By attempting to control the internet, Congress can't help but do anything but screw it up. They want to create a system whereby any website in America could be turned off at a moment's notice. And if they can do it, don't worry, they will.This information caught me by surprise, Hank's video was the first I've heard of it.
Canadian writer Karen Woodward, author of Until Death, thought it would be a great idea to interview me. Wild horses dragged me to tame horses. Tame horses carried me to room 102. Room 101 was taken. Shining her spotlight on the face of the innocent dupe I’d hired to impersonate me, Karen began the interrogation…
KAREN WOODWARD: Please tell me a bit about your book.
RLL: Neon Gods Brought Down by Swords is my commentary on a disease-raddled, drug-addled, country known for its prominent blade culture. That country is a thinly-disguised Scotland. Drugs are plentiful. Violence is everywhere. Justice is in short supply. Lives are cheap. Alliances and allegiances are even cheaper. I try to ensure that my overly-optimistic view of the nation doesn’t get in the way of a rattling good story.
My approach was to squash the sorcery element of the standard sword and sorcery tale, placing science in its stead. Not a new notion. On top of that, the war fought out in the book’s pages was a Cold War. The icing on the literary cake was always this idea that old heroes, from legendary tales, would pass through the modern stuff. Old heroes, and old villains.
The strangeness of the mixture makes for a decidedly odd cake. That’s the beauty of self-publishing electronically. Every type of story is up for grabs. As author-publisher, the e-book writer can tackle a setting that might have limited appeal in a diminishing paper marketplace. So what. Appeal to that limit electronically, then publish the next story. Build a following. Or build several different followings. It’s all on the table, and it’s all to play for.
Is Neon Gods a series? Not in the conventional sense. It’s not a story about quests. I make this quite clear in my notes at the end. A second book would run in the same timeframe as the first, featuring some of the first novel’s characters in scenes witnessed from alternative viewpoints.
However, publishing a series is not my immediate plan. I have a small stack of unpublished novels and short stories sitting there, and I am formatting those for the Kindle before I return to the series. That doesn’t mean neglecting the story.
I’ve written more of book three than of book two, as I must keep a deathly grip on continuity. Yes, I could simply introduce unreliable narrators and leave the audience to sift through inconsistent debris. But I’m in this game to do the job properly.
The novel is an Amazon Kindle e-book. It was important to list story structure at the start, in a series of chapter links. A new thing for me. I want readers to see that the story ends with chapter 32. The book ends with the section ABOUT THIS BOOK.
It’s a warning to wannabe e-authors. If you end the story halfway through the overall page-count, and pad the rest of your book with articles and off-cuts, have the decency to warn readers of this. Aim for transparency. Don’t just dump that on readers as they hit the next page. Bad form. (My story takes up 95% of the publication.)
This peeve dates from all the research I did for a novel on comic books. Comic book readers judge the story by the thickness of the magazine. A sawn-off adventure featuring the main character doesn’t go down well if an unannounced back-up strip rears its head at the turn of a page. What happened to the hero? Who is this third-rate banana, drawn by a filler artist we’ve never heard of?
Bluntly, authors depend on the kindness of stranglers. If I generate a vast audience, I know that’s a vast audience I’ll never meet. Is it possible to respect all these unknown and unknowable people? At the basic level, in applying professional standards to the work.
I am reluctant to discuss the plot in an interview. Always leave ’em hungry.
KAREN WOODWARD: What is the best writing advice you ever received?
RLL: From the pen of C.S. Lewis. Read your work aloud. I must add that I do this in the voices of the characters I create. If they sound different as I’m typing, they will be different in the eyes and minds of my readers. Well, so I like to think.
One of the best ideas I ever absorbed from a writer came from Hans Andersen. He’d travel with rope, so that he could escape from a strange house in the event of a fire in the middle of the night. I’ve only used the escape rope once, thus far. That’s another story.
I’ll amplify on your original question, and give you the worst writing advice I ever received. This happened in school, no surprise, and was uttered by an English teacher. Again, hardly a shocker. “Never use and or but at the start of a sentence. It’s okay to do that in real life, but never in an exam.” The advice was seared into my mind, for all the wrong reasons.
Indicating that exams had no bearing on real life, as far as that teacher felt. A skewed view. Hardly the meaning she was attempting to convey. There is nothing wrong in using and or but at the start of a sentence. Avoid overuse, to keep your style from being nauseatingly repetitive. I live in a part of the world in which it is grammatically acceptable to place but at the end of a sentence. That’s just the way local grammar developed, but.
KAREN WOODWARD: I understand that you have written for many years, although you have just begun self-publishing. What advice would you give to a new writer?
RLL: You mean a writer of fiction. Writing non-fiction lies in the same solar system, though is one planet over – with its own local conditions. Some of this doubtless applies to non-fiction too. For new writers, the advice is obvious. Read. Discover what you like, and what you don’t like. Learn from both types of writing. I learned as much from crappy books as I learned from excellent ones. (Sometimes I think I learned more…)
Cut loose of the stuff you like reading. Be influenced by it, but don’t become it. Cut loose of the stuff you don’t like reading. Avoid spending your writing time hating that material. You have better things to do with your days. And tastes change, over time, in any case.
Learn beyond writing itself. If you look for inspiration in non-written material, whether painted or sculpted, then that’s a good thing. Have interests and pursuits outwith literature. Apply every piece of experience to your writing. Good or ill.
Read copyright law.
Enjoy what you do, though understand that some of your best material might end up being written while in a foul old mood, with the odds stacked against you, your back to the fiery wall, and time running out.
Be prepared to recycle ideas that fall apart. There’s no call to print a story, rip it up, and throw it away. (Unless it’s truly beyond saving. Even then, I’d think twice. And twice more.) I have stuff to get back to. Fragments. Snippets. Remnants. The ruins of stories. New writers should keep hold of everything. One rainy day, that neglected computer file will be dusted down…
Put the hours in. I know I’m always banging on about that. If stories really wrote themselves, I’d be in the Bahamas right now as this interview saw to itself. That takes me back to reading. Consider the size of a book you liked…
Calculate the number of words. Discover your typing speed. Work out how many hours you’d have to spend, to come up with a similar-sized book – based on typing alone. Now think about the number of hours you can spend a day, typing.
You’ll see how many weeks it’ll take to work through a story similar in length to the one you enjoyed reading. I’ve made that sound like a mechanical process. Well, it is. Discipline is a cliché to writers. Often spoken of reverently, without further explanation.
Get into the numbers. Develop a sense of scale. Set a goal, in words. How many? Do the basic arithmetic. If you want to write 100,000 words at 1,000 a day, every single day, you’ll spend 100 days marching to the last page. Not counting research, editing, medical emergencies, and all the other stuff life throws your way. If you type 10,000 words a day, it won’t take you 100 days. Doing the same job in just over a week is no crime.
Discipline is all about the numbers. Nothing to do with quality, or art, or the creative muse. Discipline has no handy shortcut. I feel inclined to say the same to old writers, just in case you think I’m blaming youth for being young.
If you want to be a writer, write. Stop wanting. Be. (No, kiddies, I’m not a little green alien living in a swamp.) A writer is always on the job. Even asleep. Wake, write the dream down. Type it up. Stuck in a queue? Observe. Play the game of faces, as you shop. That guy’s a rocket scientist. She’s a spy. He’s the stranger, come to town with a grudge.
For reasons of space, Scheherazade-like, the interview ceases. Read the full interview on the blog, REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.
It happens to me all of the time when I teach artists social media.The face goes blank, the frustration begins to settle in and then the artist says it:To read the rest of Ariel Hyatt's awesome post, click here: The Musician's Social Media Food Pyramid
“I just don’t have anything interesting to say.”
REALLY?
I’m shocked by this every time. You are an artist; you do things we mere mortals are totally enamored by: you PLAY MUSIC, you write songs, you perform them in public!
So PHLEEASE, do not tell me you have nothing interesting to say. I ain’t buying it.
All you are missing is a System for Social Media Success.
Luckily, unlike sheer god-given musical talent, social media is a learnable skill.
As I was teaching my system to a client in my kitchen a few weeks ago over coffee and bagels and it HIT me… and so I created:
THE MUSICIAN’S SOCIAL MEDIA FOOD PYRAMID!
Remember that chart they brought out when we were in 2nd grade to show us how to eat well-rounded meals? I have re-tooled it for you so you can now participate on Social Media healthily! And you won’t even have to think about it – just follow along…
You wouldn’t eat only bagels all of the time. They are a treat once in awhile, but they are not healthy to eat every day – and a diet of only bagels would be boring!
Most artists are only serving their audiences bagels all of the time. Plain bagels. Over an over again.
Uninteresting.
We want a burger, or a giant green healthy salad, we want some candy, give us protein!
But you keep serving bagels, bagels, bagels!
These are five things that when used in concert with one another can help you ratchet up your social media effectively and manage it easily.
I talk about this a lot – simply because a lot of the time, people just don't do it. And that is professional suicide. You have to schedule your writing time and protect it like you would your own child. Then stick to it – like crazy glue. Because the writer's schedule is the writer's salvation.I'm going to do something Rebecca Bollwitt (miss604.com) suggested during her workshop at the Surrey International Writers' Conference: keep a detailed daily diary. I manage to make it to my day job on schedule, I should be able to write (at least!) an hour a day.
Almost everyone who is really good at something finds that success because they practice their profession daily. It's not like the Olympian just shows up for the race. Four years of preparation can go into a single sprint that lasts less than ten seconds. Dedication is the key. You must show up every day and do it – whether it's the 100-meter dash or the next "Great American Novel". Being a writer – paid or not – is absolutely a job, so treat it like one. Be accountable. Be responsible. Be on time. Don't call in sick. Show up and write - Everyday!
This is no secret. Most of the best authors schedule their writing, and it's that dedication that makes them good. Even the "Father of American Literature" Mark Twain famously wrote every day between 8:30AM and 5:00PM from his writing studio at his home in Hartford, Connecticut, reading what he wrote each day to his children and wife after super. Apparently, Twain needed critical feedback too.
Now I understand that structuring a 40-hour writing workweek may be a fantasy for most people, but everyone has at least one hour a day. You just have to decide what you're willing to sacrifice. Watch TV a little less, get the kids in bed on time, and yes, try waking up earlier and knock out a few pages before the sun rises. Whatever you decide, you must make it routine.
Just think, without that kind of discipline, we may never have been blessed with some of the treasures Twain completed during his seventeen years at Hartford: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), The Prince and the Pauper (1881), Life on the Mississippi (1883), Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889).
Obviously, we must give credit where credit is due – Mark Twain was a colossal talent, but it was his writing schedule that allowed him to maximize that talent. It's easy to thank Twain for his writing, but what we should really be thankful for is Twain's dedication to his writing schedule.
- Safeguard Your Writing Time
1. Yes Fred, it will make you happierThe same goes for me! :-)
Commenting is a happiness guarantee. You will have more interaction with people. People will like you. You’ll get auto-post thank yous. But, you’ll also begin meeting really great people because you’re going to comment on great blogs, right?
2. No Sally, it doesn’t take too much time
Every comment does not have to be a brilliant essay! So, stop with the excuse that it’s too time consuming! Sometimes we “desperate-for-any-feedback-insecure-writers” just love an “‘ataboy!” Not me, of course, since I’m totally secure. You like me, don’t you?
3. Yes Robert, you will get more followers
Do you want real followers or just numbers? I know there are some great programs that will increase your numbers, but if you want more quality peeps, start commenting.
4. No Herb, you don’t have to have the answer all the time
A question is posed in a post. You think you don’t have the best answer, so you don’t bother commenting. Just ask a question back.
5. Yes Karen, your Klout will improve
A lot of people measure their worth by Klout. IF you care about this sort of stuff, you probably will get a higher Klout score via commenting as you’ll just generate more of the metrics that they measure, though it makes NO sense to me!
6. No Joanna, it won’t hurt
“I don’t have time.” “If I do yours, I’ll upset him/her if I don’t do theirs!” “C’mon, I have work to do.” What’s your B.S. excuse? It won’t hurt, it won’t deprive you of needed TV time, and in fact you can do it in front of the TV!
7. Yes Jack, commenting is good for your blog
You comment. They comment. Simple. To gain loyal readers, comment on good blogs and those writers will comment on yours. I know this is complicated, but you do for me and I’ll do for you. It’s called Quid Pro Quo… and Life!
8. No Roberta, I won’t stalk you any more than I already do if you comment on my blog
I love Roberta. I follow everything she says and does. She’s afraid I’m going to show up at her home. NOT, NOT. Stop worrying, just comment.
9. Yes Norbert, I learned everything from #blogchat
I’ve written about how much you can learn from Tweet Chats, and I learned the value of commenting from #blogchat. Other than “Content Is King,” that has been the most consistent evergreen recommendation for better engagement. So, listen to the blogging pros and comment!
10. No Cynthia, all the comments don’t have to be how swell the blog is
But, it may be better to be nice. You can start incredible discussions with a probing comment, even a provocative one. I wouldn’t suggest dissing the blog or the writer. It’s bad karma.
11. Yes Carla, it helps you improve your writing
To comment, you have to read. The more you read, the more your writing will improve. You might even learn something. This is called Win-WIN!
12. No Warren, I won’t miss participating in your great community ’cause I’m always commenting
Again, we come back to time management. That is the ironic struggle we all go through with the advent of the computer. It was supposed to ease our burdens. All it did was give us more to do. So, begin slowly. Start by commenting once a day. Make it a habit and then you won’t have to miss your friends!
Okay, ready to comment? Convinced? You can start below. I will respond to EVERY ONE! I always do…
- 12 Most Self-Serving Reasons to Post Blog Comments
As with John Locke before her, Amanda Hocking sold the majority of her 1 million Kindle books independently using Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Since its launch in 2007, KDP has provided a fast, free and easy way for authors and publishers around the world to make their books available in the Kindle Store. In addition to the more than 2 million books sold by John Locke and Amanda Hocking, 12 KDP authors have sold more than 200,000 books and 30 KDP authors have sold more than 100,000 books.
“Our customers love reading all kinds of books on their Kindle, and it’s thanks to them that the Kindle Million Club keeps growing so quickly,” said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content. “It’s exciting to see both long-time Amazon best-selling authors from the traditional publishing world and independently published authors join the club.”
"I’m thrilled to be a member of the Kindle Million Club,” said David Baldacci. “EBooks are leading the way in more people reading and it’s great to be part of this revolution." David Baldacci is the internationally best-selling author of more than 20 novels that have been translated into over 45 languages and sold in more than 80 countries. His most recent books include the best seller “The Sixth Man” and the Kindle Single “No Time Left.” His newest novel, “Zero Day,” was published on October 31.
"I’m so grateful to everyone who has bought one of my books, and to Amazon, for giving me a place to share my books,” said Amanda Hocking. “None of this would have been possible without you. Thank you!" Amanda Hocking got her start independently publishing her books and is now the best-selling author of 10 books, including the My Blood Approves series and the Trylle Trilogy, which has been optioned for films. Hocking has been featured in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Entertainment Weekly, Huffington Post and Forbes.
"I know for a fact that this is the most awesome club I’ve ever been allowed into,” said Stephenie Meyer. “Of course I owe it all to the readers – thanks for continually making me cooler than I actually am. And thanks Kindle, for making it so much easier to bring 25 books with me on vacation.” Stephenie Meyer is the author of six novels, including the best-selling Twilight Saga series. “Twilight” was named an Amazon.com Best Book of the Decade So Far, and the series has become a global phenomenon that has been published in 50 languages around the world with over 116 million copies sold worldwide. The movie version of the final book in the Twilight Saga, “Breaking Dawn – Part 1,” hits theaters November 18.
Kindle books are “Buy Once, Read Everywhere” – on Kindle, Kindle Touch, Kindle Touch 3G, Kindle Fire, on the web with Kindle Cloud Reader, and free Kindle reading apps for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, PCs, Mac, Android phones and tablets, BlackBerry and Windows phones.
- David Baldacci, Amanda Hocking and Stephenie Meyer Join the Kindle Million Club
Premature editing is very dangerous for three reasons:This is an excerpt of Kristen's article, which I would encourage you to read in its entirety here.
1. Premature Editing Uproots Subconscious Seeds—Our subconscious mind is an amazing machine. It sees the big picture in ways the conscious mind cannot. As we write, our subconscious mind is planting seeds that, when viewed in a microcosm of one or three chapters, will likely seem to make no sense. Duh. That is like an acorn trying to envision life as a 100 foot tall oak tree.
These seeds need time to gestate. When we edit prematurely, all we see is a hunk of something smooshy. We don’t realize that a possibly mind-blowing idea is trying to germinate and take root in the fertile soil of our story. By editing too early, we can possibly cripple our novel. By the end of the first draft, however, we will be able to look back and see sprouted weeds, which we can feel free to uproot. But the sprouts will be mature enough to distinguish from seedlings that need to be nurtured to their full potential.
This is especially true for those of you who did at least a basic plot of your main narrative points. When we do this, we have basically told our subconscious we need to make it from Point A to Point B (Inciting Incident to Turning Point Act One). Sometimes, our subconscious will want to show off and can dazzle us with how creatively it can make the trip.
So let it alone. Your subconscious could surprise you.
2. Premature Editing Makes Us Mistake Busy Work for Real Work—Premature editing indulges our fears. Many times we writers do not continue forward due to subconscious fear. Deep down we might know our original idea is flawed, or not strong enough, or convoluted, or unclear. We may know that we don’t have a solid outline or framework to support a 100K words. We may realize our characters have problems, but it is going to take work and honesty to fix them. Or all of that might be just fine, but we fear failure or even success. We fear writing the gritty stuff because it leaves us exposed and vulnerable, or we fear writing real conflict because our human nature is to avoid it.
Premature editing gives us a false belief that we are being productive, when in fact it is sabotaging our work and reinforcing our fears by permitting us to procrastinate. Fears can only be conquered by facing them, and premature editing keeps us “busy” and gives us justification to stay mired.
3. Premature Editing Can Discourage and Keep a Writer from Finishing—This is another reason that traditional critique groups can be counter-productive. Again, other writers are seeing our work in a microcosm, and that limits how well they can critique. This is why I suggest using the techniques we discussed earlier. Just make notes.
Our fellow writers are invaluable, but we have to appreciate that they are seeing our work from a limited point of view. Their opinions may be dead-on (We HATE your protagonist and hope he dies), but they could be far off-base and serve only to uproot those subconscious seeds we discussed.
If we continue to go back changing things chapter by chapter, changing, changing, changing, either due to critique group feedback or our own self-edit, what happens is that we KILL our forward momentum with a big ol’ red-penning, back-spacing bone saw. Do that long enough, and it becomes hard not to be discouraged and ultimately give up. If you have been reworking the first act of your book for months, it can very easily end up in the drawer with all the other unfinished works.
When it comes to NaNoWriMo, the point is to write 50,000 words in thirty days. That’s it. You can’t do this if you over think your work. If you hit a wall, just keep writing. Sometimes our brains are like water pumps. We need to prime them and get through the goo before the creativity flows. Just write. You can fix it later. Or, you can start over.
Doesn’t matter.
