A ROUND OF WORDS in 80 DAYS

I'm going on a trip.......beginning the Fourth of July


Inspired by A ROUND OF WORDS IN 80 DAYS, I have joined Round 3 and making it my journey to self-publish CANCELLED.


The rules of my trip are simple: I have destinations. These are outlined in my ITINERARY. I must get to each destination BY the date listed. What are those small pictures? Those are my stamps, and my passport will be blog posts on Sunday and Wednesday to update. When I make a destination. BAM! Stamp goes in the post!

Now, no trip starts willy-nilly, you have to pack important documents! To make this work, I need to finish my last 4 chapters of my manuscript this weekend. This means butt-in-seat #wordmongering. But I can do it! ::in case there is a snafu getting travel documents going, I don't start editing until July 17::




What kind of trip would this be without SOUVENIRS? My souvenirs will be freedom to work on my reader website during my journey. I have a number of souvenirs I must collect, such as behind-the-scenes information, recommended reading lists for readers of other indie writers both in genre and out of genre, etc. But my luggage is rather small (see ITINERARY page), so all SOUVENIRS must ship on SEPTEMBER 14 (one week prior to book release), making my reader website ALIVE!


I do need company. Traveling alone is boring. I will be commenting and encouraging others on the list of ROUND 3 participants. I also need a few pre-readers to get my edited copy on AUGUST 18. These pre-readers will have until SEPTEMBER 8 to get me any feedback to put into my final manuscript, eternal appreciation, a thank-you with link in my THANK YOU page, and an invitation to guest chat or blog on my reader site. Plus anything else nice and spiffy I can think of between now and then.


If you are interested in being a pre-reader, please email me at EAWWRITES on gmail. 


It's real, boys and girls. My book is coming. My little heart is pitter-pattering. It's going to be grueling, and I can't do it without a little help from my friends.


"CANCELLED" arriving SEPTEMBER 2011. A robotics engineer asks his business partner to marry him, but a previous one-night stand is having his baby.

Self-Published Author: How Not To Write A Novel

There a gazillion, bajillion, writing resources out there telling you how to write a novel. But what about one that tells you what NOT to write? I found this at TheCreativePenn.com, and love it. 

How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them--A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide

by
 
Howard Mittelmark

Not only is the book hilarious, but it gives perfect examples of what NOT to write. The sections are divided by the major sections of a novel: plot, characters, sub-plots, endings, beginnings, etc. This makes the book a perfect last-minute checklist for any manuscript. I was thrilled to find I happened to avoid some of the popular mistakes simply because I can't stand them in books I read either. For example, the classic "character looks in a mirror and gives a full description of themselves." I didn't use this device because I know when *I* look in a mirror it's to either: A) check for a specific issues, like a pimple that hurts or B) make sure a specific aspect of my appearance is correct, i.e. hair, makeup (if I'm wearing any). 


As long as a self-publishing author can take a mostly objective look at his or her work, this book is great for polishing and editing your own manuscript. Not all of us can afford a professional editor on our first novel, or even our second. There are many techniques a self-published author can use to overcome the look of an amateurish manuscript, such as taking significant time away before tackling line edits. Using How Not To Write a Novel should be another one!


"Cancelled" arriving Late Summer 2011. A robotics engineer asks his business partner to marry him, but a previous one-night stand is having his baby.

Self-Published Author: Deadlines, Making a Living, 10-year plan

Going to be close on deadline, but I can do it! Tuesday at midnight is the deadline for my first manuscript. I'm currently sitting at 48,000 words. I have about 20,000 more to go. Then let it simmer, and work on outlining second book.


Which brings me to one of my favorite activities: GENRE SNOOPING. That's right. What are people in my genre writing? What are they pricing it at? What does it read like? I've mentioned Lucy Kevin before in regards to her ebook pricing strategy, and was surprised to realize why I couldn't find a ton of information about her. She doesn't exist. Okay, she does, but her main writing name is Bella Andre. No, I'm not unmasking a superhero, she plainly lists her pseudonyms on her main site. 


Bella Andre is an indie publishing goddess! She has over 16 titles and even better, she's like me! Let's write those modern, contemporary stories about love in the real world! Melodrama? Yuck. Weak females? Double yuck. Super strong females the male must "tame?" Super double yuck. June looks like it's going to be me devouring her entire Lucy Kevin line. It might be the first series I can put in my section of books I have personally read and like for my readers waiting in between my novels (check out my Catering to the Readers post)


So there is hope for my writing style. +1. I next played with the real numbers posted by one of the wonderful brains behind The Writer's Guide to Epublishing, D.D. Scott, and also by YA author Megg Jensen, writer of Anathema. At $2.99, Megg saw sales in the range of 50-150 books per month. D.D. Scott's $2.99 offerings, with a $.99 intro (Bootscootin' Blahniks) sees monthly sales between 200-290 books per month.


Why would I forecast my own writing? After all I have 0 data for my own books. True, but I can set goals. I know I will sell at $2.99 for a royalty of roughly $2.00, to make the math easy and to account for slight variations in royalty calculations between Amazon, Nook, and Smashwords. I currently have a publication schedule of two novels per calendar year. This year is only one, but it's my first year. I have Book #2 of the Red Ink Collection, PAST DUE, slated for March 2012, and Book #3 SERVED which is a sequel to CANCELLED slated for August 2012. 


If I average 100 books per month, per title (yes, some months might see CANCELLED sell 150, but PAST DUE only 57, and vice-versa. Calculations are based on an average, so I can even have good and bad months and not panic, Hitchhiker's style). In 2012, I will make $5,400 on my three novels. That meets my second goal of writing when I began my fiction career: Make $5,000 in one calendar year from my fiction writing. 


What if I do better than that? What if my numbers are higher, say 150 books per novel per month on average for the year? That's $8,100 in 2012. 


The highest I hoped for was to average 200 books per title per month. Again, we're talking averages, so having a few outlier months that are awesome would be enough to pull the average up. This is like big dreaming. That would be a nice $10,800 for 2012. Or 5,400 books sold in the year.


Now here is where the math gets interesting. Once I have more titles, assuming I can keep the average up (which it looks like is possible given D.D. Scott's numbers on her older titles, remember just average, not every book must sell the average number each month), in 2013 I would have 5 novels (no idea what book 4 and 5 are, but I have ideas that could flesh out, too far in advance to think concretely that far. Maybe PAST DUE gets a sequel, maybe it doesn't.) Average of 100 books per month per title (5) = $10,200 for the year. Average of 150 books per month per title = $15,300. Average of 200 books per month per title = $20,400. 


That's moving from intern to entry level hire.


I continued my two books per year production schedule up to 9 novels, or 2015, which is where I think a little burn out might occur. Then I stepped down to 1 novel per year. I calculated out for the next ten years because that is the length of my husband's naval career at the moment. Here's where I'm looking at this as a career path:


2021, ten years in the game. I'm 39 years old. 15 novels in the game. 
100 books average per month per title = 17,800 books $35,600.
150 books average per month per title = 26,700 books $53,400.
200 books average per month per title = 35,600 books $71,200.


Over my ten year career:
At 100 books avg. I would have sold 114,000 books, made $228,000.
At 150 books avg. I would have sold 170,900 books made $341,800.
At 200 books avg. I would have sold 228,000 books and made $456,000


What's The Point? My writing, while keeping me sane, doesn't come without trade-offs. For every 30 minutes of wordmongering, that's 30 minutes I'm not hanging with my family or doing something else. Some things, my writing is way more productive over, like over me playing video games. Other things, like playing with my daughter or playing a family game I wouldn't necessarily put my writing down as more important in comparison. For the record, doing laundry does not override writing time. :)


I've been writing for 4 years (non-fiction articles). I took off considerable time when I became pregnant and had my daughter. About 14 months of maternity leave :) I made $4,000 my first year writing, $2,000 my second (I became pregnant that year after struggling for over a year with fertility issues), and $1100 my third (didn't start writing again until daughter was 6 months old). Last year I claimed a $500 profit, because as she learned to walk, I got busy. Very busy. Now that she's almost 2, there is more time she is independent. 


I have to look at the monetary value of my writing and decide if it matches up with the qualitative value of my life. Does the money I make for the hours I work add to my family's well-being by giving us money to take vacations, by keeping Mommy from feeling restless/worthless, by growing a retirement fund for me to perhaps lessen the financial burden later? I think it does. 


Why forecast 10 years? In ten years, my daughter will be 12. With 15 novels, I could easily take a long hiatus and still see some money come in. There's no telling what life will be like between now and then, or even after that date. I do know most likely my husband will be leaving the Navy and that will be a big transition. That extra money will probably come in handy in reducing the stress between military and civilian job. 


10 years is also a good length of time to plan a career path. No one goes from grunt to manager level in one year. It's important as indie writers we seriously sit down and look at expectations. We're not all going to be Amanda Hocking, J.A. Konrath, and Dean Wesley Smith. In fact, this year, I'm the equivalent of the girl getting the coffee. I'm writing my first novel, and politely talking to those ahead of me already published. Next year, I'll be the new girl in the cubicle farthest from a window, only part-time until a full-time position opens up. :)


But, we're in a growing industry. Who knows? Maybe I sell an average of 300 novels per title in 2012, breaking my highest expectations. Maybe I go from intern to full-time employee, with benefits. It's entirely possible with the double digit growth in ebooks. Of course, that also means more competition. So maybe I won't break an average of 75 books per month per title and spend more time in the windowless corner, still being asked to make the coffee once in awhile. 


I urge all of you to sit down and crunch some numbers. Have a goal. Have a realistic goal (100 books per month), a fantastic goal (150 books per month), and a super-awesome screaming from the top of the mountain goal (200 books per month). Reassess every year. 


For now, my 10 year plan is going in the front of my writing notebook (a three-ring binder with sheet protectors for my goals, current project, and next project). I will see it everyday. And work towards it every time I jump in my role as a writer and publisher.




"CANCELLED" arriving Late Summer 2011. A robotics engineer asks his business partner to marry him, but a previous one-night stand is having his baby.

DAY 11- Story Plotting: Too Many Ideas Can Be a Very Bad Thing

Working on updating my digital copy of my story board with all of the pencil notes I've written on the first paper version of it, I pulled a thread and unraveled my entire middle section. It's mush right now. 


The problem is I like to build my scenes upon each other, meaning I ask myself "If A happened, how would Character Blue respond? What consequences would that have?" and so on. Only problem, is my middle is a serious crossing point of two sub plots and the main plot. Craziness. Everything has to fall into place at the right time or it sucks. Just because my story isn't a "thriller" doesn't mean there isn't a bit of mystery to the plot. 


I know what I need to do. I need to write my ideas down on notecards and remap them on my bulletin board. My beginning and end are solid. That won't really be changing anymore. Right now my middle is just a challenge to keep the story going and also capture the two relationships my main character has: one with his fiance and the other with his baby momma (not in a double sexual relationship, but relationship like his growing friendship with the mother of his child).


This brightened my evening: http://pbackwriter.blogspot.com/2011/04/self-publishing-911.html It's a hilarious script of a fictional 911 operator taking the calls of problematic self-published authors. I laughed so hard! It makes me even more excited about what I'm doing: pushing to self-publish my own work with great quality and a professional look. But tonight, I'm going to bed early and taking a break from mangling my own plot. I pushed myself hard in my work out at the YMCA this afternoon and my body and brain are screaming at me to sleep.






"Imperfect Timing" arriving Fall 2011. Johnathan Michaels, a robotics engineer, jeopardizes his engagement with his business partner when a previous one-night stand surfaces, carrying his child.

Day 3 - Great Strides and Positive Reinforcement

Today has been productive in both areas, writing and publishing.

• I digitized my story board. The bulletin board was a great tool in letting me handle my scenes in a physical sense, but it's not practical to lug around everywhere. 
• I made three chapters available to family and friends via shared Google Document, looking for cold readers.
• I perused my publishing sources, and was encouraged in my desire to self-publish. I think it makes a difference when an author purposely plans to self-publish vs. falls back on self-publishing because they couldn't secure an agent or publisher.
• I laughed thanks to Mr. Massimo Vignelli and skimmed his Canon. I am learning about typography before I get too far in working on placing completed chapters into the final manuscript.

Digitizing My Storyboard


Using a table in Openoffice.org, a simple grid 8 x 5, I made an electronic version of my story board. It prints out on three pages, but that's okay, I don't mind flipping through. It's a very handy resource and in my writing folder, along with other references I need for my story world.

Part of this process is learning my paradigm for writing. Turns out, I am a combination writer :) I like to begin with a few visceral, emotive scenes that are important to my story. I started out with a significantly different version of my first scene at the bar where my main character meets his one-night stand. From there, I wrote the last disaster of the book. Then, I wrote a little more of the beginning, and was woken up one night compelled to write the climax of the story that makes my main character choose his direction. Finally, I wrote out my second disaster. I then decided I needed more of an idea of how I get to all of these seemingly disconnected points in my storyline. This took a few weeks of tweaking, and only this week did my ending radically change. However, it feels fully baked now, and ready for icing and decoration!

I'm debating on whether or not I need to make character cards. Here's why: They are already so real to me, I just listen to their side of the story and write. I'm afraid making elaborate character sheets would quiet their voices. This is just a me thing. I will move forward and see what happens. If I find my characters falling flat, I will reassess.

Looking for Cold Readers


My publisher hat back on, I decided to start looking for cold readers. People willing to read as I write and say "This part confused me. I loved this. I didn't care for that."  Before making my first three chapters available, I slashed a great deal of narrative out of my first three chapters because I learned head-hopping in a scene is bad. Amateurish. ::Gasp!::

Johnathan Michaels is my POV character for those first few chapters; I can't start saying what the other characters are all thinking and feeling. Instead, and this is hard, I have to translate those internal thoughts and feelings into actions. When I say this is hard, I mean I deleted four paragraphs because it was all Alex's internal thoughts and a mind dump of how the three of them met. I didn't lament the words, they were crap. It was boring even to me. It slowed down the action. I was sad to see the work go. Those details aren't gone; they will come out more organically later when something ties them to the action going on. All of them are details that can't help but come out. My favorite casualty is the singing Christmas snowman Eric and Johnathan gave an updated sound card to sing the corniest pick up lines when the motion sensor was activated. He will be back, in all of his top hat tipping glory!

Positive Reinforcement


People want to read more of the story. That is a godsend. I was so afraid my story premise wasn't catchy. Turns out it is. Hopefully this will help my novel spread. I already have a new character named Jill who introduced herself to me today and started to tell me her story (she's not in this story, but she's a nurse with $90,000 in student loan debt and her relationship is derailed, she started to whisper gambling issue, but I stopped her right there and told her to wait her turn. she's safely tucked away in a file now.) But, it gives me a new project to be excited about once Imperfect Timing is published.

Also, the latest post on PubRants made me feel more confident in my quest to self-publish. Apparently, a significant publisher, Dorchester, is so broke, they can't pay back royalties to authors they owe who have jumped ship, and are struggling to pay those currently writing for them. Hmmm. If Amazon goes down, half of the writing world is dust. Or electronic buzzing? What is the e-world's equivalent of dust? So I think I'm betting on a good pony (no Jill isn't me. I don't gamble. It's a tax on stupid people who can't do math).

The Fantastic Mr. Massimo Vignelli


If you've read this far, don't worry, you're about to be rewarded. When I say I am self-publishing, I don't mean I am slapping a story together, running spell check, and throwing it up as an e-book. No. I want my paperback and ebook to be indistinguishable from professionally published titles. This is in regards to not just the writing craft, but the technical execution of the book. The layout. The typography, a new word I learned today. Yeah, yesterday I would have said "OH, you mean the font!" Yeah, no.

Massimo Vignelli's book Canon helped me understand there is an aesthetic to the printed words on a page. He introduces his book "This little book reveals our guidelines - those set by ourselves for ourselves." Alright, I can get behind that. Ars gratias artis and all that. If nothing else, this 50 page PDF is remarkable for the tone of narration. The phrasing is literally snooty, but you want the narrator to accept you into his exclusive club!

The man attacks our paper dimensions! I never knew what "A" sized paper was in the drop down box of my word processor, I'd never seen any. Here's why: "The international Standard paper sizes, called the
A series, is based on a golden rectangle, the divine proportion. It is extremely handsome and practical
as well....The United States uses a basic letter size (8 1/2 x 11”) of ugly proportions, and results
in complete chaos with an endless amount of paper sizes. It is a by-product of the culture of free
enterprise, competition and waste. Just another example of the misinterpretations of freedom." (his section on paper sizes, first paragraph)

Did you know there was an issue with our ugly paper size? I didn't. But I get now why books aren't published in 8.5 x 11. It's not based on the golden rectangle. LOL.

But all kidding aside, the book is fascinating for me--someone wanting to learn more about graphical arts and typography. I don't intend to draw my own cover, but at least speaking the language and understanding what it all means will make it easier to discuss my ideas with my cover artist (My first book will be a value priced book cover, for sure. But my dreams are big, and I hope to one day afford the cover art I envision). Plus, he cracks me up!

Finally, and this is important so I will probably put this in a Resources Page or something one day for other self-publishing authors. I have finally learned the difference between serif and sans-serif. It is night and day when it comes to readability. Compare. The above is a sans-serif font.

The rest of this post is a serif font, like Helvetica and Trebuchet,  making larger blocks of text are easier to read on a digital screen. I would argue it's easier to read in general. By changing to a serif font in my manuscript, I was able to cut the 1.5 line spacing and keep my readability. This cut my total pages down, which in turn cuts down my costs to produce, meaning I can lower my list price! Very good news, indeed.

Time to log those hours and head to bed. This writing shop closes promptly at 10:30 PM.

"Imperfect Timing" arriving Fall 2011. Johnathan Michaels, a robotics engineer, jeopardizes his engagement with his business partner when a previous one-night stand surfaces, carrying his child.

Day 2 - Story Board complete

It's pretty. I love the splashes of neon note cards. Pink represents my three major disasters. Orange are "point of no return" scenes, so I know this is a big turning point for my characters. For example: the night two of my main characters hook up in the hotel room above the benefit dinner they're attending (just found out tonight they steal 2 bottles of champagne from the event O.o.O it's fantastic when the characters whisper in your ears as you're planning stuff out). Yellow and green represent two separate subplots that fuel the main plot. The yellow is the sub plot that ultimately helps Johnathan make the decision about what kind of father he's going to be to his unborn child, and the green leads him to the lifestyle he ends up in.

I love having the road map made out of office supplies. Something about using office supplies like a bulletin board, multicolored push pins and note cards. I tried using a spreadsheet like it was suggested in Writing Fiction for Dummies, but it felt too cold. Writing each notecard out made me feel like I was touching my story, giving care to each little scene, making sure it fit in the right spot. There were a few casualties. I cut an extra romantic weekend (I think one per novel is sufficient), and some things were demoted to honorable mentions in more important scenes.

I didn't forget about my publisher work today. I'm lurking on a number of indie author blogs and getting a feel for the community. I have solved the dilemma of "genre" finally. This novel is a Romance --> Contemporary. Since my stepson told me last week that I had make sure my main character Johnathan have someone he's with at the end of the book. When I asked him why, he said "Because the baby needs a Mommy." He's so cute! So the ending changed quite a bit, and now it's fairly happy, I don't have to worry about failing the formula. Instead, I just tweak it a bit in that my main character is male! and it's a toss up until the end which female lead he ends up with! Even then, everything isn't perfectly, sappily resolved and I don't think it really can be given the storyline.

I'm about 98% sure my storyline is in place. I give myself 2% chance of something happening as I'm writing it out. I know I should write a synopsis now, but instead I'm going to charge into writing copy. I already have rather large chunks completed in various parts of the story (mainly pink and orange cards) but they need editing and tailoring to the rest of the story.

In performing the checks listed for "Is your storyline solid?" the results made me feel more confident in my ability to design a storyline. For every single main character (I have 3 major characters, 4 mid-level characters, and 3 or 4 pop ins) the major and mid-level, there is a clear story arc with a dilemma goal and story question. I didn't even plan this, it just happened as the story developed. For example, there is a clear point when Johnathan decides to propose, when Alex resolves her freak out over the baby by trying to take control of the situation, the point where Anna (the stepmother of Johnathan) realizes she needs to own up to the past about Johnathan's father and he tells her he's too busy right now with his own drama, it doesn't matter what happened twenty years ago (oh, but it does.....).

So tomorrow? Character dossiers (which I'm NOT particularly excited about...we'll see how that goes). I think I'm going to work on a scene or two tonight so I can throw it in the "raw material EDIT" folder.


"Imperfect Timing" arriving Fall 2011. Johnathan Michaels, a robotics engineer, jeopardizes his engagement with his business partner when a previous one-night stand surfaces, carrying his child.