Showing posts with label authors. Show all posts

I have been driving myself bat shit for two years trying to complete this book. I'm always at the point where I think it's done, but then when it's "done", I get this over whelming feeling that it isn't finished yet.

I have been so frustrated for such a long time with this. Finally, I decided to do an internet search to see if there was any advice for a writer who is in this kind if a slump and what they should do about it. I found this website that speaks about the "snowflake method" for designing a book. Now, first let me explain that I didn't have any kind of design or diagram or outline when I started this book. I had the ideas for a shit load of cool scenes in my head, comedy bits, dialogue and I just started typing. This has been an absolute failure of a writing method. Don't ever, ever, EVER DO THAT!! A total nightmare! Constantly writing and re-writing, trying to make this story make sense. Trying to make sure everything comes together seamlessly. Please, never do it that way! It will turn your hair grey! Yes, SERIOUSLY! I found grey hair!


The problem is though I TRIED to make an outline for this book but it never worked for some reason. I don't know why; It just didn't. I would sit there and write Chapter 1: such and such and such. Chapter 2: such and such and such. I would still write the book and feel like it wasn't complete and everything didn't match up. So I figured maybe the whole outline thing wasn't for me, even though I wrote two books in highschool using loose outlines that worked out fantastic.

Anyway, out of desperation I tried the snowflake method, cutting a lot of corners. I want my book out by December and his method of outlining a story would probably take at least a month. A month to outline a story is too much, especially since I have 300 pages already written. But I did the first two steps, writing the basic idea for the story, which was easy enough. Then writing detailed character outlines and writing the characters personal story.

As soon as I finished the character outlines for the story I started to feel better. Then hen I got to the character stories something amazing happened. I realized I could just link up each sentence of the characters story to a chapter/portion of my manuscript. For instance: "Character A wants to find the mystical key of light." (that's just an example, my story has no mystical key of light).All I had to do was take a pen or a pencil and draw an arrow to a little note that says "this is shown in chapter 3 when he's explains this to the hobgoblin king." Then, if there was a part of my character story that wasn't matching up to the manuscript, I would be able to see it clearly and change it.

After I did that I went back into my story and changed the titles. Rather than writing random titles for each chapter I wrote a very brief description for the major points in each chapter. I saved the descriptions, so that it created a big story/outline combining all the character stories. Now I had a real outline for my book and reading it over I could see what needed to be fixed, what didn't make sense, what could be cut, what could be saved and how to alter things so it blends together cohesively.


Whew! I know a lot of work but it's paying off. I can plan what's going to happen in each chapter and I have a clear definition of what these characters are all about and how to execute them. Now the funny thing is, if I had tried to make an outline from scratch before I started writing the book, it's wouldn't have been as dynamic and cool as the outline I've just made. The reason being that some things just don't make sense, but I force them to make sense in a way because I think it's a cool idea. Personally, I think it adds more drama and excitement to the story. It's like seeing a very serious room full stock brokers or something having a sort of "gathering of witches" for business types. Then an Italian guy with one of those curly mustaches, walks into the room and smacks one of them over the head with a giant halibut. Now, afterwards, I fully explain why the guy just got whooped with a dead fish, but stuff like that is a nice little wake up to anyone reading the story. That's the kind of thing that I might miss out on if I try being very organized and plotting my story out in the beginning. But I suppose this is why the creator of the snowflake theory makes the entire process last 1-2 months. You can't plot a whole story out in one night, it'll be lame. 

Anyway, this all just goes to show that not everything works for everybody, but if you try you will find something that WORKS. Some people do perfectly well with the "Chapter 1-Chapter 2-Chapter 3" kind of outline. Some people might benefit from the writing out the story and then plugging in how and where you're going to show this and this and that.

This is a long boring post that only writers care about. And maybe not so much even then. Hope I didn't put anyone to sleep but finally making an outline I could work with just felt good!

Editorial Ass is going to stop blogging. That's sad considering, I just found that blog a few weeks ago...but honey the changes it's made in me!

To be honest this post from that blog was one of the things that made me decide to go indie. I had been thinking about it, mulling it over in my head for a while...then I read that post about the "midlist", "personnel turnover at publishing houses", and "the bureaucracy of publishing". Bureaucracy is the kind of word you use to describe "unspeakable horrors" in a disinfected, corporate kind of way. I still get the jist of it though, the aura of that word is black. And as an author, I am not sure I can deal with all of that.


Talk about a broken heart thought. It's been my dream since a child to be a writer. But they sure don't tell you all about the "Mid-list", "personnel turnover" and "bureaucracy" in all of those interviews with Rowling, Meyer and King, do they? Nor do they ever really mention these things in all those "How To Be a Published Writer" books I've read.  


No, no, no, no, they let these little details about the publishing industry out of the Disney stories they feed us over the big, glowing, hyp-no-box. And there's really nothing much I can do about it. Kinda made me feel like I wasted my entire life.


Dreams shattered. Now what? Suck it up? Buck up? Yeah,  I guess. Destroy what's left of that "image" in my head of what a successful writer is, because it's a lie anyway and it's only going to cause pain now. Rebuild a new.  Restructure in my head. Fixating on new destinations.  Indie publishing, here I come!


I've been speaking to another author, Deana Zhollis and she reminded me that I haven't actually talked about my book yet. I don't know why I have this "thing" in my head that everything has to be perfect before I start advertising. Like, I don't feel I should start advertising my book until I have the PDF and everything ready for Createspace. Meanwhile, here's the real world and honestly, holding back isn't something that's good for publicity, is it? So, I placed my book cover and a short descrip down below. 


Also,  I'm trying to raise money to get the book published so I''m offering my design services. I can do book covers and websites; I'm working pretty cheap to build my portfolio, but I do great work :).  I have gone to design school and I can work my way around Photoshop and Dreamweaver. 

The cover looks dark when I view it on my netbook, so I still gotta tweak it. I created it on my larger HP laptop and I may still change the title of my book. I'm sure the first thing people think about when they hear the title is "Harry Potter", which makes sense since the book parodies YA fantasy and American culture.  But the story is actually about a teen boy who goes to a sorcery school in NY to learn how to resurrect his dead girlfriend. It's also edgier then most of the popular YA fantasies (contains lots of swearing, violence and drug references) which I know limits my audience a little, but hell, how can i write a book about a school in New York--even a sorcery school--where the students aren't dropping f-bombs like they've had military training in doing so? It's not pleasant but it's real.  Fantastically real :)


If you or anyone you know needs a book cover or website designed, send them this way. I'll make a unique book cover for anywhere from $200-$300. And a webpages starting at about $200. I'm creating an official,  "business-y" type website/portfolio for myself as we speak, so I'll post that up here. Just wanted to put a little advertisement for myself up here as well.


send me an e-mail, and well help each other out. 

Hey, I'm scouring the net to find some help for writers, especially when it comes to advertising our books. Whenever I come across some interesting info, links, ideas, I'll make a page about it and hang it up for all of us to share.

The first page is a list of places where you can post ads for free. Might want to take advantage of these things and see if it makes a difference when it comes to hits for your site!

http://allfiredup123.blogspot.com/p/resources-for-writers-list-of-free-ad.html

This has to be a quick one because I'm going nuts trying to get all this work done. My to-do list has the ability to regenerate itself; as soon as I cross one task off, two more task appear in it's place like a demonic alien hydra! eeeek!!! -_-;;.

Updates?--Okay, I figured out why it's so expensive to POD my book. My book was too long. I just butchered the thing in half o_O;; WTF?! That act nearly made me quit life. After all the blood, sweat and tears (okay, no actual blood... but definitely tears demmit) to get my story to work and get it where it made sense, I had to DELETE nearly half the book, which means I practically have to rework the entire thing over again. ARRRGGHH *smoke shoots out of ears*!!!

Also, typing my book up innocently in Microsoft word I had no idea that 360 in whatever setting I was using (the "I-think-I'm-a-real-writer-setting?") translated to 466 pages in the ready for print template. At about $0.015 a page, my book would have been waaaaay too expensive.

Kill your darlings, Kill your darlings. Isn't that what Stephen King was talking about in "On writing"?
Well, my darling is dead and hopefully it will be born again, better and stronger. Actually it is...once you hit the delete button on about 10 chapters and realize that there is still a good story there...a more focused one...Yeah, you really didn't need that 10 chapters anyway and it was just mindless--though entertaining--filler.

I got the Lightning Source Application. **EXCITING**

It's long. I'm about halfway done with it. I'm at the part where they are asking me for banking info and I figure now was the best time for me to go open that business checking account so I can use that.

I've been struggling for a while deciding whether or not to use a pen name and I finally decided to go with a pen name. Why not? Having a secret identity is sexy :)


So my small business account will be opened under my pen name (if I can.. well see)
What else? Editing insanity. Lightning Source. Pen Name. Business Account. Oh and I still have the husband/son/life/and work thing. YESH! Better to be busy then bored though and I'm definitely not bored.

Alright, enough out of me for now...I got work to do!

Well, I was warned this phase was going to come. REJECTION. When I started sending out queries I started bracing myself and got myself ready for the almighty list of rejections to start piling up.

It's still a blow to the ego, no matter how much you set yourself up and know that it's gonna happen. But seriously, my book is like my baby, you work so hard on it to polish it and get it perfect, only for someone to glance at the query letter and dismiss it. Like *POOF*.

But you know what, fuck it. I know my work is good.  So I'll just keep pressing forward until I find an agent that believes in me as much as I believe in me. And if that doesn't work? I do have my plan B's and C's.

Omg! Look who's becoming miss organized? Don't let my Microsoft Excel agent/Query list fool you. I still have no idea what I'm doing. :)



Don't laugh at my whack excel skills, i'm still a beginner. Here is a list of all the agents I queried in 2009 and now in 2010. I know it isn't very much...about 15 in all (and one agent I queried twice, once last year and once this year). My responses so far are pretty good. I had one request for the full manuscript, one resquest for sample chapters, a lot of rejections and I'm still waiting on 3.

I kid you not when I tell you that I'm pretty unorganized, but I'm glad I sat down and did this. First of all, I realized that I hadn't heard from two agents I queried in 2009; that adds two more places I can query when I send out my next batch of query letters.

Also, I now can see where I've sent my letters so I don't requery the same agency...again! Yes, I accidently queried the same agency twice! I didn't even realize it until I created the excel chart and face palmed myself for sending two queries to two people at the same agency. Funny thing is though, one of the agents from this company is the same agent who requested some samples out of me. My ineptitude didn't get the door totally slammed in my face this time :)

(And I am not saying to do this, EVER, when you send out your query letters. This was a mistake and one that should have cost me a nice, blunt, rejection letter. )



Here is the list showing who gave me the boot, who gave me a hoot and who I'm still waiting for. I made the chart in bright pretty colors because if I don't, I may forget that I exist and start to fade away; like Marty Mcfly's parents in "Back to the future".

(Wow, I'm a dinosaur for remembering that...)

Also, a tip for those of you who haven't queried yet. I send my queries out in little batches. Maybe 6 or so at a time. This is something I do not regret. As I read more blogs and discover new information, I find things that make me want to change my query around. I read something on places like http://queryshark.blogspot.com that make me want to redo my query to make it better. This is great. Once a query is out there is no way you can take it back to make another first impression. But luckily, there are a lot of agents out there, and a lot of chances to make a good first impressions.

I know other writers who do the same thing and so far, they seem to pretty much agree with me. Sending 50 queries to 50 agents might seem like a good idea---but imagine getting 50 no's! It can and has happened to even FANTASTIC writers. Better to send out 6 or 15 or even 20 at a time. If you get 15 no's then you know it's time to go back to the drawing board and can do so knowing you still have a lot of agents left to query.

I haven't dropped a post in a while, so I figured I'd better leave one, even if it's really short.

I started sending out the queries last week. I haven't heard back from any of them yet. That's a good thing! The last time I sent out queries (about 6 or 7) the rejections came immediately. Some of them were the very next day, if i remember correctly. It was the positive feedback ones that took weeks to get. So when I check my mailbox and find it empty, there's a weird sense of relief there.

My son is in St.Martin with his grandmother for the entire week. Great opportunity to sweep over my work and tighten it up for when I get request for the full manuscript. I'm having a great time reading over my own story, so I have to take that as a positive. I mean, I've read my own book only about eighty-seven thousand times. The fact that I can do it one more time and enjoy it says a lot, I think.

Anyway, my sleep patterns haven't gotten any better. Got pretty much no sleep last night so I'm going to clean up and take another crack at it. Hope all is well with anyone finding this.

-Cheers

As a writer creating effective, dynamic,characters use to be my strong point, but lately I'm finding I'm having a harder time doing it.

I'm a little bit sadden by this and curious as to why it has happened. Off the top of my head all I can guess is that you start to see people differently as an adult. People seem less dynamic. Adults a predictable, mind controlled and so afraid to deviate from the norm.

During my teen years and early twenty's, particularly my college days, I was able to create amazing and colorful characters. I was surrounding by amazing colorful people. I could take bits and piece of people I knew, stitched it together with some strange ideas of my own and, TA-DAA! Characters I loved were born.

In any case, all is not lost. I still know how to create a good character, even if it doesn't seem to come as natural for me as it did before. Plus I know when something sounds cliché, over done, to out of the realm of possibility. I still have some of my literary "spider senses" at my command. So create a new character I have! Aren't I suppose to be done writing this book already?

The fun part about creating characters now is RESEARCH. I might not have these Dynamic people in my life, but they are out there. News clips, history, television. Yes, Personalities! Historys! They are all out there.

For this new character I've decided to base him loosely on the David Berkowitz--The Son Of Sam--and I've been researching this guy on-line. Okay, scary shit, yah? But this guy is very fascinating and the more I learn about him the more my character comes alive. You have to know what parts you're looking for though and what it is you want to take out of this persons story.

It's not the fact that this guy was a serial killer that has caught my attention. It is the fact that he is now a born-again Christian that I find most fascinating. Dude! If David Berkowitz says there is a God, I'd be inclined to believe him. Lord knows he's sent many a poor soul to go meet him!

But I am totally curious about this guys story now. All the little details I'm trying to find on the net. Like, did the dog actually TALK to him and tell him to kill people or did he just translate the barking in his own head?

What exactly was it in the bible that he read that made him convert? How did it make him feel?

He says he came from a  pretty good home but I found out he was in the military and left only a few years before his first murder. I can't help but wonder if his stint in the military had anything to do with his mental problems afterwards, knowing what we know about PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) it seems possible.

Anyway, I know I'm just being attacked by distraction demons here. I need to get on and get this book completely finished. 35 Chapters complete! It's amazing! But there's no sense in quitting now.




*That pic is not of me, that's the Son Of Sam. I know! He looks like such a nice guy!He has changed though, but even so, It's still spooky...

Ladies and Gentleman, I have found a new hero...LOL



I love this guy for two reasons. 1. He's a hero and 2. He's entertaining as all fuck.  It angers me though when I watch Youtube videos about this guy and all they do is trash him because he's seems gay, he seems uncharacteristically funny about a situation which most of us would find plenty frightening, and because he's from the projects.

Okay, first of all, just because someone talks with an accent doesn't mean they are intellectually inferior. People were acting as if the reporter was throwing him math equations, or he was in the middle of a spelling bee or something. How can you decipher this persons intelligence from that little clip? You can't! That was a trick question. But a ton of people seem to think they can rate peoples IQ by how they speak. So I guess the Japanese and the Chinese of America are dumb as hell because they speak that "Engrish?"? or the Russians and the Germans and The Irish, or the Scotts...who are damn near incomprehendable when they are excited...all fail intellectually because they can't say "Jamie Foxx" without making the nearest American fly into a fit of giggles.

COME ON PEOPLE! Let's evolve a little!

Another thing about this story is that it forces me to reveal a deep dark secret about myself. I LOVE HOW BLACK PEOPLE TALK!!

AHAHAHA! I grew up in very racially diverse communities and if there's one thing I've always been happy about is having black people as friends and family and getting to sit around and just listen to them SPEAK. It sounds like a stereotype but it's true, black people are probably the most entertaining people on earth, and as a writer, I know that you can place a group of black people in any situation in a story...shoveling snow...buying food at the local Pathmart... and if you get the characters right, the conversation right, it will=COMEDY GOLD!

"MARTIN" is one of the best comedies ever! What was it about? what made it so good? Black people talking! 80% of the shows comedy bits comes from conversation alone. And this isn't just a production made up to get views...this is how BLK PEOPLE REALLY TALK!





It's not just black Americans either. The blacks from the West Indies are  really amusing to listen too. It's like the entire language is built on the entertainment factor. If you can s[peak Haitian and listen to two old Haitian men discuss the news you'll know what I mean. FUNNY AS FUCK!

But hands down, the best at speaking black are probably the blacks from the south (the southern part of North America). Sheeeeet! I can listen to them talk all day!

So in closing, i'd like to say that you shouldn't judge people by how they speak and stop trying to shame blacks into giving up something that makes them truly unique and interesting. I love how I talk, I don't want to sound like some stiff unless I am infact at a stiff ass job!

Anyway, if you can't appriciate the ART that is in how black folks talk, I pity you! LOL!

Haha! Kind of a big let down after my last post I know. But I have good reason for hesitating this time...



I took someones wonderful advice and joined a writing group online. HOORAY FOR THE INTERNET!!

Yesterday afternoon I posted the first five pages of my story---which is part of my submission packet BTW---to writingforums.com (my username is Balistic, LOOK ME UP, YO!)

Ahem. Anyway, so for I only got one critique of my work but it was good advice. Also re-reading my own except at like 5 am in the morning (I'm having really horrible sleep patterns lately, I go to sleep anytime, wake up whenever and usually don't end up getting more then 4 hours a sleep a day) I found a ton of mistakes!! Okay, not a ton, but enough to make me glad I didn't send in my submission to agents yet!

The mistakes were little and I know my overall writing is good, but I can't afford any errors. Has to be PERFECT! So for any other writers out their going bitch cakes over their work, I suggest you have it looked at by a critique group, even an online one. Competition is stiff ya'll! Everyone one and their baby mama is trying to be the next "Stephanie Meyer". How good her writing is I'll let the individual decide...but my way of thinking? I can't write a book as good as "Twilight" I have to try to make something better. That's just what it takes to succeed now-a-days because honestly, the publishing hustle has become a dog race. Which is cool with me, I'm ready for battle!




*By the way I didn't draw the picture located on the top. I found it here: http://bloodylilies.livejournal.com/profile




It's gorgeous though, isn't it? People are so talented!

Yeah. Eventually.

Not really. Let's just do it. Let's send out those query letters.

This book we've been working on forever. We've twisted it and changed it and re-arranged it. I'm gonna go glowing BaTShIT!  Seems everyday were getting a new idea for it. Maybe it's time to just send the thing out and hope for the best? If we get rejected then we alter it, but stop altering it before we can even get the queries out.

Yeah sounds good. I'm gonna do it. Really. I'm gonna do it. Okay. I'm doing it. Oh yeah. Seriously. Here i go...

Cheers! Wish me luck!