Month: July 2017

Dear Diary . . .

~ petefordwriter ~ Leave a comment

MY regular readers (Sid and Doris Bonkers of Epping) might have noticed that every now and then I post something here that’s more like a rambling journal entry than an article about something specific.

This is one of those. Day job and household chores took over things for the last couple of days; I did find time to get a few things done, though, and now I feel like rambling a bit. Let the rambling begin . . .

On books and writing:

As I mentioned in the last post, I uploaded a correctly-formatted version of Finish Your Book, and now that should be what gets downloaded by readers. I tested it and it looks the way I intended the first time round.

I also re-published Pavonis, which was the first full-length story I ever published. It was originally self-published in 2012, but I took it down after Mr. Gunn & Dr. Bohemia was published professionally, the reason being that after going through the whole pro publishing process with G&B, I realised that my self-editing left a lot to be desired and I was no longer happy to have a flawed work out there. So I had sort-of planned to rework much of Pavonis with the help of a professional editor (and cover artist—the cover pretty much stinks), and come up with a better title (because Pavonis doesn’t tell you anything about what the book’s about). But after much consideration, I decided I’d rather focus on new works than try to fix old ones. And anyway, quite a few people liked the book despite its shortcomings. In the end I decided to just put it back out there. I might at some point upload a new version that fixes the known spelling errors and some formatting problems (a few passages display underlines and italics that weren’t in my source text), and I’m considering paying an artist to come up with better cover art. Maybe.

Meanwhile on the writing front, I’m building up the story line for the currently-untitled SF book I’ve been thinking about for the last couple of months. I’ll probably be getting back on that this afternoon.

Also, I did some tweaking of the web site to rearrange a few things and update a couple of pages. I think it’s looking pretty good.

On TV:

We’re saving Game of Thrones on DVR, with the intention of binge-watching when we have four or five episodes recorded. Reason: last year we watched the first episode of season six the night it showed—and at the end we were like a couple of addicts, craving more and cursing HBO for forcing us to wait a whole week for our next fix. So, not this time.

Meanwhile I’ve been re-watching season two of Dark Matter, and when I reach the end of that I’m planning on watching the available episodes of season three on on-demand.

On games:

I was given a new video card—a GTX950 to replace my older GTX560. I installed it yesterday afternoon, but wasn’t able to do anything with until the evening. I played some Serious Sam – The First Encounter and it did seem to be smoother. I’ll try it with something a bit more demanding on the video later; maybe No Man’s Sky. (I noticed NMS has had several patches since I played it last; if they fixed some of  the shortcomings that bugged me most, I might start playing it a bit more often.)

That’s enough for now. I need coffee and maybe I’ll watch a little TV before I get back to that SF story I mentioned.

Until next time . . .

Finish Your Book updated

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I found out that the Finish Your Book file I uploaded to Smashwords didn’t get converted properly (my bad—I messed up a paragraph style). As a result the text ended up with first-line indents on every paragraph instead of the block paragraphs I wanted.

The problem is fixed; I uploaded a new file with the corrected formatting. If you bought the book on Smashwords you can download again (you already paid for it, so no need to buy it again). The way I understand it, if you got it on a Nook, Kindle, or Kobo, your device copy will update automatically within a few days. If it doesn’t, I believe you can remove it from the device then re-download it and you should get the updated version.

FinishYourBook

Now, I need to go and update the links on the Books page to add the B&N link.

Thanks to all who’ve bought and downloaded the book. I hope you enjoy it and it helps with your writing!

Finish Your Book

~ petefordwriter ~ Leave a comment

THE short book I wrote about how to start and finish a book is out on Smashwords (multi-format eBook for Kindle, Nook, Kobo, etc.). Read it in an hour, use it right away, and keep it for reference. And at 99¢ it costs less than a cup of coffee. Get it here:

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/738247

Enjoy!

FinishYourBook

Coming soon: writing process book

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IF you’ve been following updates on my Work-in-Progress (WiP) page, you’ll know that I’ve been working on a short non-fiction book about my writing process while I’m (1) waiting on markups for The Artemis Device from my copy editor, and (2) waiting on responses from agents for the query letters I sent out for Smoke & Mirrors. The first could appear at any time; the second I don’t expect for at least another couple of weeks.

So in the interim, and before I get properly to work on the SF novel I’ve been thinking about, I decided to do something I’ve been wanting to do for a while—document my writing process. And thanks to the writing workshop I’ve been going to the last few weeks, I also decided to write it up in a form that I can self-publish, in the hope that maybe I can do something that will help other aspiring writers.

By short I mean that the main body will probably end up being around thirty pages; my writing process, boiled down to just the essentials. The stuff I wish I’d known when I was just getting started, in a form that someone can read in an hour or less and keep handy as a reference after.

I started with a series of about half a dozen blog posts I wrote here a while ago; I’ve cleaned those up, expanded on them with some better examples and some additional material, and changed the order of things around a little bit to make it a bit more logical.

It’s just about done; the main text is complete, I think—I’ll be checking it through again to see if I missed anything. It needs a few things yet: a cover page, a proper title, and some front and back matter. And I have to re-read the Smashwords guides to remind myself how to format it all up. But I expect to have that all done in a couple more weeks at the most, and then it’ll be out (and of course I’ll announce it here when that happens).

On that note, time for coffee and a read of that Smashwords formatting guide. Until next time . . .

(p.s. I’ve decided to cut down on the political comment a bit. Not completely; if and when I have something I want to say regarding “president” Loco Pandejo and the Keystone Kabinet, I will. But since I managed to get myself back on the writing horse the last few weeks, I want to focus more on that. I seriously considered unfollowing all the politically-related Twitter accounts that I’ve added over the last six months, but I still feel the need to stay up with what’s going on so I guess I’m stuck with those until the Jedi arrest Trump and the rest of the traitors and pack them off to prison.)

 

The Hero’s Journey

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HERE’S a coincidence.

Last night we had a Writing Workshop meeting. The presenter was author Laura Resau and the subject was Joseph Campbell and The Hero’s Journey, and how it can form a framework for a story—and perhaps more interestingly, how you can improve a story by comparing it to the Journey, seeing how things fit, and using the results to suggest improvements to the story structure. As an exercise at the end, we compared our current projects to the Journey. I used the outline I had in my head for the as-yet-untitled sci-fi novel I’ve been thinking about (see the WiP page) and I was surprised to note that, apart from a couple of minor discrepancies, my story was a very close match. I’ve been using The Hero’s Journey, and didn’t even know that I was doing that. It makes me wonder if that story structure is wired into us somehow.

Just a little while ago I checked Google+ and a post from earlier today included a link to a YouTube video about… Joseph Campbell and The Hero’s Journey.

Coincidence. No other way it could have happened. Yet I can’t help thinking someone or something is trying to tell me something.

Anyway, the video is rather a long one, apparently spliced together from a bunch of shorter ones. Rather than post that, I was able to find the first of those shorter ones, which is definitely worth a watch. It’s three or four minutes long. Enjoy!

First Query Result…

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…AND it’s a rejection. No surprise there—I’m told that nineteen out of twenty queries result in rejection (even for really good books, apparently), so you get used to it. The real surprise is that it was so quick (only three days).

Also no real surprise: no hints whatsoever as to the reason for the rejection. Didn’t like the sample chapters? Didn’t like the synopsis? Didn’t follow the submission guidelines exactly? Is the writing horrible? Who the fuck knows. Don’t expect an agent to spend the extra ten seconds to throw you a bone. Again, get used to it.

Anyway, three more queries in the pipe, so still more chances. And if those drop out, I have two more agents on the list that are open for submissions in September.

Queries have been sent . . .

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I just sent out query letters for Smoke & Mirrors to five agents. The original query letters I sent out a few months ago didn’t work at all, so this time round I read up some stuff on Query Shark and Writer’s Digest then, rather than reworking those old letters, I wrote new ones from scratch. Let’s see if that makes any kind of difference.

On a different note, I found out last night that I have a kidney stone. I feel like crap—persistent aching in my side, tired because of lack of sleep.

And on that note, that’s all I can manage for now. End of post, except for this thought:

Screenshot 2017-07-07 at 20.13.54

New Look

~ petefordwriter ~ 1 Comment

LIKE the new web page? Actually this all started out when I went to refresh a few things on the page and the thing flung me a message telling me that the theme I had couldn’t do what I wanted because it had been retired and wasn’t supported any more. Oh, well. So I picked out a new theme (another free one, because I’m a cheap git), and did a little customising and stuff. It might not be final, either—I like it but it puts the archives and stuff at the bottom instead of on the side, and I don’t like that. So I might find a different theme (or experiment with a few until I find one I really like).

I also went ahead and paid a bit of cash to upgrade from the Cheap Git plan (that is, the free one) to the next one up. So now you might notice that there are no ads. Yay!

Finally, I’m posting this mostly because I feel like slamming down a few words, but also because the sharing configuration was playing up a bit when it tried to send posts over to Google+ and this is going to test to make sure it’s fixed now.

On that note, that’s it for now.

[UPDATE: I changed it again, to get the widgets on the side. I’ll probably be tweaking it a bit too.]

Don’t. Plan. Anything.

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YESTERDAY was a wipe as far as getting any writing or editing done. See, I’d planned to work (i.e. day-job work) until the usual 3pm or so, then spend some time working on Smoke & Mirrors. (The night before, I’d re-read the script for the first time in some months and spotted some glitches; and since I’ve been looking for agents and publishers to submit to, I decided I’d better hold off until I’d run another editing pass to find and fix as many of those glitches as I can.)

So much for the plan. Around noon something came up that meant I had to quit the day-job early and go help with moving furniture. That took until after 8pm, and by the time dinner was done it was too late, and I was too tired, to do anything else.

deathstar

This is ALWAYS the way it goes when I plan anything. I’m sure we all get the same thing. Plans are as fragile as soap bubbles. Make a plan, and something comes along to bugger it up for you. Your plan is a house of cards sitting on the San Andreas. It’s Alderaan an hour before the Death Star shows up.

So the only solution is: Don’t. Plan. Anything. There’s no point setting aside an hour or two later on, or tomorrow, to write or edit or anything else — because, guaranteed, the fuck-it-up fairy will be there to wave her magic wand and, well, fuck it up. Instead of making any kind of plan, grab whatever time you get —  ten minutes here, fifteen there — and use it. Get shit done.

On that note: this morning, lovely Saturday morning, the cat and I have been the only ones awake in the house since around 7:30am. The cat’s been parked on the work laptop, resting after a hard night’s sleep, and I’ve been working on Smoke & Mirrors — reading it through carefully, marking up changes where I see a word here or a phrase there that could be better. I also wrote in a new five hundred word scene that’ll help foreshadow something that happens near the end. I got shit done. Having done that, I put it to one side to write this — and if the house is still asleep when I’m done, I’ll grab another coffee and do some more.

Right on cue, the fuck-it-up fairy fairy appears; the house is waking up. And I don’t care. I’ll find a few minutes here and there later today, or tomorrow if things get busy (there is a little bit more furniture to be moved and cleaning to be done, but it’s almost done). Shit will get done.

Until next time . . .