Category Archives: Writing

Documenting America, The Candy Store Generation, Writing

Time: The same old, same old dilemma

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I have only so many hours:minutes a day to devote to writing. Some days are more than others. At the same time, I have only so much mental stamina:physical stamina to apply to those hours:minutes. Sometimes the two don’t align. This weekend they didn’t fully align. After yard work Saturday morning, the first I’ve been able to do since the ehrlichiosis flare-up happened, I felt good. My knees hurt a little, but not too much. I ate, rested, did a few chores inside, then went to The Dungeon to write. Alas, physical tiredness overwhelmed the gray cells, and I got less writing done than I’d hoped. This continued into Sunday.

For the weekend, I think I added somewhere between 3,000 and 4,000 words to “In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People”, bringing the word count to around 52,400. It was good to get past the milestone 50,000, but there’s still a long way to go. At 5,000 words a week, I won’t finish until around October 15. That’s just the first draft. I’ll then have rework and rework and rework to make it truly ready for submittal. Of course, by that time I hope to hear from the agent who has the partial.

Unfortunately, to achieve that much production given the disruption in the hours:minutes/mental:physical continuum, I had to neglect other writing chores. I neglected this blog and An Arrow Through the Air. I had to neglect freelance article writing. I’ve quit proposing articles to Buildipedia.com, even though that pays fairly well. I’ve quit writing for content sites, even though that pays a little. The content sites are not a big deal. I miss the money from Buildipedia. I also miss regularly posting to the blogs.

I’ve also neglected any follow-up work to Documenting America. I started on what might be the first follow-up work, The Candy Store Generation, as well as on a second volume of Documenting America. I’ve also pretty much given up on promoting the volume I’ve e-self-published. Sales have stalled in August after a promising up-tick in July.

Then there’s all the household things that aren’t getting done because they won’t get done if I don’t do them. Such as the over that only half works. Such as the microwave that no longer gives us full power. Such as the place way up at the top of the chimney, 30 feet off the ground, where the siding has torn away. Such as the skylight that’s leaking. Such as the painting that will be needed once the skylight is fixed. Such as my various piles of papers that aren’t as neat or hidden as they need to be. Such as the pile of bills and receives that need to be filed. Such as twenty other things I’m forgetting.

Time. There ain’t enough of it. To whom much is given, much is required. Unfortunately, I may be pretty much out of much.

Writing

The Other Part of To Do Lists

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In my last post I mentioned how having a plan for my novel helped me when I came to a point where I wasn’t sure what to do next. I made a plan and then began following that plan.

That doesn’t mean the plan was perfect. Already I’ve made two adjustments as I went. I consolidated two chapters and shifted the order of two others. But the plan has kept me going, and I continue to make almost daily progress on the book.

But, what I don’t have, or I should say what I haven’t done a very good job on, is developing a to-do list system for my writing. At work I print out a daily log sheet, where I record major activities, people I interact with, log my calls, and sometimes log my e-mails. Instructions from clients, instructions to contractors–all goes on the sheet.

One part of the sheet has a list of my current projects, which I change as I need to, and a space for me to write my to-do list. I’ve never done the best job with the to-do list, but I generally use it. On the left side I write things for the office, and on the right side I write personal items (pay this bill, call the plumber, etc.). As I say, I’ve never done the best job at keeping and following a to-do list.

However, about two years ago, maybe not that long, I heard about a system where you put only four things on your to-do list. I suppose the idea is you can concentrate better on those things. If you get them all done, add four more. I’ve been following that, and I think it’s helped. Although, sometimes I see that list with only four items on it and think that’s all I have to do, and tend to slack off a bit. So I’ve taken to drawing a line after the four and adding two or three more things, just to remind myself that there’s more that I must do.

Well, for writing I have never been able to develop that kind of system. I tried listing all my works-in-progress, and drawing a to-do list from them. That hasn’t worked real well, partly because my works-in-progress keep changing. I’m working on a new system now, and I hope within a week or two to be able to report back that I’ve found something that works.

Without a to-do list, I forget things. I forgot to check back with my Smashwords dashboard after I uploaded Documenting America to see whether it was accepted to the premium catalogue. It wasn’t, and it sat there for a couple of days without my checking it. Then, after I learned that, I took a couple more days to get to it. Finally I made the corrections, only they weren’t the right corrections, and it still wasn’t accepted. Even this time I failed to check the dashboard daily, and consequently was a few days late getting it corrected and accepted.

Same thing with doing the work needed to get the paper edition of Documenting America out. I need to do some study at CreateSpace, and see how to turn my manuscript into print. I actually think it’s fairly easy, but I never seem to get to it. Perhaps having a to-do list will help.

Anyway, I’m working on it. As I say, hopefully in a couple of weeks I’ll have something that works.

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Writing

Writing Productivity

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on The Writers View 2 (TWV2) e-mail group this week, the question asked by a panel member was about productivity for the writer. How do you establish productivity as a routine? What derails your productivity? How do you get it back.

I was interested, given that I’ve just come through a time of pretty good productivity, but anticipate less over the next couple of weeks. Almost all my writing time was spent on my baseball novel, In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. With the 850 words I added last night, it now stands at about 37,000 words, on the way to somewhere around 85,000.

When the good productivity began about three weeks ago (or a little less), I worked on it over a weekend, and got 2,000 words written both on Saturday and again on Sunday. It took me a while to get back to it during the week. I was trying to correct something on the Smashwords edition of Documenting America, and it wasn’t working.  Plus just getting it ready for Smashwords took some doing, a couple of weeks before that. That was “writing time”, even though no words got added to paper.

That Wednesday I added at least 2,000 words to FTSP, maybe more. I came up to the end of the part of the book that was clearly planned out. Now the planning was all in my mind. I’m in the part of the book where “strange incidents” begin happening to the protagonist, Ronny Thompson, as the NY Mafia guy tries to distract him from pitching well, thus hoping the Cubs don’t make the playoffs, which means they obviously wouldn’t win the World Series.

I had thought through some of these strange incidents, but had never planned them. Which one of the five would be first? Which second, etc.? How would I lead up to each? How would I make it clear to the reader that something wasn’t quite right about the way things were happening? Then what about the counter-moves by the Chicago Mafia guy? Would he respond to each strange incident, or were his counter-moves actually in the works before the incidents?

Then what about the sports reporter for the Chicago Tribune? How was I going to work him in in response to the strange incidents? I hadn’t really thought about that at all. He was simply going to receive a packet of material at his desk from an anonymous source, material damaging to the Thompson family, and run it in the paper. That didn’t seem quite right, however.

So on Thursday of last week, rather than try to work on the novel by adding words, I worked on it by developing a plan for the last 58,000 words. I listed the strange incidents yet to come and put them in the logical order. I interspersed them with interactions of Ronny and his girlfriend, Ronny on the diamond, the reporter doing some investigative work, the two Mafia guys and their rogue associates, the girlfriend by herself.

Three important things included in this planning were related to Ronny’s girlfriend. was the scene where the readers come to realize (if they haven’t figured it out from the foreshadowing) that Ronny’s girlfriend is a Mafia plant, and not a very nice girl. I planned a chapter of Ronny and Sarah having a quiet, innocent dinner at his apartment, and a chapter of her coming to realize what her life had become, and how it was once better, setting the stage for her character arc by the end of the book. All that I knew I wanted in the book, but hadn’t actually figured out how it was going to happen. Now I know, and the first two of those three events are written.

To each of the chapters I added a number of words I wanted it to be, approximately, with the whole thing adding up to my planned 85,000. I’m not being dogmatic about these chapter lengths, however. I’m just guessing, based on the items in the chapter, how long they’ll be.

So beginning last Friday, through Monday, I had great productivity. Looking at my written plan, which could be called a loose outline, I began writing, not skipping anything. Just knowing what was coming next helped me to prepare. I’m sure in my non-writing hours I thought through the chapter I would write that night. In four days I added more than 10,000 words, then on two weekend days, with distractions and some health issues, I added another 1,400.

I was going to write about the second part of planning to increase productivity, but I’ve run out of noon hour time, and this post is too long already. I’ll add another post soon.

May the productivity continue.

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.

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, 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.

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.