A short note, I didn't realize it's been a few weeks since my last post. Hard to imagine being on the computer and not having the time to blog, but it's true. Editing is a process that requires a lot of time and focus, especially when you might have a lot of eyes on you watching for your first effort, even if it's a short story. I'm learning a lot about self editing, that is, taking your little baby as far up the writer's road as you can on your own, as tight as possible. For me, this piece is about redoing a lot of sentences and trimming it a little, and looking at my arc, etc. There's also symbolism and showing, not telling, in a piece like this - in 3rd. (POV)
Like you maybe, I read a lot. It's deceiving how the great writers today make it look so easy. Lean, evenly paced, well blended high end work that looks so simple it makes you think you can do it....like....today...then you write a few chapters, look it over and alarms go off somewhere in your writer brain and you can't figure out why till you go over the work in a elemental breakdown way. This is also part of the process....and for those of you further up the writer's road than me, you already know this....(it's okay to laugh now....) I don't want to sound too much like a beginner here because in some ways I'm not, I know this stuff from writing a blog that had readers all over the world and some in journalism on a major league level, friends, who let me know stuff.
Fiction is a horse of a different color, when it comes to writing. Mastery of this craft is a long road...one that I've been on for awhile, and I've discovered that only in our work can we tell where we're at. No amount of talking, thinking, hoping, dreaming, or self delusion can replace the mechanics and practice of writing, and it's all practice till you get to a commercially viable level, at least for me and in my view. I wish I had the desire and capacity to be a true literary type and writer, but I don't...Maybe it's the mutt in me....(now I'm laughing...).
As you know, I'm on Twitter and I hope you'll head over and look me up and zing a few tweets back and forth. All my social media links are in the sidebar here, even my Goodreads page. I'm not so much trying to plug my stuff as I am hoping you'll get involved for your own sake and on your own terms. Every author needs to take some responsibility for their own promotion.
Daniel on Twitter
The Writers Road on Twitter
...you know where to find me...
LUVU
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Saturday, April 16, 2011
When the Thrill is Gone....
You're excited about the book rolling around in your brain. (For me it's more like a bag of rocks in a dryer on HIGH) Notes everywhere, an outline maybe fills the pages of a spiral notebook. Compelling images of characters and their plight, or, hero escapades play and replay in your mind. [You've done your research so some expert doesn't call you an idiot when the book comes out.] Finally, the moment comes when you sit down to begin composing your breakout novel, the book that will make you a household name and put an Escalade in the driveway.
You are inspired and thrilled to be a writer.
You wonder if it will be good enough as you slog through the sentences, paragraphs and pages, but you press on. The family, in the next room, is listening to Wheel of Fortune. They have no idea what the agony of artistic endeavor does to a future bestselling author such as yourself. But, in their ignorance, you love them anyway.
Your drifting. Back to the writing Einstein.....
Are you adding the elements the writing books and blogs and author vids you've read and watched tell you to? Have you practiced enough? Is this book practice? WHAT?
Commas. Dear God, watch the commas, and SHOW Don't Tell!
Make sure you ratchet up the tension like Donald Maass says in his great books on writing fire and creating breakout novels.
Right. Got it.
Modifiers, verbs and adverbs. Ok, I was absent that day.....
AND you don't want the story to appear too amateurish so you read aloud and look for rhythm, or rather LISTEN for rhythm. Gotta have rhythm....Side margins, double spacing, oh yeah.
Do I need cover art with some good looking young guy with killer abs and a haircut like the singer from Def Leopard, on the cover? Sure. Even if it's a story about redoing the driveway? Absolutely.
Bio. ( for the back cover)
Can I use a photo of myself just after I woke up or do I need one that makes me look like an accountant with a "edge"? How about the one I took awhile back, you know, with a hip three day growth and pissed off look? Works for me....
Moving right along.
Occasionally, as you labor at the really noisy keyboard you peek through the grungy blinds to see if the news crews are stationing themselves in your yard yet, in anticipation of the book of the decade. Nope. Not yet. But they will.....
Hour after hour, day after day you write, and write, and write. You try not to go back and revise the previous chapters, but you do sometimes. Some mornings you dread sitting down at the computer, you just don't feel the "mojo" and no one will notice anyway, right? Yes, right.
Sometimes you wonder if you'll pull this off, if you have what it takes, then you read a runaway bestseller and think to yourself: Yeah, HELL NO.....
Not knowing what else to do you plow forward through rain and sleet and hail and snow. (cue the soundtrack from the film Exodus please....someone...)
As the words and chapters pile up, you sneak a look by reading what you've written thus far and realize this novel is taking form, shape. A story, a really good one is unfolding from your finger tips.
Suddenly one day you understand. You get it. Yes, it's work, maybe even hard labor. But something now pulls you forward. Something else.
Someone from the living room yells; "Watermelon Festival in Iowa!" in answer to a "phrase" puzzle on WOF. Pat Sajak, in the background, almost sounds as if he's even interested in his own show.
You smile and refocus.
Forged in the furnace of fire you are.
When your daughters psychotic kitten leaps onto the keyboard erasing 3 hours of work in an instant and then you twist your knee trying to catch the little sh....darling...to rationally discuss the matter.
Yes grasshoppa......Forged like iron you will be.
True, the initial thrill is gone....but it has been replaced by a steel will and confidence borne of determination, a new and better kind of thrill. The willingness to do the "work" is something you now are a partaker of.
For love of the game....or craft....or art....is why you do it. Not the thrill. Not the thrills that you once did it for, anyway. They are now gone. You don't even look in the rear-view anymore. Your lazer gaze is now fixed on the writers road, ahead to the horizon. You grit your teeth and smash the gas pedal.
The awareness that you may be way to theatrical crosses the mental field of vision like a rabbit darting across the interstate, but you dismiss it, allowing yourself a little useless drama and paying no attention to the puffs of fur coming from under the back end of the car as you zoom onward.
Amused, you sculpt the novel of your dreams, word by word and page by page.
The thrill isn't gone....you smile knowingly.....
You know where to find me....
LUVU
Thursday, March 24, 2011
My REAL life...
Hi Folks,
I wanted to blog out a little update and mention a couple things.
Same as you maybe, as I careen down The Writer's Road like a pin ball on speed I'm finding that it's only when I truly slow down and give more, deeper thought to the "side-bar"(they're NOT sidebar) issues that come up when it comes to the actual fruit of my brain and inspiration, as it appears on paper.
THAT'S when it hits me. (Thank God for these moments...)
What hits me?
Let me explain: Recently I submitted a short piece I've been working on for a couple months, to someone in publishing whose name you might recognize, for her evaluation on my ability since we may be working on some other things together. (She's an industry expert, an author with 2 red hot titles and a mega force with a LOT going on.)
I realized, to my horror, that many fundamental elements of writing - WHICH I KNOW - had been left out of the flow and structure of the piece, a feel good story. It was overly descriptive, WAY too many modifiers, verbs and adjectives, the struggle came and went more as character building and NOT the axis of the "pay-off"(don't ask me what that means....) as I intended, wrongly thinking it would be perceived the way I wrote it(or not). Then, of course falling prey myself, in a couple spots, to what I call "presumed assumption" - where the author in an amateur moment omits key elements, knowing he knows them and then stupidly leaving them out thinking everyone else does too. And if that wasn't bad enough I told a little too much in the way of detail here and there, thus robbing the reader of the joy of imagination and thrill of marveling at my literary classic.
Most people stop at "trying to hard", but me? OH NO......I try too hard to try too hard. (I'm an extreme adventurer....it's a gift....the doctor says.)
For a few moments there I felt like a rank amateur until I read the first and last and a few in between comments she made regarding my ability, which was there....somewhere. I had to go back a few times to the ones mentioning that my mistakes could be fixed and that she felt I really could write.
THIS is what I mean by "side-bar" issues. We know they are not, and, in fact are the foundational elements of writing. So,what hit me in one sledge hammer moment was that the residual influence of my other writing endeavors and complete lack of regular writing sessions may have left gaps in my second nature tool box and the result was what she read and commented on.
Sometimes I piss myself off, and this moment was the mother of all piss-offs. Not at her, at myself, for not sitting back, examining the piece for just such boo-boos and correcting them.( I think, I, have comma issues, too, just, sayin',)
Having been a blogger for a long time I'm well into 7 figures in overall readers of the various industry blogs I've written over a period of 3+ years and that's not supposed to impress anyone however it does mean that I've learned a few things. Blogging is NOT writing, fiction writing I mean. It has little to do with it other than the elements of punctuation, spelling and all that. Better writers write better blogs but better bloggers may not, or ever, be better writers.... and I was reminded of that the other day, even though I've wanted to be a writer for much longer than I've been a blogger.
Writers in the 21st Century are faced with the serious dilemma of dividing their time in the right amounts in the right directions and there really is no model for it yet other than the trial and error phase some of us are going through. For me, it's a huge shift both time-wise and mentally to get into writer mode from blogger and techie/networker mode but I'm getting better at it. We all struggle for the time and clarity to write, too.
Just a thought.....
Also, and this has nothing to do with what I'm saying here but bears mentioning - this is why I have such profound respect for journalists who are also great fiction writers, like Alex Berenson.
Update: I think I'm moving. I stumbled onto a property(that I've been stalking) the other day and may be buying. Though smaller, it has the unbelievable qualities of being closer to the beach, we would own it AND it would be 1/3 of the cost of the half acre we are on now. I guess what I'm saying is that maybe over the next couple weeks I may be MIA part of the time, doing My REAL Life....
You know where to find me....
LUVU
I wanted to blog out a little update and mention a couple things.
Same as you maybe, as I careen down The Writer's Road like a pin ball on speed I'm finding that it's only when I truly slow down and give more, deeper thought to the "side-bar"(they're NOT sidebar) issues that come up when it comes to the actual fruit of my brain and inspiration, as it appears on paper.
THAT'S when it hits me. (Thank God for these moments...)
What hits me?
Let me explain: Recently I submitted a short piece I've been working on for a couple months, to someone in publishing whose name you might recognize, for her evaluation on my ability since we may be working on some other things together. (She's an industry expert, an author with 2 red hot titles and a mega force with a LOT going on.)
I realized, to my horror, that many fundamental elements of writing - WHICH I KNOW - had been left out of the flow and structure of the piece, a feel good story. It was overly descriptive, WAY too many modifiers, verbs and adjectives, the struggle came and went more as character building and NOT the axis of the "pay-off"(don't ask me what that means....) as I intended, wrongly thinking it would be perceived the way I wrote it(or not). Then, of course falling prey myself, in a couple spots, to what I call "presumed assumption" - where the author in an amateur moment omits key elements, knowing he knows them and then stupidly leaving them out thinking everyone else does too. And if that wasn't bad enough I told a little too much in the way of detail here and there, thus robbing the reader of the joy of imagination and thrill of marveling at my literary classic.
Most people stop at "trying to hard", but me? OH NO......I try too hard to try too hard. (I'm an extreme adventurer....it's a gift....the doctor says.)
For a few moments there I felt like a rank amateur until I read the first and last and a few in between comments she made regarding my ability, which was there....somewhere. I had to go back a few times to the ones mentioning that my mistakes could be fixed and that she felt I really could write.
THIS is what I mean by "side-bar" issues. We know they are not, and, in fact are the foundational elements of writing. So,what hit me in one sledge hammer moment was that the residual influence of my other writing endeavors and complete lack of regular writing sessions may have left gaps in my second nature tool box and the result was what she read and commented on.
Sometimes I piss myself off, and this moment was the mother of all piss-offs. Not at her, at myself, for not sitting back, examining the piece for just such boo-boos and correcting them.( I think, I, have comma issues, too, just, sayin',)
Having been a blogger for a long time I'm well into 7 figures in overall readers of the various industry blogs I've written over a period of 3+ years and that's not supposed to impress anyone however it does mean that I've learned a few things. Blogging is NOT writing, fiction writing I mean. It has little to do with it other than the elements of punctuation, spelling and all that. Better writers write better blogs but better bloggers may not, or ever, be better writers.... and I was reminded of that the other day, even though I've wanted to be a writer for much longer than I've been a blogger.
Writers in the 21st Century are faced with the serious dilemma of dividing their time in the right amounts in the right directions and there really is no model for it yet other than the trial and error phase some of us are going through. For me, it's a huge shift both time-wise and mentally to get into writer mode from blogger and techie/networker mode but I'm getting better at it. We all struggle for the time and clarity to write, too.
Just a thought.....
Also, and this has nothing to do with what I'm saying here but bears mentioning - this is why I have such profound respect for journalists who are also great fiction writers, like Alex Berenson.
Update: I think I'm moving. I stumbled onto a property(that I've been stalking) the other day and may be buying. Though smaller, it has the unbelievable qualities of being closer to the beach, we would own it AND it would be 1/3 of the cost of the half acre we are on now. I guess what I'm saying is that maybe over the next couple weeks I may be MIA part of the time, doing My REAL Life....
You know where to find me....
LUVU
Monday, March 21, 2011
ParaYourNormal - Where Para is our Normal!: Interview with Amber Scott, Author of Irish Moon
ParaYourNormal - Where Para is our Normal!: Interview with Amber Scott, Author of Irish Moon: "Hey everyone. Welcome back from what we like to think was too short of a weekend. We did lose an hour of sleep, after all. Springing forward..."
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Indie Bookstores, eBooks and Google Books
I've been looking into, (since Indie Book Stores will always have a place in my heart and upper billing on my activist list,) into the idea and upcoming trend of IBS's having an eBook list for readers who may still want to read and buy their books via the various "reader" formats. Here's an example: Book Hampton You can find them on Twitter too: Book Hampton on Twitter
The folks at this venerable store in one of America's most beautiful spots tell me they are on the "list" for Google Books and hope to be "live" by summer. As, I'm sure the book sellers in your area might, or at least should be. You may want to inquire as to when!
I feel strongly about this because maybe like you I do not want to see the brick and mortar bookstores get plowed under by the digital wave sweeping through the publishing industry and this may be the way to help keep them alive, while being genuinely price competitive. And, the real fact of the matter is that they don't have to be. Online it's a matter of buying from your book seller and of course, pricing. Right - we all get that, but if we have a choice the let's make the choice to support indie book stores too!
Google, believe me when I tell you, from what I've researched, plans to give their vendors the ability to give Amazon a run for their money in every index. If anyone can do it, it's Google Books. The major publishing houses are no doubt planning their new market models as we speak and will plot their continued 80% market dominance. Count on it. Amazon, well, Amazon will always be Amazon but so is Barnes and Noble, legitimate competitors in the eBook marketplace and having the vision and foresight to launch their own wildly successful reader, the "Nook", which is doing very well. You can also get these readers for your PC or Laptop if you don't have a reader yet. Google Books already has the downloads on their page for ALL the readers in the upper toolbar, including PC, as choices for the book buyer.
Many top selling authors are already publishing in ebook formats, including the traditionally published ones, including updating their backlists to re-enter the sales march. A good example is JA Konrath JA 's website make sure you click on "blog" in the upper left sidebar and scroll down to his wed. March 2nd posting. VERY GOOD INFO! He's also on Twitter: JA Konrath on Twitter He is an "indie author", as is Amanda Hocking Amanda Hocking , another indie superstar, in terms of sales and trail blazing for ALL authors.
Here's the link for Google eBookstore : Google eBookstore Most of the authors I searched for are there with either direct links to a sales checkout on Google or a link to a list of sales sites like B & N, Amazon, etc. The list is growing on Google eBooks for store fronts that offer all the books and authors you like, hopefully soon your fav brick and mortar bookstore will be there too so you can buy and read books how and when you want to and still support indie book stores.
I also love the idea that in your Google account, it will store all your books so you can access them on any device anytime anywhere. Like I said, I think Google has a good plan and I expect them to grab more market share very soon but the thing is, for me, this vision also includes ALL the ways we can buy books. Since in my area there is no indie book store I have been using B & N online and at the store in the mall and may still till I find a small book store to support around here or maybe online like the one I mentioned up top, but YOU can get involved, if you're of a mind to, and, who knows you may see your own book on the shelf and in an online store you helped support too.
More on Google Books and Google eBookstore and what Indie Authors are and will be listed on it, also IF and HOW, in an upcoming blog post. I have contacted a few indie authors and Google so I can put this all together for you and as an author, for myself.
Keep up with Indie Author trends here too: The Indie Book Collective You can follow the books and careers of several indie author stars there and the means they are using to promote indie books and authors, just follow the link to their site and go from there. One of the founders, Carolyn, has a #1 Kindle eBook called "30 Pieces of Silver" so trust me these ladies know what they're doing.
More soon on all this stuff and the latest updates as I break new ground as an author and make my way down "The Writers Road"
You know where to find me....
LUVU
The folks at this venerable store in one of America's most beautiful spots tell me they are on the "list" for Google Books and hope to be "live" by summer. As, I'm sure the book sellers in your area might, or at least should be. You may want to inquire as to when!
I feel strongly about this because maybe like you I do not want to see the brick and mortar bookstores get plowed under by the digital wave sweeping through the publishing industry and this may be the way to help keep them alive, while being genuinely price competitive. And, the real fact of the matter is that they don't have to be. Online it's a matter of buying from your book seller and of course, pricing. Right - we all get that, but if we have a choice the let's make the choice to support indie book stores too!
Google, believe me when I tell you, from what I've researched, plans to give their vendors the ability to give Amazon a run for their money in every index. If anyone can do it, it's Google Books. The major publishing houses are no doubt planning their new market models as we speak and will plot their continued 80% market dominance. Count on it. Amazon, well, Amazon will always be Amazon but so is Barnes and Noble, legitimate competitors in the eBook marketplace and having the vision and foresight to launch their own wildly successful reader, the "Nook", which is doing very well. You can also get these readers for your PC or Laptop if you don't have a reader yet. Google Books already has the downloads on their page for ALL the readers in the upper toolbar, including PC, as choices for the book buyer.
Many top selling authors are already publishing in ebook formats, including the traditionally published ones, including updating their backlists to re-enter the sales march. A good example is JA Konrath JA 's website make sure you click on "blog" in the upper left sidebar and scroll down to his wed. March 2nd posting. VERY GOOD INFO! He's also on Twitter: JA Konrath on Twitter He is an "indie author", as is Amanda Hocking Amanda Hocking , another indie superstar, in terms of sales and trail blazing for ALL authors.
Here's the link for Google eBookstore : Google eBookstore Most of the authors I searched for are there with either direct links to a sales checkout on Google or a link to a list of sales sites like B & N, Amazon, etc. The list is growing on Google eBooks for store fronts that offer all the books and authors you like, hopefully soon your fav brick and mortar bookstore will be there too so you can buy and read books how and when you want to and still support indie book stores.
I also love the idea that in your Google account, it will store all your books so you can access them on any device anytime anywhere. Like I said, I think Google has a good plan and I expect them to grab more market share very soon but the thing is, for me, this vision also includes ALL the ways we can buy books. Since in my area there is no indie book store I have been using B & N online and at the store in the mall and may still till I find a small book store to support around here or maybe online like the one I mentioned up top, but YOU can get involved, if you're of a mind to, and, who knows you may see your own book on the shelf and in an online store you helped support too.
More on Google Books and Google eBookstore and what Indie Authors are and will be listed on it, also IF and HOW, in an upcoming blog post. I have contacted a few indie authors and Google so I can put this all together for you and as an author, for myself.
Keep up with Indie Author trends here too: The Indie Book Collective You can follow the books and careers of several indie author stars there and the means they are using to promote indie books and authors, just follow the link to their site and go from there. One of the founders, Carolyn, has a #1 Kindle eBook called "30 Pieces of Silver" so trust me these ladies know what they're doing.
More soon on all this stuff and the latest updates as I break new ground as an author and make my way down "The Writers Road"
You know where to find me....
LUVU
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