Karen Woodward

Wednesday, May 8

Is There Such A Thing As An Aspiring Writer?

I love this graphic.

Chuck's snickerdoodle of writerly goodness brings up an interesting topic. What is a writer?

What Is A Writer?

On the surface it's seems pretty easy: a writer is someone who writes. It doesn't matter if you've ever been published, it doesn't matter if you've sent any of your work out to be published. If you write, you're a writer.

Clearly, if a person never publishes they can't use the money from their work to support themselves so they're not a professional writer. But that's okay.

If you write, you're a writer.

Of course there are still things to figure out. For instance, what if I only write one day a week? What if I only write one day each month? Each year? What if I just intend to write and never get around to it?

We can look at a person with a full head of hair and say, with confidence, "Not bald," and we can look at another person who lacks any hair and say, "Bald," but what about the in between cases? What about someone who has some hair but is follicly challenged?

I suppose the temptation is to call someone who likes the idea of writing, or perhaps of having written, but never gets around to actually writing, an aspiring writer. It's an inclusive term, it cheers a prospective penmonkey on and reinforces their desire to write while acknowledging it hasn't happened. Yet.

There Are Reasons Not To Write

That's how I take it, the graphic Chuck made, as a call to aspiring writers to get rid of the "aspiring" part of their self-definition and sit down, face their demons, and write.

A lot of writing isn't easy and it isn't fun. It's hard work. It's about bleeding on the page, about reaching inside yourself, looking at your demons, and then putting those most intimate parts of yourself on display for anyone to see and comment on.

When a person says they're an aspiring writer it means they want the afterglow of looking at the words birthed without going through the labor of producing them. They want the thrill of looking at their name on a book without the gut-wrenching terror of realizing their most intimate truths are available for perusal for the cost of a few dollars.

Sometimes I think writer's block is less a malady as it is a call to sanity.

And yet ... I can only remember one writer who ever retired. Many say they will--they threaten to, they dream about it--but most never do. There's something about the thrill of getting it right, of being able to communicate to someone else exactly what one intended. Of the transmission working and having just the effect one wanted.

But, really, much of the time writing is just putting one word after the other, even when it feels as though you're writing something as interesting as cardboard. It means writing, and finishing what you write, even when it doesn't feel glamorous, interesting, agonizing or exciting.

For great writing about writing, see Neil Gaiman's NaNoWriMo Pep Talk and his 8 rules of writing.

What about you? What do you think of the term "aspiring writer"? Is it a monstrosity of nomenclature or a useful term of inclusion?

Tuesday, May 7

Writing Exercise: Flexing Your Verbs

Lately I've been doing a few writing exercises.

I'm going through my favorite books--books by Dashell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, but also newer ones. I love Laurrel Hamilton's Guilty Pleasures. I'll write out a passage I love then rewrite it attempting to use the author's voice.

Melissa Tudell in her article Energize Your Writing With This Easy Trick, advises writers to focus on using active verbs.

1. Be Direct

Avoid "to be" verbs like: is, am, are, was, were, be, being and been.

2. Use active verbs

Rather than use adjectives and adverbs to describe an action, use a strong verb. Here's Melissa's example:

Weak: He quickly poured a cup of coffee.
Strong: He dumped coffee into the mug.

It's interesting that the strong verb comes with a tradeoff. "Dumped" implies carelessness as well as speed.

3. Let it all fly on your first draft

Debbie Maxwell Allen admonishes writers not to worry about strong verbs when writing their first draft.

She writes:

Sentences that use walked, sat, and thought pale in comparison to stalked, sprawled, and stewed. However, don't label yourself as a failure if strong verbs don't automatically show up in your manuscript. Adding stronger verbs is something you do in your rewriting.

The purpose of your first draft is to get the story on the page, in all it's unedited glory. Once you've got it down, you can analyze it for overuse of adverbs, adjectives, cliches--and wimpy verbs. (Pump Up Your Writing: Using Strong Verbs)

Debbie ends her article with a challenge:

Give it a try right now. Take a random page of your manuscript and highlight every verb on the page. Count how many are "plain vanilla" and substitute some stronger verbs. When you read it again, how much better is it?

I'm going to do that!

Chuck Wendig's 9 Tips For Writing A Million Words A Year

In a post with a very un-Chuck-Wendig-like title, How To Maximize Your Word Count and Write More Every Day, Chuck talks about how to write a million words a year.

Like him.

Yep, that's right: 1,000,000 words.

Chuck writes: "I generally write about 3,000 brand new shiny so-fresh-and-so-clean words per day."

A few months ago Chuck wrote about how to take a slow and steady approach to writing a novel in a year, today he wrote about stepping up the pace and, as he put it, punting "that slow and steady approach right in the See You Next Thursday."

Chucks tips for writing a million words a year

1. Do your writing in the morning

Although I'm nowhere near as prolific as Chuck Wendig, I find this as well; I am by far the most productive in the morning. It's like those hours are magical. Chuck writes:

Writing in the morning has more potential than writing in the evening and here’s why: writing at the end of the day means the candle is burning down. The timer is ticking. You’re watching the horizon eat the sun and with it, the remaining hours before sweet, sweet slumber.

. . . .
Write at the end of the day, you’re racing the clock.

Write at the fore of the day, you own the clock.

2. Wake up an hour earlier

Like many writers, Chuck Wendig has a toddler and toddlers loudly and voraciously demand attention. Chuck finds that by getting up at 5 AM he can get half his word count done before the little guy gets up.

Nice!

Whenever I get up early I, too, get a lot of extra work done. The trick for me is to make sure I get at least 7 hours of sleep. If I don't, I feel about as lucid as a hibernating cave bat.

3. Coffee

Coffee is good, just don't overdo it. If you do it won't work as well when you really need it.

4. Snatch time from life's thieving jaws and use it to write

I'm struck by how close Chuck's advice is to Kris Rusch's in her post, Habits. They both talk about snatching bits of time here and there. I suspect many professional writers who write in the neighborhood of a million words a year do this. Chuck writes:

If you’re going to write a lot, you’re going to need to feint and duck, stick and move, and reach in to grab fistfuls of time-flesh and use it for your own sinister purposes: in this case, writing. Got a lunch break? Write. Sitting at a long stop light? Take a few quick voice notes on your phone.

5. Schedules and deadlines

Chuck writes:

Having a schedule keeps me sane and helps me meet my writing goals. I toss all the projects I need to write into a spreadsheet. I calculate them by day how much I have to write to get ‘em done. I mark deadlines and potential start dates.

I have stress-dreams where I realize I've got a book due IN TWO HOURS.

I've begun keeping a running list of all the writing tasks I need to accomplish and I've found this lets me relax a bit. When I start to stress I just look at my list and convince myself I'm on track.

6. Plan, prep, plot, scheme (/Outlining saves time)

Chuck Wendig writes: "I outline not because I like it but because I must."

Why "must"? Because writing 3,000 words a day takes time and if you know where your story is going you can save oodles of time.

That said, I think everyone is different. Myself, I'm like Chuck, I outline. It gives me jitters just thinking about beginning a book without an outline. Dean Wesley Smith, on the other hand, recently wrote a 70,000 word book in 10 days without an outline. He had no idea where he was going with the book, how it would end, until he was about halfway through. Chuck writes:

[I]f you start the day with a mission statement already in play thanks to an outline, you can jump in, eschew any planning the day might require, and just start writing. The goal is to give as much of your time to actually telling the story as you can.

7. Politely ask for the time you need

Asking for things that you need from the folks that you love often works.

Often.

Good luck with that.

8. Write with your internal editor gagged and shoved in a box

This was one of my favorite points. Chuck writes:

Editing as you go is a perfectly viable way to write.

It is not a perfectly viable way to write quickly and to maximize your word count.

Chuck Wendig points out that editing as you go will slow you down--and I agree--but I've also found that I usually end up changing things that shouldn't be changed because I lack perspective.

I need to finish the draft, warts and all, put it away for as long as I can stand then come back and edit it.

What does this mean for your internal editor?

[Y]ou need to shut your internal editor up. Elbow him in the throat and shove him in a duffel bag. Remind him his time will come. The editor always gets the last laugh.

9. Silence self-doubt with hollowpoint bullets packed with your indifference

This is my favorite point. Chuck writes:

You sit there and write and hate everything about what you’re doing and want to punch your characters, your paragraphs, your whole story, yourself.

Self-doubt is a sticky mud, indeed.

It will slow you down.

And if one is going to write a million words a year slow is bad.

So, how does one turn their self-doubt off?

Chuck writes:

The secret, actually, isn’t in the silencing of your self-doubt.

The secret is in ignoring it.

We’re not particularly smart about our own authorial worth while in the midst of writing something. We love what sucks and hate what works and at least for me, during writing a project my headspace starts to look like the back of my television: a thousand wires braided together .... Point is, you start to lose the sense of what feeling is moored to what part of your story. It’s all just a tangle of wires.

Your self-doubt just ain’t that ... effective. Or accurate.
. . . .
So, ignore it. It’s going to be there. Pretend you don’t hear it. Tune it out. It is rarely meaningful or efficient. It’s damn sure not helpful. ...

That’s maybe the biggest secret to writing a lot of words really, really fast: you need to blacken your self-doubt sensors with a boot and — say it with me –

JUST. KEEP. WRITING.

An inspiring post!

One thing I loved about NaNoWriMo was the feeling of working together with other writers toward a common cause: each of us, individually, producing a 50,000 word manuscript in a month.

Perhaps one day there'll be a 5 o'clock club for overcaffinated writers who aspire to write one million words a year.

Do you have a tip on how to increase ones word count (other than 'Write more!')?

Monday, May 6

How To Get Over A Destructive Critique

Have you ever quit writing for a period of time? Perhaps for years?

I did.

I was a teenager and had written a story I was particularly proud of. I'm not sure why, after all these years the memory is vague, but I remember being pleased.

Then I made a mistake. As it turns out, a huge mistake.

I gave it to the wrong person to read and then I asked them for feedback.

It's not just that the feedback stung. It's not just that this person's list of things wrong with that story was as long as my arm, it's not just that they clearly felt resentful that I'd wasted their time. No, it was that my own judgement had been so far off, that I'd been proud of a story that was so clearly crap.

I hope you folks see the flaw in my thinking. I'd asked one person.

Yes, sure, that person had read most of what I wrote, but I failed to ask myself whether they could have had a bad day, whether they were going through something in their private life which might have made them a tad grumpy and irrational. Which, as it happens, they were.

But let's imagine that my critiquer had been having a great day and wasn't the least grumpy and gave the same devastating critique. In retrospect, what should I have done?

Ignore it.

Here's what I think: if anyone gives you a critique so scathing that, were you to take it seriously, you'd never want to put pen to paper again then ignore the critique! Do NOT take it seriously.

Even if you gave the story to 10 people and they all thought it was fit for nothing but lining bird cages that doesn't say anything bad about you as a writer. You liked the story, that's what counts. And, sure, there's probably something about the story that's personal to you that makes you love it, but that's not a bad thing. Save the story, cherish it. That one's for you.

Now move on and write the next story. Do it NOW! Right away.

I've only ridden a horse once, so I don't know from personal experience if it's true that after being thrown you have to get right back on, but I think if a person has a horrible experience with a story they have to write another one right away. But, please, be sure to give your new story to someone who isn't having a bad day and who seems genuinely happy to give you feedback.

Also, it can help to be clear about the kind of feedback you'd like as well as what you consider constructive as opposed to destructive criticism.

As long as you're writing you're getting better. Not writing never helped anyone become a better writer.

What to do if your story is given a devastating critique

1. Talk about it

Having friends is great, having friends who are writers is a must.

Embarking on a career as a writer without having a network of writing friends and acquaintances is like going on a deep sea voyage during hurricane season without lifeboats or a personal flotation devise.

2. Write about it

I think this is a great way to turn a bad experience around. Especially if you can sell your story. Turn your horrible experience into creative non-fiction and then send the piece out or indie publish it.

You might want to write a first draft and then let some time pass--weeks or even months--before you read it again. Make sure it's not a rant. (grin) Or, if it is, make sure it's a rant that would be entertaining to others.

Making money from the experience may not be the best revenge (Joe Konrath had a few tongue-in-cheek suggestions a while back) but it's still darn satisfying.

3. Learn from it

As I mentioned, often destructive criticism has nothing to do with the merits or demerits of your story and everything to do either with an agenda the poster has (some reviewers enjoy dumping on anything they perceive as indie), or the kind of day they're having.

Since you've read the critique the damage has been done so try to determine if there's anything you can learn from what the poster said.

Were they irritated because you'd used a mirror to describe a character? Were they perturbed that you didn't tell anyone your protagonist's name until well into the story? You don't have to change something just because a reader or three was upset about it, but sometimes the information can be useful.

Sometimes it makes one feel better to know why a critiquer had the negative reaction they did. "This story is a pile of crap" isn't helpful, "This story is a pile of crap because X" helps put the review in perspective.

4. Do NOT respond

Whatever you do, don't respond to the negative critique.

I once had a crank caller who I suspect was my ex-boyfriend. This person would call at all hours of the night, wake me up, then make gibbering noises into the phone.

At first I politely asked the caller to stop. Then I shouted. Then I used a loud whistle.

Nothing worked.

Then I stopped responding in any way and just hung up the phone and disconnected it from the wall for the rest of the night while I slept.

The calls stopped.

Responding to negative reviews just wastes your time--time that could be spent writing--and it can make one look unprofessional.

5. Don't look

Don't look at your reviews.

(This point only applies to reviews on social media sites and retailers like Amazon.com.)

I know, I know, this is much easier said than done. We want to know what other folks thought of our work.

Actually, that's not true. We want to know that readers loved our books. Chances are most will but it's inevitable you'll get a bad review if you keep writing for any significant amount of time.

And you can't do anything about it. You can't respond to the reviewer (see point 4, above) so what's the point of looking?

If we write hoping for the approval of others we set readers up as our judges, which isn't how it should be. Yes, we want to share our stories with others--that's a big part of why I write--but I write primarily for myself.

If I think I've written a great story, if I had fun writing it, that's all I can ask. Of course I give it to my first reader, and I usually do another draft after that in response to their feedback (they seem to always catch something I missed) but, fundamentally, I write for myself.

6. Eat Chocolate

Chocolate is good. (grin)

Question: How do you get over a destructive critique?

Writer Beware: Penguin And Author Solutions

David Gaughran throws down the gauntlet in his excellent blog post The Author Exploitation Business. He writes:

[Being a writer is] a dream job, and like any profession with a horde of neophytes seeking to break in, there are plenty of sharks waiting to chew them to bits.

... [M]any organizations who claim to help writers, to respect them, to assist them along the path to publication are actually screwing them over.

Before the digital revolution made self-publishing viable on a wide scale, the dividing lines were easier to spot. Traditional publishers paid you if they wanted to buy the rights to your novel. Self-publishers were people who filled their garages with books and tried to hawk them at events. And vanity presses were the scammers, luring the unsuspecting with false promises and roundly condemned by self-publishers and traditional publishers alike.

Today it’s very different. The scammy vanity presses are owned by traditional publishers who are marketing them as the “easy” way to self-publish – when it’s nothing more than a horrifically expensive and terribly ineffective way to publish your work, guaranteed to kill your book’s chance of success stone dead, while emptying your bank account in the process.

The target for David's ire is Penguin, owners of the biggest shark out there: Author Solutions. His article is a must read for any writer.

Question: Have you ever had dealings with Author Solutions? If so, what was your experience?

Sunday, May 5

Chuck Wendig On Finding Your Voice

I love it when Chuck Wendig talks about writing.

Recently Chuck gave an interview to 52 Reviews in which he mused about how to find your voice and what talent is.

How To Find Your Voice

Chuck Wendig says:

Every author decides to go on a grand adventure one day, and that grand adventure is to find her voice. She leaves the comfort of her own wordsmithy and she traipses through many fictional worlds written by many writers and along the way she pokes through their writings to see if her voice is in there somewhere. She takes what she reads and she mimics their voices, taking little pieces of other authors with her in her mind and on the page.

Is her voice cynical? Optimistic? Short and curt, or long and breezy? She doesn’t know and so she reads and she writes and she lives life in an effort to find out.

This adventure takes as long as it takes, but one day the author tires of it and she comes home, empty-handed, still uncertain what her voice looks like or sounds like.

And there, at home, she discovers her voice is waiting. In fact, it’s been there all along.

Your voice is how you write when you’re not trying to find your voice. Your voice is the way you write, the way you talk. Your voice is who you are, what you believe, what themes you knowingly and unknowingly embrace.

Your voice is you.

Search for it and you won’t find it. Stop looking and it’ll find you.

Profound.

I think that's true for many areas of human endeavour, you won't find what you're looking for 'out there,' (wherever 'out there' is) only when you look within. (By the way, Chuck also talked about this on his blog.)

What Talent Is

Another quotable quote:

52 Reviews: Speaking of 'simply writing' do you prescribe to the notion that success as a writer is more a measure of effort and dedication than actual talent? Creativity, in and of itself, seems to be pretty easy to come by while the tenacity to commit to the act of actually creating seems to be much more scarce.

Wendig: Talent is a function of excess desire. You really, really want something bad enough, you tend to manifest a "talent" for it. While I'm sure there's some argument to be made for the expression of genetics, I think mostly it's just -- if you really like architecture and have the desire to create architecture, you're probably going to manifest the "talent" as an architect.

Dedication and effort then turn that desire and talent into craft and creation. At least, in a perfect world

Chuck's Books

Since he's so nice in giving us these tangy nuggets of wisdom, I want to mention that Chuck Wendig has 4 books coming out in the next couple of months. Here's Chuck's description:

First up: Gods & Monsters: Unclean Spirits. The gods fell to Earth. One man wants revenge on them for taking his family away from him. It involves various divine wangs and vaginas. No, really.

Next: The Blue Blazes. Which we have in part already talked about but hey, I'll entice with: mystical drugs! goblins! roller derby girl gangs! the criminal underworld! the mythic underworld! subterranean zombie town! charcuterie! family betrayal!

Then: Under the Empyrean Sky, which is my young adult novel in a sunny dustbowl cornpunk future where a scrappy scavenger named Cael finds a secret forbidden garden in a world where their floating Empyrean overlords only allow them to grow a bloodthirsty variant of corn. It's got young love and adventure and piss-blizzards and motorvators and an agricultural pro-farmer pro-food message nestled in all the trappings. John Hornor Jacobs called it Of Mice and Men meets Star Wars, which I quite like.

Finally! Beyond Dinocalypse, book two of the Spirit of the Century trilogy. Pulp heroes. Two-fisted jet-pack action. An apocalypse of psychic hive-mind dinosaurs. PROFESSORIAL APES IN KILTS.

Anyone who wants to read the first chapter of Gods & Monsters: Unclean Spirits, it's up at io9. Also, information about where Chuck's books are on sale, and other good stuff, is available over at Terribleminds.

Saturday, May 4

Creating The Perfect Sleuth

As I mentioned last time (Creating The Perfect Murderer) I'm interested in writing a particular kind of murder mystery, one that is unabashedly intended as entertainment.

With that in mind, what is the single most important thing about the hero? That his actions should entertain the reader. Ideally, the reader should be so closely identified with the sleuth that he/she feels vicariously heroic because of our sleuth's actions.

So, what traits should our hero possess?

1. The hero/sleuth should be dramatic.

Think about the character of Sherlock Holmes as portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch on Sherlock. One of my favorite episodes is A Scandal in Belgravia (season two, episode one) when Sherlock is summoned to the palace wearing nothing but a bed sheet because he refused to put clothes on.

That's dramatic.

His refusal to do something simple like getting dressed also beautifully illustrates his stubborn refusal to do anything he doesn't want to and so makes his eventual manipulation by The Lady all the more striking (pun intended).

2. The hero/sleuth should be interesting

This is, as they say, a 'no-brainer' and yet, sometimes, one can lose sight of it.

One thing that makes a character interesting is possessing contradictory character traits. For instance, Sherlock Holmes doesn't care about people, they're all morons as far as he's concerned, and yet he cares passionately for his friends. So much so that he would give his life for theirs.

3. He should live a life the reader will want to learn about

Again, this is pretty basic stuff, but how many of us have started a story off with a character waking up in their bed, looking out their window at the same old scenery and starting their same old, boring, day?

What? Just me? (blush) Okay, moving on ...

Maybe living an interesting life means the hero lives in a Park Avenue loft, or maybe it means he lives in a seedy tenement with a one-eyed cat who can tell when someone is lying.

I think the key is that the hero's life isn't ordinary. Something about it is striking, unexpected.

Whatever your setting, remember, if it doesn't interest you what are the chances it's going to interest a reader?

4. The hero/sleuth is courageous.

One thing that struck me about the Monk mysteries was how the screenwriters succeeded in demonstrating Monk's courage. Keep in mind that this is a character who is scared of milk.

The key is, it takes courage to face your demons, whatever they are, and Monk regularly chose to face his demons to preserve the things he cared about, whether that was walking through a rat infested sewer or risking his reputation and his chance to get back on the police force.

Threat to life and limb. Though temporarily overcoming a debilitating fear of milk is admirable, even tormented characters such as Monk need to, eventually, face a threat to either their life or the life of someone they care deeply about.

Or not. Sweeping comments like the above are almost always false. I think that demonstrating courage has more to do with facing one's demons, facing one's fears, and that doesn't require the threat of physical death.

5. The hero/sleuth is skilled at what they do

Whatever that may be. Sherlock Holmes is a detective who solves those cases he finds interesting and he's good at it. If he wasn't he'd just be a guy who thought too highly of himself. That would be boring.

Monk: It's a gift and a curse. His physical quirks--multiple obsessions and a phenomenal memory--ruin his life but they also make him great at solving crimes. If he wasn't great at solving crimes he'd just be a bundle of neurosis and there's nothing interesting or exceptional about that.

Your sleuth doesn't have to be a detective. For instance, Miss Marple was a little old lady in a small English village who knew everyone, noticed everything, had a wonderful memory and charming manners. Her skill: she was very good at finding analogies between the actions of those around her and events in village life, analogies that laid bare the killers heart. As soon as Miss Marple got the analogy right, she solved the crime.

If Miss Marple didn't solve the crime then she'd be what nearly everyone thought her to be: a doddering old lady. As it was, she was the embodiment of Nemesis.

6. The hero/sleuth has a special talent

I've said something about this in the points above, but it's worth focusing on. The special ability can be anything,

- a photographic memory (Sherlock Holmes, Monk),
- a lifetime of experience combined with a keen intellect (Miss Marple),
- the ability to mentally recreate a crime scene and live it from the killers point of view (Will Graham),
- the ability to use logic and psychology (his 'grey cells') to solve the puzzle of the crime (Hercule Poirot),
- the ability to tell if a person is lying (multiple),
- a cool whip and the ability to use it (Indiana Jones),

And so on. But it doesn't have to be a 'cool' ability, it doesn't even have to be particularly useful. It can be something trivial like being able to eat more hot dogs than anyone.

The hero needs to be better than anyone else at something. If this something makes them seem clever and resourceful, so much the better.

7. The hero/sleuth has a deep wound

Any fully developed character will have a deep wound, but this wound plays a special role in the case of a hero/protagonist.

Previously I've talked about the main arc of a story and the secondary arc, let's call this the A and B stories, respectively. The B story generally is about the hero's inner landscape, her feelings, her dreams, her problems, her insecurities while the A story has to do with an external goal or object of desire. In many stories the B arc concludes when the hero confronts her deep wound and either heals it or is destroyed by it.

This isn't going to be a tragedy so my hero will confront her deep wound and heal it.

Here's the cool bit: the hero's deep wound is healed because of her willingness to sacrifice herself. Similarly, the villain/murderer's wound will never heal because he will never sacrifice himself, his happiness, for others.

In healing her deep wound, the hero discovers the key to attaining her external goal and victoriously closes out the A story.

Or something like that. ;)

I think I'll stop there for today. In the next post I'll talk more about the quirky characteristics our sleuth could/should have. For instance, have you noticed that many popular sleuths have been named after guns, have never been married, have no children, do not live in the suburbs and do not drive an ordinary car?

Huh.

Question: Who is your favorite sleuth?

Friday, May 3

How Many Books Would You Have To Write To Quit Your Job?

Ever wondered what the value of a book is?

Jeff Posey, project manager for Lucky Bat Books, tells us this in his post, What’s Your Novel Worth? NPV and Cash Flow. Not only that, he gives us the Excel spreadsheet he used so you can do it for yourself.

When Jeff talks about how much a novel is worth he's talking about its NPV or Net Percent Value. Here's what the NPV tells you:

... the NPV tells you the present monetary value of your intellectual asset if it generates the expected cash flow over the next forty years. It emphasizes the value of long-term steady flows of small amounts of cash, and also helps quantify the value of your time investment (you only have to write a novel once for it to earn income for forty years or more).

Clear as mud? Let's look at a few examples:

Example 1: The Casual Writer

Let's say you don't want to make your living from writing but you'd like to make enough to pay for the lattes you buy while you write.

You've published a novel and you plan on publishing another one every five years.

Number of books published: 1
Royalties per book per month: $15
Number of new books produced per year: 1/5
Money spent publishing each book: $0
Each new book boosts sales by: 15%

Estimated net monthly cash flow:

*- after 2 years: $3
- after 3 years: $10
- after 5 years: $34
- after 10 years: $174

Not bad. You might even be able to afford biscotti!

* These numbers are from Jeff's post, but when I ran them myself using his spreadsheet here's what came up:

*- after 2 years: $34
- after 3 years: $56
- after 5 years: $112
- after 10 years: $335

Example 2: The Professional Writer

You want your writing to be your main source of income.

Number of books published: 5
Royalties per book per month: $50
Number of new books produced per year: 2
Money spent publishing each book: $2,500
Each new book boosts sales by: 5%

Estimated net monthly cash flow:
- after 2 years: - $198
- after 3 years: - $70
- after 5 years: $780
- after 10 years: $8,224

Example 3: The Seasoned Writer

You've been doing this a while, your books sell well, and each new book helps the rest of your book sell even better.

Number of books published: 12
Royalties per book per month: $150
Number of new books produced per year: 3
Money spent publishing each book: $5,000
Each new book boosts sales by: 3%

Estimated net monthly cash flow:
- after 2 years: $1,753
- after 3 years: $3,710
- after 5 years: $10,371
- after 10 years: $50,414

Example: The Lone Gunman

I have a problem with using Jeff's calculations for real world concerns such as: When can I quit my job and make writing my full time profession?

Let's say you write one book, publish it, win the lottery, travel to Europe and forget all about writing. Here's what Jeff's spreadsheet told me.

Number of books published: 1
Royalties per book per month: $10
Number of new books produced per year:0
Money spent publishing each book: $0
Each new book boosts sales by: 0%

Estimated net monthly cash flow:
- after 2 years: $20
- after 3 years: $30
- after 5 years: $50
- after 10 years: $100

That seems wrong. If I only published one book and then, at least as far as my readers were concerned, disappeared off the face of the earth, I think it is much more plausible that, after 10 years, I'd be lucky if I sold $2 a month.

Yes, absolutely, if a writer keeps writing, keeps publishing, keeps blogging, then her backlist books are going to be much more visible and I could see sales staying strong even after 10 years. But whether they will increase, and whether they increase exponentially, is another question.

So, with this in mind let's redo Example 2. Instead of assuming a book will sell progressively more, let's assume that the sales will stay constant.

Example: The Part Time Writer

Number of books published: 5
Royalties per book per month: $50
Number of new books produced per year: 2
Money spent publishing each book: $2,500
Each new book boosts sales by: 0%

Year 1:
5 books for sale so $50 * 5 = $250 per month.
Net gain: $250 per month.

Year 2:
2 new books published ($2,500/12=208) * 2 = $416 per month
7 books for sale so $50 * 7 = $350 per month
Net gain: - $66 per month.

Year 3:
2 new books published = - $416 per month
9 books for sale so $50 * 9 = $450 per month
Net gain: $34 per month

Year 4:
2 new books published = - $416 per month
11 books for sale so $50 * 11 = $550 per month
Net gain: $134 per month

Year 5:
2 new books published = - $416 per month
13 books for sale so $50 * 13 = $650 per month
Net gain: $234 per month

Year 6:
2 new books published = - $416 per month
15 books for sale so $50 * 15 = $750 per month
Net gain: $334 per month

Year 7:
2 new books published = - $416 per month
17 books for sale so $50 * 17 = $850 per month
Net gain: $434 per month

Year 8:
2 new books published = - $416 per month
19 books for sale so $50 * 19 = $950 per month
Net gain: $534 per month

Year 9:
2 new books published = - $416 per month
21 books for sale so $50 * 21 = $1050 per month
Net gain: $634 per month

So, after 9 years, assuming her books keep selling, on average, $50 per month, this writer will earn about $1,000 per month.

But what if one has to pay (as many do) $2,000 a month for health insurance then $1,000 a month is a drop in the bucket.

How many books would a writer have to have on the market if they wanted to make $3,000 a month ($36,000 a year)

Let's approach this from the other end: How many books would a writer have to have on the market if he wanted to make $3,000 a month ($36,000 a year) and each book brought in $100 a month?

The answer: 30 books. Stretched out over 5 years that's 6 books a year or one new book every two months.

A highly motivated person could probably do that. Keep in mind, though, that once you have the books on sale they keep selling at the same rate so at the end of five years you can ease back a bit. Or not.

Word count

How many words per year would one have to write to produce 6, 80,000 word, books? Answer: 480,000 words.

If instead of writing an 80,000 word book one wrote, say, a 40,000 word novella, 6 books would only equal 240,000 words which is, I think, completely doable. 240,000 words is about 4,600 words a week or about 650 words a day.

Keep in mind that Kris Rusch writes as many as 1 million words a year! That means she writes, on average, 3,000 words a day and could complete approximately 24 40,000 word novellas in a year.

Also, keep in mind that books in a series can be bundled together and sold. To read more about this idea take a look at Dean Wesley Smith's post on the idea of a magic bakery.

If the thought of writing 24 novellas a year has left you a bit shaky, remind yourself that in my scenario you only need to write 4,600 words a week or about 650 words a day. Now get a nice hot cup of tea or coffee, give yourself a (short) pep talk, and start writing!

The bear knows you can do it. :-)

"Michelle, zoo manager/our tour guide" by BrianMoranHDR
under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.
Click to enlarge.

By the way, there's more discussion of Jeff Posey's post over at Dean Wesley Smith's blog and at The Passive Voice Blog.

Advice For New Writers

This is the best advice for new writers I've read:

Believe in yourself, because nobody else will, at least not in the beginning. Not at the level necessary to keep you going through rejections, bad advice, job loss, illness, grief and everything else life lobs at us. There is something about you as an individual that nobody else has. It takes work to articulate this, to show it off and to make it interesting to others. The world needs new voices, so believe in that if this is all you can do in the beginning. Keep music, quotes, movies, pictures, anything you can around you to remind you what you are working towards.

Here's some more:

Read, absorb what you read, read more, question what you read. Read for fun, decide what pulls you in and try to make your reader’s experience with your work the same.

Read poetry and study the images, word choices, and any other aspects of the work that grab you. Poets are masters of making huge statements or painting vivid images with just a few words. This is an important skill.

Write often. Write daily. Write up your experiences in the most detailed way possible. Include all the senses, even what it feels like to have an intuition or worry.

Be honest.

Be specific.

Be detailed.

Those quotations are from Sarah Martinez's post, Practical Advice for Beginning Fiction Writers. I encourage you to read the whole thing.

Thanks to +Jack Remick for the link.

Question: What was the most valuable piece of writing advice you received?

Thursday, May 2

Donald Maass On Why Books Don't Sell

If you ever have the opportunity to hear Donald Maass speak I urge you to take it. Which isn't to say I agree with everything he says, but I've found that whatever he says is worth pondering.

(See: Donald Maass Talks About How To Make Your Readers CARE About Your Characters On The First Page and Donald Maass: Your Writing Matters, Dig Deep And Change The World)

Today Denise Covey asks: "Why do some books not sell?" She writes:

... there are lots of reasons a book sells or doesn't sell, but it is universally agreed (and Maass makes this point) that 'Great novels not only draw us in immediately but command our attention. They not only hold our interest but hold us rapt.'

Yes, generating narrative drive is the key. It's just doing it that's the problem. (grin)

(See: Using Pinch Points To Increase Narrative Drive)

Here are three things Donald Maass warns will prevent a reader from being pulled into a story:

Timid Voice - this DOES NOT command attention.

Untested Characters - Make sure your characters show spine, take courage, have high principles or face their deepest fears.

Overly Interior or Exterior Stories - Be the god of your story world. Interior stories need dramatic outward events. Dramatic outward events need to create a devastating interior impact.

I'll leave you with this promise:

Runaway success comes from great fiction, period. The publishing industry may help or hinder but cannot stop a powerful story from being powerful. -- Donald Maass

Pages

Wednesday, May 8

What Is A Writer?

There Are Reasons Not To Write

Other articles you might like

Tuesday, May 7

1. Be Direct

2. Use active verbs

3. Let it all fly on your first draft

Other articles you might like:

Chucks tips for writing a million words a year

1. Do your writing in the morning

2. Wake up an hour earlier

3. Coffee

4. Snatch time from life's thieving jaws and use it to write

5. Schedules and deadlines

6. Plan, prep, plot, scheme (/Outlining saves time)

7. Politely ask for the time you need

8. Write with your internal editor gagged and shoved in a box

9. Silence self-doubt with hollowpoint bullets packed with your indifference

Other articles you might like:

Monday, May 6

What to do if your story is given a devastating critique

1. Talk about it

2. Write about it

3. Learn from it

4. Do NOT respond

5. Don't look

6. Eat Chocolate

Other articles you might like:

Other articles you might like:

Sunday, May 5

How To Find Your Voice

What Talent Is

Chuck's Books

Other articles you might like:

Saturday, May 4

1. The hero/sleuth should be dramatic.

2. The hero/sleuth should be interesting

3. He should live a life the reader will want to learn about

4. The hero/sleuth is courageous.

5. The hero/sleuth is skilled at what they do

6. The hero/sleuth has a special talent

7. The hero/sleuth has a deep wound

Other articles you might like:

Friday, May 3

Example 1: The Casual Writer

Example 2: The Professional Writer

Example 3: The Seasoned Writer

Example: The Lone Gunman

Example: The Part Time Writer

How many books would a writer have to have on the market if they wanted to make $3,000 a month ($36,000 a year)

Word count

Other articles you might like:

Other articles you might like:

Thursday, May 2

Other articles you might like: