Why this blog exists... Short answer: WordPress sucks

I've been trying to run a WordPress blog on and off since 2017. I was required to build a brand based on a project and arrangement I don't want to discuss much here. I debated over whether to nuke this site but seeing how much work I eventually put into it, I persisted, despite hating the interface and being a long term Blogger user. How long, you ask? Since 2004. I have maintained my main blog since then, gradually building up posts purely based on how much extra access I had to an internet connection (to a point, some years were very dry and I had a connection and nothing to say).

I went to WordPress out of paranoia if I linked this new project to my current blog under the same account, I'd be found out. I vent on my main page. I'm angry on main, basically. One of my contract requirements was to write monthly blogs my "employer" wanted to post for promotional purposes. They were insistent upon it. Sadly, to the detriment of what I wanted out of them. But I wasn't about to waste the work I did ahead of time so I posted them myself.

Anyway, the WordPress blog is more an archive of a three year period I thought would end very differently to how it did. This blog contains the posts (out of chronological order) that I felt were worth preserving. I'm not ready to end the WordPress blog so I've privated it for now. My reasons for leaving are petty. They make the smallest changes to how the site functions, suddenly I can't change banner photos as easily, and posting has changed as well. I lose my mind. I come here, where I have one login, and I can effectively operate this on the side when I like. I can mess around with it and edit the posts based on how much people need to know, I guess. I feel like I have stuff worth publishing in terms of advice but nobody's asking. When they do I don't really feel like discussing. And I'm not in any position to mentor. So this is just my scribe blog. Bare bones BS.

For all intents and purposes, I've been traditionally published, which was a firm goal I wanted when I decided to at least do this in earnest so some degree. The particulars of this aren't worth mentioning anymore. Nobody's going to care about them, suffice to say, it didn't work out. But I'm one of the lucky ones. I got to walk away with my work, I wasn't left thousands in the hole, and I get to say I had a couple of contracts. I could even show these people my personal self published versions of these books and say they were the same editions and unless they knew me, they'd probably know no better. I've shown people the website they were on and they weren't like, oh this looks suspect. Other people would see it a mile off. I'm playing on the layman's ignorance here, and if someone knowledgeable actually knew what happened, they'd probably still feel kind of sorry for me, so hey. Whatever. I did make one final pitch to another publisher recently who passed on my work based on being unable to give it the marketing they felt it deserved, which more or less confirmed what I had was good but not marketable. It'd be great if rejection letters just said this. You're fine, we just don't know what to do with you. Cool, thanks. I've got regrets I need to put aside, decisions I made I'd have done differently with hindsight, (which we all would)... I also avoided pitfalls others fell into, and I learnt a lot, even with the knowledge I had going in. Most of all, I tried to keep people out of it. I had nowhere to vent where people were willing to hear me out and understand my frustrations. So, I blogged a lot, and my author blog was relatively censored until the last year.

Right now, I have two personas: one for adult content and one for a new children's project I decided on finishing. I don't love my adult pen name, I wish I'd picked a different last name but for some reason in my head it sounded cool back in 2012. The other one links directly to my relatively "public" profile. I rebrand sometimes but now there's probably less consistency, not that it matters. I prefer to use easy sites like Blogger and Wix (to some extent). Any major roadblocks in formatting, I'll delete everything and stick to what I know.

Depending on how things go from here, I'll either update or not. Right now, my blogs are mental archives. If people find them or not I'm not as concerned. My free books still get hits even now, eight or so years after I decided to self-publish. I'm self-taught in terms of editing and formatting books. I haven't opted for 100% professional covers knowing it's not cost-effective. 

Anyway, if you're at all interested, go here, and there's a little Easter egg to get you to the other stuff.

As a further update, I've finally nuked not only my WordPress blog and site but my entire account, and damn did it feel good. I hate archiving blogs when I get big messy files but the content is mostly there, plus it was painfully copy/pasted into a document (where I hadn't already kept copies from when I drafted future blogs for publication). So this archive is all over the place technically. Mostly I've kept what I felt was worth mentioning and shelved the rest, the WordPress site really was the last relic of that period I've kept just for the sake of having it. I having it out there. Like I said, I hated the interface overall and as a blog site it's intolerable. My only attempt with Weebly died when I realised I had to create a text box before pasting the entry, and with that I scrambled to delete my new account.

Consolidation makes me feel better. I'll probably curate these posts now too and weed out any info I don't need. Otherwise, that's it. This is my blog and I'm not doing a new one for any reason.

School's in Session

 

I decided to take a writing course recently to see if I'd be offered more challenges and ideas going forward. I feel like my writing is very stale and repetitive at the moment. The classes have mostly included advice and not too much in the way of activities, but we have been given a few exercises to try and I'm posting Week 1 and 2 here.

"A Near Miss..."

They called it a near miss, but I called it unfair. “Everything happens for a reason.” So they said. So what reason was there for this tragedy? What was the point?
If I’d woken up maybe a minute earlier, if I’d spent one second less picking out what to wear that day… Could it have made a difference?
“I think it’s time you stop asking yourself these questions,” said my counsellor, Jasmine Reid. “You cannot go back and change what happened, Amy.”
“I know that,” I answered, my conviction failing to make an appearance.
This was our fifth session, and I’d not made much progress. The dreams were intolerable; my sleep was severely fractured. The sound of screeching tyres was on continuous repeat. My medication was keeping me from insomnia, but I still had to spend my waking hours going over that one split second.
She didn’t hear me shouting to her; the traffic had drowned my voice out.
“You need to be grateful for what you have now. I don’t think Carla would want you to suffer.”
“It’s not like I can ask her, can I?”
“It was an accident, Amy. It’s important you remember this. Have you been working through your disputation steps?”
“I can’t dispute the thought if I’d been there sooner, I could’ve stopped it happening. I was so close. I could’ve…”
“Saved her? That would’ve required you being a superhero. You’d have had to stand between her and that oncoming car. From all the reports I’ve heard, and from your account, there was nothing anyone could do.”
“Then why call it a near miss? A near miss is a hit.”
“You know they weren’t talking about Carla, Amy. If that car hadn’t swerved, it would’ve taken out those two children crossing the intersection, and you as well. It would’ve been much worse.”
This gave me no solace. It still doesn’t.
“Would you take her place if you could?” Jasmine asked me.
That was the bigger tragedy. When I thought about it — really thought about it — I knew I couldn’t.

 

"Boastful Violet"

When your teacher asks you to name the colours of the rainbow, what do you quote? Why, Roy G. Biv, of course. But perhaps you weren’t aware that over time, colours were added to the rainbow to make a neat total of seven. This has never sat right with my dear friend, Indigo. She often complains to me, "Why, Violet, must I be a mere mention in this glorious spectrum, while you get to stand proudly with the others in the sky?"

And I always tell her to speak to Mr Newton. It wasn’t my idea to shoehorn her in.

But what makes me so special? Well, they did name a flower after me, I can boast this; the petite but spectacular petals have adorned many a garden and garland. I’ve been bestowed upon countless girls as a name they can wear with pride. Though you may call me "shrinking", I think I’m quite stunning. I’m memorable as I am magnificent. I’ve dressed many a rich man and some royals as well, my pigment fetching a high price to discern the wearer from the common folk.

I can be bold and beautiful, or as subtle as a light spring rain. I’m often mentioned in songs and poetry, evoking images of sweetly scented bouquets. I’ve graced many a painting and portrait, astounding each onlooker with my striking presence — your eye is often drawn to me above all the other colours. Admit it. You may think me gentle and inoffensive, lying there on a grave, a surfeit of violets to mark your lost one’s final resting place. Then you catch me posing and preening — I am not shy. Don’t take me for an ingénue. It’s fair to say, I’ll always surprise you.

Backed into a corner

The beauty of having a lack of success is you don't have an all knowing, all powerful publisher who once loved you for the money you brought into their bank accounts forcing you to keep writing for a series that had phenomenal success, when you're completely over the characters/world you've created. It creates fatigue for you and the reader, but the publisher insists upon it because money.

If I decide to keep going with a concept, it's because I want to revisit the world. When a publisher dictates that an author continue with a series, no matter if it's genuinely finished or had open-ended plot lines, you're essentially ruining it for people. Fans of certain series have flocked to YouTube and Twitter to complain about the demise of their beloved book series. I haven't caused a generation of kids to pick up books, and the fact someone did is a good thing for literature. Kids should be reading. But when you've spent years taking their (or rather their parents) money, and you're continuing to do so, you should be rewarding your readers for their dedication and putting the effort in, sadly regardless of how much you hate having to continue and bow to the publisher who's asking you to do this. Or maybe you genuinely want to keep going after the point. But I would assume you have other ideas, and when those ideas failed to sell, when your name failed to bring home the bacon, your publisher made you back to what worked.

I couldn't do this to readers if they genuinely loved my stories and characters. I actually feel sorry for avid fans on two points: one, eventually they're going to be disappointed or even angry with an author's books if they're still churning them out, they're going to be upset with the direction the author took. Two: your love is all encompassing and you might write fan fiction, or you're just a reader, but I feel bad for you if you're not writing your own thing. I'd rather write than read, it's what I do. It's what I essentially need to do. But I would be devastated to be told to stop, or know I upset my audience by continuing a series for money alone. I would always understand their stance as well. I'd probably apologise. Being a fan seems so much more exhausting than living in a corner, like I do, making up my own stories.

 

Off-script

 

When I was considering rewriting my previous novella, Conditions Apply, I didn't actually read it over. It's been eighteen years since I originally wrote it, and I don't tend to read over my old work because it's not particularly good. I wanted to make notes from this but I ended up skimming over a lot. Two characters kept their names, one was replaced for something more "fantasy" style and another was changed completely. I feel I've made one of the protagonists far more sympathetic than she was originally portrayed. In a way it helped to just make notes from scratch and go in from a slightly different angle. And to start it further towards the deep end rather than boring people in the shallows of describing incidents leading up to the main event.

Even the notes I made didn't quite marry up to the final product. I often go off script if I've planned something out, and the story or something external decides I'm not going to stick to the plan. It's best not to fight whatever's driving the change in the direction. If you're invested, it's easier to trust the story knows where it's going. Dialogue is probably the one thing that can run away from you, if you're playing two parts and they have to react to one another and you might catch one character saying something you hadn't anticipated initially.

Sometimes you'll hear an author telling you inspiration had very little to do with how a book came to life. Peter Beagle stated desperation was what drove him to finish one of my favourite books, The Last Unicorn. My drive was simply to finish a novel, as I hadn't managed to do this for a long while. In 13 days, I had a draft of roughly 54000 words. I needed a foundation and the previous novella was a suitable candidate, I wasn't prepared to really come up with a brand new idea. I'd always intended on rewriting this anyway. So I decided to do it, and I did it. And while I thought it was boring, my editor was impressed and genuinely enjoyed reading it, stating she was honoured to be the first person to read it.

If I'd started with Josie's childhood, detailing the incidents that brought the antagonist to her doorstep, I would've eventually bored myself, and I'm sure my readers would be bored too. My decision to scrap this idea and get right to the point actually had me doing more in the space of an evening than I'd planned. I wasn't entirely sure at points what I had was going to work. If I don't finish something, it's because it doesn't want to be finished. If the story wants me to tell it, it'll make sure I tell it in full, exactly how it wants me to.

Why I write

 

I just completed a survey for my local government concerning the direction of writing in Western Australia. I've had a lot of pointed views on this since I was in university, where we were strongly encouraged to promote WA in our writing when we went out in the world of publishing. So unless you were really willing to write about your home town, and be a brilliant and unique voice for your country, Australian publishers weren't really willing to give you a break. My local press won't take fantasy. And I won't write about my town because I write to get away from it mentally. I wrote to escape my school life, the bullies and even friends I had who were mean to me. The teachers who wore me down with not trying hard enough and daydreaming all the time. The piles of homework I had that I couldn't start for the stress of how much work I had to do (I procrastinated a lot back then). But if a teacher asked me to write a story, it was the easiest thing in the world for me to do. I wrote a passage in my English exam for year 11 and I hadn't even known it would be part of the exam. I was terrible at maths, and none of the practical classes like woodwork or art were for me. I was useless with French and Japanese. I took music theory for three years when I could've opted out after one. I can't play the trumpet, though I learned to, I was awful. I took drama and dance classes, and did ballet for a year. I'm not a good dancer and I can't act that well. But I could write. So I did. And I still do now because I can.

But you wouldn't catch me writing about my friends, or the school I went to, or my parents, or my teachers. I refused to write about my friends, I said in an earlier post as such. If it was happening in my life and I was unhappy about it, then I wouldn't write about it. I kept journals, one in a code I stole from the one young adult series I read in high school when I was done with Interview with the Vampire and the Great and Secret Show. I shunned the Babysitters Club and Sweet Valley High, sticking only to the Degrassi High adaptations. Yet my school life, or even my personal life, wouldn't be part of my fictions because they were where I wasn't being taunted or yelled at or judged. I did try to incorporate my old high school in my new book, and the town is loosely based on a pastiche of country towns in Australia, but the name is fictional, and they characters could be from anywhere.

My actual location doesn't inspire me enough to want to write about it. It never has. I'm sorry, I couldn't even write an essay on how proud I was to be an Australian because I wasn't. I actually got an A for my essay about how I wasn't proud and why, because nearly everyone wrote the same thing about their so-called pride. Beautiful flora and fauna, nice beaches, our "multicultural" society that embraced everyone*... every essay was identical, save for mine. I said we were America Jr. And everyone hated me. More so for the fact I got an A.

So there you have it. I pledge no allegiance to my country and will not be forced to write about it to gain the approval of a publisher. It would be a dishonest book if I extolled the values and beauty of it, and if I were honest, it wouldn't be accepted either. Yes, we have horrible things here, if you write about the gritty stuff too you'll be accepted if it's about Australia. But I would write about how no one cares about Australian literature and movies outside of Australia. It would be dispassionate.

A kid my mother taught wrote the best book I ever read about my home town called 11 Months in Bunbury. It was amazing. I loved it and I wish I had a copy. Because it was at least honest. But it didn't gain much recognition. It was panned more for its style. I thought it was perfect. And he hadn't even graduated at the time. I wasn't even jealous. The two main characters have vastly different lives that briefly intersect, one boy suffering late adolescence in a town with nothing to do, and nearly succumbing to suicide (which seven boys around my age did eventually do not long after we graduated). The other older guy has a great life, a hot girlfriend, and he gets work cutting trees in Pemberton. The twist is the alienated kid decides not to throw himself off the tallest building in town (which is only ten stories high) and the guy with the great life is literally beaten to death by his drunk family. He nailed it. But it's not up there with our best sellers and he's not being lauded over. He wasn't supported and he wasn't really interested in being a writer. He vanished. But he was published.

I write to escape my own anger about this attitude. And I was clear in my survey what I felt was wrong and where my concerns were. I even left my name and contact details I felt that passionate about it.

It won't change how I write. Or why.

*We have a multinational society that doesn't fully embrace, and in some cases, shuns particular cultures. We also have a notorious refugee policy that imprisons refugees on a remote island just because they tried to get here by boats and not a plane. A particular politician who was flagrantly racist, and who went to jail for electoral fraud, has recently been able to rise to the ranks off the back of the resurgence of racism and Islamophobia here. We don't even have gay marriage, our government is actually actively working to stop it becoming a thing. So why would I want to write about a backwards society that protects religions despite being known as secular, and that has a history of racial bigotry spanning back to colonial times?

 

 

 

Precious Things

 

If you do your homework when looking for a publisher, you will come across forums and blogs that will usually detail the biggest pitfalls of going with a small, independent press. One of them being, your precious book may end up in the hands of someone who will go bankrupt and you'll never regain your rights again.

This is very important, I'm not trying to diminish that. You can read about these stories in other industries. The phrase "in perpetuity" is probably one of the most daunting legal terms you can encounter. And even if your contract only lasts a certain period, is it any guarantee it will be dissolved if you can't contact the publisher who goes out of business? Obviously, it could be implied if you never hear anything once the contract expires, but it's still something worth considering.

In my case, I'm less afraid of the arrangement I made because, and you may not believe this, I don't have an emotional attachment to a lot of my work. Whatever I've written for myself stays with me, usually what I intend to publish is whatever I'm willing to let go. I actually can't read any of the books I've written that were either self or traditionally published. Once it's out in the world and other eyes have seen it, I can't go over it again. I know I'll want to fix something, or I'll see an error I can't do anything about, or I'll just be plain embarrassed, even if the work has been praised. So I don't have a love for these things. I genuinely regret letting some of them go now. Certain characters were probably more precious to me than the story I wrote. In my zeal to be published I sacrificed a few stories that were dearer to me. I have other versions of some characters in different places, but that's not for public consumption.

I probably have more affection for the novel I've finished recently and its characters that I'll be a bit sad to see them go out into the world. I don't know when this will be available but I am intending on getting it out there one way or another. I've been looking at other places to take it but given my previous experiences with them, I doubt they'll be interested. Getting the attention of an Australian publisher right now is difficult if you don't have a new or exciting voice that isn't also championing something about this country. I have no real parochial bond with where I live in the world, 98% of my writing is to escape my day so why would I put myself right back where I live? You'll see traces of who I know and where I'm from, but never exact details. And I won't write about people I know, either. I don't even use the names of people I know in my work. Again, trace elements are the most you'll receive, and I know people I know are worried I've written something mean, I've already been asked by one person if I've based a character on them and I really hadn't. So you're safe. Maybe something mean you did might pop up in an abstract way delivered by another character who bears no resemblance to you physically, but again, all of my characters are from out of nowhere but my own head. It suits me.

So you'll rarely catch me being so precious about my work I feel I have to protect it with my life. It's better that way.

 

 

What I wanted to achieve.

I made very vague long term goals when I was younger. My drive through the last two years of high school was to get to the one university I knew was offering the writing degree I received. I was unwilling to consider other options, only putting them down because our tertiary entrance exams required us to nominate what would be called safety schools in the US. The score required to get into my top choice wasn't hard to obtain with a decent amount of effort. But I was disappointed having to do more homework and exams not six months out of my entrance exams. And the course didn't really propel my drive to write, it pretty much crushed it.

But my long term goal was to have a part time job so I could write on the side. I joked I'd write trashy romance novels from a cardboard box on the street because I knew already I wasn't going to end up a "famous" well-paid author. I pictured myself gaining some popularity and people wanted to interview me, and I'd dispense my creative drives etc. All very self-indulgent fantasies for a seventeen year old.

In the end, I did reach my goal. I am working part time, I've been published by two means rather than the one I originally set out to achieve, and I have all the time I need to write. So that's it, right?

Nope. Not entirely. I'm not done, I'm still writing to get better at what I do. I'm waiting to see if my next novel will be picked up, and I did once state to myself I'd only go through this process once, but I'm not totally happy with the first result and it's pushed me to do better. But I've achieved my main goal.

My biggest writing goal was to give a reader a moment similar to one I had when I was reading Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted. It's a set of short stories linked by an over-arcing plot that brings all the storytellers into one rather horrific and hilarious narrative. Rather than save the worst until last, the first story is easily the most graphic. Graphic enough to make me turn away from the words I was reading as if the image itself were on the page. There was also an incident at a reading where someone passed out from the mental image - it became the stuff of legend among his avid fans. My goal was to have a moment in a book that visceral the reader was compelled to react as strongly. But I pull too many punches to really get that far. So far, I've written stories that people couldn't put down - my best compliment to date. We may have smaller goals within our bigger ones. I haven't stopped working towards anything. But I have gotten as far as I originally wanted.

 

 

 

How not to troll yourself

 

It's become more difficult than ever to avoid nastiness online. Exposing yourself by way of literature seems to bring out very particular types who are incredibly critical of books and will actively post errors from well known books. Errors are more prevalent than ever given the comparatively breakneck speed books are published now. Yet even in the days of relatively meticulous editing and copy editing, and proofing, continuity errors still appeared. I'm usually fairly meticulous about these little things, but I'm sure I've likely had some before.

I found a less plausible aspect in my last book, and I wasn't meticulous about the chronology of events. While I made references to certain points in history, and mentioned some dates, I was rather vague about when certain events occurred, so the overall sequence of events might not seem logical, and allusions to conversations between two people wouldn't have been highly unlikely due to ages and events mentioned. It's not been recognised thus far, but to me now, it's very glaring, and I'm regretting not making small amendments to aspects I thought were perfectly reasonable all along. I was hoping it was least accurate in terms of spelling and grammar, that I didn't misspell or transpose or misspell character names. But my history and general sequence of events was probably messier than I'd first believed.

I've been online and interestingly discovered Hemingway and Austin were notoriously bad spellers. I liked Hemingway's rock-star attitude when his editors requested he take care of his spelling, and he abruptly, (probably drunkenly, who knows) told them that was their job. I'd never be as mean, I'd certainly lift my game. Self-publishing has forced me to do this where I was very casual about my writing in the past. Putting something to print should take time, but every second a book is in pre-production, it's a second the publisher isn't earning money. The internet turned all the processes of this industry up to ten times the speed of the past. The adage of wanting something "yesterday" is truer than ever. So we've sacrificed the craft for the sake of the coffers.

But the trolls are still waiting to pounce on any error you make online, and even more so in print. So if it's important to you, if you had it drilled into you your work should be polished to perfection before it even hits a publisher's desk, but you're seeing more evidence of all the stop signs being ignored on the road to print, it's hard to reconcile your inner troll. Some can just be happy with their success, but for others, perfectionists especially, they still strive to make their work as polished as possible and won't let themselves off the hook as quickly as their fans have.

I've been told my prose is pretty well perfect, that my self editing was actually quite impressive, but I won't rest on my laurels. Especially when own inner troll will just get on my back if I make another less than perfect piece.

How many drafts does it take to make a novel?

 

How long is a piece of string?

You'll come across this in all the discussions, when do you know it's finished? What constitutes a rewrite? The best answer I found before going down that rabbit hole is "what's your intention with the piece?" Do you want to just self-publish a draft or write something worthy of praise and awards?

I have gone over my work before, taking chunks out and moving them around, or simply tightening what was already there. I'm sure another editor would've taken a hatchet to some of my stuff, but when I've given it to a reader, they've just said it was good. I've had very little in the way of constructive feedback, other than I overuse dialogue for exposition rather than other means, so it's more like a film than a novel. So I've tried to be more descriptive. Most of what I do is emotion driven. I stick to one POV character at a time, I don't "headhop", which wasn't a term I came across in university. Had I handed in anything that looked like what is being published now, especially if it were fan-fiction, I'd have been kicked out most likely. But I don't just publish a draft and I don't just finish something then run a spell/grammar check and assume it's perfect.

Overworking something can tear it apart, rather like starting a quilt then getting two thirds of the way through it before you decide to unstitch every patch and start again, making more of a mess than you had to begin with. So you'll always come across people who wish they'd trusted their instincts and not done the multiple rewrites requested by others. But show me an author who believed their first draft was perfect, and I'll show you a liar.

More tips

I wouldn't run a class on writing, because I'd fail to give you structure. I'd be all, I don't know, what works for you? Do you take notes and have shoe boxes full of post-its? Do you have meticulously ordered corkboards that work as your storyboard? Do you do storyboards, actual ones that are almost artful and something I actually suck at?

I don't have a method. I either take a scene and build a whole story around it on the fly, or I plan it out and get annoyed at the corners I've painted myself into by plotting. Or I just make a few vague notes which I may actually ignore ultimately because the story dictated the outcome, not me, which is sometimes the best way to go. It's easier to reconcile this than get annoyed you failed to stick to the script. But that's me.

Seriously, my entire class would be one lesson, where I've written on the board: "You do you, boo." I won't even be there. I'll just write it up before class and leave to write whatever I was working on, or take a nap. Most likely I'll take a nap.

But go and research what other authors do to get some ideas, at least. One of my screenwriting classes was to visit Drew's Script-O-Rama and look up movie scripts for an hour. Later I'd go on to read his tremendous blog while I was at work, something he sadly left by the wayside years ago. Some of the advice will be great and some of it won't jive with your style. I don't even know if I've broken any of the major rules people put up regarding passive voice, I think my grammarly picked up a lot of it, but in narrative fiction, anything goes, to an extent. People know when you've really messed up, they'll tell you it's a mess either structurally or grammatically. You'll know if you're bad or good, most of the time - someone might mistake it for good writing but they don't know any better. There's tonnes of guides and websites out there for basic stuff, the world is your oyster compared to when I was in uni, the internet is awash with advice articles and style guides and grammar rules. It makes life easier when you forget a word you can google it on the same machine you're making your book. Provided you don't get too stifled by rules, you'll be okay.

I've had a lot of rules thrown at me, some I've stuck to, some I've ignored. But the one thing I did do was just keep doing it. Writing something bad isn't bad because it's better than doing nothing at all. Just don't think it's finished at that point. You'll get a chance to polish it up later, just go hell for leather, forget about style and structure and get something down on paper, otherwise you'll stare at the cursor on your screen and have an existential meltdown.

OK, for sake of argument, if I were tutoring you, I'd say, start with a conversation and give me a dialogue driven scene with two people. They can be talking about anything, or arguing, or whispering sweet nothings. Then maybe build some tension, but take it wherever you want. Right, go.

You done? Cool, you just wrote something. Is it good? Maybe, maybe not. But it's better than a blank page.

I am actually a qualified ESL teacher but I am so bad at it, I'd be fired. I'm bad at form. I just write, sort of how some musicians just play but have no head for theory. It happens. My tip is, find what works for you. And keep practicing.

 

Deaf to criticism

 

One thing I have noticed about authors who receive too much praise is it fails to thicken their skin against the odd criticism. I don't mind the odd sassy comeback, George RR Martin's king at these. Some people deal with twitter much better than others. But the authors who fail to listen to genuine constructive criticism do worry me. When you have a megaphone with all your fans singing your praises into it, somehow you either drown out or dismiss the naysayers, even if their opinion is valid.

I've been digging and scrounging for any kind of feedback since I began. I'm waiting for any poor critique of my new book so I can say with good grace to this person, thank you for finally telling me. Otherwise I'll never learn. You won't find me on Facebook or Amazon ranting at my detractors. I'll do what I can to ignore whatever isn't constructive, but if you have something of note to point out, where you think I've done wrong, I'll be very grateful for this and I'll say as much. And it won't be disingenuous, I am grateful, I can usual take the sting off any negative feedback now because that's what my degree prepared me for. When your work is going under the scrutiny of published authors at a university level, to have them really give a full opinion, and even a grade much lower than you were hoping for, it will be invaluable one day. When the chagrin wears off and your young ego has matured, you'll keep these words and hold them much dearer than any kindness given. Trust me, I'll have critiqued my work in my head long before a reviewer has a chance to, so I've already passed numerous judgements on it. It's good to do that. Never assume it'll all be roses.

I feel sad for authors who refuse to listen to their detractors. Ultimately, they'll never learn. And some of their readers might one day look back at their books and wonder what they loved about them.

Plus, there has to come a point where gloating over your success after multiple rejections gets stale. If you're still doing this 20 years later, you need to move on.

Crossing thresholds

From Feb 2017

I'm working my way back through the fundamentals of storytelling, watching critiques on movies as well as refamiliarising myself with Campbell's Hero's Journey principle.

I see this stage of my dubious career as an author as a step over a threshold. Signing a contract and trusting your work to a publisher is not unlike a leap of faith, but people forget part of the journey is returning home changed for the experience, be it for better or worse.

If you've ever wanted a beautiful version of the journey, I recommend Michael Ende's The Neverending Story. The movie adaptation doesn't quite nail it, the book itself is poetic and more profound in its message. The unlikely protagonist, pudgy and unremarkable Bastian Balthazar Bux, gets far more than he bargains for by stealing the book. Far into his adventures in Fantasia (beyond where the movie leaves you) our hero quite literally loses himself and his identity. And our damsel in distress, the supposedly helpless Childlike Empress, has to do much more than wait in her Ivory Tower for the hero to save her. Bastian returns to the realm of normality a different boy, having made sacrifices to save himself long after he saves Fantasia from the Nothing.

The main reason these stories resonate with us is the fact the hero with a thousand faces is linked to the human journey. We face these challenges more often than we realise, reconciling with friends we've fought with, reconnecting with estranged family members. Owning up to our own mistakes and flaws. Taking on a task that seems insurmountable and succeeding despite all the hurdles in our path. Every life is a road of trials in of itself.

I'm relatively okay with this part, where the unknown beckons, though I recoil at times out of genuine fear of exposing myself. I'm in a limbo stage right now, further ahead but still waiting for the next trial to begin. How I'll be on the other side is anyone's guess. I'll be changed either way, that much is certain.

Update (Or, the end of WordPress).

This is the end of the result of me banging my head against multiple walls. It's fair to say this book wouldn't even exist at all had my first trad publication had looked better than it did. I became so fundamentally obsessed with its terrible presentation, I actually decided to write a novel from scratch (technically based on an old idea but still completely rewritten). Why a novel, you ask? Because that was the only way I could guarantee the book would have enough pages for spine matter. Unfortunately, the publisher wasn't willing to get creative with pagination, which I did much later on, and I know it was to keep costs down, however paper thickness, alignment and pagination can make a difference to a book's thickness if printed via Amazon.

I was waiting for a response from another publisher on this before I made any updates, so when they passed, I reached out to the original cover artist and she kindly designed some spine material, which I couldn't really arrange without dimensions originally. And I wasn't happy with my own attempts. The worst thing about self-pubbing is the amount of effort/time/money you can spend on test copies and trial and error copies. You do only pay printing costs for author copies, however that can still be costly. Really the onus is on you to get it right, and even if you do, Amazon can still fumble the printing depending on which printer gets the job. (Also, it means nothing if they package it in bubble wrap since you'll be sure to get dog-eared covers).

Having said all that, now Amazon has arranged printing in Australia, (I believe via Ingram, a company I cannot have an arrangement with since I don't have an ABN as a publisher - people told me I should get one, believe me, there's headaches associated with this too.) This is great news aside from one thing - they jumped the gun on cream paper printing and it's not available here as yet. Which means this author copy was still an import.

I've let that go for now. Ultimately, after all the roadblocks and painful decisions to cut ties with the previous publisher (which was still the right decision), I think I can settle on this being the final edition. I also splurged for an editor which was the biggest cost I've spent on a book outside of the cover art. So, if I were to employ this person on the reg to edit all my books, I'd go broke. You have to be prepared to make your own investments in regards to time and money. So, it's lucky I do this as a hobby and haven't made a living out of it since I'd be in the hole for more than a couple of digits.

Scams

 

This is a list of resources because I've spent too much time trawling and researching to withhold any of this and I should be crediting those who have posted this info of their own volition because they care.

https://annerallen.com/2020/02/new-publishing-scams-2020/

https://victoriastrauss.com/writer-beware/

https://gatekeeperpress.com/self-publishing-companies-to-avoid/

https://blog.reedsy.com/scams-and-publishing-companies-to-avoid/

https://self-publishingschool.com/vanity-press/

The amount of research you have to do on your own just to find anything eats up a lot of time and energy I've chosen not to invest right now. Just that first blog post I listed illustrated how much worse the playing field is now compared to when I started.

I've put my own opinions out there, written blog posts, etc. My previous publisher appears to have shut down and has ironically reprinted to Amazon in new editions, however I have no idea if the authors will get their royalties still (not that we were much to begin with). Given it appears they're not operational, I've not reported them to Writer Beware or any other sites, though I did consider it. I'm not sure if they are actually trying to rebuild the company elsewhere or they gave up entirely, provided they're not taking new submissions or money for books they weren't sending, my conscience isn't so bothered.

I don't discuss this much. I took my last rejection with good graces because for once, I was given a reason for their rejection: it wasn't sitting in their wheelhouse for marketing, though they "agonised" over the decision, which I don't believe they did before.

Anyway, Amazon's decided to finally join forces with a printer in Australia so we no longer have to depend on print copies coming solely from the US. While the printing costs have gone up, I don't know what will happen in terms of postage (it should be lower realistically), and I'm waiting for them to switch to cream page printing, since I don't think this was facilitated as yet. I've ordered copies from the US for now as I've updated the covers but being short on cash from my wedding last year, I was reluctant to splurge on this. Previous copies are being left with local book depositories, I should take a shot of the quaint little red box in my neighbourhood. My books have been taken from there so I hope someone found them enjoyable. I still see these as little messages in bottles floating on the ether, if anyone wants to tell me what they think, at least online, they might bring it up. But I'm on hiatus otherwise, aside from the kids book which is still in production.

Even I'm forgetting to check in on people.

Sold...

 

The Amazon advertising experiment resulted in an actual sale, which means I might extend this to see how well I do. This is still one sale off 10 clicks and 11519 impressions. I won't go into what I spent vs what I earned, this arrangement isn't lucrative unless I really up the cost of my books and hope that someone would be prepared to pay 15 to 20 bucks rather than 5 or 6 (due to printing costs and Amazon's cut if I charge the minimum I earn the minimum royalties). But I generated a sale. I didn't expect to and I somehow did. This is the most passive advertising campaign I've run, I haven't even pushed on social media. I don't see the same results. I tried running a few Goodreads campaigns but they weren't delivering outcomes.

Point is, I got someone to buy something I made, which is the one thing I keep assuming I can't do. Okay, so I can't convince anyone to buy them by the truckload. But it still kinda makes me feel good. Kind of an uptick to the trash fire 2020 has been overall.

2020

If anyone tells you right now their 2020 was totally normal and barely worth mentioning, you might want to make sure they're in touch with reality. This hasn't been a good year for so many reasons. But I can't say mine, in terms of production or creativity, was necessarily bad.

Above is another new cover. I was contemplating going back to Fiverr but I found Canvas, where you can do a little bit more for free. I didn't end up doing much outside of what I could do myself. I have a new desktop computer but I'm not utilising it as much as I'd like on my picture book, or getting back into Adobe or other editing software. I have such thin patience for that level even though I know if you can pull it off, the effects are much more interesting. But I found a new image I was happy with and a decent font. This one was my least favourite, I'm still pretty happy with the others, I feel like I did okay despite having no professional design skills to speak of, apart from the one I did do through Fiverr. 

 

 

(I had to make some edits of my own but it cost me so much more to buy the assets of the designer. Fiverr is a misnomer, if you really want a package deal expect to pay a lot more.)

I don't know when the picture book will be ready at this rate, again this year hasn't been kind to a lot of people so I've given this an indefinite release date. Occasionally I've considered abandoning the project altogether but there's no reason to do this as yet. I think if it became completely unrealistic I might have to either mothball it or consider another avenue. Pitching isn't on my mind anymore, despite Into the Other still sitting with one company without a decision, which I haven't even attempted to check up on. An indie surviving this pandemic would be impressive right now.

In other news, my previous publisher seems to have fallen off the web yet again, and they may have decided to go back to Amazon after all, it's very hard to tell. I think I'll try and make an effort of not looking into them going forward. My second contract was due to expire Jan 21st, and I can now comfortably say that terminating it was the best decision for it. Whether another company is willing to pick it up remains to be seen, the biggest issue is if I'm pitching, I won't sell or list my self-published books until a decision's been made. If it's knocked back, I'm hoping to get the cover art updated to include some spine material, which will depend on whether I can get the original artist to fix it for me. Asking now would be pointless, if another company decides to go ahead, they would probably want to do their own design (and at this point if they wanted to edit the book I can understand why but I'm not really prepared to do this - they have a right to but that makes opening their door to self-published books more of a headache for both parties, so this would ostensibly be a brand new edition). It's incredibly hard to say what response I'll get. My last pitch actually came back with comments, not just a form response, and this pitch fit perfectly into what they recommended. My cynical side says they'll find some other fault this time. And naturally, they'll need to see the rest. It's very much right in the back of my mind right now.

I have absolutely no plans to start or continue or re-write anything for publication outside of the picture book. 2021 will be much more aimless. Having to plan a wedding turned out to take so much of my energy had I been working towards any major publication, it would've been too draining. 2017 was a massive year of convergence that genuinely led to my last relapse, so I think one major project at a time is all I can and should do.

Interest in the free books has dropped off somewhat, but it's not been a bad run. I've gone to Amazon Advertising where my impressions are reasonably high but one more, as with Goodreads, it's not translating to clicks. Or sales. At least this system can give you those metrics. I haven't blown my 1 dollar bid yet. Other than occasionally updating material, I'm not out there really promoting anything. The election got me sucked back into Twitter so I could check in with people online, and while I don't have my reach or any followers, I've posted my website to my profile anyway (and if for any reason a tweet of mine "blows up" at least I can share something). The reason I left has now been voted out. So instead of Jan 21st being the day I'd have gotten the rights to my book back, I get to wake up to a world where the Bad Orange Man is no longer president.

2020 may be forgiven for this, but it'll never be forgotten.

Working backwards

 

I had a concept I was trying to flesh out many years ago, which I decided to make my new project. The premise is a bit flimsy and I don't have any intentions of releasing it at all. It seems like a big idea but I can't make it big. But when I sat down to start over, it wasn't going anywhere. The only way I could dig myself out was to literally write a 109 page screenplay (after finally finding a relatively good script writing application) where I could get the dialogue and action out before I got bogged down in descriptions.

I used this trick to pull myself out of a long spell of writer's block many years ago. I realised I had so much dialogue and scene action in my head it seemed easier to just write basic outlines in a screenplay format, and use these as drafts for when I decided to write them as prose. Some of them differed dramatically from the script in the end, and ended up just being a platform to take some dialogue from and apply to a different story. Some of them were more or less the same.

This would seem like a lot of work for a simple draft but weirdly it's helped in this instance to actually get words on the page. I'm modifying and fleshing out more where applicable, a few things have already changed. I worked through the script as I saw it as a movie in my head, which is my biggest issue as a writer: I don't read more than I watch, so most of my stuff is just me translating stuff in my head onto the page, so it's sometimes lacking in scene description. But I've always taken into consideration people complaining about other authors being over-descriptive to the point the reader skimmed this information just to get back to the action. I'm also less likely to introduce a character with a name and detailed description of their appearance, I've usually tried to litter the text with character details rather than info- dumping.

I tend to get irritated with the idea of authors offering advice when something that works for them won't work for another author. I've often said, take what you need and leave the rest that doesn't work. I think getting caught up in the idea that you didn't write a book the "right way" can really upset the process. Finishing should be the goal, how you get there might not have much bearing on the journey. You may find people saying certain things weren't clear and perhaps some better planning on your part would have rectified this. Even then, you should find your best solution for this and not force yourself to adopt a tactic that you're not comfortable with. My solution is probably a weird one that happened to work for me because I had a very vague understanding of script writing formats. I probably didn't need to actually stick to the correct alignments, I'm sure you could keep everything left aligned I just like the look of it. I've had fun reading scripts online, especially first drafts and shooting scripts of movies I've seen a hundred times.

The only aspect of the software that I found (which let me do a full screenplay without paying an arm and a leg) was the gender analysis function, that could give you statistics based on gender and how many lines each had by taking each indicated character name and listing them against three check boxes. It did include an "unspecified" option, not just simply male and female, which would be great for casting a nonbinary person, but how much representation would they have in an even spread if your goal is to keep things "equal". The template script the application used drew my attention to it in this weird exchange between a male and female character that works as a tutorial while reading like an existential nightmare. I understand this function proving useful if you want your screenplay to be inclusive, I just failed to see how it would make a screenplay "better" if the content was still essentially terrible. Okay, you passed the Bechdel test, however your characters are two dimensional, and your story makes no sense. Certain stories simply don't have a balanced gender spread of characters purely from the story being told: i.e. Dunkirk was full of white men for a reason. It also wasn't making allowances for varying races. That's up to you. I see the sentiment behind this I just don't believe it's a good solution to the problem of under-representation.

Aside from that, I'm not making this project something I have to finish immediately or make any bigger than it is. Finishing it is the goal, essentially.

Blissfully uninspired...

I haven't written anything this year aside from personal blogs and finishing off something I started right before New Year's. I haven't felt any kind of need to start anything new. Meanwhile, I've pitched an existing book to an agent, but I'm not holding out much hope.

What I have made some progress on is the children's book I'm very casually working on. Now my part's more or less done this is sitting on the back-burner while I wait for the final art. I have four illustrators working on separate sections, displayed being some art I've received from the artists. I decided to involve more than one person given I knew that offering the job to one would be too much to ask, and it's an opportunity to show off their talents since I get to experience their art via Instagram. There's been some really positive, weirdly congratulatory feedback from this alone. I don't have a release date as it's dependent on a lot of factors, but I realised I've not shared much online. I'm playing with the idea of working on basic children's stories and pitching them around to see if I get any bites. With this one, I really wanted to work on it myself, having it taken off my hands didn't appeal. I'm hoping if it looks professional enough by the final product, it will do well for all concerned. Otherwise, my motivation's pretty much dead. I don't have writer's block per se, but the compulsion to do anything major isn't there. So I'm chilling as much as possible.

The benefit of reading bad books

 

I loved the movie Under the Skin enough to want to read the book. Regretfully, I've basically given up on this halfway through, and did my first DNF Goodreads review. I did really want to finish this, but I found it meandering and bogged down in over-description and repetitiveness.

But sometimes when a book genuinely annoys me, it inspires me to do something of my own, and maybe do better. I'd been meaning to flesh out a couple of shorter pieces which I did borrow from to make this piece, however I managed to finish something that was relatively new in concept, and I set myself a goal to be more descriptive as well.

Reading The Bitch Goddess Notebook back in around 2007, I think this actually snapped me out of a long period of writer's block as I went to actually finish something. I barely finished four short stories in the three years I was at university, a lot of that was taken up with essays and screenplays (or rather outlines of screenplays), the few practical classes I had to write actual fiction were far between. So I went from so inspired to uninspired by graduation, and having to find a job after that made writing difficult for me, despite having all the time in the world from having no job to write, being unemployed is a real downer so I'm not that shocked I couldn't do much. I had scant ideas but no motivation to write that much. So reading the Bitch Goddess Notebook seemed to kick me in the butt sufficiently to think I could "do better".

I don't believe I did but I did share this with more people thinking it was relatively good. It's not, but I finished it. I was still pretty slow after that to finish more projects, even after NaNoWriMo and a major relapse, getting back on the horse didn't happen until I went into screenplays just to get ideas out my head easily without worrying about heavy prose.

But there is a benefit to reading a bad book, whether it's widely known as bad or good. If you hate it and you're inspired to do better, that's not so bad. Even watching a bad film might cause this weird bout of inspiration, and I'm not talking about fan fiction. I could go on for ages my issues with this "genre", however it's divisive and you'd be amazed how many people defend fan fiction writers who have their own fan fic "stolen" for profit (the characters weren't theirs but the idea was and how dare this person steal. These thieves should get their own ideas). If you watch a bad sci-fi movie and decide to do something sci-fi related to fix the plot holes or issues you felt the movie couldn't satisfactorily deal with, that's just as good as watching something brilliant that urges you to write. A good song is just as effective, or a painting, or poem. A concept can inspire someone. I was inspired by a common clause you would see on commercials - "conditions apply" - which became Into the Other many years later. The littlest sources can be fertile ground for the biggest ideas. Even if they're not a good source. Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy was borne out of a drunken jaunt with a copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide to Europe, and Adams barely remembered the incident.

 

A piece of string...

I don't like getting into arguments over a book's length and what constitutes novel vs novella. I think it's one of the stupidest arguments to bring into the question of a story's quality. When something like the Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury speaks more to you than a hopelessly long fantasy novel you've just finished, then quality counts. I've written a story over 120 000 words and there is little to nothing of use in it. I would have to rewrite it from scratch and it probably wouldn't end up half that length because I can recognise when something is needlessly bloated. I'm trying to read Under the Skin while simultaneously bemoaning how much better the film adaptation is for its scant dialogue and heavy reliance on visual exposition. To take on the ambitious task of writing a novel after being known for shorts, it is a daunting task, especially when people make it sound as such. But if it's obvious in some cases there's a lot of redundant words involved in making it across that threshold of short to novella to novel.

I can finish a novel length story around 50,000 words in two to three weeks now. I can write 30,000 + words in six days because I don't have much else going on. I finished the original draft of Into the Other, my last novel, in 13 days. That didn't mean any of this is any good. In comparison, it took me 8+ months to finish Live to Tell, which is barely 33,000 words. And I've just recently finished an 1900 word short story I started in 2015. Yes, it took me four years to finish it because I didn't know how. That's how easy it is to lose focus on a project, even if it's that tiny. You lose momentum if the story isn't letting you end it. I have many unfinished projects now, mostly from high school. I have a box full of material and maybe 1-2 % has seen the light of day. I find it hard to believe a lot of writers do multiple drafts of books if they're faced with a deadline, but when you're starting out, you write a lot of crap. It's best you do, it's better than a blank page. But you know what will work and what won't, usually. The editor who looked over Into the Other praised my succinct descriptions; I'm not big on lengthy paragraphs of detail. I'm much better at dialogue, to the point I think I should be a screenwriter and not a novelist.

I always maintain people read lengthy books to say they read them. You can rarely get it out of them if they liked it or even understood the subtext. I came from a town that only had two television stations in operation until right before I left town, and I still wrote during class as well. I dedicated more time to this back then than I feel like I do now. But it's mostly terrible and I don't like looking them over. I salvaged one thing and I'm happy with how it turned out, but there's no way I'd let you read the original story. I didn't use a single line of it in the new version, maybe just a couple of character names and basic traits. You can read an author with a high output but I'm sure you've thought they've become one note. I don't think length dictates any form of quality. Some of the most popular books out there needed editing but the authors were so egotistical they let every useless word go to print, including spelling mistakes. Having that level of arrogance that every sentence you've written is golden the moment it emerges on the page makes you a terrible author. I don't really care how much you've written, if it's terrible, why even show it to anyone? And spending years finishing it doesn't make it better either. If there's no effort shown to demonstrate the basic fundamentals, your output is irrelevant.

 

Where you end and your characters begin.

A major part of Live to Tell is Stephen's marriage to Grace. We're introduced to Stephen when they're on the verge of separation, Grace indignant about his long absences on his book tour, and Stephen full of animosity for her threatening to walk. They've clearly forgotten what they love about each other, and Jacinta coming into their lives is the biggest test of their resolve.

Stephen is very much a creature of habit, who has become too self-involved with his work. Grace has been left with Chloe, their six-year-old daughter, who's already precocious and bratty, and Grace's patience is almost spent. Grace is sassy and clever, but too tough to be pushed around or shortchanged by Stephen's selfishness.

Neither of them is perfect, and their marriage is hardly solid. I prefer to write imperfect characters, I won't give you a hero that's without fault, and I don't believe in Mary Sue types a reader can imprint themselves on to. They might be an idealised version of me or a flawed version of me. Some people I know might be loosely woven into my characters, or the character is based on no one at all. One of my favourite screenwriters, Dan Harmon, made a very attractive version of himself in the character Jeff Winger in Community. Dan is famous for being self-effacing but egotistical, as I've learnt by listening to his podcast over the years. Community was very much his vehicle for working through his own flaws and how he approached others. If you know a writer on a personal level, it's hard to remove them from their work, but in some literary debate, the writer and the text (book, film etc.) should always remain apart.

The best part of character development is fleshing out each individual player and creating a persona that you can play with. Provided their motivations make sense to the reader, even if they are terrible decisions, or maligned ones, the reader will find this believable. Then you know you've made a strong charter.

 

Welcome to The Other – It'll Take Your Breath Away.

 

To create a world that is breathtaking in every sense of the word, many things have to be considered. How does the Other look to the naked eye, and what secrets is it hiding? What are the creatures like? And how can you survive there if you're not an inhabitant? Most of all, is it really as wonderful as it first appears?

In order to display the Other as an almost intangible place, I had to create a dichotomy with our world, so it's been coined the Concrete, the very opposite of air and softness. We see the Other through Ralla's eyes first. She grows up learning how to adapt to this environment, which isn't meant for her. Forced to train to be more like her father, the mysterious and maligned Calder, Ralla is left resenting him for not giving her a more of a taste of the world she's really from. He works to paint the Concrete as dangerous and full of horrible people only out to hurt her. When the chance comes for her to find out more, she's enticed and eager to go, but regretful once she becomes part of the Concrete.

"In the Concrete realm, the world her father seemed to hate so much, this journey they were on would’ve taken hours. In the Other, they were there in minutes; time and distance stretching and folding over to grant them a quick path home. Her father knew how to do these things in the Other with barely the twitch of an eye. Now it was Ralla’s turn to obtain his skills, and she was far from achieving his inherent mastery."

I didn't want to give the Other a fantastic sounding name. I also needed it to be beautiful but full of threats to anyone who wasn't from there. Once Josie and Nick become immersed in this world, they need to adapt much quicker, and Ralla has to give them a crash course on how to navigate the terrain. I thought if the place was more like air, the air itself could still be thin. The physical laws of the Concrete, especially concerning time and distance, are discarded in the Other.

The Other went by a different name and had different aspects when I created it years ago. It was contained and had less definition, and if I'm honest, it wasn't particularly imaginative. World building is one of the major parts of fantasy storytelling, and this takes time. I set this as a challenge to myself as I've not provided too much description in my other stories as opposed to this one. I also wanted to present characters who were essentially flawed or not who they appeared at first glance. Josie has not one but two monsters in her life from the outset, her abusive partner Brent and the conniving Calder. While Nick might seem like the hero who comes to save her, Josie still challenges his devotion with her lies, which aren't intended to hurt him but do almost lasting damage once revealed. Seth has to decide where his allegiances lie once Josie betrays him, and Ralla has much more to learn about her real home when she's thrown into the Concrete. All of them are challenged by the choices they make.

Essentially, Into the Other is a strange tale of choices, and consequences.

Check out some reviews of Into the Other here.

Judging Books by Their Covers

 

No matter how many times you hear the tired adage “never judge a book by its cover”, you will never get you past the fact your book's cover is as important as its content.

While I've been self-publishing, I've always looked for the easiest ways to produce covers for my ebooks. I recently decided to publish these in paperback, and I chose to review their covers and do new ones. It can be costly to hire a company or even an individual to help design your book cover, but if you're willing to spend some time and money on this, it can pay off in the long run. It's another investment in your book: making sure it's dressed right for the part. Since I wasn't making money self-publishing, I chose commercial free images, usually abstract patterns, and free fonts that I redesigned using a cheap paint application. I steered clear of images unless I could incorporate them stylishly, and in one case, this turned out really well and actually made a huge difference to the number of copies picked up on the first day I released the book. I didn't have half as much success with any of my other ebooks, so this said a lot to me.

My first traditional publication Live to Tell was a lesson in communication for me. I did have a mockup idea for the cover, which was extremely basic. I felt using a simple, mysterious image was better than trying to make a kind of pastiche of aspects of the book. A shadowy wood seemed the best fit for this, so the theme went over into the trailer.

With my latest novel, Into the Other, I had a basic mockup I provided, and the designer also quizzed me on some of the aspects of the story to incorporate into the cover. The end result was astonishing, and I was highly impressed, as were other people I showed the preview images to. The final printed product turned out great, and it was mentioned even the style of the font for the title correlated with the theme of the story, something I didn't notice myself. I really enjoyed working with this designer, and she was amenable to my requests for changes and asked for my feedback. She was also reasonably priced.

I have asked friends in the past to design covers for me, but they were strapped for time and we weren't able to come to a final product we had in mind, so I went with what they gave me and finished it myself. If you do know people who are talented artists, and they are willing to assist with your cover, that might work out well for you, but if you're not coming to a professional arrangement, or feel uncomfortable imposing deadlines on friends, you're better off seeking the assistance of a professional. If you are fortunate enough to be talented with digital design, you still need to be conscious of the style of your cover and if it resonates with the intended audience. I've noticed a running theme in many book and movie covers: mysterious or menacing girl with long hair, silhouetted cities with similar font designs for the title, composite images of couples and sweeping plains popularised by romance novels, and so on. So do you stick with the theme of your genre, or try something different?

Your font usage and placement also can make a difference, as well as choosing whether your name should be larger or smaller than the title. Cover design isn't ever about the image itself; there is also the front and back matter to consider, deciding whether to incorporate the same image into the spine of the book, and how much text you want to use for the blurb and other back matter aspects. Embossing your front cover lettering is another option. Most print on demand companies can do the bare minimum, so consider how effective your cover can be within the constraints of their printing requirements. Of course, a big publishing house is going to provide people to work with, but not everyone can be so accommodating, and sometimes you have to call in your own help.

No matter what you decide to do, your cover will be judged by your potential readers. It can make or break sales. Standing out from the crowd is vital now, especially online. Make sure you do what you can so your book is dressed for success and less likely to fade into the background.

 

Making Social Media Your Friend

I'm not a huge fan of social media, however, I do know how powerful it has become, especially in terms of marketing.

I was reluctant to jump on the Facebook bandwagon when it began. In its initial stages, it was purely intended to help connect university students and wasn't dependent on advertising to operate. It grew over time, gathering users from around the globe, and it was always going to be free, thanks to companies using social media to spread their message quickly and easily. Twitter, meanwhile, wasn't regarded as being an efficient tool for communication, but as its user-base grew, so did the awareness of corporations as to just how vital it was to harness this utility without abusing it. Now the public can end an advertising campaign within the space of hours if they deem it too offensive.

So it's imperative you learn how to best use these platforms. I did find joining Facebook writers' groups helped me gain more likes for my author page, which can help with your standing to a degree. It is difficult to know how many of your followers are genuinely responding to your posts, so having others share and like your posts is also important. You can keep track of your metrics better if you create a page for your books as opposed to relying on a standard profile, and you can also boost posts by running a page. Your page will also include a built-in link for your shopfront and a space for reviews. Liking publisher pages and getting follows from high profile companies or personalities on Twitter can also help.

Making connections with other authors, or even artists in other fields, can go a long way to getting you some much-needed publicity for absolutely nothing. I have been lucky to meet a few authors who were generous with their shares and retweets, as well as reviews.

I also highly recommend setting up a Goodreads author page. They're also branching out in the advertising space, and certain independent books have gained incredible traction by way of readers sharing and recommending certain authors. There's also a very active society of readers and writers under the one roof, and you can post blogs, consolidate reviews and add your books if they've not already been added by Amazon. They also offer programs for giveaways, and you can set up small advertising fee to give your book a boost on their main page.

Be careful you're not overwhelming your followers with constant posts. Try to keep a presence going without bombarding everyone. It's the best tool for reaching your audience directly, and answering questions. If you follow some well-known authors and artists to see how they interact with their followers, you can learn a lot of dos and don'ts from how their followers respond. Even a small, strong following can help with retweets and likes. And once you have fans, they'll want your work however they can get it, so you can also look into platforms like Patreon to generate sales and interest. These are all free or low-cost options for when you're starting out advertising with social media.

 

The Rules Have Changed

 

Before the advent of online ebook publishing, the publishing industry was in an entirely different realm. There were two main roads: traditional and self-publishing. Then the Internet came and everything changed. Now, all bets are off.

Deciding whether or not to publish your work isn't the difficult part. It's choosing the means of publishing that has now become more complex. Gone are the days of sending your printed manuscript to publishers with form letters and requests for consideration. Submissions processes have changed across the board. I submitted Live to Tell in this manner but wasn't expecting results. Up until this point, I'd been submitting my manuscripts to various publishers who were accepting unsolicited material, which is one important thing to remember: if you're not currently represented by an agent, some publishers won't accept any submissions from you. And I'd always been told, "You can't get a deal without an agent, but an agent won't give you a look in until you have a deal." No wonder I gave up for five years after university.

I've been very closeted about my writing despite self-publishing and self-promoting for a few years now. Close friends were aware I was writing and releasing books, but I wasn't advertising this very much. My decision to self-publish came from some positive feedback I received from a chapter I posted on my old blog. This can be a great way to get feedback, however be aware that some publishers will not accept manuscripts that have been published by any means previously, including blogs.

I had been offered a contract from another company some years ago. Their letter was very professional and I was shocked to receive it, but after some investigation, I discovered they'd developed a bad reputation and that signing with them would be a mistake. So here's another factor I learned about: vanity publishing. Unscrupulous people have taken advantage of many inexperienced writers wanting to see their work published, and have taken thousands of dollars which, in one case, ended up paying for a lovely celebration dinner for the author and hardly anything else. They were basically swindled. There's still a legal grey area when it comes to these business models. I highly recommend checking out Writer Beware, an independent blog that has the most comprehensive information on publishers with known legal issues and histories of scamming authors. The Internet may have thrown a lot of rules out the window, but it has also become your most valuable source of up to date information on publishing.

I've enjoyed self-publishing via Smashwords and Amazon Kindle, but they also have fine print you need to go over, which I was a bit lazy about when I was starting out. They have also generated some unlikely success stories. Back in the day, self-publishing implied you'd failed to gain success as a published author and had decided to go it alone. Now, with the ease of self-publishing ebooks, you'll probably find yourself struggling for attention. If you choose to self-publish, the decision you need to make then is, how much do you want to contribute to promotion, editing and production. Again, the Internet does have reams of resources out there to help you. Just be wary of sites with phone numbers or that use wording like "hybrid", or that insist upon a large investment on your part to reach publication. I ended up being bothered by another company who was trying to sell me their services, and all I had done was leave a contact number on a site saying I was looking for publishers. I made a lot of mistakes back then, but I did know not to sign a contract that required me to pay excessive amounts just to have my book published.

It's a jungle out there. Don't be afraid to submit queries to publishers and agents and really get the whole picture before you make any major decisions. It's your work that's at stake here.

Tips, Tricks and Tactics

 

I've had all kinds of advice like, “the only rule is: there are no rules”, “always have dialogue on the first page” and “Stay away from cliches in general”. I have a degree in writing which involved practical units in writing prose and screenwriting. I have textbooks with reams of valuable information I've skimmed through. I have all the tools at my disposable, and now a wealth of advice can be found online.

But I still have so much to learn. I'll never consider myself a total expert. I'm always looking to improve my skills. There a lot of ways to overcome roadblocks. Little writing activities are always a good idea. If you do some hunting, you can find exercises for students on all sorts of levels. Just because it might be a tip for kids doesn't mean you can't find it useful too. To say there aren't any rules is misleading, there are guidelines. Knowing these guidelines helps you play a little with form and style. One of Stephen King's tips is to not worry about grammar or synonyms for “said” when tearing through your first draft. Very good advice. Never go over a chapter or sentence over and over perfecting it, just get to the end. An imperfect draft has more potential than a perfect chapter all on its own.

I had high hopes for Live to Tell to become a novel with more points of view when I started out, and I did do some plotting, but I find making very specific plans paints me into a corner and I run out of things to say. I've seen photos of very meticulous notes and storyboards other authors rely on, and I'm embarrassed to say my notes and drafting process are both very haphazard. I have many tattered notebooks with random notes and paragraphs I had to get down when I was out and about. I don't lug a laptop around with me, pen and paper are the quickest way to get an immediate spark of inspiration down. I might thumb a few notes on my phone if I'm without a pen, but I won't spend hours thumbing paragraphs to later upload into a book. There is a case of one woman who wrote an entire book on her blackberry. The novelty of how she wrote the book gave it more traction than the story itself may have earned on its own.

The best way to go about it is to experiment and try new things until you figure out your own methods that work for you. Some of your favourite authors may have gotten away with breaking a rule or two that their critics may have frowned upon. It's very easy to snub your nose at the critics of best-selling authors, but writing a multitude of books may not make you an amazing author. It's honing your craft and learning from the critical feedback you receive that's far more valuable than only hearing the praise and never learning from your mistakes.

You'll come across so many practical solutions for writer's block and how to build narratives and character bibles. All of these can be of use. My best advice would be to take a few tidbits and make them your own, but don't get too discouraged if other methods don't work for you.

 

What's it About?

 

The best and worst question you can ask an author about their book is “What's it about?” If I'm in a good mood, I'll give you a brief synopsis. “ Live to Tell is about a writer who meets a girl who has a new idea for his next book.”

If I'm in a mood, however, I'll say something glib like, “It's about the pain of human conscience.” In other words, that's it as a thematic concept. This is pretentious. Stephen gets pulled into the story of the Brotherhood of Karden, but he's left questioning its validity and even its existence. Jacinta is hoping she has the evidence needed to incriminate her father, but she knows her enemies are working against her to avoid arrest.

It's probably the hardest thing for me to talk about when I'm asked what my books are about. I know the person is expecting me to launch into an enthusiastic pitch with embellishments. I'd prefer they simply read it, and they might decide it's about something else entirely. “What's it about?” isn't as simple a question as it sounds.

 

Advertising Pitfalls Online

 

Marketing in the Internet Age is a whole new arena. Keeping up to date with trends is a means of survival. You will also need to make social media your friend. Here are some points I've learned along the way.

Marketing for Live to Tell wasn't incredibly difficult for me. I have studied media and advertising, but this was years ago in university. I came up with a full brief for a Diet Coke commercial based on some print ads, and received good marks for it. Writing press releases and making small banners, and even editing a book trailer, weren't grueling tasks as they may have been for some. I'm capable of working in advertising, however, I hate commercials and don't expose myself to a lot of television anymore.

Online marketing is infinitely harder than running a simple TV or print campaign. And there are plenty of services out there for authors to use to market their book, you're not just going to use social media platforms. So it can be tricky to know which service to use. I've used services like Books and The Bear and Huge Orange, who offer small packages for social media “blasts”, but it obviously costs more for newsletter features and online book tours. They promise huge hit rates with their large averages, but you may find your particular tweet or post didn't receive more than twenty likes and even fewer shares. Also, getting the attention of reviewers in this market is difficult, and all the information says reviews are integral to generating sales, even though buyers are becoming wary of solicited and fake reviews bought by the seller to make the item appear popular. I've had books listed on websites that were given fake five star reviews, but when I requested they be removed, the company recommended I keep them since they made the book more marketable. This has never sat well with me.

If you're willing to invest in professional promotional material, online print services like Vistaprint can provide affordable print material like business cards and flyers. I organised customised notebooks and magnets for the giveaway for my new book, Into the Other, but I've yet to see if any of these endeavors have paid off in terms of sales. My biggest hurdle is my own self-consciousness, as I struggle to really promote myself as an author, never mind the book I'm trying to get you to buy. Selling a book or any piece of art is selling a piece of yourself, and you have to have a decent amount of self-worth to convince someone to part with their money for your art. Running a giveaway helped in the initial stages of promo, but I found drumming up interest later down the track was difficult.

If you are confident, and I hope you are, you'll have no hesitations selling yourself and your books. I admire people who are able to really stand by their writing, or any art they create, and show it off proudly.

 

Novel Ideas

Starting 2017 with an offer from a publisher really threw me into a huge, unexpected learning curve. Even though I'd been self-publishing for a few years and fumbling my way through the highs and lows of using Amazon and Smashwords, I was still looking for a more traditional deal. Live to Tell, was written with the intention of having it traditionally published, but if I hadn't had any luck, it would've ended up on my Smashwords profile.

I learned far more going through the motions of being published by a company. I had many stressful and exciting moments, and I put a lot of my own work into the final product.

Into the Other is the first novel I've written in a long time, and I managed to finish the original draft within 13 days of solid work. I ended up fleshing it out further, and while I thought it might be boring, my editor had glowing praise for the story and my style, and she couldn't get over how evil my antagonist was.

This story is a rewrite of a novella I wrote in high school. I'd always intended on taking this story and transforming it. I was a little obsessed with the story of Rumpelstiltskin, and wanted to create a kind of modern-day version. I also wanted to pay a homage of sorts to the role-playing and tabletop games I'd learned to play in the last few years. And while I was watching the last season of Stranger Things, I was blown away by how many similarities their story line had with mine, and this was months after I'd finished my final draft.

So Into the Other is really for my geek friends, and any lover of fantasy and role-playing. I wanted to make sure there were hints for my aficionado friends that other readers might not be familiar with. When I'm asked if this book is like my last one, I always say they're completely different. I'm happy to play with all kinds of genres.

So far it's been compared to works by Neil Gaiman, and I've always felt like a writer who's lived with one foot in reality and the other in another world entirely. The idea of different dimensions or worlds on the edge of ours isn't exactly new, but it's certainly a fun one to play with. The mundane sitting parallel with the extraordinary leaves more scope for blending and balancing the two, which keeps you skirting the edge of the familiar before you tip over to somewhere perhaps a little scarier than you're used to.

 

Standing out and Finding Fans in a Popular Genre

Nearly all writers have an author who inspired them to some degree. Some of my favourite authors are mavericks and have a very unapologetic style within their genre. They don't always want to give their readers what they want. They always speak their mind in their words and don't shy away from concepts other authors will usually steer clear of.

One of my tutors pushed me in the direction of AM Holmes when he decided my style was edging toward hers. I love her books Music for Torching and The End of Alice, but I wouldn't recommend them to those who are easily offended. She challenges her readers to explore the darkest aspects of humanity, and while many readers read to escape reality, I'm still prepared to spend some time in the shadows of another author's brain.

My stories almost always have a foothold in the real world, but occasionally, as with my novel Into the Other, I'll put my other foot in somewhere fantastic and try to marry the two. I was going to start the story at the beginning of Josie's life with Calder and his encounters, when she was a child, but I quickly dropped that and threw her straight into the thick of the narrative, when she's waiting to be interrogated for her crime.

The incidents leading her to meet Calder were small and didn't need to be fleshed out, since the essence of the story was her immediate predicament with Calder and the consequences of her choice to agree to his sick bargain. This throws you into the deep end rather than easing you into it in chronological order, but still illustrates the history Josie and Calder have. We don't really step into The Other until we meet Ralla many years later. But the story itself is certainly very much within the genre of fantasy above all else.

Live to Tell, on the other hand, fits into the genre of suspense more than anything. It doesn't totally fit under mystery, and it's more dramatic than comedic, but I did add some moments of humour to break up the tension. Submission guidelines will always specify what a publisher is looking for, and this can be discouraging if you feel you have something a little outside of the box when it doesn't match what their storefront contains.

Reaching a wider audience outside of your own particular genre is, to my mind, a much bigger accomplishment. One of the best reviews I ever received was my story wasn't the reader's cup of tea, but they still found it fascinating and I left them wanting more. And I've nearly made someone else late for work because my story had them too enthralled. If I can hold your attention, no matter what I'm trying to say, I've done my job as a writer. It's probably the best, most enjoyable form of manipulation you can find.

 

Hybrid Genres

I'm the type of person who is impossible to pigeonhole. So it makes sense my books are hard to fit into any specific genre. Choosing a specific genre may seem limiting, but there is room for scope.

I wasn't a fan of Young Adult books when I was a young adult. I gravitated toward more adult fiction by Anne Rice and Clive Barker, and had the stomach for their concepts. But when I was writing, I tended to do realistic stories that rarely went in a horror or fantasy direction. When I'm asked what kind of genres I tend to be very vague and say “fantasy drama” or “fantasy horror”.

Into the Other was always intended as a fantasy novel, and it also fell within the realms of YA. It came out of an old novella I wrote for a competition towards the end of high school called Conditions Apply. I would see this phrase on so many commercials in fine print (including the company I now work for), and it inspired a story about a woman who had to give up her baby to a strange entity to avoid going to jail. It wasn't particularly brilliant, but I always had it in mind for a rewrite. When I revisited the story, I wanted to focus more on world building, so now the Other is far more detailed than it originally was. My main aim was to be as descriptive as possible without falling into the trap of long-winded passages with explicit detail. I certainly don't consider myself a fantasy writer, as I don't subscribe to the standard tropes within this genre.

Live to Tell is an entirely different story. I'm not a big reader of mystery or suspense books, so I feel like this is more an intense drama the likes of which you'd see on a TV crime show. It has elements of suspense and mystery, there's some amateur gumshoe moments where the protagonist, Stephen, is digging up research for his new book while inadvertently finding new clues to solve a crime, and getting himself embroiled in the dark underworld of kidnapping. I was inspired by TV shows like True Detective, and I felt I could give it a suspense/noir feel while still having very human and identifiable characters.

Coping with the Critics

 

Dealing with criticism is a vital part of being an author. You'll find the most respected authors have always responded well to criticism, and have avoided using review feeds to air their own grievances against their readers.

One tip I can offer is to be more attentive to research. It's also vital to make sure you don't have any continuity issues in your story. Attentive readers are quick to spot inconsistencies, which can happen if you're the type of writer who writes chapters out of order as they occur to you. It's fine to do this, but make sure when you're in your final drafting stages that you check the chronology of your story, and that descriptions of certain aspects remain consistent.

When I did get reviews for Live to Tell, I received them as politely as I could. I took all the feedback on board, and it helped tremendously when I was beginning to write Into the Other. Reviews are invaluable, so is feedback. If you're not willing to accept some criticism towards your work, you won't be able to grow as a writer. Always try to be humble in the face of feedback from your audience, be it from friends or strangers.

This doesn't mean you have to listen to mean comments. If you're being insulted, which isn't the same as genuine critique, do your best to ignore these comments and not respond. Readers depend so much on reviews to determine if a book is worth buying. Meta-sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic have a massive influence in dictating later box office sales. Never underestimate the power of a review. If I can give you any advice, it would be to separate constructive criticism from a genuine insult. Also, don't ignore bad reviews if they are valid and reasonably stated. Focusing on all your good reviews and ignoring any detractors doesn't go a long way to progressing as a writer.

 

Avoiding Mary Sue

Have you met Mary Sue? Chances are, you've seen her multiple times in many stories and movies. While she may be a tried and true character trope, you'll find a lot of audiences aren't too keen on getting to know her again.

If you've not come across this character-type, Mary Sue is the perfect template the audience can project themselves onto. She's usually naturally powerful, though she isn't aware of it, so she's also boring and unassuming. I don't mind if you want to add her to your story, but I'd prefer to give you something different.

In my novel, Into the Other, the one character I want to stand out is Ralla. While her mother, Josie, and her choices propel you into the story, it's Ralla who's our heroine. She is flawed with no real confidence, much like a Mary Sue can start out as, and she has a strong determination to uncover the truth about herself. While she has book-smarts by way of being well read, she's still kept in the dark by Calder. Her identity and descriptions had to steer clear of cookie-cutter. She should be someone a reader looks up to, rather than someone they can step into. She's meant to be cheered on. As her confidence grows, so does her wit. A reader might want to be like her, rather than be her.

Meanwhile, Josie is the more flawed of the two. I'm expecting people to resent her as much as she does herself. But I'm hoping my villain, Calder, attracts the most disdain. In the first version of this story I wrote many years ago, Josie was originally portrayed as a much more cantankerous character, and I don't believe she was entirely likeable. I've tried to give her a more redemptive arc and make her more sympathetic this time around.

And while Seth might be churlish, he's still the most sympathetic of the three main characters. His thoughts and choices may paint him as someone almost as sinister as Calder, but he finds his own humanity from his ordeals. Seth isn't your standard geek, but he's very much a typical boy in a small town, bored and disillusioned with his own existence. He's full of suspicion toward Josie, close to learning truths that will upend his world. He's also into role-playing and dirt bikes, is incredibly resourceful and tries to put up with his lot in life without too much complaint. When he and Ralla finally cross paths, questions come up as to who they are to one another, and their relationship isn't a common boy meets girl scenario, either.

The original versions of these characters were vastly different in many ways. Josie is now less resentful and more guilty about the choices she's made, Ralla has more agency and cunning, and Seth has a more rounded and believable personality. Stereotypes can sometimes be useful in character building, but what I've learned from role-playing is that the more creative you are in your descriptions and backstory, the more compelling you are to the other players and the campaign, and you'll have a lot more fun. I've been told I write very human characters, and even in fantasy, characters should seem real and identifiable enough that you're willing to stick with them to the end.

Sometimes a writer may put more of themselves into their characters, or more of others. But if the characters are fleshed out into believable people, no matter what race or gender they are, and you are engaged by their actions, then the writer has made a solid, and hopefully more memorable, character.