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Monthly Archives: July 2012

The Satisfaction In Completing A Short Story

10 Tuesday Jul 2012

Posted by Silvi Veale in Writing, Writing Short Stories

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Horror Writing, Short Stories, Writing Dilemmas

I’ve been away for a few days quietly working.
No I don’t mean my usual paid copy writing work, but work on an actual short story, start to finish.

For too long I have been dabbling at being a writer: typing out a few more pages of my novel; discussing the plot between characters in my head; writing about the process here on this blog….

But none of that was actually doing anything – just trying to make me feel more like a writer, rather than a pretender to the writer’s throne.

Now, I am one of those people who detects charlatans a mile off. And I was beginning to detect myself as one!

It is no lie that I have some 50k words completed on my novel, but the whole process of writing something so long was beginning to drag me down (not to mention that many of those 50k words will probably be shredder material once the novel is actually finished and edited). So I decided to do something to prove to myself I could still write and get published.

So over the last five days I have written, edited, re-written and finally sent off a new short story.

The strange thing is, although I had many part-finished short stories stored away on my PC, this one was new from start to finish. I found a publisher asking for stories for a themed horror anthology and went for it.

The theme – creatures of the night (emphasis on actual creatures) – is not something I had considered before. My horror story writing is usually of the creepy ghost kind. The audience, Young Adult, was not something I had seriously considered before either. But letting the idea scurry around in my head produced a story, so I went for it.

The main drawback here was a seven day deadline from the date I found the call for submissions. This means that only I, my long-suffering husband and my friend up the road have read the story. So, even though I have been vicious in editing, strict on getting POV’s correct and have ensured that my use of adverbs is almost non-existent, I know deep down that asking for input from a beta reader would have helped make my story more suitable for publication. But I didn’t have the time.

So I will not be disappointed when I receive a rejection slip (ok, I’m lying. I will be disappointed, but I know it is likely to happen).

But the process of writing that short story, start to finish, was so satisfying I can hardly believe it.

After the experience of completing my short story, I now know I can write a story, sticking to publisher guidelines and following rules on ‘show don’t tell’, POV, etc, which had been getting me down. I also feel confident that the story will eventually sell, perhaps not in the form I submitted to the publisher, but close enough.

In other words, I have my confidence back.

Of course, this still doesn’t prove that I can produce a novel. As I said in my post Can a Writer Of Short Stories Write A Novel, those thoughts still concern me a little, but now at least I know that when time necessitates I can be disciplined in my approach to writing.

So all I need now is for a publisher to tell me that he or she wants my novel completed in six months time. That should do it. 🙂

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Are You Prepared To Be Sociable To Promote Your Book?

03 Tuesday Jul 2012

Posted by Silvi Veale in Book Promotion, Writing

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Marketing Your Book, Social Media, Social Networking, Writing Dilemmas

I was browsing my bookmarks today and found an old blog post by social media blogger, Chris Brogan. It is called An Author’s Plan For Social Media Efforts. The post is now two years old, but all but two of the links on it still work, so it’s definitely worth a look.

What I found interesting about this post is the amount of effort Brogan thinks the author of a new book needs to put in to cause interest across the social networking spectrum.

I’m not saying he is wrong, it is simply that my brain went into “don’t want to know” mode as I ploughed through the long list of things to do. However, as I had bookmarked this post, I guess I had thought I would come back to it in due course and maybe give the suggestions a go.

Brogan gives 21 different ways to promote a book and the comments (if you ignore the spam ones) give even more. Some of the advice is geared more towards those writing business books, but the advice is still pretty sound. And, as it turned out, I am already following some of his tips anyway.

Basically, you need to get out there and learn and use every aspect of social media to best effect.

Okay…so, let’s say I was intent on promoting my book (I’m not – I haven’t finished it yet!).

First of all I would need a website with a domain to fit the book (not hard to do as I already have hosting and am good at finding domains to use, so I can almost check that one), a blog (check), a Twitter account (check), a Facebook account (well, I guess my ‘keep in touch with family and friends site’ could do with a change of emphasis.. so… check).

I know how to use Google alerts, so I could easily set one up for my book (check), same with Google blog search so I can comment on other people’s blogs when they write about my book (check), I always try to be gracious to people commenting on my blogs (unless they are complete a’holes) because after all, they have not only read my post, but they taken the time to comment, so I can check that one too.

Writing guest posts on other blogs always seems like spamming to me, if you are only doing it to promote something of yours. That’s actually a shame, as I would (probably…) love to post on another person’s blog if they’d let me (and, of course, if I had something interesting to say!), so I can check that too without much worry.

No real problems so far.

But then things get a bit more technical.

I have no idea about setting up an email list and newsletters (apart from using Feedburner, which probably doesn’t count), so that would require a good bit of research and comparisons of best systems to use.

I had no clue what a ‘blogger outreach project’ was until I looked it up (I’m still working it out, but I think it concerns juggling a list of bloggers who review different parts of your book – but I could well be wrong!).

Making a YouTube video promoting my book seems like a great idea, but I would probably need help with that too (unless I want to look like a complete amateur – there again, that could be appealing in certain circumstances.. I guess…).

Then there is finding out how to arrange speaking trips and radio and TV appearances. I would assume that your publisher or agent would help with this, but it appears that a publisher’s promotional help is never enough and you should be doing most of your book promotion yourself, so… I would have to build networks with local media companies, perhaps book clubs, university literature groups, etc. Lots of hard work there, but worth the effort I would think…

That’s a précis of most of the tips. Others seem like common sense (to me, anyway), or like something you would work on in conjunction with your publisher (unless you are a self-publisher of course…).

But one thing I did notice with nearly all of these tips is…

An author needs to be very, very sociable.

I saw in the comments on this article that some assumed that writers were naturally sociable, gregarious beings – good speakers too. But are authors really like that?

It appears to me that many writers are far from gregarious. Spending your days alone, pounding out thousands of words onto your PC doesn’t give you much time for socialising (unless you give up in disgust and drown your sorrows at the local bar, of course).

Many writers also tend to be introverts, preferring to let others take the stage while they sit back and ‘people watch’. I would go as far as to say that being the darling of social media would appear as an almost insurmountable challenge to many writers, as the concept would be totally alien to them.

Taking that further, I would say that it isn’t so much the length of the ‘to do’ list that will faze a large number of authors, it is more that, after already producing a cast of believable characters for their book, they will now have to invent a ‘sociable’, outgoing character for themselves.

So, are you prepared to be sociable to promote your book?

And before you say an outright ‘No!’, think about all the blood, sweat and tears you have spent writing your masterpiece. And how much of your life has been invested in this moment, when your book has reached the publication stage.

I personally am sociable enough in that I like communicating with people, but I have to admit that it would take real effort on my part to be the life and soul of the party on and offline for days on end without let-up. But in this situation, I would not want to let my book down now by failing at ‘being sociable’. So, I guess I would have to grit my teeth, put on a suitable ‘sociable’ persona, and go for it! 🙂

No Hay Dos Sin Tres

01 Sunday Jul 2012

Posted by Silvi Veale in Football

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Euro 2012, Spain

La Roja Celebrate Winning The European Championship

No writing today, this is just to say Well Done Spain!

Watching Spanish TV over the last few days, where the caption has been No Hay Dos Sin Tres, we kept our fingers and toes crossed that everyone would be proved right.

Well, they were – Spain beat Italy 4-0, making them Champions of Europe for the second time running as well as Champions of the World!

Well done La Roja!

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