Category: <span>Writing</span>

Delving In

So, after looking through all of my folders and organising (ish) my past writing projects, I’m going to delve into what will be my work in progress.  It’s pretty strange reading something that I know I wrote, but that I can’t remember every detail of.  That obviously comes in handy for editing though!

I have a series in mind for this novel, but also a sort of off-shoot series based in the same world but with a different side of things being shown.  I don’t want to go into too much detail as the ideas are still working themselves out in my head.  But because they’re doing that constantly, I’m a little torn between focussing on this novel first, or what would be book one of the off-shoot series as it could stand alone without a problem.

I guess I should just dive in and see though.  After all this time it’s almost like I’m scared to look – partly in case it’s terrible and I hang my head in shame and partly because I don’t want to let myself down by not being able to put enough time into writing at the moment.  Moving country is taking up a lot of my time right now.  Who knew! 😉

September 21, 2011
Writing
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Language Evolution

In last month’s Writing Magazine, Michael Legat wrote a short paragraph talking about two phrases that are in common use: “north of” and “grow”.  He noted how their use has changed and you now hear them in sentences such as “He earns north of one hundred thousand” or in terms of “growing your investment”.

He posed a question to ask if we really need “north of” or “grow” in these contexts when there are already perfectly functional words such as “more than” and “increase”?

For me, it isn’t about a need for these words more than it is about enlivening language.  Using “north of” and “grow” gives a much more exciting and visual image to what you’re trying to convey.  Especially when you’re talking about something as dull as salaries and investments!

So I’m not sure I really see this as a language change, but more of a language growth or evolution where people are improving their conversations with more visual and colourful terminology.  Perhaps this points to people being more aware of their language’s capabilities and I definitely can’t see that as a bad thing!

September 8, 2011
Writing
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All At Once

This month has been very much like the old saying: you wait for one bus, then two come at the same time.

Brian and I have been waiting for almost a year for my visa to be processed and, just as I start Camp NaNoWriMo, it all comes to the last stage!  Which is great news, don’t get me wrong 🙂  We’re really excited and I’m really nervous about the interview because I have no idea what they ask!  But it has meant less time for writing and so I wanted to say sorry for lack of updates on here.

Camp NaNoWriMo, I had to forget about all together.  This is the first year they’ve done it and it’s basically NaNoWriMo but in the Summer.  For anyone who is unfamiliar with the NaNo concept, you’re given the challenge of writing 50,000 words of a brand new novel, or a 50,000 novella, within 30 days (or, as August is longer, within 31 days for Camp NaNoWriMo).  It’s a lot of hard work but it really is a lot of fun too 🙂  This new idea of going to camp has a few changes, like instead of the forums they have “cabins” where you and 5 other people get to spur each other on, chat about your progress and help each other as much as possible.  The forums on the main NaNoWriMo website are still active with Camp chatter, but the cabins are a great addition on the Camp website!

My camp experience, as little as there was of it, was very good!  If they do it again next year I’ll definitely take part.  But for now, back to organising things for my interview!

August 18, 2011
Writing
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Marketing vs Writing

Last month I read an article in The Telegraph about author John Locke and how he had already sold over 1 million self published ebooks.  The article starts by saying that he “publishes and promotes his own work” but I think the key word there is promotes.

When I first read the headline I thought “Wow, how did he do that?” followed very closely with a tinge of jealousy.  But reading further it becomes very clear that he was much more focussed on the marketing than anything else.  He talks about not having a big marketing budget, but in the electronic age who really needs one?  Facebook pages, blogs, Twitter, Linked In…. there are so many ways to start the ball rolling with word-of-mouth without any words actually leaving anyone’s physical mouth.

John Locke says that when he found out Amazon pays 35% on ebooks priced at 99c, he was over the moon!  He’s been in commission sales all his life and anyone in that line of work will know that 35% really is, as he says, “like a license to print money”.  He’s obviously very talented at marketing but from the reviews of his books it seems that really is his focus and the writing tends to be sub-par.

The one thing that grabbed me right away is that he has a book out now called “How I sold 1 million ebooks in 5 months” and at the end of the article there was mention of this as a way to “find out how he did it by buying the book”.  On his blog, his posts end with similar phrasing such as, “You know how I’m celebrating? By making my marketing system available for everyone who wants to duplicate, or exceed my achievements. I wrote it all out, step-by-step. Everything I tried that didn’t work and everything that did. I’m charging $4.99 for this information via eBook, $9.99 paperback. I hope you’ll consider it a bargain, since I spent $25,000 for information that didn’t work.”

He follows the hookline closely with, “You know when my friends finally considered me an author? When I started making serious money from book sales! And no matter how nice your friends and family are, you know in your heart they’re not going to consider you a real author until the royalties start pouring in.”

It’s very strong imagery, that you aren’t a real author until you earn royalties and that you won’t earn royalties unless you buy his book.  As a writer, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

It’s the same kind of marketing as all of those adverts on the web saying things like “I lost 6 stone in a month!  Click here to find out how!” and then you get taken to a page roping you in and at the end it says “You can find out how to do it too!  It’s all in my new book priced £39.99…”.

He seems to be very much all about the profit, which can be a big motivation for people to want to be a writer and marketing is definitely a large part of becoming a known author.  But taking the focus off the writing and putting more time into marketing the work, just makes me concerned that this kind of thinking will come back to bite new authors who focus on writing first.

July 27, 2011
Writing
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Hidden Talent

I’ve never been a fan of Lady Gaga.  There are a couple of her songs that I sang along to in the car when they came on the radio, but for the most part they were all just too pop-tastic and drowned in synth that they just didn’t grab me.  I’d known for a while that she wrote the songs too and didn’t just perform them, but because of the added pop-ness the lyrics never really made much of an impression on me.

Last night though I was looking at some pianists on youtube and there was link to Lady Gaga performing a couple of her songs with just a piano.  I checked them out because I’m a sucker for piano music and wow I was really surprised at the talent she has!  The quality to her voice is fantastic and the lyrics she writes are really good, it’s such a shame she doesn’t do an “unplugged” album because I would buy that in a heartbeat going by these very few links on youtube.

It’s sad in a way that to get the celebrity she has, she had to almost hide her writing, instrumental and vocal talent.

Here is a video from before she was known as Lady Gaga, she performed live at NYU several years ago and this song is just so beautiful – the writing and the performance.

July 23, 2011
Writing
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