Writing for non-writers

Today was a family-filled day; however, I did wind up spending some time talking about writing with someone who does not write.

That's always an interesting experience, right up there with discussing attending Harvard with someone who only knows about it from the movies, or discussing living in New York City with someone who thinks you deserve a Congressional Medal of Honor for having ridden the subway.

The primary miscomprehension that people who don't write have about writing is what it takes to write. It takes 1. a chair, 2. something to write on, 3. a willingness to sit in #1 and work on #2 for long periods of time. That's really all it takes.

This person began with, Don't you need to do oodles of exciting things in order to gain the "life experience" you need to write! Just like Ernest Hemingway!

Ah, sigh, yes, Ernest Hemingway. Let's look at Ernest Hemingway. Such a talented writer. And yet, such was his dedication to "life experience" that he "life experienced" himself into severe alcoholism, which made it so he could not write. And then, in despair because he could not write, Ernest Hemingway shot himself in the head, which really made it so he could not write.

Moral of the story? Howzabout: Don't be Ernest Hemingway? Lay off the sauce, and don't buy that gun--those are not helpful habits. Screw "life experience" if it leads to you developing debilitating disorders and then shooting yourself. Parking your butt in that chair (#1) and attacking your writing tool (#2) despite the temptations of booze and suicide are far more fruitful activities.

No. No one wants to hear that. Writing should be about sex! and excitement! and substance abuse! and mental illness! and suicide! Forget that many, many people are exciting bipolar sex-and-drug addicts who die young without writing a Goddamned thing, because they were too busy with the s! and e! and sa! and mi! and s! to do #1 and #2.

I hate to break this to you, but writer--real writers, who actually write stuff--have boring lives. The Hemingways are the exception. Let's put it this way: I used to work for a publishing house that produced young adult biographies of notable people, and one of the editors hated having to do books about writers. Why? The life stories of most writers are painfully dull. They sit in a chair (#1) and apply themselves to writing (#2) instead of going off and doing crazy things.

Writers write. And that is the sad, sad, boring, unpopular truth.

Balancing feedback

Today I also got preliminary feedback on Trust from one of my beta readers--he was confused about some things (he hasn't read Trang--I told him not to because I wanted that perspective), and he had some suggestions for improvement. At this point I know my initial reaction will be all ego-y and "My deathless prose!" so I just don't think about it, and an hour or two later when I'm, like, making lunch my subconscious serves up a bunch of fun and exciting ways to incorporate the suggestions into the book.

I think there's a real art to taking feedback--I worry about the people who just change and change and CHANGE AND CHANGE things. At what point does it stop being your book? And what happens if you first give your manuscript to an adrenaline junkie, and then give it to someone who loves to unwind with poetry? Do you just make a million changes on Tuesday, and then unmake them all on Wednesday?

But on the other hand, feedback is something that everybody (even Joss Whedon!) can use. My feeling is, it's about knowing what's vital to your story, so that you accept what will help and reject what will hinder the telling of it.

Dean Wesley Smith argues that "Work-in-progress workshops are death!!!!!" (bold in the original, oh, yeah), and I have to say that I've seen people try to write and workshop at the same time, and I don't think it works. I feel like the problem is that they haven't sorted out what their story is yet, so how can they possibly tell if a suggestion is going to help or hinder? It's a little like gardening: You have know what's planted before you can figure out how to make it flourish, because a cactus is not going to want a lot of water and rosemary does not like fertilizer.

Sometimes it take a surprising amount of time to figure out what your story is, and a workshop or group can help if someone says, "OK, your story's about X, so focus on that." But I feel like once that is said (and the writer goes, "A-HA! That's exactly right!"), then the writer should just pack up and go home to revise. I think when people get insecure and start accepting everything, they forget that writing is, at the core, a solitary pursuit. You have to overcome things like plot problems on your own--and with any luck, you'll figure out a really cool and unique way to do it!

Progress report

OK, I finished reading over Trang and inputting the corrections. For the most part they were very small, but I did find a place where I added 600 to 150 and (later in the book) got 850. Wow.

Tomorrow's busy, so presumably Monday I will (deep breath): Compile the Acrobat files into one file, compile the cover files into one file, upload all that to CreateSpace, convert the DOC file into proper ePub files, and upload them to B&N and Amazon (I've already uploaded to Smashwords). That actually doesn't sound so bad after all this layout work!

Progress report

Today I read through a little over half the revised manuscript. The idea was to just find new mistakes--ones I put in there laying it out again. But of course I found a few others: One of the downsides to cleaning up a manuscript is that it makes it easier to spot the really minor errors.

I did input them into my e-book file and will do one last round of uploads. At some point I am also going to update the large-print edition, but that is a very low priority.

It seems really funny to still be working on Trang at this point, but I think it's gotten cleaner and better-looking. Certainly you can argue that this focus on detail is counter-productive, but I think that you do need a professional-looking product, and this is what it takes.

The nice bit is that I don't mind reading through it--I figured I'd be bored to tears at this point, but it still entertains me.

Progress report

First, some sad news: The friend who I was worried about earlier was having serious health problems, and she passed away early this morning. Rest in peace, Sylvia--your friends and family love you.

Obviously, that was a hell of a downer, but I guess glumness is the appropriate mood for inputting proofreading changes, because I finished the last five chapters of the Trang layout today. And that was despite Word doing what it does best--suddenly and inexplicably developing major issues. I've been using the Merge feature to incorporate the proofreads into the layout with no problems for 18 chapters, and then chapter 19 comes along and Merge suddenly starts working in a different and much less helpful way. I have no idea why--I experimented with different settings to no avail--and I have no clue if the next time I use it, it will resort to its former self or remain this new, decidedly less-helpful creature.

Also I was trying to pull up a word by kerning a line, and Word would not tighten it up until I kerned up the entire paragraph. That got the word up, and then I went and un-kerned all the lines except for the one I had kerned in the first place. And the word stayed up, because Word is apparently just that lazy.

I am probably going to switch computers in a few months because mine is quite elderly. Whatever I get, I smile knowing that because I am no longer a freelancer and because Smashwords will soon accept ePub files, I will not have to use Word again.

Progress report

I input corrections to a whopping two chapters today--the aptly numbered chapter 13 and the relatively benign chapter 14. I did so little mainly because there have been certain errands I've been ignoring, and I couldn't ignore them any more, so I got quite the late start. But the other reason was because chapter 13 felt obligated to live up to certain negative stereotypes about numbers.

To wit: There were some errors early in the chapter, and when I fixed them, they altered the layout. No huge deal, I laid out the chapter again. But then it turned out that, with the new layout, the chapter was a page longer than it was before.

NFW--I was not going to lay out the entire latter portion of the book again. So I went back and laid out chapter 13 a third time.

What saved my sandwich was the decision to replace the ornaments that marked breaks within the chapter with blank space. There are, for whatever occult reason, quite a few breaks in chapter 13.

You know what's nice about blank space? The way you can make it bigger or smaller, and people don't care. In fact, I'm going to guess this is why publishers stopped using ornaments--when you vary space around a little landmark like that, it's a lot more noticeable.

Progress report (the I'm back! edition)

I got some work done today--and I expect extra credit for it, because I really didn't feel like doing it, the printer was annoying and wonkus, and the cats want me to spend every single moment of the day petting them to make up for the horrible trauma I caused by sending them to the nice, clean kennel over Thanksgiving.

Anyway, I input the changes to chapters 10 through 12. In keeping with this post's general theme of "I feel whiny," the changes caused all sorts of layout problems, and fixing those caused other problems later in the chapter. So it was all a big pain, wah-wah-wah, woe is me.

At least it's done. I've got child care tomorrow, but after that there's only seven chapters left to do. Then I read it over one last time and give it to CreateSpace.

And you know, if I really can't stand to do this another day, I could start writing Trials again. It's not like I have no options. I want to get it up by Christmas, but it's not a huge rush.

You can tell when someone is honest because they don't lie to you

This is a good post about Penguin's self-pubbing service, called Book Country (titled "Sucker Country," hee). If you read it, you'll see that Penguin is engaged in a delicate balancing act. It has to imply (but not promise) to newbie writers that they are going to be published by Penguin! OMG!! This is the major leagues!!! At the same time, it has to make sure that Book Country is legally separate, otherwise the authors Penguin publishes and their organizations will say, Oh, Penguin is now just a sleazy scam of a press, I shall take my business elsewhere!

I assume something similar happens when someone hangs up a sign that says "digital publisher" and asks for $3,000 or half your royalties to do more or less what I spent part of an afternoon doing last Friday. They say, Oh, but I'm a PUBLISHER! I'll PUBLISH your book, and then you'll be PUBLISHED!! and the writers, zombie-like, reach for their wallets.

Here's a reality check: It's the pricing schedule for Book Baby, which will produce an e-book for you (and design your cover) if you pay them. I haven't used them, but I know people who have and were happy with the work. More important: File conversion (complete with table of contents!) and distribution is $99, plus a $19 annual fee after the first year. The most-expensive "deluxe" cover design is $279.

Total technophobe? Afraid to do a cover? Don't even want to try doing it yourself? Fine--there's your price range.

When people start asking for five or ten or thirty times that amount of money, you need to become DEEPLY skeptical. They are NOT five or ten or thirty times better. Remember, experienced professionals typically charge you less because they are more efficient and can handle a large volume of work.

And nobody--NOBODY--can promise your book will become a best-seller. NO. BODY. The people who say that they can make that happen are lying to you. The people who hint that they can make that happen are misleading you. The people who want all your money to make that happen...run Penguin. It's sad.

See? See?

The Passive Voice featured this post by a person in charge of digitizing a publishers backlist. The highlight for me?

When it comes to the actual conversion I honestly thought that if you sent someone the inDesign or PDF of the book then the eBook you got back would be relatively clean, but sadly that’s rarely the case so you need internal resources to check the eBook thoroughly (if you want to produce good eBooks).

 

See? Even the publishing houses have to check the books after they are converted. So must you!

Progress report

I did chapters 5 through 8 today. Holiday craziness is upon me, though--yesterday was pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving, which is apparently a thing now. I'm actually glad I have something I can stop and start and work on in what random spare time comes my way....

Oh, and I'm doing a giveaway!

Yeah, I suck at marketing, don't I? I'm doing a giveaway and not telling anyone about it--it's, er, um, stealth marketing, that's what it is! It's all part of my carefully-conceived master plan....

Anyway, the LibraryThing giveaway is here--scroll down a little, they list by number of copies being given away. Which explains why people give away so many copies. I'm so naive that I just looked at the top couple of listings, thought, "Seems like people are giving away about 500 copies" and put down 500. We'll see how I feel about that number when time comes to fulfill the requests.....

I should go Tweet about this. I know there are people who scan Twitter looking for "free" and "giveaway"--I wonder how many of them won't bother to read the description and will miss the language advisory. I look forward to many, many one-star reviews saying, "This book has the word 'fuck' in it!"

Calibre works

OK, I input the rest of the proofreader's changes, did a couple of things I caught, and then uploaded the Word file to Smashwords.

Then, I tried that Smashwords hack. No dice--it did not work at all. I couldn't even read it with Adobe Digital Editions. I'm guessing that there's some kind of information in an ePub file so that if you open it up and change something, the whole thing won't work (unless, I assume, you have magickal hacking powers (hackigal powers?), which I sorely lack).

So, I went on to Calibre, which is designed for e-book readers, not so much e-book authors. It converts from e-book format to e-book format--which means that you can't convert a Word file into anything.

You can, however, convert an HTML file. I turned the Word file into an HTML. The Word file had a picture of the cover in it, and that stayed, eventually becoming the interior cover in an ePub file that had eluded me for so long.

While I had the HTML file, I gave it a clickable table of contents (which went much faster this time). Then, using Calibre, I converted it to an ePub file, looking it over with Adobe Digital Editions before I uploaded it to Amazon and B&N.

The result is a much cleaner look to the book. For whatever reason, before when I had a new chapter, it would just start a couple of lines down from where the previous chapter ended. Now it is clearly a new page. And the breaks within the chapters look discrete without the ornaments (although I kept them in the Smashwords version because they output into so very many different formats).

Is it 100% error free? I don't think so, but of course I'm having to judge from the preview tools, which are less reliable than one might like. In the Kindle version, some of the text was not justified on the right side (although most of it was). And something's a little screwy with the interior cover: If you look at it using Adobe Digital Editions, it's fatter than it should be. With the Kindle preview tool, the first page is blank, and then there's the interior cover. With the Nook preview tool, you have two interior cover images. I'm not sure what to make of all that.

Still, it's definitely better than it was before. I may noodle with it a little more tomorrow and see what I can do. But not today....

Progress report (the ugh, my eyes! edition)

So, I input about half the proofreader's corrections into the Smashwords edition of Trang. Boy, if ever I was wondering why I never went into copy-editing--the focus on detail is just insane. Very, very, VERY useful and appreciated of course, but inputting it all...ugh. I'm hoping my eyes will uncross eventually.

I'm not going to be able to get around doing it twice, either--once for the e-book and once for the printed book. I am, however, extremely motivated to not have to do it again for the Kindle and again for the Nook. I'm going to try the Smashwords hack, and if that doesn't work I'll download and figure out Calibre, a (free, and apparently pretty much the standard) program that converts files into ePub (and that will hopefully allow me to include an interior cover).

If neither approach works, I'll just convert the Word file into HTML and take it from there.

That gun there REALLY needs to go off....

Today was a wash, work-wise--the problem is that I am not a morning person, and I let my sleep schedule slide over so that I've been keeping what one of my friends used to call "vampire hours." This would be less of a problem if I wasn't expected to periodically get up at the crack of dawn to watch kids. As it is, I was so exhausted yesterday that I went overboard with the caffeine and the sugary foods and the beer after the kid left to try to wind down from it all (note to self: That worked when I was 19, didn't get hangovers, and had a stomach of iron. It does not work now), and today I am, if anything, even more exhausted.

So, I read a book. This book was billed as a novel of suspense, and indeed it was a novel of extremely pure suspense, because nothing actually happened. That was actually fine for the first 90-95% of the book--it was a really, really well-written novel of suspense. But to quote Anton Chekov, "If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there." Especially, I should note, if your book is titled The Pistol and the whole damned book is about this evil, dangerous pistol lurking on the wall that is going to do something bad...something REALLY bad...something SUPER-DUPER bad...or maybe it won't. The End.

As a writer, I've fallen into this trap myself. Part of it is the feeling that, well, gee, the pistol always gets fired, so it's a little obvious, right? It may be obvious, but it's really unsatisfying when it doesn't happen and the reader is asked to pay all this attention to something that doesn't matter. Of course, the pistol doesn't literally have to be fired--but at the very least the pistol should come off the wall and get pointed at somebody. If you can come up with a satisfying twist, all the better--the pistol comes off the wall and is pointed at somebody, but just as the trigger is being pulled a cannonball is fired through the wall, obliterating the dude with the pistol. Or whatever. The point is, if you make a big deal about the pistol, there needs to be some drama happening with it. Otherwise, just cut it out and make your story that much more focused.

Keep in mind, too, that what is obvious to the writer is not necessarily obvious to the audience. In Joss Whedon's Serenity, there is a very suspenseful scene where soldiers are pointing guns at our heroes, ready to blow them all away. In the early versions of the movie, it just cuts from that scene to a scene where our heroes are fine, because Whedon figured it would be obvious to viewers that somebody intervened and told the soldiers to stand down. It was not, in fact, the least bit obvious, so another scene was added in which the soldiers were told to stand down. (And that, my friends, is why movies have previews and novels have beta readers.)

But honestly, I think the main reason people don't have the gun go off is simple fear--fear that, as a writer, you just don't have the chops to pull off a big climactic scene. Those kinds of scenes are hard to write, and they're intimidating, because they're usually really important, and if they go wrong, it's a disaster. Maybe you'll come up with one of those scenes that make people laugh and laugh because they're so dreadful! Maybe you'll come up with the latter-day equivalent of "It was a dark and stormy night," and people will name mock literary awards after you! Maybe you'll biff it so badly that George Lucas will want you to help him revise Star Wars again!

Ah, well--it's the writer's job to overcome those kinds of fears. To complicate matters, the intimidation factor can be hard to recognize--when I first wrote Trang, I tended to have the dramatic events take place "off-screen" where no one could see them. In fact, the more dramatic the event, the more likely it was that I had put it someplace where I didn't actually have to write about it. That was NOT in any way a conscious decision: When I because conscious of it, I was immediately struck by what a self-defeating pattern it was--why would someone ever read something where all the exciting bits have been carefully hidden away? But that's how the subconscious works, right? You're afraid that you might write something bad, so you write something that's guaranteed to be horrible!