Resist the Devil: With the help of some very talented relatives (yeah, I'm that lucky) I sent the novel through another proofread and updated the cover, then expanded its distribution to all the ereader stores (Nook, iBooks, etc.) and made it available in print as well.
Editing: I continue editing nonfiction articles, mostly web content, but I'm also proofreading a novel. I think that must be the ultimate literary nerd test: I love proofreading novels! I think it's because I tend to proofread when I read, anyway, and the mistakes irritate me if I can't do anything about them.
The Claw and the Eye: After the recent work on Resist, I decided my book of short stories could use the spa treatment, too. At this point it's a matter of looking it over and deciding what needs to be done.
An Analysis of the Cardassian Language: I'm still writing the second draft, slowly. I love this book - love the characters, love the feel of the story, love to write it. And I think, in some illogical way, that makes me feel like I have to get everything else done first, before I can work on it. No dessert until your plate is clean. So I've been naughty and not been writing consistently.
You did the cover for Canterbury Tales yourself. It’s very impressive, a rarity for authors. Simple and yet instantly recognizable. Is there a difference, for you, between writing and creating visual art?
Thank you for saying so. I am so critical of my own work and it's almost impossible to judge yourself. I think there is link between all of the creative arts. music, painting and writing and it's aesthetics. It's such a difficult concept to grasp because it's entirely subjective. Two people might agree that something looks beautiful but ten others might not. Who is right? I know when I've done something that looks right image wise, but I can't explain how. I just look at it and say to myself "yes, that's right." When someone else agrees that's very pleasing. I only wish it were that easy with writing, I am never quite sure whether that's good or not. There's a lot less certainty.
I think I must have a visual sort of mind, I tend to visualize everything in the story before I ever write it down. The writing part is the last part, like the events have happened and the words are just the 'reporting' of those events. I did a two year course in visual communications about six years ago and, even though I can't draw that well and have never seriously considered working in the industry professionally, I learned how to present things professionally. How to 'sell' yourself and take a professional attitude to manage deadlines and such. It seems like something so simple now, but before going to college I would start projects and never finish them, or never plan them out to how I would complete them. I'm a lot more workman-like about my writing as a result of that and it's certainly come in very handy to know how to do typesetting and produce stuff for print and all that.
The other great thing I learned at college was to be experimental. You have to do something which will stand out. Everyone has access to Photoshop and computer imaging software these days but they are just tools. There's a great temptation to let the computer do all the work but then you'll simply end up with something which looks exactly like everyone else's.
At college, they would encourage us to go out and photograph 'textures' or to collect unusual objects, or do something else totally random. Then we'd have to incorporate these into our work. It made us think differently and come at things from another direction. I have certainly tried to apply this ethos to my writing.
Like the story I'm working on at the moment, which has the plot line of 'discovery'. The main character discovers something which ends up changing his life and leading him in turn to discover something fundamental about himself. I took the word 'discovery' as a theme and 'discovery' wrote the first draft instead of carefully outlining it like I normally would. The result was a different story to the one I would have written if I'd planned it, probably. I don't actually know this for certain of course. I would be inclined to say I learned 'to think outside of the box' if that phrase wasn't so hideously overused.
Describe your writing process? How often do you write and how long per session?
I write do a lot of my writing at work, in the truck or sitting in the driver's waiting room. I can easily clock up three or four hours of sitting-around-time a night. Having said that, I do have an iPad and waste a huge amount of that time on twitter, or watching TV shows and movies.
I recently set up a very convoluted system for making myself write, which involved writing a text adventure game. Check my blog for more details. It's completely crazy, and I know it's crazy, but it seems to be working. It goes back to what I said about being experimental. Nobody in their right mind would waste time creating a text adventure game to help them write a novel, but doing the obvious and the expected is only a sure route to creating something obvious and expected.
The first four tales took over four years to write, but it allowed me to develop a kind of production line system where I start out with a concept, themes and a plot then go on through drafts on to a final version.
So to begin with I draw up (with coloured lines and everything) an outline for each main character. If you've seen that video of Kurt Vonnegut explaining Cinderella and other classic tales, you'll get the idea. That outline forms the basis for the first draft, which is a really free-flowing exploration of all the ideas I've had for the story. I don't hold anything back, I just chuck everything in. Usually the story has been gestating for months and rolling around inside my head. I like it best when the first draft spills onto the screen in a couple of weeks.
Sorting out the mess of the first draft is the task of the second draft, which is where I try and figure out where the scenes are, and each scene has to advance the plot. This is vital with a short story where space is at a premium, but it also keeps the story moving along and I like to switch up locations a lot too, have contrasts between scenes so the mood changes and the reader gets a sense of following the character through their journey.
The third draft is where I edit down, make things clearer, try to cut out scenes which aren't necessary or merge scenes. It's great when you can double up things too, like having dialogue which doesn't just explain the plot, but also describes a character and maybe foreshadows or sets something up for later. The third draft really has to get the story ready for publication, with line-editing to cut down the word count as much as possible. Someone once told me to 'imagine the editor is charging you for each word'.
Then there's the final draft, where I do the last bit of proof-reading and checking for overused words, like 'just' or 'decide' or 'wonder', which I seem to use a hell of a lot!
I am the worst procrastinator in the world and will do anything to avoid writing, but with this new system I'm hoping plan out my time much more carefully and get the next volume out in a year.
The ideal amount of time I've found for writing is about 90 minutes. You have to decide to make those 90 minutes sacred, keep away from Twitter and the internet. Even so, for the first half an hour is just messing about, getting the brain warmed up. Then I'll hopefully be in the zone for a good hour, before I stop. I stop at the end of the time, even unless things are going really well, because I'll go off the boil and stop producing anything any good.
One of the things I like to do at the end of a session like this as well is to set up the thing I'm going to be doing in the next session. Write the first few lines of the next scene or a few lines of dialogue. So I'm not coming to the work completely cold next time.
What do you think is your weak point as a writer? Or, to say that another way, describe something about your writing you would like to improve.
I often worry about my characters and whether they're all the same, or whether they're all just versions of me. I enjoy writing dialogue but it's so hard to get into a character if you're not sympathetic with them or if they're supposed to be the 'bad guy'.
My main gripe though is my lack of output, the procrastination that I mentioned. But then again, I would not be too unhappy to have written only one or two good books by the time I leave this rock by one means or another.
I used to read a lot of books on writing and listen to writing podcasts and go to writing workshops, but in the end I think you can overdo it. One tends to end up with analysis paralysis, where you end up doing nothing because you think everything you're writing is bad. There's a sort of bad writing hypochondria where you recognise every example of bad writing and think 'yes, I do that.' You can easily convince yourself you're writing is shockingly bad and that has the effect of stopping you from writing, which is the opposite of what you should do of course, which is write more and more until you get better.
Or, you could do what I do and just have your story told by a narrator and then blame all the bad writing on him.
Lastly, how many volumes are planned for Canterbury Tales? Have you thought about what you’d like to write after the series is finished?
There will be two more volumes of the tales to come, making up the total of twelve tales. Volume 2 should be out next year, with volume 3 following in 2015. Then I'll probably collect the three volumes together into one book, and I'm thinking that maybe I should add some new stuff for that version.
There could be an infinite number of follow ups, but I'm a big fan of ending things before they go stale. Leave your audience wanting more and all that.
The book after was planned so long ago, well before the Canterbury Tales were even conceived. But it's going to be a better book for the fact that I have honed my story-telling skills on this project first. I'm really aware of learning all I can from this project to build up to writing the next one.
It will also be based on video-games and the culture that surrounds them. It'll have two levels going on, a little like the Canterbury Tales has; firstly the group of players in an online game and also the events and characters they play in the game itself. It will also tie in with what I said about online games and the character's stories emerging from the players themselves, rather than having pre-written and scripted things in the game.
I'd love to explore the iteration between the players and their characters in a system which could potentially generate and manage an entire fictional universe drawn from all the world's literature and culture on the internet. A sort of automated AI storytelling machine which injects new stuff into a video game all the time. Such a game would be endlessly playable (not to mention highly addictive.)
My book, Council of Peacocks, is finished. I'm about to upload it to Amazon. Everyone tells me I should feel proud, that I've accomplished something amazing. But I don't feel it.
Surprisingly, I'm a little bit numb to it all. I keep wondering why I'm not jumping up and down and celebrating. Maybe it's because, for me, the publishing part isn't the accomplishment. And it's not about the money either. My expectations are very realistic. The average indie author only sells a few hundred copies. That's about all I'm expecting.
For me, the most important thing is to have people read the book and enjoy it. Maybe I'll jump up and down at my first positive review. Before indie publishing became a reality, I always expected to get my first rejection slip. That was how I would know I was a real author. So maybe it will be my first bad review. Maybe it will be my book showing up on LousyBookCovers.com.
Here's what I do know: now that I'm published I will not be watching sales numbers on KDP. Would Stephen King lurk in Barnes & Noble waiting for someone to pick up his book? No. What he did is what I'm going to do: keep on writing.
Young Stephen King
Most experts will tell you the way to make money as a writer is to write a crap load of things. I'm not going to waste too much time promoting Council of Peacocks right now. It will sell the more people become aware of me. I'll feel more excited when I have 3 or 4 books published. Maybe.
Truth is, the only time I get really excited is when I'm writing. All the other stuff - the promotion, the editing, working with cover artists and beta readers - all of that is a necessary evil. My passion is doing the work.
So what should I do know that I'm published? I'm going to celebrate by doing what I do best. I'm going to write.
Many of you have asked how my current book is coming along, so I thought I'd give a quick report on all of them:
An Analysis of the Cardassian Language is in its second draft, and I've been posting the chapters as I complete them. However, I don't write sequentially and I don't want to give you the chapters out of order. I got the first 17 done and posted, then started at the end, and am working backwards. I plan on writing the whole 'back' third of the book before Chapter 18. But maybe I'll need a break soon and get 18 done a little earlier than planned. We'll see.
Neither The Claw and the Eye nor Resist the Devil got a chance to get any decent editing, etc. I'm growing more connections now, and I hope to at least make them somewhat better, soon. I'll feel a lot better about promoting them when I feel more confident that they are well-presented.
This is the final post in the special series of guest posts by Luke Bellmason to celebrate the recent launch of his new science-fiction book, The Canterbury Tales, Volume I. These posts are repeated from Luke's own blog. I wanted to share them with you because they give a nice little glimpse into what it's like for him as a writer. They were written before the book's launch. Here's Luke:
They say you shouldn’t do your own cover art for your book. It’s probably good advice, but I’ve always wanted to do book covers. About six years ago I did a full two year course at my local college in Graphic Design. Not because I wanted or expected to get a career as a graphic designer (though I admit it would have been nice), but simply because I wanted to learn more about how to do logos, cover art and such professionally. I got a HND in Visual Communications out of it, which is like a starter pre-university qualification.
This means I am actually even more qualified to do my book cover than I am to write my book; writing is something for which I have no professional training at all! It also means that I am in a fairly unique position of being able to truly reflect my book and my writing style in my cover art.
This is still the concept cover, but it’s beginning to grow on me. I wanted a cover which was like my writing style; bold, simple, straight-forward and clear. This design hopefully gives some indication of the four characters who’s stories feature in the volume. One of the major problems with having a title like ‘The Canterbury Tales’ is that I didn’t want to mislead people into thinking this was the original book, but really I’m going to have to hope that people read the blurb on the back before buying it so they know it’s not. The other factor I needed to consider was that the other two volumes need to have the same style of artwork, but look different, so I’ll be using different background colours for each one, and each character is going to have their own colour as well. I also wanted something which would stand out on the Amazon Kindle store, where the vast majority of sci-fi titles have starfields, ships, planets and such.
Of course, if I could actually draw I might have gone with all that stuff, but I can’t draw! So I use Adobe Illustrator, which is a piece of software so fiendishly difficult to use that few people get past the first two hours of trying to make it do anything even remotely useful. But I’m a video game player, I’m used to software which is difficult to control, which actively tries to make life difficult for you and which reveals its secrets to you only after you’ve shown it that you’re the boss! Learning to use Illustrator seemed a lot like that.
So, for those who are interested, The Canterbury Tales Vol. 1 nears completion. I have spent the past months editing, proof-reading and finishing off the text. Then came the task of taking the finished files and formatting everything into a word document to get it Kindle compatible. After that, I took almost three days to write the Preface and finally, I got to do the cover art – probably my favourite part of the whole process.
I posted this concept cover on my Twitter feed last night and this morning I woke to find it had been favourited by Ray Dillon! Don’t know who Ray Dillon is? Well he’s a writer and artist who does the artwork for HBO’s Game of Thrones and who has done a massive amount of work on comics, cover art and trading cards. After you’ve finished admiring my lovely cover, head on over to Ray’s page and marvel at his gorgeous images. Needless to say, I am super psyched about my cover getting favourited by such a luminary and wow, what a huge compliment. Thanks Ray!
My book’s going to hit the Kindle store in the next week or so, assuming I can successfully wrangle with MS Word and the upload process. I’ll be sure to post here when it’s finally up, check back soon for more news!
Late last fall, I got into a conversation on Twitter about how much better things would be for both writers and readers if there were an indie writers' guild. It started out very light-hearted - an offhand comment and a couple of joking responses - but very soon we realized we were onto something.
The Premise
The idea was that as much as we may want to, no one writer can ever produce a truly professional book all alone. It's not that we can't teach ourselves anything we would need to know. It's that no one of us could teach ourselves everything we would need to know, at the necessary level of expertise. And then there's the fact that you just can't edit your own work. To produce a truly professional book requires at least a few different pairs of eyes.
There are only three possible ways I can think of that an author can get a book out there, without compromising quality:
Traditional publishing. I mean really traditional publishing, with the full editing and marketing force that goes with that. This option is like the lady's slipper I found this morning: we can't exactly pick that one, because it's an endangered species.
Extremely expensive self-publishing. You pay for four, or at the very least, three expert editors, in addition to experts in layout, graphics, electronic formatting, printing, marketing and distribution. I've probably forgotten a job or two. Obviously, most writers simply don't have the money for this one.
Collaboration. Like bees in a hive, each of us has a specialty, or develops one, and we all work together to publish and sell books we're not ashamed to put our names on.
The Plot
So that's the idea behind the Suckers Guild. We looked around and didn't see any writers' group already out there that worked like this, so we started one. To learn more, you can visit the Suckers Guild site.
The Title
I know you're wondering why we named it the Suckers Guild. It came from the half-joking remarks that began the whole conversation, about how we don't want our books to suck, about how our lack of access to publishing resources sucks, and even about PT Barnum's famous saying, that there's a sucker born every minute.
In the end, we chose it because it reminds us that while we strive against all the odds life throws at us, there's no need to be stuffy and take ourselves too seriously. Because - yup, I'm going to say it - that would suck.
Yesterday, we had Steven Ramirez here talking about the importance of quality for indie authors. I think he makes a very important point, and I'm very glad he agreed to send me the post. Thank you, Steven.
One of the nicest things about guest posts, in my opinion, is that they let me bring in a variety ways of looking at things. Sometimes it's just a new way to say something I agree with, but sometimes the guest writer will have a different opinion than I do on a given topic. In the case of Steven Ramirez, I agree wholeheartedly that quality is essential in a self-published book, but I disagree with his recommendation for how to achieve that quality.
I don't think it makes sense to pay money for editing, cover design or any other publishing component. If you can afford it, that's fine, but most of us can't. If we say that the way to produce quality books is to spend money, then we're cutting the regular people out of the indie scene and leaving serious indie publishing only to the lucky few with money. And that, of course, would go against the whole point of being indie in the first place. It's supposed to be about quality, not money.
So what should we do? Beat our chests and announce that we don't need no stinkin' editors? Proofread our own work and hope for the best? No, really, there is a better way. It's called barter. Yes, we should proofread own work: that's just a mark of a professional and courteous writer. But a book always needs editing by a fresh pair of eyes. Even if you're an expert in spelling and grammar, you can never catch all your own mistakes. Our brains tend to see what they expect, so if you already 'know' what you wrote, you won't necessarily be able to see what it really says on the page.
Fortunately, there are lots of other authors out there who are very serious about their work and are also experts in various aspects of self-publishing. For example, there are professional-quality editors who need a service you can provide and are willing to barter. I might even be one of them.
Please help me welcome today's guest blogger, Steven Ramirez:
Okay, so you’ve got this killer idea for a book. You’ve always known that deep down you are a writer, and that you want to make your living putting words on paper that other people will pay to read. You fire up Word and bang away. In a few months you have ninety thousand words that you can’t wait to share with the world, so you decide to put it out there.
But wait! You still need a cover. Hey, you’ve got a buddy that’s pretty good with PowerPoint. You ask him to “throw something together” for you. After a day or two he sends you the file. Looks pretty good, you think. Now you’re set. Your little heart is racing as you create an Amazon KDP Account and click on the “Add new title” button. You’re nearly there.
You fill out all the fields, set your price at $9.99, upload the cover and book, and PUBLISH! In a day or two you receive an email saying that the book is live. Whoo-hoo! You are now a self-published author!
Actually, you’re not. You’re just some person who threw something up on Amazon that no one—besides your mother and maybe your cousin—will buy. Why? Because you didn’t’ take the time, effort and money to produce a work of quality—a book that customers cannot wait to get their hands on.
Writing Isn’t Enough
I’m not saying you didn’t write a great book. You may be a talented individual with lots to say in a way that is fresh and imaginative. But without a good editor, you risk having people think you are lazy. I say this from experience. I’ve been writing for many years, but I still need an editor—every writer does. So you should budget for that.
A Good First Impression
Don’t forget that your title is out there along with around a million others. Customers have lots of choices, and they’ve been trained to know what’s good. If they see your cover and it sucks, you’ve pretty much made the decision for them not to buy your book.
Think about how you buy books. Isn’t the cover the first thing that attracts you? Sure, you want to “click to look inside.” But you won’t even get that far if the cover is no good. So hire a professional cover designer.
Formatting Counts
Another thing to consider is the actual formatting. Now, there are many ways to accomplish this. Many writers I know start out with a Word document, which is what I do. And we’re all pretty much aware of the fact that you can’t just upload it and expect to get a nicely formatted eBook. There is a fair amount of work involved.
More and more people are turning to Scrivener. I haven’t tried this program yet, but according to Joanna Penn, it rocks. Be sure to check it out.
Yet another way to go is to purchase a book template from Book Design Templates. They have templates for both eBooks and print. Or you could just hire someone to create the eBook for you. People like JW Manus and Guido Henkel.
Anything Else?
You should make sure that your eBook contains a table of contents. That’s just common courtesy. You should also ensure that the description is not only accurate, but compelling. If you can, include a few quotes from any early reviews you might have received.
Be realistic about the pricing. $9.99 for an eBook by an unknown author is most likely not going to fly. And $.99 makes you look like a hack. Take a look at other titles in your category and price accordingly. After a while, you will have a pretty good feeling about what is reasonable.
If you are doing a paperback version, make sure to go with services that other authors use and recommend. Two I can think of right away are CreateSpace and Lightning Source. And if you’re going the print route, make sure that the formatting is flawless. Remember, the goal is to put your book alongside other paperbacks from major publishers, and have them be indistinguishable in terms of quality. Since you’ve never done this before, you might also consider hiring a book shepherd like Joel Friedman to help you through the process.
Finally, don’t forget to put up a professional-looking author profile on Amazon. And make sure that your headshot looks good.
I’ll leave you with this last thought, something to remember each time you get ready to hit the “Publish” button: Indie Publishing isn’t hard. Indie Publishing something good is hard. Remember this, and you will have a much better chance of making your writing dreams come true.
About the Author
Steven Ramirez is the author of a number of short stories including his latest, Walker. He is planning to publish his new zombie novel, Tell Me When I’m Dead, this summer.
You can find out more about Steven at his website, “Glass Highway.”
