Writers in the Storm

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Okay, button up, because as they say in the vernacular of Texas, I'm fixin' to gush all over you.

One of the big surprises when I published was how many pirate sites there are out there, posting my work. My sweat. My property! I swear, the only Google alerts I get anymore are when Pirate sites post my books. Makes my blood boil, I tell you. 

Most publishers will allow you to report infringement sites to them, and they send out copyright infringement notices. At least they claim they do. I'm not questioning their veracity, but let's face it, they're focused on publishing the next book. And since their marketing ended about a week after they released my book, how much money are they going to put into backlist infringement? Call me a cynic, but I'll bet this gets under my skin a LOT more than it does theirs. 

Many authors just give up. They tell themselves that the people who download illegal works aren't people who would ever pay money for their books anyway. They wish those people a parting gift of nasty computer viruses, and move on.

I'm more stubborn (and more pissed). I want to feel the power of blasting those damned posts to the briny deep. 

Well, now you can. And while it's in Beta phase testing, you can do it FOR FREE.

I am a huge fan of Blasty 

I don't even remember where I heard of Blasy first, but I've been with them almost from the beginning, probably over two years ago. They've been in Beta all this time, because the more Beta testers join, the more feedback they receive. The more feedback they receive, the faster they'll build an outstanding tool against piracy. I've seen it improve in finding more content over the months.

How does it work? You go to a personal invitation link, HERE, and request Beta access. May take a day or two, but then you're in.

After filling out your profile, you add your books. Your dashboard will look something like this:

 

Then you tell it what to look for. You'll want to consider this carefully: look for too much, and you'll get a zillion items, much of which is legitimate. The search terms I decided on were:

• pdf
• free
• download
• torrent

Blasty will then go to work, scanning the internet for your books with those search terms. Here's what mine looked like this morning:

All you do is check to be sure it's not a legitimate posting, then hit the orange 'Blast' on the right. Blasty will send a copyright infringement notice, and you'll be informed when it's completed. BOOM. Done.

I've refined my terms, so most of my results are piracy. But for some reason, it always wants to pick up a review site (legit), that reviewed my books. All I do is add that URL to my 'Whitelist', and Blasty ignores it in the future.  

You can also, if you have time, search Google by book, for infringement yourself. Just go to your dashboard, choose that book,  and click on the 'check Google now' button on the right. You can scan for anything that your search words didn't pick up. This also helps you refine your search words.

I don't know what could be easier. And I get the satisfaction of making those little pirates walk the plank. Argh! 

Have I convinced you to try Blasty? Do you have a good pirate story for us?

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About Laura:

Laura Drake is a city girl who never grew out of her tomboy ways, or a serious cowboy crush. She writes both Women's Fiction and Romance.

She sold her Sweet on a Cowboy series, romances set in the world of professional bull riding, to Grand Central.  The Sweet Spot won the 2014 Romance Writers of America^®   RITA^® award in the Best First Book category.

Her 'biker-chick' novel, Her Road Home, sold to Harlequin's Superomance line and expanded to three more stories set in the same small town.

Laura has realized a lifelong dream of becoming a Texan and is currently working on her accent. She gave up the corporate CFO gig to write full time. She's a wife, grandmother, and motorcycle chick in the remaining waking hours.

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Aimie Runyan

Whether we’re ready for it or not, tomorrow marks the beginning of the 2016 holiday season. Between the end of November and early January there are dozens of celebrations, both religious and secular, and chances are a few of them apply to you. While the world at large is planning menus and wrapping gifts, we writers are worrying about how to get our word counts in on top of all the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. For some of us, the holidays simply mean a couple of extra work gatherings and an extra day or two of family time. Others of us are orchestrating elaborate gatherings or are travelling great distances to be reunited with loved ones. Writing during this time isn’t impossible, and I’ve compiled a few helpful hints for you:

1. Take your time management skills to 11. Plan ahead and do the holiday tasks that can be done early so you’re not in a stress-induced panic later. Stress is not the muse’s friend, nor does it enhance your holiday fun. Bust out your Google Calendar or Franklin planner and put in *everything*. It will make your available scraps of time more apparent so you can use them to your advantage. You have 20 minutes? Use it. Case in point? I wrote the first draft of this very post in the King Sooper’s parking lot. I took my 4-year-old with me to do the Thanksgiving meal shopping and she fell asleep in the car. Rather than rouse her, I busted out my trusty notebook so she could get some rest. Also? Carry a notebook. Always.
2. Prioritize Holiday Activities. You can’t do every holiday tradition and function justice every year. Pick and choose what is important to you and your family so you can really enjoy what you’re doing. Lose your Pinterest guilt. If you don’t make the Christmas-Card-worthy gingerbread house from scratch every year, you are not Scrooge. The minute you begin to loathe going to another party or making another craft is the moment you’ve overscheduled.
3. Prioritizing Writing Activities. This is not the ideal time to begin a new project or to schedule a million events, so decide what’s important. It’s not always possible to avoid conflicts, however. You may have a book to launch over the holidays or edits due (I’ve been in both situations) and you have to do your best to get as much done in advance on your projects as possible. Creating launch memes early and having packing lists for book signings are all little things we can do to reduce stress when we can’t minimize our writing life in December.
4. Keep writing goals realistic. This is key, in my mind. You may not be able to keep up your usual pace, so think about what you can feasibly accomplish. 200 words a day instead of 2,000 for the two weeks your kids are off school? Fantastic. Those are 2,800 words you didn’t have before and you “touched the ball” each day, which is key in staving off writers’ block once you return to your projects in the new year.
5. Remember, family (biological and otherwise) should come first. For many of us, we wouldn’t be able to be successful in this crazy business without the love and support of our friends and family. If they want our time during the holiday season, we should do our best to honor it. Plus? You never know what stories might be waiting for you around the dinner table.

Wishing you love and peace in 2017,

               ~Aimie

Any other, 'write through the Holiday' tips for us, WITS readers?

Kate Moretti

 

This is not going to be a political post. But I am going to talk about politics. Sort of.

As writers, we’re sensitive souls. We observe the world around us, and as Kimberly Brock called us in a beautiful post earlier this week, we’re lightning collectors. I loved this analogy; it’s so perfect. I wait for the idea that always inevitably comes, whether it be a plot twist, a scene conflict, a character. Our subconscious does most of the heavy lifting.

I have copy edits and a draft to write. My manuscript is due to my editor on May 1. I’ve written eight thousand words, and two weeks ago, was moving at a decent clip.

Then the election happened. My gal lost. Political upset, you know all about it. But now, suddenly, the world doesn’t make sense anymore. Not because my gal lost. But because there are so many people I don’t understand. No matter which side of the aisle you fall on, I imagine we all feel this way. The election has been so divisive that we’re all looking around and saying, wait, I don’t know you. Some of us might be dreading Thanksgiving, or even seeing our neighbors at the mailbox – bracing ourselves for the anger or the gloat, depending on where you fall. It’s draining, no matter where your ideologies lie.

The most fundamental aspect of my job is to understand people. I pride myself on it. Now, it feels like a little bit like the world’s gone mad, and maybe I don’t actually understand anything. As a writer, who needs to tap into human empathy at the most basic levels, this was terrifying.

Thursday, November 10^th, I sat down to write. I had a scene in mind and a blank page in Scrivener and nothing happened. There was no lightning. Or rather, there was lightning all around me and I couldn’t catch any of it. Friday was more of the same.

I worked in the corporate world for eighteen years. I still do. On bad days, I can phone it in, literally sitting in my home office, calling into passive conference calls, doing the easy work: trainings and email replies. In the creative business (yes, that’s a thing: the business of being creative), our brains have to be on. All. The Time. The downside to this is my brain is never off. I absorb all this unrest and internalize it. It’s clogging my creative pipes.

By Saturday, I knew I needed an action plan.

Step 1. Channel your negativity. Yes, this is so obvious. But I wasn’t at the right point in the book for so much uncertainty and I didn’t know exactly how to DO THIS. Like most things, when you take a deep breath and clear the brain clutter, the answer is obvious. I opened my Scrivener file and down under “Research” I opened a new file. An unnamed character (not my current WIP) is standing in the middle of a crowded amusement park and a bomb has gone off. What does she see? Feel? What are people doing? I wrote about 1400 words, a scene. She helps a woman with a baby. The paramedics come. Writing this scene, while not related to my character or my WIP, became a weapon in battling my powerlessness. I hope I use it someday.

Step 2. Do something creative besides write. I play the piano. Not well, mind you, but well enough. Sometimes I go months without touching it and it’s badly out of tune. I’m sure you also know, this week Leonard Cohen died. I wasn’t a diehard fan or anything, but it felt like another needle stick: in the midst of chaos, a great artist leaves us. Hallelujah has long been one of my favorite songs (honestly, the Bon Jovi rendition is pretty freaking beautiful. Yes, I said Bon Jovi. Don’t judge). It’s also ridiculously easy because the chord progressions are the lyrics. I figured it out, taught myself to play it. I won’t open Carnegie hall or anything but something about it felt so right.

Step 3. Bring light.  I’m an introvert. When people talk to me in public, I smile (seriously not even a real smile, mostly like a terrified don’t talk to me smile) and move on ASAP. This week, I went out of my way to reach out. I’ve never been so uncomfortable in my life. I talked to grocery store clerks, guys pumping gas next to me, toll booth collectors, people in line at CVS. I challenged myself to be ridiculously, over-the-top kind to everyone. I told a woman at the post office that I loved her bag. My kids picked up on my energy, too, and the three of us became a traveling team of chatterboxes. People’s faces transformed and I knew it was because of me (well, us. My kids are pretty cute). I gave a stranger light, just for a second. I bought the car behind me coffee. Step 3 felt so good I haven’t stopped. I wondered why I’d been so afraid, kept to myself so much?

Step 4. Take action and move on. There is always going to be something going on in the world that is out of our control. The past two weeks have felt like a maniacal version of the teacup ride at Disney. In order to get my mojo back, I needed to take back some of my own power. I started my morning by calling my senators and representatives, expressing my views. It’s a small thing, but it’s a thing. It helps me cross off the worry, even if just subconsciously. Just for today, I was able to file my anxiety in a box, put a lid on it. Tomorrow, I’ll repeat. But I know that I’ve done what I can. While my action was political, I realized I don’t do enough of the small things. It’s so easy to let life take over and consume you and feel so helpless. Sometimes, doing the small thing can have a significant impact on your mental state.

Step 5.  Meditate. Download the app, get comfortable and for ten minutes, clear your mind. Breathe. Works wonders.

On Monday, after completing my five step sanity program, I’m happy to report that I wrote 1200 words. Are they any good? Well, that’s beside the point. Am I still worried? Uncertain? Sure. Nothing about this is a cure-all. It’s hard to be an adult in the real world. If we don’t preserve our pretend worlds and protect them with everything we’ve got, what good are we as writers?

 

Your turn, WITS readers. What is your coping mechanism? Share, you could help others.

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Kate Moretti is the New York Times Bestselling author of the women’s fiction novel, Thought I Knew You. Her second novel Binds That Tie  was released in March 2014. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband, two kids, and a dog. She’s worked in the pharmaceutical industry for ten years as a scientist, and has been an avid fiction reader her entire life. Her latest book, The Vanishing Year is available for pre-order and will be out September 27.

She enjoys traveling and cooking, although with two kids, a day job, and writing, she doesn’t get to do those things as much as she’d like. Her lifelong dream is to buy an old house with a secret passageway.

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