Writers in the Storm

 

by Laura Drake

In the last Writers in the Storm ‘throwdown’ (if you missed it, it was character driven vs. plot driven writing.) I was more than willing to admit that both sides of the argument are valid – even necessary to a great story.

But this time?  The other side of the coin terrifies me.

Do you start at the beginning of your novel, and write straight through? Or do random scenes come to you, so you write them and then, at the end,  stitch them together like you would a granny-square afghan?

I’m so far to the linear side of this one that I can’t even see the middle. I like things orderly -- bordering on regimented. I love routine. My library is in order by author, then by title. I admit to not being able to go to bed if there are dishes in the sink, and I can’t leave the house in the morning unless my bed is made. I’m a bean-counter in my other life and it fits me well.  I like things to balance – to fit neatly into the little boxes I make. But life is messy, and the little buggers won’t stay there!

Control freak? Huh. No, not me.

But before the other WITS bloggers schedule an intervention, let me get back on the subject.

I write in as close to a straight line as I’m able. I start (in a perfect world) on scene one, then move to scene two and write that, and so on. That doesn’t mean that I have no idea what’s going to happen through the story.

While I’m riding my bike, I may have a flash of an idea for a scene farther into the book. I record the thought on my voice recorder (one of the best inventions ever.) When I get home, I jot notes about the scene on a 3X5 index card. This allows me to reorder scenes with a quick shuffle. By the end of the book, I have a three to six inch stack of index scene cards.

There are disadvantages to the linear method though, I will admit.

• It takes me forever to get started with a new book.
• I’m not sure of the character’s traits, or the backstory that caused them. And I can’t begin until I know!
• I wring my hands.
• I write in fits and starts.
• I whine to my crit group. They’re wonderful, helping me look ahead and plot, reminding me that I’m not losing it; I always do this at the beginning.

I also use excel as a tool to help me see the big picture. I’m including it here in case you’d find it useful. Below is a snapshot of my “Cheat Sheet.” I create a file for each book. First is a quick chapter review. I fill in the page and word count as the chapter is completed.

Cheat Sheet

The next sheet is my detailed “Scene Sheet” breaking down the chapters. It gives more detail on what happens, and gives me a bird’s eye view of upward and downward movement of the protagonist, as well as turning points.

Scene detail

Drawbacks aside, Linear works for me. I’m a character-driven writer. It takes a long time to develop a rich, multi-layered protagonist. A lot of that I find out through naturally progressing through scenes, and the character’s arc, I don’t know it all when I start. If I didn’t write linearly, I could end up spending time on a scene at the end of the book that isn’t true to that character!

Aren’t you scattergunners afraid of that? Why not?

Which comes naturally to you? Linear or Scattergun?

Don’t forget to check back on Wednesday when Jenny answers the challenge and discusses the dreaded non-linear side. *shudder*

The dark side.

 

Today's authors are very in-the-know about the changes sweeping through the publishing industry. I am so thankful to be pursuing a writing career in these times where the access to amazing resources and generous authors is at our fingertips.

If you don't feel "up to date" and want to read more about the changing state of publishing, it's hard to find a better resource than Kristine Kathryn Rusch and her publishing industry blogs.

Our current brave world of publishing demands that an author build a brand.

What does that mean exactly? Simply put, your brand is the picture that pops into people’s mind when they hear your name.

For established authors, this picture is usually tied to one (or many) of your books. For the new or unpublished author, you need to get started on forming that picture in people's mind as soon as possible. Participation in social media is one of the easiest ways to do this.

I'm interested in exactly how you're participating in this speed-of-light social media world. I see many of you on Twitter and Facebook. I even see a few of you on LinkedIn.

Where are lots of my WITS peeps conspicuously absent?

It's pretty rare for me to see more than a few of my WITS pals in my hashtag chats, with the possible exception of #myWANA. Either we don't keep the same hours or you're hanging out somewhere else (that you'll hopefully mention in the comments, so I can hang out there too!).

The other answer is that you haven't been cued into the hashtag thing yet, which means you're not using social media, especially Twitter, as fully as you could be. (If you're scratching your head, wondering what the hell a hashtag is, please read this post on what Twitter hashtags are and why we need them.)

Note: Be sure to download TweetDeck or HootSuite - they'll help you to enjoy social media a whole lot more. If you choose TweetDeck, I highly recommend Piper Thunstrom's tutorials on TweetDeck. They are AWESOME!

Perhaps you're happy in Facebook, and Twitter is an unknown frontier. Maybe you're already hooked up in Google+...that's part of what this post is about. I want to know where the writers are hangin'.

How do I go about "building a brand?"

For more detailed information on branding, here are some of the best blogs I’ve found on the subject from people who say it far better than I do.

• Jami Gold’s How Do You Decide On Your Author Brand? – Part 1 and Part 2
• Jami has another wonderful post on Branding 101 – Online Brand vs. Author Brand
• An older post from leadership guru Michael Hyatt that still applies – 7 Ways to Build Your Author Brand Online
• Video: Creating Your Author Brand by Joanna Penn
• Kristen Lamb’s must-read post on Bob Mayer’s Blog: Building An Author Brand.
• Bob Mayer discusses Social Media and the Writer in his Publishing Lessons series.

Particularly now that so many authors are going the Indie route with smaller independent publishers or even venturing into self-publishing for their first book, author branding is no
longer a “nice to have.”

Read the posts above and take a look at these two books: Kristen Lamb’s We Are Not Alone: A Writer’s Guide to Social Media, and Bob Mayer’s Warrior Writer. They will put you light years ahead of where you might have gotten on your own. At the very least, they'll get you there faster.

My personal observation is that people are seeking authentic connections and that, by branding themselves, an author is opening themselves up for connecting.

In my own experience on Twitter and both of my blogs, your Followers and your Tweeps become your friends. We spend time with these people, whether it’s chatting on Facebook, having a Worldwide Book Launch Party or sharing Sunday morning coffee. Seemingly disparate people throughout the world are connecting through social media and enjoying the hell out of each other. It’s a beautiful thing.

Perhaps you don’t know where people are gathering on Twitter.

Fret no more…here’s the list of where my Tweeps and I hang out. This is your invitation to hook up with us. Like I said, if you are spending time somewhere else online, we want to know where that is!

#myWANA – This love revolution started on Kristen Lamb’s blog (WANA stands for We Are Not Alone…I’ve linked to the book above)

#weWRITE – Hashtag started by Anna DeStefano and Jenni Talty based on their How We Write Wednesday Series. Note: There are no links allowed in this group – conversation on writing only…you’ll have to post your links elsewhere.

#PubWrite – these tweeps enjoy writing, sharing ideas and frustrations, and the occasional adult beverage.

#amwriting – writers from everywhere hang out here and encourage each other as they write. If this is your hangout, you might also enjoy http://amwriting.org/.

#amediting – writers from everywhere hang out here and encourage each other as they edit their works-in-progress.

#wordmongering – writers do timed sprints of 30 mins at :00 and/or :30 every hour. This is fun 24/7 and participants say they get so much writing done.

#Row80 – Hashtag started by Kait Nolan that I’m participating in. This is a writing challenge that lasts 80 days and requires that you publicly post your goal. For more details go here.

#LifeListClub: Another goals-based hashtag chat. You must publicly state your goals, usually on a page in your site, and then work to achieve them and cheer on others. If you decide you want to be more involved, you can submit to be on the list of writers who blog hop every other Friday. For more details on what the Life List Club is, go here.

#nanowrimo - When November rolls around, the agony and the ecstacy of National Novel Writing Month can be found here. (Until then, we have Row80!)

Note: If I’ve missed any really cool hashtags, please let me know in the comments.

Writing-related hashtag resources that might be helpful to you:

For a great resource on Twitter (and social media and branding), I recommend that you visit Kristen Lamb’s blog and read all of her Twitter Tuesdays posts – TT #2 deals with hashtags and delves a bit deeper on some of the topics here. Plus, when she posts at Dr. Twuth, you need to swallow your beverage before reading.

If you would like to see a list of popular hashtags, go to one of the following sites:

• Specific to writers: http://www.dailywritingtips.com/40-twitter-hashtags-for-writers/
• http://tagal.us/ is working hard to be the dictionary on hashtags. It is a cool site and worth looking at since a list of tags drops down as you type and the hashtag definition shows in the search results.

What about you? Where do you commune with people on Twitter or Facebook (and why)? Are there groups of writers that you recommend above all others? Please share your discoveries with the rest of us!

~Jenny
More Cowbell: http://jennyhansenauthor.wordpress.com
Twitter: @jhansenwrites

Have you discovered Writers In The Storm on Facebook? We'd love to see you over there! :-)

Today we welcome back Denise Domning, contributing blogger here at WITS, with the fourth in her series detailing her self-publishing journey.

by Denise Domning 

I did it!  I made my deadline!

Kind of.

It’s August 15th and the book, The Men Wars, Book One  Men-ipulation,  is up on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

What about the iPad version?

Well, that’s another story.  I did have it up on Lulu briefly.  I can’t say exactly why I was so uncomfortable with them, but I suspect what bothered me most is that Lulu was a middle man.  Having them standing between me and the iBook version just didn’t feel right.  Then my husband bought the Lulu version and tried to install it on his iPhone.  Lulu doesn’t offer the Apple version.  It only offers the book as a PDF via Adobe digital.  That was it for me.

I pulled the book down and had my son, who owns a Mac (along with six other computers; my niece has my Mac and it’s too far to drive to go borrow it back), start our iBook account.  I can’t do it with this laptop without installing Quicktime and Quicktime has never worked on any of my other computers so I didn’t bother.  Now, No Regrets the Book, LLC (that’s the company Monica and I formed around the book) is in the approval process with Apple.

If you didn’t know, Apple won’t publish a book on iTunes that (1) wasn’t created on a Mac and (2) doesn’t have its own ISBN.  I’m only guessing, but I think they must assume that only publishing companies would buy ISBNs.  Ergo, one of the questions was how many books a month would we be publishing.  Our lowest option was one.  So I had Justin put in “one”.  Who knows?  It might be possible.  Not probable, but possible.

Why didn’t I go with Smashwords like so many other authors?  For the same reason I didn’t feel comfortable with Lulu.  They’re a middle man.  That, and Smashwords wanted me to put up my Word doc, properly formatted of course.  That wasn’t happening.  (Read my last post for my Word issues.)

Instead, I sent my son the link for Sigil for Mac, then sent him the eBook I made in my Sigil for PC.  It should work, or so I read on someone’s blog.  When my son ran the PC version through the Mac version it validated with no errors.  Nice!

Now, this is just my opinion, but I want to state for the record I don’t think much of Calibre.  It’s one of those ebook editors, and it’s one that comes up first on a search.  I didn’t like the way it took control of my computer and wrote itself in with its own directories.  That’s just rude.  Then, when I tried to input my book, it reset all the sizes of the images.  Didn’t ask or anything.  Like I said.  Rude.

Sigil.  Free, easy, clean and it’ll do a search through every file in the whole document.  Now we’re talking!

And we’re still fighting to get the Createspace files uploaded.  So, the book is available on two of our four chosen venues.  We’ve received a stupendous first review and …we sold three copies on the first day.  (And I did not buy one.)  That’s three more copies than I thought we’d sell right away.

Meanwhile, Monica is gearing up to take over from where I left off.  And that’s nice, that’s very nice.  All I had to do was write the book.  She’s going to carry the ball the rest of the way.  Well kind of.  I’m still trying to figure out how to get more reviews and putting together ideas for our ad campaign (a Facebook ad).  I’ve helped her complete her questionnaire for Annie Jennings (our PR person).

And I’m still trying to find out how to reach Howard Stern.

Minor details.  The book is done.  VBG.

How is your self-pub journey going? Are there roadblocks you've encountered that you'd like to share?