The Walking Dead on AMC

First.  Zombies.  I watched Walking Dead.  Especially since Gale Anne Hurd produced it and she just optioned Area 51, except not my Area 51, she optioned the supposed non-fiction Area 51 to make a fiction TV series.  So I don’t get that one either.  Gale, give me a buzz.  I already did the heavy lifting with nine books.

Anywho.  So in season one, they have to drape themselves in assorted body parts to get through the zombies because they can smell ya.  Then in season two, all it takes is pulling a body on top of you as a horde of zombies comes ambling through and they don’t smell you at all.  Huh?  And then there’s the guy who conveniently rips his arm open and is spewing blood, but they don’t smell that either?  So what exactly are the zombie rules?

But let’s go bigger picture.  How threatening is a creature that can only shuffle along and only hurt you if it makes blood to blood contact?  I mean you can outrun the things right?  Okay, so there’s lots of them.  Then more bullets.  They kept showing scenes of tanks and machine guns over-run.  How?  Even in the Civil War with muzzle loaders, it took the bad ass Confederates 12 charges running and screaming like banshees six hours to break the Hornet’s Nest at Shiloh.  I think if zombies had been charging, the Union would have wiped them out with their muzzle loaders and they didn’t have tanks and machine guns.  They’d even have had time for a tip or two of Oh-Be-Joyful in between firing.  So I aint buying zombies taking over, but I’m open to someone explaining it to me.

Which, totally aside, reminds me of the totally worthless movie made of the classic Starship Troopers where the Infantry is fighting bugs.  Did we suddenly forget how to make tanks?  Huh?  In the book, the Mobile Infantry were some bad asses, in exo-skeleton suits carrying nukes.  How’d they end up guys in cheap plastic body armor getting scissored by bugs?

Back to Walking Dead.  Note the key word is WALKING?  And we had plenty of time to do that, since they’re still shuffling around.  In the same episode where you can just hide under a car and zombies with their keen sense of smell walk on by, the survivors are searching a convoy of cars out of Atlanta for supplies and weapons.  And get real excited because they find—tada!—a set of knives and hatchets.  Wow.  Excuse me.  Atlanta is in Georgia.  If there was a convoy of cars in Georgia there’d be enough freaking firepower in those cars to outfit a regiment of Infantry.  Ditto for cars out of LA, Detroit, Bumfuck Arkansas, you name it.  We got more guns in this country than we have brains.  Or zombies.

And then they’re arguing, should so and so be allowed a gun?  Hey.  You got DEAD people walking around, folks!  The least of your worries is whose got a gun.

And then there is all the suspense over the guy shagging the protagonist’s wife.  First, they did think he was dead.  Two, we got DEAD people walking around, folks, eating LIVING people!  Least of your worries is who is shagging who.  I know the male brain supposedly thinks about sex like a gazzillion times every second (do male zombies do the same since it’s in that core part of our brain that’s apparently left?) but I have to tell you this.  Sex, while on a mission in Black Ops, never even occurred to any of us.  We were kind of more concerned with like, you know, LIVING.  So there are times us Neanderthals aint thinking about—what was that, I forgot because I was thinking about sex forty-two times in the last sentence.

Which brings me to vampires, well, not really, but here’s my problem there.  They’re DEAD right?  Sort of like zombies?  So why do vampires need blood and zombies need to eat?

Really, what’s with the blood thing?  Dead is dead.  They don’t need food.  Why do they need blood?  In my vampire book published before vampire books were about sparkly and teenage girls, the blood was the vampire, served a unique purpose and came from . . . well, you’re just going to have to read the damn book along with Gale Anne Hurd.  But you heard of telomeres?

I asked that at a Romance Writers of America chapter and got an answer that partially explained it.  Male vampires need blood, because, well, you know, for some reason they’d rather shag a human woman than drink her blood and a guy needs a certain supply of blood to enable that, along with, to believe all the commercials during football games, a lot of certain pills.  Because, you know, you never know when the moment might occur.  If you’re married, you know when that moment is going to occur.  Never.  Duh.

Or the vampire wants to drink her blood and then shag her.  Whatever.  But one thing for sure.  They don’t want to spend the night and they won’t call the next day.

Which brings me to that chick in Twilight.  Huh?  What’s so freaking special about her?  In fact, she’s kind of irritating.  Like the vampire and the werewolf are both lusting after her?  Come on.  They’re lusting after each other.  She’s just in the way.

Now there is a point to understanding zombies and vampires.  It’s why my nonfiction work in progress is:  The Green Beret Guide to Surviving The Apocalypse, Zombies and other Lesser Disasters.  See, zombies represent a blood borne communicable disease.  THAT is a real threat.  An airborne one could damn near wipe us out.  Did you see Contagion? I thought they were pretty restrained in that, but one key thing is note all the GOOD people who helped others died.  I actually think if an airborne virus with a 20% kill rate evolved, civilization would break down faster than you could say crossbow.  Speaking of which, I’m still out there plugging away.  Because I can reload and fire my crossbow faster than any damn zombie can get me.  But, I still prefer 5.56 at 250 meters.  And then 9mm, doubletap to the forehead, after I run out of the several thousand rounds of 5.56 which aint happening anyway. But if it does.  And then I run out of all my mags of 9mm and all my bolts for my crossbow, it’s time to pull out the dagger.  And then, well, I can kill them with my little pinkie.  But I’d stab you in the leg first, because it all comes down to is who can outrun the zombie.  Sort of like outrunning the bear who shits in the woods.  You don’t have to outrun it.  You have to outrun everyone else in your group.

I feel old and tired and a slacker after being on the Doing It On Their Own: Self-Publishing Authors Find Success panel with Bella Andre this afternoon.  She had so much energy and drive, she reminded me a lot of Susan Wiggs, another bestselling author, except Bella is a self-published author who earned over a million dollars in 2011.  The amount is impressive, but more so her drive for the future.  I plan on bugging the hell out of her for more information that, I being the slug I am, have failed to uncover.  Also, I think Bella and I should co-write a romantic, Special Forces, thriller and translate it into a dozen languages.  Hey, I’ve co-written some romance before.  I bring the bullets, she brings the romance.  I do real body count, she does fun body count.

Tony van Veen from Bookbaby was a great panel member and I liked the way Bookbaby does business.  Straight up, you get what you pay for, and the rest is on you, author.  No percentages, just flat fee (and an incredibly small one in my opinion) for digitizing your content.

And our other panel member, Elle Lothlorien gets bonus points just for her name.  Yes, it’s real, not a pen name.  As you’ll see at the end of this blog, I’m going to mangle a quote from the LOTR movie.  Also, she started out self-pubbing with no backlist, and has been successful which is astronomically hard to do.  She achieved that dream of many writers:  earning enough to quit her day job to write full time.  So check her books out.

I have to thank Mike Shatzkin for putting together a great conference.  And Michael Cader for his usual deluge of information during his presentation and for Publishers Lunch.  If you write, sign up for it.  For $20 a month, it’s more than worth it.

I also had lunch with my wonderful sister, Ellen, in Grand Central Station.  She said let’s meet at the Apple Store there, so I walk down and am standing looking at a map of the station, trying to find the Apple Store, then look to my right, past the famous clock, and duh.  Can’t miss it.

I’ve got a stack of business cards I have to wade through, but you want to know the good stuff, the useful stuff.  So.  Hmm.

In the interest of being controversial, let me restate my feeling about digital publishing:  Authors produce the product.  Readers consume the product.  Everyone else:  Lead, Follow or Get The Hell Out of the Way.

That is from my days in the Infantry.  Listening to many of the people on panels here, they act like the author is almost a secondary consideration.  Others act like authors are partners.  Guess which of the two is going to be successful?

Open Road focuses on authors.  That’s leading. Some others.  Not so much.

Yesterday morning was a series of large group talks from the big guns.  I thought Ellen Archer of Hyperion made a lot of solid points.  It’s clear when people are seeing the big picture and when someone is focused on their niche.  But overall, I felt a lot of traditional publishers are still about a year behind on the digital learning curve.

The reality is with digital it’s going to be the same as print:  the big names will get the attention, while the midlist and the rest will wither on the vine unless the author gets lucky or does an incredible amount of work and gets lucky.  The latter just means you have a higher chance of getting lucky.  As Elle said on the panel:  I’d rather trust my fate to me.

A lot of panelists kept talking about their big successes, which are exceptions to the rule.  The rule is that this is a brutal business for authors.  It’s also called reality.  However, I’m taking a cue for that and going to discuss how things have gone for me in eBooks over the course of the next several blogs.  Not the rule, but my experience.  The first fact I’ll throw out is that in January 2011 I sold 347 eBooks.  By the end of 2011, the tally for the year was around 400,000.  So things picked up a bit as the year went on.  You could say.  I didn’t earn quite as much as Bella but not far behind.  I’ll give more exact numbers in a few weeks once all is tallied along with percentages, but frankly they’ll mean little to you unless you’re in my situation.

I re-iterate my point that publishers and agents need a formal training program for their authors.  I submit, once more, my Write It Forward program.  Still no takers.

Here are some interesting numbers you can make of what you will:

25 million Americans own ereaders.

34 million American own tablets, which includes 5 million kindle fires.

The Big 6 say 15% of sales are digital.  Hmm.  I always liked the line from The Wire:  Juking the stats.  I met my wonderful agent after the conference and she sees real numbers and even she said it’s much higher for her clients.  But I do take back one of my predictions for 2012 made just a few weeks ago.  I think it’s highly unlikely a big name authors will jump this year and go indie.  They’re being compensated well enough by their publishers and the work of being indie is just so incredibly hard.  Ask Bella or Elle.

Amazon plans to publish 400 plus titles in 2012.  The ‘big’ announcement that HMH will sell-in Amazon’s NY print titles wasn’t as impressive as many made it to be, since that’s not their genre imprints in Seattle.  Plus, the future for fiction is what Amazon does best:  eBooks.  I found a lot of antagonism toward Amazon from people, but hey, they sell books.  Sort of the way people went after B&N and said let’s support the indie.  Then the same people cried when Borders went under.  We’re all people who love books.  More on this at the end. But let’s stop fighting each other.  Except you.  Yeah, you over there.

By the end of 2012 it’s estimated there will be 40 million ereaders and 61 million tablets in the US.

Publisher optimism is waning.  Duh.  Isn’t this the year the world is supposed to end anyway?  They had a futurist, David Houle, give a presentation on Publishing  in the Shift Age and my first thought was:  this guy thinks there’s a future?  Remember in Black Ops:  You aint paranoid if they are out to get you.  Watch RED last night and LOVE that movie.  And hate to tell, despite being very funny, it was scaringly realistic.  Down to Malkovich picking up a Swedish K and loving it.  If you know what he’s talking about, then you know what I’m talking about, and now I gotta come kill you and put your head in a safe.

28% of publishers think their company will be stronger—which is down from 51% last year.  That’s telling.

We got asked by our panel moderator, Jeremy Greenfield, from F&W, what would entice us to go with a traditional publisher and we all kind of sat there and eventually said:  “Uh, nothing really.”

I don’t rule it out, but things would have to change dramatically.  I’m open to pretty much anything, being the publishing whore that I am, but I’m also very aware of the realities of the publishing landscape, particularly digital.

I’ve got more, and will have to do another blog post on it, but I wanted to get this out.  So I’ll end with a mangling of a stirring speech from the LOTR movie (wasn’t in the book BTW) as the good guys and gals of Middle Earth stand there on a pile of rubble surrounded by the forces of Mordor and Aragon does what good leaders are supposed to do:

Sons of Barnes & Noble, of Random House, of Amazon, of Indie Authors, my brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends, and break all bonds of fellowship; but it is not this day! An hour of woe, and shattered shields, when the Age of Men comes crashing down; but it is not this day! This day we READ! By all that you hold dear on this good earth, I bid you stand, Men and Women of Publishing! TODAY WE READ”

Rant over.

Anyway, then I went inside, still eating my slice and sat in on a workshop on SEO.  There were a lot of industry people from publishing there since, after all, we’re in New York City, the home of publishing.

I have mixed feelings about conferences.  Sometimes they can be mind-numbing.  Other times they can be very exciting.  But I find in the long run both extremes pull together towards useful.  Even when they’re sort of mind-numbing, they stir the brain.  As a fiction writer one of my favorite sayings is “take it one step further”.  And another is:  “What if what appears to be; isn’t.”  The latter comes more from my time in the Special Forces.  We were a tad paranoid.  But you aint paranoid when they are out to get you.

Which brings me to the topic of analytics.  The panel was “You can’t grow what you can’t measure.”  Hmm.  I’m not sure about that.  Sometimes we become so enamored with numbers, we forget a key question:  what do they really represent?  I think of Snakes on a Plane.  Tremendous internet buzz.  Then when it came out, tanked.  In Special Forces (YouTube video from appearance on Discovery ref the Green Berets) we knew there was a big difference between information and intelligence.  The latter is usable information.

I was a bit surprised during the sessions I attended on how basic a lot of the information being put out was and how basic many of the questions were.

But here is some of the information (along with a few comments); make what intelligence of it you wish:

There was a lot of focus on click throughs.  I get that you’d want people to actually go to your site and look at what you have, but I think (anecdata without even an anec or a data) that just having the cover on the side of a Facebook or Google page a couple hundred thousand times with only 20 clicks, still has reach.  That image is in the corner of the eye.  It penetrates the subconscious.  And most of the time nothing happens.  But say that person sees that cover or that author name again, somewhere else?  There will be a connection.  Presence marketing.

An interesting slide from the SEO session was how important it is to rank in the top three results on a google search of your keywords.  Because people click on choice one 36.4% of the time, choice two 12.5% and choice three 9.5%.  That’s hmm, 58.4% of people gone before they get to #4.

Pre-Order your copy NOW!

But Jen Talty covered all this in our upcoming The Shelfless Book:  The Complete Digital Author (pre-order you copy NOW!).  After I came back from Storyworld, the West Coast cousin to #DBW12 we focused on metadata.

Google also own 80% of the SEO market share.  However, Bing has now passed Yahoo as a search engine.

Some other points made:  use your keywords over and over in the body of your text also.  Bob Mayer.  And use links.  A lotta links.  Bob Mayer.  An interesting thing we need to check into is that you can use keywords for images inserted into a WordPress blog (Jen just told me when she loads blogs here she puts in a description for the image).  Also, the more time people spent on your page, the higher Google ranks it.  So go get a beer, this will still be here when you get back.  Even better, just leave this page on your screen when you go to bed?  Hmm.

Any of you heard of pinterest?  It’s supposed to be the hot new thing.  I sent Jen the link. She signed right up, though is still waiting for her “invite”.  What do you think if you’re using it?

One thing I realized, again, is that because I wear so many hats:  author, publisher, promoter, crossbow firer, consigliore to Riley (my three week old grandson) the future leader of the resistance, servant to hardworking guard dogs Cool Gus and Sassy Becca, I have a big perspective on this whole digital book experience.  I still get the feeling that experts are, well experts.  Very good at what they do, but not exactly sure at times how their expertise helps the big picture.

I’ve got to go over my notes and then process them with a full day tomorrow and I’ll blog again.  I did get some interesting ideas “taking it one step further”. Jen is waiting on the edge of her seat for my ideas. I think I’ll make her wait a little longer.

It’s weird, I keep hearing military terms in the civilian world and it kind of, well, I don’t know what it makes me feel.  Don Cheadle in House of Lies used HALO, which stands for High Altitude Low Opening Parachuting.  Special Forces runs the military’s HALO school at Ft. Bragg, which is now only 60 miles down the road from my new abode.  I also use it in Who Dares Wins by that guy Bob Mayer, and Write It Forward, by that guy, Bob Mayer who works with that girl…what’s her name? Oh yeah, Jen Talty.  But to hear people use it who have never done it, is strange.  BTW, that’s a wickedly good show.  Right up there with The Good Wife and Southland.  We all need a touch of reality.  And yes, I’m watching Downton Abbey too and it’s damn good.  And then there’s Raising Hope, which is on the lighter side and we all need that too.

Oh, yeah, as promised, FREE eBooks.  Two of the Black Ops series:  The Line and The Gate, will be free on Kindle for the next three days (that’s Toosday, Wendssday and Thoisday in the Bronx).  So go snark ‘em up.  (You do know you don’t need to own a Kindle to read a Kindle book, right?  It’s an app.)

Free Kindle eBook 24-26 Jan

The Line received some really cool reviews and also got me banned from the Association of Graduate’s Magazine book reviews at West Point:

“Mayer has crafted a military thriller in the tradition of John Grisham’s The Firm.” Kirkus

“So convincing, that by the last page, readers may doubt the official version of the last 50 years.” Publishers Weekly

I used to pitch it as an updated Seven Days in May.  Until I gave the keynote at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and asked how many people had read or seen Seven Days and not one in 500 people raised their hands.  Oops.

Free Kindle eBook 24-26 Jan

The Gate, I based on a book I picked up in the nonfiction section of the library at Ft. Campbell called Japan’s Secret War.  The author claims there’s a chance the Japanese detonated an atomic bomb at the end of World War II in Manchuria.  His evidence is spotty, but it is true the Germans sent two U-Boats with their uranium to Japan near the end of WWII.  So it got me thinking and I took it one step further and asked:  What if they did do that, but there were two bombs?  And where is the second one?  And . . .

Well, you can read the free book to find out the rest.

That’s my name (Bob Mayer) repeated how many times in this post?  And how many links?  And how many left this page live overnight?  Come on, Google.  Of course, the machine probably didn’t like me referring to the future leader of the resistance against the Rise of the Machines.

I think I just linked myself into a visit from a guy with sunglasses.

Write It Forward!

I’ll be doing a blog post with the publication of the book to discuss how my eBooks did in 2011.  I’m going to quote real numbers in terms of sales.  I mean dollars. That seems cold.  Americans hate talking about money.  Even though we are a capitalistic society.  Do you know how much the person in the next cubicle/office/home office etc is making?  Hell no.  You can ask them if they beat a gopher with a stick but not how much they make.

I remember sitting at lunch years ago with several authors at the Maui Writers Conference.  We were discussing the business and I started talking about dollars and every author just about spit their iced tea out.  They said NO writer talks about actual dollars.  But they were also very happy to finally let the beast out of the closet and talk about contracts and real dollars.  Because it was their livelihood and for their entire career they had been working in the dark trying to figure out what they were worth, what their books were worth, what their time was worth and what their writing was worth.  But it was all hidden under a bushel.

All I read lately are blogs about indie and trad numbers and how many of each hit whatever bestseller lists and how USA Today is better than NY Times because it sort of tracks real sales, yada, yada I told you about the bisque didn’t I?

There are quite a few indie and trad authors making a very nice living and they never hit the bestseller lists.  To them, I say, take satisfaction in that you get to do what you love and don’t worry about the ‘validation’ of lists that are vague at best.

Because not a single bestseller list focuses on earnings (except in a way, Amazon sales rankings, although pricing can vary widely).  And that is a fatal business flaw as any MBA, or person with a business sense, will tell you.  Especially with the tidal wave of eBooks.  Let’s walk through a practical application of this.

A certain author sells 1 million eBooks.  (Stephen King just passed 1 million btw) Woohoo!  At .99.  Well, okay.  But it’s a million.  I grant it’s a brilliant marketing move.  For the first person who did it.  For the rest, sorry, it’s not that unique any more.  A million eBooks on Amazon at .99, where each earns a little over .29.  Ultimately around $297,000.  Not chump change.  Except the guy in the next cubicle who sells 100,000 eBooks at $4.99, one tenth of that all important number, earns $349,300.  Huh?  Yet which one does the publishing world focus on?  The units sold.  However, which, ultimately, is the more important number?  You can’t pay employees with units sold.  You pay them with earnings.

Bad business.  Because at the end of the day we have to pay the rent/mortgage, the utilities and our business expenses.  And our employees.  Or else, you know, we have to like, fire them.

Look at Publishers Lunch, which announces deals.  We know agents and publishers never give exact figures to PW.  So it labels them with terms:  good, nice, yada yada.  Except how many books?  What rights?  What royalty rates?  Which exact end from the low end to high end does the deal actually hit?  Ask anyone.  Big difference if they get the top number or the bottom number.

Let’s not even get into how antiquated the NY Times list is.  It’s always been skewed. Sunday’s list reflects sales through 7 January.  Hey, NYT, it’s 21 January!  Do you own a computer? Connected to the Internet?  You’ve been reporting the list the same way now for decades.  And it’s based on reports from stores, not actual sales.  One time I had the #4 bestselling fiction mass market title on USA Today and didn’t even hit the Times extended list.  Then I had a book on the Times list that never touched USA Today.  So which reality are they operating in?

I know that we’re not going to shift to reporting actual dollar figures.  But I think as indie authors we need to be aware that believing in numbers with such a high degree of variance once you get into the details as our measuring stick has inherent problems.  I took some courses in psychology on statistics and how they can be skewed.

I know, it’s all we have. The key to success in digital publishing is not the immediate success and the bestseller list.  It’s the long tail, a broad base of titles, and consistent sales over the years.  Where bestseller lists really count is on Amazon if you get on that first page for your genre.  That’s called discoverability.

All I’m saying is let’s be aware that ‘success’ is different for each of us and there are many roads to Oz and even Oz is a different place for each of us.

BTW:  I had my first title free this week on Amazon:  Atlantis.  It was downloaded 26,000 times in five days and hit #1 on the science fiction free list.  Once it was back to $2.99, it dropped precipitously in ranking, then climbed quickly until it hit the top the top ten in paid science fiction.  It is currently #14 in scifi and also selling well in audio via Audible.

We just did a schedule where at least one of my books will be free every week (in some weeks up to five will be free).  I’ll do a blog post each time a book becomes free.

Write It Forward.

You’ve got your original idea and you’ve done your research. Now, before you begin to write your book, you should find a novel similar to what you plan to write that is already published. I guarantee you there is something out there that is similar. Then you should sit down with your razor sharp brain and cut it apart to see all the pieces. Then put them together again to see how they all fit.

You have to ask yourself a number of questions:

1. What was the original idea the author started with? How close is it to mine?
2. How did the author translate that idea into a story? What twist did the author put on the original idea? What’s my twist? How am I different from this author’s work?
3. What is the theme/intent to this story?
4. Why did the author begin where he or she did?
5. Why did the author chose the perspective he or she did?
6. What scope did he or she place on the story?
7. What is the pacing of the story?
8. How did the author bring the story to a conclusion?
9. What did the author do that you liked?
10. What did the author do that you didn’t like?
11. What didn’t the author put in the book that you might have? Why didn’t the author put that in?
12. What was in the book that you feel could have been left out? How would the story change if it were left out?
13. What were the subplots? How did they connect with the main plot? Did all the subplots get resolved?
14. Why did the author pick the settings he or she did?

These are questions you are going to face in your own manuscript. If you can understand how someone who successfully wrote the same type of book answered them, you greatly improve your ability to answer them.

Here’s another interesting exercise to do. Take a book that was made into a film and compare the two. For example, The Great Santini by Pat Conroy. If you read the book, then watch the movie, you will notice several subplots are missing from the movie version that are in the book. How did the screenwriter do this yet maintain the original idea and story of the book? Did these subplots add or take away from the book?

I was talking to producer Dan Curtis (Winds of War) and he told me how he works on taking a novel and turning it into a screenplay. First he breaks the novel down into a list of one or two sentences summaries of every major scene or action. Then he writes the screenplay off that list. Then he breaks the screenplay down into a list of one or two sentence summaries and sees how that compares to the one he did for the novel.

Use narrative structure to lay out the structure of the novels you read. What is the hook? What are the progressive complications? What is the choice the protagonist has to make? How is it made? How is the main plot resolved? How do the subplots support the main plot?

It is essential that you be well read in the area in which you wish to write. The more you read, the more you will get imprinted in your conscious and subconscious brain the style and manner in which those types of stories are written, which will aid you greatly in writing your own.

You should also read more first novels, rather than the latest by a best-selling author. Since you are trying to get published, see what kind of novel it takes to get published at various publishing houses. Some best-selling authors can crank out anything– which would not get published if a no-name author did it– and have it become a best seller.

Another thing that book dissection can help you with is determining how “realistic” your book needs to be and in researching your topic. For example, in most mystery novels, police procedure lies somewhere between detective shows on TV and the way it is really done. You’ll find if you interview a homicide detective about how they cover a murder scene, that you will be overwhelmed with detail and the scene you write in your book would have to be many hours long and slow your action down. So see how such scenes are generally written in most novels that are published in your genre and proceed accordingly.

I have sat down with best-sellers and breakout novels and broken them down on a spreadsheet scene by scene to study the structure. Many authors I’ve talked to have done something similar in order to learn.

A question you should ask yourself after dissecting a book like what you want to write is this: How is my book going to be different? What is my unique twist? Every idea has been done– it is in the development of your story off that idea that you have to bring your originality.

102 Solutions to Common Writing is FREE for the next couple of days on Kindle.

Atlantis was free last week and now is in the top 10 overall in science fiction.

Monday I go to New York for Digital Book World and will be blogging about what I learn there.  From there, it’s on to the San Diego State University Writers Conference.  Nothing but good times ahead.

Yesterday Bob forwarded me an email from Amazon about new Kindle Publisher Tools with the Kindle Format 8 (KF8) support

I’m drooling. And as Bob is reading this, his eyes are rolling to the back of his head. Not because he’s not excited about it, but when I get talking about techie stuff, Bob starts to twitch.

Amazon also has a beta tester for a Kindle Adobe InDesign Plugin, but it doesn’t yet have the ability to support the KF8, so its kind of useless to me, but when they do figure that out (and they will) I won’t be drooling, I’ll be foaming at the mouth.

So what does all this mean?

That is what Bob said in his email. When I translated what it meant…I haven’t heard from him since. I think he’s avoiding me…

Seriously, this is very exciting stuff. But it’s only the beginning of what is going to happen as eBooks take over the world. As we discussed before, using a Word document or using a web page .htm Word generated document isn’t a very good idea when creating an eBook. See this blog post. I prefer to use InDesign or Pages, which allows me to create a quality ePub file. The KindleGen is a free download from Amazon that accepts HTML, XHTML or an ePub file as a source file. What is most exciting to me is that I can use a single ePub file that I created that works fabulously with iBooks, B&N and Kobo (video and all) to create the new files for Kindle that can be used on both KindleFire and Kindle eReaders.

Even better, there is a Kindle Previewer Software. I don’t have to be in KDP to “preview” my eBook. (A little piece of advice: if you can, preview your book on all devices and apps).

But here is the problem. This isn’t perfect yet. Certain things that are supported by Kindle Fire Table (such as nested tables and merged cells and scalable vector graphics) are not supported by Kindle eInk based devices or Apps for PC, Mac and Smartphones.

The Vook is another new great tool for authors. I’ve tested it, and while it’s not for me, it’s a really excellent option for authors for formatting both ePub and Kindle eBooks. I do recommend it over some other options out there for authors because it does create high quality and the author does control the end result more so than other services out there, whether it be free or paid. If I didn’t have InDesign, I’d probably use Vook regularly. They’ve done a really good job of working out some of the kinks and for those authors who don’t have a nerd who lives to “figure things out” as their business partner like Bob has with me, then it’s an excellent option.

Also, Apple is going to make some big announcement soon and it will most likely have something to do with eBooks either directly or indirectly.

As eBooks gain popularity, this technology is going to get better and better. We are going to undergo some major changes and with it will come some frustration since we will have to learn new things. But at the same time these changes are very exciting and will help authors connect with their readers and that is a beautiful thing.

Write It Forward!

In January of 2011, Who Dares Wins Publishing was puttering along.  We sold 347 eBooks that month.  In July we sold over 100,000 eBooks.  That’s how fast things are changing in publishing.

In January of 2011, my wife and I were living on Whidbey Island, WA.  This January we’re living on a hilltop in the forest in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

In January of 2011, we were parents.  This January, we’re grandparents.

Riley Kiran Cavanaugh was born on the 4^th of January.  His first name is the same as the protagonist from my early Special Forces books.  We will train him to be the future leader of the Resistance.

The move was, well, let’s say hard.  Our plan get sort of sidetracked with some other expectations—we actually were going to stay in the Pacific Northwest, but nothing there worked out.  We literally decided near the beginning of November and were on the road in two weeks.  Cool Gus and Sassy Becca were real troopers, sleeping in the back of the car, learning a different motel room every night.  Gus tore his paw up chasing his ball somewhere in Wyoming and ended up in a cone of shame.  So traveling and a cone of shame—he was not happy, but as you can see, Becca was very supportive.

We had no idea if we would find a place here in North Carolina.  We spent a couple of very discouraging days looking for a rental and then finally found it.  2.5 acres with an electric dog fence.  A built in office.  A kitchen with stuff that actually works.  Hill top view.  Great fields of fire.  Space for a crossbow range to practice for the zombies.  And the electric fence actually works.  They are not dumb dogs.  And they have plenty of space to roam now.  Most importantly, close to Riley, Craig and Nisha.

Of course our stuff didn’t come for 2 weeks so we got quite good at living and working out of a hotel room.  But once it came, we were unpacked in 48 hours and everything set up in a week.

While we were moving I also expanded into audio books via Audible.  Five titles are live and seven more are in production.  I plan to have the entire Area 51 and Atlantis series in audio by the end of 2012 along with a number of other titles.  The Jefferson Allegiance, Bodyguard of Lies and The Rock are also currently available.  I recommend the Audible ACX program to authors who have the rights to their books.  It’s a very straightforward process.

Our expansion into foreign markets is gaining ground.  The Spanish version of Area 51 is selling well on Amazon ES and we’re working on getting the rest translated.

We’re playing with promotional programs.  Five titles are in Kindle Select and Atlantis is currently free and ranked #1 in free Science Fiction in just 24 hours.

So, as the sun comes up through the trees, I’m taking a moment to reflect and be grateful for a new year and a new life.

What you get when you enroll in KDP select is your book will be placed into the Kindle Lending Library, so customers who participate in Amazon Prime can load your book for free. Any book lent will receive a portion of specified funds, but any book sold at regular price, you still get a royalty. And you can also do a promotional sale for five days.

We decided to try the program with five titles and we are very happy so far. My title Jane Doe’s Return is one and we’ve since set it to “free” for five days. This is one of the perks of the program. As of this writing we’ve had nearly 2000 downloads of this title.  It is currently ranked #11 in Romantic Suspense, #27 in Contemporary and #213 in the overall FREE Kindle Store. Not bad. Also, my other title, Rekindled has seen a slight jump in sales.

So, for the next 3 days, my book Jane Doe’s Return will be free on Kindle. Its FREE! Go, download it now. Really. Do it. It’s Free!

Imagine spending your entire career looking for the one person you believe will unlock the mystery of who killed your sister only to find her the most unlikely place; in your office, as your new partner.

Special Agent Travis Brown has set his life up so he can have access to information that will lead him to the one woman he believes can tell him who killed his sister. But he’s not prepared for the drive and determination of his new partner; Special Agent Shauna Morgan. Her instincts are sharp and her beauty undeniable. His attraction to her is as strong as his need to find his sister’s killer. But Shauna has a secret. A secret that will ultimately put his heart on the line, along with her life.

Jane Doe’s Return is a contemporary romantic suspense novel set between the city streets of Albany, New York and the scenic beauty of Lake George where I lived for many years. It is a tale of one woman who believes the only way to move beyond her past, is to shut the door on it, and the man who breaks it down.

Jane Doe’s Return is the recipient of The Molly and The Beacon Romance Writing Contests.

Write It Forward!

This is often because all those goals we set don’t have a strategic goal, which they support.  The #1 key to success in any endeavor is to set a strategic, overall goal and do whatever it takes to accomplish.  I’m gearing up to teach a Write It Forward workshop on-line for the next two months (registration closes Thursday night) and the first thing we work on is goals.  The excerpt below is from our Guide to Writers’ Conference: How to Get the Most Out of Your Time & Money, but it’s also a version of what’s in Write It Forward.

Strategy First: Know Your Goals

Understand Why You’re Going

We’re opening this book about conferences with an adapted excerpt from Bob’s book Write It Forward:  From Writer to Published Author. In this section we discuss goal setting, because the first thing you have to do, even before you look for a writing conference, is know what you want to achieve both with your writing and with your conference experience.  Every decision you make before, during and after the conference depends on what goals you set.

Let’s talk first about your strategic writing goal. It can be anything, but it’s important that you lock it down in one sentence. Here are some broad examples:

• I will be a NY Times best-selling thriller author in five years.
• I will write my memoir for my grandchildren in the next three months.
• I write part-time simply because it is a hobby and spend an hour a day on it.
• I want to be published within 2 years by a major, traditional press.
• I will have my book in print within 2 months via self-publishing.
• I will write a book that will help people with —– and spend the next three years using it to bolster and complement my speaking career.

The Importance of Your Strategic Goal:

• It starts your creative and practical process.
• It determines your supporting goals.
• Remembering it keeps you focused.
• It is the core of your work regime.
• It is the core of your marketing campaign.
• It determines what conference(s) you will attend and how you will plan for them.
• All supporting goals must align with it in the hierarchy.

Supporting Goals

Your supporting goals are designed to help you achieve your overall strategic goal. Thus, everyone’s path will be different based on having different strategic goals. What conference you pick to attend, what workshops you will go to, how you will socialize and network, who and how you will pitch, etc. all will be shaped by your goals.  Each of those decisions are based on the supporting goals for each one.

Everything that you are getting in this book is filtered through your specific strategic goal. When you go to a writers’ conference, everything you hear is also filtered through your strategic goal.  So two people attending the same session are going to walk out with two different impressions, each filtered through their point of view, which is shaped by their strategic goal.

When you state your goals, they should be done in one sentence. The sentence should have a positive verb that indicates the action you’ll want to use to achieve your goal. The verb must indicate an action you control—to an extent. In publishing, you control the writing and the way you approach the business. Beyond that, the publishing gods are fickle. I will become a NY Times Bestselling author in five years seems a bit lofty. But here’s the bottom line: if that’s what you want to achieve, then state it. And then develop a plan to do it. This greatly increases your odds of achieving the goal than the hit-or-miss method.  Studies have shown the #1 key to success is setting a long-term strategic goal and doing whatever it takes in order to achieve it.  Once you have that strategic goal, it determines everything you do, because everything you do has to support that goal.

Your goal should have an external, visible outcome. Just as in your novel your character’s goal should be something concrete and external, so should yours.

You should have a time lock for achieving the goal, unless time is of no consequence to you. For most of us, time is the most valuable asset we have.

Keep It Positive- A Negative Goal Accepts Defeat

Here’s another thing about stating your goal: Putting it out there, verbally and in writing, is a form of making a commitment.  We know many writers get some static from those around them about all the time and money they invest in writing when they are unpublished and there seems to be no payback.  The expense of a conference might be hard to justify.  If people just see you sitting in front of a computer staring into space and then going off to conferences, they might start to question what you are doing.  Letting others know your goal is committing to trying to achieve it and also lets others know you’re serious about it.  Then showing your supporting goals such as how much time you allocate each day to writing, attending conferences, taking workshops, etc. will make sense in terms of the framework of the larger, long-term goal.

It also puts pressure on you to stick to your goals. We know many people who are afraid to clearly state their goals because by not doing so, they can slack off day after day. Also, some are afraid to state goals because they fear ridicule.

In 1987 Jim Carrey was 25 years old and a struggling comic. He drove his Toyota up Mulholland Drive in LA. Overlooking the city he wrote himself a check for $10 million. He dated it 1995 and noted it was “for acting services rendered”.

He was wrong. In 1995, his price for a movie was $20 million.

We can guarantee you one thing:  if you don’t state your goal and strive for it, you are guaranteed never to achieve it.

Write goals out.  Post them where you can see them every day.  Put your conference goal on the inside of your notebook where you can see it every time you open it up to take notes.

What do you fear doing? (Often this is exactly what we must do). We have often found that many writers are afraid of writing about the things closest to them. Which means they are afraid to write their passion. Most writers are introverts, so going to a conference is against our instincts. Socializing is difficult for us and we don’t like crowds.  We know many writers who go to conferences and hide in their rooms, rather than attending sessions.

Questions to ask Yourself

They key to answering these questions is the ability to do so in one sentence. This is important because it forces you to focus on what you really want.

• What do I want to do?
• Why do I want to do it?
• Why should anyone else want to do it? (History & Research)
• What is the most important thing I want to achieve?
• How will I know when I have achieved my goal? What will have happened?
• How have others defined it?
• How long did it take others to achieve this goal?
• What was your original goal when you began writing?  The good news is you had one. The bad news is you might well have forgotten it.  That original goal is key. It’s usually the spark of inspiration.  It is the foundation of you as a writer, the seed, from which all else comes. It is your Strategic Goal.

Strategic and Supporting Goals Worksheet

My strategic writing goal is:

My tactical writing goal regarding mode of publication is:

My tactical business goal/priority regarding agents is:

My tactical business goal/priority regarding editors is:

My tactical business goal/priority of attending conference is:

My tactical goal regarding priority of workshops is:

List all the things you intend to do to help ensure your goals are met:

Write It Forward!

(PS:  We’ll be doing a bunch more blog posts this month about Writers’ Conferences because many of you are planning on attending at least one in 2012)

Cool Gus and Sassy Becca were troopers on the drive across America, although Gus suffered a torn paw somewhere in North Dakota as he was exercising, running after his ball, so he had to wear the cone of shame for a long time.  But they love the new house and being able to roam around over 2 acres outside.  Here they are in the back of the car during the drive.

And I’m getting psyched because while 2011 was the year of breaking out in eBooks and starting in audio books, 2012 will be the year of writing, when I can push forward several of my series and introduce some new books.  My first audio books went live on Audible this month and are already selling well.  Area 51, Atlantis, The Jefferson Allegiance, Bodyguard of Lies, and one of my all time favorites, The Rock are now on audio and more books are in production.

First out of the gate in January 2o12, currently being edited, is The ShelfLess Book: The Complete Digital Author which takes all Jen Talty and I have learned about the eBook business and compiles it in one source.

For fiction, the first new title will be I, Judas; The 5^th Gospel, a thriller that I’ve just about completed where it appears to be the beginning of the Apocalypse and deep in the Amazon, Judas Iscariot is telling his 2,000 year old story to two intrepid survivors of an expedition sent to assassinate him.

A new Duty, Honor, Country will be published, moving Elijah Cord and Lucius Rumble forward from the ending of the first book, starting on the pivotal first night of battle of Shiloh and further into the Civil War.  One great thing about being in the east again is greater access to the battlefields of the Civil War. While I’ve walked all of them, going over them one more time really adds to the writing.  As a sidenote, I’m only 50 miles north of Camp Mackall and the home of the Special Forces Qualification Course which I went through a long, long time ago when men were men and the sheep ran scared.

A new series spinning off of Area 51 will launch in 2012:  Area 51: Nightstalkers.  I find it interesting that Gale Anne Hurd (Terminator, Aliens, The Abyss and The Walking Dead) has optioned Area 51.  Not my Area 51, but the nonfiction one (supposedly nonfiction) to make a new TV series.

Chasing The Dead will feature Horace Chase from Chasing the Ghost in a new adventure.

And The Kennedy Endeavor will take the characters from The Jefferson Allegiance and thrust them into another national security issue based on a historical secret dating back to Kennedy, Khrushchev, the killing of Mary Meyer and the Cuban Missile crisis.

On the non-fiction front, 2012 will also bring The Green Beret Survival Guide for the Apocalypse, Zombies and Other Lesser Disasters.  I’ve set up a crossbow range in my new backyard and am honing my skills.  Gus and Becca are keeping a safe distance.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg as there are a couple of other projects in the developmental stage that I’m very excited about.

I hit the ground running in January with a Write It Forward on-line workshop and then to New York City for Digital Book World and flying from there direct to the San Diego State University Writers Conference where I’m teaching a track on digital publishing.

So, thank you for 2011, and let’s hope 2012 is just as exciting and fulfilling!

Write It Forward!

The reality is, to thrive and not just survive, everyone in publishing must be willing to change on a dime and innovate.  My background in Special Forces taught me how to do that.  Also, it taught me that to succeed, I must take risks.  The company isn’t called Who Dares Wins for nuthing (as we say in da’ Bronx).

What do I see for 2012 in publishing from the perspective of someone who spent two decades in traditional publishing and two years in indie publishing?

1. One big thing lurking is a major trad author who goes indie, once they crunch the numbers on their royalty statements (which are still working via the Pony Express rather than the Internet) and realize their loyal readers will follow them regardless of which imprint the book is published under and how their royalty rate can skyrocket on their own.  I still feel the fear coming off many authors about abandoning traditional publishing, even though trad publishing will dump them in a hearbeat if the P&L statement isn’t favorable.  And gives them very lousy royalty rates and restrictive contracts to boot.  Fear will kill you.
2. Slow will also kill you.  I’d forgotten that “I’ll get back to you next week” in traditional publishing equals “I might get back to you in a few months, but likely never” in the real world.  That’s not going to cut it in the electronic age.  Five years ago, when describing publishing, I’d use two terms:  SLOW and TECHNOPHOBIC.  Both are killers today.  And they’re still damn slow. Tick-tock says the reaper.
3. Agents as publishers.  Yep, every agent wants to make a living and keep their clients.  So they’re cobbling together some “experts” and offering services to their clients.  I’m not even going to weigh in on whether it’s ethical, my issue is can they do it?  Being an agent is not being a publisher.  It took almost two years to get feet on the ground with Who Dares Wins Publishing.  Can an agent do it?  Can their clients afford to go through their growing pains and mistakes?
4. Authors as publishers: ditto.  I call myself indie, but in a blog post earlier this year I pointed out the term “self-publishing” is a dangerous one.  I’m not self-publishing.  I’ve got a company.  I can’t do it all myself.  I think the success stories from self-publishing will occur, but be few and far between.  What will happen is agents and publishers will use self-publishing as the new slush pile, letting the author do all the work, and then scoop in.  Nothing wrong with that.  I think it gives authors a fairer shot by letting readers and thei authors’ own initiative and work ethic count a lot more than the vagaries of the unpaid intern reading the slush pile.
5. I’m also waiting to see someone develop a system like ACX (Audio Creation Exchange) for books, marrying up the content providers with the talent to produce a finished, professional book, both print and eBook.  I see a lot of start-ups sort of doing this, but their focus is more on making the author pay than making the reader pay.  Money should always flow to the author, not from the author.  And, ACX does something publishers are going to have to do with eBooks:  Pay a sliding scale royalty.  Selling more should get you rewarded.  My Area 51 audio is already close to hitting the first royalty bump (starting at 50%) and it’s only been available for a couple of weeks.
6. But in a case where money flows from the author, self-publishers have to realize it isn’t free.  With ACX the author either decides to outright pay the talent to produce the audiobook or profit shares at 50-50.  Authors have to pay for editing, for a cover (no your little sister’s drawing on your cover isn’t going to cut it), for marketing, etc.  A key thing I see looming is more profit-sharing and the drawdown of the advance.  This has a lot of upsides (not so much for agents):  it means everyone has a stake in the success in the book.  Like the old Saturday Night Live skit about lawyers:  I don’t make my nickel until you make your dime.  It’s the model we work on at Who Dares Wins Publishing.  Also, profit sharing with a solid royalty rate for authors (at least 50%) gives them more motivation to promote their book.
7. Pricing.  While I believe in the value of the .99 eBook for getting readers, and $2.99 is a nice price for an indie, I think the real value of a novel has to be around $4.99 in eBook format.  As a consultant, I’ve learned people don’t value what they get for free or for cheap.  I don’t see NY lowering it’s prices much except that they will start to see the eBook as replacing the mass market paperback and price accordingly as they cut back on the bloated print overhead they no longer need.
8. Royalty rates.  Going back to #2 above, the 25% rate is a no go.  Not with 70% lurking for indie publishing.  I think 50% of gross is fair.  Which brings up the dangerous term “net”.  Who the hell determines that?  Publishers can play games all they want with contracts and terms, but sooner or later someone is going to turn over all three of the cups instead of just one and find out they’re getting conned.  I see lawsuits pending over publisher accounting for eBooks.
9. Those who don’t “get it” will be gone.  I just moved to Chapel Hill, NC and on US 15/501 near the intersection with I-40 is a large Lowes.  With a large, empty Borders building in front of it.  I see major changes coming at large publishers as they shift from their traditional way of doing things to the new way.  An issue few discuss is the fact there are people inside those companies actually fighting change for the better, because they know their very job is threatened.  While this is a normal human reaction, it’s costing the publishers, agents, and authors a lot.
10. I attended Storyworld in San Francisco this year and it was all about transmedia.  What fascinates me about this is that I heard the old way of doing transmedia is to start with the book, then transform into games, movies, shows, etc. etc.  Yet I never heard the word transmedia from a single agent, editor or publisher in all my years in the business.    Gale Anne Hurd just optioned Area 51—unfortunately the wrong one.  The nonfiction bestseller, that my fiction Area 51 has outsold in eBook—to make a TV series to follow her success with The Walking Dead.  I suppose that’s transmedia.  What I think should happen, but might not really happen, is to bring the creative types from the various media platforms together at the idea stage and then branch out transmedia from that.  Develop stories unique the medium with the same idea.  Not try to develop a story from a story.  If you understand this, you understand how story develops out of idea.

2012 promises to an interesting year and the bottom line for authors is to Write It Forward!

One question I am constantly asked is what device is the best device?

I have the original Kindle and I still use it. I also have an iPad, and I use that, though less for reading and more for testing the eBooks I create for Who Dares Wins Publishing on the Nook App, the Kindle App and the Kobo App. This way I can “see” how each of my files is performing and if any tweaks or adjustments need to be made. I write on my iPad, do email and search the Internet, so the functionality of it is much greater than my 1st Generation Kindle. However, there is nothing like curling up in my favorite chair on the back porch and reading on my dinosaur Kindle.

But now we have the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet.

Both are considerably less costly than an iPad and both have some really cool features. I buy the majority of my books either from Barnes and Noble or from Amazon. I can find just about any book on either site. I can’t say the same for iBooks. I have no problem searching outside the App for books. On Amazon, I can specify where I want the book sent: My Kindle, My iPad, My Computer or my Droid phone. I can easily sync all my devices, so my books are with me 24/7. How cool is that? Nothing worse than getting stuck at the ice rink without a book to read…but I have my phone…so I have a book! So lets say I’m sticking with my iPad.

But for those who are in the market, what really are the differences?

Price is a big difference between the iPad and the Kindle Fire and the Nook Tablet. But there is only a $50 difference between Fire and Nook. So, between the two, which one would I recommend?

This is a one size does not fill all type of questions. I read an article from PC World that really broke down the basics between the two. The article states that Nook is the clear winner for reading, physical design, personalization and email. Kindle is the clear winner with regard to buying or renting books, music and video and speakers. Neither one scored well in terms of multitasking, pictures and personal video and apps. You can read the entire article here.

Here is a Youtube video comparing the two tablets.

Whether you buy a Kindle Fire, Nook Tablet or any other eReader or Tablet device, there is no doubt eBooks are fast becoming the number one way to enjoy a good story.

Write It Forward!

Registration is open for Bob Mayer’s Write It Forward on-line Workshop. For details click here.

You could also call this “willingness to change.”  This is not only important when starting out, but it is perhaps even more important after first getting published.  You should be willing to learn from any source to improve your writing.

Before you can be willing to change though, you have to be willing to say the three hardest words in the human language for most people:  “I was wrong.”  This should be followed with:  “Maybe I’m not doing this the best possible way.  Maybe I can learn from someone else.”  In this blog, I’ve posted several times where I publicly admitted I was wrong.

One thing I see too much of is writers who want validation instead of help.  They want to be told how great their manuscript is and have a publisher put the check in the mail.  They don’t want to hear what’s wrong and what more work needs to be done.  I find this very strange in the environment of conferences and classes, where the entire purpose is not validation but to become better writers.

After three books published, I took some graduate literature courses at the local college.  It was a very worthwhile experience and expanded my horizons.  In fact, the longer I write, the more I appreciate the literary side of the house.  I think many genre writers get too caught up in the “formula” of their genre and trap themselves, becoming unable to write anything different.  In the same manner, if you have a background in literature, don’t turn your nose up at information that seems too “common” or genre oriented.

I read a book and took a course on screenplays and learned some things about writing that I can incorporate not only into my work on screenplays, but also my novels.  I found the way a screenplay is broken down interesting and I use it later in this book to help you get the big picture on how a novel works.

I recently watched the visiting writer at a local college come into our writer’s group to do a reading.  She walked in, did her reading, took her applause, and then walked out.  I guess she was simply too good of a writer to waste her time listening to the other people in the group read or discuss writing.   She didn’t bother to find out whom she had just read to and because of that she lost the opportunity to network with several published authors who might have helped her in her attempts to publish her next novel.

That’s another lesson I’ve learned– you never know who you’re dealing with so be courteous and open to all you meet.  No matter what your mindset, listen to others and what they have to say about writing even if you disagree with them.  You might find yourself agreeing a year or two later.  In this book, you might find me appearing to be somewhat schizophrenic, taking several different perspectives, some of them seemingly opposed to each other, but remember, I began writing this in 1990 and have been adding to it ever since, so in these pages you see some of my own evolution as a writer.  I do have to say that for mainly ego reasons, I was very touchy when first starting out at what I perceived to be “snubs” from the literary community toward genre writing.  Now I see that attitude to be naive and wrong.  You have to decide what you want to do and pursue it, regardless of what others say or believe.  Another thing I have learned is that it is guaranteed that someone, somewhere, will not like what you’ve written after you get published.  It’s also guaranteed that some of those people feel a burning desire to inform you of those dislikes.

You can’t ever get better if you don’t first admit you’re not doing it the best possible way.  When I taught a writing correspondence course, I would have to say that 80-90% of the students were unwilling to change anything based on the feedback I was giving them.  The first question this raises is why they even took the course in the first place?  The answer I mentioned above– they wanted validation.  The few who did change, who did the hard work and reworked their material, and put the time into thinking about the questions I would pose– they made great strides as writers.

Remember that change takes stages.  First one has to accept that there is a need for change.  Then you have to intellectually accept the change, which isn’t total acceptance.  After a while of living with the mental acceptance, you will gradually have emotional acceptance of the change, which is total acceptance.  That is why it takes years and years to change, if one ever does.

I find change usually requires Kubler-Ross’s five stages: 

1. Denial.  There is no problem or need to change.
2. Anger.  How dare someone, including me, say I’m not doing it right.
3. Bargaining.  Maybe if I can change some small things it will make a big difference.
4. Depression.  Yes, I do really need to change.
5. Acceptance.  Which leads to change.

Where do you think you are on the emotional stages of change with regard to your writing?

****Admin Note****

Write It Forward On-Line workshop taught by Bob Mayer will begin 01 Jan 2012. Course costs only $40.00. Registration is OPEN.

This is a 2 month on-line course. The course is hosted on a Yahoo Group and is interactive.

For both fiction and non-fiction authors, a workshop that focuses on educating writers how to be authors. Write It Forward is a holistic approach encompassing goals, intent, environment, personality, change, courage, communication and leadership that gives the writer a road map to become a successful author. Many writers become focused on either the writing or the business end; Write It Forward integrates the two. Write It Forward fills a critical gap in the publishing industry paradigm. While there are numerous workshops focused on just the writing, this is the only one that focuses on the strategies, tactics and mindset a writer needs to develop in order to be a successful author.

As a “machine” the brain is very inefficient.  Physiological psychologists estimate that we use less than ten percent of our brain’s capabilities.  (Rent the Albert Brooks movie Defending Your Life and see how he uses this in his story.)  In many ways, that is what makes writing fiction so hard and draining: you are trying to expand the portion of your mind that you normally use and tap into your subconscious.  A little bit of understanding of that other 90 or so percent is useful.  It is commonly called the subconscious or the unconscious and plays a very large role in determining our character (key buzz word).  Whether you agree with people such as Freud and Jung, it is useful to know a little bit about their theories.  A fully rounded character has a complete brain and while they may only consciously be using ten percent, that other ninety percent affects their actions.

As a writer you will start having dreams about your story and your characters.  That is your mind working even when you consciously aren’t.  You will also run into “writer’s block” which I believe, when real, is your subconscious telling you to hold until you realize in your conscious mind something important with regard to the story.  This is where the “write what you feel” school of creative writing comes in.  I believe what they are focusing on is this very thing:  the power of the subconscious (90% vs. 10%).  It is more than feeling though; it is a large part of your brain and the better you can get in touch with it and use it, the better your writing will be.

There are many experiences a writer should have in order to understand both their own mind and the minds of other people.  You have to remember that you are not the template for the rest of humanity.  Hard as it may be for some to believe, there are differences between people.

I’ve sometimes said the best thing about a writers’ group is not necessarily the critiquing or networking, but rather watching the different ‘characters’ in the group and trying to figure out what is motivating them to act the way they do.

If you don’t understand yourself both mentally and emotionally, you might have a hard time understanding others.  Therapy can be a very useful tool for a writer to dig into their own mind to figure out where they are coming from.  Yes, if you’re a writer, you need help as I recommend in Write It Forward.

After listening to many authors speak of their creative processes I realize they are talking on two levels.  There’s what they are saying and there is what they are meaning.  The saying part often varies, but they almost always mean the same thing.  For example, there is the issue of outlining.  I know writers who swear by outlining and others who say they don’t outline at all, they just write.  However, I’ve also found those who don’t outline tend to do a lot of rewriting, thus the first draft of their manuscript might be considered a very detailed outline.  Those writers who do a lot of outlining tend to not want to do much rewriting.  But in the final analysis, although the two methods seem very different, they are actually the same in creative essence.

Also remember that there are two sides to the brain.  The right side is your creative part while the left is more analytical and logical– this is where the editor part of you resides.  Sometimes you have to silence that editor while creating or else nothing will get done.

Are you left brain dominant or right brain dominant, or just plain nuts?

The amount of time I spend writing a novel has actually increased the more I learn about the craft.  Rather than making it easier, more knowledge makes it more difficult to write, as I try to make the book the best possible product I can.

Writers are often asked what their daily schedule is.  I think it is important to have the discipline to have a daily schedule and/or goal.  It is too easy to let the writing go and take care of everything else if you don’t force yourself to face that daily goal.

It’s different for many writers but here are some from writers I know:

5 pages a day; 2,000 words a day; 10 pages a day; six hours a day.

I think an external goal that can be measured is the best to go for.  It’s a tangible goal and you know when you’ve accomplished it.  While this might seem to contradict the statement made above about something like NANOWRIMO, the key is that the writing is often going back and layering onto writing already done.

Beyond that tangible writing goal, I work seven days a week, anywhere from eight to fourteen hours a day.  It’s hard for me to say how many hours a day I work because I am almost always ‘working’.  If I’m not sitting in front of my computer, I’m in the library researching or watching the news for interesting facts or simply thinking about my story, playing it out in my mind, watching my characters come alive.  I have many of my best plot ideas when driving or riding my bike.  Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night with an idea, which is why I have my iPhone with recorder next to my bed ready for instant use.

My cable bill is very high, with every channel, on-demand, and DVR.  There are writers who say ‘kill your television’ but I disagree with that.  There’s some very good writing in that medium.  I watch movies and shows the same way I read books:  analytically to see what the writers did and also what were the possibilities that weren’t explored.  The #1 thing a writer must do other than write is read and watch movies and shows.  It is work.  It will take away some of your enjoyment of things as you can get good at predicting what will happen next under Chekhov’s rule of ‘don’t have a gun in act one unless you use it by act 3.  But note that I say ‘use it’ not ‘fire it’.  That’s the key to great writing.  To take what is expected and do the unexpected.

Writing is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.  If you write only when excited or motivated you’ll never finish.  You have to write even when it’s the last thing you want to do.  Just put something down.  You can always edit it later or throw it out (you’ll do a lot of throwing out and it hurts but it’s the sign of a mature writer; also, it’s one reason you don’t edit yourself to death on the first draft).  I eventually average 500 to 550 pages of manuscript to produce 400 good pages in a final draft.  My last manuscript was 126,000 words long and then I cut it back to 90,000 words.  To sweat over that many pages and then “lose” them hurts but not as much as getting the manuscript rejected.  The longer I’ve written, the more I’ve become a fan of rewriting and editing.  I’m a fan of outlining and doing a lot of work before I write the first sentence of my manuscript, including extensive character development.  This is a trend among several authors I’ve talked.  Both Terry Brooks and Elizabeth George got back lengthy editorial letters on the first book they sold.  They determined then and there to make sure that future manuscripts would not require such rewriting.  And they didn’t.  They learned to know what they were doing before they did it.

Overall, I’ve developed an inner “writing clock” that works in terms of weeks and months that lets me know how much I have to produce and how quickly.  It varies its pace depending on the project at hand and it took years of experience to develop this inner clock.  I force myself to put the time and effort in, even when I don’t feel like it.  However, as I discuss in Write It Forward, almost every writer tends to underestimate the time it takes to complete a manuscript.

Experiment and find something that works for you in day-to-day writing.  Maybe it will only be for one hour every morning before everyone else gets up– keep doing it.  You’ll be amazed how much you can get done if you stick with it.

Scott Turow wrote Presumed Innocent on the train to and from work in Chicago.  So don’t let circumstances stand in your way.

All the thinking, talking, going to writer’s conferences, classes, etc. are not going to do you any good if you don’t do one basic thing:  WRITE.

Ultimately, though, as Bryce Courtney says, you need a large dose of ‘bum glue’.  Gluing yourself to that seat and writing.

Do you have a large supply of bum glue?

Remember something about the art of writing: It is the only art form that is not sensual.  I’m not saying you can write sensual material, but rather the way the art impacts your senses.  You can see the colors and strokes that make a painting, feel a sculpture, and hear music.  The manner in which each individual piece in those fields impacts on the senses is different.  But every writer uses the same letters on a piece of paper.  You have twenty-six letters that combine to form words, which are the building blocks of your sentences and paragraphs.  Everyone has the same words, and when I write that word and you write it, that word goes into the senses of the reader in the same way.  It’s how we weave them together that impact the conscious and subconscious mind of the reader that makes all the difference in the world.

A book comes alive in the reader’s mind.  You use the sole medium of the printed word to get the story from your mind to the reader’s.  It is the wonder of writing to create something out of nothing.  Every book started with just an idea in someone’s head.  Isn’t that a fantastic concept?

Writers learn by writing.  And before that, by being voracious readers.

In essence, writing is no different from any other profession.  It’s a simple rule, but one that every one wants to ignore:  the more you write, the better you will become.  Practically every author I’ve ever talked to, or listened to, or read about in an interview, says the same thing.  I saw Stephen King on C-Span and he said the most important thing to do to become an author is to write a lot.  That is one of the reasons so many people are participating in this month’s Nanowrimo. One writing professor said you needed to write a million words before expecting to get published.  I’m currently around word five million and still learning so much.

Let’s look at the positive side:  The odds are strongly against getting published.  But simply by taking the time and the effort to learn from these words and participating in Nanowrimo, you are increasing your odds.  By continuing to write beyond your first manuscript, you vastly increase your odds.  Many writers gush over the amount of money John Grisham made for The Firm but they forget that A Time To Kill was published previously to lackluster sales and failed.  What is important to note about that was that Grisham realized he hadn’t done something right and worked hard to change.  Note that Grisham did not sit still and bemoan what his agent/editor/publisher etc. didn’t do to help the novel.  He didn’t complain that the reading public didn’t understand his brilliance.  He worked on the one person he knew he could change:  himself (a tenet of Write It Forward).

From talking with other published writers, I have found it is common that somewhere between manuscript numbers three and six, comes the breakthrough to publication.  How many people are willing to do that much work?  Not many, which is why not many succeed and how you can vastly increases your chances of beating the odds.  Publishers do not want to make a one-time investment in a writer.  When a publisher puts out a book, they are backing that writer’s name and normally want to have more than one book in the pipeline.  Multiple book contracts are very common; with their inherent advantages and disadvantages.  As soon as you type THE END on your first manuscript (and I mean THE END after numerous rewrites), the absolute first thing you must do is begin writing your second.  With self-publishing, I recommend having at least three books before putting much time and effort into marketing, as I describe in this earlier blog post.

Publishing has changed drastically and there are new opportunities for writers to get their novels into the hands of their readers. Traditional publishing isn’t the only viable option for the 21^st century author. Self-publishing is quickly becoming the new medium for mid-list authors, and new authors. Amanda Hocking self-published her way into a two-million dollar contract with St. Martins Press. Myself, Connie Brockway, Barry Eisler, LJ Sellers and JA Konrath have all either written ourselves out of NY contracts or turned down a NY contract and ventured out on our own and have been successful.

As someone who wants to be in the entertainment business, you have to study those who have succeeded and failed in that business.  Read interviews with people in the arts and entertainment industries and you will find a common theme:  a lot of years of sweat equity put in before the big “break” came.  I’ve read of and heard actors and comedians talk about spending decades working in the trenches before they became famous.  Musicians who sang back-up for years before becoming lead.  Painters who toiled in squalor (and often died) before their work was recognized.

Study the lives of writers.  Read interviews with authors and see what they say.  Go to conferences and talk to them.  Listen to them talk about several things:  how they became authors, how they live, how they feel about writing, how they write.  Many worked very strange jobs before getting published.  Almost all struggled and spent many years of suffering before they succeeded.  I say suffering in terms of financial or career terms, not in terms of the writing itself.  Most writers enjoy writing.

People seem to think that writers are different and, while in some highly publicized cases they are, most published writers have spent many years slugging away before even their first novel was published.

Simple perseverance counts for a lot.  I think many people with talent lack the drive and fall out of the picture and people with maybe not as much talent but more drive take their place.  It’s the difference between having a growth mindset and a fixed mindset.  People with talent often believe they know all they ever need to know, so therefore their mind is fixed.  Those who believe there is always something more to learn, have a growth mindset.

Let’s get back to where I talked about people in other professions doing a work practicum.  Besides writing novels and reading, the other advice I would give would be to attend conferences and workshops.  It is a worthwhile investment of your time and money to go to workshops and conferences.  Not just to learn, but also to network.  Because of that, the first Write It Forward ‘short’ my publishing company released is How To Get The Most Out Of Your Time And Money At A Writer’s Conference.

A college student once interviewed me and she asked me what she could do to become a better writer.  I replied with my usual “Write a lot,” then thought for a second, looking at this nineteen year old woman.  Then I said:  “Live a lot.  Experience life, because that is what you are eventually going to be writing about.”

What things do you suggest writers do in order to help themselves become better writers?

Mark Twain said:  “Write what you know.” I have four addendums to that:

• Write what you want to know.
• Write what you are passionate about.
• What is your background?
• Write what you read.

Elizabeth George writes best-selling mysteries based in England and she lives in California.  I write about myths and legends because they interest me and I’m willing to do the research to learn more.  I believe that if I can find material that interests me, it should interest some readers.

Usually your background will dictate what your story is about.  That’s not to say that since you haven’t ever gone into space that you can’t write science fiction, but it does mean that you know something about the physics of space flight if that is going to be in your manuscript. Think about when you read the book jacket for a writer you never heard of.  If they’ve written a thriller that’s set in Antarctica and in the bio it says they spent three years studying ice formations in Antarctica you’re going to give the author more credit.

I think it is even easier than that:  you will most likely write whatever it is you enjoy reading.  The best preparation for becoming a writer of mysteries is to have read a lot of mysteries.

Some words of advice here:  start with something simple.  Don’t try to write the Great American Novel on your first try.  I am constantly learning more about writing and am polishing my skills every time I write and it’s nice to be able to learn and make a buck at it too.  As I learn more, I can write more difficult plots and characters.

And now some words of caution.  I’ve said you should write what you know and you should keep it as simple as possible, but be careful.  A common problem with new writers is thinking that their life story will be extremely interesting to the reading world, the fictional memoir I discussed earlier.  This is my third addition to Mark Twain’s saying.  There is nothing inherently wrong with writing about yourself, but be realistic about the possibilities of someone else wanting to read it.

Writing about something you care about very deeply has the advantage of adding passion to your prose.  It also has the disadvantage that some writers can’t separate themselves enough from what they write to adequately judge its content or style.  I have watched writers waste years on the same manuscript, trying to polish the editing, doing rewrites on various subplots, etc. when they were not willing to accept a fundamental problem with their story:  the basic idea wasn’t that interesting.

I have seen many writers become too emotionally attached to bad ideas.  Remember I mentioned earlier that open-mindedness is a very important trait for writers. Too many writers get tunnel vision and fail to objectively evaluate their own work in terms of someone who has no emotional attachment and is seeing it for the first time. Just because you feel something, that doesn’t mean you can get the reader to feel the same thing.

There is a problem every writer faces when approaching his or her first manuscript:  You are trying to do something new.  Most wise people when trying to do something new use the KISS technique– keep it simple.  You are trying to juggle two glass balls:  the story and the writing.  The simpler you make the story, the more attention you can give to the writing.

That sounds rather simplistic, but I have seen many writers get in over their heads by trying to write a very complex first novel and the writing suffers as they wrestle with the story.  Most first novelists can do one or the other well, but very few can do both well.  Since you must write well, give yourself a break on the story.  When I was still unpublished and got hooked up with an agent, his first (and only) comment to me was to simplify the plot of the manuscript he had looked at.  I had too much going on and was not a skilled enough writer to keep it all going.  I did as he suggested and that book was the first one we sold.

In fact, I’ve come full circle.  I’ve written a couple of series of books that have done well but are very complicated, with complex story-lines involving a large cast of characters and generally rewriting the entire history of mankind.  Talk about difficult.  I’ve also written some thrillers that were quite complicated.  The next book I write that’s not under contract is going to be a very simple idea and story line where I can focus on giving my characters the depth I used to devote to the plot.

One thing to be careful of with your first novel and one of the reasons first novels rarely sell:  often the first book a person writes is an expunging of personal demons.  Thus the book holds great emotional weight for the writer but it might do the same for the reader.

Another problem:  perfectionism.  Some people think that the writing has to be perfect.  They spend an inordinate amount of time on editing and rewriting.   Sometimes, you just have to accept it’s either good enough, or that the horse is dead and can’t be brought back to life.

I am going to go on here on my soapbox a little bit longer.  I just finished looking at a couple of dozen “novel submissions” for a contest I am judging.  I have yet to see one that was not about “love, death, divorce, child abuse, broken hearts, etc. etc.”  Nobody said, “hey, I’ve got a great science fiction story here.”  Or a horror story.  Or a thriller.  There’s nothing wrong about writing about love, death, etc. but none of the writers were up to the task.

Go to the bookstore.  Look around.  What is the largest section?  From the bookstores I frequent, the answer is:  Computers.  Second largest?  Self-help.  Ah– what is self-help about?  “Love, death, addiction, child abuse, broken hearts, etc. etc.”   And last I checked it is non-fiction.

Remember why people read fiction: most of the time we read to escape “death, abuse, addiction, broken hearts, etc. etc.”  We read primarily to be entertained.  Yet, here are all these aspiring writers trying to write what I call The Great American Novel.  How many of these types of books are on the bookshelves?  Maybe 10 to 20 percent of the hardcover new releases.  Less than 10% of the paperback original releases.  You figure it out.

I am really starting to believe that this is the number one problem most new novelists have:  they pick very difficult subject matter for their story.  The craft of writing is difficult enough.  The more difficult the topic is, the better the writing has to be.

The bottom line is that you need to have an original thought/idea that will spark you and others.

Conflict keeps a story going and reveals much about your characters. Conflict is the gap between expectation and the actual result. There are 3 levels of conflict for your characters:

• inner (inside the character) In many cases inner conflict occurs when a person has a disagreement between values he or she holds to be important. By adjusting a character’s circumstances, you can develop internal conflict.
• personal (between characters)
• universal/societal (characters versus fate/God/the system)

You have to consider what your main character faces on each of these levels.

There are five major sources of conflict for people (although you can probably come up with more):

• Money
• Sex
• Family
• Religion
• Politics

Keep these sources of conflict in mind when developing your characters.

Remember all characters have to have an agenda/goals they want to achieve. That gives them a driving force, even if it is a passive or negative one. Characters can pursue their goals aggressively or subtly. Or they could not pursue their goals, which also says something about them.

What is Conflict?

• A serious disagreement or argument
• A prolonged armed struggle
• An incompatibility between two opinions, principles or interests
• (v) be incompatible or at variance, clash

Basic Story Dynamic

• The Protagonist (the character who owns the story) struggles with . . .
• The Antagonist (the character who if removed will cause the conflict and story to collapse)…
• Because both must achieve their concrete, specific . . .
• Goals (the external things they are each trying desperately to get, not necessarily the same thing)

The Protagonist

• Must be someone the reader wants to identify and spend time with:  smart, funny, kind, skilled, interesting, different.
• Must seem real; flawed, layered, blind spot.
• Must have a unique voice.
• Must be in trouble, undeserved if possible, but usually not random.
• Must be introduced as soon as possible, first is preferred.
• Must have strong, believable motivation for pursuing her external and specific goal.
• We often empathize with a reluctant protagonist.
• We must see the spark of redemption in a negative protagonist very quickly.
• The protagonist’s blind spot can be fatal flaw, but at least brings about the moment of crisis.
• The protagonist, as she is at the beginning of the book, would fail if thrust into the climactic scene.

CONFLICT EXERCISE

What does your protagonist want most?

The Protagonist

• Drives the story.
• You have one for one main story line.
• Does not have to be the hero/heroine or even good.
• If she fails, what is the result? (Stakes)
• Is the person on stage in the climactic scene, defeating the . . .

The Antagonist

• Must be someone the reader respects (fears):  smart, funny, kind, skilled, interesting, different.
• Must seem real; flawed, layered, blind spot.
• Must have a unique voice.
• Must be in trouble.
• Must be introduced as soon as possible, even if by proxy.
• Must have strong, believable motivation for pursuing her external and specific goal.

CONFLICT EXERCISE

What does your antagonist want most?

The Antagonist

• You have one.
• Drives the plot initially.
• You must do the antagonist’s plan and it should be very good.
• If removed, the plot collapses.
• Should be a single person so the conflict is personal.
• Is the person on stage in the climactic scene, fighting the protagonist because . . .

Their Goals Conflict

• The reader must believe both will lose everything if they don’t defeat the other.
• Their goals are difficult to achieve because of external barriers, primarily each other.
• Their goals are layered, usually in three ways . . .

Goal Layers

• External:  The concrete object or event the character needs.
• Internal:  The identity/value the character is trying to achieve via pursuing the external goal.
• Relationship/communal:  The connections the character wants to gain or destroy while in pursuit of the external goal.
• People want to achieve their goals because of their . . .

Motivation

• The reason your character needs his or her goal.
• Everyone has an agenda.
• Every character has a primary motivator; Frankl’s ‘One Thing’.
• Some motivations stem from key events in a character’s life.

More on Motivation

• The reader must believe that your characters believe all will be lost if they don’t achieve their goal.
• Motivations, like goals, come in layers that are peeled away as the story escalates in conflict and the character is under more and more pressure.
• The motivational layers are all present in the beginning of the story, but the character is often not conscious of the layers.
• Thus the motivation and goals shift as the story goes on and we peel away layers…

CONFLICT EXERCISE

What is stopping your protagonist from getting what he/she wants most?

What is stopping your antagonist from getting what he/she wants most?

The Central Story Question

• Will the protagonist defeat the antagonist and achieve her goal?
• When the reader asks that question, the story begins.
• When the reader gets the answer, the story is over.

Central Story Question Examples

• DON’T LOOK DOWN:  Will Lucy defeat Nash and save herself and her family?
• AGNES AND THE HITMAN:  Will Agnes defeat Brenda and keep Two Rivers?
• This question leads us to the . . .

The Conflict Box

The Conflict Box is a tool that is used to diagram visually your protagonist’s and antagonist goals and conflict.

You can either have conflict because

• Protagonist and antagonist want the same thing.
• Protagonist and antagonist want different things, but achieving one goal causes conflict with the other’s goal.

The Conflict Box

The core conflict based on goals that brings the protagonist and antagonist into direct opposition in a struggle that neither can walk away from.

Conflict Box:  Same Goal

• Agnes wants to keep her house, which she bought from Brenda.
• Brenda wants to steal back the house she just sold to Agnes.

To see if your conflict is inescapable:  Draw a line from Agnes’ goal to Brenda’s Conflict.  If Agnes is causing Brenda’s conflict, you’re halfway there.

Then draw a line from Brenda’s goal to Agnes’ conflict.  If Brenda is causing Agnes’ conflict, you have a conflict lock.

The key to the conflict box is one character must cause the other character’s conflict. You have that, you have conflict lock.

Conflict Box: Different Goals:

From Lost Girls.  Gant wants to find out who is kidnapping and killing young girls.

The Sniper wants to continue killing the daughters of those he feels betrayed him.

CONFLICT EXERCISE

Go to the below box and fill it out for your book.

Some in the business of screen writing say you should be able to state your intent in three words.

• Love conquers all
• Honesty defeats greed

In Duty, Honor, Country a Novel of West Point and the Civil War, my theme was honor versus loyalty.  Would you rather have an honorable friend or a loyal friend?

There are others who say you need to be able to state it in one word:

• Relationships
• Honesty
• Faith
• Fathers

What is my intent?

What do you want readers to walk away with emotionally when they finish reading your story?  This is a question many authors don’t ask themselves and it is one of the most important questions because it’s the readers who keep coming back for more. When you consider intent, consider your readers first.

Filmmakers have to think about what they want the viewer to feel when they walk out of the theater.  This is one reason there are so few negative endings in films.  That’s not to say you can’t have a dark ending.  It’s more to point out that you need to be aware of the effect of a dark ending.

I’ve seen some excellent films where the ending was dark and bleak– and often most realistic– but most of those films were not box office blockbusters.  The original screenplay for Pretty Woman was called Five Thousand Dollars.  And the Richard Gere character drives away at the end.  Realistic, yes.  Would it have succeeded as much as the rewrite?

I’m not saying you have to have happy endings and make your reader happy.  I’m saying you have to know what feeling you want the reader to experience and make sure you deliver.  Larry McMurtry is a master writer and most of his stories have rather bleak endings.

I think that the more negative the intent, the better you have to be as a writer to keep the reader involved.  To take readers on a dark and relatively unhappy journey, you have to be very good to keep them in the boat.

Intent

• What do you feel?
• What do you want readers to feel?
• You always have an intent.
• Positive versus negative.
• Beware of lecturing.
• Resolution–the payoff to the reader

The more a reader feels about a book, the more he will get into it. Feeling comes out of the three aspects of a novel:

1. Idea
2. Intent
3. Characters

If you know and, more importantly, have a good feel for each of these three before you begin writing, you increase the quality of your work.

What is your theme/intent for your book?

If you desire to write a novel because you want to have a bestseller and make a bundle of money, my advice for you is to play the lottery; it will take much less time and your odds will be about the same, if not better, and I can guarantee that the work involved will be much less.  The publishing business makes little sense and it’s changing faster than ever before.  However, I do believe that the more you know, the greater your chances of success.  The vast majority of writers are flailing away at the craft and the business blindly.  Armed with knowledge, you greatly increase your ability to rise above the rest.

You write for you.  You write because you have a story in you that has to come out.  This is the core of the art of writing.  Pearl Buck said:

“The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this:  a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive.  To him a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.  Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create– so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him.  He must create, must pour out his creation.  By some strange, unknown, inward urgency, he is not really alive unless he is creating.”

I believe that passion, which fuels long-term perseverance to be the single most important factor.  I also believe that too much discussion on the topic of creativity can actually stifle the drive in some people.  They start thinking that they have to do and think exactly like everyone else in order to succeed and that is not true.  That is why I say that there are no absolutes, no hard and fast rules in writing.  Follow your path.

I have listened to many writers speak, read many books on writing, and while much of what they say is the same, there is often something that is very different.  Usually that different thing is part of their creative expression, the way they approach their writing.  However, on a core level, I think most creative people operate in a similar manner.

I see people who do #nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) where they try to write a certain number of words each day, every day and I have two views of that:  it’s good they are getting words down.  But are they the type of writer who works that way?  I know writers who don’t write every day, but work in creative bursts.  They might not write for a week, then knock out 20,000 words in three days.  #nanowrimo doesn’t work for them.  Stephen King says he write 10 pages a day.  That’s great for him.  Does it work for you?

Additionally, that is what he says.  Does he actually do it?  Probably, but maybe not.  He’s the only one who knows the truth.  Most writers feel a subliminal degree of guilt over getting paid to sit at home and create stories.  So sometimes we says things to make it more apparent that we ‘work’.  Because it’s hard to explain how hard it is to simply be sitting still, doing nothing, while we develop blinding headaches trying to work our way through our plot while remaining true to our characters.  So we use things like word count and page count instead, even if they aren’t true.

When I discuss how to write a novel in The Novel Writers Toolkit, I talk a lot about the craft of novel writing.  The art is woven into the craft with deeper insights and when you take craft and twist it by breaking rules.  But the first rule of rule breaking is to know the rule.  Thus we must learn craft before we look to art.

Craft is the intellectual aspect of writing.  The art is the emotional aspect.  A great writer engages both the reader’s thoughts and emotions, thus being both a good craftsmen and a good artist.

One of the paradoxes of writing, and something to keep in mind when listening to people talk about writing:  They present techniques, ideas and formats that are the “accepted” way of doing things; yet the “accepted” way makes you the same as everyone else who can read a writing book and follow instructions, and your work has to stand out from everyone else’s.  So how do you do that?  How do you do things the “right” way yet be different?

Everything is a template; do not allow anything to stifle your creativity.  Remember the paradox.  The best analogy I can come up with is that if you were a painter I am telling you about the paint and the canvas and lighting and perspective, but ultimately you are the one who has to decide what you are going to paint and how to paint it.

Another thing is to understand the techniques and methods, and then use your brilliance to figure out a way to change the technique or method to overcome problems and roadblocks.  To be original– an artist– with something that’s already been done.  Also to mix techniques and methods in innovative ways.

The Basics

1. Write a lot.
2. Before writing a lot, be a voracious reader.
3. I also am a big fan of watching a lot of movies and TV specials and series.  There are writers who dismiss the television, but there are great writers putting out excellent product in that medium.  And we all can learn from any artistic medium.  Watching a different medium can also allow you to see new ways of looking at your writing.
4. Learn the proper way to do business things in the world of publishing such as having a strategic plan for your career, which is covered under my Write It Forward program and book.

How do you approach writing?  Do you do a daily word count like Nanowrimo or do you write in bursts?  Do you think watching TV is good or bad for you as a writer?