I’ve been Tardy…

It’s now the eighth of March and this blog post is later than it should have been. I apologize for the lack of blog posts. I have been busy.

Tonight, I should have been in bed hours ago…such, I shall ‘try’ to keep this post short, but knowing me, no promises.

This post is intended to act as an update on my writing process and some of the issues and errors that I have made. Some that I have corrected, some that I have not.

So far I have published two books and a third will be launching next week sometime. My cover artist is busy and it is likely it will be a bit before she gets to it. It’s all good.  As of the end of February, I have made a total of fifty bucks from my books and I have realized I have made some mistakes.

My marketing needs work and I have no sense of cover design. The two book covers that have been posted, I love. I think that they are lovely designs, the issue I have with them is that they’re not drawing people’s attention. No one wants to click on my books. No clicks mean they won’t buy my book.

After that, my marketing copy is bad. Bad marketing copy means that they will not be wanting to buy the book.

I have no data on how many people clicked the covers, or getting to the sale page, or putting it in their shopping carts.

The books are included in the KDP Select program. So people can read the books for free. KDP select is the only place that people will read my Phantom Sorcerer’ books. Most of the revenue made is from having ‘Phantom Sorcerer’ in KDP Select.  So far no one has read a page of the ‘Missile Attack’ book.

I think the problem with the ‘Missile Attack’ book, is that it’s a hard market to get into. And it makes sense. The kids that would enjoy the books don’t read KDP Select and don’t have credit cards to buy it.

That means that I need a new marketing strategy for my middle-grade book before I launch it on Amazon. But what to do? More research time I guess.

But from what I see in the reports that I get from KDP select, people read it. Not a lot, but when they do, its a cluster of times that they read the books. Meaning that I think that people are finishing the books. But I have no sign-ups for my newsletters or reviews on the books.

And that is that. I am currently 90% done on my June release, while I’m working on my July launch. But I haven’t gotten much down.

I have been hit by a wave of stress and a defeatist feeling. The peanut gallery is back. My inner Statler and Waldorf have made their untimely resurrection. Their presence has halted my production down to a crawl. They are an unwanted tumor in my life, and I must again figure out how to get rid of them. They’re halting my writing process and it’s not very good.

Advice would be greatly appreciated for any of the above statements and concerns. Feel free to email me at NAPedde@peddehouse.com, leave a comment, or a Twitter message.

Until next time.

Cheers.

 

 

 

 

Writer’s Block Part 2

In the earlier blog post that I did on ‘writer’s block,’ I explained that it doesn’t exist. And it doesn’t. Go ahead and go back to the blog post. This will be here when you are done.

In this post, I will give some was that I have gotten out of the feeling of ‘writer’s block’ or what I like to call a creative slowdown. Be warned though, these are kinda like trying to get rid of hiccups. They don’t all work when you want them to.

The first strategy that I usually do is that I keep in mind that ‘writer’s block’ is a phobia and doesn’t actually exist. It is best to keep positive, and it has been shown that positive thinking works overcoming a wide range of problems. I keep that in mind when I feel a slowdown. It helps when I feel the pressure and the stress of having deadlines and a long list of projects that may make me feel overwhelmed. It is a hard thing to do as the media and the like portraying the author as a tortured soul that wears fedora’s and suffers from a creative slowdown.

Brainstorming is the second strategy. I don’t suffer from the lack of ideas, as I have dozen’s of manuscript titles all wanting to be the next one on the list. But I usually do feel a creative slowdown when I run into a problem with the current work in progress.

My current project I have going on is the middle-grade sci-fi that I am writing with my son. I have finished the rough drafts of book two and three. At the end of book two, I felt like the ending blew. It did a read through, and an edit and the ending is limp, lackluster and just plain wrong. This killed the last few hours of my writing session. It knocked me down. Then I started to brainstorm and to think about the ending and on ways that I could fix it. I now have a plan on how. I just need to do it.

The third strategy is what I do when I am in the middle of a first draft. I am working along, and then I realize that a scene sucks. It happens. I reread a paragraph and wonder what type of narcotics that I am on. This can stop me. I will go back to fix one word, then one line, then a full page. Then I have been working and reworking the same stuff for months before I give up and say that I have ‘writer’s block.’ All cause I can’t get past that point to create new work.

The best strategy is not to. When I feel like your work isn’t up to any sort of good standards, lower them. Drop them to the floor. Get past the point and keep going. If I am worried about losing that lousy section, use the highlight tool in my your word processor and make a note about the part, then keep going. Once I get rolling again, I raise my standards back up until I have issues again. The key is to get it down on the page.

The fourth is when I sit down at my writing station, and I pull out my ‘outline,’ and then nothing happens. I can’t get going. Nothing is working. I am thinking about other things. Like the lawn needs to be mowed, or that I will just watch one youtube video. Just one.

That is a major problem. It is the easy distractions of the mind. They take as many forms as there are stars in the sky. The best way to combat this one is routine. Get a place to write. Something comfortable and my own. Preferbly away from distractions. Then set upo time to write. Gwt into the routine that I write and most times, I will.

If that doesn’t work, then I must go to the fifth strategy, get out of the house. Maybe I need a change in your environment. I go to a coffee shop or a bar. A library is good too. Get out and write elsewhere. It can pull me out of my slump.

The sixth way, is to know what I am planning on writing. It doesn’t mean that I have to have an outline. Just a couple notes on what I was going to do may help. Some writers intentionally don’t finish the scene that they were working on so that all they have to do is to read what the had of the last scene and then it’ll flow. This way doesn’t always work for me.

The seventh way that I have is that I will challenge myself to write a low number of words. Like 250. Then I find that when I get 250, either I am done for the day and I move onto the next strategy or I find that I have pumped out a  thousand words and I am not stopping.

The eighth way is that after I have attempted a couple ways to stop the creative slowdown, I go and read a book. I pick it up the next day. During the rest of the day, I will think about what I have in the story and see if my brain will come up with anything. It does. usually when I am trying to sleep.

I hope that this helps.

Until next time.

 

The Horror! The Torture! The College Students!

Well. It’s been a while since I talked to you all. Today I am going to talk to you about perspective and beginner writers.

There are many different people that will have there own opinion and knowledge on the subject. Many of whom are much smarter than I am and are much better writers as well.

But today I am going to give my opinion on the subject as I am an opinionated S.O.B. and I feel like standing on the soap box.

You see, yesterday I wrote the majority of this blog post in a tiny note book as I was being tortured by an unspeakable horror. I was taken captive by my wife to go to listen to her college creative writing class read portions of there ‘manuscripts’. (Please note that I did find about four of the story exerts enjoyable. My wife’s was included in that number.)

I use the term manuscript lightly.

In there defense, they are all mostly beginners and they don’t know any better. They don’t know about show, don’t tell (unless you want to). They don’t know about proper dialogue techniques. Or plotting methods to make a story easier to plot out. They don’t know about a lot of things that only experience gets you.

But all of that is okay. I can usually ignore those mistakes and enjoy the moment. I can usually try and turn off that critical part of my brain. To simply enjoy listening to these passionate new writers enjoy the beginnings of their journeys as writers. But I couldn’t. Not that night.

Which is why I wrote this blog post on a tiny note book at the back of the crowded room.

The reason for my lack of enjoyment was the fact that most of the writers wrote their pieces in First Person Perspective. Author after author did it. Like herpes, it spread to most of the class and wouldn’t go away.

So as I sat there, I wondered why did they do it? The first answer to jump into my mind was that it is a college setting and it is all ‘Literary’ fiction. And that theory is possible. But there was a fantasy novel and a historical one. There was a Horror and a couple comedies. Maybe the fact that colleges push the notion of ‘Literary’ fiction isn’t the case.

Maybe the teacher gave them permission and encouragement to do First Person? And that theory is also possible. The teacher is trying to get them to put pen to paper and if a student was going to write in first, who is he to stop him. She is writing, right? Right?

Or maybe the students were all lazy and thought that writing it in First Person was the easier way to go? They are college kids after all and most of them don’t have fine arts majors. This class was supposed to be an easy elective to break up the hardship of their major. A reprise.

My theory is that it is a mix between the second and the third theories. The teacher gave permission and encouragement. And the students were just being lazy. The students took what looked like the easy road.

But is First Person Perspective the easier way to go. Is it easier than Third Person Limited?

My opinion is no. It is not easier. It seems like it at first glance. Like that flat straight farming road. No turns or curves as far as the eye can see. But just beyond sight are dangers. by taking this road for it can quickly turn into a mud pit if you don’t tread carefully.

First Person is more restrictive than Third Person Limited.

In First Person you can’t see or hear anything outside of the range of your main character’s sight and hearing. If the main character can’t see it or hear it, they don’t know about it.

That leads to situations where it is impossible to move the plot forward. Or the plot moves forward but the writer has no way to tell the reader what is going on as the main character doesn’t know. It is also very hard to hide anything from the reader without coming off as cheating.

It is very hard to jump back and forth in time and forget about showing a different characters Point-of-View as writing a book with multiple First Person Point-of-View’s is not something anyone should try. Too many ‘I’s’ to keep track of. There is no ‘I’ in team.

In Third Person Limited, you are inside the Point-of-View of one specific character. You can hear the thoughts of that character when you want to. Or not as you see fit. You can’t, however, hear the thoughts of other characters around the Point-of-View character.

That is Third Person Omniscient and different than Third Person Limited. Also not apart of this blog post.

In Third Person Limited, you can run into similar problems as First Person. It is limited as the reader is only experiencing what the Point-of-View character experiences. He has no knowledge of what is happening on the other floor, etc. But with Third Person Limited, you can always jump into the Point-of-View of another character to let the reader know what was happening. If is easy to hide things from the reader without coming off as cheating.

Like First Person, you are still describing the setting, etc from the Point-of-View’s perspective. The intimacy that comes from a First Person Perspective story is still in a Third Person Limited, but just less of it and only at the authors discretion. However, with Third Person Limited a standard pitfall is the characterization coming off as hollow or only skin deep.

So does First Person have a time and place to be used?

Simple answer. It does.

On the other side of an airlock.