One Year, Baby!

Today at Seven Heroes Books, we are celebrating our one year anniversary. Quite exciting! And, this event provides us with some sort of requirement to summarize what we have done in the past year, and what we may have learned.

Critiquing

I’ve encountered a lot of advice on writing. The years fly by and it seems that certain aspects of the art become more crucial and pointed for me, whilst others seem like non-issues. What have I learned from these experiences? I was going to make a list, but perhaps just fragments of thought would be more appropriate (and more for you to criticize!).

(Okay, I’m making a list.)

Self-Publishing and eBook Creation

Hello all. Thank you for visiting this blog once again. Kyle & I appreciate it very much.

It's not easy to "reach the masses" these days, despite ever growing media channels. And, perhaps that makes it even more crucial for bloggers and tweeters to keep up, lest they fall behind. We would hate to fall behind.

The order of business in this post is a discussion and overview of self-publishing, and eBook creation.

You'll say (since you've followed ALL of our posts), "Hey, you two fools, haven't you already done self-publishing posts before? I WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS." Well, we say, "That's why you're sitting...and something new has come up, so we feel it a good thing to update the STATE." Applause.

I have The Write Message onto Amazon and Barnes & Noble as an eBook. I am very proud. Exciting.

A few posts back I mentioned how self-publishing (and all publishing for that matter) require more than just writing and selling: you've gotta market. Without putting it out there, you are leaving your fantastic, golden baby to die in the annals of The Internet. The annals are a scary place. You don't want that.

Since I have just put my creation to the world in a digital format (other than in print  at the KU Bookstore), I have some words of advice: you'll become the person who people think of as "Oh, here THEY come, shoot. They're going to talk about their BOOK again. I bet you all of the glittering vampires in Twilight. Yeah, that's right -- you're not going to take that bet."

But, it must be done. The odds of your ebook or printed book selling past your family and close friends is low. It's lower than your room temperature, you poor, poor, person.

You'll have to be a bit annoying. And, it will hopefully pay off, assuming you have a worthwhile story.

That being said, publishing your creation on Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble is surprisingly easy and quick. You'll probably want to learn a bit about formatting...seriously. If you spend the time learning how to format either in a word processor, or HTML (that's what epub and mobi use), then you'll be able to nearly obliterate all formatting oddities when you go look at the site previews. I'm not a professional, and I don't have to the time to become one, so I didn't get ALL of the problems out. Just the big ones.

When you've got that ready, for Amazon, go to the bottom of the page for Independently publish through us. Then, assuming you aren't doing print, go to Kindle Direct Publishing (versus print for createspace). And, the rest is straightforward.

For B&N, go to the bottom for Publishers. Then, you'll find information about pubit! That's the service you'll use and in my opinion it's even easier than with Amazon, which is saying something.

You get to set your royalties, the genres (you get 5 with B&N, vs 2 with Amazon), and any information about your book you think the audience would like or needs.

After that, you wait for the processing to go through. Amazon is fast, like Jimmy Johns. B&N is not as fast.

And, that's it for now! You can, of course, check out Smashwords. They also do eBook publishing. I haven't had much experience with them, so my guidance stops here.

And, as always, some useful links to help boost my ego:
The Write Message at B&N
The Write Message at Amazon


-JK

Writing After NaNoWriMo

Certainly it must be possible to write after the infamous National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).

Right?

Yeah.

Okay, I should clarify: writing a different story once NaNo is over. And by a different story, I mean to assume that you've completed your NaNo piece. Because we all complete the things we work on.

I did NaNo last year, successfully. I got it published in April, so I was editing during that time. Once I had it finished, I wrote stuff in vague bits of inspiration for some time. And basked in my own *glorious* writing.

Then I went back to old projects. Then took a break. But now, I've got two main projects and I love them both. I recently checked the page count for my new story, "Daniel and his Dead Brother Brian", and it's at 27 pages. I was very happy. That's something. It's the beginning of a story. Readers can actually judge it!

So, I suppose I am in a surprised state. It feels strange to be writing without an overt deadline. No end of November to hound my dreams (nightmares). Instead just the nightmares of stories forgotten. Just Kidding. Really.

But, in the end, I'm happy that I'm back into writing something and not moving on quickly. I'm back, baby!

-JK

Jason's Rules of Writing

Jason's Rules of Writing

(And why you shouldn't listen)

1. You write gold. Except you suck.
2. You will usually describe objects (nouns) by their three most important features. (More of a context thing.)
3. Passive sentences are killed by a watchful eye (or eyes) and practice.
4. Being redundant is redundant. Don't be redundant.
5. Readers will hate a meaningless story more than a story full of crappy writing.
6. Readers don't like to read crappy writing, unless glittering vampires are involved; and thus the pages glitter in their own respect.
7. You write gold. Except you suck.
8. The mark of a great writer is one who learns the rules (guidelines), and breaks them in such a way that the reader benefits from it (and possibly doesn't realize the breakage).

Apologia Writing

We don't live in a vacuum.

Our words can hurt others as much as they can enlighten.

Learning to tone down the critical or negative aspects of one's views in light of how others may perceive the message is something I have never been particularly great at.

And, because of this, sometimes it means you have to bite your own words.

NaNoWriMo gave me a lot. Although I have only participated in it a single time, I have fully experienced the trials and stress of the competition. A friend of mine has children and she gave it a shot last year, only to get a few thousands words typed. So, because I finished means what exactly? That I had an easier time. That's all.

Under the guise of being Awesome, it seems I became cocky and then  not-so-cocky after the fact. Now I just pity the poor souls who devote November to the Writing G-ds. I pity them for one main reason: it's a drug that is hard to give up.

I will re-iterate that I am not jealous of my friends doing it this year. It is a tough thing to do and should not be taken lightly. After all, as students, hitting 1667 words a day ain't easy. And, that assumes you don't like writing utter sacks of smelly forgotten words. You want to do well. And so did I.

The first thing one must do in any sort of rhetoric, especially when they are communicating with a potentially opposing beliefs crowd, is not to attack them or make them feel stupid.

I didn't quite miss that mark. I didn't mean to come off as critical or pretentious as I might have. I was only looking to write a blog post.

So, brave NaNo'ers: fare the rocky synonym shores and alliteration valleys with caution as you make your way to the Land of Eternal Denouement. If you're lucky, you might come out with something you'll want to continue working on.

JK

Making NaNoWriMo out to be a (non) Giga Deal

Perhaps it should be stated that NaNoWriMo is a giga deal.

It isn't so much that the act of writing itself is important, but the persistence in doing so.

That is the "magic" of NaNoWriMo.

And, at least in my case, once I've waved the NaNo stick, suddenly the event itself seems to disappear.

Until over half of my writer friends are doing it.