Curious ROBOT Visits the Library

Inspired by one of my favorite childhood stories.

This is ROBOT. He was a good little android and always very curious.

Today ROBOT and his friend, The Cyborg in the NextGenSkin, were at the library.

ROBOT couldn’t believe the number of books on the library shelves. He’d never seen so much paper in one place before. The books were covered in a thick layer of dust, and cobwebs stretched across the bookends.

 

 

ROBOT and The Cyborg in the NextGenSkin pushed the cobwebs out of the way as they read the titles, trying to find the right one.

“Wherever could it be?” ROBOT muttered to himself.

They’d gone to the library for a particular book. An out-of-print book that wasn’t in their memory bank, a book they heard might be dangerous for NewSociety.

A banned book, purported to exist in only one location.

“I found it,” The Cyborg in the NextGenSkin said. “Over here, in the back.”

Curious ROBOT made his way to the corner, and took the damaged, faded book from his friend. ROBOT examined the cover, the insides, the brittle binding. He held it to his nose, inhaling.

Ick. No wonder NewSociety closed down all the bookstores and libraries. It was a terrible aroma that reeked of old paper held for too long by human hands.

“That’s the one,” Curious ROBOT said. “Let’s go.”

“Aren’t you going to read it?” his friend asked.

“I don’t need to,” Curious ROBOT replied. “I read about it. Same thing, right? Don’t you just love the challenge of finding books that aren’t in the system? Like a puzzle.”

“Sure. I guess.”

Curious ROBOT and The Cyborg in the NextGenSkin took the banned book outside, set it on fire, and watched it burn down to ashes on the concrete.

Then they went home.

 

**Support Local Libraries**

Want to Understand the Publishing Industry? A Few Comparisons

Warning: I’m feeling subversive today, so this post might raise some eyebrows. But I’m willing to risk it. Why? Because I’m a writer and it’s my job to explore controversial topics. At least this is what I tell myself.

We talk a lot about how writing is a craft, while publishing is a business. And this is true. So true. Neither side is right or wrong. They are just different, with different goals around the same core product. Writers NEED to write. Publishers NEED to sell.

Alright, what about the juicy and subversive parts?

Okay, here we go.

SUBVERSIVE COMPARISON #1. Writing is a drug, and publishing is the cartel.

That’s right. I’m comparing books to street drugs.

Let me explain. For the writer, words on the page are a buzz, a personal high (“YES, I made that word count today! Yay me!”). For the publisher, words on the page mean the bills get paid.

For the writer, connecting with readers about their stories is like smoking out together with friends at the same party (“Dude, I freaking LOVE your protagonist. I could totally live in that world forever and ever and ever. I'm serious, man. If you stop writing this series, I'll literally die. I can’t put it down.”)

But for the publisher, writers who connect frequently with readers on social media will sell more books. This is a crucial difference that I think many writers fail to understand. Which leads me to…

SUBVERSIVE COMPARISON #2. Writers who want to become successful in today’s market must understand both user and dealer, without succumbing to the trappings of either role. So yes...forgive me, but I’m just going to say it…today’s top published authors are like veteran drug lords.

It’s a rough comparison that doesn’t make either side look good, which is exactly my point. Throughout history we’ve glamorized the publishing industry, as if selling books is somehow less prone to the politics found in other types of industries. Here’s the truth: If you want to become a semi-successful published author, you will encounter an industry that’s more Breaking Bad than Jane Austen.

Now wait. In my last post, “How to Sell Your Book Without Selling Your Soul,” I made a big point about using “idea-based marketing” techniques to get your book in front of readers, so that you’re not always having to pimp yourself out to everyone you see. Now I’m saying that you need to be like the hardened leader of an illegal drug cartel. Which is it?

I guess I can understand your confusion. Illegal drug cartels might be a stretch. What about legal ones?

SUBVERSIVE COMPARISON #3. Writing is the cure for cancer, and publishing is the pharmaceutical company that wants to fund the research and secure the patent.

Better now? It’s certainly a more noble comparison. But the pharmaceutical industry has a lot of problems, too. I mean, not everyone out there is trying to cure cancer, right?

Here’s my point: There’s stuff behind the scenes in every industry that most people don’t see. When you take a tablet of Advil, for example, you have no idea what happened to bring that Advil to your home. When a kid parties one night, she probably doesn’t think about how many people were beheaded in Mexico to make it happen.

Business is business.

People who become successful in any industry—be it publishing, the illegal drug trade, or pharmaceutical cancer research—learn the rules of that industry and work to master them.

Violent beheadings aside, I think it’s still fair to say that writing is like a drug. The written word is powerful and dangerous. Always has been, always will be.

And you know what?

I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Certainly not anything involving a Mexican drug cartel. (Though one of my characters might…)

Be A Tease!

Everyone loves a tease. That tiny morsel of goodness to whet your appetite and leave you begging for more. The build up of anticipation for something, whether it's food, books, movies, a hot date...it's what keeps your attention and focus, leaving you aching for more.

Teasers are an important part of book marketing. Done right, you can grab a brand new reader's attention in less than a minute. Done wrong, you can turn a potential reader away for life.

Here's a teaser for my new book out today, ELUDING ILLUSIONS

Sometimes teasers can be done using a tagline or a "hook" for your book. Here's another using a tagline for my book, VEXED.

Sometimes teasers can be lines or quotes from your book.

You'll notice in the teaser above I put my copyright info and gave credit for the picture to the owner of it. NEVER use pics of celebrities or steal pics from the interwebs to use in teasers. You can get in serious legal trouble without express written permission from the rights holder of the image. There are many stock photo sites you can buy images from to use in your teasers. 

And if you don't want to buy images, some photographers will allow you to use an image if you credit them in the photo, as I did above. But you must have their permission to do so. Or you can use plain backgrounds and make your own using images from your book cover art files as I did in the first two teasers. Ask your cover artist for help if you want banners made up or blank teasers you can manipulate using your cover art files.

A teaser can even be as simple as just an image and your release date to start getting your cover in front of your potential reader audience, like the one I did above.

Also, please remember when making teasers to keep the fonts legible.

While those are cool fonts and it makes it eye catching, it's somewhat hard to read. Teasers should entice a future reader, not make them work for it or get frustrated because they can read only every other word because of font, or colors blending in over background images. 

Try can keep them as crisp and eye catching as possible.

Remember to change up the teasers. 

• Have a sexy one if it's a romance novel. 
• Have a more serious and dramatic one that shows the depth of the book as well. 
• Have a tagline hook as we mentioned earlier. 
• A PG level one for general audiences is also a good idea. 
• Have one as well that gives perspective and insight into the personalities of your characters. 

Like the one below for my novel, VEXED, it gives you a sense of the banter between the main characters.

Teasers can also can turn a potential reader into a lost sale. Remember that a variety of people will be seeing your teaser. So, unless you're posting in a specific group of people, please make your teasers for a general audience. If you write BDSM or Erotica, make sure you have a teaser specific to those audiences, but don't post those in a general FB group using graphic sexual references. Have a cleaner version for the masses and put a warning that the book itself will contain language, violence, or graphic sex. 

Also, please, for the love of all humanity, make sure your teasers don't have misspellings or typos. It's a reflection on you as the author. Put your best work forward.

Go forth and tease the world!!

To Self-Pub or not to Self-Pub: The Burning Question

Self publishing--Indie publishing--is all the rage these days, and for good reason.

In its fledgling days, self-publishing amounted to vanity publishing. It consisted primarily of people who had written a book, mostly for themselves, and wanted to see it "published" so they could give copies to their friends and family. For the most part, they weren't serious authors whose goal was a career in writing novels.

For a long time self-publishing was the illegitimate child of the publishing industry. Books were just plain bad: badly edited, badly written, bad characters, bad plot, bad storytelling...just BAD. It gained a horrible reputation that lingered like that uncle nobody wants around.

But self-publishing has shed the stigma and evolved into a serious, reputable, potentially profitable alternative to traditional publishing, so much so that many traditionally published authors are engaging in hybridization of their careers by doing both.

What are the advantages of self-publishing?

 The major advantage to self-publishing is control. As the author, you have control of everything: cover, content, price, marketing, branding.

You have the freedom to do whatever you want with your book.

You also keep all the subrights to your work, and can sell those yourself.

Finally, you keep all the profit. For ebooks, most publishers pay authors between 25% and 50% of royalties on all sales. As a self-published author you keep most of the profit.

Sounds great, right?

What are the disadvantages of self-publishing?  

You're responsible for EVERYTHING. You may envision yourself living the life of an artist, free to make your own choices regarding your work. And that's true. But once you write the book(s), you have to take off the artist hat and put on the businessperson hat and start all the hard work of cover design, formatting, purchasing ISBNs, interacting with vendors, understanding pricing and SEO and markets and readers and genres and niches.

Part of being a self-published author is keeping your name in the readers' mind, so often self-pubbed authors produce more work than traditionally published authors. Romance, especially, is a high production genre where many authors crank out anywhere from two to four manuscripts per year.

And then there's marketing. So much marketing. When you self-publish you're solely responsible for making sure your target audience knows your book exists, so they can buy it. How do you do that? It's like the quest for the holy grail, my friend, the thing all self-pubbed authors are searching for. Basically, marketing is a shitton of work.

Finally, when you self-publish, you bear all the cost of publishing your book. You must purchase the cover art, pay for the ISBNs, pay for copyrighting, pay for marketing, pay for printing, pay for shipping...you pay for everything.

A side note about genre: Not all genres sell well as self-published books. In fact, romance seems to be by far the best genre to self-publish, primarily because romance is the best selling genre overall in all publishing formats at over 50% of the total fiction market. Romance readers are rabid, gobbling up books as fast as authors can write them.

Unfortunately, not all genres do as well self-published, so if you're thinking about publishing your own book do some research to see if self-published books in your genre sell very well.

If self-publishing is so much work, why do so many people do it?  

There's a lot of frustration with traditional publishing. Because the publishing industry is evolving so rapidly and expansively, traditional publishing has changed a lot of its models to meet the changing habits of readers. The days of huge advances are gone, and if you hadn't noticed, the days of huge chain bookstores are waning as well. Digital books have taken a huge bite out of print book sales, which means bookstores can't afford to stay in business.

Because of this, traditional publishers are more cautious about acquiring authors for print deals. They don't pay as much, they don't acquire as many, and there are different expectations of authors. As a result, many traditional publishers have started their own digital lines and acquire authors for those more often than for print. Authors get no or very little advance for digital deals, and usually smaller royalty percentages than smaller digital-only presses, or what they'd make from self-publishing.

Digital-only presses offer higher royalty percentages than traditional publishers, but they often don't do much more than what you could do yourself as an indie-author. They bear most of the costs of publishing the book, but often expect authors to shoulder a large portion of the marketing effort.

Because it's more difficult to get a print deal with traditional publishers, and digital-only deals aren't maybe as attractive as they could be, more and more authors are turning to self-publishing.

When is it a good idea for you to self-publish?

First, ask yourself: Why do I want to self-publish? Am I willing to do all the work involved? Do I want a long-term career as a writer? Do I want to publish a book just so I can say I did it? Am I frustrated with traditional publishing and want to try something different?

If you answered yes to any of these questions...it's a good idea to self-publish!

BEFORE YOU SELF-PUBLISH: It's important to keep in mind that once you self publish, you can't take it back. You can't take that same book and query it to agents or traditional publishers. So if you self-publish a book and it tanks big time, you can't say, oh, well, I'll just start querying agents now. They just won't look at it because it's ALREADY PUBLISHED.

With that in mind:

If you can afford a professional editor and decent quality cover (some people can do these things themselves, but not many. Be honest with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses);

If you're a good storyteller and have had beta readers (other than your mom, other family, and friends) read it and help you polish the story;

If you've researched and know your genre sells well in the indie-published arena;

If you're a savvy businessperson who knows how to market and publicize your work;

You have all the ingredients to be successfully self-published.

What prompted this post about self-publishing?

My writing partner, Merissa McCain, and I have decided we're going to self-publish our contemporary romances, the Tap Zone Series, set in the world of MMA fighting.

We did extensive research, we've made a to-do list and split it so we each have responsibilities, we've put together a long-term plan, and we're proceeding  according to it.

We haven't set a release date yet for book one, but it will be sometime this fall. We'll keep you posted.

In the meantime...everybody keep writing!


~Margaret


 

 

Books Vs. Movies

A couple weeks ago a debate sprung up between me and a few of my friends. Which is better, books or movies? We live in a day and age when books and movies are accessible with the touch of a button. Where, in a few minutes, you can have any book or movie you'd like at your fingertips. That brought up a serious problem with a few of my friends. Most only read books when they were too excited to wait for the movie. Only a few read the books for pure enjoyment and because the books offered much more than the movies. With the advancements in technology, that line seems to be more of a blur than ever before.

In an effort to combat the book-lovers opinions of which is better, the movie-goers insisted that movies are easier to understand. It brings the books to life in a very real way giving characters an actual voice and face, gives the setting a perspective that the imagination can't quite come up with on it's own. I will admit that I have a very active imagination, but the world of Harry Potter was so much more intriguing in the movie than in my own mind.

Another point they insisted on was that books are anti-social. It doesn't require a group of people to read a book. It's a solitary activity, while a movie can be enjoyed in groups or for dates. I happen to disagree with this opinion. I enjoy movies alone. I don't want to talk during a movie, or be talked at during a movie because I rarely answer. It bothers me when people are constantly up and down to go to the restroom or restock popcorn because they've annihilated the jumbo bucket. I saw Jurassic World on my own, without children, and it was a freeing experience. I saw the complete movie from start to finish. I haven't been able to do that in years.

The last point they insisted on was the lack of action in books. There are no fiery explosions or tragic drownings. A pit of snakes is not as intimidating, raptors aren't as ferocious and the swords fights are not nearly as edge of your seat. It's tough to write fight scenes or other action. Movies flow with the action, giving your mind a visual to understand.

In the defense of books I must say that I enjoy writing a fight scene, I like the flow of my words on the page, like a dance of back and forth blows. Is it harder to do than actually acting it out? Of course, but in the end the sequence feels more satisfying.

While books may require more imagination than a movie, they have a level of depth that movies can't. You can't get inside the characters head in movies or hear their thoughts. Emotions are more involved and deeper in a book. In my opinion, more tears are shed, more laughs are shared and I cling to the characters in novels for much longer than I do those in movies. In books you're able to attach. Their emotions are not rushed for the space of time that a movie allows.

Movies often lose parts of books. There is only so much that can be added to fill the space of two hours, and sometimes things have to be cut. It's a sad truth and sometimes it leaves out the reason that a character is loved, or an important plot point or even a character that may not feel that important to the movie, but makes an impact in the plot of the book. I'll never forget the first time I watched Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It wasn't my favorite book by any means, but I found the trials fascinating and when they left out aspects of the books I was confused and devastated. I'd imagined what this world would look like and I felt like they'd cut the world in half somehow.

There are pros and cons to both books and movies, and I will admit that I love to see a book come to life on the big screen. But I also go in knowing that things may not always follow the book closely, that parts will be left out. Sometimes I read the book before hand, sometimes I read it after. Whichever you choose, give both your best shot, don't get mad at the author for things that get changed in movies because they'd don't control it and just enjoy the different experiences, because that's what they are. A different way to experience the same story.

So, do movies do books justice? Do you always read the book first? Tell me in the comments below!

What Influences You?

This last week I took part in #Nestpitch reading slush for the mentor of my team. The competition isn't over yet, but my part seems to have slowed down a bit. I thought about all the different pitches and first 300 words that I've read the last few days. There are so many interesting ideas out there! It got me wondering.

What influences your writing?

A lot of authors will tell you that various books inspired their writing style, or their type of genre, but I had to wonder. Is that the only thing that inspires authors? Good books? Of course you're told that in order to write, you need to read. I believe in that one hundred percent. I love books. I've been an avid reader from the moment I picked up a book at the school library. The very first book I got at the Scholastic book fair still sits on my book shelf. I find myself wanting to be as lyrically beautiful as JRR Tolkien when I read The Lord of the Rings, but there are many other aspects of life that influences my writing as well.

Now, I can't really speak for everyone else, but I can tell you a bit about myself.

Hi. My name is Niki. I'm an avid gamer, particularly games with strong story lines such as:

The Legend of Zelda. Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time, was the first game I remember playing and beating one hundred percent on my own. It will forever be my favorite game of all time. 

Kingdom Hearts. Another game that I adore. I loved revisiting all of the Disney worlds in the game. 

Final Fantasy X. Sadly I have never finished this game, but the cut scenes were so beautiful that it will always be a favorite. I hope to replay it one of these days.

and Bioshock. There is so much about this game that I love from the 40's/50's feel to the unique bosses and weaponry.

I'm also a watcher of Japanese anime. Old school, since I used to watch it on Toonami on Cartoon Network when I got home from middle school. Some of my favorites include:

Sailor Moon. In middle school I had a friend that could draw anime and spent our free time in class drawing Sailor Moon pictures in everyone's notebooks. I loved the animation, I loved the female power, I loved the story lines.

Inyasha. Because, honestly, who doesn't want a dog demon following them around? And the cute thwap sound his ears made? Easily my favorite anime of all time.

and Gundam Wing. I adored Duo and the Death Scythe. The series ended before I could see the finale and Endless Waltz, but I will always love the concept of humans living in colonies in space and fighting with mobile suits.

I also love Gilmore Girls. I'd always hoped that when I grew up I would be Lorelai Gilmore and I'd have a daughter like Rory and we'd be surrounded by awesomeness.

and Charmed. I also hoped that one day I'd develop the ability to freeze time. I'm still waiting for that to happen.

All of these, along with Jurassic Park, Harry Potter and the Phantom of the Opera, have influenced my writing in one way or another. My Sleeping Beauty/Robin Hood retelling has a lot of Inuyasha's rooftop crossing. I saw it, I loved it, I wanted to write something similar to it. My YA Spec Fic has been compared to Frozen meets Pokemon. I don't really know much about the Frozen part of things, I wrote it before the movie came out, but I will admit I borrowed some of the concept from Pokemon. Here are the first few pages:

A fireball charged at me, crackling and spitting as it grew in size. It sounded like a freight train tornado, sucking air and whistling forward. Instincts took over and I ducked, throwing my hands over my head. The crowd around me wasn’t bothered by the fire as I peeked out at them from behind my fingers. Dressed in gray t-shirts and blue gym shorts, some chuckled and chatted, others played with their phones.

Ship, ship, ship. I’d spent so many years watching my language around my younger siblings that “ship” became a natural reaction, even in my head.

“It’s not real, Evie. Stand up,” Takeshi, my student trainer, shouted. His accent went from the calm British of my best friend to a thick, almost unrecognizable Japanese in his agitation. He couldn’t cross over the lines of tape on the basketball court without risking an automatic loss. Takeshi didn’t like to lose.

 “Don’t baby her, Tak.” My opponent, Tawny, sneered, hands waving in an intricate dance that I couldn’t emulate no matter how hard I tried. It was times like these when I wasn’t sure if she was my best friend or not.

The fireball barreled into an inky black wolf the size of a horse as we argued. The audience cheered. Energy from Tawny’s ball pushed my wolf into the wall where it yelped, fur smoking. The bird in front of Tawny soared up to the ceiling and spread its wings, giving a caw that shook the building. That it was a hawk of some sort, the size of a pteranodon, wasn’t surprising. Tawny always picked birds.

Suzanne Collins said that the idea for the Hunger Games came from mythology and Roman gladiators. She also said that she'd been watching TV and switching back and forth between a reality TV program where kids were competing for money, to a news channel where kids were fighting in war and said the lines between the two sort of blurred.

Veronica Roth has said that Psychology 101, "Sweet Sacrifice" by Evanescence, and splitting into groups, drove her writing of Divergent.

Stephanie Meyer had a dream that started Twilight.

Carrie, by Stephen King, was influenced by a discovery while working as a janitor that girls' showers had curtains, an article on poltergeists having telekinetic powers, and his memories of two girls at his own school, both dead, who formed the character of Carrie White.

Influences come from everywhere, from the books we read to the TV shows and movies we watch to the games we play. They come from real life experiences we have ourselves, or things that we've heard others experiencing. Many people listen to music and have playlists for what they write. Other's surround themselves with pictures. Some turn to Pinterest to nail down their characters, storyboards and places they've never been before.

 Don't limit yourself. Draw from every aspect of life.

So, what influences you?

In Defence of Paper

I'm pretty certain it won't surprise you to learn that I'm a voracious reader - in fact, most writers I know read as much as time permits. And although I've long since given up resistance and bought an ebook reader, my favourite kind of book is still one that crinkles when I turn a page, that gets dark rings on the cover if I rest my cup of tea on it, and that gets that peculiar, nose-tickling musty scent when it's been sitting on the shelf for a while, feeling neglected. No kindle, nook, iPad or what have you can give you the same tactile reading pleasure as a real, physical, printed paper book. 

So today, I'm going to give you ten reasons why The Book (Paper Edition) is a great thing, not to be forgotten...

1. You can hold it in your hands...

A paper book is a physical phenomenon that can be touched - you can stroke it, you can hug it, you can even throw it into a corner or rip it up and burn the pages, depending on whether it meets your approval or not. 

2. It sticks around...

We are a very technical society - so much of what we do and what we say is recorded in little noughts and ones somewhere on a circuitboard, invisible to the eye. I've heard it said that in a couple of centuries our time will look like the dark ages, because all that data will be in an unreadable format. I'm not sure if it'll go quite that far, but be honest, who (ok, who over a certain age) doesn't have the odd backup floppy disk lying around that will surely never be read again? This will never be a problem with a printed book, now will it?

3. You can browse in an actual bookstore...

I'm all for the convenience of shopping from your armchair, but I don't really want Amazon to be the one who decides what I might or might not like to read. I like wandering through a bookstore, picking up random books that catch my eye with a great cover, a good title, or perhaps just the way they were placed on the shelf by a well-meaning book store employee (and not sent into my mailbox by a you-might-like-this-algorithm). In fact, I've discovered a lot of new authors just like this. It's also nice to be able to read a couple of pages before you buy a book, to see if the author's style suits. 

4. You can show off your library...

And by show off I don't mean to anyone else, it's sufficiently satisfying (if you ask me) to show off to yourself all the great favourites and/or classics you've read. Bookshelves make a house cosy and more home-like, if you ask me - I'm fairly leery of people who have no visible books lying around in their homes. I mean, really, what do these people do with their free time? Maybe it's writerly curiosity, but I'm quite fond checking out other people's bookshelves. You can tell a lot about a person by seeing which books have creased spines, which are carefully dusted and what shelves are sorted by (are you an alphabet or a genre sorter?). 

5. Physical books have character...

...or at least I like to think so. New books have a certain feel to them, a cleanness of uncreased paper, sometimes the vague scent of ink not unlike that which you get from a freshly printed newspaper (if you still read newspapers in physical form, that is...). With older books, you can sometimes get a feel for the previous reader(s). Are there many dog-eared pages? Did someone make notes, or highlight, or maybe just very faintly underline things in pencil with lines so light you have to tilt the page a certain way in the light to be able to tell? Are there coffee stains on some pages, or is there, perhaps, a squashed bug preserved in paper prison for all eternity? Did someone carefully fold the beautifully designed dust jacket of a hardback book and tuck it between the last pages for safekeeping? Or were the flaps used to mark the pages read? 

6. Books have great covers...

(link to Amazon)

...by artists like Michael Whelan (my personal favourite). There's something to be said for a large, hard-bound book with a well designed cover. I know ebooks have the same covers, but still, I think the impact of art is bigger in physical form. 

7. Friends can share the joy...

You can give people your favourite book, you can wrap it up as a present, put a bow on it, write a dedication that will stay in the book no matter what. It's even possible to lend someone a book or give your books to charity once you're done with them.

8. Books make you focus your attention...

Occasionally I read ebooks on my mini iPad (which I adore, btw). While this is all well and good, though, and there are soooo many advantages to having thousands of books at your fingertip (no I don't have thousands of ebooks in my kindle library, but I do have a couple of hundred...), I do find myself flicking between books if one is a bit slow in a chapter, or skipping over to the Facebook app to check what people are up to, or...well, you get the picture. With a physical book, this temptation ceases to exist, and you can pay proper homage to the written word. 

9. You can write things on paper...

And yes, I'm one of those people who write things into their books. I even (GASP!) use a highlighter on occasion. Mostly, though, I stick post-its onto pages with my little notes (or even just plain multi-coloured post-its). And yes, I do know you can add notes and highlights to ebooks but I really, really don't like doing that. 

10. But really, what's important is the reading...

because reading is essential to the writer (there's even articles that say so - it must be true!). Reading teaches, inspires, wakes up the muse. Do you know any writers who do not read? I can't quite believe there are any. 

So go on, read. Buy a paper book if you're a tactile sort of person (like me), or download the ebook if you don't care about that, but buy a book, sit down and read. It'll make you a better writer, even if (worst case scenario) it only teaches you what not to do in your own book. 

Want More Creative Energy? Pace Yourself

Writing a novel is a game of endurance, and every writer must find their own pace. I learned this the hard way. I’m currently working on my third novel, the second in a series. Yes, you heard me right: my third novel is the second in the series. That’s because my first attempt at a novel needs a complete rewrite. Currently it’s occupying space on my hard drive until I develop the courage to tackle it.


"So, my old foe, we meet on the battlefield once again."

That first novel taught me something huge and valuable: never underestimate the power of a creative endeavor.

Creating something of value—whether a novel, painting, screenplay, piece of music, or the life of a child—demands reverence and care. Creative energy comes from the Creator, a being whose image we bear in our frail and broken bodies. It is a power…a force, both spiritual and emotional. It is life and love and pain. We can only handle small pieces of this power, and yet we crave it in massive doses. That’s why pacing ourselves is so important: we want the whole thing but can only digest a few bites at a time.

Some people—the marathon writers—work on their novels every day throughout the year. Good for them. I learned that I need to write in blocks of time (usually one to four months) and then take a couple months off to recuperate and brainstorm. You know, take a breather. Stop and smell the roses. And all those other forbidden clichés.

 

But pacing is more than knowing when to rest. There also comes a time for getting down to business. BICHOK: Butt in chair, hands on keyboard. This is when pacing becomes extremely important because this is the point at which creative power becomes the most intense. Writers often call this part of the process “the writing cave,” because it is deep and dark and consuming. It is also necessary for anyone who wants to finish a novel.

During these stretches of focused writing—months of concentrated plotting and words and dialogue—I learned that I can’t skimp on the basics.

What are the basics? They’re probably different for everyone. For me, I stock my writer’s cave with regular sleep, strong coffee (daily), red wine (occasionally), good friends (as much as possible), and time with family (daily).

For hardcore writing months, I also carry around at least three books in my backpack. Yes, actual books made with paper and ink. I don’t even have to worry about recharging the batteries. When I get discouraged—or feel like nobody else on earth has ever experienced the angst and sheer misery of writing a novel because obviously it is a special form of torture reserved for abnormal people like me who have an unhealthy obsession with words—then I pull out one of these books and read until I feel sane again.

1. Stephen King, ON WRITING. Love this book. The guy knows how to write, how to make a career out of it, and how to enjoy every moment. Good stuff.

 

 

2. Anne Lamott, BIRD BY BIRD. Anne Lamott has a true gift for expressing deep truth in relatable ways. My copy of Bird by Bird is crinkled and warped because I accidentally dropped it into the bathtub during a long bubble bath, and Lamott writes in such a way that makes me think she'd be okay with that.

 

3. Steven Pressfield, THE WAR OF ART. A friend lent this to me when I was writing my second novel (the first in the series). I was so impressed that I immediately bought my own copy and refer to it when I need a quick burst of motivation.

There are lots of terrific books for writers, but these are my tattered and torn titles that I come back to again and again when I need to focus that creative energy.

As a disclaimer, I still crash and burn sometimes. But pacing myself keeps that kind of craziness to a minimum. (For the most part.)

Now your turn. What works for you? Any favorite tricks for harnessing creative energy in your writing?