Beware the Crutch

Recently I saw a post on a writer’s forum giving a link to an online tool which allowed the self-published writer to quickly add up their sales figures on their Amazon reports. There were lots of positive replies on the usefulness of the aforementioned online tool, because it meant you no longer had to add the numbers up yourself.

Hang on a minute …?

You need an online tool to add up a string of whole numbers? While I’ve come across a lot of evidence to suggest a brain isn’t always a requirement in the world of self-publishing, in general I’ve found that mine is usually sufficient enough for this task, often with the help of the fingers on one hand, or occasionally both on a good month. And if you’re one of the lucky ones who sells in the kind of numbers that might take more than few seconds to easily calculate, then there’s always that trusty tool known as a calculator. Most computers have them, as, often, do desks, drawers and pockets.

The paragraph above might come across as being a little condescending, but be assured it was meant to be tongue in cheek. However, this online tool is a simple example of a writer’s crutch.

Of these, the self-publishing writer should beware.

I see lots of posts on forums by self-published authors wanting programs to help them do things. “How do I keep track of sales/chapters/characters?” Um … Excel? Or failing that a pen and a piece of paper?

I see a lot of writers talking about a program called Scrivener. I don’t know what that is, but apparently it’s a computer program that organizes the hell out of your novel. Personally I’m happy with an old version of Word and a simple Excel spreadsheet, but even that is a crutch. A computer is a crutch to make life easier for writers who used to write on a typewriter, which was in turn a crutch for a writer who used to use a pen, which was a crutch for carving something on a rock, itself a crutch for your mouth, which was a crutch for your heart, which is where stories truly come from … whatever, you get it.

Just to clarify, I’m not trying to belittle Scrivener or those who use it or any other specialist writing program. I know far better writers than me who swear by it and sooner or later, if it’s as awesome as I’ve heard, I’ll probably be using it myself. However, as a noob starting out on a writing career today who has already decided to start self-publishing as soon as heavenly possible (which is probably too soon) then you could do worse than working with a pen and a pad of paper. Many moons ago that’s what I did. You’ll connect with the words a whole lot better and when you start out that is the only thing that is important.

My point is that you should beware over-reliance on something that makes your job easier. When you’re starting out on the quest to write as well as you can, you shouldn’t concern yourself with how to make it look pretty, or how to organize it neatly. Right at the very, very beginning, you shouldn’t even worry about plot. You should concern yourself with the WORDS AND THE WORDS ONLY, because if your words are awesome all the rest will come together in time.

The biggest crutch I see self-publishers leaning on is the editor/proofreader. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use them because I strongly believe that you should – but knowing that an editor is waiting to correct your crappy grammar or your poor spelling is no excuse for not striving to get your book perfect before it is seen by anyone else. The old analogy that you can’t polish a turd is appropriate here – an editor might be able to round a turd into a more uniform shape so that it appears somewhat more like a mud pie … but it’s still a turd, and shame on you for sending it to them – for leaning on your crutch – in the first place. You should never have let it out of your sight in that condition.

I used to do proofreading on the side, but I gave up because people were sending me the kind of junk I would be embarrassed to allow off my computer and expecting me to fix it up into a quality book that people would want to pay money for. I molded a couple of mud pies, but that was the best I could do. Then, surprise, surprise, aforementioned turds later appear on Amazon with five-star reviews from friends and family and the evil beyond all evil, the paid-for review service. So it looks great, and it sounds great. But what has really happened is that turd has been allowed to get all the way to the reader before it’s been flagged as a turd, but by then it’s too late, your turd is in the hands of someone with the power to smash your sales into smithereens, simply by pointing out in a nicely worded one-star review what you should have realised long before you self-published it that what you have on your hands is nothing more than a turd. All those fake reviews are like a paper umbrella – it’ll protect you from the rain for a while, but sooner or later the rain is going to break through and then you’re going to get drenched. But whatever, it’s each writer’s personal choice. There is a school of thought that self-published writers can “grow up in public” as it were, improving their craft with the public as the ultimate judge. Each to their own, but as a shy, fragile kid who’d been pushed around a bit at school I know without a doubt that had I self-published those novels I wrote at 18 and 19 in the form they existed in then, I would have got deservedly hammered by reviewers, and that would not have been good for me. It would not have been good at all.

But, whatever. Each to their own. Personally I don’t enjoy getting punched in the face, either in real life or on the internet, not until I’ve developed a chin to take it.

It says a lot about a writer who leans on crutches too much. First and foremost a writer is an artist. After he (or she) has created something worth selling he then becomes a businessman. Review that phrase “worth selling”. This is the key. It is your responsibility to produce something worth selling. After you have done that it’s perfectly acceptable to get someone else to give it a shine and then put it into a nice packet ready for sale. But don’t cut corners or those corners will reappear sooner or later to bite you in the ass.

Beware the crutch. We all use them, but know that you’re using them and always strive, where possible, to do without them as much as you can. You’ll be a better writer for it.

That is all.

Chris Ward

April 17^th 2013

Submitting to Magazines - Why and How to do it

During my self-publishing adventures I’ve come across a lot of people who are trying to get a slice of the ebook pie through publishing only novellas and short stories. While these can be just as difficult to write, the shorter form is often seen as being less of a time investment than full novels, simultaneously giving the author more visibility. They are also popular with people who don’t have the time to write regularly or for long periods, or who don’t enjoy spending two years on each novel.

A lot of people I’ve come across are publishing short stories and novellas on Amazon at a furious pace, but is it the only option? For every Wool (which was originally a novella) there are thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of short pieces selling a handful of copies a month or less.

Disillusioned? Maybe, but unlike novels, which are notoriously hard to sell, short fiction can be a lot easier to market, and although you might not become a superstar, there are still gains to be made.

Prior to self-publishing, I spent fourteen years submitting and occasionally selling stories to magazines. Just to prove it, here are a few of my publications –

The Substitute in Prenumbra Sports and Games Edition

Ms Ito’s Bird in Weird Tales 352

Ovid’s Legacy in Flagship (the pic on the front is from my story!)

Going Underground in Noctober 

Feeding the Gulls in Written Word (pretty salty about this one because I never got paid, but it was like $15, so whatever)

 My claim to fame!

Self-publishing a short story can occasionally be profitable, but more often than not it’ll sit there in cyberspace doing nothing. Also, you can never be quite sure whether it’ll take off or not. So much depends on the title and cover. For example, after my rights returned to me from Weird Tales (after a year, I think, although magazines will buy various rights from 6 months to 2 years), I published Ms Ito’s Bird on Amazon as an individual short story. In roughly ten months it’s sold … wait for it … ONE copy.

 

There it is about halfway down ... see it? And the third picture down

is from my story! :-)

When I sold it to Weird Tales I made roughly $160. At the time that was more than half of my entire revenue from eight years of trying to sell short stories. And that was just the money - nothing else I have ever achieved in writing EVER has given me the confidence in my work that that sale did. Conan the Barbarian was serialized in that magazine. Getting in Weird Tales is big time.

Getting back to the cold hard cash line, there’s money to be made from selling short stories if you’re good, but here’s a few common pitfalls to avoid.

Noob Mistake #1 – Posting your story publicly and then expecting to sell it later

I see a lot of authors posting works in progress on their blogs, Facebook pages, Goodreads, forums, etc. If you ever have plans of selling that story to a magazine, this is a really bad idea. You can get away with it on a private forum or in a crit circle that requires membership to access, but anywhere it’s available publicly through a search engine it counts as being published and therefore you’re relinquishing your first world publication rights, which is what magazines will buy. Pull it down before you submit it and make sure it's got no cyber footprint. If it can still be available online it is effectively worthless. You might be able to get $5 here or there as a reprint, but any chance of selling it to Fantasy & Science Fiction for $600 is gone right away.

And trust me, the big magazines will check. Google is a powerful thing. And they won’t just search by title (otherwise you could just change it) but by chunks of text.

Noob Mistake #2 – Ignoring the guidelines

“Send us clean sci-fi with no sex or violence towards animals.” So, you send them a horror involving a serial killer who likes to have sex with elephants, just in case they want to make an exception … nope. Here comes another rejection letter. Guidelines are there for a reason. Perhaps if you’re Stephen King you could get away with it, but otherwise forget it. Trust me on this, I’ve broken them all and regretted it. The exact same goes for deadlines. If a magazine gives you a date to submit by, or says on its guidelines page that its currently closed to submissions, then it means it. Don’t waste your time by submitting anyway.

Noob Mistake #3 – Submitting to more than one magazine at once

Check in the guidelines to see if a magazine is okay with “simultaneous submissions”. This means they’re happy for you to submit elsewhere at the same time. If they don’t like this (and the guidelines will say), then don’t do it anyway. Nothing could be more awkward than having two magazines accept your story and you having to tell one of them you’ve changed your mind because its been accepted elsewhere. This kind of thing doesn’t make you any friends. Particularly at the top magazines, a lot of the editors generally tend to know each other. Of course, if a magazine is okay with sim-subs, then go for it. Be courteous though and notify the other magazines if one accepts you.

Noob Mistake #4 – Responding to Rejections

Don’t do it. Ever. Whether it’s a form letter, an “I’d rather kill myself than read any more of your crap” type letter or a “wow this was awesome but not quite awesome enough” type, just don’t respond. The editor really doesn’t care what you think. Nine times out of ten you’ll get a form rejection, but if you get comments then read them, apply them if necessary, and move on. Don’t bother to thank the editor unless they write like a page of notes (unlikely). If they gave you comments then they probably gave them to twenty other writers, and if they have to open twenty “thanks for your comments, love, random unknown” emails every day they’ll quickly stop writing them and start sending form rejections instead.

If you get an acceptance, however, then of course you should respond.

Where to submit?

You could search in Google or Yahoo, but its far easier to just use a listing site. For the most part I write speculative fiction (fantasy/horror/sci-fi) so my primary resource is Ralan. Another good once, which includes mainstream magazines, is Duotrope Digest (although I notice you now how to pay a subscription - it was free back when I was using it). There might be others, but these are pretty much the only two I used.

Now, it’s just a matter of opinion, but for anyone planning a career in writing I personally think it’s a waste of time to submit to magazines offering only exposure/token or minimal pay, basically anything less than 3c/word. I spent years submitting to and being published by tiny little magazines, and I used to get really excited, even though only six people were every going to read it, the editor, me, and the four other writers included in the same issue. I had this grand idea that I would sell novels if I only got enough exposure in small press magazines.

There are a number of flaws in this plan:

1.      No one reads small press magazines except the editor, the included writers and (if you’re lucky) your family and friends.

2.      They’re not very prestigious.

3.      Most of them are run by other unknown writers so their judgment on what is good is negligible at best.

4.      They tend to fold/disappear without warning, sometimes shutting down the website completely, so that there’s no record of you ever having been published there.

5.      They don’t always pay you or send contributors copies, regardless of what they might promise. In short, they're incredibly unreliable.

Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. Some small press magazines are well run, always respond personally and actually pay you. They're very much in the minority though, in my experience.

However getting into a pro/semi-pro magazine is a different. For starters, the money is actually decent if you’re prolific and sell frequently. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction pays 6 – 9c/word. On a 5000 word story that’s $450, which would pay my rent for a month, and they accept stories up to 25,000 words. At 5c/word that's $1250, also known as decent pay. Plus, people actually read big magazines and they have prestige. The year I was in Weird Tales it won a Hugo Award for best semi-pro magazine. In the genre fiction world that’s a big deal. I wasn’t even on the cover of the magazine I was published in but Ann Vandermeer, the editor at the time, sent me a photo of the trophy and a note of thanks for being in the magazine. That was almost as awesome as being published in it.

Getting in a small press magazine might count as a “publishing credit”, and for years I collected them with pride, but getting in a major magazine can make you famous.

How likely is it that you’ll be accepted?

That depends on how good you are and how well your fiction fits with what the editor wants. You need to write well. If you suck, you probably won’t sell anything, which is why I’d suggest only submitting your best stuff and keeping the rest for self-published anthologies, but to be honest, if you suck you won't sell anything if you self-publish either and would be better off spending your time practicing (see my previous post about how to sell ebooks). Also, with the big magazines they’re trying to make money. If you’re a bestselling writer they’re far more likely to accept you than if you’re an unknown. However, they all frequently publish new writers because part of what they’re about is finding new talent, but your work needs to be outstanding. For that reason it also helps to keep it shorter. If you’re an unknown its way easier to sell something of 2000 words than something of 10,000, because they can slot you neatly into the back third of the magazine while saving the bulk for big name writers. In general I keep my stories in the 2000 to 6000 range. In general, though, even if you’re good, expect a lot of rejection. My average overall was about 10 rejections per acceptance, but that was for small presses. For major magazines it was more like 150-1. Those odds might not be for everyone, you have to make the decision based on how good you think your stories are.

Also, it’s worth remembering that everything the magazine selects is the editor’s personal choice. You might have written an outstanding story but it wasn’t quite what the editor wanted, so you get a form rejection. Don’t give up. Have confidence in your work and submit it somewhere else.

Is submitting to magazines a good idea for you?

That depends on what kind of person you are. For starters, you need to patient. While some magazines will get back to you within a couple of days, others will take months. Even now I get the odd rejection letter/email show up and it’s been more than a year since I submitted anything. And even if it is accepted, it might be a year before it's published. That's just the way the industry works; its very different to being published by a traditional publisher. In general, the bigger the magazine the longer you'll wait for publication. However, the bigger the magazine, the less likely they'll fold suddenly. I had no less than three pro sales never show up because the magazine - usually some ambitious small press - folded before the first issue ever reached print. THAT is frustrating ...

Also, be aware of the costs. While most magazines now allow email submissions, a few of the big ones still require paper copies. This can get expensive if you submit a lot, so make sure you think you’ve got a real chance before doing it.

It helps if you have a lot of stories. Waiting on one story can be frustrating. At one point I had over 40 stories out for submission at the same time so they were all coming and going. Keep all the info in a spreadsheet. Unless a magazine says otherwise, give them about six months. If they don’t get back to you, check they received your submission and also check they haven’t folded. This was something I found frustrating with the small presses – I’d wait several months for a response, go to the website and find the magazine had shut down. Sometimes they don’t even say why, they just go inactive. This is why Ralan is such a good site – it regularly checks for inactivity and a site that isn’t responding is moved to the Dead Markets page.

So, to summarize (because I’ve prattled on for almost 2000 words on this …!), if you’re consistently producing high quality short stories you could consider it as an option. Be aware of what it takes, though. You’ll go through a lot of frustration, but there is money to be made and prestige to be gained if you’re successful. And if you do sell something, you'll get your rights back within a year or so anyway so you can still self-publish it in the future.

As always, comments/questions are welcome.

Chris Ward

April 5^th 2013

Why your book isn't selling OR How to improve your ebook sales

Today I read this rather entertaining article about some guy whose book didn’t sell, and I had to chuckle to myself. As an indie writer I come into contact with A LOT of other indie writers (we have to huddle together for warmth in the cold, cold climes of indie publishing). Some of them are super successful pros and others are journeymen picking up a few sales here and there. I'm very much in the latter category but I've seen sales gains every month since December and I sold exactly eleven times more books in March 2013 compared to March 2012 so I'm moving (slowly slowly slowly ...) in the right direction.

One thing about sales is that you can be never quite sure if you’ll get any or not. Some genres sell better than others, while some writers are incredibly prolific and literally saturate their corner of the market. However, for many people, writing a good book is the easy part. Actually selling the thing is remarkably hard and you might have no idea why.

One thing that will give you a push in the right direction is having a positive attitude. I tend to steer away from whingers like the guy in the article above, who seem to think they have a God-given right to sell thousands of copies. You might get lucky, but we’re talking 1/100,000 lucky. Otherwise you’re going to have to work for every sale you get and hope that they become more organic as your name and backlist grows.

So I’ll tell you this now:

DO NOT whine about not getting any sales. Unless you're famous enough to whine in large internet magazines like the guy in the article above, you will achieve nothing other than to make hardworking writers hate you. Speculating about why you don't make more sales is fine, that's what I do. :-) But don't start jumping up and down and screaming "I'M A FAILURE!", at least not in public. It's counterproductive. Be proactive instead.

If your book isn’t selling you can guarantee it’s for one of three reasons -

              1. It sucks

              2. It looks like it sucks

              3. No one knows it exists

Be honest with yourself. If your book falls under #1, sort it out. I’m sorry to say this, but if you regularly struggle to write a page of text which contains no spelling or grammar errors then you probably shouldn’t be publishing. I don’t mean that harshly, because I couldn't care less whether you publish your error-strewn rubbish with your name spelled wrong on the cover or not. It's nothing to do with me. I'm saying it for your own benefit. If your writing is littered with mistakes then sooner or later you’ll get canned by reviewers. It hurts. I think my work is awesome yet I’ve been one-stared, and it’s painful. I have confidence in the quality of my work, but if deep down I knew the review was justified it would hurt even more.

Here's a little allegorical story about becoming an indie writer.

Doctor A and Doctor B both went off to medical school. Doctor A was a good student, worked hard and stayed for the full five years. Doctor B got bored of studying after two years and thought he was good enough already. He went out and paid a bit of money to get a nice coat, he bought some pretty paintings for the inside of his surgery, and he put a nice window display on the front. Lastly he set his prices nice and cheap to get customers in through the door.

For a while he was doing okay. He saw a lot of clients and made a bit of money, but after a while he realised  no one ever came back. A few weeks later he saw a bad review of his practice in the local newspaper, because it seemed that once people had got past the glossy facade they realised he wasn't a very good doctor at all, and gradually his business began to suffer.

Doctor A, on the other hand, studied hard until he was fully qualified. At first, when he set up his practice, he found patients were hard to come by, but over time the same ones returned again and again, and they recommended him to their friends who also showed up to hand over their cash for his wonderful medicines. Pretty soon he was the most well-respected (and richest) doctor in the land.

The point of my little story is that if you cut the corners you'll end up getting bitten on the ass. Sure, you can pay for nice covers, editing, proofreading, formatting, advertising ... but if your intrinsic writing skill is not very high and your stories suck, sooner or later these problems will come back to haunt you.

In short, it’s best to be properly armed before going into battle. Thankfully there are these wonderful things called grammar books and this equally wonderful thing called practice. These will help you out if you put enough time into them. There are no short cuts. On forums and websites I regularly see statements such as “I have my own style” or “(insert name of famous writer) doesn’t use correct grammar”. In the first case, 99 times out of 100 it’s a case of you don’t have ANY style (except a bad one), and in the second, they’re allowed to. Famous writers are famous for many reasons, but one is that they’re a master of their art. And when you’re a master of something you can pretty much do what you like. Your job as the noob indie is to become a master. You can’t break the rules until you know what the rules are. If you do, it shows. Trust me.

If your problem is #2, this is a far easier fix. And the easiest way to do it is to pay someone. There are covers available everywhere, from custom made ones to Photoshopped ones to cheap premade ones. Can you believe that my very first cover was a screen print from Word which I used Paint to erase the ruler marks from? No, nor can I. So, if looks like I’m getting up on my high horse and talking down to people just starting out, be assured that I’m not. I’m speaking as someone who learned the hard way, and by listening to my advice you can save yourself a lot of hardship and a whole lot of time.

If you’re good with computers you can do it yourself, using Photoshop or stock images. I buy the images for my short stories from a site called www.pond5.com for about $20 and then play around with them with Picasa on my iMac. They’re not perfect, but they look nice enough and they fit into my budget. For my novels I use Su at Novel Prevue. If you have a budget of several hundred dollars, go to Kindleboards and browse the covers in the profiles in the Writer's Cafe. There are dozens of designers to choose from.

If your problem is #3, then you have to be proactive about ways to find extra visibility.

You might not be a particularly outgoing person, but you’re going to need a social media presence.

Off the top of my head you have -

Facebook

Twitter

Goodreads

Shelfari

LibraryThing

Your own blog/website

And then there’s the mighty ‘Zon of course. Amazon’s KDP Select might not be as lucrative as it once was but those five free days a quarter are still going to get you plenty of exposure if you get picked up by sites such as

Ereader News Today (free to submit to, paid bargain book listings)

Pixel of Ink (free to sub, hard to get on!)

Free Kindle Books and Tips (free to sub, paid bargain book listings)

Freebooksy (free to sub, paid advertising)

Free Book Dude (free to sub)

Bookbub (expensive but the undisputed king)

Bookblast (cheap but still growing)

and lots more (Google is your friend)

Most of the above can be accessed directly through Author Marketing Club. Some of them will require a certain number of reviews. If you don’t have any, please don’t review your own books or get someone you know to give you arbitrary five star reviews. Don’t pay for them either. Again, it might seem easy in the short term but you’ll suffer for it eventually.  Instead, put your nose to the grindstone and submit to a bunch of blogs at The Indie Book Reviewer List or join the Making Connections group on Goodreads. Don’t offer to review swap with other writers of dubious quality. Remember those teeth marks on your ass? You'll end up with gangrene and you really will be over as a writer if your ass has to be amputated (unless you can afford one of these ;-) ).

All of the above mentioned sites also do advertising and bargain book listings, which are your second best friend. Some of them are free and others are paid. You have to decide what’s in your budget. “But I have no money!” I hear you cry. Um, you can afford your computer with a net connection, your iPhone, your car, your beers on a Friday night … what you actually mean is that you’re afraid of reallocating some of your funds from a known/accepted expense towards a speculative/unknown one. As with producing your book, you will have to speculate to accumulate, it’s a given. Are you prepared to sacrifice just a little bit - say one night out a week - to chase your dream? It's your choice …

You don’t have to drop thousands of dollars, but you can guarantee you will have to pay something. I’ve cut a lot of corners in my time but these days I pay for advertising, pay for proofreading, pay for covers, etc. I make a little money but probably 90% goes back into my “business”, because I’m building for the future. If your book isn’t selling then you need to invest in it too.

Another thing you can do is increase your available formats. For paperbacks you have

Createspace

Lulu

Lightning Source

and others

while for audio books you have

ACX / audible.com

Work on having as many formats available as possible. My novels are available in both ebook and paperback formats and I’ll be trying to sort out some audiobooks later this year. ACX isn’t currently available to non-US authors so we have to go via subsidiaries. I’m looking into it.

Another thing you can do, particularly if you don't like using Select, is to expand your markets. You can be distributed by 

Smashwords

Draft2Digital

or if you're in the US you can go it alone on sites like

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Diesel

Apple iStore (though you need a Mac to upload)

Google Play

It all comes down to being proactive and getting off your badly bitten ass. You WILL have to put the time in, and you will probably have to put money into it as well. There's no other way around it.

And before I forget, perhaps the most important thing of all - WRITE MORE BOOKS. Nothing sells a book like another good book. You might get lucky with one book, but you probably won't.

Remember, don't be a whiner, it's lame. Help yourself, and the general public will help you, by showering you in lots of wonderful cash.

Good luck!

Chris Ward

2nd April 2013

Goals, goals, goals ... OR ... How to motivate yourself

I generally write this blog for readers of my books (and anyone else who wants to follow the madness) but I've recently had a few indie authors get in touch with me and one thing I've found that many people have in common when they start out is issues with movitivation.

Just as a disclaimer - I'm a lazy bastard. Doing something hardcore like getting up at 5 a.m. in mid-winter to write for two hours before work just isn't going to happen. In general I'd much rather surf Facebook or mess around on YouTube than be productive. I'd been scrapping around for years writing a book here and a book there without ever really getting anywhere.

On the 24th of January 2012, I entered the world of self-publishing for the first time with a short story called Forever My Baby. I was five days shy of my 33rd birthday, and after fifteen years of collecting rejection slips from agents and publishers I decided to give it a crack on my own.

I had seven novels and roughly eighty short stories already written, in various states of repair. I knew that I couldn't just rely on the backlist, though, I would need new material.

When I first pressed that self-publish button I was hellbent on eventually making writing my career. I knew I had the talent - I'd sold thirty odd short stories to magazines, two of them professionally, and Tube Riders came within a whisker of getting an agent - but whether I would have the dedication and the business sense to get anywhere on my own was another thing entirely.

Prior to self-publishing, my writing motivation was at an all time low. In 2011, for example, I wrote perhaps 20,000 words. That's nothing.

When I first started self-publishing, I concentrated on getting out the backlist, a few short stories, a collection, and then Tube Riders in March. The rest of the time I spent doing things like playing around on Twitter and emailing bloggers. In June I decided I needed new material.

Since June 20th last year I've written 325,000 words. It would probably be a lot more but for the last month I've done nothing but editing.

That's the equivalent of three full novels, or roughly a novel every three months. There are guys I know writing a novel a month but those are God-like levels. Three to four novels a year is a pretty solid output for an average mortal like me.

How?

It's an easy answer - goals.

I have dozens of little goals, and each one of them is important, but I don't want to talk about me, I want to talk about what you - the starting out writer - can do to motivate yourself.

The first and foremost rule of setting goals is to keep them attainable. Set yourself stupidly difficult goals and you'll spend all your time frustrated.

As example of a bad goal - last November I was feeling all confident so I took on NaNoWriMo. I took it a step further - I tried to write a 50,000 novel from scratch while carrying on with all my other stuff.

It was a bridge too far.

I started out okay, but a week in my computer broke. I lost 10,000 words, most of them on my NaNo. I started out again, but it just wasn't to be - I had another computer crash and lost another 5000. You guessed it - that was my NaNo. I tried a third time but my motivation was done and I quit. And all the while I was wasting time trying to force myself to rewrite a novel that I was force-writing in the first place, I lost ground on all my other stuff.

Big mistake.

Keep your goals simple.

Wordcounts

Wordcounts are the easy one. If you struggle to write 1000 words a day but can quite easily get 600 - 700, set your goal at 500. That way, you'll easily attain it and you'll feel good about yourself. If you set your goal at 1500 and you only make 1200, even though you've actually achieved more, you'll feel like you haven't.

Make a big spreadsheet, and every time you start a new work in progress, put it in and keep a daily tally of the wordcount. Don't limit it to daily, either - have monthly and yearly targets plus targets for each work. If you're like me and usually have five or six different WIPs on the go all at the same time, you'll find that you'll always be within 100 - 200 words of one target or another. Keep pushing to get that extra 100 - 200 words down and then you'll see another little target to aim for. I can easily get 2000 words down by aiming for these little targets.

One other little thing that I cannot say often enough - if you can't touch type, LEARN. It's the one single most useful skill I have. People tell me my writing has really good rhythm - that's because I can type it almost as quickly as I think it. If you're plodding away with two fingers doing ten words a minute - get a program off the internet or take a course. You won't regret it. It takes time to learn - after doing a course in my final year of school - I spent six months with a tea towel draped over my hands while forcing myself to use the correct fingers for each key. It was brutally frustrating, but so, so worth it. So, one more time LEARN TO TOUCH TYPE. Don't um and ah, and mutter about how difficult it is when you start out ... JUST DO IT. Trust me on this ...

Publications

Once you've started publishing, set publication goals. Remember to keep them realistic. For example, in 2012 I published 21 items - two novels, one short story collection, two novellas, one novel split into three and a bunch of short stories. My aim for the end of 2013 is to hit 40. I just published item number 25 and I have nos 26, 27, 28 and 29 in the can and ready to go. It'll be a push but with a handful of short stories I should make it. My target for 2014 will probably be 50 - by the end of next year I'll have a lot less backlog and will be relying mostly on new material. Remember - as a self-published author you're not just relying on only new material - you can bump up your publication count by creating packages or bundles. For example, if you have ten short stories, there's no reason why you can't have two collections of five, an omnibus of ten, and then each story individually, all at different prices. Remember, this is business. I don't agree with ripping people off but what you're doing is offering purchasing options while increasing your visibility. Buyers choose whether they want to buy something. As long as your description accurately matches what they're buying, you're not doing anything wrong.

My goals are pretty high but I consider them attainable. Remember to set your own - for example a short story every two months, or a novel every six months, or one novel and two short stories a year. Keep your targets within what you are confident you can achieve.

Marketing Goals

You can pick and choose what these are, depending on your preferred forms of marketing. If you use Facebook a lot, then you can aim at building up your number of likes. I'm currently aiming for 500, mostly by using Facebook ads to target possible readers and then engaging the people that join up as much as possible to make them stay ... for a comprehensive breakdown on how to use Facebook for marketing, study and memorise every word of this excellent post by a good writing buddy of mine, John Daulton. That is the blueprint to using Facebook as an author.

Twitter, also is another one that authors often use. I'm not a big fan, but setting follower goals or tweet goals can be useful. Personally I've had little success through Twitter, mainly because I hate it, but some people swear by it.

Goodreads is my favorite place on the net for marketing. There are tons of things you can do there - set up groups, run events, giveaways, all sorts. One stat I keep an eye on and try to improve is how many users have my books on their to-read shelves. You can get on loads of these by doing paperback giveaways. My target for 2013 is 2000 unique users. Currently it's 1082, but I should make it if I do perhaps one giveaway - of a single book at a time - every two months. This is one of those things that you won't see an immediate sales bump for, but it's part of visibility and its that whole "speculate to accumulate" thing. I currently put about 80% of what I earn into marketing and book stuff - covers, formatting, editing, proofreading.

When you start out, it's best to concentrate most on writing rather than marketing. This post by the very successful thriller writer Robert J. Crane basically sums up why. In short, if you write a book that someone likes, you want them to have a bunch of others to choose from. It's possible to blow up and be a bestseller with one book, but it's rare. You're far more likely to have steady success across ten books.

Sales Targets

My personal favorite - this is where you get the cash. In theory ... Again, be realistic. If you have just one short story out you might be lucky to make a sale a month. I've been there. I have shorts out now that haven't sold a single copy in six months.

As always, keep them reasonable. Of course, when I published Tube Riders last March, I was hoping to have sold 10,000 copies by the end of the year. It didn't happen - but that doesn't mean it won't sell 10,000 this year, or next year. However, putting your money on a sudden boom like this is unrealistic. They happen, but not often. It's far better to look at your overall trends and aim for a gradual improvement as you put your books out.  By August or September last year my target was a sale a day - and it was a struggle, but they gradually came (mostly from hammering Amazon free promos). This year my aim is 100 sales/month. I've managed it four months in a row, mostly through endless free and bargain book promos, some of which are costing me money. Again, speculate to accumulate. If you're a real writer you're in this for the long haul - building up repeat customers over time is of paramount importance.

Long Term Goals

So, what do you want from all this? Do you want to be a pro, or do you just want to make a bit of cash for a year or two? It's all up to you, of course, but again here's another opportunity to set targets.

Mine, of course, are huge. I started this just shy of my 33rd birthday and my goal is to be doing this for a living by the time I'm 40. Seven years. In the interim, my three year goal is to be making $500 a month. I'm currently making about $200, although most of that is going back into the business. I'm not getting rich yet. Still, got to start somewhere ...

As always, look at what you think you can achieve, and keep your goals realistic. I know writers who've been able to quit their day jobs within six months, but out of half a million or so self-published writers that really is like being struck by lightning. It might happen, but it probably won't, so plan according to what you think is attainable.

Well, my hands are getting tired from typing all this, and I apologise for not being one of those bloggers who breaks up blocks of endless text with cute pictures - I could put some book covers in but I think you've seen all those already ... I hope some of you out there find this useful. Feel free to add any comments or link to this blog anywhere you like and if I think of any more information to add I'll update the blog as I get to it. Most of it is pretty basic stuff but you're building your career from the ground up after all ...

Chris Ward
March 23rd 2013

Rewriting a Sentence - a few tips

Here’s a little writing clinic today, on the art of rewriting a sentence.

Writing is, of course, not just about what you say, but how you say it. Here I’ll give you a few examples of how you can rewrite a sentence (sometimes into more than one sentence ...). This is not, of course, to say how one is better than the other, because there will be a time and a place for most sentences.

As a base let’s try this one –

Vincent ran quickly down the street away from the men who were running after him.

It’s not a bad sentence, but it’s a little boring and doesn’t say much despite using quite a lot of words. We can tighten it with some sharper vocabulary. In general, where an adverb is used – “quickly” in this case – a stronger verb exists that implies the same meaning. Sprinted, bolted, dashed, hurried, rushed, fled . . . all of these are better alternatives to “ran quickly”, which by its vey nature does not express the meaning of the words it uses.

Also, look out for phrasal verbs that can be tightened or replaced by a single word verb. Of course, English originates from many sources, and with Romance languages being more lyrical it makes sense to use a verb that came from one instead of a clunkier phrasal verb. In this case “run after” can be replaced by a word such as “pursued”, “followed” or “chased”.

Consider –

Vincent sprinted down the street away from the men who were chasing him.

Or

Vincent fled down the street with his pursuers following him.

Better. We can also omit details we already know. For example, if we don’t care about the street, or if we already know where Vincent is, we can cull the street entirely.

Vincent fled from his pursuers.

Simple, but not very dramatic.

It’s often interesting to add detail rather than take it away. What you’re doing is adding colour to a scene. Just make sure that colour isn’t in the form of –ly adverbs.

Vincent bolted, his feet clattering over the cracked asphalt. Behind him, the men gave chase, their shouts of anger shattering the still of the night.

Interesting, if a bit long winded, and the clatter/shatter thing is borderline weird because of the rhyme. It sounds nice to write but can annoy readers. However, you can sort that out with a Thesaurus.

When trying to spice up a sentence beware of clichés –

Vincent fled with his pursuers in hot pursuit.

“Hot pursuit” is a cliché (in fact, “spice up” might be one too! I’ll have to check…). These are expressions that are so common as to be eye-rollingly annoying. In short, they’re a sign of lazy writing, of relying on tried and tested phrases, so you should try to cut them out. Search Google for lists of them. (here's one) You’d be surprised how many there are. One that got into Tube Riders was “all hell broke loose”. I liked it, but it had to die …

Another thing that a lot of newbie writers forget about is their senses. Remember, real life isn’t just what you see, but what you hear, taste, smell and touch. Use them. Again, they add colour.

Vincent tasted blood on his tongue as his boots echoed off the crumbling asphalt. Behind him, the shouts of his pursuers rang in the air as they hunted him. He grimaced, remembering the coarseness of their rough hands as they held him underwater, the stench of week-old sweat, the salty taste of the cold liquid as it forced its way down his cracked and bleeding throat.

Okay, so I’ve gone totally over the top there and one one sentence has become three, but you get my drift. You don’t have to force senses into every sentence, but just remember they exist. When describing something always keep them in mind, just like you would in real life. What you want is for your fiction to jump off the page, and remembering your senses will certainly help.

So far we’ve focused on Vincent, but of course there are loads of ways we could rearrange this sentence.

You could focus on the people chasing him –

They were gaining on him, Vincent knew, as he sprinted down the street.

Or on outside details –

The howling wind ripping through the trees screamed at Vincent to hurry. The men were gaining.

You could even consider what Vincent is thinking –

The wind howled down the dark street. At the far end, a group of shadows appeared beneath a solitary streetlight. Here they come. They’re gaining. I’m dead this time. Taking what he hoped wouldn’t be his last breath, Vincent turned and ran.

(use italics if possible to indicate thought. Some people use speech marks which is kind of silly since speech marks are used for speech, while some people don’t do anything, which means the thoughts can sometimes blend into the rest of the narrative.)

And one last thing, as I’m going on far long than I originally intended with this, remember the lengths of your sentences. Depending on your genre, short sentences could be better.

Vincent looked up. The wind howled. There, beneath the streetlights: a man. Heart pounding, Vincent turned. And ran.

Or long ones –

The howling wind tried to mask the sound of pounding feet over the cracked and broken asphalt, disguise the shouts of the men as they raced like a black tide towards where Vincent, his heart pounding, his throat and lungs raw from the torture, turned on shaking legs and began, one fragile step after another, an attempt to escape.

Or something like that …

Okay, I’ve gone on far longer than I intended to with this one, but I hope some of you find this useful. Remember, there are always more than one way to describe something. If your writing feels flat (or worse, other people tell you it’s flat) think about some of these ideas and see if you can’t, um, spice things up a little bit.

Good luck and happy writing.

CW

30^th Jan 2012