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Lexi
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Oct 07, 2020 01:13PM

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Laura is the heroine in the first book I published. Good luck with your first book.



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!



So yes, life is a gift in many ways.

Hi - how lovely to hear from you. I must take a look at your blog.

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.



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'.



It seems exaggerated, but ask any writer committed to a legacy book and having trouble.

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.



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.

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.

As readers we have so much choice!

That it might be my preferred way anyway could be true. It feels right. But I don't know for sure.

I'm just glad I don't have to write with pen and ink.


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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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?

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!


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!

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.


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.

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.

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!)

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?

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.

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.