All posts by David Todd

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?

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, family, Writing

Limited Writing Time

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This week looks to be a dud as far as writing goes. We have out-of-town family in-town. Not staying with us, but staying in the area and performing each night at the Country Gospel Music Association convention being held in Springdale. I believe the performances are each night from last night through Friday, and maybe some during the day on Saturday. We went last night, not getting home until almost midnight. The 5:45 AM alarm seemed kind of early this morning.

And actually, I didn’t get much writing done over the weekend. On Friday this illness that has beset me, be it Lyme disease or whatever it is, seemed to flare up a little. Saturday we went to see a matinée performance of the last Harry Potter movie, then shopping. I came home and felt totally wasted, perhaps the result of all the popcorn I ate. By Sunday afternoon I was better and was able to…

…format and upload “Mom’s Letter” to Smashwords. It was easier than expected. The Smashwords Style Guide is long, but as it turned out my MS Word file was mostly according to the style guide. Almost immediately I had a sale, and I’ve had the sample portion downloaded four other times. I like the statistics that Smashword gives; much nicer than Kindle. You can see more items, and have a better feel for what’s going on. That’s all on the page for the book if you are logged in as the author. Then there’s another stats page that gives even more information. As I say, very nice.

So, I don’t know if I’ll be going every night to the sing or not. I suspect so, in which case I’ll get little writing done this week. I’ll try to make a blog post or two, before work, on breaks, or on the noon hour.

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Writing

“Send”

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I did it.

The agent I met with at the Write-To-Publish Conference last month said, “Send me your novel as it is, even unfinished, so I can evaluate it.” I didn’t quite do that. I’d written two chapters in the month before the conference, but had lost the file with the latest typed version. A couple of weeks ago I wrote about finding the lost file.

Being delayed in the finding and polishing, I decided to delay a sending little bit to add some more chapters, so as to get the book to the first plot point. That’s the point where the hero experiences the event that triggers him to go on with the quest. I finished to that point on Sunday, and have spent the last three days proof-reading and polishing. Those edits I completed tonight (bringing the word count to 21,200), saved the file with a new date. I had only to attach it to a simple e-mail to the agent and click “send”.

Fear entered in at that point. Fear of rejection? Fear of success? I don’t know. At our appointment at the conference, once the agent liked the concept of the book, she asked, “What kind of platform do you have?” “Platform” for a novelist means “ready-made audience.” What do I have? A blog with 14 followers and 350-450 page views per month, a new writer’s web site, a Facebook fan page with 6 followers, two self-published e-books with a total of 11 sales. A writers critique group of 6 regulars and 13 on the mailing list. In short, nothing.

This is a make or break time. Short of a financial windfall, I won’t be going to any more conferences, and almost no unknown novelists get discovered through the slush pile. My chances of being so discovered are quite low. So selling my book through a face-to-face meeting is probably my best shot. Since that might be my last face-to-face meeting with an agent, this is probably my last shot. Thus, clicking “send” carried a lot more weight that a simple mouse movement.

So I hesitated; re-read my e-mail and made a change or two; re-read some of a scene in the book but could find nothing I wanted to change. Finally I did it.  clicked “send”—and Yahoo e-mail said I had typed an invalid e-mail address. Ah hah! An omen! Or maybe a God-sent hesitation. Or maybe just a stupid typo. I fixed the typo and clicked “send” again before I could over think the hesitation.

So it’s gone, now sitting in the agent’s inbox, ready for her to open, read the simple e-mail, open the attachment, love the book, pick up the phone (or e-mail me) and say, “I love ! Let’s talk representation.”

Did I ever mention that my dreams are very, very big?

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Writing

Working the To-Do List

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It took me a couple of weeks after returning from the Write-To-Publish Conference to figure out what to do next. Well, not exactly. I knew the first this I had to do was to send thank you notes to the many people on the faculty, and a few fellow attendees, for the interactions we had. So that took first place on the to-do list. Next was to prepare the things I had to send, the materials requested by agents and editors I met with. Third would be to follow-up and send some of my works to fellow writers who asked to review them.

I have that to-do list somewhere, maybe in my yellow conference folder. If I recreated it now, without looking at it, I think this is what it had.

  • WTP Conference thank you notes
  • more work on Fifty Thousand Screaming People, then submit
  • a proposal to Timeless magazine for some genealogy articles [PARTIAL]
  • a proposal to Timeless magazine for a short story
  • a proposal to Wesleyan Publishing House for a series of books on John Wesley’s writings [SOME RESEARCH COMPLETE]
  • a proposal to SmallGroups.com for some small group studies [SOME RESEARCH COMPLETE]
  • submit some poetry to Advanced Christian Communicator magazine
  • a copy of Father Daughter Day to David and to Sally
  • a copy of Documenting America to Jim

That’s not too bad. I had sort of been bemoaning my lack of progress over the last couple of weeks, but when I list everything, and add it up, I have made some progress, despite taking a week off doing not much of anything, using my computer woes as an excuse.

This week I added about 8,000 words to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, bringing it to just over 21,100. More important than the specific word count is the place where I’m at. The last chapter added brought the book to the “first plot point”. As defined in a class on fiction writing that James Scott Bell taught, this is the event in the book that causes the hero to move out on the quest. Normally the event is at least partially caused by the hero himself—well, it doesn’t have to be, but it makes a better story if it’s his own doing that forces him on the quest.

In this case, the event is Ronny Thompson’s, pitching phenom with the Chicago Cubs, blow-up with his parents. He argues with his dad over farming vs baseball, and with his mom over family and small towns vs friends and the big city. He speaks harshly to his mom, who responds with her own anger, then Ronny leaves for spring training a week before pitchers and catchers are to report.

When I planned the book, I hadn’t quite worked out this plot point. As I added chapters and words this past week and weekend, it all kind of came together. I’ll re-read it tonight, and see if everything I’ve written makes sense, and look for the stray word, the unfinished sentence, the excessive modifier that all tend to make a first draft a first draft. I’ll fix those, then by mid-week I’ll fire it off to the agent that requested it.

Then, what next? If I work my to-do list, I’ll next complete the proposal for some genealogy articles and fire it off. I’ve already drafted a proposal; I just need to find it, polish it, probably run it by crit group tomorrow, and send it. Then, as time allows (since I don’t write in a vacuum but occasionally have to pay bills and update budget spreadsheets and deal with health insurance claims and help manage my mother-in-law’s retirement money), I’ll hop on the Wesleyan Pub House proposal.

To-do lists are great, aren’t they? It’s about time to re-make mine.

poetry, Writing

Thoughts Behind Rejection

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our son, Charles, will next Monday begin his professional career. Doctorate in hand, he begins his position as an associate administrator over admissions for the Pritzker Medical School of the University of Chicago. On a phone call this week we talked, not for the first time, about the job and what it entails. Some of it will involve recruiting trips, to various universities, to encourage potential medical students to apply to their school.

In the course of that conversation, he said that Pritzker accepts maybe 10 percent (I think that’s about right; don’t hold me to that number) of those who apply. For the U of C as a whole, there’s also many more applicants than positions. That caused me to ask what to me seemed to be an obvious question: “If you have more than enough applicants, why are you going out and recruiting?”

He explained that recruiting was for the purpose of getting more and more qualified candidates to apply—so that they can reject them. Actually, he didn’t say that. He said that universities, and professional schools such as the Pritzker, thrive in part on “exclusivity”. The more candidates they reject relative to the number of positions available, the more exclusive the school will appear, and the more better candidates will apply. They will always had a difficult time competing against the good medical schools such as Harvard’s, but exclusivity helps. If they can say, “Only 5 percent of those who apply to Pritzker are accepted,” that will look better than saying, “Only 25 percent of those who apply….”

I suppose that’s true. A med school candidate, planning on applying to Harvard and similar exclusive schools and thinking they can be one of the 1 or 2% who are accepted, might not apply to a Pritzker that accepts 25% of all applicants, but might apply to a Pritzker who accepts only 5%. So off the school goes to recruit. Get the better candidates to apply, accept the best among those, and hope that with each class you’ll have a better and better student body. Then, maybe at a point in the future, some of those applicants who are accepted to both Harvard and Pritzker will go to Pritzker

I wonder if writing is a little bit like that, or at least traditional publishing is. The rejection rate is sky-high for most things that a person would want to publish. An agent that is actively recruiting new clients might see 100 query letters and want to see a partial manuscript for only 5 or 10 of those. Of those 5 or 10, the agent might want to see 1 or 2 full manuscripts. Of those 2, an offer of representation might come to only one. At most one. The agent will most likely need many more than 100 queries to find that one writer he/she would want to represent. Yet, the agents invite queries to be sent, and attend conferences and workshops with the intent of recruiting new writers, hoping to find that one writer who can produce a mega-best-seller.

This isn’t really the same as the medical school analogy. In writing, it’s a buyers market. Too many writers chasing after too few publishing positions. In medical school, it’s a seller’s market where the best candidates and the best schools are concerned. I’m not quite sure how the bottom 95% of the candidates fit in, and I think my analogy breaks down.

Today I submitted three poems for possible publication. I submitted them to a small-ish periodical, one that I’ve read from time to time but don’t subscribe to. It’s a publication for writers and speakers. The have mostly prose, but publish some writing-related poetry. I met the poetry editor of this mag at the Write-T0-Publish Conference, and she suggested I submit some. This might be a better than 1 or 2% chance for garnering a publishing credit. Maybe it’s around 10 to 20%. A week or two ago I submitted a haiku to a group that’s putting an anthology together to help school libraries that were destroyed in the Joplin tornado. I think that one may have as much as a 25% chance of acceptance.

Clearly I’m not exclusively applying to the Pritzkers and Harvards of the writing world. I’ve been doing that for about eight years, and getting no where. I may be close with my baseball novel, but I may also be farther away than I thought. We’ll see.