World Time and Writing Time

Today I was at a meeting in one of my networks and one of the members asked me how things were going with the writing and pusblishing. I explained to her that I´d come fairly well out of Read an eBook Week and was looking forward to getting one of my novels done so that I could publish it. Then she asked me something that made me think:


"When you write," she said, "do you lock yourself in a room with no connection to the world outside for a week or so to better concentrate on your writings?"


Instantly I got the picture in my head of some author with writer´s blog leaving the world behind and travelling to some worn out cottage in the wilderness so far away from civilization that there are no phones, radio or internet.

I answered that I usually write when I am alone, but that I need to have people around me during the day in order to function in my life.


But when I drove home that question seemed to have hooked itself on to my main thought stream. I began asking myself a simple question with a complexe and unfinished answer:


"From where do I draw inspiration and how do I get it written into words?"


It may seem simple enough, but the fact is that I really had to think about it. Actually I´m still thinking about it.
One thing I know for sure is that I wouldn´t be able to write a single coherent sentence or come up with even the roughest sketch of a character, if I close myself off to the real world.


On the other hand I also need time alone to think and to write. Time where I´m sure to not get interrupted and all my thoughts and plots wander off to another dimension.


It seems to me that all of this is a fine balance. Too much active "World Time" prevents me from thinking and writing but not enough "World Time" will eventually kill my "muse," so to speak.


I haven´t to a full extend found the right abalcne and I have the notion that this balance is never really found. I´m even beginning to think that if I was at some point in time getting very close to such a balance, it would not be for long, because the right balance would then have changed - because I change, my family changes, the world changes...


Even if you are not a writer and even if you are not a creative person, you may have similar balances to balance in your life.

How do YOU find balance?

The wasted young - on traditional and Indie publishing

"The youth now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers."

Perhaps you´ve seen the above statement before. Supposedly it was said by Socrates in his defense speech when he was acused of corrupting society. If this is true or it´s a hoax made by either Platon or Xenophon is unknown, but the fact remains that it´s been written by the students of Socrates and thereby we can safely say that someone thought these thoughts in ancient Greece.

Recently I read a quote by a simple farmer that is even more to the point:

“Things today are not what they used to be - and they never have!”

“What does this have to do with Indie vs. Traditional publishing?” you may ask.

Well, it really is quite simple:

Every generation feels threatened by the culture and views of the next and this is apparently also the case for generations of publishers and authors.

Try watching the underneath clip from youtube. It´s in Norwegian, but someone has been kind enough to provide a translation in English. When you´ve watched it, please read on, because I have some important points to make:

Medieavel Help Desk

A friend and fellow author wrote on his blog:

“One of my university lecturers told a friend to tell me that if I self-publish it might ruin my chances of being traditionally published or entering competitions.” - you can read the entire post here.

Why would any publisher or host of a writing competition rule out selfpublishers? Do they not want good quality? Or could it be that they would rather have uniformity in views on how to properly publish?

Indie Authoring threaten to shift the power balance 

I think it has to do with defending your livelihood. If Indie Authoring becomes main stream, how would publishers make money and survive the publishing business?

Thus, it would seem to be better to try giving selfpublishers a bad name and start rumours about poor quality and bad editing. And yes, there a examples of both in the Indie World, but quite frankly: so is the case with traditional publishing.

Are there more poor quality in Indie books than in others?

Well, to be honest, I think there is, but for one thing, it´s going in the right direction as the readers simply won´t read bad quality and thereby bad writers and writers publishing bad edited books won´t sell their books. In time, bad quality will diminish to a level competing well with traditional published books. And we are almost there…

And this brings me to the point I want to  make:

Really, the publishing war is not a question of quality, but a question of “who makes money and for what services?”

But it doesn´t sound good if traditional publishing companies use this argument, does it?

“We think, Indie Publishing should stop, because it shifts the balance of power and we are beginning to make less money than before!”

Hmmm…. Not a solid case, is it?

It sounds much more reasonable to come up with all sorts of excuses and statements about quality and reading experience - just like you saw the munk in the video clip complaining about this new world of books, where things aren´t as they used to be.

Examples are vast 

I could continue for hundreds of pages with examples that Indie Authoring is a good idea that will not go away, but it would bore you, I think.

Instead, I´ll tell you something quite interesting:

About a decade ago, a single mum received no less than 25 rejections on her manuscript for a children´s book, before a small publisher decided to take her in as a new author.

That author was J.K.Rowlings and the book was “Harry Potter and the sorcerers stone.”

Imagine, if she decided to believe the publishers word that the book wasn´t any good?

The big 6 Publishers tightening the screws on Indie Authors

Best as you would think, the trenches between Publishers and Indie Authors could not be dug any deeper, it seems the big Publishing Houses have decided to take out the big spades and digging frantically into the underground as if they could undermine Indie Authoring all together.


Rumours have it, that the big 6 publisher of NY are tightening the screws on Indie Authoring. This time they are using the authors already in their stables as a sort of Gate Keepers by demanding that the refrain from providing Indie Authors or unknown Authors with blurbs and thereby helping these newer authors to advance their works.


This is, said in the nicest manner I can think of, a highly peculiar choice of tactics for a number of reasons:


First of all, artist of all times have had this tradition of helping newcomers on their way. From painters to musicians to magicians and to authors, the established have always felt an obligation to help the new kid on the block to success. Why? Becasue at some point someone did the same for them and they remember how much it meant to them.


Secondly, as stated at the top of this post, the trenches have already been dug deep enough and the effect has been the same every time: the more the Publishers complain and moan and the more they put hindrinces in the way of upcoming authors, the more Indie Authoring is boosted.


A third reason is that the possibilities of the internet completely takes away the Publishing Houses´ monopolylike grip on authors. If they do not up themselves and make firm decisions to listen to the authors and beginning to understand that authors are not their costumers, they are, in fact, their providers and breadwinners, they might very soon find semselves sitting on a branch that starts making cracking noises. Because if they continue to fail, others, like Amazon, are ready to take over.

The Fish Model: Element (a) Starters!

The first element of the fish model
As promised, I will go through the fish model in making a good reading experience for your readers and today I will guide you through the first element: The Starter!

But first I need to clear something up
As these posts are a work in progress I will from time to time have to revise some of my definitions and explanations as needed. In my first post I claimed that the starter is the first 2-3 words in your work, but as I was writing the present post I realized that this definition is a bit off. The starter CAN be broader than those first words. It can be the title of your work, the first few sentences or even the image on the cover.

Let us begin
The Starter is, beside the obvious that it´s what starts your work, a teaser. It´s something you use to get the readers attention. In a commercial, the first few miliseconds are vital to getting out the message. To get an idea, think of a commercial you remember. How did it begin? What was it that got your attention? Was it the clothes the people in the commercial wore? Was it some text on the screen? Sounds maybe? Whatever it was, the thing that made you want to see more was an example of a good starter.

Three starter tactics
There are many ways to make a good starter and though it is impossible to set a complete guideline to cover every possible effective starter, there are a few tactics you can use to make a good starter.


The surprise tactic is when you - yes, you guessed it - surprise your readers, catch them off guard to open up their minds as to what comes next. The surprise tactic has it´s strength in being unique, ´cause otherwise it really wouldn´t be a surprise, would it? If someone else has already used what you may think is a good surprise tactic starter, then you may want to rethink it.


Examples
In my first English fairy tale I use this tactic in the title of the book: "Princess Lila and The Knight in Shouting Armor." It´s simple and effective, because you would expect a Knight in SHINING armor and instead you get a Knight in SHOUTING Armor. The reader´s interest is already on heels and I can begin to tell the story.


In fact, when I published this book on Smashwords.com the number of sample downloads sent it straight to the top of my own book list passing books on it´s way that had been there for several weeks and I must admit, that the cover I had at the time was the worst cover I´ve ever had on any book!


Another example where the title is the starter is a Danish novel published fall 2011. It had the quite extensive title: "The 100-year-old, who climbed out the window and disappeared." This title makes you wonder, because it seems to be self-contradicting. Just to imagine someone that old climbing out the window is strange and we want to know more.


Yet another example is chapter 2 in my upcoming novel, "Hickory Street Changing," where the beginning says "Couple´s Therapy? How can cheating on your wife be Couple´s Therapy?" Indeed! How can it? I want to read more to find out and thus it´s a good starter.


The sounds tactic is a tactic rarely used, but when applied it can make a world of difference. Using a sound in the beginning of your work instead of words brings your story to a high paste level even before your reader has any clue as to what the story is all about.


Example
I´ve used this tactic in some of my Flash Fiction and this is an area where it is most called for, because Flash Fiction being so short, you really need something to get things going right away. A sound will do that. I wrote a flash fiction a few months ago (in Danish, so I´m sorry, but you can´t read it) where the beginning is a car crash. It started with "Crriiiisjang!" being the sound of a car crashing.


The quoting tactic is a peculiar one to describe, but as you have already guessed this tactic is when you start with a quote. The quote can be one of your characters saying something interesting or it could be a quote from a paper, a book or a magazine, those being either from the real world or from the world of your story. This tactic is one of my favorites, but since it is usually harder to do well than the other tactics mentioned here, I try to not use so often.


This tactic is widely used in Science Fiction and Fantasy. The reason is probably because in these two genres you need more description of the story´s world than in most other stories. So, why not do two things at the same time: peek the readers interest with a good starter AND at the same time explain a bit of the story world?


Examples
An example could be Isaac Asimov´s trilogy "Foundation" It starts of with a quote from the galactic encyclopedia presenting one of the main characters, Hari Seldon and at the same time presenting a bit of the story world. This example is even better than most, because in addition Asimov uses this quote to presetn another main character, Gaal Dornick AND it leads us into the story by letting the encyclopedia tell of a meeting between these two people which then is the beginning of the story itself. Brilliant use of the quoting tactic!


The Peculiarity tactic is the last one I will present at this point. There will of course be dosen´s of other tactics, but not on this blog and certainly not today.


This tactic is quite simple to explain, but hard to master. The tactic is to use words in such a way, that it makes the reader puzzled enough to read on but, and this is the hard part, not so puzzled that your work is tossed and replaced!


How to do this is a matter of training and getting someone to read your peculiar start. Did I say "someone?" What I meant was as many different people on your target group as you can possibly gather! The challenge with this tactic is that you can never know how people will react to your starter. You never know when it´s going to keep them reading and when it´s a tosser starter, so the only way to get an idea is to let numerous people read it and give you some feed back.


Warning!
My advise: stay away from this starter, unless you have the base for experimenting with it. If you fail with this starter you may even throw off potential costumers from ever reading another book of yours!


Final statement
Now, that´s it for today. I will get back to the other elements of a good reading experience as soon as I can, hopefully next week, though I cannot make any promises.


Was the above helpful? Do you agree with what I just said? Do you have any revising statements?

Defining a good reading experience

"A book should never contain more than 100.000 words!"

Recently an English Professor hit a fellow author, L.E.Fitzpatrick, with this review. Though it wasn´t any of my own work beeing careened and hung to dry it still made my blood boil. Who is anyone to state such obvious nonsense about creative businesses such as writing books or music, painting or sculpturing?

That´s why I decided to write this post on my blog trying to define a good read.

Authoring is hard work!
To give your readers a good reading experience is hard work. You have to make an effort, so that your reader finds it worth the trouble to turn the page and read on. This truth has made some people think it´s like rocket science. Well, let me tell you: it´s not! Still, a lot can be done to give readers alike a better reading experience, ´cause let´s face it: we need higher standards when it comes to books - especially since recent years developments in the area of ebook publishing has made it possible for any bum visiting a public library to publish inaddequite scribblings - and believe me, they do! Just open your favorite ereader and download the first 5 free ebooks by Indie Authors. Chances are you will know exactly what I mean as soon as you´ve read the first three of them. And now that we´re at it: there´s a reason why so many Indie ebooks are free!

We need rules - to be broken
So, basically, we need rules, but we also need to understand that rules in creative fields are meant to be broken, if it´s called for.

My music teacher in college used to put it somewhat like this:

"The rules are there to help you improve. By applying the rules, you stand on the shoulders of those who came before you learning from their experience. But the rules are not there to deprive you of creativeness. If the music works, it´s good music, end of story. However, if you choose to not apply the rules, the music better be good or I´ll slap you in the face with bad grades!"

Defining a good reading experience
Let´s begin by defining a good reading experience by stating this simple fact:
If your target reader in general likes your work and turns the pages with little difficulty, you have given them a good reading experience.

But how do you do that?

Here is a few basic tips:

1. Shape your book like a fish (my apologies for the poor quality of this drawing - I am, after all, an Author, not an illustrator:)

By shaping your story like a fish you have the basic model of a good story. The elements in my model are:

a. Starters! The first two or three words are perhaps the most important part of your readers experience. This beginning determines if your reader starts reading with excitement or confusement. Make them count!

b. Introducing the basics is one of the most hidden secrets to writing. When you read a book you like, you probably won´t notice the effort the author has put into giving you these basics. But if they are not there, you will! And you probably won´t even get to the bottom of the first page before giving up.

c. The beginning. If you are just as impatient an author as I am, beginning to tell the story is the part you hate the most. This is the part where you give your readers back ground info to enable them to understand the rest of the story, so if you don´t get it right, they won´t read the rest of the story and you will have a hard time convincing them to buy your newest book, if the first part of a previous book was not worth the while.

d. Main body of the story the part you, as an author would most likely find to be the easy part, because this is where your idea comes to life. Still, you need to work hard to tell the story right, but I´ll get into that in another post.

e. Concluding the story can be an exciting endeavour, but to be honest, it can also be a drag. But again, if you can´t conclude the story, your readers will feel cheated. Depraving your readers of the conclusion is like waving candy at the eyes of a child only to put in back in your pocket. Even if your book is brilliant up to this point, a bad conclusion can ruin the entire reading experience for your readers and they´ll never come back.

d. Tying up loose ends means answering unanswered questions. In any story there will be questions that are never answered, but still you need to at least address these questions. The interesting thing is this: if your readers loved your book up to his point all you have to do is address unanswered questions with something like:

"How Mrs. Landry ever got the information never came to the surface, but it was on her account that the firm upgraded their security."

With this you haven´t answered the question, but you still addressed it and your readers will accept it.

e. Making room for more is not really a necessity, but it is often what separates a good book from a very good book. The reason is simple: nothing in every day life really ends and by making room for more you make the story credible.

Making room for more posts
In the coming week I´ll be diving deeper into the above mentioned, but for now I´ll just ask you this one question: do you apply all of these elements in your story and in which ways?

Excerpt from "Hickory Street"

Hi folks,

Here´s another excerpt from my upcoming novel "Hickory Street"
I wonder if I´ve written it in such a way that it´s clear enough to understand what´s going on without it being too clear. Looking forward to any comment:

Presenting two teenage boys: Harm and Mike

Harm and Mike had found each other as friends from the very first day and their friendship grew tighter for each day that passed. The Friedenhoff couple were a bit surprised to see this. Mike had never been very interested in reading books, unless there were more pictures than words, but within just a few weeks he had actually been seen reading the Harry Potter series. Of course they were thrilled and even began to reconsider their decision to enroll him at summer school next year.

One Saturday they were both sitting in Mike´s room reading. Mike was holding the first part of “The Lord of the Rings” with both hands sitting in his bed with his feet up and his back to the window. He occasionally rotated the book to one side to get a better look at the pictures and nodded with content at them. Sometimes the pictures were so amazing that he had to look up and ask Harm to join him. Then they would both look at the pictures with their eyes dilated and their mouths half open.

Yes, those pictures in that book really were worth studying thoroughly, they agreed.

So, what do you think?

Is it clear enough? Is it too obvious? And mostly: is it funny or just plain boring?

Platform Wars! - helpful or destructive?

Apple Hypin´ Announcement!
Apple has announced that they will have an announcement by the end of the month. Not very surprising in itself. Apple has had much success using this form of advertising in the past to create speculation and rumurs and thus hyping the effect of their announcements when they actually announce their announcements... Confused? Don´t be!

Just understand it like this: Apple will tell us something that may or may not be of interest, but to be sure we are listening, they tell us that they are about to tell us something so that we will keep a close eye on them and be open minded when they finally come around to telling us what they want to tell us.

Ehm... I can see that didn´t help much... Well, let´s just say that Apple wants to tell us something by the end of this month...

What are they planning?
According to Good Ereader Apple is about to launch a self-publishing platform for ebook authors making it easier to publish your ebook through iBook.

So far, so good...

Amazon has had such a platform (DTP) for some time now and this will be Apple´s response.

Is it a good development?
I suppose that for Apple, Amazon and some of the other retailers in ebooks this is a natural course of action and though I agree that competition between companies is usually good for the consumer and for the international economy one thing pokes me right in the eye: they all have a catch! You have to give up your right to publish elsewhere!

See, when you are an indie author you are by definition concerned about your freedom to write, publish and earn your way as you see fit. Some may think this is a sort of arrogance towards the publishing industry, but understand that the publishing industry has flushed out the very ground base of it´s right to exist: Author Servicing!

In the old days, when you planned to publish a book you would send your manuscript to a publisher who would read it through and decide weither it was worth their effort to go further with it. If they found your manuscript worthy of publishing they would help you edit it, proof read it, create a cover for it, print it, advertise it and distribute it. All in some variation of cooperation.

Today, when you want to publish, the first step of getting a publisher to move on with your manuscript is still the same, but as soon as you get approved for publishing, you´re on your own! You edit it yourself, you proof read it yourself or ask a friend to help you with it, you get someone to create a cover for you (if you´re really lucky the publisher may do this for a certain fee) and if you want people to know about your book the entire marketing departement sits about 15 inches behind your laptop.

Considering all of this, the only advantage you have as an author publishing through the big dogs is the distribution process. No wonder more and more authors decide to become independent!

In comes Smashwords.com in 2008 making it both easier and more effective to publish your work and the market changed. Now you can publish via Smashwords who will proof read your book before shipping it to other retailers among which are Barnes and Nobles, Kobo and.... well, whaddayounow: Amazon Kindle and Apple iBooks!

Amazon´s DTP requires you to publish exclusively through Amazon and Apple´s new publishing platform? Surprise, surprise..... Exclusive Publishing!

Thank you, but no thank you!
Sorry guys, but I simply fail to see any reason whatsoever why I should renounce my freedom as an Indie Author to publish through those platforms as long as I can keep my freedom using Smashwords.com

Smashwords does have a rule that resembles exclusiveness: you are not allowed to use the ebook formats created with Smashwords´ Meatgrinder automated tech. - but that seems only fair, since they are the ones providing that option. But you fellas at Apple and Amazon demands me to renounce my rights to my own work and that´s a whole different story!

The platform wars
This platform war is about to be derailed and from history we can learn that in the end only one platform survives - and in many cases the winning platform isn´t even the best.

Mainly two examples come to mind: the qwerty vs. Dvorak Keyboard Layouts and the VHS vs. BetaMax videotape war!

The qwerty keyboard was patented for type writers by Christopher Sholes in 1868 and the first to use it was Remington in 1873. At the time it made good sense, since it combined effective type writing with as little jamming of the keys as possible, but when the electric typewriter was invented in the 1930´s the jamming problem disappeared. Then Dvorak invented the Dvorak Keyboard Layout based on studies of physiologi and typing speed. It never was any real success because the cost of replacing a well proven type writer layout with a new one was just too risky.

The war between BetaMax and VHS was won by VHS even though almost every expert claimed the latter to be of poorer quality. The main reason was that the porn industry decided to use VHS.... food for thought in itself...

What´s the best ebook platform?
Honestly: I don´t know! But what I do know is that if I was asked to point out the one thing most important to an author, my answer would be simple:

The freedom to write and get read!

I believe I am not the only Author with this as my highest priority, but don´t take my word for it... Instead, comment on it, if you´re an author yourself and tell the world:

Your turn!
For you as an Author, what is the most important thing when it comes to publishing?