Coffee heat rising

the writing life

So much for best-laid plans…

by

LOL! Really, don’t you know this to be true? IT NEVER FAILS.

And yes, damn straight: Whatever can go wrong will go wrong.

😀

So you’ll recall I had this Grand Plan to get marginally in shape before tomorrow’s stress test at the Mayo. The 10-day lead time gave me eight or nine days in which to get out into the Phoenix Mountain parks and build up at least a marginal degree of stamina.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Lovely spring weather. Old lady who loves to hike. Good way to run off ginger and orneriness. And maybe even fake out a cardiodoc. Dontcha love it?

As an idea, it is lovable.

As reality? Well…

So I got several two-hour-long walks in, three times up Shaw Butte (about four miles in a fairly steep round trip) and a couple times around the back of North Mountain, on the flat (a little under four miles RT).

Then it rained. Used that as an excuse not to go out: very convenient.

One day down.

Then I realized I had to get off the dime and write the next chapter of Ella’s Story if I’m gonna keep posting stuff in the current long-term give-away scheme. This is a time-consuming proposition. Unlike journalism, unlike blogging, copy for works of fiction does NOT just pour out of the ends of your fingers.

Two days down.

Saturday, I eat something that I should have known better than to eat. Not surprisingly, it inflicts a roaring case of Montezuma’s revenge. Not only am I enjoying the collywobbles, but before long I’m in a LOT of pain. Like…should I go to the ER??? type pain.

After the fun surgery for the intestinal obstruction (kindly occasioned by scarring from an old appendectomy), the surgeon’s PA informed me that sooner or later the obstruction would recur. And the next time, fixing it will be a lot more involved and will not lend itself to laparoscopy.

Welp: several considerations:

  1. First, I would rather die than go through that again.
  2. Second, when you have the collywobbles, your innards are moving, indicating they’re not blocked.
  3. Third, I would rather die than go through that again.
  4. Fourth, the pain is not the same kind of pain evinced by the adhesive blockage. It’s all over the place instead of localized in one spot.
  5. Fifth, I would rather die than go through that again.

With this calculus in mind, I drop an Imodium. Then (it’s always then with me, dammit!) I reflect that might not have been the best of all possible ideas. Ohhh well.

The diarrhea ceases, not surprisingly. The pain continues. I crawl into the sack with the two annoyed dogs.

Three days down.

Next thing I know, it’s Sunday morning.

Our pastor has cooked up a tradition that he calls “Switch Sunday,” in which once a month the 9 a.m. service is a full Bells & Smells performance. The early service, which caters to families with kids, is the usual much more boring modern version…and it engages the services of the volunteer choir, which on other weekends  sings at the later service.

I feel slightly better (though the gut still hurts) and decide to chance showing up at choir. If worst comes to worst, I can always leave.

This means it’s out of the sack at the crack of dawn, feed the dawgs, bolt down breakfast, get washed up, paint face, throw on clothes, and fly out the door. I’m not happy, but neither am I terminal: manage to get there and stick out the whole shindig.

Back at the Funny Farm, I fix lunch/dinner, a halfway decent (read “time-consuming” meal), diddle around, waste time…and eventually realize…holy mackerel! I am really, REALLY sick.

But: the gut (now bound up tight as a drum, thanks to the Imodium) is marginally functioning. That being the case (sort of), I decide against yet another goddamn run on the Mayo’s ER room.

I’ve been up there so often they have a special cubbyhole reserved for me.

Note that during these escapades, no work is getting done. No exercise is getting done. But by about 9 p.m., I do feel enough better to take the hounds on their mile-long circuit. This was not what you’d call one helluva lot of fun, but I figured that if my theory is correct (i.e., I’m not really dying), a walk should help kick-start the innards.

Oh well. At least it doesn’t seem to make things worse.

I crawl back into the sack with the dogs.

Four days down.

Not altogether down. Sunday afternoon whilst I was huddling in the sack, I did manage to draft the last part of the current Ella’s Story chapter, providing a sequel to the chapter that I slapped online this morning. Was kinda pleased with the images that surfaced in a few searches. This great old guy looks a lot like I imagine Dorin the Overseer to look. I’m sure he’s actually an aging Romanian. But what the heck.

This image is yet to be used: the passages I wrote yesterday will describe the exotic landscape of Zaitaf, which sports a methane lake. And what might that look like? Probably somewhat like this:

😀 Can you believe I found that thing?

Now, just think how magical it would be if I could figure out how to make WordPress lose the goddamn fucking extra nonbreaking line spaces!

Oh. Well, that’s the sort of thing that keeps me from doing any creative work: killing time trying to force the code to do what I want it to do.

So, four days of eight were lost to the planned get-fit scheme. Tomorrow morning I will show up that the Mayo fat, flabby, and probably still sporting a bellyache.

Never. Effing. Fails.

New Book: Major Progress!

by

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!

Time Suck Control

by

Okay, so after yesterday’s rant and after a full day of running from pillar to post around the city, I conceived the idea of building a kind of calendar to get a grip on the time sucks that have expanded to fill all available time and space. TS, I call it: it stands for “technological stuff” as well as “time suck.” And the technological stuff IS, by and large, the biggest offender in the time-suck department. Add to that to the fact that I now have to drive 40 minutes round trip to get free access to the PCs needed to format e-books, and you have some serious time suck.

One of the successful (s/he says) porn writers claims to allocate time like this: write a 5,000-word bookoid in two days; spend one day formatting and uploading it.

Well…it’s possible you could crank 2,500 words in a day, though it would be a bit of a stretch. Probably not very good words. But whatEVER. And it’s probable that once you know what you’re doing, you could format the result for Kindle, Nook, or both in a single day.

Realistically, I’m not producing anything like that much copy in a day. Most of the time, when I finally get a chance to sit down and write, I manage about 1,000 words, give or take. The second Biker Babe book is at about 3500 words right now, and the plot has barely begun to thicken. It will need a rewrite…as a practical matter, I’ve been so whipped by the time I start writing, I’m not thinking clearly and so the thing just isn’t coming out the way one would like.

At any rate, the write-write-format idea has some appeal. So yesterday afternoon (speaking of time sucks…) I created monthly calendars to cover the rest of the year, dedicating time for writing, for TS, and for my highly minimalistic social life. Videlicet:

Calendar1
As usual, click on the image to see details

As you can see, half of today will be occupied with two meetings. Tomorrow, the entire afternoon is gone: have to drive halfway to Yuma to the monthly chivaree of my fave writer’s group. The morning of the 5th will be blown by a dentist’s appointment (the prospect gets me so upset I can’t even spell it right!). And since I know I will be very upset after that meeting, I’ve scheduled the rest of the day for running errands an other time sucks. Tuesdays or Wednesdays are designated for errands (also disturbing, evidently…), because those are the days when Costco is at its quietest and so, incidentally, are most other venues.

Obviously, this pristine schedule won’t last: there’ll be, for example, at least two more dentist’s appointments in the near future, maybe more. I do get together with friends now and again, believe it or not. And there’s always SOME damnfool thing that scotches up the best-laid plans. But at least now I have a plan.

For August, it gives me four or even five days a week for writing, which is quite a lot. Sundays are ambiguous this month: writing or TS, whichever is most pressing, because a lot of stuff is still in the set-up stage, and I’m still climbing various unpleasant learning curves. But once all that stuff settles down, it means that in the summer I’ll have an extra day for writing (I hope) or for time sucks (as needed), compared with the rest of the year.

After choir gets started, we have this:

Calendar2a

In this scenario, half of every Sunday is occupied by choir, and so is every Wednesday evening.

The latter is significant because when I’m not falling over with exhaustion, I typically work until 10 or 11 p.m. So that excises several hours of work time — not very productive time,  by that hour, but still…things do get done then.

What’s left during the choir season, then, is three and a half days dedicated to writing, three and a half days given over to either TS or writing, whichever is most pressing, and four half-days of either writing or TS, if there’s time and energy for that on Sundays.

Now. The cool thing about this scheme (as unrealistic as it may be…) is that to meet our production goals, I’ll need to post something about once every three or four days. With specific dates already dedicated to time sucks (believe me, formatting and posting these things IS a time suck!), I can schedule exactly when I’m going to put the things up.

The 18 serials of Fire-Rider are now ready to go. Gary, the graphic artist, delivered all 18 covers, plus a high-res version of the original cover so that I can improve the image at the Fire-Rider website. If I start on that project tomorrow and only post on days that are already dedicated to time sucks, then the last FR story goes live on Kindle on October 3.

Since I’m not doing Kindle’s thing in which Amazon demands exclusivity and pays you not for the book but for the number of pages readers look at(!!!), then I also could post on Nook, once I figure out how. The figuring out will suck some more time, but actually it looks like it may be easier than posting to Amazon. In theory, I probably also could put it on iBooks, but the why of that escapes me.

At any rate, if all that’s going up is FireRider (plus an improved version of the cookbook, whose formatting I’m still wrestling with), that will give us a full month — all of September — in which to build an inventory. We already have six “racy” novelettes in hand. I’m working on two others right now, so that means I need to write only two and my freelances each need to write only two to meet our minimum goal for a single month. Ideally, we should have fifteen in hand, but ten will do the trick.

As it were. 🙄