Year: 2015

The Writing Life, July 14

Did you sign up for Thirty Days, Thirty Ideas, yet? Do it now so you don’t forget!  Click right here to sign up!

My adventures this week included trying dry shampoo for the first time and introducing a new budgeting technique to avoid overdraft fees.

There are two reactions to what I just wrote; tell me more so that I may learn, and what the hell does that have to do with writing? If you had the first reaction, we will get to that. If you had the second reaction, I want to tell you why you should care first.

Being an indie writer requires a tight budget, a lot of confidence and a tight schedule.

And my new adventures, if they work, will save me up to sixty dollars a month, forty minutes a week, and make me feel more confident.

So, dry shampoo. I found this recipe on the awesome blog, Living Well, Spending Less. Now, I have super oily hair, which I usually either was every night or feel like a grease ball. My oldest monster has my hair. You would not believe the amount of times we have been late somewhere because I noticed, too late, that her hair or mine looked like someone had rubbed cheap pizza on it. With this dry shampoo in the house, though, my life is better.

* It is cheaper than shampoo, and now we use less shampoo. (Less water, too.)
* I save twenty minutes every time I’m not taking a shower I don’t need.
* I feel more confidant about how I look, and about my mothering skills.
* I smell like awesome chocolate.

As for my money saving tip, it’s pretty simple. I don’t keep track of my money, spend too much, and overdraft. So this week, I’m taking out the amount of money I know I can spend, then moving my debit card from my wallet, were it’s all to easy to retrieve, to my check book that lives on my desk. It’s simple, but I hope it will be effective.

So that’s what’s new in my life. How about you?

Things that rocked this week-

* Fail, my Mash story was way too long, and I couldn’t cut enough of it without hurting the core of the story. Win, I submitted it to Flash Fiction instead. There is no great loss without some small gain, I have always said this.
* Wal-Mart has their back to school stuff out. Fifty cents for composition books!
* I am so pumped about your reaction to Thirty Days, Thirty Ideas.
* I’m not lying, this dry shampoo is awesomesauce. I smell like chocolate!

Things I’m looking forward to this week-

* I should be finished with part one of the fourth draft of Broken Patterns. Okay, that doesn’t seem like a big deal, but it is to me. It’s a step towards being done with the fourth draft, and there’s only one more draft after that.
* I’m working on the rough draft of a new story, the second to last one for my short fiction collection. Eight stories down, two more to go. I’m really getting there.

Not a super exciting week. I’m working a lot over overtime hours at the day job to pay for some computer upgrades around the house. So it’s a head down, nose to the grindstone, any progress is good progress kind of week.

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What Self Published Writers and Stand Up Comics Have in Common, (And what we can learn from them!)

Have you signed up for the 30 Days, 30 Ideas Challenge?  Why not, don’t you want 30 new ideas?  Sign up here.

I really like stand up comedians.  Louis C. K, Gabriel Iglesias, Kathleen Madigan, Lewis Black, Patton Oswald.  These are all some amazing people in my book.  I can’t talk about stand up without mentioning two of my favorites that passed on, of course, Robin Williams and George Carlin.  (Quick tip, don’t watch Robin Williams stand up with your kids or parents.  NSFW, kids, or your mother in law!)

Stand up has always been something I loved.  Like everything else I love, it influences my writing.

As self published writers, we should see the stand up comic as our brother.  They’ve got a lot in common with us, and a lot to teach us.

  • We’re all trying to get noticed.  Whether it’s sweating an open mike night or shouting at people from twitter to go download your newest book, that’s all we’re after.  We just want people to look at what we do, and like it.  We want fans, basically.
  • We all usually start out broke.  Most stand up comedians are just like you and me.  Working a day job, squeezing in hours to write, scribbling ideas down on paper during a thirty minute lunch break.  That’s the life, indi writer or comedian, until you make it big.
  • We are all busy.  Like stupidly busy.  That’s what life is when you’re working two jobs, but you work one for free.  Tell me this, have you ever written a blog post on your tablet while grocery shopping with your kids on your day off, hoping you might be able to squeeze an hour in at your desk in between cleaning up the house and doing some laundry just so you’ve got clean undies to wear to work during the coming week?  (Guess how my day is going.)  Stand up comedians do that too.
  • We’re all passionate, though.  That’s why we put up with the crazy and the sleepless nights.  Because we know what we want, and it’s those big shiny name in lights.  Comedians want to be headliners.  We want our name on that shiny book cover.  We all want to be somebodys.  Household names.
  • More often than not, though, we’re all just working for experience.  We want to say, “Here’s where my work’s been.  Here’s who actually paid me a few bucks for something I scribbled on the side of my shopping list.”  The credit is more important than the money, every time.

Stand up comics have us beat on a few things, though.  After a lifetime of loving them, here’s what I’ve learned from stand up comics.

Be Fearless-

Say the bad words people tell you not to say if it’s what rings true.  Write about the serious stuff, the humiliating stuff, the real life stuff.  Write about how you feel about things, even if you don’t think it’s popular.  Write about how people actually act, not how we wish they would.  Write like your parents will never read it.

Fight through rejection-

You got a rejection letter?  Great, that loser in the coffee shop who wears dumb hats didn’t get one, because he didn’t bother to try.  Go get another rejection letter, get boo’d off stage somewhere else.  Learn from it, and do it again.

Don’t be afraid to go solo-

Because why not?  If you try and try and try to get an agent and no one’s biting, what are you losing by self publishing instead?  Oh, you might not sell any copies.  Are you selling any copies right now, with the book sitting in your desk?

Always have fresh material-

No one would go see Kathleen Madigan if she told the same jokes over and over.  People set Carlos Mencia on fire when they found out he was stealing other people’s jokes.  Always have something fresh, something new, something that you just finished working on, and now you’re going to write something else.

Handle your hecklers-

Stand up comedians are ready for hecklers.  They are so ready for them.  And the good ones will rip a heckler apart.  They will make lifelong fans out of other people because of what they did to a heckler.

We get hecklers.  People who would rather hate on your work than make anything of their own.  It’s not a bad idea to have some witty zingers to defuse a situation and make them look stupid.  So be ready with some scathing, smart remark for haters, and then move on.  (But don’t do that to honest critics.  Take good criticisms with humility, and don’t lash back just because you’re pissed.)

Stay clean, and emotionally healthy-

So, we can learn this from our own ranks, but since I mentioned Robin Williams earlier I’ve got to say something about it.  Depression is a real thing.  I don’t know if writers and comedians suffer from it more than other people, but we hear about it more.  I have depression.  Some days no one, not even me could tell.  Some days nothing is okay, and there is no reason for it, but it’s still not okay.  That’s a real illness, and it needs medical care from a professional the same as any other illness.

Stay off drugs, too.  I kind of mean that for everybody.  July 5th was the three year anniversary of the death of a good friend of mine.  He was addicted to drugs, and caught hepatitis from it.  It killed him.  My daughter’s uncle died because of a compromised immune system due to drug use last year.  They both left behind children and friends who miss them every day.  Their drug use, in both cases, was largely due to depression that they didn’t have the tools to deal with any other way.  If you have a problem, get real help.

Don’t be a Hemingway, don’t be a Robin Williams.  Don’t become another famous face on a magazine, dead before your time.

Love what you do, even if you get no love for it-

I’ve never had a bad time writing.  If I never get published again, I’ll still write until the day I die.  Because I love it, I truly do.  Stand up comedians would tell jokes if no one laughed, if no one came to their shows.  The best would play to a house of one, and have a great time doing it.

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Writing Prompt Saturday, What’s your Dream?

Have you signed up for the Thirty Days, Thirty Ideas Challenge yet?  Here’s a link if you haven’t yet.

I have a dream life.  It’s very specific, I have details.  Here’s my dream.

I want to live in a city apartment in Pittsburgh.  I want there to be a nearby coffee shop where I am known by name.  I want to be a novelist that at least flirts with the best seller lists.  I want to attend writers conferences and sign copies of my books.  I want to go to New York to meet with my agent, and I want to have book signing tours.  I want to speak at libraries.  I want to have an office, in my Pittsburgh apartment, where I go to work every day.  And I do mean every day.  I really don’t like taking days off from writing.

What’s your dream?  What makes you want to be a full time self published writer?  What do you think your days will look like when you achieve this dream?

I want you to go into detail with this exercise.  Really picture your dream work day.  I imagine a hot cup of coffee over a few hours of my most recent novel in the morning.  Then an hour of social media followed by any office work that needs done, balancing the budget or reading contracts.  Followed by an afternoon of short fiction work and blog writing.  Then an evening playing with the monsters and my husband.  I think I could spend the rest of my life just like that and be perfectly happy.

Let me tell you why this exercise helps me.  When I’m working hard, when rejection letters start coming fast, when I work ten hours at the day job just to come home and put in two more hours at my desk after the monsters are in bed, it’s not easy.  It’s sometimes the hardest thing in the world to drag my fat self out of bed at least an hour before I would need to so that I can get some writing time in before the day job.  When it’s too much, when I just don’t want to do it.  When I think I could just take one day off even though I know it would turn into another and another.  That’s when I think about my dream.  A desk at a window that overlooks Pittsburgh, with a days worth of writing to look forward to.

That’s the sort of dream that will get me out of bed every morning, guaranteed.  Whats yours?

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Market, Witches, Warlocks, Demons, and other Evil Doers

Have you signed up yet for the Thirty Days, Thirty Ideas Challenge?  Don’t worry, you’ve got all month to do it.  Here’s a link to sign up.

This market is probably my favorite one this month, because I get to write about a bad guy!  In fact, you have to.  This anthology is all about writing a story from the point of view of an evil, dark character.  Whether your evil protagonist wins or not is up to you.  Mine probably will.

Genre- Horror.

Word Count- 4,000 to 8,000

Submission Date- September 1

Wait Time- Two to three months after deadline

Payout- $25.00

Rights- Not specified

Here is your link to the full submission guidelines.  Let me know if you have any success with this or any other market, and I’ll include you in the monthly brag board, complete with a link to your site if you’ve got one.

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Thirty Days, Thirty Ideas Challenge.

For the past ten days I’ve counted down to today. Here, on twitter and facebook, I’ve counted down, and now it’s time to tell you why.

Next month is August. It’s Paper Beats World’s birthday. It’s first birthday.

I wanted to do something special, something exciting. Here’s what I came up with.

I love thirty day challenges. Take a month, and see what you can do to better your life in some specific area. No spend months, positive thinking months, tidying for ten minutes a day, I’ve done them all. Now, I want to do one with you.

For thirty days, I want to come up with a different, brand new idea. It can be an idea for a short story, a novel, a character, a plot bunny (I do love my plot bunnies), whatever comes to mind. The point is to make sure you find some time every day to think of something new.

I think that this is a practice that can help every writer, no matter where on the road you are.

For new writers, ideas are valuable and might be thin on the ground. If you’ve written one book, but aren’t sure where you want to go next, you might need a little push. Even if you’ve been at this awhile, sometimes your imagination gets stagnate.

As for me, I’m working on a series. That means that I’ve been living in the same universe through two books now. I love the Woven universe, but even the best toy gets boring if you play with it too much. I depend on short stories to keep my imagination fresh. I am always seeking out new ideas even if I don’t think it will fit into Woven. Either I can write a short story that have nothing to do with Woven. Or, maybe something will click in my brain, and I’ll realize I can use it any way.

So what does signing up for the thirty day challenge mean for you?

-You’ll get an e-mail every day, reminding and inspiring you to come up with a new idea. Sometimes it will have a prompt or guide, but you don’t have to follow that if you don’t want to. The important thing is to create a new idea.
-I’ll be hosting twitter chats every Thursday at 8:00. We’ll get together and talk about ideas and the amazing things we writers do with them
-After the event is over, you’ll be left with a notebook full of ideas. Think of it as your shield against writers block.
-You might also be left with a good habit. If you spend thirty days thinking of something brand new, maybe you’ll find that on the thirty first day, one comes to you just out of habit.

If you want to join the Thirty Days, Thirty Ideas Challenge, click here.

As a bonus, it will also sign you up to receive the road to full time newsletter once a month.

Your first e-mail will arrive on July 31. And, of course, I’ll be participating in the challenge as well.

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Check This Out, Mail Chimp

When you start selling your books and other products, you’re going to need a mailing list.  I started one last month, called the Road to Full Time.  I’m really glad I started one.

  • It allows me to talk at length about my actual step by step process to becoming a full time writer.
  • People who sign up for newsletters are actively saying, “I like what you have to say, and I would like to see more than you post on your site.”  That feels good.
  • When my books start coming out, I’ll be able to let the people who like me most hear about them, and offer specials.
  • It’s one of the most cost efficient ways to advertise.  Remember, you have to do all of your advertising when you’re a self published author.

The trouble is, I have very little time, and not a lot of money to spend. So, I started using MailChimp for my newsletter.

If you want to sign up for my newsletter, click here.

If you don’t want to sign up for my newsletter, click there anyway to see how easy MailChimp works.  Seriously, I just copied some code and attached it to that text.  It takes no time.

As for creating the newsletters, it is also easy.  That was really important to me.  I have worked for a lot of newspapers and newsletters for different organizations I’ve belonged to over the years.  You know what the worse thing about those were?  Page layout.  It sucks a lot.  MailChimp is by far the easiest program I’ve used for it.  Which is nice because I don’t want to be worrying about page layout.  I want to be worried about the content.

This is one of those things that you set up, and forget about it until you’re ready to make a new newsletter.  Images are easy to upload, and you can write articles right on the template, same as on WordPress.

So this week, check out MailChimp.  And let me know if you make your own newsletter.  I’m excited to see them.

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The Writing Life, July 7

One more day until the big announcement. Check us out tomorrow for all the awesome details for something really cool we’ll be doing in August.

So, on Saturday something pretty amazing happened. Yes, our country had its birthday and I blew up fireworks and ate greasy food and all that.

Way more important, to me, is that Paper Beats World reached 1,000 views for the year!

It has been eleven months since I started this little site, and I have had so much fun with it every day. I’ve learned so much, and gotten to meet so many awesome people. I can not thank all of you enough for reading, and sharing your journeys with me.

Honestly, I thought maybe three people would read this thing. So thank you all. I hope you get something out of reading here, and I hope to hear more success stories as the months go by.

What rocked this week-

* I finished my rough draft for Mash. The deadline’s July 15, by the way. Get on it if you haven’t started yet.
* I watched all eight Harry Potter movies with the husband and my monsters. I’m glad we finally did it, but that last movie was such a let down. Really, you span two books and you can’t even mention the whole back story with Dumbledore being friends with the second most evil wizard, or the fact that Harry had all three deathly hollows and got rid of all but one? Really?

What I’m looking forward to this week-

* Tipsy writer twitter chat tonight. That’s always a good time, hope to see you there!
* My super big, terrific announcement is tomorrow! Don’t miss it!
* My favorite show is starting again on Sunday. It’s Ray Donovan, on Showtime. If you follow me on twitter, you already know of my obsession.

What are you excited about this week? Looking forward to anything fun?

Have you signed up for the Road to Full Time newsletter yet? It prints once a month, and it’s all about the journey from part time writer, to full time. You can sign up right here.

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The Super Easy (Not Really) Twelve Step Guide to Self Publishing

Three more days until the big Paper Beats World Announcement!

Welcome to the very simple (not really), quick and easy, (no) super fun (well, yes), and completely stress free (not a freaking chance), twelve step guide to self punishing your book! This is my game plan, my map for the next year or so to publishing my collection of short stories. But it should work equally well for any sort of book you’re writing.

Let’s dive right in, though. There is so much you’ve got to consider when you’re self publishing. You don’t have an editor, a publicist, a design department or any of the other things that you have with traditional publishing. That means that everything, every single little thing, is in your hands. Good news, you are in total control. Bad news, nothing will get done if you don’t do it. So, here’s where you start.

Step one, write the book

This will probably take the longest time. I know it does for me. I’ve gone over my whole process of going from rough draft to polished draft a ton, most recently when participating in the IC Blog tour, so I’ll not bore you with that again.

Step Two, Edit the hell out of the book

Make it shine like the top of the Chrysler Building!

Step Three, hire someone to edit it for you

Or, get someone you trust to edit it. I’ll be hiring someone for my book, and let me tell you why; I will not go out into the world with my shirt un-tucked and my fly down. I want someone else to red pen my book, and give me an honest opinion of it before I invest a lot of money in it.

And by the way, this is something every traditionally published book goes through.

Step Four, Cover art

Unless you’re a really lovely artist, or graphic designer, or photographer, hire someone to do this right for you. This is likely where a lot of my self publishing budget is going to, because people will judge your book by it’s cover, no matter how many times we are told not to.

Step Five, copy write your book

And any other legal things you have to do. You don’t need to be paranoid about intellectual theft, but you do need to be aware of it. While we’re at it, if you’re going to be taking people’s money, and keeping important files on your home computer, get a good firewall and virus protection.

Step Five, Research publication options

Now, this is the step that has worried me the most. I’d like to offer my book as an e-book, but also have the option of print. But print books are a whole different beast. Sure, some people love them, but they are going to be more expensive to create. They also have to be shipped, which takes time and money. To justify it, I might end up having to charge more for a print copy than an e-book.

My current solution is that I’ll sign every print copy, so the reader’s getting a little more for their money. I also think I’ll take a leaf out of the awesome DeliaWrite’s book, and go ask my local book stores if they’ll stock it. It can’t hurt to ask, and it might just pay off.

Step Six, decide how people can pay you

I like cash, but I also like PayPal. I like whatever gets that part done and out of my mind fast enough, honestly. When it comes to money, I’d like buying my book to be as self served as possible, so I’ve got time to order prints, ship stuff and eventually get back to actually writing more books.

Step Seven, decide where your book will be available

I’m not getting into the Amazon fight here. Every time I turn around it’s in the news again, so I’ll just say that I haven’t made up my mind about whether my book will be there or not. Just be aware that while there are other options, they don’t all have the same popularity.

However, I will say that wherever my book is, it will not just be there. I intend to set up on as many different platforms as I can, to guarantee that if one shop goes down, I’m not out of commission entirely.

Step Eight, start talking about your book on social media

As soon as possible. If possible, put of excerpts from your book on your blog. Get people excited about it.

Step Nine, set a release date

It should be far away enough to gain anticipation, but not so far away that people get bored. (No, this is not what my current count down is about. That’s something totally different and really awesome, but my book’s not done yet.)

Step Ten, sell your book!

Stick to your launch date. Plan for technical things to go wrong. Make sure that if you use a seller like Amazon that you know when they will have it available. Read your contracts. And celebrate!

Step Eleven, keep selling your book.

Don’t stop talking about your book! Mention it when relevant, talk it up during holiday gift buying times. Participate in Cyber Monday. Maybe even do a mini relaunch down the road.

Step Twelve, write another one!

It’s an old saying, but it’s a good one. Nothing sells a book like a sequel. Besides, no one wants to be a one hit wonder. Even Harper Lee finally got around to writing another book.

So that’s it. Easy, right?

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Writing Prompt Saturday, Write an Ghazal Poem

Four days until a really awesome announcement

Yet another really obscure poetry form, ghazal poetry is going to be my new favorite thing for awhile. For one thing, it’s all about couplets, which means that it is twitter friendly.

So, a ghazal poem is at least five couplets, traditionally no more than fifteen. The first couplet should end with a refrain that will finish each couplet.

Traditionally, ghazal poetry was very melancholic. So if you’ve been getting the stupid amount of rain I have, it’s great.

Here is a example of ghazal poetry.

“Even the Rain” By Agha Shahid Ali

What will suffice for a true-love knot? Even the rain?
But he has bought grief’s lottery, bought even the rain.

“our glosses / wanting in this world” “Can you remember?”
Anyone! “when we thought / the poets taught” even the
rain?

After we died—That was it!—God left us in the dark.
And as we forgot the dark, we forgot even the rain.

Drought was over. Where was I? Drinks were on the house.
For mixers, my love, you’d poured—what?—even the rain.

For all of us in the states, hope you’re having a great fourth. We are blowing things up and grilling greasy meat here. How about you?

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Market, Grave Markers

Five more days until the exciting announcement.

This isn’t an anthology or a short story collection. It’s something different, and I think really cool. Have you ever written an in between story, lengthwise? I mean a story that was too long to be short fiction, but not long enough to be a novella? I have, and it’s irritating. I can’t cut it down or I risk losing important parts of the story. I can’t add anything to it without making it feel… puffy.

Well, if you write horror, Grave Markers are the answer to this. Fair warning, the publisher has said they only intend to take up to six a year. But this is totally worth it.

Genre- Horror
Word Count- 10,000 to 20,000
Sub Date- Any time
Wait Time- Standard, about two months
Payout- Not listed

As always, here is a link to full submission guidelines. Let me know if you have luck with this or any other market so that I can include you in the monthly brag board.

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