Life Lessons From Writing

People often accuse writers of being dreamers who retreat into their own worlds to escape the harshness of reality. While there is definitely a grain of truth in this stereotype, I have to say, my own experiences as an author have taught me many valuable life lessons that it may have taken many years to learn otherwise.

Far from allowing you to escape from the real world, sending your writing out there to be judged will quickly dispel your illusions and give you a strong dose of reality. Authorship is not for the faint-hearted dreamer, I can assure you, but a guaranteed way to rip your head out of the clouds and plant your feet firmly on solid ground.

Here are the top 5 lessons I've learnt from writing, which have helped to make me a healthier (and humbler) person:

1. Getting published will not change your life: It seems that everyone on the planet has a desire to write a book. There's just something about being a writer that is so appealing to the majority of the population, but as many writer's manuals point out, only a tiny percentage of people ever manage to start, let alone finish a book. When they do actually manage to finish a novel, most author's see it as a life-changing event. When that novel gets picked up for publication (or you self-publish) it's like the heavens themselves have split open and choirs of angels have appeared to herald your success. You dream of the new-found respect and income that will surely soon be yours. Then the book comes out, and if you're lucky some people who don't know you and aren't related to you buy it and read it. Some love it, some hate it, some think it's okay.  And life goes on as usual.

Life lesson:  Your achievements don't really mean that much to anyone besides you. Even your own family and friends don't care that much and some won't find the time or energy to buy your 0.99 cent book on Amazon.

2. Some people just won't be that into your books: Even when you've poured your heart and soul into a book and are convinced that everyone who reads it will fall instantly in love with it, it is an absolute certainty there will be many people out there who simply don't like your writing, don't appreciate your message and don't think you should continue to kid yourself that you can actually write. Even if you manage to write the greatest novel the world has ever known, there will still be people who feel this way about your book. 

Life lesson: Many of the people you meet in life are not going to like you or understand you. Don't ever let this prevent you from living (and writing) your own truth.

3. Criticism can be good for you: The other day I made a comment in a writer's forum about how I won't review books that are below 3 stars in my opinion because it could make me vulnerable to pay-back reviews from disgruntled fellow-authors and their fans. Someone implied on the forum that even a 3-star review these days is considered insulting to some authors and could have the same result. Since when is a 3-star review considered a 'bad' review? There are so many 4 and 5 star reviews being thrown around for first-time authors that I believe it's making the whole review system irrelevant. I know that reviews are based on subjective opinion, but when the classics and Shakespeare are being ranked alongside a first-time indie book that is riddled with typos and grammatical errors, then something is truly rotten in the state of Denmark (yes, I include my own self-pubbed books in this assessment). There is such a thing as literary merit, and authors (especially newbies) need to toughen up and accept that their first books are not works of sheer genius deserving only of unqualified praise.

Life lesson:  Don't ever believe you are beyond criticism. Keep an open mind and don't let your ego get in the way of the truth, no matter how painful it might be. Develop the wisdom to know the difference between constructive advice and mean-spirited comments designed only to tear you down.

4. Sour grapes are a waste of energy: It can be very discouraging for authors to see books they consider undeserving rocket to the top of the bestsellers lists while their own books languish at the bottom with all the other undiscovered masterpieces.

Life Lesson: Newsflash: Life is unfair. Get used to it.

5. Don't believe the hype: Everyone knows that if you continue to try your hardest and keep believing in yourself, you will eventually get what you deserve. Wrong. How many authors toiled away in obscurity only to be discovered after they died? How many great works were rejected by short-sighted publishers and then thrown on the fire by despairing authors? How many ground-breaking books are mouldering in dusty attics even as I write this, and will never see the light of day?  How many brilliant books are there are on Amazon that have been drowned in the tsunami that is self-publishing and will never gain the readership they deserve? Sobering questions, but ones every author needs to ask themselves.

Life Lesson: If at first you don't succeed, try and try again....but don't be naive enough to think you'll actually make it big.

It's true that many authors enter the world of publishing with unrealistic ideas, but it doesn't take very long for reality to set in. If writing and publishing are fraught with disappointment and shattered dreams, why do so many people continue to write? I can only answer for myself when I say I do it because I couldn't live without it. Writing fulfils a need in me that nothing else can. If writing makes you happy and complete, then all of the other stuff doesn't matter. To find the courage and determination to follow your heart and do what you love, even if you never gain any recognition for it, is the most valuable life lesson of all.

This above all: To thine own self be true, And it must follow as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Self-Publishing: A Last Resort For The Desperate?

A dwindling number of writers today still consider self-publishing an avenue of last resort. They equate it with vanity publishing and believe it's a sign of failure if fellow authors are forced to take this route. Not so long ago I held the same opinion and thought that even publishing through a small epress was preferable to doing it on my own. I've since changed my mind, and although I still plan to submit full-length novels to trade publishers, I'm more than happy to publish shorter pieces myself.

The main reason for this is exposure. It means very little if you manage to secure a contract with a publisher but no one buys your book. My romantic suspense Shadows of Yesterday is currently languishing in the 700,000s in Amazon, and will slip over a million very soon. My publisher was great to work with and they have many successful authors on their books, but my novel has not taken off. On the other hand, my self-published novella Prude & Prejudice is currently selling between 5-10 copies a day on Amazon. Which would you prefer?

Unfortunately this relative success has not equated into sales for my other books, but I do understand that this is a waiting game and the more books you have, the more chance you will develop a reputation that leads to more sales. Another reason I've chosen to self-publish is because I love the fact that I have complete creative control over what I have written. It's so much fun choosing a cover and making all the decisions about how your book will be presented.

Whether people like it or not, self-publishing is here to stay, and more and more books on the bestseller lists are going to come from authors who have chosen to do it on their own. I believe self-published authors will be forced to make use of freelance editors and cover designers and the quality of self-published books will improve over time. At the moment it's a bit of a free-for-all out there, but this is unchatered territory, and sooner or later readers are going to start demanding that certain standards are met.

 It's great to see the publishing power structure being shaken up a bit because publishing houses are notoriously conservative and reluctant to take chances on books they don't think will be commerically successful. Hopefully more original and ground-breaking books are on the horizon that challenge genre conventions and reshape the world of fiction. We live in exciting times for publishing, and I'm very curious to see how this pans out over the next few years.

In terms of my own self-publishing adventures, my novella Desire of the Flesh has been free for 48 hours and has been dowloaded 400 times. This is pretty reasonable considering it isn't even showing up in the free search for US Amazon (not sure what's going on here but will have to get onto Amazon about it), so I'm guessing most of these are from the UK where it reached 17 on the free list for Fantasy/Futuristic & Ghost. Hopefully this promotion will lead to at least a few sales of the other novellas in this series. I also have another romantic suspense that's ready to go as soon as I get the official rejection from Carina. Obviously I would love to be published by Carina, but I don't think it's going to happen with this one. Keep you eyes open for Fire Mountain, coming soon!

Here's an article from the Huffington Post about the rise of self-publishing. The general consensus on the writer's forum where I posted this article is that the animosity between self-published and trade-published authors is greatly exaggerated, and this is journalistic shit-stirring at its worst.

What do you think?

Writing in the Digital Age - Pros & Cons

There are many benefits to being a writer in the digital age, but there are also drawbacks. Below are what I consider to be the top five positive and negative aspects of being a writer today.

Pros

1. Research: All the information you could possibly want is right at your fingertips. Need to know the rectal temperature of a Madagascan hummingbird? No worries. Just google it and Bob's your uncle. Imagine what it must have been like in the 'olden days' when authors had to spend hours trawling through library books to find or confirm simple facts.

2. Email queries: Again, imagine what it was like when authors had to print out multiple copies of manuscripts and then haul them to the post office. Now all this inconvenience and expense has been done away with at the click of a mouse (apart from the few agents / publishers who refuse to accept email queries. Like the early denigrators of electricty they are patiently waiting for this ridiculous fad called the internet to run its course).

3. Online communities: How wonderful it is to find like-minded souls ready at any time of the day or night to answer your writing questions or just commiserate with you over the fact that the world has yet to recognise your genius.

4. Self-promotion: Authors are now far less dependant on publishers for promotion and they can reach their readers in a way which has never been possible before.

5. E-publishing and self-publishing: Have made the joy of authorship available to so many. Now people who otherwise would never have had the opportunity to see their words in print are free to express themselves and share their creations with the entire world.

 Cons

1. Research: All the information you could possibly want is right at your fingertips. The other day I found myself googling the question "what is a good name for a town in a novel," because I just couldn't be bothered thinking one up for myself. The information superhighway is making people lazy and dulling the imagination (at least in my case).

2. Email queries: Now that it's so easy and convenient to send out multiple queries, the agony of suspense and rejection has been multiplied many times over.

3. Online communities: Why bother writing a book when you can spend hours chatting online with people about your plans to write a book?

4. Self-promotion: Authors are now far less reliant on publishers for promotion, and can reach their readers in a way which has never been possible before. Only problem is that with so many social networking sites around, self-promotion has become a full-time job and there's no time left to actually write.

5. E-publishing and self-publishing: Have made the joy of authorship available to so many. Now people who otherwise would never have had the opportunity to see their words in print are free to express themselves and share their creations with the entire world.

Kindle Direct, You're Killing Me

Yesterday I took my first tentative step into the world of self-publishing through Kindle Direct with my short story Written In the Stars. It was an experience that probably would have been a lot easier if I hadn't tried to research it first.

Being the girly swot that I am I took it upon myself to find out as much as I could before I got started. What I read really scared the bejesus out of me. There was all this information about converting word documents into html code that had me diving for the drinks cabinet and warning my other half that I would probably be needing his help very soon. When I actually got around to checking out Kindle Direct itself,  it was extemely easy and simple to use. It's actually easier than creating a blog...except for one minor thing - indentation.

OMG. The Kindle Direct instructions state that every first line in a paragraph is automatically indented, and if you want to indent other lines, you must do it manually and not through the tab key. I tried it their way, but when I previewed my book some lines were indented and other were not, meaning I had to go back and fix all the errors...Only problem was after I fixed them, when I previewed the new version other lines were not indented. The most bizarre thing of all was that when I scrolled back up a page I'd already checked, different lines were now indented and other weren't. After a couple of hours of this I was at my wits end!

Thank god you can preview and edit books as many times as you need to before publishing, and even after publishing it's extremely easy to take books down and re-edit them. I think I must have hit a record for the number of times I previewed my book.

To cut a long story short, I simply took out all idents, justified the text to the left and added double spacing between paragraphs. It worked and Kindle Direct DID NOT indent every first line in a paragraph. I actually think it looks quite good.  If you'd like to shell out a whopping 99 cents you can take a look for yourself, and possibly read my short story while you're at it!

http://www.amazon.com/Written-in-the-Stars-ebook/dp/B007IHRA9C/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1331361810&sr=1-4

In future I'm probably going to stick to this format because it will save me a lot of headaches, unless someone has got some advice about how to overcome this glitch in Kindle Direct. I notice many other ebooks have no problem with indentation, so there's a (remote) possibility the problem is with the user!