All posts by David Todd

Headshots, Writing

A Wasted Weekend?

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How many words did I add to my work in progress over the weekend, you ask? Or I suppose that should be works-in-progress, as I have a couple going on. Here’s the short version.

  • My essay “The Learning Curve”: nothing done
  • Headshots: approximately 150, or maybe as many as 200.
  • Danny Tompkins short story: none.
  • Carlyle encyclopedia articles book: none.
  • The Gutter Chronicles, Volume 2: none.

In other words, not a lot of production to show for a quiet weekend at home, with my health good, chores at a relative minimum.

I actually accomplished a little more than that. I re-read chapters 1-6 of Headshots, and reacquainted myself with what I’d written. I brainstormed a few chapters of it as well. I’m currently writing chapter 8, and have it planned out through chapter 13. The word count stands at about 15,100, which is somewhere between 1/6 and 1/4 through it. I wish I was further.

I also proofread eight pages of the Carlyle encyclopedia articles book. I’m down to about 16 pages of text to proofread, plus the four page index from the regular encyclopedia. I’m not sure I’ll include the index in my book, as it’s sort of meaningless. This work isn’t scheduled for publication until next year, so working on it now might be foolish. I proofread a couple of pages a day because it’s easy work, something I can do with the TV on.

Yesterday I arrived in The Dungeon around 2:30 p.m., after church and some running around afterwards. I decided not to take a nap (as I wasn’t the least tired), and not to turn on the TV to have NFL football on, so as not to distract me. Having Saturday’s editing and brainstorming at hand, I put my keys on the keyboard and…nothing. I couldn’t apply my mind.

I reread chapter 8 as it stood, and sort of knew what I needed to do, but the words didn’t flow. It didn’t seem like writer’s block. It was more a case of “why bother?” Low book sales were weighing on my mind.

From a technical standpoint I was having trouble with how to proceed with chapter 8. This is Ronny Thompson in the hospital, working on recovery from his last operation and musing about his future: in baseball, with his girlfriend, with his parents. The next two parts of the chapter were determined based on my planning and brainstorming. As I sat there playing mindless computer games, I thought through the chapter and how to organize it to get the next two events in place. But I just didn’t feel like adding the words needed.

Eventually, once most of the afternoon was gone, I managed to get the 150-200 words in place. Tonight, if I can just concentrate, I can finish that chapter, maybe even get into the next one some. I need to have the characters quit talking and start acting. Maybe that transition is part of the trouble. Too much talk, not enough action, and making that transition in the text is part of what’s giving me fits. Once I get past that, maybe I’ll be okay.

self-publishing

October 2013 Books Sales

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As I mentioned in my last post, my sales continue to be lackluster. I sold 5 books in October. That’s a 150% increase from September, but certainly not something to cheer about. Those five sales were one each of five different items. One was in the UK, the others in the USA. One was a paperback, the others e-books.

On to November! Hopefully I finally complete and publish my professional essay. I’ll keep working on Headshots, and maybe on the next Danny Tomkins story.

And here’s the smaller table for me to link to at Absolute Write.

Doctor Luke's Assistant, Documenting America, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, self-publishing, Writing

A Little Publicity

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October has been somewhat of a disaster as far as writing is concerned. The only original writing I’ve done is:

  • Write about 200 words in the next Danny Tompkins story, while waiting for meetings to start. I haven’t typed them yet.
  • Write 1,400 words yesterday in a scene for Headshots, the sequel to In Front Of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I typed those during breaks at work and e-mailed them to my personal e-mail address. Then last night I merged them into the Headshots document and updated my diary. The problem is it’s been so long since I looked at this book in progress that I don’t know if this scene is the next one in sequence or not.

As far as other writing/publishing tasks, I’ve managed to get a few done.

  • Have reformatted Doctor Luke’s Assistant with a smaller font, which will allow me to republish it as a slightly less expensive book. I will have at least one sale of this cheaper book, to a man at work. The cover designer redid the cover, so that’s ready to go. I was working on this Tuesday when I discovered a potential glitch concerning the ISBN number. Since then I’ve found out that I’m probably worrying about nothing, and hopefully tonight I’ll complete the publishing tasks on this.
  • A man read a book review I made at Amazon, which led him to my blog and my books. We interacted by e-mail, and he bought a copy of Documenting America. He also wanted a copy of the instructor’s notes, which I gave him. Hopefully he’s a new reader and, dare I say, fan.
  • Somehow (don’t remember exactly) I found a sports book blogger, contacted him, and he agreed to read and review In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. That is complete. He posted the review on Goodreads, Smashwords, Amazon, as well as on his blog. In addition, he’s going to interview me this weekend, which I presume will go up on his blog. I’ll link to it once it’s up.

My October sales stand at 5 so far, with 13 hours to go, Amazon time. Two of those sales came from my direct contacts; the other three are unknowns, though could be from earlier marketing efforts. I’ll report final sales numbers soon. That’s an increase from September, and any increase is gratifying even when the result isn’t bestseller status.

One other thing I did was speak to three different people about my books at an American Society of Civil Engineers state convention in Little Rock two weeks ago. I don’t believe any sales have come of that so far, but I have good hopes for at least one in the future.

All this tells me my writing “career” is still in early infancy. Sales are still one at a time. I need to finish more projects and publish them. I need to find a way to work writing into a work and home schedule have has become more busy of late.

All this I will do. As Emerson said, “There is time enough for all that I must do.”

Doctor Luke's Assistant, self-publishing

MS Word is Sometimes Maddening

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I decided to reformat my book Doctor Luke’s Assistant to reduce the cost. I changed the font from 12 point to 10 point, and decided that I would not force chapters to start on a right page. That seemed to add 15-20 pages to the book. The paperback originally cost enough to produce I had to set the price at $14 on Amazon (though they immediately discounted it), and I wanted to reduce that to $12.

Changing the font was easy easy. Since I use Word styles, I just changed the style for book paragraphs, and the entire book reformatted. I found a few other styles, such as scripture quotes and a few other one-off items, and changed them. I also found a couple of stray hard returns that needed to come out. All of this took no more than ten minutes for the 520 page book, and reduced it to around 450.

Next came a change in the section breaks to get rid of the forced right page chapter starts. With the last three books I’ve learned a lot about what printers call “running heads”—the text at the top of the page that differs as you go through the book. Look at any book you have, especially a non-fiction book, and you’ll see what I mean.

On left-side pages the header is one thing, typically the book title. On the right-side page the header is something else, typically the chapter title. In older books (19th century) they changed the right page header almost every page to reflect what was actually being covered on those pages.

All this is not as true with novels, but since DLA had chapter names, not just numbers, I decided to use the right-page header as the chapter title. I had this in the original print version. But the section breaks I added to the original had to be changed. I added a <Section Break Right Page> at the end of each chapter. Except I didn’t do it at each one. Sometimes, if the chapter ended on a left-side page I just added a <Section Break Next Page> and let that suffice.

A complicating factor is that on the first page of a chapter you don’t want any header at all, not even a page number, and no text at all on any blank pages. This is accommodated in Word by having the first page of a section different from the others and not using the header on the first page. Thus in each section you have three headers: first page, left page, right page. The same with the footers. Also, when Word forces a blank page based on a <right page break> it keeps the page blank, not displaying the headers or footers. I should say this is for Word 2003. Word 2007 and 2010 are the same, I think, but I don’t know them as well.

Many publishers put the page number at the bottom of the first page of a chapter, but then at the top of the other pages, with it always being at the outside of the book (so on the left for the left-side page and right for the right-side page). To simplify things, I had decided to put all page numbers at the bottom. That seemed to work well, and the original DLA was perfect in its headers and page numbers.

So when I changed the font to 11 point and the pages adjusted, I had a mix of chapters starting on a left page and a right page. The front matter pages (half title page, books by author page, title page, copyright page, table of contents) all had not headers and no page numbers. Numbered page 1 was the prologue. It’s on a single page, and I wanted Chapter 1 to start on a right hand page (page 3), and all other chapters on the next page, whether it be the right or left.

All was well through chapter 1. Beginning with chapter 2, I removed the section break at the end of chapter one (which had been an odd-page break) and inserted a next-page break. When Word inserts these, it assumes you want the headers to continue the same as the previous chapter. That’s true for the first page header, left page header, and for all footers. But the right page header must be different, and you must manually click on the <same as previous> button to deselect it.

All went well for several chapters. Then on one chapter I forgot to deselect <same as previous> for the right page header. Thus when I changed the header for the right page, it also changed it for the previous chapter. I went about three chapters before I realized I was forgetting to click the button to deselect. So I went back and did that. I went a couple more chapters doing it right, then scrolled back to check my work. To my horror Word had changed prior section breaks from <Next page> to either <Odd page> or <Even page> according to the page that chapter had started on.

So I changed those section breaks back to ; except, of course, I had to deselect for the right page header. When I forgot to do that, then went back and fixed it, somehow the prior section break again changed from to or , Word for some footling reason doing that without my asking it to. So I went back and changed section breaks, then I remembered (or maybe forgot) to deselect . Then I left The Dungeon in frustration.

That was last Sunday. On Monday I let it go. On Tuesday I went back at it, and decided to work from the back of the book instead of the front. I found I had the same problems. On Wednesday I worked for half an hour with no real progress. So I decided to remove all section breaks (after the prologue, which remained correct throughout) and begin anew adding breaks.

That seemed to work. Having to add each section break when none was there gave me the discipline to remember to deselect when I needed to, and to change the right page header to what it needed to be. But with 36 chapters I didn’t finish on Wednesday. I did last night, and had time to proof the book. I found page numbers had somehow crept into the front matter, and fixed that. The section breaks didn’t change. I proofed it again, and all was well.

The book will be 94 pages shorter. Hopefully the price will be $2 or $3 less. Hopefully I’ll have the re-sized cover by Monday, the revised book and cover uploaded then, a proof copy ordered a day or too later, and a re-sized book for sale a week after that.

A day in the life of a self-publisher, or in this case several days: fighting MS Word, and other worthwhile causes.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Doctor Luke's Assistant, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Headshots, self-publishing, Short Stories, Writing

Writing Time Hard to Come By

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As you might be able to tell, based on the fact that it’s been 20 days since my last post, I haven’t done all that much writing in October. The reasons are many, and some of them I don’t want to get into publicly.

But I haven’t stopped writing, and I haven’t abandoned this blog or my other blog, An Arrow Through The Air. I have been in a very busy time at work. It began back in June and hasn’t stopped. Training events have come one after the other. I was event planner for two multi-day events. I went to a training convention in St. Louis in September. Just last week I went to a state engineering society convention in Little Rock where I taught a class and sat in on many others. Today I teach a noon hour class, and that’s the end of the special events. From then on it’s business as usual.

Things at home have required my attention as well. Some of those are completed, some on-going. It shouldn’t be too long, however, till I can get back to having an hour or two in the evenings to write.

Meanwhile, with serious writing out of the question, I’ve been editing. Yesterday I updated the “Works In Progress” section of this web site, and mentioned that I’m slowly working on aggregating Thomas Carlyle’s encyclopedia articles into a book with the intent of publishing this public domain material. That’s an easy thing to do. All the articles are now in one Word file. I’m down to 63 pages left to proofread, to get rid of the optical scanning errors.

I’m not in any hurry with the Carlyle book. I wouldn’t even be working on it except it’s easy to proofread a page in odd moments between major tasks, or while waiting on the doctor or a meeting, or in that half hour before going to bed when you don’t really want to start something new. So this is progressing slowly. I don’t anticipate completing and publishing that until sometime in 2014, perhaps February or March.

In other odd moments I began work on a new short story in the Danny Tompkins/teenage grief series. I really hadn’t planned on any more stories in this series after finishing “Kicking Stones”. However, a couple of reviewers indicated they would like more. That set my mind to thinking about what else I could write that would follow from the three already written and published. Some things came to mind. While waiting for the doctor a couple of weeks ago I began writing it in manuscript. I have the story in mind, but not all the details or the length.

Headshots, my sequel to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, has languished in the last month. I’ve been pulling chapters out of it and submitting them to the writers critique group. I’ll receive critiques tonight on the third chapter, and from one person who forgot to bring the second chapter with them to the last meeting. I’m very close to restarting work on Headshots.

I probably should have on Sunday last, but instead decided to work on reformatting the print version of Doctor Luke’s Assistant with a smaller font so that I can reduce the size of the book and hence the price. However, I had lots of problems with the headers and with the section breaks. I spent two hours on it. With 37 chapters there’s a lot of running heads to get correct, and MS Word decided it didn’t want them correct.

I started from the back, then from the front. I’d fix one header and chapter pagination and another one decided not to work. It was maddening, and by the end of that time, though I wasn’t finished, I had made progress. I suspect I’ll be ready by next weekend with all things corrected and will be able to give the cover designer the new thickness. She can turn a book cover around quickly, and by this time next week I should be ready to submit to CreateSpace and send off for a proof copy. I have at least one buyer for this.

So I’m completing some writing and publishing work. Thanksgiving is coming, when the family will gather in to our place for a joyous time. We have much preparation to do for it. Writing will suffer, but it will continue.

 

 

Writing

Hard to Get Motivated

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I don’t do well with adversity. And I’m finding myself less able to handle multitasking than I used to be. So when anything goes wrong, or life gets extra busy, I find myself unable to write.

Maybe, however, it’s more a case of motivation than the problem of my brain changing as I get older. Here on the 28th of the month I have 2 books sales. One of those was the one I mentioned in a previous post. The other was a copy of Documenting America that sold in Japan. So I’ve now sold books in three countries.

That should have been a shot in the arm. And it was—for about 10 minutes. Then I remembered that that makes only two sales for the month. That I have difficulty in shifting gears weighed on me. This week I wrote almost nothing at all. Busyness at work and at home, and my wife’s desire to just have some recreation time this week gave me little time and less gumption to write. So much easier to recreate.

I’m not quite sure how to interpret this. Is my enthusiasm for writing waning? Or is something else going on. These next few weeks will tell.

Operation Lotus Sunday, Writing

Still one sale at a time

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It was 30 years ago that we were in China, making a 14 day tour of six cities as part of our 30 day Asia tour that included four countries. It was a wild ride. Were we young and foolish or young and bold?

A few days ago I make a post to my Facebook timeline, then shared it with my children, to let them know of the anniversary. I included a link to Operation Lotus Sunday. A friend who read it posted to say it was a good read. Then another friend posted and asked which of my books I recommended for her to start with.

Now that’s a hard decision. How does one choose from among their “children”? I told her OLS would probably be best, but included in that post some thoughts about my other books and why they might or might not be for her. Two FB friends then posted. One, a friend from high school and college, recommended OLS to her. Another, one of Lynda’s cousins, did the same things. Or at least she said she and her daughter read it and “really enjoyed it.”

That’s where the on-line conversation ended, on Sept 18. Then on Sept 19 my Amazon reports showed I’d sold one e-book copy of OLS. Was it the friend who enquired? Could be, or it might be someone else who saw that thread. Or it could be totally unrelated to that thread. However it happened, I’m thankful for the sale.

All of which shows I’m still at the point in my writing career where books are selling one at a time, and (most likely) as a result of personal contacts I make. I wish it were otherwise, but that’s how it is.

Stay tuned.

Writing

I Guess I’ll Keep On

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It’s the 17th of September. So far no book sales in this month. I’m working on my next novel. Plus I’m doing advanced work on a non-fiction book aggregating and publishing some works from the 1820s. Ideas for my next two short stories are beginning to filter through. I may be able to start work on at least one of them soon.

So why does writing and publishing seem so hopeless right now, like I’m wasting my time?

Lack of sales is the main reason. The work is another. This past weekend I wrote 6,800 words on my new novel. That was very satisfying, but also tiring. I did my walks on all days, but had very little time to do things needed, even taking out the garbage, doing typical weekend yard work, or any of a half-dozen other things.

All of this for zero sales. And 5 sales in August, 9 in July, and 52 so far for all of 2013. That’s lower than 2012, with more titles for sale. It’s at this point I ask myself why I’m bothering.

Yet, except for the work, I’m still in, even with the lack of sales. I wonder why. It’s probably irrational behavior I should see a shrink for.

Tomorrow at work I’ll take time for that long-range project, also for creating the better quality figures for my professional essay I’m planning to publish ASAP. I’ll keep plugging away, as irrational as it may be.

Operation Lotus Sunday

30 Years Ago – in China

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Well, I messed up. I had intended in doing a series of posts about our being in China 30 years ago, beginning with the day we entered that country. But we went into China from Hong Kong on September 13, 1983, and I missed it. I’ll blame my lack on the aftermath of being in a conference three days last week.

This could be of interest to anyone who has read Operation Lotus Sunday. I say that because the events in OLS took place in September 1983. In fact, Roger and Sandra Brownwell entered China on September 13, 1983, the same as we did. On September 15 they were in Guilin, and took a boat tour on the Li River (Li Jiang). the same day that we took a boat tour on the Li River.

As I said in other posts some time ago, OLS follows our itinerary in China. Well, it mostly follows our itinerary. Since the plot involves two couples, and I didn’t want the couples running into each other in the different Chinese cities, I had to modify the itinerary of one couple a little. But they visit the same cities and see the same sights the Todd family did many years ago.

It’s going to be fun over the next couple of weeks, reading the diary again and reliving those days, all while thinking about the Brownwells and how I sort of relived it through them.

P.S. I don’t have the right photo I wanted to post on my computer here at home. Must be at work. I’ll swap out the photos tomorrow.