whether natural, like Alex, or merely mechanical, like a sump pump failure and a whole basement flooded because of it - are just some of the joys of life.Can you sense my sarcasm?
As much as I want to be one of those writers who writes 3000 words a day every day and cranks out a book a month, that's just not me. I think two, maybe three if they're all pulps, is all I can manage.
Perhaps these breaks are good, albeit inconvenient and often painful, in that they allow us some down time, a breather, and lets us enjoy different aspects of our writing, like the marketing that you're doing.
Those breaks are essential in that they allow us to recharge. At least I need them.
The best on the puppy sitting and the new book!
(I think I'm gonna have to make this my next blog - haha!)
Mark wrote: "As much as I want to be one of those writers who writes 3000 words a day every day and cranks out a book a month, that's just not me. I think two, maybe three if they're all pulps, is all I can manage...."Two or three books a year is fantastic. It is taking me over five years to write the current second novel in my mainstream trilogy, and the first took fifteen (I had to learn to write fiction to my own standards).
Do you still read widely?
Mark wrote: "Those storms, whether natural, like Alex, or merely mechanical, like a sump pump failure and a whole basement flooded because of it - are just some of the joys of life.Can you sense my sarcasm?
As..."
Yes, just about!
I am trying to remember the story of two men; one is pushing something up a hill and he must get it to the top to complete the task. The other constantly adds more height to the hill so that the other one never quite manages it. He retries after he has made calculations on how to do it but the other sneaky one scuppers his efforts by always adding more height to the hill. It would be easy to think that the one who always has to keep trying to get to the top is in hell and the other one has the easy task. It eventually dawns on the reader (or maybe the storyteller?) that it is the one who is doing all the pushing upwards who is in heaven because he has a challenge every day. I'm not telling this story correctly. It's probably a Greek myth. Anyone know what I am talking about?
Anyway, I can see that this could be applied to writers. Every time we think we've got the finish in sight, something scuppers us and we have to do yet another rewrite/edit.
For any non-writers reading this, you can, perhaps, see why Alicia talks of five or even fifteen years to complete a manuscript.
Good one.Or we finish, and start the next book.
Yes - some would say gluttons for punishment (but we know better :o))
It could be toxic, but most likely isn't.Some people express their envy of what you do by calling you a glutton for punishment. A few others might be pointing out that taking a break could be good for you.
But if you've been putting off the new story as you did the editing and formatting and etc. for the old book, and, when that's published, allow that new story in, I think that's the right way to go.
