Jan 1 2011

The editing continues…

My random editing technique seems to be working, and I have more pages of edits to make on the digital copy, and yet more threads that need tying up either in this novel or the sequel. I feel the need to make my novel more visual, and would love to have a chart of all the characters and the events in the novel, but I’m not sure how to do it. Ideally, if I could draw, I would draw the characters, incorporating their physical appearance and then have visual elements around them that define them. Hmmm, I’ve just had an idea! A while ago, I came across the website http://www.wordle.net/ which turns text into a wordle – a word cloud that makes words that are used most often bigger than the words that arent used very often. You can play around with the font, the layout and the colours, then print directly or copy and paste the image. I made wordles of several chapters of The Earth Angel Training Academy, and have them on my wall in my room. I could make a wordle of each character and their characteristics. Hmm, I feel the need to try it right now, I will paste the main character here…

I think Wordles may be the way to go! Much better to look at than the boring excel spreadsheet I currently have!

On another note, I was watching TV earlier, and Back to the Future was on, an excellent film I haven’t seen in years. Towards the end, at the school dance, they do a song called ‘Earth Angel’ I found a version of it on Youtube, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7Y9kcBkWOk

Right, back to the editing, I may be a while…

Dec 29 2010

To self-publish, or not to self publish… That is a very good question!

I realised that perhaps I haven’t really explained why I’m self-publishing, or what my novel is even about, and thought it might be a good idea!

First of all – the subject matter of my novel. I dread when people ask me what my book is about, because I find it difficult to categorise – not a good thing when it comes to publishing a book! The title is: The Earth Angel Training Academy. It’s based on the other side, in an Academy for beings from all different realms. There are Angels, Faeries, Merpeople, Old Souls and Starpeople. They go to the Academy to learn how to become human, so they can go to Earth and help with the Awakening. The novel follows several of the characters as they experience the final term of the Earth Angel Training Academy. Anyone who has read any of Doreen Virtue’s books will understand the term Earth Angels, and maybe even know which realm they themselves are from! I will possibly add some excerpts from my novel on here, to give a little bit of a taster.

Now then, my reasoning for self-publishing. I must admit, I initially wanted to publish this book the traditional way, and like I mentioned before, did start sending it out to agents and publishers, and received a few replies. I only did e-mail submissions, I didn’t quite get into the hard copy submissions. I suppose you could say that going down the self-publishing route is me being a bit lazy, and not wanting to bother printing out the first three chapters of the book and sending them out to people, which would be quite true. I don’t really want to go through all of that process, just as I don’t really want to spend all my money on the postage, printing and paper costs! Then there’s the time thing – I’m just far too impatient to wait years, or if very, very lucky, months before finding someone to take on my novel.

In 2007, I self-published my novella – Heaven Dot Com, because at 18,000 words, it was too short to be published by a publisher, and too long to be sent to magazines, so just because I wanted to see it in book form, I published it on the POD site, lulu. Though the quality was good, I wasn’t too impressed with the postage costs, or the high manufacturing costs, so I was pleased to find a different company this year. I re-published the novella, and found that the quality is excellent, the manufacturing costs are low, so I can make the price lower, and the postage is very reasonable. I also like the function on the site that allows people to read a certain number of pages online. So, although I would love to have the benefits of an Editor, Proofreader, and marketing department, I’m afraid that I just don’t have enough patience or stamps to go the traditional publishing route.

Which means of course, that the editing is entirely down to me, the cover is down to my wonderful sister, and the marketing and selling is also all down to me. Which should be interesting. Aside from social networking, I have no actual marketing plan, I may be calling on some other friends in that field to help me out. I also love the book “How to become a famous writer before you are dead.” by Ariel Gore. It has some excellent tips.

I think that’s more than enough information for one post, so time to print out that extra copy, I think!

Dec 29 2010

Errors abound!

The Acknowledgements page is shaping up nicely, have the feeling I’ve forgotten someone though… The read through is coming along, I started randomly picking pages to edit in the copy I printed for my boyfriend to read, and I’ve filled pages in my notebook of errors to correct already! Some of it is just slightly dodgy wording, but some are spelling or grammar errors. There’s also a few points that weren’t wrapped up by the end of the novel, or that need mentioning in the sequel but haven’t been yet… dear me, I feel another mammoth edit coming on! Was really hoping I was nearly there, but apparently not. So I think I will be printing another copy for myself to read through again for errors. It seems like an awful waste of paper and ink, but I find it very difficult to see the errors when reading off the computer screen. Don’t know why it should make much of a difference, but it seems to!

Another thing to add to my plan – a bibliography of books that inspired me at the back. Progress is being made, albeit slowly 🙂

Dec 27 2010

Merry Christmas!

The New Year is still four days away, but I feel impatient to get going with the publishing process, problem is, I’m not entirely sure where to begin… you would think I would have a plan or schedule of sorts, but I’m really just making it up as I go along, I’ve been thinking about the acknowledgement page, and I should make a list of all the people who have helped me write the book, either with their encouragement or with their editing skills. I should also read through the book again, and see if there are any more errors to correct, I would hope I’ve got them all by now, but the odd little one may have snuck in there. Hmm, I guess another good thing to sort out would be a review or two, so I could put the snippets on the cover, I always think it looks good that someone has actually read the book and enjoyed it! Well I think this may be the beginning of a plan – Acknowledgement pages, another read through, and then obtaining a review from my friends who have read it.

I’m feeling like I should get on with adding to and editing the sequel too, I keep getting new ideas for it, and I feel it would be a good idea to have it pretty much done by the time I publish the first one, so I can then publish it not too long later. I hate it when I’ve read a good book but I have to wait months or years for the next one! There’s a book series that I loved more then ten years ago, and the final book never got published. I’m still waiting faithfully, but I have to admit, by the time I actually get my hands on it, I’m not sure it will have as much impact as it would have done all those years ago. We’ll see! I won’t make my readers wait so long, I promise.

Here’s a bit of fun, I mentioned it in my other blog – Organicism – it’s a great tool for making yourself write quickly, it’s called Write or Die and you can set it to do various things, such as flash different colours if you pause writing for more than a few seconds, or even, if you pause too long, it will start to delete you words!! You can set your own time limits and word limits, and I wrote a short piece on it, I think it was about 500 words in 17 minutes, which is pretty good going! Check it out, it’s good for a laugh. http://writeordie.com/

Well, I think it may be time for lunch, I’m feeling a bit lazy right now, which I suppose is allowed over the Christmas period, but I feel the need to do something creative, so it’s time to get off the internet I think! I will update with the progress of the plan!

Merry Christmas!

Dec 20 2010

The Beginning…

Ah, the first post, always a tricky one! Well it’s not quite 2011 yet, but I thought it would be a good idea to begin now, with the journey up until now…

It all started on a train journey from New York City to Westchester, when I started to read Chris Baty’s book ‘No Plot? No Problem!’. The concept of writing 50,000 words in a month very much appealed to me, even though the longest piece I’d written up until then had been 18,000 words. It was only March at the time, and I decided that I couldn’t possibly wait until November, the official novelling month, and so set the challenge for April. After a week of planning, I began writing the novel in the airport and on the plane home to England on April 1st, 2009. After a month, I had 40,000 words, and was only half way through the story. I continued in the same vein through May and by the 2nd of July I had a 96,000 word novel.

I let it sit for a while, having got severe RSI in both hands! A couple of months later I did some editing, and also had a friend look through it for me. I then probably made the rookie mistake that many new writers have done – I started sending it out (via e-mail) to agents on publishers. I got a few replies, and though polite, were rejections. I left it for a few more months, then decided to get a few more opinions, having realised that only two people had read the entire thing from start to finish, not a great idea. So, armed with a new printer and cheap ink, I printed a few copies and sent them out to some more friends, and they gave me feedback not only on grammatical errors but a few other points too. The overall response was very positive though, and they all asked to read the sequel, which then gave me my subject matter for the 2010 Nanowrimo.

Which is the subject of another post! The point I am at now, is of polishing the manuscript, writing the front pages, then setting it out ready to upload it to a self-publishing Print on Demand website.

Well, before this turns into a novel itself, I will end this post, and will update in the New Year. Merry Christmas!