Writer's Wednesday--Exciting news!

I composed my IWSG post for last week a bit in advance, since we were out in the wilds of Maine. As a result, I failed to include my writer's news, most of which happened after I queued up the post. I have a couple of things I'm excited about sharing this week instead!

1.  I got a story accepted! My short, "The Revenge of Gorg," a rewriting of the first chapter of Gorg's book was accepted for publication in the November issue of "Frostfire Worlds." I'll share more info about purchasing copies when I have it. I'm extra excited about this, because after trying a couple of years ago to put Gorg's stories into a novel form, I let that project drop in frustration. This sale restores some of my faith in Gorg, and his book is going back into the hopper for more work (as soon as I deal with a few other things).

2. I got inspired, and the outlining process for the Pismawallops PTA #5 is well under way, even while #4, Death By Library, is with the proof-reader (heck, while she has the MS I can't do anything with that one, so...). The new book is tentatively titled Death By Donut.

3. While working on the outline, I stumbled on some notes from last spring for a short story or novella featuring our friends from Pismawallops Island. I got excited, and on Monday drafted over 5000 words of the story, which I plan to finish and release before Christmas (but after Death By Library).

We expect to be back home in about 5 more days, and then I'll have until the end of January to focus on writing (well, aside from that whole bit about hosting the holiday revels).

Some of our time in New England has been this:

Descending the Bridle Trail from Franconia Ridge, NH

And some has been this:

View from the Zealand Hut, White Mountains, NH

Lots more photos to come as I get them sorted. I made my life extra difficult by hitting something early in the trip that caused the camera to take 3 versions of every photo. Extra fun in the editing phase!

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2019
As always, please ask permission to use any photos or text. Link-backs appreciated!

IWSG Post

Purpose: To share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! Posting: The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Be sure to link to the IWSG page and display the badge in your post. And please be sure your avatar links back to your blog! If it links to Google+, be sure your blog is listed there. Otherwise, when you leave a comment, people can't find you to comment back.

Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!

September 5 question - What publishing path are you considering/did you take, and why?

The awesome co-hosts for the September 5 posting of the IWSG are Toi Thomas, T. Powell Coltrin, M.J. Fifield, and Tara Tyler!

I don't have much to report about my own writing. I've been on the road for the last couple of weeks, so my writing (as it has been for most of the summer) has mostly been my journal. At least when we are traveling I write more regularly and more extensively than at home, so I hope at least I get some good exercise out of it.

Moving on to the question of the month... My publishing path and why I chose it.

I have been self-publishing my books since the first book in 2012 (though I kind of prefer the "author-publisher" designation). At that time, I had (over the course of a couple of decades) completed and shopped around 3 different MSS, with limited success. That is, I never got an agent, but each one did garner more personalize responses and requests for larger samples. That being the case, I could have concluded I was making progress, and gone on shopping books to agents. Two things changed my mind (or maybe 3). For one thing, I was losing patience with a very slow process that I didn't know how to manage emotionally.

A second, and larger, reason for the move was the state of self-publishing in 2012. It really was at the perfect point: there was a degree of respectability that the vanity presses never had (and, of course, it was fiscally plausible, unlike vanity presses),  but the market was not then so saturated with self-published books of dubious quality that it was as hard to get seen. A friend had recently published that way, and encouraged me to consider it.

I think that the thing that pushed me over the line to try self-publishing was that although I knew The Ninja Librarian was a good book, I also knew it didn't fit categories well. I market it as a children's book, and kids like it, but the writing is not simple, and adults may find even more to like in the book and the sequels. It's historical fiction and humor and tall tales and adventure. I might have been wrong--an agent might have seen something and figured out how to help me make it marketable (I know--now--that it would have benefited from some editorial advice). But I didn't really believe I'd even find a publisher willing to take a chance on it, and I wanted to share it with the world.

Of course, I made all the usual rookie mistakes, from not using an editor (at least I knew enough to have it proof-read) to making my own cover (I got a professional cover a year or two later when I wrote the second book, Return to Skunk Corners). I would like to think that I've learned enough to start really considering myself a publisher as well as an author. I just need to make one more leap, to buying my own ISBNs and removing the CreateSpace label. On the other hand, since I don't expect to ever make a fortune at this, I may never bother to do that.

How about you? What's your path, and do you think you made the right choice?

Writer's Musings: Why I Write

This week, instead of a flash fiction challenge, Chuck Wendig asked us all to write a 1000-word essay on why we write. I didn't count the words, but I'm pretty sure I'm under the line.

Why I Write

My initial reaction to this question was to ask why I even need to ask it. I write because that's who I am. What I do. What more is there to say?

But of course there is a lot more to say. If it's purely a matter of identity, how do I explain the years and years when I wrote almost nothing--taking nearly 15 years to draft an 80,000-word mystery?* So even though I have always thought of myself as a writer, always wanted to write books, and began almost as soon as I could hold a pencil, there must be a reason why I write now.

What I'm looking for is the reason why at this time in my life, I'm writing nearly daily (okay, I admit that it's not always on my books, and this summer has been a mess and I've really not written anything like daily, but it is a generally true statement). In large part, it still comes back down to the urge to write that's been there all along. About five years ago, that urge found a new outlet, and I began writing a lot more often, composing the stories that made up The Ninja Librarian, and sharing them with my co-workers at the library.

I think that might be at the root of why I kept writing more and more, instead of losing track of the project for months and years at a time, as I did with earlier books: I had found an audience. I had found an audience, moreover, that loved my work. The librarian after whom I modeled the Ninja Librarian was delighted to keep featuring in new stories. My other fellow library-minions laughed at the stories (in the right way) and asked for more.

There was another thing that happened about that time, that wasn't me, but had a lot to do with me continuing to write: the self-publishing world experienced a giant shift, from Vanity Press to genuine self-publishing, in a way that took a lot of the stigma and most of the expense out of the DIY approach. And I'd had enough of rejection slips (during those years when I say I mostly wasn't writing, I actually produced and shopped around two adult mysteries and a children's book, and collected the usual pile of [mostly well-deserved] rejections).

When I looked at The Ninja Librarian, I saw that it was good. I also saw that it was a bit stuck between audiences, if not between genres. And I didn't feel like spending the time to put it out there and let the agents tell me that. I wanted to share the book wherever I could. So I did it myself.

That led to the other reason I write, and write pretty regularly (most of the time now I have a fair bit of discipline about it). Because when I had put that book out there, and shared it in my community, and read bits of it to school children who bought copies, I started hearing the questions authors love: "When is the next book coming out?"*** There is nothing like someone eagerly awaiting your work to make you want to sit down and get to it. Especially when that someone is a kid, looking up at you with big eyes, asking for your next book.

So, ultimately, that's why I write: because I did it once, and now there are people who want more.**** And that feeds my ego, but it also tells me I'm doing something right. It tells me that yeah, I'm a writer. And that's pretty danged cool. That's why I write.



*Okay, there's that little matter of getting my PhD, getting married, and having two kids in that period, too. For quite a few years after high school, I was just too busy. Not too busy to write--I think I know now that a person can always find the time to write at least a little, if they want to. I was too busy to feel the urge to write.**

**I was also busy having my ability to write readable prose beaten out of me by the necessity of learning to write academic prose. It took me years to get over that.

***Note that this is very close to the question authors hate, "Are you writing anything now?" If one is a writer, one is of course working on something now. And if by any chance one isn't (writers block or life interferes, or something), one really doesn't want to be reminded. But "when is the next book due?" is a totally flattering question that feeds our pathetic authorial egos and soothes the ravenous insecurity-monster.

****Not enough to make me rich, but enough to keep me in coffee. That's worth something, right?

©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2015

Being an author-publisher looks a lot like work...

I don't have a review ready to go today. I could blame it on having been on the road with my oldest son, visiting colleges (colleges? We're just getting some traction on this parenting thing, and it's almost over?). That would even be partly true. But I'm also working hard on all the final details for Halitor the Hero, which is still on schedule for its Nov. 30 release date!

There's a lot to do. Once the MS is clean and lovely as far as content goes (got there last week), the formatting begins. I spent yesterday in battle with MS Word getting it to where the ebooks should be perfect (I often wish my books had illustrations, but I admit that it is easier to create an ebook without them!). Now I'm working on the print version, which is easier in some ways (no need for live links!) but requires more of what I'm less good at, i.e. an artistic sense. This font or that? And I set myself a big challenge this time: I hired my amazing cover artist, Danielle English, only for the front cover. I'm doing the back and spine myself. In theory, this is well within my skills. In practice...the jury is still out!

Once that's done and all the chapter heads are just as I want them (and headers! footers! page numbers!), and I upload the whole thing, I'll finish that short story for Friday's blog and get back to your regularly scheduled entertainment!

Oh, and about that "NaNoEdMo" idea, where I was going to get Death By Trombone through the first round of edits by the end of the month? Not looking so good! But I am working on it, so I know I'll get there eventually. Maybe even by the end of the year (just in time to start the second round of edits in the new year).

Meanwhile, you can pre-order the ebook of Halitor from Amazon AND from Smashwords!

 

And don't forget the exciting pending release of the BookElves Anthology! I'll link up as soon as we have a pre-order page, because there are some cool holiday stories in there! Huge thanks to Princelings of the East author Jemima Pett for all the work she's doing on this!

And don't forget that Goodreads Giveaway for Halitor!

T: Ten Things I Didn't Do

 

Today's topic is talk about tasks that time has taught me thorough types tackle (but I didn't, both during the A to Z and more generally about my writing).  (I thought about writing about taxes, but I've finished with that annoyance, and don't want to think about it--nor do I particularly want to risk sharing my dubious decisions).

These first five are about the blogging thing:

1.  Because you already figured this out, I didn't write a post for today.  Or even figure out what it was going to be (I don't consider a vague note of "something about Tess?" to be a plan).

2.  Housework.  Blogging is a great deal more fun than housework.  Oh, I've kept the laundry done and fed people most days, even swept the kitchen and dining room a couple of times.  But please don't look too closely at my dust bunnies.  They are getting large and savage.

3.  Talk.  I haven't made enough time this month to talk to my friends.  It's very easy for an introverted writer to crawl into a cave with the computer and not emerge.

4.  Visit.  I'm guilty of failing to visit as many blogs as I'd like, though I think I've hit everyone who's left me a comment.  Where do people find the time for this?!

5.  Prepare.  Next year (and yes, I'm already planning on doing the next A to Z!) I want to prepare more posts in advance.  Prepare, plan, and execute, so that I can spend more time reading.

Six through ten are about writing, and publishing:
6.  Plan ahead.  I wrote the book, then I started thinking about covers, formatting, etc.  The sad thing is. . . I did it again with the second book, which is why instead of it coming out in Feb. as promised, it's still not out.

7.  Invest.  Spend a little to make a little.  In other words: hire a cover artist.  Maybe an editor, but especially a cover artist, because without a decent cover you just don't sell books.

8.  Build a platform before you publish.  Everyone says to do it.  Unfortunately, for many of us, once we've published THEN we start reading about how to promote our books.  But you know what?  Since my indie-published book is not under the gun to reach a certain level of sales by the end of six months, that's okay.  I can take my time and learn the ropes and get there by and by.  Or not.

9.  Perfect my record-keeping.  After figuring out the taxes, I noted that I now knew how to keep my records (what categories to use, etc.) to make it easier next year.  I can't help noticing that I haven't changed my record keeping yet.

10.  Pick an age and genre and stick with it (in a particular book).  The Ninja Librarian  grew organically out of stories I wrote for my co-workers, and only when I had about a dozen did we start to think it was maybe a kids book, maybe YA (turns out not).  So the poor Librarian hovers between the children and the adults, and no one is quite sure where to put him.  So I'll clarify: the Ninja Librarian  books are completely suitable for kids, and adults will get even more out of them.  Some of the humor verges on slapstick, some is more subtle.  I think the story works either way.   But, from a purely marketing standpoint: don't do this at home, kids!


On the up side, there are a few things I've done and want to keep doing: I've read a lot of books this month, after a bit of a slump where I was just noodling around on line.  And I've been finishing books.  That's something to be proud of.

Cheap thrills, author style

Today I got the biggest thrill of the last several months.  A grade-schooler recognized me in the grocery store and told her mom, "She writes the Ninja Librarian book!"

Yup, my first groupie.  First time anyone has spotted me as a writer.  Not the Library Lady.  Not the PTA lady.  The one who writes the Ninja Librarian.

Okay, I'm easily wowed.   The kid attends my local grade school, and I read to her class last spring.  Still.  Wow.

I was still glowing from that one when I stopped by a friend's house, and one of the many kids around there (another from that same class) started telling everyone how I'd come to his class and read two chapters of my book.  Finally he looked at me and said, "You're an author."

For just a moment I was taken aback.  It felt. . . like cheating or something.  Then I got a big stupid grin and told him, "Yup.  I am."

This kind of thing is exciting for me, new as I am to being published.  But it also made me think.  Having people identify me as an author means I need to be an author.  Every day.  Even when I don't much want to write, or think I have no inspiration.

Because that's what authors do, and I don't want to make liars of those kids.