Coffee heat rising

Writing

Lazy as an old hound…

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…on a summer afternoon!

Okay, I admit to it: spending WAY too much time loafing.

The weather’s gorgeous. The laundry’s laundered, the groceries are shopped, the house is clean, and I. do. not. feel. like. doing. ANYTHING. creative or constructive! I did manage to backwash the pool today and ascertain that once again I need to call the pool guys to come clean out the DE filter. Again. I should’ve gone into the pool bidness.

Had to get up and go away from the computer to get anything done at all today. With the exception of Mr. Comey, reading about the doings in Washington is like watching the antics in a snake pit: at once hypnotically fascinating and revolting. I’m finding it so difficult to keep from flipping over to the news sources to stare in horror at the goings-on that I simply can’t get any work done unless I’m a long way from this contraption.

But by sitting down at a table with a pen in hand, I did manage (somehow) to draft four or five pages, once transcribed to type.

It’ll be interesting to see if this story turns into anything. Once again — as usual — my mood tends to straddle the line between literary and genre fiction. It’s too tacky to be literary, and too intellectual to make good thriller, sci-fi, or romance. What can I say?

I’ve signed up for a MOOC through the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. It starts tomorrow…that should be an amusing way to pass the summer. As voltage goes, from what I’ve seen so far, it’s pretty…low-tension. However, it’s free: you get what you pay for, I imagine. It’ll be interesting to see what comes of it.

Nothing, I expect, of value for the present imagined world. But nothing ventured…

Image: DepositPhotos, © vitalytitov

Gangbusters!

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The editing business really is going gangbusters! It’s a drought-and-deluge affair, and just now we’re in the middle of Noah’s Flood. Just moved two academic articles off my desk; we’re about to wrap up the current issue of CLS; another Chinese mathematician is in the wings; two indexes are in the offing; and I’m 10,000 words into an 89,000-word fantasy novel.

These bursts of incoming always get me all excited: if I could get this much work coming in all the time, I could make a living on this business!!!!!

But of course, as a practical matter, over the summer all the academics will go into estivation, not to be heard from until about two weeks before Christmas, at which time they’ll show up with a raft of arcane tomes all needing to be indexed by January 5. The Chinese mathematicians presumably spend the summer calculating, once they get their grad students out of their hair. The grad students flew into a frenzy along about April, pleading to get their dissertations in order by the first week of May.

In between times, nothin’ much is up. And of course, that means in-between times, I’m not earning much.

I’d like to get through 10,000 words a day for my current budding novelist. That would move his magnum opus off my desk in about 10 days, after all is said and done.

But lemme tellya, it ain’t easy. I had a slight head start this morning. It’s now 3:30 p.m., I’ve been working nonstop since 7:00 a.m., and I only just arrived at the 98,863rd word. After I finish lunch/dinner, I’ll easily make today’s goal. But…

If anything urgent comes up, this will have to go on the table till whatever new crisis is dealt with. And there breathes nary a Chinese mathematician who is not in a state of crisis….

But truth to tell, the hardest job is working with the wannabe Great Novelists of the Western World. Whereas reading their copy is infinitely more fun, and whereas (bless’em!) they never burden you with the terrors of APA, Chicago, CSE, AIM, or AMA documentation style, and whereas you do not have to ride herd on the batsh!t things they do with their references, NEVERTHELESS…

You do end up having to teach them how to write.

Most fiction writers, when they hire an “editor,” are really hiring a “developmental editor.” That would be something very like a writing coach. They want someone to show them how to write dialogue. How to build a character, how to wrangle point of view, how to set a scene. Oh hell…what a scene is, for hevvinsake! They are amateur writers, and they crave with all their lively being to become professional writers.

Academics, on the other hand, are professional writers, and about 90% of them are pretty good at what they do. They don’t need coaching on how to write. They need to have their documents regularized to fit their publishers’ endlessly complicated requirements. They need to have their references checked. If they’re native speakers of languages of the World at Large, they need to someone to make their golden words sound like English. Sometimes like American English, sometimes like the Queen’s English.

Writing coaching is more like teaching than like editing. Sort of like teaching graduate students, because generally your client will take the lesson and run with it. About a third of the time, the result is far better than anything you could do and better even than you hope your soaring student will accomplish.

But like teaching, it’s one bitch of a lot of work.

Explaining something that you know — that you know so well it’s second nature — is not easy.

I’m thinking I may give creative-writing clients a free copy of the new book, as a kind of lagniappe. It’s ready now in PDF format; it won’t take much to get it into PoD format. And in a few weeks, I expect Wonder-ebook-Builder will have it in Kindle and ePub format. Why not give it to clients as a kind of textbook?

😀

 

 

 

Weekend Frenzies

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It’s gonna be a very busy weekend. And a lot of fun, one expects.

Down at the church, a lively and much beloved minister is getting married this weekend…to one of the choir members. With a beautiful tenor voice and a noticeable understanding of classical singing, he’s on the chamber choir. (Yes, Virginia: Episcopalians, despite being a dime short of RC, do ordain women priests!) Well, naturally we’re all excited about singing at their wedding…which will take place during the beautiful Evensong service…complete with bagpipes and kilts!

It is going to be a grand party. Over 400 people are expected.

As for me: I have nothing to wear. My only decent skirt is black, not something one can wear to a wedding. This would be the disadvantage of living in Costco jeans… 😉

I dropped by Nordstrom’s Rack yesterday. They had exactly NOTHING. Far as I could tell, the only skirt in the entire store was an ugly straight, short burgundy-red corduroy item. Better the jeans than that thing…

This afternoon I’ll be on the far west side for the monthly meeting of our writers’ group. It should break up early enough that I could go by my favorite shop in Old Glendale, the Garden Shop. It has wonderful, unique clothes — some of them made in the US. They’re kind of expensive, but you really can’t lose with that place.

But…except…yeah: what you lose is a ton of cash out of your budget…

So I tried on a very old, once very pretty hippy-dippy outfit that I got long, long ago in Tucson, while I was still married. I think it may even have been before my son was born.

It’s still pretty enough. But it wants to highlight the paunch. That’s the first thing you see when you look at me in said outfit. The elastic in the waist — which I believe I’ve changed out once or twice — is shot, so I have to pin the skirt on both sides to make it stay up. That would be OK, because the long, flowing top covers the waist…but…not the paunch.

Lo! What should I find in the closet but a shirtwaist-style dress with a loose, billowy skirt that does disguise the paunch. It looks OK with the flat chest, and it looks just fine with a pair of knitted knockers pinned into a cami.

Trouble is, it’s Army green. Not exactly festive. So I’m standing there thinking…well…if I put enough jewelry on, I could get away with it. Fortunately I’m old, so most people can’t see me. Old people by and large are invisible, unless we’re making some kind of a fuss.

Then I remembered that a year or so ago I’d bought a hand-screened silk scarf at the Garden Shop, and it has a lot of green in it. Dig it out of the closet, swing it around my neck Isadora Duncan-style, and voila! It works.

The dress is sleeveless, which means I’ll be cold walking in from the car (it’s about to rain today and probably will be chilly all day tomorrow). But that’s good, because with 400 people in the church, it is going to be freaking hot in the choir loft. Especially under a robe and surplice.

In 20 minutes I have to drive across the Valley to the monthly meeting of the writer’s group I took up with.

I’ve developed quite the flinch reflex about that. It was on the way out there — a 40-minute drive — that I had the fainting spell that scared me back to the cardiologist’s precincts…and that could’ve killed me and one of my fellow lunatic drivers. And it was on the way back — same trip — that the Dog Chariot died in the middle of the intersection and I spent 5 hours waiting for the tow truck to show up…about three of them in the company of a pair of tweaking drug addicts.

Really, the meeting place is just on the far a very bad part of town — everything west of 19th Avenue out to Sun City and Waddell is questionable. And I don’t like to drive through those districts. New car and automatically locking doors notwithstanding. Now that it’s been brought forcefully to my attention that I could get stuck for hours in unpleasant circumstances, I like driving out there even less.

BUT… I do enjoy those people. They’re very nice, and it’s an exceptionally good amateur scribblers’ groups (most are pretty ludicrous). And one of my friends shows up to every meeting, so I do enjoy seeing him.

test-2-smoking-cover-lo-resAnd…this next book I’m about to emit is something that WILL sell to that audience. It’s a natural for them.

In fact, today they’re critiquing cover copy of members’ books. So I’m taking something I tossed together yesterday to get their feedback. Whilst having it copied, it occurred to me to put the table of contents on the back side of the copy: Instant ad!

What I really should do is join a group here in town or in Scottsdale. It would be closer and probably would have a larger membership.

But then what? Am I going to abandon all my new pals out on the West Side?

Likely not. Then I’d have yet another meeting to have to go to.

Which probably would be a good thing. Really. I need to get out of the garret. I spend way, way, way too much time in the company of dogs. And myself.

Four minutes to blast-off. No time to proofread this thing: my apologies for the usual flood of typos! And a happy, well-dressed, entertaining weekend to you!

🙂

 

Major Project DONE!

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At last! The writing book — The Complete Writer — is done, indeed. It’s a MAJOR major project: 433 pages with the index and the back matter in place. I’m very pleased…it has been a huge job, made all the more huge by my having screwed up the page count twice, leading to not one, not two, but three total rewrites of the endless index.

An index is mind-numbing enough to compile without having to do it three times. That’s for damn sure…

Still have to do a wrap-around cover for the print version. I do have one for the e-book incarnation, but have heard nothing from the e-book formatter so don’t know where or if that thing is.

Trudging through that accursed index for the third time (eight single-spaced, double-column pages set in 10-point type…phbhphtbt!), it crossed my mind that the thing has its uses: an index points to a book’s topics in a more succinct and telling way than any table of contents does. Index topics are sharply focused, unfanciful, and succinct.

The marketing strategy for The Complete Writer involves a lot of public speaking: before groups, clubs, classes, whatever I can get. That, o’course, is going to entail coming up with things to speak about. Well…where do I have an eight-page list (two columns, 10-point Alegreya)? Mwa ha ha! Scan your eye down the index of a book on any subject you know well, and lo! You see a gold mine of subjects you can turn into dog-and-pony shows.

writing-scamsMatter of fact, I have to give a presentation on Thursday. Believe its subject will be “Scams for Writers…and How to Avoid Them.” The index points to everything I need to address, and it also refers me to web pages where I can download some handouts.

Hot diggety.

Donna Freedman is in town. It was good to see her yesterday…we had lunch at a favorite hole-in-the-wall Mexican joint and then killed an inordinate amount of time chatting. That was fun! 🙂

She’s looking to market her blog writing course and also has been hustling up a lot of writing assignments. I’m reminded of how lucky I was to have a working husband when I was covering the earth with copy as a freelance writer. Keeping the pump primed takes an enormous amount of work, and you dare not pause. The minute you quit drumming up work, the pipeline runs dry.

Today is gray and damp and vaguely chilly. I’ve spent half the day wrestling the last of the index into place and another several hours scrubbing up and battling dog hair. The dogs and I are now ensconced with an electrically heated throw atop the bed, there to loaf the rest of the day away.

And so it goes.

Happy New Year to you!

New Book: Major Progress!

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So now all but one chapter of the new book is done. It’s starting to look pretty good. IMHO, of course.

A friend who agreed to read a draft asked who is this book written for? And that was a great question! It not only pointed the way toward what to delete and what to keep, it also told me what to put in the introduction and it suggested a title: The Compleat Writer: A Scribbler’s Guide to Writing, Publishing, and Living the Writer’s Life.

How about that?

Here’s a draft of the intro, pleasingly short & sweet:

Who is this book for?

  • Anyone who wants to write articles, books, or blogs at a professional level
  • Writers of nonfiction
  • Writers of fiction
  • Business owners who need to create books or blogs for marketing or personal purposes.
  • Book authors deciding whether to self-publish or to seek a traditional publisher
  • Individuals who hope to make a living as freelance writers or independent publishers

When I came up with the idea for The Compleat Writer, my plan was to create a book that I could give (maybe even sell?) to my editorial clients at The Copyeditor’s Desk. At the outset, most of my clientele consisted of academics, nonprofits, and small businesses. Over time, though, more people have asked me to help prepare books, fiction and nonfiction, for independent publication on Amazon and waypoints.

Many of my clients secretly dream of making a living at writing. I’ve lived that dream myself, and I can assure you: it’s not wise to quit your day job. For most people it’s not the path to a middle-class lifestyle, especially if you don’t live in one of the big coastal cities that are publishing centers.

Other clients have more salient reasons to launch self-publishing enterprises, ranging from a simple ego boost to marketing strategies for their businesses.

Whatever you crave to do with your writing and publishing dreams, you must be able to write clearly. You need to understand what makes a publishable document, and you need to know how to edit and revise your work to make it publishable. Maybe even more than that, you need to understand that the only person who will market your product is you. This is true whether you write a blog or newspaper and magazine features or books or copy for some other business. I say “other” because all publishing activity is a business.

Over the years, I’ve published in many venues—magazines, newspapers, websites, academic journals, websites, and books. I’ve helped innumerable authors and small businesses perfect websites, journal articles, and books. I’ve published my own and clients’ books through mainline publishers,[1] and out of curiosity, I’ve also self-published a number of my own squibs through Amazon and waypoints, under the Plain & Simple Press imprint.[2] I also have operated one of the top 100 personal finance blogs in the English language,[3] plus a few others.

The Compleat Writer brings brings 25 years of writing, publishing, and academic experience to bear on issues that most concern people who want to be writers:

  • How to write better
  • How to write articles, websites, and books
  • How to write nonfiction
  • How to write fiction
  • What to do about writer’s block
  • Whether to self-publish or to seek a traditional publisher
  • How to prepare a book for publication
  • How to market books
  • How to manage a freelance writing business

Obviously, no book can answer all the questions or solve all the challenges that arise for every writer. But I hope this one will give you some insight into what you can expect if you decide to dive into the writing life, and how to go about it. If you have any specific questions, I invite you to visit Plain & Simple Press[4] or The Copyeditor’s Desk[5] and send them to me through either site’s Contacts page.

[1] The Life of Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester, Folger Shakespeare Library; The Essential Feature, Columbia University Press; Math Magic, with Scott Flansburg, William Morrow.

[2] Slave Labor: The New Story of American Higher Education; FireRider, a saga in three volumes; 30 Pounds/4 Months, a diet plan and cookbook for people who love to eat.

[3] Funny about Money (https://funny-about-money.com)

[4] http://plainandsimplepress.com

[5] http://thecopyeditorsdesk.com

Hee! Lookee there, WordPress can now engross Wyrd’s code for footnotes! Who would ever imagine?

Beyond tired. After the usual four hours of sleep, the day began with a system crash.

Took 45 minutes or so to bring the computer back online and recover all the files.

Cleaned the pool. Washed three weeks’ worth of neglected laundry. Scrubbed more pans than the human mind can comprehend, all left to soak after the weekend’s cook-fest. Repaired the computer, more or less. Responded to new prospective client. Arranged repair (or at least disguise) of cracked kitchen tiles. Organized a new box to hold collected colored pencils for the drawing class. Failed to practice drawing. Paid a bill. Engineered breakfast locale for tomorrow’s meeting; made reservation. Moved on to the book. Wrote until I was blue in the face. Cooked and packaged dog food. Wrote some more. Purchased new layout template in 7 x 10 trim size. Discovered sources of crowd-funding for wannabe publishers. Sent word of that to novelizing client. Fed self and dog. Found self unable to work another minute.

And so…to bed!

New Book a-Bornin’

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make-time-for-writing-tipsBelieve it or not, I have a new book in draft. And this is one that a) I wish to use as a tool for marketing the others and b) I suspect will sell smartly in its own right.

After watching the book marketing industry and testing its waters, I’ve come to think that probably the best way for a self-publishing scribbler to sell books is face-to-face. Person-to-person. Business to Business. That would be through a variety of speaking engagements in front of groups whose members might be interested in whatever one is selling, and by bringing the book to sell it on the spot.

Far more profitable, though, is helping others self-publish books. There are a lot of good reasons to self-publish — none of which include becoming a famous best-selling writer who makes enough on her genre novels to quit her day job. For example:

  • Many a manufacturer can use an informational book for customers or retailers.
  • Nonprofits and churches can raise funds with any number of books, whether they’re related to their mission or cookbooks for supporters.
  • A town’s history society also can raise funds and support its mission with a local or regional history.
  • A family planning a reunion might collect stories and facts about the family’s history and produce it, for the event, in book form.
  • Genealogy enthusiasts can gather all the dope on the ancestors and produce their findings in books to hand down to the grandchildren.
  • Doctors, dentists, and veterinarians can profitably produce patient information in book form.
  • Lawyers also put out books of client information.
  • A paperback or coil-bound book is a convenient way to gather and produce employee training materials.
  • How-to instructions, whether for workers or for people who buy products, lend themselves to book format.

The Copyeditor’s Desk is already doing just that: producing print-on-demand books for clients who want them for specific purposes.

So I propose to suggest this service to businesses and nonprofit groups around the city, by attending meetings where managers are likely to show up and explaining what they might have to say and how they can say it in a book. And why.

The subject of the current work in progress is why, what, and how to self-publish. In it, I argue that Amazon is a scam, just like all the other scams that exploit people who think they want to be a Writer with a Capital W.  The highest and best use of a self-published book is not as something to sell on Amazon.

Cobbled together from two blogs and a book I published some years ago, it’s already at 395 pages, and I still have a half-dozen chapters to write out of whole cloth.

LOL! I figure when some business owner or lawyer who covets a book to peddle his services sees a 400-page tome on how to do it, he’ll figure he’d better hire someone else to do it. Namely, moi!

😀

Seriously: I had no idea I’d written so much on the subject! By the time I transferred content from the published book (which I’ve reused many times for courses and so had in PDF and even, in some cases, in Word format) and then added in as many blog posts from Plain & Simple Press and FaM, the thing came to over 460 pages.

Cut about 70 pages, but then had to add some content to fill in a few lacunae. There’s more material that I can cut, but I’ll need some time and space to think about it. But nevertheless, I’m afraid the thing will come in at right around 400 pages.

Whether that’s an advantage or a disadvantage remains to be decided.

Occurred to me to break it into several books. However, the Amazon experience at serializing Fire-Rider gives the lie to the conventional wisdom about spoon-feeding readers in baby bites. Three books = three times as much cost, three times as much work, and three times as much hassle to produce, print, digitize, and market. I really think I’d druther focus on trying to peddle one book than two or three.

 Of 66 chapters, 18 remain to be written or massively rewritten. Or maybe not massive; a few just need some edits. But even if I average all of one per day, that’s only 18 days of work!

Then another two days of formatting. In the meanwhile, I’ll be trying to hustle up some speaking engagements. Since it only takes about two or three days for Author2Market to print a PoD opus, I should be able to get it out in fairly short order.