All posts by David Todd

critique group

Writers Group Tonight

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After a four-week holiday hiatus, the BNC Writers will meet again tonight. I’m looking forward to it. I need the fellowship of other writers. I have been much engaged with writers during this time, but on-line. I have come to know a couple of them well. And I joined and became active in the on-line counterpart to Ozark Writers League, though I’ve never been to a real life meeting of theirs. Maybe I’ll make one in 2012.

There’s nothing like a meeting of writers to get the creative juices flowing. I always come home from them thinking how great it would be not to have to eat or sleep, but rather just go to the computer and type new works, edit draft ones, publish completed ones, market published ones. Even research is an enjoyable task, with heightened interest after meeting with writers.

We are likely to be a small group tonight. I know of two regulars who can’t come. I haven’t heard anything from the other three regulars, so don’t know if they will be there or not. I also hope to have one new member there tonight. She’s on our mailing list, and would have been there last meeting except for missing the meeting announcement and learning about the meeting too late to attend.

Tonight we will have somewhere between 1 and 5 people there, I think, with three being most likely. That will be enough for meaningful fellowship and for critiques. If it’s just one—meaning me—I’ll be disappointed, I confess. I’ll stay till almost 7:00 PM and work on my next Buildipedia article in manuscript form, then head to the house. It will be an empty house since I am batching it again, my beloved having made the trip west to help out with the grandkids.

So, in an hour it will be off to the unknown fellowship, with a stop on the way at the Bentonville Public Library to see if I can find Documenting America in the electronic card catalogue and on the shelf, or perhaps checked out. Whatever happens, it will be a good evening.

Documenting America, flood studies, Genealogy, goals, The Candy Store Generation

2012 Writing Plan: Non-Fiction Books

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In addition to the non-fiction articles I mentioned in the previous post, I’ve also thought of and plan to work on some non-fiction book projects during 2012. One for sure, and three probable, are what I’m thinking of. I suppose, if I could become really, really productive, I might be able to write a fourth one as well. For all of these, I plan on self-publish.

  1. The Candy Store Generation is my first project, already started, but not very much done. This will be a political book. The Candy Store Generation is the Baby Boomers, and I’m convinced they (we) are ruining America. We are now in charge of business and industry, are the majority of teachers in the schools and universities, are in charge of the Congress, States, and local governments. And the USA is in decline. Could it be that the Boomers are at fault? I think so, and this book will show it. Status: I have written only about 4000 or so words on the way to 40,000 words. I have some research to do on the makeup of Congress, which I have started but am only 10 percent done with. Since this is an election year, I’d like to have this done and available by about May, but that is perhaps too ambitious.
  2. I have done much research into my wife’s paternal immigrant ancestor, John Cheney of Newbury, Massachusetts. He came to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635. I have an eleven page document of facts and figures that I would like to flesh out into about a 40-50 page biography. I have in my hands three or four histories of Newbury, which I can use to fill in something about his times. I also can take the bare facts and turn them into narrative. In fact, I started this at one time, and should be able to find it on a computer some where. Why do this? John Cheney has many descendants, many of whom are studying their genealogy. I encounter them on message boards all the time. Much misinformation has been posted on-line about John Cheney, and it would be nice to correct it. Also genealogy books sell for a good premium compared to books as a whole. A 50 page e-book would sell for at least $4.00, in print for $10.00. The cover wouldn’t be important. I have no schedule for this, as I’d like to see how other projects, already scheduled, go first.
  3. I have a number of articles written about floodplain engineering that would form the basis of a decent book. But the key thing I would put in this book is Federal floodplain regulations, and format and annotate them in a way to make them more useful than as they are published by the Feds and commented on by FEMA. I think it would be a 60-80 page book. I don’t know what I’ll do with this. It seems like a good idea, and would sell for a good price relative to its length. I just don’t know if I would have the time for this, or if the good price will offset the relatively small audience for this subject.
  4. A fourth work that has come to mind is a second book in the Documenting America series. I’ve already done some of the research for this. I would probably make it more time-limited, probably to the Civil War years: before, during, and after. I’ve already gathered some material for this, and may have written part of a chapter. You might wonder why I would write a second Documenting America book when the first has sold a grand total of 27 copies in eight months. I would answer: because I can and want to. It is a way for me to study history and get paid for it. How sweet is that! If I do this, it would most likely be at the expense of some other project.

Well, those are my plans, or a combination of plans and hopes/dreams. We’ll see how many of these non-fiction book projects actually come to pass.

non-fiction, Writing

2012 Plans: Non-fiction articles

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As 2012 begins, I have three non-fiction article writing gigs in hands. One is for real money; one is for almost no money; one is for unknown money.

The no-money one of these is Suite101.com. This was starting to be an earner for me, until Google made major changes in their search algorithyms and ruined access to the site. I wrote 127 articles there on a variety of topics that interested me. I figure these articles amount to about 101,000 words. Back in January-February 2011, it looked like all the work was beginning to pay off, as ad-share revenue was finally amounting to something. Then Google screwed us, and did so again in August. Ad revenues are down to less than $5.00 per month average, maybe closer to $3.00 per month.

I haven’t written an article there since last February, though I remain a member in good standing, and could write there any time I want. The site is soon to go through a major re-vamp. I’m waiting to see what they do, and if anything I want to write on will still be suitable. I don’t expect to dedicate a lot of time to this site in 2012, though that could change as site changes unfold.

The one for decent money is Buildipedia.com. I’ve been writing there since about August 2010, a variety of engineering and construction article. Right now I’m writing a twice a month column on construction administration, something I’ve done a lot of in my career. I’m paid $100 for these 500-600 word articles, which take not too much time to plan, research, and write. I have one due Monday, and another two weeks later. It looks as if I’ll get contracts monthly so long as they like the results.

I could also pitch feature articles to Buildipedia. I wrote about 15 for them in 2010-11. The previous editor was starting to reject most of my feature article ideas, but I should pitch some to the new editor and see where they go.

The third gig is a site named Decoded Science. The owner/editor invited me to join and submit articles. I have one written, but have not yet taken time to complete all my paperwork. Their article submittal process is quite different than for the other two sites, and I suppose I’m holding off because I don’t want to learn a new system. But I will write for them, at least a few articles, and see how the ad-share revenue is. I’m thinking of writing some articles on low impact development, something I’m learning that is all the rage in site design right now.

Apart from these, I have no plans to plan, pitch, or write freelance articles this year. The one experience I had in 2009 with an article for Internet Genealogy was not fun. If all print mags are similar, I’m good writing for the Internet for less money. Actually, at Buildipedia it’s a lot more money per word, and I don’t have to beg them to pay me.

Church History Novels, Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Doctor Luke's Assistant, fiction, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Short Stories, Writing

2012 Writing Plan: Fiction

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Now, on Jan 4, 2012, looking ahead to what I plan to accomplish this year with my fiction, here’s what the year will look like.

  1. Publish my second short story, titled “Too Old To Play”. The story is written. I’ve  edited it for typos, plot, language usage, etc. It’s ready to publish, in my view. I e-mailed it to my critique group mailing list and to another trusted reviewer, so far with no response. I’m not really worried about  receiving critiques. If I get some, I’ll see what I need to do. If I don’t get any, I’ll publish as is. My schedule is to eSP this in January. Since it’s a sequel to my previously published short story, “Mom’s Letter”, I hope they will feed sales to each other. I’ve already “commissioned” creation of the cover.
  2. Publish my novel Doctor Luke’s Assistant. I finished what I consider the last round of edits a month or so ago. Publishers have told me it’s a good idea, but they won’t publish such a long work in a difficult genre from an unknown author. I figure it won’t have great sales, but what’s the downside in self-publishing it? Only the cost of a cover (already commissioned). If it doesn’t sell much, then the editors will be proved right in their judgment of it. If I make anything on it, that’s more than my prospects through commercial publishers. Right now I’m planning for an e-book. It’s so long I’m afraid a POD print book will be too expensive. I’m targeting this for February, which is very do-able
  3. Publish my novel In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. The book is written, and partially edited. I sent it out to about twelve beta readers in October, and have heard back from three. The copy they read had many typos, as I had not proof-read it. I have a few plot issues to address, and must make a judgment on the amount of dialog vs. narrative. I think I can have all this done by the end of February, making production of an e-book in March fairly firm.
  4. Publish another short story in the Danny Tompkins series. I hadn’t thought of adding another story to this series until recently. Heck, the second one didn’t even come to me until three months ago. I haven’t seen myself as a short story writer. So I’m still testing the waters. A plot for another one (actually two) has run through my mind, so I might as well schedule it to be written and published. I’m guessing this will be somewhere around June, but I’m still in the early stages of this.
  5. Begin work on my third novel. I could go several ways with this. I could work on a sequel to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I hadn’t planned on that, but my friend Gary pointed out to me how the things I left hanging at the end of the book could segue very well into a sequel. I’m thinking my espionage book, China Tour, is most likely to be next, since it has had the longest gestation period. But a series of cozy mysteries has been brewing, and the first of those might be next. Given the uncertainty of what I’ll be working on, I’d say completion of the next novel in 2012 is unlikely, and I’m not putting completion in my plan.

So, there are my fiction writing plans for 2012. In a vacuum (i.e. with no non-fiction), it would be an easy schedule. Covers may be the hold up for maintaining my publication schedule.

self-publishing

2011 Book Sales

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As I posted on my Facebook writer’s page, 2011, my first year in the world of self-publishing, did not set any records. I sold a total of 35 books, and made a whopping $34.23 in royalties. Here are two charts that break it down into monthly figures.

I figure that sales will always fluxuate, some months being better (or much better) than others. The key is to always see sales rising. But with fluxuating months I wasn’t sure how to measure that. I can have MS Excel add a trend line, but those are not always the smartest things Excel does.

I decided to use what I call a Cumulative Monthly Average Sales. This is the total of all sales divided by the number of months I’ve had titles up for sale. This should normally be increasing as I add titles and markets. And for the most part it is, as seen in the line in the second graph. It will be interesting to follow this through the months ahead, as I add titles and continue to promote the old. Right now this number stands at 3.18. So any month I sell four or more books this number will go up, until it tops 4.0.

The spike in revenues in November and December reflect personal sales of the paperback version of Documenting America. I make $3.93 per copy. I don’t need to make that much per copy, but the price is set by the minimum I have to charge on Amazon so as not to lose money on those sales. I suppose I could discount self-sales, but I’m not ready to do that just yet.

December was my highest month for sales, with 9. No coincidentally, I did more promotion in December than any other month, and I had the most markets available in November and December. I haven’t actually received any revenue from on-line sales yet, since I haven’t accumulated enough sales for the market to pay me. Since I am a cash-basis taxpayer for writing, these accumulated royalties won’t count as real income until they are paid to me.

So, while these numbers are small, and almost every writer can wish for more sales, these are not bad numbers for a partial year, limited copies, and very little promotion. The good news is I already have my first sale for 2012, of “Mom’s Letter” on Kindle.

Bible study, non-fiction, Wesley

2011 Writing in Review: Non-fiction Bible Studies

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The last of my posts reviewing my 2011 writing activities is in the area of non-fiction studies, primarily Bible studies. Actually, while I have a little writing of small group studies other than Bible studies, it was Bible studies that took some writing time this year.

Well, I suppose that’s not completely true. Yes, I worked on Bible studies the first couple of months of the year. But after that, any writing time I spent in this area was on John Wesley studies. My intent was to work up a large book dealing with his writings, and working that into a study of Christianity and the Bible.

At the writers conference in June, I talked with a couple of editors and found some interest in the project; however, the editor most interested said he would prefer studies of six lessons each. Split it into a series of books like that, he said, and he might be interested. So I began the process of consolidating my research then splitting the long study into a number of smaller ones.

I originally began writing these Bible studies to teach for our adult Sunday school class. During the summer, the church announced that we would be moving to a sermon-based curriculum in December. Unfortunately, that killed my motivation to complete two Bible studies in early development and the Wesley study series. That’s a lousy excuse, but that’s what happened.

So from about August till the end of the year, I didn’t work on any Bible studies for publication. I haven’t dropped the notion. I have four from the past that, with just a little polish, I could e-self-publish. I may do so in 2012. But wait, this post is about 2011. I’ll discuss what to do with those later.

Church History Novels, Doctor Luke's Assistant, fiction, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Writing

2011 Writing in Review: Fiction

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In 2011 I spent a lot of time on my fiction. At the beginning of the year I polished and published a short story, “Mom’s Letter”. I wrote this somewhere around 2005-06, first for a contest and then expanded and reworked. I published that at Kindle in February, at Smashwords in July. Sales are brisk, with a total of 9 copies sold (No; that’s not a typo).

When I attended the Write-to-Publish Conference in June, I pitched my second novel, In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, and an agent was interested. I hadn’t looked at it for a couple of years, and was surprised to see, when I prepared to submit the partial manuscript after the conference, that I had less than 15,000 words written. I thought I was over 20,000.

So I got busy. From mid-July to early October I completed the novel, ending at about 87,000 words. I sent it out to beta readers in October, and have received a trickle of comments back.

At that point in time, after a brief break, I read my first novel, Doctor Luke’s Assistant, which as been “in the drawer” for about three years, looking for “about 60 typos” a beta reader said I had but didn’t identify, and fixing a few minor plot problems or references. My goal is to e-self-publish it around February 2012. I made the typos and think it’s ready to go, cover permitting.

I then decided to work on another short story, to help me get another book on my self-publishing bookshelf. So I dashed off a sequel to “Mom’s Letter”, titled “Too Old To Play”. I’ve distributed that by e-mail to my critique group, but so far have had no responses. In my mind it’s ready to upload to Kindle, though I’m open to edits.

Beyond this, I dreamed a lot. I know which novel I’ll work on after that. I have at three series identified and at least five novels in each (by title). I have only outlined, at least in part, one. So this is work for the rest of my life.

 

Documenting America, non-fiction, The Candy Store Generation

2011 Writing Year in Review: Non-fiction Books

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Just before our Christmas trip I wrote out a schedule of posts for this blog that would take me through around January 13. Today I find myself two days and one post behind, the consequence of spending time with family over Christmas. I don’t regret the time, nor the need to catch up. But family is still in town, activities are still planned at least through January 2, so I’m not sure when, if ever, I will catch up.

The good news is: It doesn’t matter if I ever catch up. A day late, two days late, a week late, or even not posted at all, doesn’t much matter. Today I’ll at least begin the catch-up and see where it goes.

Reviewing 2011, in the area of non-fiction, book-length works, I had only one: Documenting America. I have other posts on this blog where I explain how and why this volume came into being, so I won’t take up valuable pixels to repeat that here. I will say what prompted me to finish it and publish it in 2011.

Back in January 2011, when I made the decision that I would e-self-publish some of my works (while not completely severing the dream to have something accepted at a traditional publisher) to test the process, I figured my completed short story, “Mom’s Letter”, was the perfect item to start with. I could practice formatting and uploading. I could see what went into having a cover made. I could see what it was like to track the work once it was live on line.

Then I looked at what to do next. I could have gone to my completed novel, Doctor Luke’s Assistant, but that didn’t seem right. I had these 18 or so newspaper columns I had written, only four of which I had published, or that I even tried to have published. I decided they could serve as the basis for a book. Lengthen each of the 18 to what I wanted them to be without the constraints of newspaper column-inches. Add to them until I had 40,000 words, and eSP it. The research, writing, and editing consumed March and April. By early May it was available as a Kindle book, though it took a little longer to attach the real cover.

Having got that far, I took another two months, with many other life issues getting in the way, to format the book for Smashwords and have it added there. CreateSpace took some more months, with the cover modification being one problem.

During all this time, I was thinking of what to do as a follow-up to Documenting America. I began research for a second volume (in fact, I almost called DA Volume 1), and have material in hand to generate at least 10,000 words. I also began writing a different, though sort of related work tentatively titled The Candy Store Generation. This is based on blog posts I made at a friend’s political blog about the Baby Boomers and how they (we) are not improving the United States. I pulled those blog posts together, and added some additional material. I believe it stands at about 5,000 words, needing to get to at least 30,000 words to be a viable book. I also did some research into the make-up of Congress, when the House of Representatives tipped to being dominated by the Baby Boomers. This turned out to be slow going, but I have the research started and well organized.

That’s it for non-fiction books in 2011. The next year-in-review post will be fiction of all types.

Buildipedia, Engineering, Suite 101

2011 Writing in Review: Non-fiction Articles

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It’s Christmas morning, and not everyone is up yet. So I think I’ll try to dash off the next in my year in review posts, this time about non-fiction articles.

I started 2011 with a renewed interest in writing articles at Suite101.com. For the first six weeks I added at least one a week, and had a couple of others in the hopper. Then around February 22 a major change in the Google search algorithm went into effect. Called “Panda”, this algorithm change pretty much killed content sites such as Suite101. Page views and ad share income dropped to very low levels over night. A slight recovery occurred in August, but then another Panda update killed it again. As a consequence, I have not written another article for Suite, and don’t intend to for a while.

I was contacted in March or April by a transportation industry newsletter to write an article for them. This was my first time to have an editor solicit me for an article. She wanted an engineer for this article, not a freelancer,  had seen some of my engineering articles at Suite101, and so contacted me. The pay was good, and writing this article required me to do some interviewing. That was good experience.

I wrote about ten (maybe a few more) articles for Buildipedia.com. That started out strong early in the year, but by June it started to fade, as they were assigning only one of every six article ideas I pitched to them. But they had an editorial change in November, I pitched a column on construction administration to the new editor, and it was accepted on a trial basis. At the end of the year I have had two columns published, and contracts for two more columns.

So it was a good year for non-fiction articles. Almost all my writing income came from them. It’s something I plan to keep doing into 2012.

poetry

2011 Writing in Review: Poetry

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2011 was not a banner year as far as my poetry writing is concerned. I had lines, stanzas, and verses floating through my head at different times, but I didn’t allow myself the time needed to develop them into complete poems. Prose writing took front seat in 2011; poetry a back seat.

All I wrote were three haiku, and one light verse poem for the workplace. The haiku, while short, are not necessarily easy. It’s more than just three lines of a certain syllable count. I follow the Lee Gura model for making a Japanese poetry form work in English. It includes: seasonal reference; nature reference; two images both linked and cut by syntax. I add one other rule. I try to make the middle line ambiguous, thus having it go with either the first or second image. This is a complicating factor, but I enjoy it.

The light verse I wrote was requested by my company, a CEI version of “Twas the Night Before Christmas”. I did that just last week. That was a no-brainer, and barely worthy of being considered a poem.

The other thing I did this year that was poetry related was take part in several discussion threads at Absolute Write. I critiqued a few poems there, but not many. The discussions dealt with “Is Poetry Dead” and “Perfect Iambic Pentameter”, things like that. It’s a good way to maintain my interest in poetry while not actually writing poetry.

Given my busyness with other writing, and the health problems I went through in 2011, I’m happy with that poetic output. Maybe 2012 will see more.