Light a fire

It's very possible that many people in medieval times didn't know how to start a fire. Do you? I mean without a match or lighter. Maybe you do. You've probably seen at least one person do it on TV.

But they didn't have TV. They also didn't have matches or lighters. But they did have fire.

So why would I make such an absurd statement?

Most people didn't need to start fires. Even though they used fire for many things we use modern technology for today (light, cooking, heat, etc.). Did they go without all this? No. They just didn't let their fires go out. They kept the coals burning.

In the early religion of India there was one person assigned to never let the fire go out. Other people had little containers that they used to carry embers around in when they were traveling. Fire was a big deal. Someone had to know how to light it, but most people may not have. (Check out this video for fun.)

Even if you're good at it, lighting a fire is not easy.

It's the same thing with writing.

If you stop writing for a while, it's hard to start. If you keep yourself in practice, then you've got an ember of the writing skills still kicking around in your brain. A few minutes a day is enough to keep the embers glowing.

But you don't want an ember. You want a ravenous flame that keeps those pages lit with wonder time after time. So write a bit each day. Keep your embers hot. And when you're ready, coax your little flame into something greater. Because professional writers write. They write a lot. Their writing flame catches on to all sorts of things....Come to think of it, perhaps a fire analogy wasn't the best choice when talking about books.

Ah, well. Keep up the writing. Don't let it go out. Because just like fire, it's more difficult to start all over from the beginning.

Art Again

So I attended a panel at LTUE given by professional artists. They talked a bit about their process for designing a book cover and the collaborative process. I came away with two things. First, a contract with a professional artist for a cover is very expensive and way more complicated than I initially thought. It turns out that they're artists too and they want to get paid for their work. I'd like to accommodate that.

The second thing, the interesting thing for me, was something about collaboration. One of the artists talked about how she will give a client 3 revisions and that's it unless they want to pay more money. But she doesn't go in expecting any revisions. She starts out with a bunch of thumbnail sketches and says, "Which one gives you the feeling you're looking for?" Then she takes that and sketches a larger image. She submits the larger sketch and says, "Is this right?" If not, she makes the changes and does it again. Then she draws the entire image with details and at this point is where she starts counting revisions. But she's communicated throughout the whole process, so most of the time the revisions aren't even necessary.

The point is that she knows when it's time to get feedback, and when it's time to trust in her artistic skill.

As writers we could probably take a few notes from this process. We should be open to changes on our notes or ideas. Even after our first draft we should be asking ourselves (and possibly alpha readers), does this fit my end goal? Most of us don't have anyone to collaborate with, but we do have to make the final call about our own work.

Because when it's done, our name is on the cover. We should accept feedback, but we should also be confident in our skills.

Good luck with your next project. And if you need a cover artist, make sure you're paying them for their work too.

Writing Productivity and LTUE

So, I'm presenting a paper I wrote on writing productivity and the brain. I'm sure I've talked about it all here before, but I like to hear myself type so I'll do it again.

The basic premise of my paper stems from a few comments made by this guy in this video. He makes some great points about how to get the most out of life. I speculated about how we can make room in our brain for writing processes.

I'll share the paper here, and the PowerPoint presentation here.

If you made it to the conference, then I hope you were able to take something away from the presentation. If you have more ideas about productive writing, feel free to comment below.

EDIT: At the conference I gave out a worksheet. Here's a link to that.

EDIT EDIT: Okay, so I have another presentation on formatting ebooks. It's an intro to the subject and you can find the slide presentation here.

Is e-publishing really changing the world?

As you probably have heard, there is such a thing as an e-book. The idea of the e-book is basically the idea of trade paperbacks. For years people who just wanted to read a story would buy a paperback. They weren't as sturdy as a hardbound copy, but the reader could get the same story for cheaper. But the more expensive option was still there for anyone who wanted it.

E-books just go another step toward making publishing less expensive, and delivering stories to readers in a more convenient way. Mostly it's more convenient for the publishers (in this case amazon.com, applestore, smashwords, etc.). There is no physical copy, so making the text available is way cheaper. There are no physical copies, so there are no worries about printing too many and not selling them. The publisher/author can make changes and corrections without having to run a whole new print line. There's more, I'm sure.

The reader also gets some benefits. You don't have to go to a store to get a book. You can keep an entire library on a single device (or link your devices). You can change the fonts. E-books are cheaper.

Really the last one is probably the driving force for both sides. We've still got the arguments that it's nice to read a physical copy of a book (which I agree with). I do both*. But if I want a hard copy, I can get one. It's just more expensive. I do the same thing with movies too. Some stories I want to ingest, digest, and be done. Others I fall in love with and I want to keep them. Those are the ones I want on my bookshelf. Those are the ones I will keep.

But in the end you as a writer have the same problem you did twenty or fifty years ago. When you write something you need to get someone to read it. That's why the publishing industry came about. Writers can't make a single dollar without someone buying their books. In the end it's all about marketing. We have new online tools, and new markets, but you won't make a cent unless you convince someone else to read your work. And though there are new tools, it's still a pain in the rear end. You can try to sell to a publisher, or you can publish yourself. But you need to find readers, and that takes time. Don't worry though. The good news is that it's still possible, and perhaps even more possible for writers without a big publisher.

And it all starts with writing something worth reading.

P.S. Oh, and I almost forgot. I'm doing a little experiment. I'm giving a presentation at LTUE about how to format your e-book. And a big question is where to put your book and who to format it for. So I put a short story online at Amazon with the limiting Kindle Direct Publishing, and then I put another short story on Smashwords which lets you publish anywhere else. I want to see if there is a significant difference in the number of views or purchases. I'll be posting the results in about 3 months. Not the most scientific, but it will be interesting to see what happens. Happy Writing!

*Realistically, I should admit that I listen to books on tape (or audio books online) so that makes me not a bookworm, but a...I'll let you finish that.