Too busy writing to write anything?
How do I describe what I'm doing with all my time?
I spent a lot of time creating content. I can't be sure which of that content accurately qualifies under the heading of writing. What we mean by writing has changed so much during my lifetime I'm no longer sure when I'm writing and when I'm not.
What's the difference between writer, author, content creator and so on.
As a self-published author, there's a lot of tasks that need to be done. First, I get the idea, then the outline, and finally the slog through producing that first draft. First draft in hand there is the editing and revision, creation of covers, formatting the manuscript, and all the steps to uploading that manuscript to platforms, so it's ready for purchase. If that was all I had to do, I don't know what I would do with my spare time.
I tried compartmentalizing my thinking. When I'm in my creative persona, I'm the writer. The steps that involve the editing and publishing I think of as my author persona. The author part of me takes the creative output of my writer persona and makes it into a published book.
Am I really a writer if I spend all day doing things that are writing?
I feel a layer of guilt about even calling what I do writing. When I was younger writing meant using a stylus, a pen or pencil, and placing characters on a piece of paper which could be interpreted by others as the words I intended. Indeed, I am old enough to have primarily written using cursive rather than block letters.
As I have completed additional trips around the sun, I find this a less threatening metaphor than saying I have gotten older, my writing has involved considerably less writing. Over the last century, more or less, I think we came to accept that products created using a typewriter can be justifiably called writing. From typewriters it's been a leap, sometimes a traumatic one, to producing that same final "written" product using a computer.
Is it writing if I dictate?
The last few years I've developed pains in my wrists when I try to type too much. Where I once took pride in "pounding the keys" the keys on my computer began to pound back. Recently I've taken to primarily dictating. While writing and dictating are both forms of storytelling, I'm wondering if we're stretching the meaning of the word writing when I tell people I have written several books when I have in fact been dictating them?
I think the concept of writing has crept ever larger.
Are making videos other forms of writing?
One "little" project I've been working on over the last month has turned out to be not so little. Many of my students and more than one of my colleagues has emailed me asking if I had seen a particular video. Notice I no longer call those messages which arrive on my computer as something they have written to me. Emailing letters has substantially replaced writing letters.
I have spent a good part of January creating a YouTube video channel and producing videos for that channel. I noticed that readership of the counselorssoapbox.com blog had suffered as students, went to researching things on YouTube. The net result of this cultural shift is my new video channel with the shockingly creative name Counselorssoapbox.
Maybe the title writer will go the same way as the title scribe.
I'm told that initially writing was created more for high counting then for creative endeavors. When someone had to keep track of 17 camels, 52 sheep, and 114 goats, it is a lot easier to come up with one symbol for each type of animal. And look how useful it is to have numbers rather than to have to repeat that word goat 114 separate times.
While I'm not a linguist, I'm inclined to believe that the occupation "scribe" ultimately gave us the word scribble. I've noticed people inventing a lot of new words to try to describe this process of creating which no longer fits neatly into a particular category. Watch for the words – creative's, author entrepreneur or contraction of that, and several more expressions designed to cover how "writing" is being transformed by new technologies.
Eventually, writing had to expand to include words to describe a lot more than naming farm products. As a result, scribing became writing. What remains to be seen is how much longer I can call all these things I'm doing writing.
Are Audiobooks, podcasts, and videos forms of writing?
Some people are calling themselves videographers. I've even seen some people describing themselves simply as "YouTuber's, or should that be You-Tubers?" I used to know what a tuber was, but I'm not sure any more.
Presumably, audiobooks began as a written manuscript which one or more people convert so that it can be listened to rather than read. If I listen to a book can I say I have read it? The line between writing and speaking becomes fuzzier when we talk about podcasts, which frequently start as an oral conversation, but may eventually end up as a written transcript.
Thanks for reading my ruminations and if you have any suggestions for why I've been so busy writing things that I haven't finished writing my book, please leave a comment.
My promiscuous relationship with punctuation.
Periodically I get in trouble with the punctuation police.
If you're one of those people who has memorized the entire Code of Federal Regulations section on proper punctuation, you probably have little sympathy for my proclivity for loose relationships with punctuation.
I will plead guilty to abusing commas and neglecting my hyphens, but with an explanation.
I came from a home filled with dysfunctional punctuation.
I grew up without a good role model for punctuation. What I know about her I learned on the streets from certain undesirable types who use punctuation purely for oral communication. I learned early, that people who came from proper punctuation homes followed a certain code. But when you learn your punctuation for use in ordinary conversation, you're likely to ignore some of the punctuation etiquettes.
Someone who is effective as a public speaker inserts frequent pauses for dramatic effect. The resulting (pregnant pause) often is in no way related to (pause) the proper use of Miss Comma. If you're used to the looser variety of commas, you would prefer that they spoke plainly, telling you what they mean rather than hiding behind a fan of proper punctuation rules.
Why has Miss Comma fallen out of fashion?
I find it disconcerting, when reading aloud the text of the speech that someone gave, to encounter Miss Commas smiling face in places where the speaker would never have permitted her while eschewing to allow that same Miss Comma to continue to maintain her ongoing relationship with that person's speech. I realize that proper punctuation is all the rage these days. I prefer my punctuation to be plain speaking, saying what she means and meaning what she says rather than hiding behind her cousins, dashes, colons, and semicolons.
No matter how much the dictates of fashion might change, my taste seems unchangeably fixed. Despite the current proclivity towards severely underweight women, I continue to prefer women with a little meat on their bones. Likewise, despite frequent opportunities to date some of these newer punctuation marks, I would rather spend my sentences was several commas than to engage in a dalliance with even a single frivolous dash.
I trust you will forgive an old man for this philosophical digression.
Bumps on the Road of Life. (Non-Fiction) Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.
Self-publishers must fill many roles.
Bumps on the Road of Life.
Self-published authors need many hats. Even if you pay someone to do some of these functions; you still need to spend time on that role. I continue to feel like I'm just at the beginning of my self-publishing career, but when I look back over my shoulder and see how far I have come, it's incredible.
My first blog post was in May 2011. I continue to learn about blogging. The transition from blogger to published author has been a steep uphill climb. My first book, Bumps on the Road of Life, a nonfiction book about recovery when life knocks you down, was published in late October 2017. Bumps was followed a week later by my first novel Casino Robbery. My second novel, Sasquatch Attacks, was released in September 2018.
Through this process have learned a great many things but I have many things yet to learn. To be successful as an indie author, however you define success, requires learning and practicing a great many skills. Here are some of the skills I've been working on developing.
Self-published, indie authors, must become researchers.
Writing a nonfiction book requires a lot of research. I thought there would be less research needed when I started writing fiction. I have learned that if I didn't do the research before I began to write, I was likely to have to stop in the middle of writing and do that research.
Whatever you put in your book you need to describe accurately. I have had to research locations for my settings, weather patterns, clothing, and a great many other details. I'm tempted to write a fantasy novel set somewhere in my imagination. But a preliminary outline for my fantasy already tells me I will need to spend a lot of time creating this world in minute detail, so I don't have my characters doing things that aren't consistent with that setting.
I continue to learn about how to research effectively and plan to write another blog post about the lessons I've learned about how to be an effective researcher.
Self-publishers need to be creative authors.
You would think making things up, that would be easy. Lots of people lie every day. Creating fictional characters doing fictional actions turns out to be harder than I had imagined. My creative process continues to change. I started primarily by imagining my protagonists, putting them in a setting and then creating obstacles for them to overcome.
For me, this process of "writing into the dark" involved a lot of stopping and starting. I get my character to a setting, and then I must describe the location. Next, I set my protagonist to interact with other people. But who are these people?
Over the last year, I've written several additional novels which I hope to get published in 2019. I found that the most creative part for me now is writing the outline. For each chapter I plan to write, I think about where the action will take place, who will be there, and what the action will be. As I work my way through the outline ideas for other possibilities pop into my head. This requires going back and inserting the helper who will come to the protagonist aid in chapter 12 into earlier sections, so the reader won't be surprised when this character appears.
Independent authors need to be extreme editor's.
I continue to learn about the process of editing. Editing is a lot more than running the manuscript through spellcheck and Grammarly, as valuable as those tools are. Editing also involves looking for the things that been left out and cutting out the unnecessary, boring parts. One challenge I encounter, when editing, is balancing the need for correct grammar with establishing authentic voices for my characters and the narrator.
You may decide that you need to hire an editor. I read a lot of self-published books, and some of them are so full of typos and errors that it makes them hard to read. Paying an editor to weed out all those typos can be expensive. Whether you elect to pay an editor or do the editing yourself the more errors you find and correct the better the final product will be.
Indie authors are also their own publisher.
The publishing function includes several tasks starting with formatting the manuscript for submission. The requirements for an e-book are enormously different from those from a paperback. E-books can contain links while the paperback edition requires complete information, including the URL.
In publishing your book, you need to decide whether to go exclusively with Amazon or "publish wide" so that your books will be available on other platforms such as Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google Play, Apple iBooks, and so on. If you "publish wide" you will need multiple formatted manuscripts. You can't include links to your books on one platform in a manuscript published on another platform.
My nonfiction book is currently available exclusively on Amazon. The two novels I published wide. One of those novels has sold predominantly on Amazon, while the other novel has sold almost entirely on the other platforms. I learned a lot of lessons by attempting to publish wide. The decision to publish exclusively on Amazon, or to go wide on other platforms is a complicated one. That decision requires a full blog post all on its own.
Self-published authors need covers for their books.
Many indie authors pay someone to design their covers. A good cover can help sell your book. I feel like I'm just in the "kindergarten" of learning book cover design. I have used Amazon's cover creator and found it very helpful. I've also tried designing my own covers. Creating a good cover is a lot harder than it looks. I continue to learn about creating covers.
Indie authors need to be their own Promotions and Publicist person.
Wouldn't it be wonderful once having written your book and uploaded it to a platform, if that book suddenly started selling? With so many books on the market, the challenge is to make your book discoverable. Promoting sales of your book is an ongoing challenge.
There's a short description of some of the various skills I've been learning in my process of writing and publishing my own books. I'm sure I have a great deal more to learn. If you have questions for me about my writing and publishing journey feel free to ask.
Part of the promotion process is getting reviews for your book. Securing more reviews for the books I have published is one of the things on my "to do" list. Honest reviews help other people decide whether to purchase a book. If you have read one of my books and have not yet left a review, I would appreciate one.
Sasquatch has discovered a hole in time and is preying on humans. Can two people lost in the desert survive?
The guests had come to Meditation Mountain to find themselves. Trapped in the Menhirs during a sudden desert storm, two guests move through a porthole in time and encounter long extinct monsters. They want to get back to their own time, but the Sasquatch wants to kill them.
You must grab the ideas while they fly past.
I don't understand the term writer's block.
I've read many blog posts, even some passages in books on writing, where the author describes sitting at the keyboard waiting for the Muse to say something. My problem is not that the Muse refuses to talk to me. My problem is she never shuts up. Sometimes she whispers in my ear, and sometimes she shouts. My biggest challenge in learning to write has been learning to listen to her carefully.
I have pages of notes about the things the Muse says.
Every time I sit quietly for a few minutes, the Muse starts talking. You should write a blog post about loneliness, jealousy or anger. She goes on and on about the posts I should write. Sometimes the Muse starts to tell me a story about a character who went to this city and got this kind of job and then something else happened. Then she hints that this would be an excellent topic for a novel. If I let these words of wisdom sit too long, they evaporate faster than a light rain on the parking lot during a desert summer.
Most times I hear the Muse speak, not every time, but most of the time, I open a word document, type in the title of this great work, and save it to my projects-to-work-on file. The problem comes the next time I open the file. There's the title or the idea, but I don't remember what it was the Muse was talking about.
I studied what others have said about communicating with their Muse.
One source reported they didn't believe in writer's block. The rationale was that writing is a profession and professions don't get blocked. You don't hear about truckers complaining about trucker's block or doctors having doctor's block. I get that idea, but sometimes when I get behind the keyboard and take off for a trip, I end up going down the wrong highway and getting lost.
Another source said the Muse once told her a story.
This writer, I have forgotten who it was, maybe one of you can fill in the source here. Anyway, this writer told the story of the Muse presenting her with an idea, but she never got around to writing the book. Years later, at a conference, this writer ended up on a panel and, lo and behold, someone else on that panel had written that book.
I have this experience a lot. I open a partially done article but can't remember what the Muse told me to write here. I close that piece up and work on a different one. Frequently what happens is in the next day's email I find a post written by someone else about precisely that topic.
My muse doesn't like to repeat herself.
What I've learned from this is that when the idea enters my brain, however, you conceptualize the origin of that idea, I had better act. Once the idea is upon me if I don't get to writing that article or book in a speedy time frame, that idea begins to fade. Eventually, the idea becomes so faint that even my partially completed document won't bring it back.
Occasionally I'm sitting in my chair trying to relax, perhaps trying to finish one of those half-read books, and then out of nowhere the Muse suddenly starts yakking, and she won't stop. Occasionally I try to ignore her, but as most men my age will tell you, ignore a woman at the risk of imperiling your life.
I hastily try to scribble down as many of the things as I can from the Muses to do list, knowing I will never be able to write all her directives down and even if I did she was talking so fast I wouldn't be sure what she meant by some of the things she said.
I suppose if you must have a problem with your Muse is better to have one who talks constantly than one who gives you the cold shoulder.
Thanks for listening to me yet one more time.
You can learn a lot from making the effort.
This is the third year in a row that I've written a novel during November. Before that, I had tried to write several books, but they never reached "the end." Each of these attempts has taught me valuable lessons about writing a novel and about myself. One of the things I learned is how much more I have to learn. Writing, like every other skill, needs both knowledge and practice.
Last week I shared a post about how as I get closer to the end of a writing project the more resistance gets in my way and the harder it is to finish that project. This week I wanted to share with you some of the other lessons I've learned because of participating in the NaNoWriMo contest.
Having a deadline keeps you moving forward.
In the past, I've started lots of projects which are still residing somewhere in electronic storage. One by one each of these ideas languished as the next shiny idea distracted me. Almost every time I have set a deadline to finish a project, the result has been a completed project.
The exception to meeting my deadlines? Those times I set unrealistically high goals. On an extremely productive writing day I may be able to write 3000 to 4000 words, once I even wrote 8000 words, but planning to write a 50,000-word novel in 10 days by writing 5000 words per day is both unrealistic and undoable for me.
During NaNoWriMo, I stuck to the goal of writing on average 1667 words per day. That occasional high-number-of-words day made up for those days when I simply couldn't find the time or inspiration to write more than 200 to 300 words. Setting an unrealistic goal for me is a way of sabotaging the project. Setting a doable goal kept me moving forward.
Repeated small efforts add up.
During November, I had several days off from my other work activities. I had counted on writing a large number of words each of those days. That didn't always happen. Driven by the pressure of a deadline I tried to write something, anything, each day. There were even days when I wrote less than 100 words.
Writing something every day was like drops going into a bucket. While several days output may have been less than I wanted, doing something each day kept my bucket filling and my goal in sight.
Having a story blueprint kept my process moving.
I've tried both outlining and going by the seat of my pants. Neither of these approaches was the full answer for me. What has worked best for me is to think through the story and create a list of the scenes that will make up the story. I started this book with an outline at the scene level but for many scenes nothing beyond the basic idea for that section.
Trying to write a perfect first draft resulted in a lot of opening chapters that went nowhere. For me, there's no such thing as writing a great first draft. In the first draft, I get the story down. But after that first draft, there's going to be a lot of editing and polishing before I can publish this book. I've learned to accept that writing a publishable book takes me a lot of hours.
In writing from start to finish something suffered. Having written the first draft in one month, I discovered certain things were left out. While I think I have the framework of the story, the finishing touches are missing.
I've already gone through the manuscript briefly correcting a lot of typing, spelling, and grammar errors. But I discovered that what I had left out were descriptions. In places, I just say my protagonist walked up to the house. What I haven't said is very much about the house they are approaching.
Another thing that happens when I write the way I would tell a story verbally is that I have certain words I use repeatedly. Polishing the language is something best left for subsequent drafts.
Before this book gets published, I will need to do not only editing but all the tasks of publishing. There's a cover to create. A manuscript to format. Blurbs to write. And a great many other tasks associated with publishing and marketing the book.
Having too many priorities means nothing gets done.
Looking back over this last year, I've been working on a lot of projects. The consequence of having many "priorities" was that I completed very few of these projects. Every time I have picked one major priority and put a large share of my efforts into that project, I have been able to complete it.
A prime example of selecting one project and focusing on it is the three books listed below. Each of these books was started a long time ago, and each was finished when I finally decided to make them my top priority and set a final date for completion.
The closer you get to the finish line the harder it gets.
Resistance takes its toll on writing.
Every project starts out with high hopes and expectations. It seems to be some perverse law of nature that the longer you work on something, the harder it gets. A lot of people start their project, begin their novel, plan their business venture, maybe they make a start on the project, but it just never gets finished.
It feels as if the burden you carry gets heavier the more work you've done on the project. Some of you know I been participating in the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) contest again this year. This year is the fourth time I tried to write a novel of 50,000 words or more during November. As the month progresses I find it harder and harder to write. Some of you may have noticed that I missed last Wednesday's blog post on my writing adventures. I'll try to make that up to you regular readers during December and throughout the new year.
Since I began writing counselorssoapbox.com blog on a regular basis, I've completed almost 1500 blog posts. I have also written probably ten novels or more, but just couldn't get them completed and published. The first time I tried to write a novel in November, I couldn't finish the book.
Finally, in late 2017 my first two books, Bumps on the Road of Life a nonfiction book about recovering from life's setbacks and Casino Robbery my first novel in the Arthur Mitchell Mystery series was published. Casino Robbery was written for the 2016 NaNoWriMo contest.
My 2017 NaNoWriMo effort, a book titled Family Secrets is in the editing stage, and I hope to publish it shortly.
Am I going to finish another novel this year?
One reason I'm telling you all about this is that with only a couple of days to go I'm finding it harder and harder to finish the book. At the beginning of November, I was having some 2000 to 4000-word days. In the start, even my slow days were 700 or 800 words. As we approach the final deadline, I've had three days of writing 300 words day or less.
One reason I'm throwing this out there to all of you at this point is that by confessing this publicly, it's going to force me to finish this book before the end of November. If I don't, I will have to spend the next year listening to people asked me why I didn't finish my 2018 NaNoWriMo novel.
Resistance tries to prevent you from succeeding.
Resistance takes many forms. Life gets busy, and there are things I absolutely, positively must do. Or at least I tell myself I need to do them. Things I neglected doing all year, suddenly take on new necessity just as I'm getting close to finishing my novel.
Another way resistance manifests itself as the next shiny idea. While I'm writing the second Arthur Mitchell Mystery ideas for the third and fourth in the series have appeared. Not only is my Muse tempting me with two other Arthur Mitchell Mysteries that need writing, but she's also yelling loudly in my ear that both of these ideas will make better books than the one I'm working on now.
As if Resistance hadn't come up with enough ways to stop the progress of "Planned Accidents" the Muse has begun to torment me the last few days with a fabulous idea for an entirely new series. I won't tell you the new series idea now as I don't want to get committed to having to write that series, at least not yet anyway. What I will say is that the Muse tells me I need to abandon my current project and immediately began researching the idea for my next fabulous series.
Despite Resistance's efforts to prevent my completed this novel I continue to plod forward even though the pace has slowed, and the writing has become more difficult.
Stay tuned. Sometime between Friday, 3 November and next Wednesday, December 5, there will be another blog post, and I'll let you know my final word count and whether the novel made it across the 50,000-word finish line and is now a candidate for revision and editing.
Whatever you're working on for 2018, don't let Resistance stop you from reaching your goal. Are there some projects you should finish in 2018 to clear the slate for your new adventures in 2019?
The one absolute rule for writing a book.
The process of writing a book is a lot like running a marathon. Beginning runners spend a lot of time training. Lots of people talk about someday running a marathon, but the number of people who finish one is much smaller. An immense quantity of manuscripts never become books.
No matter what you are telling yourself, that thing you're calling your book, it will never be a book until you get done writing it. I know this firsthand. Stored away in my digital attic are scads of unfinished manuscripts. So far none of them have turned into books. They never will unless I take that big step and finish them. No matter what you have been told, the essential step in writing a book is starting at the beginning and writing all the way to the end. Do whatever you have to do to reach the end.
There are lots of abandon partial books in drawers.
Everyone who aspires to become a writer probably has many writing projects sitting in drawers or in digital storage. For some of those manuscripts that's a good thing. If a writing project doesn't work out, you may be better off abandoning it.
There's a world of difference between writing and being a writer. Writers finish things. In my mind, I also distinguish writers and authors. Authors send their works out into the world like children who, for better or worse, have grown up and need to make it on their own. Authors publish what they write.
I made the transition from writer to author when I push that publish button for my first blog post. It has given me a great deal of enjoyment to see three of my books so far released. I elected to self-publish. Eventually, I want to write about my decision to become an indie author rather than submit my books to a traditional legacy publisher.
It's possible my writing would have gotten better by taking the time to learn to submit to traditional publishers and go through that process. The best part about the indie route is I got to physically hold my book in my hand, rather than wonder if my descendants will get to do that after I'm gone.
Being perfect is the enemy of a finished book.
Trying to make something perfect can get in the way of ever finishing the project. Every semester I assign my students the task of writing a paper. As beginning students, I don't expect any of these papers to be masterpieces, though some are remarkably well done. Unfortunately, each semester some students keep revising their papers but never turn them in. A few students turn them in late, and others don't turn them in at all. Most of them would've gotten better grades if they had turned their report in on time, perfect or not.
It's possible that the books I've written would've been better had I rewritten them several more times, but the risk was that I would never move on and begin work on the next book. So far, those people who have left me reviews have been positive about my efforts.
Even if your book is not perfect, eventually you must send your children out into the world to make it on their own.
It requires more than one date to create a relationship.
When I first started writing, I thought I could produce a passable result the first time. The result was that my early blog posts, written late at night and published immediately, contained a lot more errors than I would've liked.
I've learned that no matter how happy I am with something I write, it needs to sit for a while and then I need to reread it and make corrections. Occasionally someone falls in love at first sight, that's usually more lust at first sight, but the odds of a good relationship are a lot better if you get to know the person first. Spending additional time on your writing project makes them better.
That first draft was probably awful.
Each successive book I've written has required more drafts. I think that's a good thing. The first draft, sometimes called the down-draft, is a result of you trying to get the story all down on paper. If you attempt to edit it too much as you write, you'll never get to the end. You can't start the second draft until you finish the first. Each successive version should get better. In the second draft, you fix big, glaring problems. Later drafts involve smaller and smaller polishing efforts. Unfortunately, every draft also includes discovering some additional typos and spelling mistakes.
Whatever you're trying to write, the absolute rule must be, finished that piece you're working on. Thanks for letting me share a part of my writing journey with you. Next week another segment of my writing experience.