Here’s a possible cover for my professional essay, “The Learning Curve”. It’s not really what I want, but it’s all I can do given my skills at present. Created in PowerPoint and saved out to a jpeg. Still not sized for either Kindle or Smashwords.
Category Archives: Writing
A Wasted Weekend?
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.
A Little Publicity
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.”
Writing Time Hard to Come By
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.
Hard to Get Motivated
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.
Still one sale at a time
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.
I Guess I’ll Keep On
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.
August 2013 Book Sales
Sales dropped again last month. After selling 20 in June and dropping to 9 in July, I sold only 5 in August. They were of four different titles. I sold two copies of In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, one of which was in England.
At Amazon’s Author Central, my author rank has dropped to the lowest level ever (excepting for a one-day mistake caused by some change in Amazon’s algorithms.
Here’s two copies of the table: one at full size and one at reduced size that I can link to in my self-publishing diary at Absolute Write.
Writing and Publishing
Sunday I got back to work on Headshots, the sequel to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, my baseball/Mafia novel. As I wrote FTSP I didn’t plan for it to have a sequel. My friend Gary Boden pointed out all the hanging plot lines and said it was set up great for a sequel. I realized he was right. The first chapter came out last October, as I was casting about for what to write next.
As I say, Sunday I wrote on it again for the first time in ten months. The second chapter flowed fairly well. I knew exactly what I wanted to write and had thought out the chapter for a while. I added 1700 words to the book, bringing it to around 3,150 words.
Then last night I was back at my computer in The Dungeon, with the book pulled up, ready to add 500 to 1000 words to start the third chapter. Except, I stalled. I’m writing about one of the characters from the first book, and I can’t remember one key fact about her and how I handled that. I wrote what I think is correct, but then thought maybe I’d better wait. It would be too easy to write that and never get around to checking the first book to make sure the two are correct.
I talked about this (via Facebook messaging) a few days ago with a writer colleague, and she asked me how long it would take to write the book. I said that I didn’t know, since I had a lot of other tasks to complete as well. Some of those are writing and some publishing.
On the writing side, I need to finish the graphics for my professional article, “The Learning Curve”. I suppose graphics are writing related, though it feels a lot like publishing. Then I need to create a cover for it and publish it. So writing quickly turns into publishing for this item.
Other publishing tasks on the near horizon are:
- Make (or have made) a proper cover for The Gutter Chronicles, for both e-book and print book; upload the improved cover to all retail outlets; create the print book and publish it.
- Make (or have made) a better e-book cover for In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People; upload to all retail outlets; create a print book for this and publish it.
- Try a different internal font for Doctor Luke’s Assistant and decide if I want to make a change; if I do have the print cover redone and re-publish it. I’m pretty sure I’m going to do this. After comparing books with 12 point and 11 point fonts, I think the 11 point works better.
So there is a summary of my upcoming work. Writing and publishing. This is how it will be forever, so long as I remain a self-published writer.
Book Review of “The Art and Craft of Storytelling”
I don’t remember where I picked up The Art and Craft of Storytelling by Nancy Lamb. It’s not a used book, so I bought it at a bookstore somewhere, possibly the nearby Barnes & Noble or at a writing conference.
I started this book sometime in early 2012, I think, and read as far as page 118. I found it to be a great resource in exactly what the title says: the art and craft of storytelling. I also found the author to have a good attitude toward new writers. So many how-to-write books, blogs, and conference presentations seem to be far removed from the newbie. Typically the author or presenter is decades into their career and don’t really relate to the new writer. Nancy Lamb does.
I even took time to track down an e-mail address for her and wrote her an e-mail, thanking her for her book and her attitude. That started a brief e-mail exchange between us, and she was just as helpful in those as she is in the book.
At that point in time I put the book aside, other matters pressing me. In late July I was looking for a writing book to read and picked it up. I had forgotten about it in the more than a year since I put it back on the shelf. It looked like a new book, but I found a little marginalia in the early chapters. So I went to the last chapter and read it to see if it sounded familiar. It sort of did, but the book had none of the usual signs of being read through.
I vaguely remembered Lamb’s name and thought Maybe I exchanged e-mails with her. Sure enough I found them, learned where I was in the book at that time, and decided I would read the rest. Feeling kind of crazy, and having just read the last chapter, I read the chapters one by one from the back to where I had left off before. This worked because the chapters somewhat stand alone. On occasion something was referenced to an earlier chapter, but those were easy to work through.
Lamb has a logical approach to her work. She covers many things that relate to how a story comes together, what its elements are. Her writing is clear and helpful. The best part is she hasn’t forgotten what it’s like to be a new author. I like that.
This book is definitely going in my library, and I’ll read it again. I’m sure I”ll get something out of it each time I read it.