And welcome to post number… two. Five. Zero. Zero. Yes! TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED posts on this blog since 2009! š Gone from daily posts to weekly posts, and even though blogging is no longer a thing, I’ll keep going for a little longer.
The writing is still slow (less than 2K again) because I spent a lot of time editing and formatting and making covers last week, and this week I have guests and some traveling to do. Hopefully next week I’ll catch up, but for now I’m at 220K for the year, so I’m not complaining.
I saw the warning about changed on BundleRabbit and now I’m starting to see what it’s becoming. It’s not fully ready yet, so I’ll post about it next week, when I’ll head there to set up the next curated anthology for Sci-fi July. It has changed (moan) but has added some very interesting features I hope to use in the future (yay!).
For you KU authors, there’s a wake-up call. The ever-changing landscape of indie publishing is going through another shift, maybe not this year, but it’s coming. I have only certain Italian titles in KU (and Lisa’s Odyssey), so it won’t affect me much.
Although I haven’t really built an audience elsewhere, but you can find me on Amazon, Apple, Barnes&Noble, Kobo, Smashwords and DriveThru already. Probably more in the future, especially if some of the above features pan out. I hope eventually to be able to sell from my own website, but it won’t be in the next couple of years.
I enrolled all my books in the Smashwords July Summer/Winter sale – everything 50% off from tomorrow and until the end of July, except for 99c titles and the new one coming next week (or possibly earlier, since I’ll be traveling soon).
Now back to prepping those new titles! And since I skipped a month or three, I’ll add some Words of Wisdom/Writers on Writing/what-have-you below! Have a great week! š
***
Kill your darlings.
It is, as with all pieces of writing advice, good advice.
Until itās not.
Meaning, no one single piece of writing advice is a one-size-fits-all unitasker. Nearly all pieces of writing advice ā with maybe the exception of FINISH YOUR SHIT ā can easily be Judo-flipped onto its back. Nearly every piece of writing advice and its opposite is true, at some point, for many writers. And itās vital we not be rigorous with what we feel are these chestnuts of writing advice. These chestnuts must, in fact, be roasted time and time again to bring out their nuttiest, most delectable flavor.
(…)
And as I said above, itās good advice, until itās not.
More to the point, Kill Your Darlings (besides from being a great band name) is 101-class writing advice. Itās entry-level, as are most of the authorial platitudes. Show Donāt Tell? Sure, great, until the time comes when you need to tell the reader something. Write What You Know? Go for it, until you realize you donāt know a whole lotta shit, and if you take that advice too literally youāll never write a goddamn thing that isnāt you sitting at the keyboard writing about writing about writing. Never Use Adverbs, For They Are Wizard Prisons! Great, great advice, perfectly golden always and forever, oh, except the words āalwaysā and āforeverā are motherfucking adverbs. Writers Write Every Day ā except until they donāt, and some write every week, or every month, some write 2000 words a day, some write 15000 words once a month, some write for a couple hours, or four, or eight, some write to music, some write to the screams of the people they have trapped under their floorboards. Open With An Action Sequence, except action sequences donāt always give the proper context, and also, what if youāre not writing action?
– Chuck Wendig
The fact is, I don’t know where my ideas come from. Nor does any writer. The only real answer is to drink way too much coffee and buy yourself a desk that doesn’t collapse wen you beat your head against it.
– Douglas Adams
12 Strategies to Help You Deal With the Stressors Blocking You From Writing
Life is stressful. You can write anyway.
1. Focus on one thing at a time. Multitasking (usually) doesnāt work.
2. Break big scary tasks into small less scary pieces. Tackle one piece at a time.
3. Prioritize the things that need to get done today. Finish those first.
4. Donāt forget to breathe.
5. Write something that makes you feel good ā no āstringsā attached.
6. Treat writing as a reward, not an item to check off your list.
7. Speaking of lists ā¦ try making shorter ones. Just TRY.
8. Remember that itās sometimes better not to write than to write poorly. Sometimes.
9. Take a few days off from writing if you have to ā but only a few!
10. Or, alternate between writing days and writing āoffā days.
11. Donāt beat yourself up when you donāt write. Itās OK to have a bad day.
12. Give yourself a pat on the back for every good writing day. Cherish those moments. Smile.
– Meg Dowell
TAKE CHANCES, DONāT JUST PLAY THE MARKET
I need to write what Iām passionate about. If I donāt, the reader knows. Understanding the market is fine, and Iām not saying itās entirely without influence, but writing is a labor of love. I need to be able to sustain that love over the course of the boring bits, right? Not every scene can be a character returning from the dead or a car chase or a shower scene.
– KD Edward
What are the rules of Writer Club? Well, since you askedā¦
1. The First Rule of Writer Club is that long-term success is always about building readership.
2. The Second Rule of Writer Club is that any success you have in achieving the first rule does nothing to hurt the chances of mine.
3. The Third Rule of Writer Club is that itās okay to talk about Writer Club.
– Ron Collins
That blaming of the writer, and that emphasis on the words is reflexive. Itās what we were taught in school.
However, this craft we call āwritingā isnāt about words. Itās about telling stories. And there is no secret scale that makes one story better than another.
Itās all about taste.
So itās time, writers, to stop blaming your colleagues when one of their books doesnāt satisfy you. Maybe the book isnāt to your taste. Maybe you donāt like that sort of story. Maybe the writer didnāt tell the story the way you would have told the story.
All valuable ways of looking at fiction. But you as a writer have to stop using that invisible scale inculcated in us when we were childrenāin a different world, one run by a handful of people who had a stranglehold on publishing. That scale does not exist. It never existed. There is no perfect novel. Nor is thereāfrom a writer of Noraās caliberāāmerely adequately readable prose.ā
If you start admitting that a book isnāt to your taste, you free yourself up to readāand writeāthings that take risks. You can write books that donāt belong on that imaginary scale. You can drop the chains that force you to struggle with that scale, and start writing things that interest you.
You can find the freedom to write what you love. But only if you stop blaming other writers.
Itās all taste, folks. And your taste is as valid as mine. Itās just different. And thatās okay.
– Kris Rusch
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