Wednesday 29 July 2015

To self-publish or not to self-publish - Part II

I peppered my last post with words of warning that self-publishing wasn’t as rosy as I was making it seem. This is my rebuttal, what part of my brain says when I swing back from my self-publishing high.


This is…

Part II - Not to self-publish 

i.e. publish traditionally. By this I mean the normal route of:
  •         finding an agent
  •         the agent finding you a publisher (big or small)
  •         you getting an advance
  •          the publisher producing your book and selling it (hopefully)


1/ You get a stamp of quality

As much as I hate it, there is still some stigma associated with self-publishing. And even though the barriers are coming down, it’s still hugely important for many people to get that recognition. Agents are sometimes called ‘gatekeepers’, because they stop all the crap from getting to the publishers. They’re the ones who have to sort the gems from the slushpile they receive.
Nobody stops anyone from publishing crap on Amazon.
Now you may say that many crap books are published by traditional publishers, but what you mean really is that many books you think are crap are published by traditional publishers. Other people like the very same books you think are a total disgrace. But you won’t find books that have loads of typos, are ridden with grammatical mistakes or just make no sense.
Now in all honesty, I doubt those terrible Amazon books made their author very successful or have swamped the market. They’re part of the data, sure, but they’re just there, doing not very much. (There must be some very interesting articles on this data somewhere – if you know any, do send them my way!)
Yet people still attribute this enormous importance to ‘being published’. To having someone else say: ‘Hey, this is good. We should sell it.’ Which brings me to point 2.

2/ It takes a hell of a lot of guts to promote a self-published book

You have to be pretty damn confident to go around and ask people to give you money and invest their time in something that no one but you (and your mum, or so I hear) think is brilliant. Relentlessly ask people for money and time. As part of the jobs you take on, you have to be the main marketing guy in your one-person company. Now of course you care passionately about your book, which makes you well qualified to rave about it, but it’s your baby. You’re too close to it. You might also be incredibly a) sensitive, b) doubt-ridden, c) overprotective or d) all of the above (D, please). You have to stomach bad reviews all on your own, and have nothing but your own self-belief to keep you going. That’s haaaard.

3/ A one-person company can be lonely

I mentioned in a previous post I’d fallen in love. It wasn’t so much love as that feeling you get when you’re single and you see a loved-up couple. You might well be very happily single, dancing and singing à la Natasha Bedingfield and Beyonce, (*all the single ladies, all the single ladies, lalala*), but then you see that couple touching and kissing and looking so lovely together you get that warm fuzzy feeling and you think, ‘Gosh, I wish I had that.’ It’s not so much envy as hope. You see all that love and you think, ‘That could be me.' That's why we watch romcoms, right?




Right, so this is what happened to me with an agent. Not as romantic, I know. But the way she talked about her author was so passionate (yes, I know it’s her job!) it made me want someone to talk about my book like that. Someone who would be on my side and love it and fight for it with me.

I know there are many indie author networks and circles. But being part of the traditional publishing process, you’re also part of a team, and that team is working for your book because they believe in it. Not because you’re paying them. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?

4/ You get an advance

Now of course you’re not in writing for the money, otherwise you’d be an investment banker (or insert other stereotypically well-paid job). But it’s like with my other actual job (the one with the little people): you don’t do it for the money, but you still need the paycheck at the end of the month to pay the bills. If nothing else, getting an advance might mean this: giving up the day job for a few months to write book 2 and do some promo. And this little bit of time might make all the difference to your career as an author.


5/ It takes a lot of time to self-publish
(Have you noticed how nicely my paragraphs flow into each other? I hope you’re impressed.)

I mentioned earlier that as a self-published author you take on all the jobs of a normal publisher. Now even if you outsource some of it, it’s still a huge responsibility. It means learning a huge range of skills and doing a lot of reading. It means coordinating and proofing a lot of work. It takes time.
Time you’re not spending writing your next book.

6/ Self-publishing costs money

As indie author, you are your own investor. You can do a kickstarter (or similar) to raise some money, but unless you already have a following, you’re looking at your friends and family giving you a hand. If you are successful, you should be able to recuperate the costs, and hopefully even make some money (to take time off to write book 2, as with the traditional route).
But let’s look at numbers. From what I’ve seen, a book published to a professional standard will cost around £3000 (maybe more). If you get about £2 back for every book, you’d still need to sell 1,500 books just to cover your costs. For an indie author, that’s already quite a lot. So there’s also high risk that you’d lose money on the book. But at the end of the day, if you’re self-publishing, it’s because you are willing to take on that risk. So then you have to decide… Is it worth it?

As for me, well… At the moment I’m in the ‘finding an agent’ phase of my mood swings. Tomorrow, who knows?



To self-publish or not to self-publish - Part I


Foreword:

Today I finished my new round of changes to Book 1 (The girl from Otherworld).

Now what?

Well, apart from writing Book 2 (how’s that synopsis going, you ask?), there’s publishing. And with it comes the important question: to self-publish or not to self-publish?

A few years ago, this might not even have been a concern. You just tried for an agent first. But now self-publishing is becoming more respectable, it is a real dilemma: should I even try for the traditional route, or just embrace self-publishing?

There’s a French saying that goes, ‘Between the two my heart swings,’ and it really is how I feel about publishing. One morning I’m rearing to self-publish, the next I’m back to wanting a publishing deal.

In the next couple of posts I’m going to try to explain why, for me at least, it’s not a clear-cut answer, and what the advantages and disadvantages are for both. Needless to say that this is NOT a guide for anybody else to make a decision on whether to publish or not, but my own internal comings and goings.

I am therefore pleased to present …

Part I - To self-publish

1/ My book doesn’t follow the rules.

My book is YA high fantasy, a combination that’s not exactly hot at the moment, while YA is also said to be saturated. My story has characters with quite different ages (14, 16 and 25ish), and a main character who is scared of her own shadow (not the usual ‘moving the action forward’ kind of character) and might well get on some people’s nerves.
It also has three different points of view. When I tell people in the trade about this, I always get that sucking in noise people make when they want to say: ‘Oooh, that’s bad!’ The ‘eeeesh’ kind of noise. Then I get told I need to make sure each character has a really distinct voice for it to work, and I hope I have achieved that, but they may well disagree. I also don’t think it’s as big a problem as they say (in my completely unqualified opinion). Game of Thrones has more points of view characters than I can name, Alone in Berlin changes points of view mid-thought (not that this is a good example to follow) and authors have been using omniscient points of view for ever. So what’s the big deal?
The problem is that it’s unusual in the kind of book I have written, and therefore there is a risk attached to it. A lot of risk.
I have heard great and terrible stories about publishing, but on the whole what I understand about it is this: most agents and editors care deeply about the books they sell, but they are also in this business to make money. In order to find books that sell, they look at what books have sold. Now everyone knows this is a poor predictor of what is going to sell, but everybody is famously rubbish at predicting what the next big thing is going to be. Both Tunnels and The Night Circus were predicted to be as big as Harry Potter, and well... Have you even heard of them? Publishing a book costs money, and publishers gamble when they take on a debut author. And that is why they don’t want to take any extra risks. Now I’m sure people can argue at length about the disastrous consequences this might have on the quality and diversity of literature, but it’s not their money being put on the line.
I, on the other hand, would be willing to risk it, because (most days) I believe I have written something solid. And that is where self-publishing comes in.

2/ It is now easier than ever

If you wanted to make your book available on Amazon, all you’d need to do would be to convert it to the right format and upload it. That’s it.
Now it might well be that it’s unedited and badly formatted, but the distribution on Amazon is that easy.

I have read a number of tutorials, and the reality is of course a lot more complicated. There are different platforms and formats to consider, there is proofreading of conversions to be done, there are tax concerns to deal with. And there are many, many companies out there who want your money and will try to screw you over.

However, the fact is that all the services available to publishers – line editing, copyediting, proofreading, formatting, illustration, cover design, typesetting, printing, even marketing and distribution to real bookshops – are all now available to independent authors. Some services are offered by large companies, others are by individuals who can be contacted on platforms such as Reedsy.

As I see it, as an independent author you become your own publisher, which means you do all that a publisher would do. You either pay for it (as an investment) or you learn to do it at a professional standard. There is a plethora of articles and self-help books, as well as forums and writers’ groups, so if you are committed and do your research, the information is out there and (mostly) free.


3/ You can reach the same audience as a traditionally published author

Well, yes and no, but of course here I’m going to argue yes.

The ebook audience has long been the domain of self-published authors. Platforms such as Smashwords reach a number of ebook stores, except Amazon (but as we’ve seen, that’s dead easy) and the internet (blog reviews, Wattpad, Goodreads, etc.) allows indie authors to reach out to complete strangers. Sure, putting a book on Amazon and reaching an audience are two different things, but it's been done. A few self-published author successes (the authors of Switched and Wool for instance) have shown that complete nobodies could become bestselling author.
(If you are wanting to throttle your computer as you scream ‘Yes, but!’, bear with me – I know it’s not all black and white).
But for a really long time, that was it. Bookshops, libraries, schools – no one wanted to hear from a self-pub author. They had enough books to choose from and in my experience were the most likely to suffer from prejudice against self-published authors. Why wouldn’t you get traditionally published if your book was good enough? #stiffupperlip

From speaking to a few hopeful writers, it is still an issue. To find a distributor, you need to be a publisher. To get to bookshops, you need a distributor. Some people established their own publishing companies (employees: 1), but this can be viewed as cheating (i.e. pretend you’ve been "properly" published when you’re just another reject of the traditional route).

That being said, I think things are changing. The attitude of the public and the industry towards self-published books is not as negative as it used to. With companies like Matador* offering distribution to bookshops, indie authors now have a shot at street retailing as well, which is great news.

*I know I bang on about them – I swear I don’t receive any percentage of their profits. I haven’t even tried them myself – they just sounded pretty impressive and I haven’t found any negative articles about them.


4/ Authors have to do all their promo themselves anyway
Twitter presence, blog tours, writing blogs… Whether they are traditionally or independently published, nowadays authors are expected to be actively promoting their books. And it’s not just author talks and interviews. I have been told that authors should also be approaching bookshops directly to offer to sign stock or do events. So if authors are going to be doing all their promo anyway, they might as well keep the profit.


5/ You've got the power!

I've got the power!

As a self-published author, you get to decide EVERYTHING! You can choose the cover you want and what it’s all going to look like. You have total control over everything (except, of course, whether people buy it or not).
It’s terribly exciting, and it also means that there are no nasty surprises. Nobody can make you change things you feel deep down are wrong for your book and your career. You don’t find yourself in the horrible situation where the heart of your baby (your book, that is) is being torn to pieces by the people in the marketing department who clearly don’t understand your work of genius. Or that ugly cover design over which you have no say.
The problem with traditionally publishing is that you are only the writer. Oh, yes, you’re supposed to help with promoting the book, but the publishing bit is not your job. This has its advantages  (see next post), but it also means that if your publishers completely screw up your vision for your book (or even your vision of you as an author), you have no leverage. You have signed a bit of paper that has handed that over to somebody else and you are legally bound. This, more than anything, is what scares the crap out of me.

Of course you might also make all the wrong decisions as an indie, but hey, at least they were your choices, and not something imposed on you by a third party. Not great if you don’t like making decisions, though… *whistles*

Friday 24 July 2015

Alternative

I hate my sister.

This really wasn't what I was planning my next post to be. But then, a lot of things are going off plan recently.

What happened was this: I was having a nice chat about visiting her and her work and life in general when we started talking about my book.

And what do you know, two hours (and a few held-back tears) later, and our conversation has made me decide to make some major edits to Book 1. I'm trying to think of it as an 'alternative' version, rather than the 23400th edit, but it's still demoralising to be back to that. I was done with Book 1, damn it! I think I've found a new title for it, too: The Book That Is Never Finished (the Neverending Story was already taken).

It all started because of a comment my sister made about Lacie, so really it's all her fault.

Tuesday 21 July 2015

Number crunching

Today I decided to change the age of some of my characters (yet again). Partly it's because I've decided to make June a POV character for book 2 (Are you excited?!! I know I am!!) and therefore I need her to be a bit older, and partly it's because I'm thinking I need to narrow down the age group of my audience a bit more, and it's likely to lean more towards the older teens.

So at the start of the book June is now 10, Theo 13, Lacie 15 and Izzie and Rowan 16. It doesn't really change anything for any of them since I'm not changing the way they act (which I think is appropriate for their new age as much as it was for the old one), just their age on paper. So you might ask: why all the fuss?

Well, the exact age of my characters matters a great deal because it impacts on how much time has elasped since events in the past occurred. And this matters greatly because in my book because, as Esther says, 'Time doesn't pass the same in your world than in ours. That is to say it passes much, much more slowly.'
It passes 8 times more slowly, to be precise. And I have a whole spreadsheet of when certain things happen so that I don't get confused (which I do. All the time.)

It looks like this:












*** Spoiler note: I've hidden what all the dates and times actually mean, so this should be relatively spoiler free. ***








This means that every time I change when something happens, or how old someone is, I have to change the whole blooming spreadsheet. And if I'm honest, it takes me a long time to remember what my calculations mean, let alone fix them.

So there. This is what I did this morning. And that, kids, is why you should listen to your Maths teacher. You never know when it might come in useful.

Monday 20 July 2015

The Masterplan

So, world, long time no see. It's been so long in fact that my URL bar autofill had forgotten blogspot and *shock horror* I had to type it in myself.

But now I am on holiday and I have at least 10 days before going anywhere, which means writing is back on the agenda! Hurray!

I had promised about a thousand years ago that I would reveal my masterplan for my book. That was when there was a masterplan, which was in 3 stages:

Stage 1: become part of the community
- get my book out on Wattpad so my friends/ family and even hopefully random strangers can see what I've written. In other words, build an audience. I'm happy to report I have 8 followers, 12 comments, 24 favourites and 216 views. Which is really pathetic in Wattpad stats, by the way, but makes my gratitude for those 8 followers all the more heartfelt.
- be active on Twitter (which has happened, like, twice).
- connect with online reviewers by reading their reviews and the books they recommend (note to self: add to to-do list).

Stage 2: crowdfund to self-publish
I've always thought a crowdfunding campaign would be really fun. Also really embarrassing to beg people for money, since I am aware that most people who know me and read my blog are not actually that interested in reading high fantasy adventures for teens. Still, it would have involved making videos and promotional material and thinking of perks (the stuff you give to people who donate), all of which sounded exciting. My idea was to raise enough money to get an editor, a cover design, making the book (typesetting, printing, etc.) and promotion. Possibly pay for some of that myself (goodbye exotic holidays!), depending on the success of the crowdfunding.

Stage 3: self-publish
This would have meant going through all the steps mentioned before, which as I understand it involves the following:

- line editing: making it sound better, fixing dodgy sentences or unclear paragraphs, etc. It might sound like something you can do yourself or ask a friend to do for you, but this is the one thing that everybody says you should not skimp on.

- copyediting: fixing typos, grammatical mistakes, etc. I have become totally blind to my typos, so I definitely see the need for a copyeditor.

- typesetting: getting the file ready with the correct font, spaces, etc. so it can be printed.

- formatting for ebook or print format

- cover design and formatting. One of the tips I received at the London Book Fair is that a book has to be a beautiful object for booksellers to want it. I particularly like the ones with foil blocking.
I love foil blocking! (That's the gold stuff on here.) This is not my book, obviously, but I love this cover I had to ask some guys to move so I could take a picture of it on the tube.
- printing: does what it says on the tin. Printing can be 'on demand', which is more expensive per copy but is the only option for very small print runs, or it can be for a particular print run, usually over 200 copies, which is then cheaper per copy.

- distribution: for ebooks, there's a variety of platforms from which to distribute the book, all of which seemed achievable as an indie author without paying anyone for it. However to reach the printed book market (and how cool would that be!) you need to go through a distributor. Distributors and bookships don't usually accept indie books if you contact them directly so I thought that was the end of the story, but there are some publishers which, for a fee, will place your book with distributors, and tehrefore bookshops. I know that you have to be very careful, though, with vanity presses, and I have heard of many a horror story of people paying through their nose for services they never received and gave up their copyright for their work in the process. I think, though, that with the rise in self-publishing, a few The one I was the most impressed with at the London Book Fair was Matador, which is a self-published imprint of Troubador (and from my little research, doesn't seem to be fleecing writers in exchange for hot air). They were upfront about the costs, had some legit endorsements and very helpful advice booklets. And because they are part of an actual publishing house, it didn't seem like a fraud (though that's not always a guarantee). Anyway, as you can see they did a good job of convincing me they were the best in town for my purposes, because I had my heart set on them.

The reason this needs to be paid for is that a publisher would pay for it. And if you want your book to look professional, it needs to be done by professionals.

Some self-published authors also pay for marketing, but I was mostly keen on doing that myself: blog tours (blogs publish a piece about you or your book on different days within a week/ month - like a tour, but online), twitter presence, entering competitions, doing giveaways on Goodreads...

From this point on, my path was set for glory, right?

But like I said, this WAS the masterplan. And now... well I have fallen in love, and it's changed everything.


Sunday 14 June 2015

I am not dead

I swear.

Only trying to keep up with life. I will post soon, I promise!

Saturday 18 April 2015

Read That Grey Area

Fantastic news!


You can now read Book 1 - The Girl from Otherworld on Wattpad!


Following my days at the London Book Fair, I learned that the best way to get people to care about my book is to get readers. I now have a big plan (more details soon), and the first step was to post my book on a reading platform like Wattpad. 

How it works is this: people sign up to read, they find something they'd like to read by looking at categories or using recommendations, then they start reading, chapter by chapter. Some stories are finished (marked as 'completed'), some are not. 
If readers like it, they can vote for each chapter by adding it as a favourite (a yellow star at the bottom) or they can leave comments. Books that have many reads, many favourites, and many comments are more visible, and get more readers.

 I will be posting chapters every few days. Just click here to start reading. And if you like it, remember to vote or leave comments so I can reach new readers!
You need to create an account to be a reader, but it's quick and free.

Thanks to all the lovely people who have been supporting me in doing this. It is scary, putting my book out there for the whole world to see. Not just an extract where I can say, 'What, this old unedited thing?', but the real thing.

So thank you. You are amazing and I couldn't do this without you.


Lessons from the London Book Fair


By chance the London Book Fair fell during one of my weeks off and so I took a bit of time off from editing to infiltrate the publishing business and listen in.

These are some of the lessons I learned. Now bear in mind that this isn't my advice, but what the pros at the fair were saying.
Beauuuutiful cover!

#Lesson 1: Pretty books matter
One of the comments that was made by booksellers over and over is that what a book looks like matters hugely. Don’t judge a book by its cover? Forget it, everybody does. Booksellers are flooded with hundreds of books, so if you want your book to stand out, it’s got to be stunning. In the words on a bookseller, ‘make it a beautiful objects that people want to get their hands on’. That being said, easier said than done…

# Lesson 2: Use social media – but be genuine
One of the advice I heard the most is also the least helpful: use social media. Oh thanks, geez, hadn’t thought about that! Everybody said it, especially those who haven’t grown up breathing and living twitter and facebook. They mostly said sensible stuff that seemed pretty obvious to me, but it least it’s making me think I’m doing things right:
- Don’t be a knob. Be polite and enthusiastic and give other people a hand. Or as somebody put it, forget about the self-absorbed part of your brain that drove you to be shut up in your own little world for months to write a book.
- Don’t spam people to ask them to buy your book. Nobody wants someone’s book rammed down their throat all the time. An interesting blog post post on this topic came out this week telling authors to 'shut up'.
- Make connections. When publicists tell authors to use social media, what they mean is to reach out to people, engage in conversations, have a ‘presence’. The same blogger who told authors to 'shut up' wrote a following blog explaining what authors should do instead of spamming.
- Be genuine. Find what social media comes naturally to you and do that one. For me it would be blogging, but an author was talking about reaching our to other debut authors through twitter was how she started using twitter, linking to pages she liked and found useful.

# Lesson 3: Build an audience. 
I think this is in competition with ‘use social media’ for most annoying advice! Yeah, thanks, I’d love to. HOW? In all honesty, I can’t say I got the answer to that one. But I got tidbits of information, things that might help.
- travel back in time to a time when there weren’t a million bloggers (see blog earlier)
- sign up to websites such as wattpad or platforms where your readers are and engage with the people there (genuinely, not spamming – see above). Make the networking part of your routine.
- publish nothing until you’ve got 3 books. Or, without going that far, publish books very close together, so your audience can continue to engage with your books. If you wait too long between books, you will lose your audience and have to start all over again
- call on your family and friends to help you spread the word
- start a mailing list

# Lesson 4: Metadata matter
Lots of acronyms like SEO and SEM got brandished around, and in all honesty I mostly didn’t have a clue what these people were talking about. Google tells me this is ‘Search Engine Optimization’ and ‘Search Engine Marketing’. Note to self: do some more research.

# Lesson 5: Do your research
When contacting people – publishers, agents, booksellers – find out what they like and don’t like, and find the name of the person you should be contacting, then contact them, and not their colleagues, who might have completely different tastes.


And finally, The Bookseller’s secret to success:
- Write a great book
- Find your audience and given them time to tell their friends about your book
- Repeat

Now I learned another very important thing, but that deserves a post of its own, so stay posted.

Thursday 16 April 2015

Help! I need somebody, help!

I finished editing my book this morning, and I have quite a lot of things I want to blog about, but I thought I would start with a problem I have.

My title.

And I need YOUR help.

My book has changed titles many times but for years now it's been called 'That Grey Area', in reference to the main theme of the book, that things are not being black and white, and to Lacie's realisation at the end that there aren't 'good people' and 'evil people'.

And I like the sound of it.

It also doesn't help readers get a sense of the book at all. But then again, book titles I love are things like 'The Knife of Never Letting Go' or 'Under the never sky', which don't really tell you what the book is about either.

So I'm a bit stuck. Should I change the title? What do you think of it?

And if I do change it, then I have an even bigger problem: what the heck am I going to call the book?

At some point the book was called The Darkness Within, in reference to a riddle inside the book (and the idea that everybody can do evil). I actually quite like this title, but I thought it made it sound too gothy (another book called The Darkness Within is a vampire book).

And if not that... well, I don't really have any ideas.
Part of the riddle also says 'If you are without sin', which could work, but again I think this gives the wrong impression.

I don't like titles that have things like Faerie in them, and I don't really want to mention the Tree Circle, e.g. I think 'The secret of the Tree Circle' sounds a bit lame.


Please leave a comment on what you think of:
- That Grey Area as a title
- The Darkness Within as a title
- Any ideas YOU have of what the title should be (though I understand that might be hard if some of you have only read bits or the synopsis).

Thank you!

~*~

Edit: I had a look at titles, following Catherine's comment.
How about 'The girl from Otherworld'. Or is that too much 'the girl with the dragon tatto'?

Tuesday 14 April 2015

Have courage and be kind

Something a little bit different today. Although this blog is about writing, it is also more generally about storytelling.
(Besides, this is my blog so I can talk about whatever the heck I want.)

So today I am going to talk about a story. A very old story. The story of Cinderella.

Or rather, Kenneth Brannagh's live action version. Having read mixed reviews, I went to see the movie with my mum last night with no other expectation than it would look pretty. (And it did - oh that blue twirling dress!)




What I wasn't expecting was such a strong moral message. 
On her death bed, Ella's mother asks her daughter to promise to have courage and be kind, two rules by which Ella strives to live, even when life deals her a pretty bad hand.
Have courage and be kind. I was surprised - and impressed. Kindness and courage are rarely associated.

Now I'm going to go a little bit personal on you.
When I was growing up, I was a bit of a goody-two-shoes, and my older sisters, dutifully doing their jobs as older sisters, teased me for it. They called me Cinderella (mostly when they got into trouble because I was crying or I'd told on them). It became an insult. Being a Cinderella was being whiny goody goody who couldn't stand up for herself.

And that's often how people view kindness. Now I'm not claiming to be as good as Cinderella, and when mice eat from my kitchen they leave droppings everywhere. But being generally nice, and usually shy, I can still appear to be a bit of a pushover. A Cinderella.

There is, in some people, a simplisitic view of what being kind or being brave is.

Some people think that being 'nice' is being a smiling warm person and having good manners, saying nice things and flattering, and avoiding conflict.
But being kind is something else entirely. 

Being kind is caring, especially about those who are more unfortunate than you are or those society deems unworthy - like Cinderella, sharing the little she has with the mice.
It's thinking of others, and sometimes putting their needs before your own - like Cinderella giving milk to the poor old lady, having lost everything herself . It's about giving, of yourself, your time, and whatever you have. It's about forgiving, like Cinderella forgives her stepmother (I won't carry on giving examples from the movie, but you get the gist). It's giving people a chance, and giving them a second chance. A chance to be kind, too.




In the same way, brashness and confidence are often mistaken for bravery. Some people think the brave ones are those who speak louder than everyone else. They think of courage and see men with swords, charging into battles.

But in the wise words of the Starks:

'Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?'
'That is the only time a man can be brave.'

Bravery is about not giving up and keeping going, even when things are tough and don't look like they're going to get any better. It's doing what you're afraid to do and daring to show the world who you truly are. It's standing up for what is right and saying no to wicked deals, even if it will cost you everything. All those fascets of bravery, Cinderella demonstrates in the movie. I wrote a post a while ago about strong female characters. To me, Kenneth Brannagh's Cinderella is strong. She's strong from within.

Now this isn't a lesson life teaches us often. I know that to appear sassy wins more hearts in the real life than being a Cinderella, and I know having a big mouth gets people's votes. I also know that 'nice guys finish last' and people don't get ahead in life but putting others first. There aren't any fairy godmothers in the real world to give good people a happy ending.
But what a sad lesson that is. And what a sad world it would be if these were the rules we lived by.

So you might scoff at Cinderella, at the twirling dresses, at love at first sight and graceful dances. You may think Cinderella's wet eyes and candid manner are twee and you may think the storyline too simplistic (I loved it all). Or you might think there was no need for a live action version of an animated classic, or even for anything straying so far from the original fairy tale.

But I, for one, am grateful that there are still people out there telling stories that teach us the importance of having courage and being kind.

'I've got a feeling we're going to need them more than usual before long.'

(Bonus points if you can tell me what book this is from. Hint: the quote doesn't refer to kindness and bravery, but to laughs.)



Monday 13 April 2015

Some other people's thoughts

Hello world!

I have been very busy editing during the Easter holidays - you can follow my adventures on my new facebook page - but it's not left me a lot of time to post on the blog. I have lots of blacklogged ideas for posts, but it will have to wait until the weekend, when I'll (hopefully) be finished with my current round of editing.

In the meantime, though, other people have written interesting stuff.

Catherine, a fellow writer and teacher, did a survey of what 13-year-old girls in her class were reading, and she found some cool things. Mostly I noticed none of them were reading unheard-of indie authors. *cough*

Harry Bingham of the Writers' Workshop, did a timely survey of authors and what they thought of their publishers. The verdict? Grumbling but not quitting. That being said, it doesn't make you want to work with publishers (but more on that later...).

And finally, I came across this blog post debating the usefulness of book reviews in driving book sales. It uses personal experience and some stats to back up its ideas, and it's well worth a read.

As for me... well, I'm only 15 000 words away from the end, so I'll resurface with my own thoughts when that's done.

Saturday 28 February 2015

To write or be published



A while back I wrote a post about ratings on goodreads, my bottom line basically being that different people have different tastes. Someone’s trash is somebody else’s treasure (or if you’re like me, you love your trash).

More insightful, perhaps, is this quote James posted in the comments:

"It’s not the job of the artist to give the audience what the audience wants. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience. They would be the artists. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need." –Alan Moore


And it’s got me thinking.

A lot of advice to writers I read is about getting published (see my toolkit to know what I mean). From what I understand, publishers are very timorous. They buy what they know will sell. So if I want to be published, I need to write what sells. And I understand that. I don’t think studying the market is a cynical way of writing. After all, why should anybody take a financial risk on my behalf? How can I expect to be read if I don’t write something people want to read? Good writing takes into account the audience and how the reader will be gripped – even my nine-year-olds learn this. Fine. Don’t write shite and expect others to read it.

But I don’t think it’s that simple.  I recently read this interview with a literary author whose book, Even the Dogs, I had just read – the book is depressing and certainly literary, but also very clever, in a way I will never be able to write. The part of the interview that struck me was this:

"When I started writing Even the Dogs I decided to ignore any concerns about readers who might not buy into what I was trying to do: to write the book as I wanted to write it, and wait to see what happened."

Of course, as a literary writer he is allowed, even expected, to be experimental. The kind of writing he admires is ‘barely readable’ (his own words). I am writing genre fiction, as mass market as it gets: YA. Not quite comparable. Yet I do think there is something true there.

Yes, I would love to be published. And I have studied pace and points of view and all of those good tips and techniques to make my writing better. As good as I can possibly make it.

But I spend my weekends and holidays writing because I love it. I love Lacie and Rowan and Meuriaden and Faerie more than publishing. And if getting published meant that the changes I was required to make corrupted the core of my book and its message – and it might well be that my current plot/ characters/ story are unmarketable at present without massive changes – then I’d rather carry on as I am now: an amateur holiday-time writer.
I'm not saying there is always a dichotomy (unlike my title suggests), and still hope for a bright future for my book. But if it doesn't turn out like that, at least I have written the book I wanted to write. If I find out it’s not publishable, well… tough.

In the meantime, I’ll carry on trying to make it as close as possible to what I want it to be.

Saturday 21 February 2015

After party

So...


Thank you to everyone who came and in particular all those who commented. 39 comments! Ok, so about half of them are my replies, but still. I am deeply moved that so many people took the time to come.

Now there's two more things that have come out of this party.
1. I need to make a page about writing resources.
2. We have a winner! I forgot to mention it again, but as I had previously said, I have picked a commenter at random (using the random number generator on Excel... At least I've remembered one thing from statistics lessons at uni). This lucky winner will get not only to read a never-before-seen chapter, but also have their own guest blog here.

And the winner is...

Clara!!!

Congratulations Clara (or maybe commiserations?) Really looking forward to your post - I hope you're up for it!

Happy Birthday to me!


Welcome, welcome!



Come on in and make yourself at home.

Cake? Glass of champagne? Are you sitting comfortably? Is the music ok?

All right, fine, I need to calm down.

Welcome to my blog’s virtual birthday party. The idea is that you leave comments and I reply or you reply to each other. So get commenting!

Here are some of the things you might want to have a look at:
What the book is about
Who the characters are - or take this test to find out which character you are the most like!
Perhaps you’d like to learn more about the world in the library
Or you want to have a sneak peak at what I’m writing by reading some excerpts
Or maybe you want to start a debate and argue on one of my opinion posts.

Whatever you choose, feel free to comment on any post, even old ones.

There is also a Q&A post, so if you have any questions for me, you can leave them there and I’ll answer them.

Just remember to be nice and cordial to each other, even if you think this is all pants and why on earth any adult in their right mind would write a story about fairies.

Have fun!

Q&A

This is the place for you to ask any questions you want answered during the amazing fantabulous Virtual Party! Or anytime, really.


For the love of numbers


And so a year has passed. A year since my big coming out. And what a year it has been:

  • 43 posts
  • 80 comments (including my responses)
  • 1854 page views (nearly 50% more if you ask blogger rather than google analytics, but it can inflate the number of page views because it includes bots)
  • 680 sessions
  • 327 users (people)


Now if you know a lot about blogging, you’ll probably think all these numbers are pathetically small. But to me it’s a big deal. 1854 page views! Considering only people I know visit this blog, it feels like a lot. When I wrote the first post, I didn’t even know if anyone would bother to come and read it. I didn’t know if people were going to make fun of it.
So thank you to everyone who has come, even just once. Thank you to all those people who come discreetly, but then tell me they think it’s great I’m doing a blog. Thank you to those who comment, even on the French version (which is on hold for the time being). Thank you for the feedback.



Of course, the really important numbers are the ones about my book.
2014 is:
25,000 words of brand new (or completely rewritten) material
5 new chapters and 7 new scenes
Over 82, 000 words of edits
And many, many words cut out (I haven’t counted those).

The book is currently about 130,000 words long and I have about 50k left to heavily edit before I do a final editing for style. The current plan is to finish this summer. If you’re interested in beta-reading the book, or part of it, especially for the writing (no further rounds of editing that will affect plot or characters), then do get in touch!

Thank you to everyone who has supported me this year, be it through kind words or by pushing me to write a little bit more. I feel I can finally see the end at the light of the tunnel.


Saturday 31 January 2015

This was the year – book, interrupted


You might have noticed my absence, and if you have, I am both sorry and impressed.

I did a lot of work over Christmas, in spite of the family situation (which I don’t really want to go into here). I edited over 25k of words, some of which required some heavy re-writing. I still have the first chapter from hell to edit rewrite, and then about 2 chapters of Rowan and 6 chapters of Lacie. It’s about 45k still of editing though hopefully it won’t be any nearly as difficult as Stus’s stuff.
Ideally I’d also like to have another read through to try to cut down on superfluous words and phrases. The book is long – over 130k – and way too long for a YA novel. But I also think it’s roughly the size it needs to be. After all, I have two plots intermingling and so really I have two stories in one. But if I have any chance of this working, I need to make sure the writing is as tight as I can possibly make it.

Unfortunately, that won’t be any time soon. Easter is the closest I think I’ll be able to even glance at the damn thing.
If you’re following, then yes, it means I haven’t made it. This was the year I finished. This was the year I finally let go, and it looks like it might be another six months at the very least. 'The Year' finishes on the 19th February.

But my current circumstances mean I can’t focus on my book right now. It’s a ‘now or never’ moment in my professional life, which means that it’s my priority and takes up all of my energy, creativity and time (and health).
Anyway, I like to think positively. The point of this year, this blog, was to get me back to writing, after a disastrously writing-free 2013. And from that point of view, it has been a massive success.

So in a few weeks’ time, when it is the one-year anniversary of this blog, I will hold a little something special to thank you all for following and give a summary of my progress.

But in the meantime, and all the way until Easter, it will be a bit of a downtime here. See you at the other end.