Think

 This post, by celestine, originally appeared on Lifehack on 6/3/12.

You have a deadline looming. However, instead of doing your work, you are fiddling with miscellaneous things like checking email, social media, watching videos, surfing blogs and forums. You know you should be working, but you just don’t feel like doing anything.

We are all familiar with the procrastination phenomenon. When we procrastinate, we squander away our free time and put off important tasks we should be doing them till it’s too late.  And when it is indeed too late, we panic and wish we got started earlier. The chronic procrastinators I know have spent years of their life looped in this cycle. Delaying, putting off things, slacking, hiding from work, facing work only when it’s unavoidable, then repeating this loop all over again. It’s a bad habit that eats us away and prevents us from achieving greater results in life.

Don’t let procrastination take over your life. Here, I will share my personal steps which I use to overcome procrastination with great success. These 11 steps will definitely apply to you too:

1. Break your work into little steps. Part of the reason why we procrastinate is because subconsciously, we find the work too overwhelming for us. Break it down into little parts, then focus on one part at the time. If you still procrastinate on the task after breaking it down, then break it down even further. Soon, your task will be so simple that you will be thinking “gee, this is so simple that I might as well just do it now!”.For example, I’m currently writing a new book (on How to achieve anything in life). Book writing at its full scale is an enormous project and can be overwhelming. However, when I break it down into phases such as – (1) Research (2) Deciding the topic (3) Creating the outline (4) Drafting the content (5) Writing Chapters #1 to #10, (6) Revision (7) etc, suddenly it seems very manageable. What I do then is to focus on the immediate phase and get it done to my best ability, without thinking about the other phases. When it’s done, I move on to the next.
    
2. Change your environment. Different environments have different impact on our productivity. Look at your work desk and your room. Do they make you want to work or do they make you want to snuggle and sleep? If it’s the latter, you should look into changing your workspace. One thing to note is that an environment that makes us feel inspired before may lose its effect after a period of time. If that’s the case, then it’s time to change things around. Refer to Steps #2 and #3 of 13 Strategies To Jumpstart Your Productivity, which talks about revamping your environment and workspace.
    
3. Create a detailed timeline with specific deadlines. Having just 1 deadline for your work is like an invitation to procrastinate. That’s because we get the impression that we have time and keep pushing everything back, until it’s too late. Break down your project (see tip #1), then create an overall timeline with specific deadlines for each small task. This way, you know you have to finish each task by a certain date. Your timelines must be robust, too – i.e. if you don’t finish this by today, it’s going to jeopardize everything else you have planned after that. This way it creates the urgency to act. My goals are broken down into monthly, weekly, right down to the daily task lists, and the list is a call to action that I must accomplish this by the specified date, else my goals will be put off.

 

 

Read the rest of the article, which includes 8 more tips for fighting procrastination, on Lifehack.

 

In the last ten years, Will Smith has made 10 movies. Of those 10, nine of them hauled in a minimum of $100 million in box office salesapiece.

(Seven Pounds missed the mark by a measly $40 million.)

If you think that his success is by accident, you’re wrong. It’s by educated, researched design.

Many years ago, when Will Smith was preparing to enter the movie industry, he and his manager decided that they didn’t necessarily want to make Oscar winning movies or spirited indie flicks, they wanted to make box office hits. Period.

So they did their research, studied the 10 top grossing movies of all time, and identified the common characteristics.

This is what Will himself said about that research in a 2007 Time Magazine article:

“We looked at (the list) and said, O.K., what are the patterns? We realized that 10 out of 10 had special effects. Nine out of 10 had special effects with creatures. Eight out of 10 had special effects with creatures and a love story.”

So what did he do?

Will Smith made movies with special effects (Bad Boys I & II; I Am Legend), special effects with creatures (Men in Black I & III; Independence Day) and special effects with creatures and a love story (iRobot, MIB II).

And you know what? They were all box office hits.

He threw in the occasional drama (Pursuit of Happyness, Seven Pounds), kids movie (Shark Tale) and sports flick (Ali) to mix things up and suddenly, Will Smith had a booming movie star career.

So what can we learn from Will Smith’s strategy?

Well, if you’ve decided you want to earn a substantial, sustainable income from commercial writing you can use the same three steps Smith used to get there.

SUPER Important Caveat 

There’s nothing wrong with approaching your career from a different perspective. If, for example, you want to produce award-winning literary pieces that’s a great career goal as well.

I’m not at all saying you MUST do it this way.

This method is just for authors who have a goal of a financially beneficial career in writing (and nothing’s wrong with that either). To successfully execute this strategyyou will have to put marketing and sales before your creativity, many authors are not okay with that. You need to know yourself and what you want out of your writing career before you decide to pursue this avenue.

Also keep in mind that once you’ve jumped the hurdle, made some great sales and established a crazy-dedicated fan base, there will be time later in your career to explore your creative side and take more risks (that aren’t necessarily based on marketing research). Check out John Grisham’s career path as an example.

How you can use the Will Smith Strategy

To use the Will Smith approach in your writing career, you need to follow these three easy steps:

1. Research the best-selling books in your genre and find the common denominators.

Pick your genre of choice (YA, science fiction, paranormal, romance, chicklit, etc.) and find out what the top ten best selling books are in that genre.

This is a little harder than it might seem on the surface.

I couldn’t find an all-time best seller list by genre, but this handy tool from USA Today at least lets you sort by genre and pick the week of your choice from anytime over the last several years. Amazon also offers the ability to sort genre lists by popularity.

Once you’ve got your list, you need to figure out what elements these best sellers have in common.

If you’re looking at the science fiction genre for example, do most of the books take place in space? Are they in alternate galaxies or other planets within the Milky Way? Is there a love story? Murder mystery? Aliens?

If more than half of the books you research contain the same element, add it to your list. You should be able to compile a half dozen or so different traits that they all have in common.

From those traits you can begin to form your plot and characters.

2. Put your own spin on it.

By my estimation there are approximately 234,985,047 vampire novels in circulation right now and another 349,062,175 dystopian books to boot (those numbers are rough estimates and probably grossly understate the issue).

The point is, if you’re going to do this right, you have to make yours stand out from the crowd.

This is where your creativity does come into play. You have to step outside the box and find some new elements to mix in with what your sales research has taught you.

Whether it’s a different perspective on an old issue, a new world that has yet to be explored, or the benefit of a completely different and unique writing style, there has to be something different that will make people want to read your book when they’ve already read different ones.

Going back to our Will Smith example, what made all the Men in Black movies ($250 million, $190 million, $178 million respectively) and Independence Day ($306 million)more popular than Battleship ($65 million)?

They all had aliens and special effects, right?

So there was something about the plot or characters that made Will Smith’s movies more popular than the Battleship bomb. (For what it’s worth, I think that comedy had something to do with it — the trailers for all four Smith movies contained snappy one liners while Battleship comes off looking like a Michael Bay rip-off that takes itself too seriously.)

3. Market, market, market your book.

Here’s where the difference between winners and losers is really made.

You can have a great book with great subject matter similar to that of all best sellers, but if nobody knows about it, it doesn’t matter. No Will Smith movie ever hit theaters without you knowing about it at least a month or two in advance, right?

Fortunately, marketing a ready made best-seller based on the popular books in your genre is pretty straightforward. There should be plenty of available arenas where books of that type are heralded, you just need to jump in the game and introduce yourself.

You know I hate to use this example, but that’s how 50 Shades came to be what it is now. It was shared in the Twi-hard fan fiction forums and it spread like an STD (see what I did there?).

So all you need to do is find the forums, blogs and other popular hangouts for fans of the popular books you researched and jump in the game.

Participate in the conversation, make friends and share the details of your book (in that order, please).

What do you think? Would you try it?

So that brings us to the $100 million question — would you try Will Smith’s approach with your writing career?

Certainly $100 million is very near impossible for book sales (unless you’ve got the next Harry Potter series up your sleeve), but with some research in your pocket and great marketing you could surely aim for a very financially successful career.

I’d love to hear some answers from you guys on these questions as well:

• Do you think it’s a smart move or is it too contrived?
• Have you researched your genre to find out what seems to be popular?
• Are there any other elements you’d add to this strategy?

Give us your thoughts in the comments [on the original post at Duolit]!

 

 

This is a reprint from the Duolit blog. Click here to download Duolit’s Free Book Marketing Toolkit.

This post, by J.A. Konrath, originally appeared on his A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing on 9/8/12.

Updated below.

I had a long talk with a friend last night, and we realized something obvious.

Amazon allows one star reviews. 

In other words, the existing system allows and encourages people to publicly trash books.

[Publetariat Editor’s note: strong language after the jump] 

Reread that sentence. Just about every book has one star reviews. So there are, quite literally, MILLIONS of one star reviews.

Every one of those millions of reviewers who trashed a book deliberately did it to harm that book’s sales. That’s the whole point of a one star review. Someone yelling to the world "Don’t buy this!"

This is why I don’t leave one star reviews. I think it is a shitty, mean thing to do.

But it’s allowed.

If it was wrong to trash a book, it wouldn’t be allowed. Like murder isn’t allowed. Our society doesn’t allow murder.

But society does allow people freedom of speech. And that includes the right for people to offer their opinions. Even anonymously. Even stupid opinions. Even biased opinions. Even opinions with agendas.

Recently, three authors were exposed using an existing system–one built upon the very principle of people voicing their opinions–to their advantage, and they’re branded immoral and beyond reproach.

Sorry, no.

Ellory did a shitty thing, and because he didn’t sign his name to his reviews he was also cowardly, but what he did wasn’t any different than what millions of other one star reviewers did and continue to do.

Ellory didn’t want people to buy his rivals’ books. He wanted them to buy his books. That was his agenda.

He’s allowed his agenda. And I’ll defend his right to do things like that, even if I wouldn’t do it.

If I have a bad meal at a restaurant, I’d warn my friends not to go there. I’m deliberately preventing that restaurant from making money. That is my agenda.

And if I warned my friends to avoid a restaurant I never ate at, I’d be doing the same thing, except I’d be a dick.

And if I owned a restaurant, and publicly denounced other restaurants, I’d also be a dick. (Or an advertiser using Pepsi Challenge rules.)

There are dicks on the Internet! Gasp! Circle the wagons, Pa!

As I said, I don’t leave one star reviews. I think trashing books is shitty. That’s my personal opinion.

But if you want to throw Ellory under the bus, you need to condemn the millions of others who give malicious one star reviews, and then condemn the system for allowing it.

If you want to throw Locke under the bus, you need to condemn the millions of others who give unsubstantiated five star reviews, and then condemn the system for allowing it.

If you want to throw Leather under the bus, you need to condemn the millions of others who use sock puppets and post anonymously, and then condemn the system for allowing it.

 

Read the rest of the post on A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. Also see this rebuttal from Alan Baxter‘s The Word.

This post, by Chuck Wendig, originally appeared on his terribleminds site on 9/10/12.

 

We’re all familiar with the recent spate of bad behavior by authors, right? Writers paying for false five-star reviews. Authors creating fake sock-puppet accounts (or “dick-puppets” as Blackmoore calls ‘em) which they then use to pump up their own work, denigrate the work of others, and act as fake mouthpieces online. Then you have the response, where authors see that bad behavior and respond with their own, leaving one-star reviews as some kind of “Internet country justice.” We’re all clued in, I’m sure, by now.

 

 

My initial reaction to all of this was that it’s a bit inside baseball. It’s authors being dicky and tap-dancing on dubious ethical ground and waggling their penmonkey genitals about in an unpleasant display.

Except then I was online at Amazon (which already is notoriously assy in terms of filter and discoverability) and I was reading reviews and was suddenly struck by the horrifying notion –

I don’t know if these are real.

Suddenly I’m reading reviews with the same level of doubt and suspicion I reserve for reality television (we all realize that ‘House Hunters’ is a big lie, right?). It’s the same vibe I get when I go looking for reviews of restaurants. Locally we had a restaurant where the owner was caught leaving good reviews for himself, bad ones for his competition, and was also getting on forums as a sock-puppet and shouting down folks who said his food had dropped in quality (as it used to be great and isn’t anymore). Shitty behavior, right?

I read reviews for a toaster, my cynical mind flares up like a hot rash: “I’m sure the positive reviews are all left by employees of Big Toaster, and all the negative ones are left by proponents of some Anti-Toaster Coalition.” Casts all reviews in these areas as suspect. Which makes them beyond useless.

Now I’m feeling that way about books.

 

Maybe I should’ve been all along. Maybe I was naive.

It doesn’t change the fact that this isn’t good for anybody.

 

 

Read the rest of the post on terribleminds.

 

NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, is held every November. This post, by Chuck Wendig, originally appeared on his terrribleminds site on 10/4/11.

It’s that time of the year, then, that normal everyday men and women get a hankering for the taste of ink and misery, thus choosing to step into the arena to tangle with the NaNoWriMo beast.

Here, then, are 25 of my thoughts regarding this month-long pilgrimage into the mouth of the novel — peruse, digest, then discuss. Feel free to hit the comments [on the original post] and add your own thoughts to the tangle.

[Publetariat Editor’s Note: strong language after the jump]

1. Writing Requires Writing

The oft-repeated refrain, “Writers write,” is as true a sentiment as one can find, and yet so many self-declared writers seem to ignore it just the same. National Novel Writing Month — NaNoWriMo, which sounds like like the more formalized greeting used by Mork when calling home to Ork — demands that writers shit or get off the pot. It says, you’re a writer, so get to scrawling, motherfucker.

2. Writing Requires Finishing

The other giant sucking chest wound that afflicts a great many so-called writers is the inability to finish a single fucking thing. Not a novel, not a script, not a short story. (One wonders how many unfinished manuscripts sit collecting dust like a shelf full of Hummel figurines in an old cat lady’s decrepit Victorian manse.) NaNoWriMo lays down the law: you have a goal and that goal is to finish.

3. Discipline, With A Capital “Do That Shit Every Day, Son”

The way you survive NaNoWriMo is the same way any novelist survives: by spot-welding one’s ass to the office chair every day and putting the words to screen and paper no matter what. Got a headache? Better write. Kid won’t stop crying? Better write. Life is hard and weepy-pissy-sadfaced-panda-noises? Fuck you and write. Covered in killer bees? Maybe today’s not the best day to write. You might want to call somebody. Just don’t pee in fear. Bees can smell fear-urine. Pee is to bees as catnip is to cats.

4. The Magic Number Is 1666

Ahh. The Devil’s vintage. Ahem. Anyway. To hit 50,000 words in one month, you must write at least 1,666 words per day over the 30 day period. I write about 1000 words in an hour, so you’re probably looking at two to three hours worth of work per day. If you choose to not work weekends, you’ll probably need to hit around 2300 words per day. If you’re only working weekends, then ~6000 per day.

5. The Problem With 50,000 Words

Be advised: 50,000 words does not a novel make. It may technically count, but publishers don’t want to hear it. Even in the young adult market I’d say that most novels hover around 60,000 words. You go to a publisher with 50k in hand and call it a novel, they’re going to laugh at you. And whip your naked ass with a towel. And put that shit on YouTube so everybody can have a chortle or three. Someone out there is surely saying, “Yes, but what if I’m self-publishing?” Oh, don’t worry, you intrepid DIY’ers. I’ll get to you.

6. The True Nature Of “Finishing”

For the record, I’m not a fan of referring to one’s sexual climax as “finishing.” It’s so… final. “I have finished. I am complete. Snooze Mode, engaged!” I prefer “arrived.” Sounds so much more festive! As if there’s more on the way! This party’s just getting started! … wait, I’m talking about the wrong type of finishing, aren’t I? Hm. Damn. Ah, yes, NaNoWriMo. Writing 50,000 words is your technical goal — completing a novel in those 50,000 words is not. You can turn in an unfinished novel and be good to go. The only concern there is that 50,000 words serves only as a milestone and come December it again becomes oh-so-easy to settle in with the “I’ve Written Part Of A Novel” crowd. Always remember: the only way through is through.

7. Draft Zero

It helps to look at your NaNoWriMo novel as the zero draft — it has a beginning, it has an ending, it has a whole lot of something in the middle. The puzzle pieces are all on the table and, at the very least, you’ve got an image starting to come together (“is that a dolphin riding side-saddle on a mechanical warhorse through a hail of lasers?”). But the zero draft isn’t done cooking. A proper first draft awaits. A first draft that will see more meat slapped onto those exposed bones, taking your word count into more realistic territory.

8. Quantity Above Quality

Put differently, the end result of any written novel is quality. You’re looking for that thing to shine like a stiletto and be just as sharp. NaNoWriMo doesn’t ask for or judge quality as part of its end goal. To “win” the month, you could theoretically write the phrase “nipple sandwich” 25,000 times and earn yourself a little certificate. Quantity must be spun into quality. You’ve got all the sticks. Now build yourself a house.

9. Beware “Win” Conditions

If you complete NaNoWriMo, I give you permission to feel like a winner. If you don’t, I do not — repeat, awooga, awooga, do not — give you permission to feel like a loser. This is one of the perils of the gamification of novel-writing, the belief that by racking up a certain score (word count) in a pre-set time-frame (one month for everybody), you win. And by not doing this, well, fuck you, put another quarter in the machine, dongface. Which leads me to:

10. We’re Not All Robots Who Follow The Same Pre-Described Program

NaNoWriMo assumes a single way of writing a novel. Part of this equation — “smash brain against keyboard until story bleeds out” — is fairly universal. The rest is not. For every novelist comes a new path cut through the jungle. Some novelists write 1000 words a day. Some 5000 words a day. Some spend more time on planning, others spend a year or more writing. Be advised that NaNoWriMo is not a guaranteed solution, nor is your “failure to thrive” in that program in any way meaningful. I tried it years back and found it just didn’t fit for me. (And yet I remain!) It is not a bellwether of your ability or talent.

 

Read the rest of the post, which contains 15 more things to know about NaNoWriMo, on terribleminds.

This blog article features various software packages from one company, Mariner Software, Inc. It’s not meant as an advertisement but an evaluation of tools I use because I find them to be the best out there. They deliver what they promise. I decided to write this because I’ve been asked to be a beta tester for a new upcoming package called “Persona.” Here is what they intend for it to do:

With Persona, you will be able to:

• Create the cast for your story
• Explore the relationships and interactions between each of the characters
• Categorize each character into one of 32 archetypes and 64 styles
• Create Smart Groups of characters based on attributes like tags, type, sex, or any word or phrase from your notes
• Create adhoc groups of characters without a defined relationship so you can explore their interactions
• See the relationships between archetypes, for example, if your hero is corrupted and becomes a villain

This is the best answer I have seen for an old warhorse of a writers aid called “Dramatica,” which is based on a complex, almost incomprehensible writing theory. Persona is a combination of a character data base and a collection of archetypical types and their motivations and typical actions. It is, as I said, still in beta testing, but should be out soon. Here are some other products that I use which you should find helpful:

Contour—$49.95 Mac/Windows

This was designed for screenwriters, but I have found it to be extremely helpful for novel writing. It starts out by asking these 4 questions: Who is the main character? What is the main character trying to accomplish? Who is trying to stop the main character? What happens if the main character fails? From there it goes on to ask questions throughout the structure of a typical story that, if an author answers the questions, will give him or her a logical progression of the story. Contour, the proven story development system developed by Emmy Award-nominated Jeffrey Alan Schechter, is designed to take your idea and turn it into a solid outline – the same kind of character-based structure used by many of the biggest blockbuster movies. In the company’s words: Unlike other story development systems which are either so complicated that you don’t know where to start or so light-weight as to wonder, “why in the world did I buy this?”, Contour is a must-have for every screenwriter. Taking your idea and using a fill-in-the blanks and intuitive approach, Contour guides you as to what elements need to be part of your story outline – you’re never left to wonder, “what comes next?”

StoryMill 4.0—$49.95  Mac

I love this aid and use it a lot. Here are the company’s description of what it does:

Writing a great novel doesn’t just happen, it is designed. It is thought out. It takes a writer who has discipline, creativity and open-mindedness. Writing is a creative process and like all creative processes, sometimes it’s hard to get started. But ask any writer, once you get into “the zone” you can write forever.
Take your idea for mystery, romance, adventure, action or science fiction and turn it into that novel you know is within but just needs a little help getting out. Developed to ease a person into the writing experience, StoryMill 4 is purposely designed to include all the essential writing elements, while at the same time maintaining an intuitive user interface.
StoryMill is incredibly flexible – use it as your no-nonsense place to write and revise using its distraction-free full screen and powerful annotations, or as your complete database of every character, location and scene that makes up your novel. You can set a daily writing goal and keep track of it using the Progress Meter. There are handy things to help you keep track of cliches and monitor how many times you use a word. There’s a single place for all your research – add pictures, tags, files and links, or make notes to any item in your project. It’s all right there within easy reach.

Have Timeline, will travel
The Timeline View is all new. You can group the scenes so you can see the relationship between them. Change the unit of time measurement all the way from minutes to centuries. Insert scenes or events and view the list of untimed scenes. No matter what passage of time your story takes, the Timeline View will give you a perspective unique only to StoryMill.

Conclusion

If you need writing software that can help you think through the creative process, develop the elements of your story, its characters, its scenes, its time lines, and its research, these packages are invaluable. Their costs are reasonable.

 

This is a cross-posting from Bob Spear‘s Book Trends blog.

This post, by Amy Rose Davis, originally appeared on her A Modicum of Talent With Occasional Flashes of Brilliance blog on 7/16/12.

After reading the two already-published installments of The Kingkiller Chronicles, I started to put into words some of the real criticism I have about my beloved genre. I think these thoughts are worth sharing in more general terms for a few reasons. First, I don’t want to rant about Rothfuss anymore. I don’t think his books are rant-worthy. I just think they’re overhyped and not nearly as brilliant as people think. Second, I want to go over these things because I think anyone who reads my blog and writes fantasy might find them useful. And third, I want you all to know what I’m trying to avoid in my own work!

As I see it, fantasy falls into three big traps:

The books exist to build bridges, set up conflicts, or establish scenarios for future plots. One could argue that most of The Wheel of Time exists purely to set up the next book, ad infinitum, until we hopefully get the big payoff in the last book. I wouldn’t know because I don’t plan to re-read the books. The problem of books existing only to bridge gaps is probably more of a problem with second books, I think. I suspect that authors work so hard on those first books in order to get an agent or publisher that the first book is usually polished to a fine sheen–plots are tight as they can be, characters as fleshed out as possible, worlds intricately built.

But the problem is that when we come to book two, authors have deadlines, expectations, and multi-book deals in hand. So maybe there’s a rush to write something to meet the deadline and expectations. Or even worse–book one was outrageously successful, so maybe in the haste to publish book two and book three, the author writes like a demon, the agent and publisher work more on marketing or publishing than on editing, and the result is a book that’s not nearly as tight as the first one.

Listen, authors. Every book in your series should potentially stand alone. There should be some kind of central conflict, some kind of goal for each book in the series. Do not expect your readers to go along with you for three or five or twelve books just hoping for the big payoff at the end. Give them a payoff in each book.

Too much backstory becomes frontstory.

Did I just make that word up–”frontstory?” Honestly, I think this is about 90% of the problem I had with Rothfuss’ books, and I think this is quite possibly why Kvothe comes off as such a special snowflake to me. If I just didn’t have to hear every flipping detail about his entire life, maybe he wouldn’t come across as so irritating. I think Rothfuss got caught up in writing backstory and history for Kvothe and never really distilled those stories into an actual plot.

 

Read the rest of the post on A Modicum of Talent With Occasional Flashes of Brilliance.

Writers are supposed to be passionate, communicative, and have some strong opinions. Like all artists, it’s their job to speak truth to power when others will not or cannot. In other words, they’re supposed to have something to say, and they’re supposed to say it, and they’re not supposed to give a damn what anybody thinks. It is in this that the purity of their art is grounded. 

Authors are supposed to establish an online presence that’s open, welcoming, inclusive, and entirely inoffensive. Like all marketers, it’s their job to appeal to the widest demographic possible. In other words, they’re not supposed to have anything negative or controversial to say, and if they do, they’re not supposed to post it, and they’re supposed to care a great deal about what everyone thinks of anything they do post. It is in this that their online reputations are kept untarnished. 

Do you see the disconnect here, the fundamental opposition of these two sets of requirements? 

[palm-forehead] What were we thinking?!

For years now, I’ve been proferring the same author platform advice: carefully cultivate and maintain your image, always be nice, don’t say or do anything that could be construed as negative or controversial, and strive to avoid turning off your readers (and potential readers) at all times and at all costs. I’m beginning to think this advice is wrong. 

How can one possibly spend half or more of the time wearing his Author hat and being a totally benign milquetoast, and the rest of it wearing his Writer hat and churning out impassioned, moving prose? Assuming it’s possible to make a habit of pretending not to care too much, or be bothered too much, by anything, is it a good idea for any artist to do so? 

I’ve noticed that after about five years of doing the benign milquetoast thing, the seams on my carefully cultivated, totally benign, online effigy are starting to show sometimes. And rip open in a few places. However hard I try, when I come up against something or someone with which/whom I disagree very strongly, there are only so many times I can avert my eyes, either say nothing or just mumble something vague, and keep moving. Increasingly, I can’t seem to help going off on the things and people that bother me lately. 

Maybe it’s just because election years always bring out the ignorant yahoos and smug twits in droves, and I’ve had just about enough of their nonsense. Maybe it’s that the collapsing economies all around the world have us all on edge. Maybe it’s because I haven’t felt I’ve had a well-developed enough concept to channel all that writerly angst and passion into a new novel. Maybe it’s because I’ve been (figuratively) beaten down and bloodied by a few simultaneous life crises over the past two years. 

Maybe I’m just a cranky bitch. 

Or maybe, just maybe…it’s because behind my carefully tended online persona, I’m a human being who’s alive, with an active mind, who has thoughts and experiences and feelings, who is imperfect, and sometimes gets angry at the wrong people or for the wrong reasons, who feels guilty or insecure every now and then, and every so often runs out of patience at precisely the wrong time. 

As a writer, I’m supposed to believe—no, I NEED to believe—that all the mistakes I make, all the wrongs I either inflict or endure, inform my work. As an artist, if my art is to have any impact at all, I am supposed to wring meaning and insight from these experiences and channel it into my work. 

Remember when part of the charm of celebrated authors was their other-ness? They were legendarily prickly, snarky, bohemian, drunks, or brawlers who seemed to spend their days in bed (often with multiple partners), and their nights about equally divided between scandalizing the bourgeoisie and pouring out Important Literature. Above all, they didn’t give a toss what the general public thought about them. How could they? In much the same way an actor must be totally un-self-conscious in order to really disappear into a role and be true to the material he’s been given, a writer must be totally un-self-conscious in order to disappear into the world of his stories and characters and be true to the material he’s creating. 

When you’ve developed the habit of turning off your authentic self to the point that it feels effortless, how can you be sure you’re really capable of turning it back on again? If you spend so much of your time worrying about how you’re being publicly perceived, how can you prevent that insecurity from creeping into your work? If you care so much about being perceived negatively online that you’ve made it a practice to avoid posting anything that could possibly cause you to be perceived negatively, how can you be sure you’re not sanding off all the rough edges of your ideas, plots and characters as well? 

Now, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying writers should all immediately pick up some self-destructive habits and start purposely offending everyone within virtual earshot. No, no, no. But I am saying that maybe it’s not so bad to take a stand every now and then, and maybe it’s not the end of your career if it’s a poorly informed and badly executed stand. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing to expose your human-ness and your passions once in a while. 

Being a good little Author Platformer means putting the Ego in charge: the reasoning, detached part of the self that suppresses baser urges and animal instincts. The Id is where all base urges and instincts originate, but it’s also where insight and creativity live; chaining the Id to a post in the basement of one’s day to day life may be the worst mistake any artist can make. My Id has been locked up for too long, and it’s acting out. I’m beginning to wonder if I should’ve been letting it come out to play, and make its mistakes and messes, a little more often than I have these past five years. 

Case in point: a post of mine was picked up by The Passive Voice blog, and there were a number of comments. One commenter zeroed in on one specific line in the post, and took up a real battleflag against it. And this irked me, a great deal. Straw man arguments are a pet peeve for me, but not without good reason… 

I have read and personally experienced far too many cherry-picking arguments when the indie author movement was just getting off the ground, where some naysayer or other would attempt to discredit the entire notion of indie authorship by attacking or attempting to disprove one specific statement in an essay or blog post—an essay or blog post with which they could find no other particular fault. Time and again, the trolls would come forward to hold up this or that one, specific example of a failed or poor-quality indie book, and use it as the foundation for their thesis that, "therefore, all indie books are bad and virtually no one buys indie books." So I’m pretty touchy about cherry-picking arguments. 

I do not believe this commenter is a troll, nor do I think he necessarily deserved the chilly and irritated responses he got from me. I’m sure many people have seen the exchange, and some of them thought worse of me for it. Three years ago, I would’ve been frantically working damage control and obsessing about the potential fallout. Two years ago, I wouldn’t have responded to the commenter at all. One year ago, I would’ve responded with some bland bit of mild disagreement, sure to include at least one qualifier that would welcome anyone reading my response to dismiss it completely. 

Now, I’m doing nothing. I overreacted because this commenter unintentionally hit a raw nerve, but while I did go so far as to wonder "aloud" what his motivations might be for so tenaciously clinging to this one line of argument, I don’t believe I stepped over the line into being rude or hurtful. A display of poor judgment on my part? Absolutely. Obnoxious? Fine, I’ll give you that. A total meltdown? No, I think that’s going too far. 

Above all else, what it was, was proof positive that I’m not just a bland…um, I mean brand. It was a demonstration that I can and do get bothered and passionate about things sometimes, even if this Author Platform lifestyle of stuffing those tendencies down for the past five years is now resulting in me getting a little too bothered and being a little too passionate about relatively unimportant things. 

I’m not advocating for authors to start shooting their mouths off about anything they want to in any setting. There are such things as decorum, respect, and ‘reading the room’, after all. I’m just saying that maybe it’s not such a bad idea to be your authentic, opinionated, imperfect self now and then, at least when the stakes are low, even in the context of author platform. Some will respond well, others won’t. But those who don’t like your authentic self probably never would’ve liked your work anyway. And if constantly stifling your authentic self may also result in stifling the authenticity of your work, it’s a price that’s too high to pay. 

Maybe letting your Id peek through the veil every once in a while serves to vent bile that would otherwise build up until you do have a public meltdown when some minor irritation tips the scale. I can’t say for certain. All I can say is that whatever I’ve been doing up until now ain’t working anymore.

 

This is a cross-posting from Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton’s Indie Author blog.

This post, by Ben Galley, originally appeared on C.S. Lakin‘s Live Write Thrive.

It’s a sad truth, and one that is almost immediately apparent to most, that self-published works can be immediately dismissed due to their origins. From readers, to blogs, to bookshops, the word self-published is often greeted with a grimace and a groan. Some of you may not have experienced this yet, but I guarantee you will in time. But why is this reputation such a notorious one? And, more importantly, what can we do to escape it?

 Cheap and Quick Doesn’t Mean Lousy

There are two main foundations to this reputation. The first comes from the very roots of why there has been such an “Indie Boom”over the last few years. Self-publishing is cheap and quick, and in any industry, this doesn’t often mean quality. This has had a deleterious effect on the rest of us.

In a nutshell, one of the reasons for this stigma is the high volume of low quality, rushed self-published works available. The large majority of readers will be unforgiving of books with no proper editing or a cover made in Word. It’s painted a poor initial view of us. Notoriety results. A bad reputation is a hard one to shrug. For readers who may have simply tried a few indie books in the past and been consistently disappointed, they are unlikely to try again. The same goes for reviewers.

 No Quality Controllers

The second reason is due to the publishers, though not directly. One of the big issues surrounding self-publishing is the idea of curating. This is the idea that within the book industry publishers are the curators of quality. Ideally, they decide what is good enough to go to print, and discard what isn’t. Whether or not this works in reality, some readers simply trust publishers to be stamps of high quality. Self-publishing has no such process, and because of that we’ve been dubbed the new slush pile. Because we lack this “quality stamp,” readers unfortunately view us as a risk, and not worth spending the money on. Combine this with the misconception that self-publishing is simply Vanity Publishing: a last resort to rejected authors, authors that therefore must not be very good at what they do, and we’ve got a community that thinks all self-published books are substandard. Who would want to buy a book by a rubbish author? This, combined with an already shaky reputation, has caused many readers, reviewers, press, and bookshops to close their doors. Many for good.

This is simply untrue. So what do we do about this? Do we campaign? Do we street march? Speak out? No, the simple answer is this: We attain quality.

 A Turn for the Best

The good thing is the tide is already turning. We are seeing Indies encroaching on the best-seller lists. We are seeing reviewers amending their policies. We are seeing dedicated blogs and sites curated by voracious readers of Indies. People are beginning to see that the lack of so called publisher-curating can actually allow fresh and new writing. The opinions are beginning to change. How? Because we are now working to avoid these stereotypes. And we are working HARD. Here’s how:

 

Read the rest of the post on Live Write Thrive.

This post, by Brandon G. Withrow, originally appeared on The Huffington Post on 6/27/12.

This last week I went to Amazon to look for a book. Did you know they sell those too?

Their home page directed me to an IndieReader.com article (also published here at The Huffington Post) by Jessica Park ("How Amazon Saved My Life"), author of several books, but whose book Flat-Out Love is her first Amazon book. Needless to say, Park is exuberant about her work with Amazon and for Amazon the feeling appears mutual.

Most of Park’s books were traditionally published under a standard contract with all its usual difficulties and blessings. Her article is an interesting look at the pros of self-publishing with a big force like Amazon and includes the benefits from choosing your own cover to the potential to make big money.

I admit that I was intrigued by the money side first. After all, as a traditionally published author, I (like so many others) hope to at least earn as much from the book as I spent in buying coffee while I wrote it.

Up until now, and outside of blogging, I’ve not given self-publishing too much thought. Part of the reason for that is the reputation that the self-publishing world has — whether it is deserved or not — for being average or even subpar. I am also a professor, meaning that promotion and tenure are things that require a certain publication history not generally associated with the self-publishing book world at this point.

Park pulled no punches in her opinion of traditional publishing, and her belief in the superiority of self-publishing was far from reserved. Declaring anything one’s savior is usually a bravado reserved for religious tracts. Should it be followed-up with "Amazon has a wonderful plan for your life?"

Despite the usual criticism of self-published books, I had an experience recently that reduced some of my skepticism of that industry.

I received an email a little while back from Nick Frieseler, a debut author. He asked me to look over his manuscript for his forthcoming book, Imago Dei: The Evolution of Man in the Image of God (WinePress Publishing). In this, Frieseler suggests a theological solution for discussions of evolution and Christianity. Reading my articles here at the Huffington Post on religion and evolution, he thought I could offer suggestions.

 

Read the rest of the post on The Huffington Post.