Seth Godin: How to overcome writer's block

We've all heard of writer's block, so why not talker's block? Questions like these are why I love Seth Godin's blog.

No one ever gets talker's block. No one wakes up in the morning, discovers he has nothing to say and sits quietly, for days or weeks, until the muse hits, until the moment is right, until all the craziness in his life has died down.

Why then, is writer's block endemic?

The reason we don't get talker's block is that we're in the habit of talking without a lot of concern for whether or not our inane blather will come back to haunt us. Talk is cheap. Talk is ephemeral. Talk can be easily denied.

We talk poorly and then, eventually (or sometimes), we talk smart. We get better at talking precisely because we talk. We see what works and what doesn't, and if we're insightful, do more of what works. How can one get talker's block after all this practice?

Writer's block isn't hard to cure.

Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly, in public, until you can write better.

I believe that everyone should write in public. Get a blog. Or use Squidoo or Tumblr or a microblogging site. Use an alias if you like. Turn off comments, certainly--you don't need more criticism, you need more writing.

Do it every day. Every single day. Not a diary, not fiction, but analysis. Clear, crisp, honest writing about what you see in the world. Or want to see. Or teach (in writing). Tell us how to do something.

If you know you have to write something every single day, even a paragraph, you will improve your writing. If you're concerned with quality, of course, then not writing is not a problem, because zero is perfect and without defects. Shipping nothing is safe.

I didn't feel right copying and pasting Seth's entire blog post, but I wanted to because it was so good! I encourage you all to go to Seth's site and finish reading this most excellent article: Talker's Block.

How does a beginning writer build an audience?

Word-of-mouth advertising can only work if you have fans out there spreading the word. This then is presumed to be a chicken and egg dilemma. How can you have word-of-mouth if you don’t have fans, and how can you have fans without word-of-mouth? Therefore self-publishing can’t work.

Michael J. Sullivan writes:

What I find so fascinating about this argument is that it is like a magic trick. It appears real until you’re shown how the magic is done and then it is just so obvious. Until then however, the argument can be quite convincing.

....

It was about this time that I saw an episode of The West Wing. It was a rerun, but I hadn’t seen it before. This was one of the later episodes where Santos is running for President. It doesn’t matter if you know the show or not, the point is that this guy was running for President, and no one knew who he was. His successful and experienced campaign manager took him to New Hampshire to start his campaign. And Santos, like me, expected there would be this rally, or convention where he would address hundreds of people. And just like me that didn’t happen because hundreds of people didn’t know he existed. Instead he was driven to the city dump, where people were known to frequent, and he was instructed to walk up to folks as they dumped their garbage and introduce himself. Just as you might expect Santos looked at his manager incredulously. He was running for President of the United States, not city council of Concord. This was ridiculous! How can you get to be President if you can’t get people to come hear your speeches? If no one knows who you are, how can you gain a following, and without a following how can people know who you are? How can you get fans if you don’t have fans?

The answer is very simple, so simple it is hard to accept especially for those expecting more, and I’ve noticed people are always expecting more, expecting life to be easier than it is. There is this idea that when you are published, you’ve done the same as winning the lottery, and now all your troubles are over. You’ll be able to quit your day job, and spend your time basking in the adoration of your fans. This is the fantasy, but the reality is a bit different.

The truth is—the answer to the question of how you get fans without first having word-of-mouth is…one at a time.

This sounds insane, I know. When I finally realized that I was expected to build a beach one grain of sand at a time, I was stunned. Really? Do you know how long that will take? The sheer absurdity of the size of such a task is overwhelming. I just did the impossible! I wrote a novel, and I got it published! Do you know how hard that is? And my reward is that I have to build a beach grain of sand by grain of sand? Are you nuts?

I went to my first signing like Santos went to the dump. I introduced myself and felt foolish doing so.

“Excuse me, sir. Can I tell you about my book?”
“You wrote it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So you’re an author?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Huh. I’m just here with my wife. She likes these romance books. Honey, you want to talk to this guy, he’s an author!”
“No! I’ve got what I came for, I just need to pay for it.” She had a copy of one of the Twilight books under her arm.

At this point I wanted to crawl under a desk somewhere.

“But he wrote this book—he’s a real author. Tell her what your book’s about.”

In my mind I was imagining stabbing myself in the eye with an ice pick. Can I leave now? But I grudgingly went through the motions of explaining, knowing it is pointless and humiliating at the same time. I’d never sell any books like this. This isn’t what I thought being an author would be like. I might as well give up and keep whatever shred of dignity I have left.

“Will you sign it for me?” she asks.

“Huh?” I ask. “You want to buy it?”

“Sure.”

“Really?”

Afterwards I turned to my wife with a huge grin on my face and she smiled back then whispered in my ear. “Next time try not to look so shocked.”

Read the rest of Michael Sullivan's article here: A Sandy Beach is No Vacation

Robertson Davies: Asking an author if their work is autobiographical is like ...

To ask an author who hopes to be a serious writer if his work is autobiographical is like asking a spider where he buys his thread. The spider gets his thread right out of his own guts, and that is where the author gets his writing.
--Robertson Davies

Thanks to Veronika Corvine for the quotation.

Dan Wells On Writing A Short Story

I love advice on how to structure stories and I like Dan Well's system. Here's a talk Dan Wells gave at Life, The Universe, and Everything in early 2010.

Dan Wells on Story Structure, part 1 of 5


Dan Wells on Story Structure, part 2 of 5


Dan Wells on Story Structure, part 3 of 5


Dan Wells on Story Structure, part 4 of 5


Dan Wells on Story Structure, part 5 of 5

Writers Stand Up: A Writer's Bill Of Rights

On Thursday, the Writers’ Union of Canada released “A Writer’s Bill of Rights for the Digital Age.” ... Demands include that

“the publisher shall split the net proceeds of ebook sales equally with the author”

and that

“when a book is out of print in print form, continuing sales in electronic form shall not prevent a rights reversion to the author.”

Author Greg Hollingshead, chair of the Writers’ Union of Canada, answered some questions about the bill of rights.

Read the article here: Writers’ Union of Canada issues digital “Bill of Rights”

Kris Rusch: Why Traditional Publishing Is Going To Do Just Fine

Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes:

Traditional publishing is going to do just fine. Traditional publishing is going to find writer after writer unwilling to learn the business, writer after writer lining up for the “honor” of being published in lieu of actual money, and, if the traditional publisher is lucky, a few of those writers will become bestsellers.

The rest of those writers will become disillusioned. They’ll go to writers conferences and sit in the bar and kvetch about how impossible it is to make money at writing these days. They’ll talk about the way their publisher screwed them, and they’ll never ever ever take responsibility for the fact that they signed the boneheaded contract in the first place without a single attempt at negotiation.

They’ll give all of us professionals a bad name.

But it won’t matter. Because most of us professionals will only take traditional publishing deals when the deals are advantageous to our business. And the rest of the time, we’ll publish our own books.

We’ll have careers because we are responsible. And we’ve taken the time to learn the business of publishing as well as the craft of writing.

We’re professional writers—emphasis on the word “professional.” And these other published writers? The ones who take the crap deals and do a ridiculous amount of work for no pay?

Those people might be writers, but that’s all they are. They’re certainly not professionals.

Kris Rusch let loose this Thursday and wrote one of her best blog posts ever. She explains that she "had started with some namby-pamby crap that had nothing to do with the topic at hand" and then her frustration got the better of her.

Kris writes:

You see, I’m really getting frustrated. I’ve been doing these blogs for months now, pointing out the various problems with traditional publishing, talking about the changes and the opportunities presented by the e-book and POD revolution, and warning writers to watch their backs on contracts, on their work time, on compromising too much for too little return.

And then what happens? From the World Science Fiction Convention in late August until now, people who should know better have been telling me about their business decisions. That “should know better” refers not just to the decision, but to telling me about it. Because in every single case but one, they’ve contacted me after the decision was made, and wanted me to validate it or to pat them on the head and tell them they did a good thing.

One person even admitted they had “probably made a mistake, but it’s not that bad, right?” Well, it was bad. On the scale of business decisions in the last 20 years, it wasn’t Enron or even what’s going on with Netflix right now, but it was most certainly boneheaded and it certainly made me glad that my career wasn’t tied to that person’s.

Here's what happened to occasion the ire that inspired Kris' post:

Since the beginning of August, six different authors have talked to me, emailed me, or called me, asking my advice about a new “deal” that someone in their traditional publishing company offered them. (By traditional publishing company, I mean one of the misnamed Big Six [it’s not six, that’s wrong, but I’ve railed about it elsewhere to no avail]. i mean one of those publishing houses we’ve all heard of, whose books we all have on our shelves.)

These companies are telling their authors to write a short story or a novella (or short novel) that will be e-book only. The short piece doesn’t have to stand alone. It should be part of an ongoing series of books that the publishing house has under contract from the author. It’s a “loss leader” to get readers into the book series.

The publishing company plans to offer the e-book at a very cheap price or for free to establish interest in the series, and because that e-book will be cheap, the company says, it wants to keep its up-front costs low. So it really can’t afford an advance, but it will pay 25% of net on royalties when/if the e-book sells.

Now realize that these are the deals offered by major publishers to bestselling writers on bestselling series. No advance, and a crappy 25% of net on royalties—of a book that will probably be selling for free for only a short time.

Six writers that I know of have taken this deal, three from companies that are having troubles accurately reporting their e-book sales. Two of those writers told me they knew that, but it “didn’t bother them much.” Um…what?

I think that one of the key points here is that the authors didn't get an advance from companies (these are all Big Six comapanies) who are known to underreport ebook sales. Kris continues:

But chances are, if you are truly a bestseller—and both contracts said in the book description, a story/novella/short piece “in the Author’s bestselling series”, so I’m not making any assumptions here—then your editor will sigh a little when you ask for an advance, and then pony up the money.

Because editors are smart and they know business and they were simply trying to do what their boss wanted, which was to get as many rights from you for as little money as possible.

And in the case of five of the six authors (I still don’t know what the sixth did), those publishers made out like bandits. These writers might see a few measly pennies on this deal, but I’ll wager you that the writers will not get the money they’re owed. After all, at least three of these deals were offered by companies who are being investigated for underreporting royalties on e-books. One of these deals comes from a company being sued for underreporting royalties on paper books.

These authors all knew that. And they still made a royalty-only deal with these companies.

See why I want to scream? Really and truly scream? Because it doesn’t make sense—not in any business world, not in any way. These writers gave their work away to a company that doesn’t deserve their trust. And at least four of these writers are slow writers. They can’t afford to give away anything, because it’s a goodly portion of their yearly output.

To read the rest of Kris' article, click here: The Business Rusch: Professional Writers

Why Should A Writer Blog?

Do you want to write a book or even an article or essay, but feel stressed out and self-conscious when you think about the fact that your writing will be read by others? Does this reduce your creativity and leave you feeling blocked and unable to write? Try blogging.

. . . .

Blogging provides a format that actually can reduce the amount of writer’s block produced by fear of exposing your work to the world. In the process, your productivity will increase.
- Improve Writing Creativity and Productivity by Blogging

This is exactly what I was trying to express yesterday, in an email to a fellow writer. I find that I'm less nervous about sharing my writing since I've been blogging and I hope that will help me write more since I'll spend less time wringing my hands, wondering what other folks will think of my prose.

Yes, when you blog you do show your work to the whole Internet community, but, in truth, for most newbie bloggers this really is not something to fear.
When you begin blogging—or even blogging a book, you typically don’t have any readers. If you don’t tell anyone about your blog, surely no one will find it right away. This allows you to get your cyberspace legs. You can test out your blog voice and your idea before anyone even shows up to read your first post in most cases. You can even delete the first posts if you don’t like them and start over and in many cases no one will have read them yet.

When I read this I got excited, because this is exactly what I did! (Yes, a few of my early blog posts have gone to the great blog in the sky.) But, more, it's how I thought of it. I wasn't using Google Analytics in the beginning so I had no idea whether anyone was reading what I wrote -- and I suspect no one was. But it gave me a platform for my writing, it got me writing to a schedule and it helped me build up a few articles so that when folks did eventually come by and take a peek, there was something for them to look at.

Blogging ... helps you move through fear (writer’s block), thus freeing up your creative flow so you  can write more easily, produce a manuscript more quickly and get your work read at the same time.

The quotations I've used are all from this post: Improve Writing Creativity and Productivity by Blogging

Edit: Almost forgot! I came across this link when I read The Passive Voice blog. I read PG's blog every day and I highly recommend it! :-)

Could Newspapers Become Ebook Publishers?

Swiftly and at little cost, newspapers, magazines and sites like The Huffington Post are hunting for revenue by publishing their own version of e-books, either using brand-new content or repurposing material that they may have given away free in the past.

And by making e-books that are usually shorter, cheaper to buy and more quickly produced than the typical book, they are redefining what an e-book is — and who gets to publish it.

On Tuesday, The Huffington Post will release its second e-book, “How We Won,” by Aaron Belkin, the story of the campaign to end the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. It joins e-books recently published by The New Yorker, ABC News, The Boston Globe, Politico and Vanity Fair.

The books occasionally snap up valuable spots on best-seller lists — “Open Secrets,” an e-book published by The New York Times, landed in the No. 19 spot on The Times e-book nonfiction best-seller list in February.
- The New York Times, In E-Books, Publishers Have Rivals: News Sites

I hadn't considered this possibility, that newspapers could bundle content into ebooks, but it makes sense.

When the phone-hacking scandal erupted at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation in early July, Vanity Fair collected 20 articles on Mr. Murdoch, his family and their businesses and put them in a $3.99 e-book that went on sale July 29. Graydon Carter, the magazine’s editor, wrote an introduction. The articles were then grouped into six chapters, each with a theme that reflected various aspects of Mr. Murdoch’s life.

“It’s like having a loose-leaf binder and shoving new pages into it,” Mr. Carter said. “E-books are a wonderful way to do a book and do it quickly. They don’t need to be fact-checked again. They do go through copy-editing. But you’re not reinventing the wheel each time.”

The New Yorker created a similar e-book about Sept. 11 using content from the magazine’s writing on the attacks and their aftermath — everything from poetry to reported pieces on Al Qaeda. It sells for $7.99.

So far, sales for the handful of digital special editions that The New Yorker has released remain relatively small. Pamela McCarthy, the deputy editor, put the number in the thousands. “The question of what constitutes well in this new world is one that seems to be up for grabs,” Ms. McCarthy said of the success so far.

Read the rest of the article here.

Dean Wesley Smith: Book Cards Work!

Here's the idea: You have an electronic book to sell but how can you show it to potential customers at, say, a convention? How can a bookstore sell your electronic book? It is stating the obvious, but ebooks aren't like paper books, you can't just hand the book to someone.

Sure, you can direct them to Amazon.com and say, "Well, just search on 'Until Death' ... and maybe add 'Karen Woodward' so you're sure to get the right 'Until Death' ... I mean, who knew certain titles would be so popular! You'll remember all that? Right?"

No. They won't. The solution? Book cards! This is Dean Wesley Smith's idea and I think it's brilliant. I'll let him describe it:

Each “book card” had two parts.

Part one was the plastic gift card the size of a credit card and the same thickness. The cover of the book is printed on one side, the code and instructions on the back. We used these cards alone for a sort of business card as well, since the cards had our web site addresses as well as WMG Publishing website address.

As you can tell from the image up to the left, these credit-card-sized book covers were way cool.

Dean cautions that,

For the next few years, until book cards become more accepted by bookstores, I do not see them being economically viable for an indie publisher to produce for every book for sale. It would take too long to return the printing investment.

But WOW are they great promotion. Worth every penny.

Let me say that again. On special books and for events, book cards are worth every penny.

He closes by saying ...

Honestly, I see book cards becoming a major way for bookstores to sell electronic books in four or five years. It’s going to take traditional publishers to jump onto the idea to make it easier for indie publishers to get book cards into bookstores.

And book cards, packaged like gift cards, have a huge market in major supermarkets and other major retail stores besides bookstores, placed right beside all the other gift cards that have already gotten into those stores.

Electronic books are clearly going to be over 50% of all books sold within five years. This is a way to get those books into reader’s hands and thousands of new markets that paper books are too expensive and large to get into.

And from the author perspective, all I can say is that they are great fun. These are fantastic promotion.

Now it is up to traditional publishers to get this going. Cindie and I gave copies of these to many New York editors and a couple major New York publishers who really, really loved the idea.

First publishers have to train bookstores.

And then bookstores have to train readers that they can buy their electronic books in a regular bookstore.

It will happen.

Read Dean Wesley Smith's entire article here: Book Cards Work.

Harlan Ellison: Writers Need To Be Paid

When I read this blog post -- Un-Screwing The Writer -- I immediately thought of Dean Wesley Smith. Those of you who follow Dean's blog know why.

The video is short (3 mins or so) and eye-opening. It is of sci-fi legend Harlan Ellison ranting about the assumption that writers don't need to be paid for their work. I read what I've just written and think: Of course writers need to get paid for their work, it seems glaringly obvious, but as Harlan Ellison notes, all too often it doesn't happen.