Category: writing life (Page 15 of 17)

I Will Be Bad at Marketing

March 4, 2016 / / 0 Comments

In my twenties, I used to belong to a forum called Tolkien Online. This was when the Peter Jackson LOTR movies were going strong. I had read LOTR twice while in college and became a total fangirl. My love for fantasy literature had been rekindled (see my life’s story for more on that).

I loved Tolkien Online. There were vibrant discussions of LOTR movies, intelligent discussions of Tolkien’s books, threads for debates about religion and philosophy, even a thread dedicated to reciting Grateful Dead lyrics. I spent incredible amounts of time on Tolkien Online.

But then college ended, I got more enmeshed in the Classic Movie Blogosphere (not sure if that’s a proper noun or not, but it feels like it should be), and I fell out of the habit of posting to message boards.

Eventually, real adulthood happened (aka, my 30s), and I fell out of the habit of posting comments on my favorite movie blogs too. Basically, I didn’t have time to read a hundred comments a day and write something witty in response to them. I had a job. I had a family. I sorta, kinda, completely stopped being an active online presence in other people’s playgrounds.  (I never gave up blogging, though. That would be absurd.)

But now that I’m getting ready to publish my first book, I feel like I have to drum up some interest for the book on the interwebz. I have to “find my readers” and “gain an audience” and “market,” and I don’t want to be sleazy about it, I don’t want to just pop into some comments section and blab randomly about my book, or post annoying “Look at me!” posts on a forum where I’m a total noob. I want to make myself part of the community. I want to show that I’m not just a saleslady for my product. I want to be genuine.

So I joined two fantasy literature forums (I won’t say which ones). I didn’t post right away. I spent time reading the different threads and getting to know the lay of the land. And every time I came close to posting something, every time I thought that maybe I’d found the place where I wanted to jump in… I didn’t. I’d hit “reply” and get ready to type. And then… nothing.

I started beating myself up about it: You’ve got to get going! Your book is coming out in June! Establish relationships, build an audience! Make yourself part of these online communities! What are you waiting for? Just do it!

And yet, despite my self-badgerings, I still couldn’t do it.

I’m not in my twenties anymore. I’m not the message board gal I used to be.

It’s not where my head is.

It’s not where my voice is.

It’s not that I think message boards suck or anything. For many people, they are still awesome ways to connect.

But they’re just not for me. I can’t explain why, but I just don’t have anything to add to the conversations on these forums.

My blog is enough. I can ramble into the abyss all I want here.

My books are enough. I can express myself and communicate my ideas through them.

I don’t feel the need to be a commenter. I don’t have the drive to belong to a forum.

And I know this is a liability. I know that for a completely unknown author who doesn’t even have anyone reading her blog, I need to get my name out there. And yet… I’m not feeling it.

I’m more than ready to keyword-ninja my way through the Amazon algorithms, and I’m more than ready to pay for advertising. I’m doing Tim Grahl’s pre-launch strategies as best I can. But I don’t think I can be a full-time forum poster. I don’t think I can start reading a dozen blogs again just so I can get my “name” known in the comments.

If this means career suicide, I guess I’m fine with putting my head in the oven.

And the reason is that even if I did force myself to comment and post on different forums, my heart wouldn’t be in it. I’d be faking. I’d be as disingenuous as the sleaze-oids who post about their books on Twitter every five seconds. If I’m gonna go on Twitter, it’s gonna be so I can retweet awesome pictures of old movie stars. It’s not gonna be to hock my books.

Maybe I’ll do more on GoodReads. That feels more like “me.” If nothing else, I’ll try reviewing some books on there (which I’ve been meaning to do since forever).

But whatever I may do in my as-of-yet-non-existent career in self-publishing, I don’t want to be untrue to myself. I can’t fake things.

And if that means I’ll be bad at marketing, so be it.

Maybe I’ll find another way.

Writing and Revision: Have I Been Following (and giving) the Wrong Advice?

April 18, 2015 / / 0 Comments

I teach high school English, so of course, I give a lot of writing advice to my students. It’s my job, after all, to teach young people how to write. And for years, I’ve passed on the two “golden rules” of writing, the same essential words of wisdom that I learned from my own mentors: 1. All rough drafts suck, and 2.) Writing is rewriting.

And yet… When I think of some of my best writing — the stuff that soared and sang from my pen and felt true from the first word — much of it came fully formed on the first draft, with only a few minor touches and polishes coming afterward in the editing phase. If I’m totally honest with myself, my rough drafts didn’t suck at all. In fact, they were usually right on the mark. The only revision I really needed to do was clean up some prose, fix a few grammar issues, maybe add a line or two here or there, and cut out a few extraneous bits. But the works themselves — whether essay, poem, story, or article — were anything but sucky. And those times when the first draft truly was bad, even in revision, I couldn’t fix it all that much. There is one time — and only one time — when I remember revising an essay multiple times and making it really good.

So I’m not saying revision or editing are bad things. I have had to polish and do minor edits on most everything I’ve written. But the whole “first draft is crappy” thing? I’m kinda not buying it (at least not in my case). In my case, if the first draft is bad, it’s a sign I need to write a new draft, not try to revise the bad one. It’s a sign that something was off about that first try, and that the way to go is to give it ANOTHER try, not try to polish something that’s no good.

What’s got me thinking about all of this is my decision to start the Thirteen Treasures of Britain over from scratch. There were too many things in the first draft that I didn’t like, that didn’t work. Instead of trying to patch the first draft into a Frankenstein’s monster of a story, I decided to simply start over, to write the whole thing new from the beginning. Perhaps this IS a form of revision, but for me, it doesn’t feel like revision; it feels like a new start, a new story. And this story, this new creation, is already much better than the old one. Yes, I will still need to edit and polish, but this time, I won’t be working with a sucky draft. I’ll be working with a draft that soared and sang and felt true from the first word.

Realigning my thinking when it comes to drafts and revisions means that I’m not forcing myself to write everyday. I check in with my draft nearly everyday — reading bits here and there, adding or changing things as needed, keeping my enthusiasm and imagination charged — but I don’t feel required to plop down 250 words at the end of the night after the baby’s in bed and I’m tired from the day’s work. Because those 250 dead-eyed, zonked-out words are usually crap, and when I read them the next day, I end up deleting them all. What good are 250 words if they’re totally irredeemable?

So I don’t write everyday. I write when I feel fresh. When I have a good chunk of time to devote to thinking. When the story is clicking. And if the story isn’t clicking, if the effort feels strained, if I’m writing garbage, I stop. And I come back to it another day. I try a different chapter or a different type of writing. I don’t force things, because when I force things, I end up with a lot of splintered and broken things. And there’s no way for me to fix something once it’s splintered.

If this seems like I’m breaking the number one rule of writers (i.e.: write everyday), then yes, I’m breaking that rule. What can I say? I’m a rebel. I always have been, so why change now? I tried the conventional “write everyday,” “first drafts suck,” “don’t get it right, get it written,” and frankly, those conventional ways don’t work for me. And perhaps that’s the point of this post. When it comes to writing, there is no ONE way of doing anything.

The Continuing Adventures of a Writer (and mom)

March 18, 2015 / / 0 Comments

I thought my initial goals were realistic. 1,000 words a day. No big. Totally doable. My work as a high school teacher is only part-time, so finding a way to write 1,000 words a day should be easy, right? I only have one child (currently), and she can’t even walk yet, so 1,000 words should be no problem, am I right? I’ve written 1,000 words in an hour before, so finding the time to do it over the course of eight hours should be easy-peasy, shouldn’t it?

In one word: No.

No, apparently I can’t have nice things. Apparently, there are days when I simply cannot get the time to sit down and crank out 1,000 words. Either the essays I have to grade are piling up, the yearbook pages have to be approved and submitted to the publisher (before our ever-approaching deadline), there’s school paperwork I need to file and complete, there’s food I need to make for the baby, there’s laundry to do, or cleaning to do, or I need to shop for the baby’s Easter dress, or we’re running out of food and I need to go to the grocery store, or… I do have an hour of peace when the Noodle finally takes a nap, but by the time I pee, make a cup of coffee, read what I wrote yesterday, start to get ideas for what to write today, and then start writing a few halting, awkward words, the baby is up again. On a GOOD day, I can manage maybe 400 or 500 words. On a middling day, I can hit 300. But on most days, I manage zero.

There’s too much life piling up around me to find that elusive creature known as Regular Writing Time. I struggle to write well when I’m writing in fits and starts throughout the day, sneaking in a word or two while the sweet little Noodle is occupied for five minutes by her Winnie the Pooh toy. But trying to set aside a nice, two-hour chunk of time is pretty much impossible.

I’ve read about moms who have three or more kids running around (all under 5 years old), and they somehow manage to feed their kids organic gourmet meals, play educational games with them all day (and never plop them in front of the television), and yet somehow still manage to make a living as working writers. I think these women are liars. There’s no way. I only have one child and I can barely manage it. I can’t imagine it gets any easier with more (and I do plan to have more).

What about this blog post? you ask. Didn’t I somehow magically find the time to write this blog post? Yes, yes I did. But I don’t really care about this blog post. It’s just a tossed-off rant that requires very little brain power to compose; it doesn’t have a complex structure or dialogue or characters or imagery or any of the other more difficult skills that need to be utilized when writing fiction. I can do a blog post like this in fifteen minutes, tops. And I can do it without thinking. So if the Noodle is clawing at my knee while I’m doing it, it’s no big deal.

But if I’m trying to write the next chapter of my novel and I need to actually THINK about what I’m doing, then the Noodle’s claws and boops and bips and bops are much more distracting. And I can’t write 1,000 words in 15 minutes.

What this all means is that stay-at-home moms who write have to scale back their expectations. At least this stay-at-home mom does. (Also, I technically work part-time, and it’s a job — teaching — that requires a lot of extra work at home, i.e.: grading.)

So there are moments in my life when “Write every day” is just not happening. It’s not because I’m not disciplined. It’s not because I don’t love to write. It’s not because I have writer’s block. It’s simply because there are a lot more needs that need to be addressed before my writing.

I have to admit, it’s disappointing. I wish I could just wake up and write for two hours before work and then the rest of my days can be spent goofing around and going to the library or the zoo with my baby (and occasionally cleaning the house). But since I already have to get up at 6 a.m. for work, getting up at 4 a.m. is an impossibility. Seriously. It is never going to happen.

So my expectations are being lowered. Instead of writing and publishing two books this year and writing the rough draft of a third, along with a pilot script for a T.V. show, maybe I’ll just write one book (and maybe the rough draft of another). And maybe I’ll just outline that pilot script (and write the actual script next year). Maybe I’ll just have to be slow and (slightly) steady.

It’s not how I planned but maybe there’s something cool in flying by the seat of my pants. I’ve decided to be more of a plotter when it comes to planning and writing my novel, but maybe when it comes to my writing life, I can be more of a pantser. I’ll write when I can, flying by the seat of my pants and hoping that, eventually, I’ll land.

The Rough Draft Is Done!

February 2, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Finished my Thirteen Treasures of Britain rough draft the other day. Whew!

Now comes the long march of revisions. I might just totally, utterly, and completely revamp my entire story. So that should be fun.

What’s weird is that I used to outline my stories in the past — lots of note cards, lots of outlines, etc. — and I found it made the process of actually writing to be a bit of a slog. I found that my inspiration kinda died if I did too much outlining and planning ahead of time.

So with Thirteen Treasures of Britain, I totally wrote by the seat of my pants (“pantsers” as they say in NaNo-realm). It was fun to write (until the end, where I had no idea how to finish the story in a non-lame way), but now I’m afraid what I have is a hodgepodge mess of a story that ends in a boring, predictable way. My endings always suck. But this one was particularly sucky because I didn’t have a plan going in.

Does this mean I really need to be a “planner”? Do I have to do a full outline beforehand? Do I need all kinds of character profiles and maps and background-y stuff?

It’s looking more and more like I do. And yet, I’m afraid that I’ll plan everything out and then be completely uninspired when I sit down to write. It’s happened to me before. Will it happen again?

Interestingly, when I was in college learning about screenwriting, it was pretty much hammered into our brains that we had to write treatments (basically, outlines in story-form), beat sheets, and scene summaries. And I never found these kinds of pre-writing tools to be soul-deadening or inspiration-crushing.

My plan for revising The Thirteen Treasures of Britain will include the following:

  • Rereading my rough draft and marking up sections (basic categories: keep it, toss it, needs work)
  • Creating a “BORG outline” (trademark: James Scott Bell in Plot & Structure) for a new version of the story
  • Seeing where I can combine material from my rough draft with my new story outline
  • Writing a second draft (using the new outline)

For now, I’m letting the draft settle and I’m working on pre-writing for an entirely different story (tentatively titled The Red Tower). I will return to the Thirteen Treasures of Britain rough draft in a week and go from there.

I’m kinda excited. Revision is one of my favorite parts of writing.

Ballantine Adult Fantasy and the Wonders of Cover Art

January 26, 2015 / / 0 Comments

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I love the vintage book cover art from the 1960s and 1970s. My husband and I have an entire box of the Penguin Books classic covers as postcards (and we’ve even framed some and hung them in the house). But I most especially love the science fiction and fantasy cover art from that time. Whenever I stumble onto an older edition of something, I get more excited for the cover art than for the book itself.

So I was delighted to read Charles de Lint’s book reviews in the latest edition of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. In his review of William Morris’s The Well at the World’s End, he mentions the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series, edited by Lin Carter. I’ll be honest and admit I don’t know much about the publishers of fantasy and science fiction. I know a handful of names that are involved: Tor, DAW, Del Rey, Ace. I even own a couple of Ballantine fantasy books (The Tolkien Reader and The Last Unicorn), but I never paid much attention to the publisher (until now).

Searching for more about the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series, I found reviews of the books and the history of the series, but most especially, I found the cover art. I spent my morning just gazing at the artwork. I love interesting cover art. Not just for books, but also music albums, comic books, magazines, anything with a cover. I should probably do another post just about how much influence the Beatles’ cover art had on my childhood. But suffice to say, I don’t need the latest self-publishing guide to tell me how important cover artwork is.

I have purchased books solely because of the cover art, and I’ve skipped over books solely because of the cover art (Case in point: I refuse to buy any other versions of the Chronicles of Narnia except for the ones with the original Pauline Baynes art, or the 1970 Macmillan/Collier versions, i.e.: the ones I stole from my brother to read when I was eight) (Another case in point: When I look through my daily Book Bub ads, I am put off by the cover art on almost every title; a book has to have an extremely strong description to get me to overlook the lame, garish, and often cookie-cutter covers).

The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series is my cover art crack. Without sounding too “get off my lawn!” about it, I wish that fantasy fiction still featured such surreal and whimsical art. Just looking at these covers has gotten my imagination going and given me ideas for my own fiction.

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The-Blue-Star

Lud-in-the-Mist-front-cover

I can see where this style of art is perhaps too quirky and too dated to appeal to contemporary readers, but I find it fascinating. At some point, I’m going to have to start looking for a cover artist for The Thirteen Treasures of Britain, and I’m not quite sure what style of cover I have in mind. I wish I could get art that harkens back to the BAF covers, but that’s probably not a very smart business decision.

In the meantime, I can still gaze longingly at these beauties.

So where is my finished rough draft?

January 10, 2015 / / 2 Comments

Yeah… not done yet. New deadline! January 13. (This is the nice part about being my own publisher…)

But…

I’m probably not gonna make that January 13 deadline either. It’s a busy time for me at work: Midterms. So that means I might have to reschedule this new deadline…

I am apparently the worst at meeting deadlines. The worst part of all is that I don’t feel like I’ve been goofing off (she said as she wrote this not-her-novel blog post). I’ve been doing work for my “real” job, taking care of my family, doing as much limited house cleaning as I can sneak in, eating. There haven’t been a lot of random Lord of the Rings marathons (okay, maybe one…), or binge watching Orange Is the New Black (which is what I was doing last year in January when we had an epic amount of snow/freeze days at my school) (I have been binge watching Comic Book Men, but that’s usually when I’m feeding my infant or playing with her on the floor, so it’s not like that’s interfering with my writing time).

I suppose I need to have more realistic goals. I have to face the fact that I’m not gonna be Johnny and Sean and write a zillion words this year. My original publishing plan for 2015 was to release three full-length novels plus a few short stories. I’m fearing this will not happen. I hate taking it slow; I want to get my stuff out there! But maybe the more realistic goal is to go at the pace my life allows. And my life right now does involve taking care of and raising a human being, so that’s kinda important.

2015: The year I try to live with more realistic goals.

New rough draft deadline: January 20

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