Loser

Another day, another rejection. It gets difficult to stay positive when all you get is negative reinforcement. 

I get my work out there, put myself out there, but I get a fair bit of negativity back, though in fairness, a little positivity too.  I keep trying, I make  submissions to agents and publishers, but the big publishers can only be accessed via an agent, and the agents just reject or just don’t respond. 

I am a good writer, and quite a prolific one. Here are all but one of the books I have out (one is missing because it published 7 days ago and I haven’t had chance to change the graphic to my satisfaction yet):

The problem seems to be that I don’t fit easily into any particular pigeon hole. On those rare occasions when I get feedback, it’s not the writing they reject, it’s the fact that they don’t know how to market the work.

If the people whose job it is to sell stuff don’t know how to sell my writing, how should I? Marketing was never my strong suit. Well, here’s the thing, that’s what I’m going to have to figure out isn’t it? Learn to do the marketing.  

Sigh, but not today, today I’m going to let myself experience the emotions another rejection brings up, I’m going to sort the TBR pile into the space I’ve recently made for it, and tomorrow I will dust myself down, pick myself up and submit again. I will learn and improve. As things should be.

Rationalisation

Been putting things back into the newly decorated hall and landing today (pictures when all done).  With the redecorating, rationalising the mess and number of books was called for.  Doing this partly because we’ve removed one shelf.  Which is nothing in the scheme of things in this house, but it gave me a spur to tidy. Though Maris Wots-her-name can get lost with the 30 books per house rule – 30 books per shelf maybe.

This is just one pile of books to go

Some of the things on the landing bookcase were easy to remove. I had masses of notebooks and printed versions of books that have now gone to print.  So, all of that was removed. As I prefer spiral bound notebooks, I separated the paper pages from the card covers and wire bindings.  That meant we ended up going to the tip with four carrier bags of paper, one of card and one of wire. 

Then I got harder on myself and my book collection.  Books that I’ve read and never intend to read again were put out – unless I’ve formed some emotional connection to them.  The first five DCI Banks, first three Discworlds (and all Discworld hardbacks), those stay even if I won’t read them again.  I kept the Leigh Nichols I bought as a teenager because I love Dean Koontz.

Of those unread, if the blurb didn’t thrill me, they went out too.  In total over 120 books are to go out.  No entirely sure what I’m going to do with them.  Some may be resold on Amazon, others will go to a charity shop.  Can’t take them to the library as all local libraries have cease to accept donations.

It’s hard parting with books, but now I have free shelves to fill.  Good for my mood both ways.

Hangover

After two days of frantic activity, had a very quiet day today.  Kind of had to.  I drank a bottle and a half of wine last night.  Why?  I have no idea. It was there and I drank it.

Despite also having water to drink before going to bed and during the night, I was hungover as hell this morning. Got up at 11 with a massive headache. I wasn’t sick, but did retch a few times. I tried to function, but it just wasn’t going to happen. Instead I went back to bed.

I got up about 3, to find that our son was on the phone to my hubby, it being Father’s Day and all.  I did talk to him too, thankfully all’s well with him and his significant other.

Since then I have been going through a load of the papers and notebooks that were on the various bookcases. Picking what to keep and what to throw away. Most of it got thrown out. I had three plastic shopping bags worth of paper, one of cardboard, and one of the wire that binds my preferred style of notebooks. That’s also six magazine racks emptied.  Which is a good start on the getting rid of stuff. 

When moving around all the bookcase from the hall and landing, I decided it was time to trim the collection.  It’s easy to get rid of the my notes, the next step is to rationalise my book collection.  That’s going to be harder.  I love books, and getting rid of any will hurt.  But it’s got to be done, and to quote one book I don’t have “Tomorrow is another day” and this time, I won’t wake up with a hangover.

Arrangements

With the curtains up in the conservatory, and my back playing up, I’ve been working back down in the conservatory.  It’s been much better, I get the support of a decent desk and deskchair, and with the curtains taking the edge of the direct sunlight, it’s workable.  What this means is that I don’t finish work with either a headache from too much sun or a backache from sitting on a sofabed all day. 

I knew it would take a while to get things set up as I wanted.

The console table I had trouble with is now behind the sofa, holding my personal laptop (I’m working off the works laptop in the day). This now means that I have a working area that I can walk away from at the end of the day and then I’ve got somewhere safer for my personal laptop, instead of slipping it under the sofa.

It also means that the boxes of my books that have been behind the sofa have now been tidied up and put under the consol.  This means they are away from the radiator – not that warmth has been an issue. And that we have easier access to the CD rack and the bottom of the bookcase that end of the room. 

Still have to place my laptop over the scratch though!

But it’s working out, I’m getting comfortable, and that matters.

Bloggers

Been reading an ARC, advance reader copy, in case anyone wonders.  This is only the second time I’ve every done this, and I oddly feel the pressure because I have to get it read and reviewed by a specific date.

I shouldn’t be pressured, because that date is more than two weeks away, and I’m loving this book so much I’m already a third of the way through on day 2. I don’t want to put it down.

But it made me think about all the hard work that book bloggers must go through to keep their reading and reviewing up to date. It has to be remembered that book bloggers don’t get paid, they don’t always get the books for free (though often), so to read that many books and write often in-depth reviews, is really quite impressive. 

I couldn’t get through reading one book a week to review, I’ve got too much else going on. I’ve doing the Goodreads reading challenge this year, and so far I’m 22 books in, and most of that because I listen to Audible books too.  I’ve only set a challenge of 48 books this year, which I don’t feel any pressure to fulfil. If I miss my own expectations, so what?  Reading is about relaxing and enjoying. I’m not comparing my reading to someone else, that’s pointless, this is not a competitive sport.

And if it was, the bloggers I know would have me beat hands down. And good on them, they do a fabulous job for all authors, and largely go unsung.  So, thank you bloggers. I am in awe.

Questions

Questions come up every hour of every day, and a week ago, my hubby found a fifty questions of pick A or B.  What was really interesting was the ones on which our daughter and I picked both the same thing and the different. 

Because we had a laugh with that, it led to a discussion of music and it surprised us all how much stuff our daughter recognised from our generation of music. That then led to a challenge for all set a quiz for each other on topics we know.

The topics we picked were Photographers and Comic Strip artists (my hubby), Films and Animations (our daughter) and Book Lines and Comic book characters (me). Each topic had ten questions leading to forty questions for each to answer.  Impressively, I got 19, daughter 16 and hubby 13. 

The weird thing was we all thought the questions tat we set would easy – but as you can see from the scores, that was not the case.  It’s amazing that when you do know about a topic, you assume everyone knows that topic, and it’s stunning that they don’t.  Especially when you all live in the same house and talk about each others interests. 

So we’ve decided that next week we’re going to do another quiz. I’ve got book covers, I’ll either take out the title or the author depending on the book, the second topic is doing famous cars.  Daughter’s doing Villains and Sitcoms. Hubby is doing Landmarks and Album Covers.  So that should be interesting.

The point is that as much as we know and share, there’s so much that we have individual taste and exposure to. Its really fun to share and talk about what we like that the others don’t know. 

Something more to share.

Connections

Tonight I’ve been watching “Grayson’s Art Club” with my husband and daughter.  After it we got talking about art and artists, bear in mind through this that my husband and daughter are both very good photographers, so they understand images better than I do, while I as an author understand words better than they do.

So, my husband threw us a curve ball with a question about autographs.  His point was that signatures on paintings are the authentication of the painting. When a book gets signed, is it about a connection to the artist? He asked me as someone who had has been on both sides of the experience, how did that need for authentication translate to books?

Now the oddity for me has always been that I enjoy the art, but can’t give a toss about the artist. So I’ll enjoy the book, but not care about what the writer went through. I brought “The Great Writers” series when I was in my teens, and as much as I enjoyed the books, I didn’t care about the authors. The books were great, the magazines were average at best.

I do have some books that have been signed, and as an author I have signed book.  But the reality is if I’ve got £50 to spend and I’m torn between a signed comic and a signed book, there’s a pretty good chance I’d pick the comic.

I think the is a thing about art is the limited edition, where are books are constantly reprinting.  Also I think writers pour their souls more into the word than the artist do into their pictures, but what do you think?

January Review

So what happened in January – it started well, but finished on something of a low.

Locked Down is out for review, and the ebook is up for pre-order, the paperback will be up shortly, but Amazon doesn’t allow books to be pre-ordered if they are print on demand, seems odd, but it’s their game, their rules.  So that will be joining the ebook shortly.  I have one review on Goodreads already, so that’s good, and I’ll have to start the promotional stuff soon.

I have been working on Speed of Aether, but to steal a friends comment, Spead of Aether isn’t warp speed.  I’m behind where I wanted to be with this novel at this point.   I’ve reached 46k words, but I should have finished the book by now.

This isn’t because of the book, it is all the distractions, self-publishing especially.

I also took a week out of writing Speed to do a 5,000-word short story for an open competition I heard about. Now the bones of that were down quickly, but it took a fair amount of polish.  The problem was, I didn’t submit it because the feedback I got included the fact that I’d misrepresented a certain fetish.  And after looking into that fetish a bit more, I got the point.  I had.  And though the story was still a good read if you knew nothing about the fetish, I didn’t think it was the right thing to do to put it out there.  So more research needed.  Then I’ll re-write it, ignore the 5k limit and I suspect at some point it will be coming out as a novella.

I’m also down on wordcount, because I have barely been able to work on anything this last week.  I’m picked up a lung infection from somewhere and it’s laid me very low.  I can’t take a deep breath without it making me cough, movement or any form or exertion leaves me breathless – now I admit I’ve not been fit for a while, but I could walk up a flight of stairs without it making me call for oxygen, can’t do that right now. It’s seriously affected my ability to concentrate too.  You wouldn’t believe how long it’s taken to write this blog. Still, it’s an infection, I have been prescribed antibiotics and it will pass.  I just wish it would pass faster.

This year I promised myself that I would read and listen to more.  At least one audiobook and one paperback a month.  It doesn’t sound like much, but both are things that have suffered due to my full schedule.

This month I listened to “The Invisible Library” by Genevieve Cogman. I thoroughly enjoyed the story, Irene and Kai are such fun and the story had plenty of interest points to keep me listening.  The only downside was the narrator, her breathy voice worked well in some places and in others (which was, unfortunately, most places) it annoyed me.  It was like listening to a vicious argument spoken like an M&S Foood advert – This isn’t, an, argument, this, is, an M&S argument.  Really there are times when you want the action to feel active and that narrator lost that impact for me a few times.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s great book, I’d recommend reading it, I wouldn’t want to put you off listening to the audio either, but it was only a 4* for me.

This month I’ve mostly read an unpublished manuscript – which was brilliant!  It needs polish but if the author does what they need to do to get it published, I’m sure it will go down a storm. I’ve also read about half of “A Time for Silence” by Thorne Moore, very good Welsh-centric book. and part of “Dawn’s Early Light” by Pip Ballantine and Tee Morris, one of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences novels.  These are very different genres and very different storytellers.  But that’s been a good thing because I’ve been able to match what to read to how I was feeling.  Both have their good points, have to admit I’m enjoying the steampunk more as it a joyous adventure story, but there’s a more of an emotional connection with Thorne’s characters.  To be honest, there’s a character in there that I really don’t like, mostly because he reminds me of people I know. But isn’t that what the writers set out to do, entertain and evoke an emotional response?

Anyway, that’s me done for now. I’m going to listen to some “Mortal Engines” now, as that’s about all I have the energy for. I’ll catch up with you as soon as I can.

Psychopaths Panel

Should start by stating that the panel was about Psychopaths in Literature, not a panel of psychopaths.  Though…

Tonight I am back from a weekend of Llandeilo Litfest – it was a blast!  My first ever experience of being on a panel and I didn’t know what to expect, but it was a great hour.

The panel was led by Thorne Moore, writer of psychological crime novels, many of which are based here in Wales.  She did a great job of asking pertinent questions that set the rest of us off into interesting discussions.

My fellow panellists were John Nicholl and John Thompson. Now John N is an ex-police officer, and John T is a barrister, which left me feeling a little out of place – I’ve never worked in any of the law enforcement or legal occupations.  I’m an office bod who specialises in system design (Excel and Access mostly), so least qualified there.

What I enjoyed was that the three of us didn’t always agree which makes for lively conversation, all good-natured.  It was also lovely to get some really good audience participation going with an open floor and some back and forth.

To find more about these lovely people try:

• Thorne Moore: www.thornemoore.co.uk
• John Nicholl:  John Nicholl’s Amazon Page
• John Thompson: John Thompson’s Amazon Page

 

It was also great to see some old friends and make new ones.  People that I’ve connected to on the internet, I finally got to meet in real life. New people that I met for the first time too.  All the writers were lovely people and everyone willing to lend a hand at all points, writers are just about the most supportive group of people I have ever met. Then there were people who I know through Swansea and District Writers’ Circle, lovely to see everyone again.  Had some great chats at the Book Fair and managed to sell a few volumes too.

Thanks to all who made it a great weekend.

 

Editing is Hard

“Editing is hard.”

One of my editing clients said this to me the other day – yes even after I’m done tearing apart their manuscripts clients do still speak to me.

My internal voice said “No sh** Sherlock,” but externally I smiled and nodded and agreed.  But it made me realised that this is news to some people.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people think that writing is easy, that you just scribble a few lines and that’s it, you can self-publish and everything will be great, best seller, right.  Wrong.

You can write a novel in 30 days (see NaNoWriMo), I’ve done it.  Normally I can write a novel in two months – well that is 60 days of work, not always every day for sixty days on a trot because I have a life and two jobs.  But if I had sixty days on full-time writing, I could do it in 60 days, hell full time I would write it in 30 days.  But it wouldn’t by any means be publication ready.

That’s where editing comes in.

Writing is the quick part, editing takes forever, and sometimes it feels like it’ll never end.

Let me give you the example of my last completed novel, Shades of Aether.  This is my first steampunk novel, and I wrote it in about 60 (non-consecutive) evenings.  Then I reread it – the first self-edit.  With that, I picked up any obvious inconsistencies, made any changes I thought necessary, in this case, I upped the level of steampunk in the text. Then I booked it in for an edit.  My editor couldn’t do it immediately, so I have time for another read through to find a few more typos, tweaks, and corrections.  Then it went off to my editor.

Let me underline that – it went off to an editor. At no point did I think that could ever get a book complete for publication on my own.

So it went off to edit, that’s another four weeks gone – though I think in this case it was five weeks.  Then it came back with loads of questions that I hadn’t even thought about, so I had to do some major edits after that to ensure that I answered all those questions for the reader.  Having the facts in my head are no use if I can’t get them onto the page.

So that was another couple of months of rethinking and rewriting, editing and tweaking. And it wasn’t easy.  Some of the questions and queries that had been raised really stretched me, forced me to re-imagine my ending completely.

Then – guess what – more editing.  Yes, I sent it off for another professional edit, because to a certain extent I had a new book.  That one is due back to me any day now, but even then, I’ll still have to edit it, then reread it.  So there’s another couple of months gone by.

Once that is done, then there is the last stage – proofreading.  More time, more money, because proofreading, like editing, cannot really be done by the writer.

Writing the full novel is only the beginning.  Once it’s done all the hard work really starts, that is editing.  So don’t underestimate how much time and effort editing takes, but it’s well worth it.  Editing is the only way that you will ever get a publication ready book.