A Productivity Note

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

This post will be short and sweet because…I’ve gotten a little behind with everything this week.  :) And the odd thing is that this is back to school week, so you’d think I’d be getting tons of stuff done.

But no.  And yesterday, I had to sit down and assess where I was going wrong. Why was I scrambling to finish up writing-related tasks like promo?  Why was supper a last-minute effort? Why did I keep forgetting milk at the store?  What on earth was different?

Well, what was different was that the kids were back in school.  But it’s not quite the same as last year.

Last year…all the years, actually…I’ve driven my son’s carpool to school and back.  I sat in the carpool line and typed half of my word goal each day in that line.  And now—my son is driving himself to school. 

I’m still driving my daughter’s carpool, but not every afternoon.  That school lets out later than my son’s school, too. 

So my schedule changed and that messed me up.

Another place where I went wrong—in the afternoons, I felt so lost by not heading off to the high school to sit in the carpool line that each day this week I asked myself, “What should I be doing right now?”

And the answer each time was: “I have no idea.  Maybe I should check my email.”

Wrong!  Checking email is never the right answer to that question.  :)  Email is a tremendous time-suck for me.

What I did instead yesterday was to make a list of what I needed to do.  I’d made a list in the morning, but I’d checked those things off.  What I need now, apparently, is a separate afternoon list.  So I wrote it up.  The most pressing things were to proofread a teaser chapter that I was on deadline for, find and schedule links for Twitter, and then pull that laundry out of the dryer before the stuff started wrinkling (there’s not a lot of ironing going on in my house).  Checking email was not on this list.

So, for me anyway, even small fluctuations in a schedule have an impact. If I lose productivity, then I need to figure out where I’m going wrong. 

And lists…one list may not be enough to carry me through a whole day.  Because when I finish the stuff on my morning list—heck, I might just pull up my emails and lose an hour or more.

Do you ever have to reassess when to fit your writing in?  And do you rely on lists as much as I do?

Writing and Taxes

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

The business side of writing is my least favorite part.  I struggle to keep up.  And there’s sort of a residual guilt that I’m not doing all I can do to keep my accounts organized.  But I’m trying.

New as of 2013 is an accountant.  I tried…I did try…to do my taxes last February. I’ve done my own taxes for the last ten years.  This time, however, they boggled my mind about halfway through and I also felt a rising panic that I was doing something wrong.  I found a CPA right away.

One of the problems is that my income—never very much, but always nice to have and increasingly relied upon—comes from many different sources.  I’ve now got income coming from two traditional publishers, Amazon, Smashwords, Nook, ACX, and CreateSpace.  My accountant recently asked me financial planning questions.  I ended up giving several apologetic shrugs.  I’m sure this makes her want to drink heavily.

How many drafts until you’re done?

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I think when writers ask how many drafts another writer completes for a finished story, they’re really wondering whether they’re spending too much time editing or too little time editing.

That’s what happens when you work alone—you have no basis of comparison.

I got this question emailed to me recently and I had to really think about it.  What comprises a draft to me?  In general, how many times do I go through the manuscript before I send it to my editor?

I definitely keep going through it if I keep finding mistakes.  Obviously, if you think it’s not a clean document, you want to keep working on it.  And I continue reading through the manuscript if I feel I could have used better diction or if I think of other ways to improve the story.  But there does get to be a point where a writer is making changes just for the sake of making changes.  You can write the life out of your story and when it’s tough to say if a change makes the story better or worse…it’s probably time to either put it aside for a while or send it out on submission.

What comprises a draft?  To me, it’s a new version of the manuscript with significant changes.  A draft is something, to me, that would make me want to send an updated copy to my editor or beta reader (“No, read this one, actually.  Not the one I sent you.”)

I’d say that I have probably four or five drafts of a story before I turn it in.  That’s mainly because I write in layers and the second draft is where I put in the book’s character and setting description and the third is where I stick in chapter breaks. Then I have another couple of read-throughs for errors, pacing, continuity, etc.  

You can also approach it a different way—a bunch of targeted mini-drafts.  This could take more read-throughs, but each time you’d be looking for specific things: weak scenes, conflict/tension, description that pops, out-of-sequence storyline, grammar, etc.

After I’m done,  I’ll email the story to my editor.  Months later, there will be more editing.  Then it goes to the proofreader…and even more editing ensues.

How many drafts do you usually go through on a manuscript?  How do you know when it’s ready? 

Image: MorgueFile: jppi

Twitterific

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Twitterific links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 23,000 free articles on writing related topics. It's the search engine for writers.

Sign up for our free newsletter for bimonthly writing tips and interviews with top contributors to the WKB or like us on Facebook. 

Mike Fleming and writing coach James Scott Bell are offering an online, interactive, writing program to help make your next novel great. It's called "Knockout Novel" and you can learn more about it at Knockout Novel.com. 

Amazon adds author new book e-mails: http://dld.bz/cMRrb @BufoCalvin

Arming Your Characters with a Strong Point of View: http://dld.bz/cMRrd @scriptmag @brettwean

Should You Ever Redeem Your Bad Guys? http://dld.bz/cMRre @KMWeiland

Telling a Story in Our Own Voice (or One That Comes Naturally To Us)

 by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Wednesday, I was the only adult in the line of about 100 junior year high school students in front of the counselor’s office.   

The students were all there to have their schedules changed for one reason or another.  My son was next to me, both relieved that I was there and resigned that I was there. His schedule, unfortunately, needed four or five changes to it—sometimes computers stick odd things on schedules.  This computer had.  I was there to lend an air of gravitas to the situation and help him get the schedule in order so he’d have what he needed for these colleges he’s starting to look at (primarily German III and German IV, since they want four years in a single language).

Outlining a Story

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I’ve been asked a few times lately to write a post about how I outline.

This is something I’ve been reticent to do, since I don’t really think of myself as an outliner.  My outline process does seem to work for me, though, and in the hopes it might help someone else, I’ll share it.  But it’s not pretty.  There are no highlighters or index cards around.  And at times, it seems like the ramblings of a crazy person.

With that caveat, here we go.

10 Ways Plot Structure Influences Character Arc

by K.M. Weiland (@KMWeiland)

I’m sometimes asked which is more important: plot or character. This is a misleading question, at its foundation. Not only are plot and character equally important, they’re also interdependent upon one another. The term “structure” has become almost synonymous with “plot.” But the truth is this: structure is as much about planning your main character’s arc as it is crafting a solid beginning, middle, and end. In my book Structuring Your Novel: Essential Keys for Writing an Outstanding Story, I talk about the structure of plot, but today, let’s take a peek at the structure of character.

Twitterific

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Twitterific links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 23,000 free articles on writing related topics. It's the search engine for writers.

Sign up for our free newsletter for bimonthly writing tips and interviews with top contributors to the WKB or like us on Facebook. 

Mike Fleming and writing coach James Scott Bell are offering an online, interactive, writing program to help make your next novel great. It's called "Knockout Novel" and you can learn more about it at Knockout Novel.com. 

And...I have a new release! Death at a Drop-In, a Myrtle Clover mystery, released last week. 

The Alphabet in Crime Fiction: Scissors and Other Sharp Objects: http://dld.bz/cMxJN @mkinberg

Using Android's Contacts to Store Character Information: http://dld.bz/cMA3X @clarissadraper

Yet Another Good Thing About Outlines

 by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

As you know, I’ve been a very reluctant convert to outlining.  I look for ways in which outlining doesn’t work for me.

Instead, I keep coming across proof that it does. Sigh. (Here and here.)

I have an outline due for an editor by September 1.  Chapter one of that book is due on the same date.  I worked a bit on the outline while I was traveling those two weeks in July.  Then, the last week of July, I worked harder on it and finished it.

August 1, I started writing chapter one of the book…and stalled out.  I continued writing, but I realized that chapter one wasn’t right. The tone and the mood were all off. I was reluctant to even open up the document every day to work on it. 

Release Activities for the Reluctant Promoter

 by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

This year, I will have at least four, maybe five (the fifth will be pushing it) releases.  Three are traditionally published, I’ve got one new self-pub release,  and there's one that’s waiting in the wings.

Somehow, though, despite all the releases, I freeze up when it’s launch day.  You’d think I’d never had a release in my life. I really have no idea why I do this, but I’m now coming up with a handy-dandy cheat sheet for me so that I can refer to this post when I freeze up again…which will likely happen with the December Penguin release.

After I get the formatted files back from my formatter (thanks Rik Hall), or after the traditional press book launches, I need to:

Using Blog Posts as Resources

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I usually do all of my link sharing on Sundays, but I thought what I’d do today is to share a couple of recent links I’ve found helpful…and also share some posts that I find myself coming back to often to re-read.

Porter Anderson in his Publishing Perspectives column last Tuesday, linked to a Tumblr post by Fight Club writer Chuck Palahniuk.  In it, Palahniuk pointed out that characters who think can be dangerous. :) Thinking words need a bit of the show-don’t-tell treatment.  Palahniuk also tells why solitude is bad for our characters. Check the links for more information.

Twitterific

 by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Twitterific links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 20,000 free articles on writing related topics. It's the search engine for writers.

Sign up for our free newsletter for bimonthly writing tips and interviews with top contributors to the WKB or like us on Facebook.

Mike Fleming and writing coach James Scott Bell are offering an online, interactive, writing program to help make your next novel great. It's called "Knockout Novel" and you can learn more about it at Knockout Novel.com. 

 

Do it yourself? 10 tips for beginners from top self-publishing sites: http://bit.ly/1cjWzKD @darlawrites

Indie Author Organizations for Publicity: http://bit.ly/1cjWNRV @cateartios

On Toeing the Line

 by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

After my post Wednesday, where I extolled the virtues of the feeling of control that one gets through the self-publishing process, I thought I’d backtrack a bit today and talk about the times I don’t have a feeling of control as a self-publisher.

A large exception is dealing with a certain mammoth retailer.  When Amazon writes me an email, I pay attention and immediately do whatever it is that they want me to do. 

This is the first time I’ve received this particular email from Amazon:

Hello,

We recently noticed the digital list price for the title(s) listed below is higher than the list price of the same book listed on Amazon.com or another website.

Truths About Being a Hybrid Writer

 by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

I’ve discovered that there are many things that I like about being a hybrid writer (one who self-publishes as well as publishes traditionally.)

I like the visibility that traditional publishing still affords me.  There are still some folks out there who shop in bookstores and have discovered me that way.  Penguin’s mysteries do tend to get decent visibility on Amazon, too, and they’re doing a good job with Facebook mentions and tweets on their end.

I like that my output tends to be higher when I’m working with my publishers’ deadlines.

I like the editing and story development assistance that I receive from my editors.

On the other hand, I like the higher income that I receive from self-publishing. 

The Importance of Knowing Our Audience and Genre

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Considering how much I post on Twitter, it’s amazing how little time I spend there (thanks to a handy-dandy free tool called “Social Oomph").

There are a few things that I see on Twitter that make me wince.  One is a BSP (blatant self-promotion) tweet that’s a variant of: my book is for anyone who loves a great story!

Well…sure.  We hope that anyone who enjoys reading will love our books, right?  Just the same, I know a good deal about who I’m aiming for with my books. I know how and where they shop, their general age range, their interests, their general thoughts on profanity and violence in books.  I know their gender and some of the things they enjoy doing in their spare time. I know what they're looking for when they pick up a mystery.

Twitterific

by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

 

Twitterific links are fed into the Writer’s Knowledge Base search engine (developed by writer and software engineer Mike Fleming) which has over 20,000 free articles on writing related topics. It's the search engine for writers.

Sign up for our free newsletter for monthly writing tips and interviews with top contributors to the WKB or like us on Facebook.

Mike Fleming and writing coach James Scott Bell are offering an online, interactive, writing program to help make your next novel great. It's called "Knockout Novel" and you can learn more about it at Knockout Novel.com.

 

Resources for Writers: http://bit.ly/18uRE7a @AnnetteLyon

Building Paranormal People: http://bit.ly/18uRLQe @rubysisterhood1 @KateParkerbooks

7 Tips for Brainstorming: http://bit.ly/18y6ptm @writing_tips

Don't Make These TV Spec Script Mistakes: http://bit.ly/18y7gdz @jacobkrueger

Another Update on ACX and My Thoughts so Far

 by Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

It’s time for another update on ACX—the audiobook platform that distributes to Audible,  Amazon, and iTunes. I first wrote about ACX in an April post, so if you’re interested in getting details, take a look. Basically, ACX is your audiobook option if you’re self-publishing.

I also wrote a follow-up to the April post a couple of weeks later, talking about how the audition process had gone.

Where I am now in the process:  I’ve got two titles for sale as audiobooks and 1 title in production (which should be released in the next week or so).

What I like:

I like that I’m opening up another venue for sales.

I like that sales seem to be a lot brisker than I’d thought (I’m around 177 sales for the past month and sold copies even a day or so after the audiobook’s debut).

I like that the process was very streamlined and that there were many FAQs if you got confused.

I like receiving a monthly statement from Audible which includes sales figures for all three platforms (Audible.com, Amazon.com, iTunes.) You can also check sales during the month on ACX’s site.