MJ Scott

Gotta say, I really enjoyed K.M. Weiland’s blog over at AuthorCulture (and Linda Yezak, and Johne Cook, and Lynette Bonner, of course!), especially the set of four posts she did on marketing via social networking sites. Very informative and helpful. Particularly interesting was the information on Twitter.

Now, I haven’t signed up for Twitter just yet, but I’m going to. If only because I’m beginning to see just how powerful a networking tool it can really be. That, and I’ve learned some useful tools that will help me make use of it even while I’m at work, when I won’t have access (Thank you for that tip, Linda).

So. Sometime later today, tomorrow at the latest, I’ll take the plunge and sign up. I’m really hoping I can get assistance from all you Twitter critters out there in figuring this out. Then, hopefully, I’ll be able to get back to some serious writing.

To live, to write, to make it happen, to fight… pick your poison. I’ve realized I’m just at the very beginning of this new writing career- and that this also is a realization for me, that this is what I’m being called to do Now.

This doesn’t mean that I’ve given up preaching. It just means that I’ll no longer be looking to ministry to earn a buck. I’m making tents now, and I’m going to get really good at it. My tents look a lot like books. Especially when they’re open and lying face down. Or maybe my books look like tents.

Regardless, I just got my butt kicked over at  Amanda Hocking’s blog. She’s writing on the secret of her success–except it isn’t really a secret ’cause she’s just blabbed it all over the internet, and it isn’t a secret because it’s common sense stuff that any schlep can implement.

Including me.

In a nutshell, here’s what she appears to have done to be so successful.

a) She writes like a frickin’ machine. She turned out a novel in two weeks. Two weeks! Talk about word-count envy. I’ve spent a year and a half on The Elixir of Life, and almost a full year on Patriots and Tyrants. She has a work ethic that makes me look like a pathetic wimp. I guess I have been, too. The Coppersmith took me two years to write. I did The Lost Scrolls in a year and a month. I’ve just got to get better at cranking out words.

b) She published in print first, then kindle. I don’t know if that made a difference or not, but she did both very close together. That probably had a lot to do with it. She claims that she edits like crazy. I believe her, but I also know that she was able to publish multiple books at a time because she had several stuffed in her drawer that she’d tried submitting the traditional way before going indie. This points out the third thing:

c) She’s published multiple books. That’s a big secret, one I’ve suspected for a while now. You can’t make it on just one novel, even though it may be a single novel that puts you over the top. I’ve never wanted to publish just one novel as it is, so I’m cool with that, but I also know that I have so many books to write in my life, and right now I’m so far behind I will never die (thank you, Bill Watterson).

d) Blog tours were the secret to her marketing success. I haven’t really tried this yet, though I’ve been mentioned on a few (three, to be precise.). My thanks to Joy Tamsin David for sending me the link with all the blogs she’s researched ahead of time. That’ll make life easier.

I suppose this just means I have to knuckle down all that harder and learn to WRITE MORE. It is fairly simple, actually. That’ll be the key to my success as well. Heck, if my nephew can crank out 375K words plus in four years, I oughtta be able to handle doing more than a book a year.

Just have to knuckle down and make it happen.

This is the problem with working three straight overnights. By the time Wednesday afternoon rolls around, I’m usually so wiped that I have absolutely no desire to actually write. Instead, I sit here at the computer surfing news sites, playing solitaire, mahjong, or minesweeper, and trying to overcome ennui sufficient enough to generate some words.

And then, even if I do manage to squeeze out a couple of syllables, what I’ve crafted is, frankly, garbage (or at least it feels that way to me.).

Sigh. This is not how I want to spend my day off.

I have learned a new respect for the publishing industry. I am currently in the process of ordering my third and (hopefully) final proof for the print version of The Spirit of Resistance. I consider myself a reasonably good speller and “grammatician” (translation: I ‘kin rite gud), but this process has had me flummoxed!  I knew there’d be a second proof when I ordered the first one. I even expected it, knowing how many corrections and changes I might need to make. One of those included a font change that required a complete reformat of the entire book!

What I did not expect was, after ordering that second proof, that I’d find so many spelling errors in the new version. I suppose that’s one of the challenges of writing, though. The advice I’ve given and received always flows along the lines of “turn off your inner editor during the creative process.” All well and good when it comes to creating the story. But you’d better turn that editor on full once the story is finished!

That being said, I just finished reading the third installment of Stephen Donaldson’s Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Some enterprising reader at the Penfield library took it upon themselves to edit the printed book. I counted no less than five separate spelling errors throughout the book. I suppose that’s not bad, given that this tome was 575 pages long, but still.

There’s no such thing as perfection this side of eternity, I guess.