All posts by David Todd

Fifty Thousand Screaming People

Writing Productivity

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Once again, I’m batching it, at least through tonight. Lynda is in Oklahoma City, helping tend to grandchildren and visiting a friend in the hospital there, someone she went to church and school with in Meade Kansas. So it’s been quiet around the house. I often don’t turn the TV on much, preferring to read or write in the silence. Some writers say they do better with noise around, either background music or street noises. I think I do better in the silence.

For all the peace and quiet, I didn’t have as productive a week as I could have had. For the week I added over 8,000 words to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, bringing the total words to a couple of hundred short of 35,000, on its way to around 85,000. That sounds like a lot of production, and I suppose it is. If I could do that many words every week I’d be done with it in six or seven weeks. Done with the first draft, that is.

However, I could have written much more. I allowed the spam problem on this blog take at least a day away from production and I tried to figure out what to do. A lot of that time wasn’t figuring time, however, but fuming time. Fuming and wasting time, feeling sorry for myself. Another day I was too tired to write. I sat at the computer for a couple of hours, but got nothing written. A professional writer should be able to fight through the tiredness, and a produce through perspiration when inspiration fails.

Part of my slowness was that a couple of these chapters were something I was writing up to, but hadn’t figured out exactly how I’d do them. One was the first Mafia-induced distraction in the protagonist’s life. I came to that chapter with no plan. I was able to write it, and I think produce a good chapter, with a twist or two that didn’t come to me until during the writing.

Then there was the chapter where the protagonist’s “girlfriend” shows the readers that she isn’t what she claims to be. I had sort of been dreading that chapter, knowing it had to be in the book but not sure how to write it in a way that my mother would approve. Well, not my mother. She didn’t put many restrictions on her reading. Let’s say in a way my mother-in-law would approve. She doesn’t want to read things the least risqué or lurid. As I was writing the chapter, I found a way to show what I wanted to show without being at all explicit. I wrote that chapter over the weekend, and I’m pleased with it as it stands. I’m sure I can improve it some in rewrites.

Yesterday I wrote two chapters, over 3,500 words. The second one is a critical chapter where the girlfriend has her first plot point, the event that causes her to embark on the journey that will bring her through her character arc. Those that teach writing talk about the two plot points the protagonist should go through that leads him into the stages of his journey, but I’ve not heard them talk about plot points for characters below the protagonist-antagonist level, but it seems to me such events apply to them as well.

Anyhow, said girlfriend has begun her character arc. Tonight, plans are for the protagonist to have his fourth “strange thing” happen to him that is really a Mafia-induced event. It’s a big one, done under the noses of three people who are supposed to protect the protag from such things. I plan for that to be only about 1,000 words, though we’ll see how it goes. I’ve thought of one change I need to make in an earlier chapter. I’d love to have enough time to get into another chapter, where the “good” Mafia Don is able to add some protection for the protag in a way that nobody would suspect him.

One thing I did, on Friday I think, after I was too tired to write a second chapter, was to develop an outline for the rest of the book. I had an outline in my mind, even down to thinking through a scene here, a scene there, but I had nothing in writing, nothing that told me, “Okay, you’ve finished this chapter; what comes next?” Now I have that, and it’s a good feeling. It shows me that my thoughts on the length of the book are about right, and that the plot is about right. All that’s missing are the words.

family, Writing

Is it always going to be this way?

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I don’t take adversity very well. I need my life to be full of peace in order to be productive and creative. Today was anything but that.

It actually began last night, getting home from church around 8 PM, I found a large hole dug in my yard. The underground phone lines had been marked on the ground about a week ago, and the digging was where the markings were. Since we haven’t had any phone problems, I assumed this was an un-requested upgrade of the service line. Entering the house, I found we had no phone service.

It took me four phone calls today to find out who was responsible. That man couldn’t tell me when it would be fixed, just that they’d have a technician out not later than 5 PM tomorrow. Meanwhile I get home and the hole is still open and fenced off and I still have no phone service. If AT&T wants people to keep their land lines, they are sure doing a poor job of showing it.

Then there was the spam attack and trying to figure out what to do about it. That took almost 3 hours. I’d load a WordPress help page, and find it a mass of words, crammed together, with graphics and links. Page after page, link after link. You would think, since this is such a problem, they would have somewhere on the dashboard a direct link saying something like, “Download and install this widget to protect against automatic spam swarms. But no, you must search for it. Figure out exactly what you want and then search for it. Go through the multiple crammed screens, file downloads, file extractions. Never a Wizard to show what to do next.

Finally I figured it out. The protection is installed and active. Two hundred fifty auto spam posts deleted. All desire to write gone. I started the blog to develop a web presence to build a writer’s platform—that ready-made audience that agents and editors want you to have before they will even talk with you about any book. Yeah, right. My audience is smaller than my techno-IQ, which is almost in negative numbers.

I can’t help but think of that song that we played on tape and sang for Ephraim multiple times last week: “There was an old lady who swallowed a fly….” In this case it would be: There once was a writer who started a blog. Stupid dog to start up a blog. He started a blog to capture some readers…. I need to work on it beyond there.

Goodnight all. I can’t work under these conditions. Might as well go eat.

miscellaneous

Spam

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Folks, I have temporarily disabled comments while I deal with a spam problem. I had over 200 spam comments posted to the blog today, and I can’t deal with it. This is all very confusing to me on WordPress. On Blogger it was much easier to protect against spam.

Okay, I’ve installed protection, so I’m re-opening comments. Nothing showed up on my screen, but maybe that’s because I’m logged-in as administrator. I’ll try logging out and see what I get.

Documenting America, Writing

Citizen and Patriot

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Once again I am considering changing my writing course. Not changing it, exactly, but trying once again to focus it.

I came back from the Write-To-Publish Conference with too many irons in the fire. I worked on them as best I could, but have not been able to spend the brain power on them to make them into real prospects. I need to lay a couple of these works-in-progress aside.

Then today was a blog parade hosted by WordServe Literary Agency, with many of their clients posting on their platform building efforts. Out of twenty or more blog posts to that many different blogs, only a few dealt exclusively with the writer’s platform, the rest dealing with marketing of books in general. The thoughts I gleaned from the weight of these posts, and from another writer’s blog recommended to me today, were these:

  1. A network of family and friends who will champion your work is the first essential.
  2. Concentrate on one genre, to maximize marketing efforts as well as for other reasons.
  3. Social networking has become quite effective for book marketing.
  4. Blog to meet readers needs, not for other writers.
  5. Have a blog that targets the audience of your book.

These all seem like truisms to me. Well, except maybe social media. I have limited experience with it, and haven’t been able to satisfy in my own mind that is true. Certainly my initial experience with it says it is not true, but that maybe I have to work at it both harder and smarter.

So I think immediately I’ll exclusively devote my actual writing time to two works, In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, and the Documenting America brand, which would include The Candy Store Generation as the next installment. To build up a network, I’ve begun casting around for groups to join and participate in. I joined Conservative Arkansas today because, while I tried to take a tone in Documenting America that is not truly conservative, I think conservatives are the most likely audience. I’ve already made one post there and had a couple of people like it.

My blogs certainly have not given me an army of fans who will champion my writing. In fact, with a couple of notable exceptions, my family and friends have proven utterly disinterested in anything I write. Writing acquaintances have shown more interest. So I guess my efforts will have to be targeted to find a new army of friends.

Concerning having a blog targeted toward my work in progress, what I’ve thought of is to open a new blog page under this David A. Todd writer’s blog aimed at the potential audience of Documenting America. I would make posts in support of that work, possibly an excerpt from the book, possibly research toward a second volume, possibly editorials. Anything that would draw in and inform people who might want to buy Documenting America.

Doing this would mean making 3 posts a week in the new blog, which I’m thinking of calling “Citizen and Patriot”, after the passage in the James Otis speech around which chapters 1 and 2 of DA are built. But it would also mean having to cut back on my other two blogs. And finding time to write freelance articles would be impossible, so that would be gone for a while.

So my question to you, loyal readers, is this: Does this sound like a good idea to you? Should I write a blog targeted to US history, focused on original documents, not analysis? I’m anxious to know what you think.

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Harmony of the gospels, Writing

Getting into a Writing Routine

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Okay, excuses have to stop. My tick-borne disease is on the mend, if not fully reduced to antibodies. Grandson #1 is gone back to Oklahoma. Blogs are linked, and I can put different content on each and feel okay about it. So the time has come to get to work and write.

Last night I began the task of re-establishing a routine, and perhaps tweaking what I’ve done in the past. With my wife out-of-town, and with my aches and pains under control, I had no excuse but to be B-I-C for a significant number of hours yesterday. That’s “butt-in-chair” for you non-writers, implied that it’s either in front of a working computer screen and keyboard or at a writing desk with paper and manuscript.

I was at the computer from about 3:30 PM to 9:30 PM, with a 45 minute break for supper. During that time I worked on In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I wrote about 1900 words. Why not more in 5 1/4 hours, you might ask? First, I re-read the chapter I wrote last week, making a couple of small, though important, changes that should add a little intrigue as to what the mafiosos are doing. Then I remembered one enhancement I wanted to make to the first chapter, a simple six word sentence fragment by a radio announcer that will add nuance throughout the book.

Then, I set to work on Chapter 14. But, I hadn’t really planned or thought out this chapter, about spring training in my protagonist’s first full season in the major leagues. So it was a struggle to get into it. I kept “shelling out”, as I call it—to a computer game or a web site or Facebook or turning the TV on and off to hear some of the raging political news. I’d spend five minutes writing, get stuck, shell out to a game for fifteen minutes, think of something else to write and come back and write it. Then I’d get stuck again, shell out again, this time to a publishing industry blog, figure out what to do next, and come back to writing.

After my supper break, I had less and less of the shell out time and more time in the book as the needs of the chapter and the words of the characters gelled in my mind. In 5 1/4 hours I should have been able to write 3,000 or even 4,000 words. Maybe, if I was in a chapter I had already thought through, I could have done that. Or maybe, if I had a better way to think of what to write next, I could have produced more. But I completed the chapter, and think it’s not bad, and I enhanced two other chapters with not more than a hundred words. So I’m not displeased. Tonight I’ll be working on a chapter I have thought through, so hopefully I’ll get more done.

This morning I arrived at the office at the usual time, about 6:45 AM, beating the main commuting traffic. My devotions are from the Harmony of the Gospels that I wrote. Then I sit with my coffee and spend about 20 minutes adding to the passage notes section of the Harmony and twenty minutes formatting the letters of John Wesley. These I downloaded from The Wesley Center at the NNU website. I format them in a form I like that is tight for printing yet still very readable. I’m on volume 6 out of 8 volumes, the first five fully formatted and printed and residing in 3-ring binders, sometimes read, often waiting to be read.

Are these smart writing pursuits? I don’t know. The Harmony is not, I think, a commercial project. It’s more of a labor of love and a self-study guide. The Wesley letters might be a legitimate writing activity if I ever get my act together and pursue the Wesley study series I pitched at the Write-To-Publish Conference. That idea isn’t dead; I just haven’t figured out the exact form the series should take, and developed the idea enough to present a proposal to the publisher. But this is sort of a labor of love as well, and will lead to excellent reading matter for me once it’s all done.

So my routine is coming together. I don’t know how long it will last. I’d like for three months of it, with not too many interruptions. That will give me a completed novel, completed Harmony, completed Wesley letters, and some time to work on other projects. I might even feel like a productive writer.

writer's platform

More on Writer’s Platform

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Today on her blog, literary agent Rachelle Gardner posted the elements of a book proposal, at least how their agency wants to see them. While different agencies vary slightly, the elements Rachelle posted are pretty much universal. Every agent wants to see this information in a proposal before they will consider your book or send it on to an editor.

What troubles me most about the proposal is this statement, which she says is needed in both non-fiction and fiction proposals.

Author marketing: This is where you’ll talk about your platform. How are YOU able to reach your target audience to market your book? This is NOT the place for expressing your “willingness” to participate in marketing, or your “great ideas” for marketing. This is the place to tell what you’ve already done, what contacts you already have, and what plans you’ve already made to help market your book. A list of speaking engagements already booked is great; radio or television programs you’re scheduled to appear on or have in the past; a newsletter you’re already sending out regularly; a blog that gets an impressive number of daily hits. Include specific blog stats (monthly unique visitors, monthly pageviews), number of Twitter followers and number of Facebook fans/friends.

This is what bugs me most about trying to be published through a regular, royalty paying print publisher. “Speaking engagements already booked”? Really? What am I supposed to say? “I have this great book, and if it is every accepted by a publisher, it will be in bookstores in 24 months.” The audience would laugh me off the stage. Same thing for radio, double-same for television.

I just don’t get this idea that you must have a speaking platform in order to get a book published. Who will book someone to speak if they don’t have a book published? If I were scheduling speakers for some meeting, say a quarterly men’s meeting at a large church, if I had the choice to book a published author to speak or a wannabe author, which one would I choose? The published author, of course. Who in their right mind wants to spend an evening listening to someone who so far hasn’t been able to get published? This seems exactly backwards to me.

But maybe it’s possible with those civic clubs that meet weekly—the Kiwanis, Lions, Civitians, and probably half a dozen others. They need so many speakers that maybe they will take about anyone. But when I call the volunteer with the organization and ask to speak before the club, what do I say? “I’m trying to get published, but have to have speaking engagements lined up before any publisher will even talk with me. Want me to speak to your group?”

Now obviously, that’s not how I should go about it. For my book Documenting America, I should say something like, “May I speak to your club on a unique way to study USA history? It’s this….” If the concept is compelling, maybe the Kiwanis club will schedule me. There’s 17 Kiwanis clubs in our two county area, and probably five times that number for all the civic clubs put together. Is it possible I could speak to them all about a book not published?

I’m struggling with this.

writer's platform, Writing

Progress on Writing and “Platform”

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If I’m a writer, I have to write something. A good rule would be “Do something writing-related every day.” I pretty much follow that, though of course some days are more productive than others.

Yesterday, for example, on my writing “diary” sheet—which is a table of days of the month across and writing items down, with specific details footnoted at the bottom—I checked the following.

  • Harmony of the Gospels (wrote passage notes; some edits on the harmony)
  • John Wesley letters (formatting volume 6 for MS Word document)
  • An Arrow Through the Air (my other blog—posted there)
  • Absolute Write forums (posted)
  • Rachelle Gardner blog (posted)
  • Other writing blogs (posted)
  • Documenting America (format for Smashwords)

That’s not a bad number of items, though it’s easy to see that, except for the blog posts, I did no writing. I don’t consider my Harmony of the Gospels to be a commercial writing project; it’s more a labor of love.

So a day went by with no specific progress on my works-in-progress, other than formatting Documenting America for uploading to Smashwords. That’s important, but not writing. Also, the day went by with no promotion of my writing. The posts on the blogs and forums are a sort of general promotion, mainly in the fact that agents see my name and activity, and fellow writers and a few potential buyers see the same. I don’t dismiss the value in that, but it’s not a big platform building activity.

Obviously I have to devote more efforts to writing and building a writer’s platform. I need to work on this website, and figure out how to include a “contact me” link. I somehow need to promote my author page on Facebook to try to get more than the 8 fans I currently have. I need to start creating a buzz for Documenting America. I don’t want to do a lot of that until I get it listed on Smashwords and included in their premium catalogue for wide distribution.

I guess what I’m saying is I’m not unhappy with my recent efforts, but I’m not satisfied either. My physical problems of late are starting to fade. I’m feeling almost at my background level of aches, pains, and infirmities. Extra family responsibilities will soon fade, and that will be back to background. Beginning Sunday, I should have much more time available for writing and for platform building. I hope, with a post really soon, I’ll be able to report better progress at adding words and adding fans or sales.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Documenting America, self-publishing, Writing

Summary of e-book sales and royalties

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Don’t be fooled by the title of this post. Nothing much has changed. Other than it’s July 25, and I’m already standing at my best month yet for both sales and royalties.

That doesn’t mean much of course, since I haven’t sold much at all. But so far this month I’ve sold 2 copies of “Mom’s Letter” and 3 copies of Documenting America. These sales have accrued $2.01 to my accounts at Kindle and Smashwords.

See, I told you these were not earth-shattering numbers. But the fact it’s still my best month so far. Previously my best month was 4 units sold and $1.68 in royalties accrued. So it is indeed a better month.

This is what the e-self-publishing experts say: More books on more e-reading platforms will result in more sales. That’s turning out to be true. In July I added “Mom’s Letter” to Smashwords. I’ve wanted to add Documenting America to it as well, but that’s a little more involved as I have to create an electronic Table of Contents. That’s not difficult; it just takes time. Maybe I’ll get a little time to work on it tonight.

That brings my total sales to 8 of “Mom’s Letter” and 7 of Documenting America. My accrued revenue stands at $6.28. That’s over five months for the former and less than three for the latter. I would love to have more, and I’d hoped the increase would come quicker than this, but I’ll take these for now, considering how little time I’ve put into promotion.

But, today I had a big surprise. I have three sales reports I can check: sales in the USA Kindle store, sales in the UK Kindle store, and sales in the German Kindle store. Normally I only check the USA one, but today I checked the UK, and discovered I have one sale of “Mom’s Letter” there in July! Surprise surprise. I earned 0.22 Pounds Sterling for that sale, which will work out to $0.35. I’m not quite sure how that gets accumulated and paid out, but it’s there in the record as a sale. I’ll take it.

So, I’m on a roll, albeit a very small and slow roll. I really need to get Documenting America up on Smashwords, and find something else to publish. Doctor Luke’s Assistant is more or less ready to go. I could probably have that on Kindle in a week and on Smashwords in two. I also still have to do the work needed to get Documenting America on CreateSpace, so that I have a physical book for sale. I don’t want to do a lot of promotion before having the physical book for those who don’t want an e-book. Then I’d better get busy finishing In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People so that I can slide over to another volume of Documenting America. Or maybe get serious with The Candy Store Generation.

That’s a plate full. Oh, well, better to have ambitious goals than to sit and watch TV all night.

fiction, Writing

Why Do So Many Write Fantasy?

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I can’t remember if I’ve written about this before, but will plunge ahead without checking my archives.

At Rachelle Gardner’s blog, she has been posting a workshop on verbal pitches. One type of verbal pitch is called the “elevator” pitch. You want to be ready with that, the saying goes, in case you board an elevator at a conference at the same time as an agent or editor, who then asks, “Are you a writer? What are you working on? I get off at the tenth floor.” You have 30 seconds to tell about your book in so compelling a way that the agent or editor hands you a business card and says, “Send me your proposal.”

Talk about stressful! It’s never happened quite like that for me, but other occasions have arisen where a short, verbal pitch was called for. So I’m interested in what Rachelle has to say about this. Today she invited people to post their elevator pitch in a comment. She’s now up to 68 comments, of which 47 are the requested pitch (one of them mine). Of those 47, at least 3/4 are for some type of fantasy or science fiction book. Rachelle doesn’t represent authors of those books. This is the second or third time where people in long threads on her blogs have identified their genre, and each time it’s this many or more who write science fiction. If she doesn’t represent it, why are so many people following her blog?

And why are so many people writing fantasy? and, to a lesser extent, science fiction? Is the market so large that we need that many books? I don’t read much of it (a little science fiction from time to time but not recent time, and a little fantasy). I have a theory on this; don’t know if I’m correct.

Besides that fact that a lot of people do enjoy fantasy and sci-fi, I think a lot of authors choose it because they believe they do not therefore have to do any research. In fantasy just create your world and go to it. In sci-fi, determine your future time and the technology needed and go to it. No research required.

I’m not saying no research required, but I suspect that is a huge inducement to writers. It would make those books seem easier to write than, say, a historical romance. Or even a contemporary novel, which requires accuracy as to settings and circumstances. In a fantasy, who’s to say what accuracy is? Create your world and run with it.

I’m sure, however, that the greater amount of time spent creating the fantasy world (i.e. the equivalent of research) the better the novel will be. So if a budding novelist really wants to be published in these genres, they still have to do the “research” in order to write the best book possible.

So says me. Waiting to hear from others.

Fifty Thousand Screaming People

Would you buy this book?

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In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People

This novel is a sports thriller, about Mafia influence in baseball. A Kansas prairie farm boy breaks into the big leagues as a pitcher for the hapless Chicago Cubs. He pitches so well that he is the spark that can lead the Cubs to their first World Series victory in over a century. But if they do, a New York Mafia Don will lose an $80 million bet to a Chicago rival Don. To prevent this, the New York mobster becomes the pitcher’s enemy, and the Chicago Don his protector. Both try to manipulate his off the field life to suit their interest. He can’t understand what these strange things are happening to him; he just wants to play baseball.

It all culminates at the seventh game of the World Series, Cubs against Yankees, with a crossfire set up in Yankee Stadium to take the pitcher out if the Cubs are in a position to win. Will it trigger?