Before Christmas I blogged about wrestling with the rewrites of my current work in progress. At the time I was using the term “work in progress” in its loosest sense you will understand.
Work in progress by Kevan courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons licensed by CC BY 2.0
I had been worrying away at trying to make a section work and failing spectacularly to understand why the piece wasn’t coming together.
My time away made me realise what was wrong. I was trying to make the characters act out of character to suit the plot.
It was so obvious when I went back it. Suddenly I could see that shoe horning the characters into the boxes that the plot dictated took away what made their characters work in the first place.
It was a salutary lesson. As soon as I stopped trying to make my characters act against their will, the scenes began to come together and the writing started to flow.
No plot is written in stone. It can always be improved upon. As soon as I made the necessary changes and allowed my characters to act in a way that suited the personalities I had built for them I stopped trying to push a boulder up a hill.
Pushing a boulder by ((Brian)) courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons licensed by CC BY 2.0
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking just because you came up with a plot it must always remain as originally thought up. Adapt it, play with it, experiment.
In an upside down world by Craig Sunter courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons licensed by CC BY-ND 2.0
And the next time you are struggling to make a scene sing, ask yourself if you are making your characters act out of character just so that you can preserve the plot and if the answer is yes don’t sacrifice your characters, change the plot.
As some of you will know who follow my blog I am in the midst of rewriting a novel I wrote some years ago. It needed bringing up to date – smartphones have rather taken over our lives and I needed to address some inherent problems with the plot. I blogged about it here in Easy Option – https://goo.gl/qPP5SO
Now I am deep in the heart of the rewrites and my confidence is sometimes high but mostly low as I grapple with the mess that was once a cohesive novel albeit a troubled one. I am sure you are all familiar with the saying ‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs’. Well my desk is covered in broken eggs right now and it is hard to keep the faith.
Breaking Eggs by Rod Waddington courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons licensed by CC BY-SA 2.0
One part of the story was giving me more trouble than any other and I spent a couple of days beating myself up at the keyboard wondering why I just couldn’t make it work. Sometimes you can just be too close to a piece of work and all it takes is a little distance to see where you were going wrong.
Exhausted by the process of getting nowhere, my brain aching from turning the same problems over in my mind and not reaching any satisfactory conclusions, I decided to take a complete break from writing for a couple of days.
Resting by Γιάννης Σκουλής courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons licensed by CC BY-SA 2.0
It was a brave thing to do (some might say foolhardy) given I had a self imposed tight deadline but that in itself was adding to my stress levels. When you can no longer see the wood for the trees your writer’s spidey senses are hardly going to be at their best. So I decided to pull the plug for a while.
I stopped being Ellie Holmes the writer and just enjoyed being me. It took a few hours for the white noise of a busy writer’s brain to calm itself. A dose of reality TV and comfort food helped. And once peace reigned, I lived for a few days like normal people live. You should try it some time. I highly recommend it.
As you can tell from this blog, it didn’t last long. A brief holiday from my writer’s self was all I needed to recharge the batteries and rev up the creative engine. But as with a traditional mini break I came back refreshed, reinvigorated and ready for the challenge.
When people think of indie publishing they think of one person multi tasking, swapping between being a writer, being an editor, being a formatter and being a promoter. There are some writers (and I take my hat off to you) who do all those things themselves. Most of us have a team we rely on to help us do the jobs we cannot do ourselves or don’t have time to do.
But beyond that group of people are a wider support network which form such an important part of an indie writer’s support system and most of them the writer has probably never met. I’m talking about the online support groups. Most writers belong to a few of these. They can be enriching, entertaining, informative, sometimes frustrating but always worthwhile – at least when you find the ones that suit you best.
Support by Igor Grushevskiy courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons licensed by CC BY 2.0
And that’s the beauty of support groups – there are a lot of them out there and every writer will be sure to find at least one group they feel comfortable with. As with other aspects of life, one man’s meat is another man’s poison and just because your writing friend raved about a particular group doesn’t mean you will find them worth committing time to. You have to kiss a few frogs before you find your prince (sorry – blame the romance writer in me for that analogy!).
Good Advice by Brett Jordan courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons licensed by CC BY 2.0
One group I was fortunate enough to discover very early in my indie writing career was the Alliance of Independent Authors. If you are not familiar with Alli and are an independent author I strongly suggest you check out the Alli site. If you need to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s new in independent publishing, best practices and so much more check out the link to their website below:-
If you have a favourite writing based group you belong to, why not tell us all about it either in the comments section below or perhaps in your own blog post and send me a link. Why not share the love?
When you are running a business as an author your reputation is everything. A good reputation is a hard thing to achieve and an all too easy thing to lose. Here are my rules for using social media:-
Never go anywhere near Twitter or Facebook when drunk.
Wine by Denise Mattox courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons licensed by CC BY-ND 2.0
When I launched my first book in the summer of 2016 I hoped for 20 reviews in the first month of release. I hit my target but I didn’t do that by sitting back and hoping for the best.
Reviews by Margaret Ornsby courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons licensed by CC BY 2.0
I spent some time researching reputable book bloggers and identifying those people who read in the genre that I write in.
Then in the two months before the release date I approached the ones that I had identified as suitable and emailed them to ask if they would be interested in reviewing a copy, mindful that these bloggers are extremely busy people who often run their book blogs alongside having a day job and whose TBR piles are probably higher than yours and mine put together. I approached 27 bloggers in all aware that some bloggers might no longer be accepting new books and that I was an unknown with no track record. I expected to hear nothing at all from lots of them.
I didn’t want to send off a batch of bland emails so once I had picked the bloggers I wanted to approach I spent a bit more time checking out their blogs and reading the ‘Information for Authors’ section. Many of the bloggers had specific submission criteria and so I was careful to follow it. There is no point annoying a book blogger before you have even struck up a relationship with them because you ignored their submission criteria or you didn’t research the genres they were interested in before approach.
Blog by Xiaobin Liu courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons licensed by CC BY-SA 2.0
My email was a few paragraphs long setting out who I was and gave the important information about my book – title, genre, release date plus whatever information individual bloggers had requested. I finished my email by including links to my website and social media pages in case the blogger wanted to check me out before replying. I also included a link to an excerpt of my book (that was available to all on my website) so they could get a flavour of the book they would (hopefully) be reviewing.
The genre of romantic fiction is a broad church and I did not want someone to accept my book for review expecting a certain type of read (chick lit for example) and then being disappointed.
From the 27 bloggers I approached, 13 did not reply, one said it wasn’t her thing, one said she might consider it if she had the time and space to do so (but I didn’t hear back) and 13 offered to read and review which I thought was a pretty good strike rate.
Because I didn’t have a large social media reach at that time I also engaged the services of a blog tour operator to book me a blog tour. [Although now that Amazon’s rules surrounding reviews have been updated I probably would not do this again which is a shame because the people I worked with were lovely but if the reviews are no longer eligible to appear on Amazon as a result (if I am interpreting the Amazon rules correctly) it doesn’t now make sense to engage their services]. See Anne Allen’s wonderful blog for more information on this http://annerallen.com/amazons-new-review-rules-should-authors-worry/
I made a diary note whenever a review appeared so I could check them off my list and I sent a couple of gentle reminders to people which helped me keep track of reviewers who were reviewing some weeks after the release date.
I should stress the fact that I offered the book in all instances in exchange for a fair and honest review. It’s the only way. I had a few stinkers as a result which is to be expected as the appreciation of books can be so subjective. One reviewer, in particular, hated the book, did not hold back in saying so and referred to me throughout her review either by my surname alone or simply as the author. Ouch! But in a way I was glad because it proved that my reviews were authentic.
Honesty by thinkpublic courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons licensed by CC BY-ND 2.0
This was my first foray into sending out ARCs. It was an interesting and, on the whole, positive experience. I think I had reviews from everyone I sent a copy of the book out to all bar one who I have since discovered was having some health issues which makes her lack of review completely understandable.
In order to boost the launch of a book particularly at this early stage in my career I would certainly do it again but always mindful of Amazon’s review policy at the time of the book launch.
I’m watching a thriller on TV at the moment. I won’t name the show because I’m not here to trash other people’s efforts but it has been such a disappointment. The set up to the story was intriguing. The cast is outstanding and the backdrop to the story is atmospheric and adds to the sense of mystery and intrigue with a hint of danger. It has even had a few twists and turns that I didn’t see coming and yet even those were not enough to ignite a spark of excitement in me about the show.
Bored by Whateverjames courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons licensed by CC BY 2.0
Why am I still watching it? Good question. I held on for a few weeks thinking it needed time to grow and it would get better. When it didn’t achieve that, it got relegated to what I call my ironing/cooking programmes i.e. it gets watched with less attention than a show I am really into because I’ll clear the ironing pile or batch cook whilst it’s on. Shows that get relegated to ironing/cooking programmes rarely make it back to the must be watched with full concentration list.
When I realised it wasn’t going to get any better I continued to watch it because one of the leads is hot and everyone loves a little eye candy and I was at episode 5 by then and figured it would put us all out of our misery with the final instalment at episode 6. Imagine my distaste when I realised they had dragged this poor show out for 8 episodes in all.
Anyway, you may be wondering why this treatise on my viewing habits is part of a Flower Seller Thursday writing blog. The answer is I wanted to be able to put my finger on why this particular show isn’t working and it was an interesting exercise. As I said at the start so many of the classic elements of a good story were there. When you add into the mix that the characters themselves are, for the most part, believable you should have TV gold and a happy viewing public. If this programme had been a book I would have wall-banged it and given up long ago.
So what went wrong?
In a word – heart. In another word – soul. In yet another word – likeability.
Heart by Nghiem Vo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons licensed by CC BY 2.0
The characters might be believable but they are also flat. None of the emotional set ups, and there are plenty, worked for me because I wasn’t moved by the characters’ plights. You have to be able to engage with a character to be able to invest in them and what happens to them and that is true whether we are talking about books or film or TV. If there’s no heart and soul, there’s no story, however good the rest of the set up is, however competent the twists and turns of a thriller. If you aren’t investing emotionally, it will leave you cold.
Frosty by Costel Slincu courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons licensed by CC BY 2.0
I mentioned likeability. You don’t have to like every character but there needs to be something there that sparks your interest in all the main characters even if it’s a character you love to hate. For the heroes and heroines of a piece, however, likeability is essential. You have to care about them. If we present a character that the readers like they will follow that character across hundreds of pages of heartache, turmoil and trouble, just to see how the story ends and writers forget that simple rule at their peril.
Heart by Seyed Mostafa Zamani courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons licensed by CC BY 2.0
It’s good to have dreams but a dash of reality wouldn’t go amiss.
Writing a book takes a long time. Marketing a book takes a long time. Building a career as an author is a marathon not a sprint and anyone who expects instant results is likely to wind up disillusioned and disappointed.
Houses that are built to last have strong foundations. Create your brand with the future in mind. I was given some sage advice when I started out. I was told to assume it would take three years and/or five books to reach a point where things were ticking over career wise. The smart money seemed to be on two full length novels and one set of three novellas to spread the reach as broadly as possible so that is what I am in the midst of aiming for with that three year target in mind. We may live in a world where instant gratification is the must have but as a writer you need to think long term.
Planning by Alice_Mercer courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons licensed by CC BY-SA 2.0
While it’s good to keep your feet on the ground you do need something to aim for so that you know where to direct your energies. Are sales the most important thing? Are reviews? Are you motivated by how many friends/likes/follows you have? Some of these things are more important than others and it is easy to be dazzled by social media and spend all your time in the places that won’t necessarily move your career on instead of doing the spadework on the things that will.
It is very hard for one writer to compare themselves with another writer as there are too many variables involved to make any comparison worthwhile. Don’t do it. Set your own targets – the ones that you think, with your business head on, are achievable and the ones that you dream about. It’s okay to have the latter as long as you also have the former. Then make them happen.
Bottle of Dreams by David Urbanke courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons licensed by CC BY-ND 2.0
Writing is a slog. So you need to be able to celebrate the little victories along the way. As you hit your targets give yourself a pat on the back and then set new targets, moving the goal on a little higher each time helps keep you motivated.
As a writer it is one of the best feelings in the world when you beat a target you have set yourself. It is an even better feeling when you achieve success in an area you had no target at all because it wasn’t even on your radar. I had no idea how The Flower Seller would perform on Goodreads and so I set no target for the book on there. This week I achieved 100 ratings on Goodreads for The Flower Seller, the majority of them positive. Here’s to 150 before The Flower Seller’s first anniversary.
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