S.M. Butler's Blog, page 15

I’ve been pretty random about the stuff I’ve been talking about lately, even though it’s all writing related. So I thought I would refocus and start at the beginning, which is timely considering I’m also starting a new book this week. So let’s talk beginnings.

Beginnings are tricky beasts. And I do mean they are beasts. They carry the weight of the book on its shoulders. It’s where you sell the book to readers, or publishers, or agents. Those precious first few pages can’t suck, because if they do, readers will never make it to that amazeballs scene in the middle and the end where you blow all the stuff up and the hero gets the girl.

Our world now is about instant gratification. Between social media, the crap political climate, or the fact that people just don’t have the leisure time like they used to have, it’s make or break trying to hook someone before they decide to put that book down.

So… now that I’ve completely freaked both myself and you out, let’s ease some of the pressure. It doesn’t have to be as hard as we make it. Okay, as hard as I make it, but come on, commiserate with me.

It used to be we had twenty pages to talk about what a tree looks like (I’m looking at you, Tolkien) but in the days of Netflix and one-click sales on Amazon, when we introduce the “ordinary” world of our hero, create that baseline of how things are going to change through the story, we need to get to the action sooner rather than later.

I think about movies like James Bond flicks, or Lara Croft, or Raiders of the Lost Ark. Outrunning a boulder is actually normal for Indiana. We know exactly what he is good at, what kind of work he does, and that scene even establishes the rivalry with the movie’s antagonist. So when he’s asked to get the medallion that can lead him to the Ark, we know he’s the guy for the job.

Also? Who doesn’t love a guy who carries a whip for pretty much everything except actually whipping someone?

That all said, we don’t even need to open with ordinary world. We could open with the inciting incident, and while the hero is flipping us off with the mere mention of it, we can explore his ordinary world and show why our hero is reluctant to leave it.

I suppose I’m somewhere in the middle there. I like the ordinary world, but I also like blowing stuff up right at the beginning. I think all of my romantic suspenses may have started with an explosion or two. Or people firing weapons at each other. It’s kind of my thing.

Actually, that might be my problem. Hmm… Dear Readers, I think you just gave me an idea for my next beginning.  See you next time, my little book nerds!

Learning how to write a serial has been an interesting and fun challenge for me. Sure, I could have written Section Five as a full book, and then serialized all the parts. But cutting up a novel into parts doesn’t really lend itself to good serial writing. It just doesn’t fit.

So, I’m treating Section Five like its own TV show, for lack of a better comparison. I’m writing stories that might be mainly about Naomi, or they might be about Daniel or Jet. Whatever serves the larger series story. I might have a cliffhanger once in a while, but my aim is to keep these stories, and the parts to them self-contained so that they make sense on their own, but maybe might make a reader curious as to the rest of the stories.

That led me to searching out structure books. I’ve never been a big plotter. I tend to write first and then fix later. I understand structure as a concept, or no one would ever buy my books. But this series is the first time that I’m sitting down and figuring out the big moments I want to hit and when I want to hit them.

Pacing is huge in these stories. Too slow, and I bore folks. Too fast, and the reader attention fizzles. That was the main reason I decided to rewrite the first episode. I didn’t structure it exactly right, or layer in the elements I would need in the future episodes. It had a beginning, middle, and end, but it wasn’t exactly what I needed. I guess that’s why they do pilots in the television world. They figure out what their show is going to be like, and then they go from there.

The funny thing is I bought two new books on story structure, and then promptly went back to a book that I’d had for years. But I think I still pick up things from books that I put down in favor of others.

This project is a learning experience for me, which is kind of a scary thing because I’m doing it in front of everyone, in front of my community on Patreon, on my blog, and you know… It’s fun, though. I love learning about new things, particularly new writing techniques. In all honesty, when I do these projects like this, where they’re more for me to learn, I learn a lot about me personally as well.

Until next week, my little book nerds.

Maybe I’m not the best at dealing with discouragement and therefore probably shouldn’t be talking about how to deal with it, or maybe because I didn’t handle it the best, that makes me the best to talk about it.

If any of that made sense, thank goodness because I think I confused myself with that sentence.

I think just about any writer will have to deal with discouragement in some form or another in their career, whether they’re at the very beginnings of writing, or submitting their first story, to hitting publish on their 35th book. We all go through it. I think creative types seem to take discouragement way harder than most other types of folks do. We just seem to be more sensitive. Maybe because we do open our hearts every time we write, or paint, or knit that blanket for our best friend’s new baby.

We are programmed to be in more in touch emotionally, because we have to write about others’ emotions, particularly for romance writers. It makes it difficult when we’re thrust into a situation that discourages us. That’s why it’s super important to learn and practice how to cope with discouragement so we can turn it from a bad experience into a positive force.

The first thing we need to know is that it’s okay to be discouraged, or even upset or angry. The difference between handling it or not handling it is being able to channel it into a more positive direction over letting it fester and hang over you like the Little  Black Rain Cloud. Go vent to your friends, write in your private journal, eat a little chocolate, and throw darts at the object of your anger.

It’s important to get that raw reaction out of your system as fast as possible, so you can move on without that Little Black Rain Cloud hanging over you. You don’t want to stay angry or bitter, especially since as a writer, we put a lot of ourselves into our work. It will affect the quality of which you write.

Trust me on that. I wrote six drafts of a book that still hasn’t seen the light of day because I wrote it when I was dealing with unhappy matters, and my mind was clouded with that festering bad feeling. I still love the idea of that story, and maybe when I’m in the right mindset, I can go back and finish that book one day.

Once you got that raw emotion out of your system, you can slow it down and figure out what is the cause.

I can’t get past this scene in my book.

I can’t get my book accepted.

The sales on my last book tanked.

No one likes my book.

Those are just general enough that I think every single writer on the face of the planet can safely say they have said at least one of those things in their life. How did they get past it?

There are things you can change about what’s discouraging you, and some things you can’t. For the things you can control, you can change what you’re writing, how you promote yourself, or how much or little you write. Maybe you try another book to that publisher. So much is subjective in the submission process. The book you’re submitting might just be too similar to another book they already acquired or published, so try another book you might have to get your foot into the door.

Yes, there are things that we just can’t change. We can’t make a publisher want our book. We can’t make readers buy our books. But we can change other things adjust our current course to something more positive. Maybe we run ads to reach new readers, or we try a different publisher with our book, or maybe we decide to dive into self-publishing.

Here’s a few quick little tips you can do to make these adjustments.

Develop a plan based on the things you can control, and address the source of your discouragement. Remember, indirect solutions can be even better than direct solutions sometimes.
Set goals and targets you can measure, such as word count or number of submissions, and keep track of your progress.
Write in a journal, or privately email friends about your discouragement rather than venting on social media.

Of course, you’re still not going to be able to control everything, and that’s okay. These little things can put you on a path to correcting things that make you feel more empowered and confident, rather than feeling like you landed in a shitty ditch you can’t get out of.

It took me about two years to get past my own discouragement, and in the process, I destroyed everything I’d built in my writing business. The one thing I didn’t handle well is where I nuked my entire website… twice… because of my frustration. The thing is, I told myself it was for a fresh start, but in all honesty, I was scared to continue where I left off because of what a mess it was, and decided a clean break was better.

Maybe it was. Maybe it wasn’t. I don’t know, and probably won’t ever know if it was the right thing to do at the time.

The bottom line is that anger is okay. Positive anger is okay. That anger that motivates you to persist and improve yourself. That part of you that is motivated to prove whoever discouraged you is wrong (including if it’s yourself). That anger that tells you that you’re just too awesome to be ignored or blown off.

Always give yourself a plan to deal with the things you can control. Even adjusting one part of your life to indirectly compensate for the parts you can’t control can have a snowball’s effect on you. I’ve always been an over-analyzer, and that leads me to see things that maybe aren’t really there. If I let things fester, eventually, the whole world will be out to get me (in my mind). For me, I have to identify what is really causing the problem, and develop a plan for what I can do about it. It keeps me focused on the prize.

I finished formatting episode 1 this morning. It’s crazy. It’s edited and ready to go, but I still managed to find things to fix as I formatted. I suppose that’s about normal for me. Nothing is every truly finished in my view. I just find a point where I have to stop working and tweaking on it and move on.

I’m pretty excited about how the first episode’s revisions turned out.

Anyway, I just wanted to share that with you all. Next up, I have to get busy getting the files ready for retailers, and finalize the cover. I did post a work in progress cover over on Patreon if you’re a member there, but I don’t know if I’m going to keep it or move on to a new design. I like the typography, but the actual image I’m not sold on.

Maybe I’ll do some backups and do a little testing.

I don’t know.

Hope you guys have a fantastic weekend!

I applied for an apartment yesterday.

It’s a really cute apartment. Two bedroom, with a study. It faces the lake, so when I’m in the study, I’ll have the best view. That means writing while I stare out at the lake, or painting that landscape because it’s gorgeous out there.

I’m worried that they’re going to deny me, but they shouldn’t. I’m pretty good on paper.

But my anxiety is flaring up, and that’s making me think about all the things that could potentially go wrong in this venture. I just love this apartment and that’s making the anxiety worse I think.

I have this same anxiety when I publish books too, but it seems less when it’s business over the more personal parts of my life.

I’m not sure how that works.

I guess that’s why I’m posting off schedule. I need to get this anxiety out of my head, so I’m not thinking about it 24/7 and driving myself insane. What do you guys do when you’re too entrenched in anxiety to think straight? How do you make it stop, or at least lessen so you can function like a real human being?

I guess this is why I was glad I didn’t make a big splash with my first book. I published it, and I was an unknown, so it was a quiet launch. I think I sold six copies the first week. When I look back on it, I’m glad. Not because the book was bad. I still get lots of compliments on that book. But because it was a learning curve for me, and because it was my first, I was very nervous to hit publish on it. I spent $3 on stock images, did the cover myself, got friends to help me edit it for blaring mistakes so I didn’t have to pay a professional editor. I learned how to format ebooks through YouTube tutorials, so I wouldn’t have to farm that out as well.

It was a total budget launch.

I think people get too wrapped up on how to publish that first book, and how to make it big with their first launch. There’s a huge learning curve with publishing. I’m not sure how I would have reacted with the anxiety if I’d had a best seller first time out. I think it might have been too much pressure to produce after that.

I’m not sure how this relates to my apartment anxiety. I think they’re similar in ways, and maybe that’s why I’m thinking about when I first published. Waiting for people to react to your book is excruciatingly painful. Wine sometimes helps that, though. Maybe tonight is a good night for me to go draw a bath, drink a glass of wine, and try to relax.

If I’m meant for that apartment, I’ll get it. I just have to tell my brain that.

My brain has been on this creative over-drive lately, which you think would be good for writing books. But the thing is I have too many ideas to focus just on the one that needs to get done. But I know myself and I know that if I try to do multiple projects like i have in the past, it’s not going to work. I won’t get any of them done.

I know that I need to finish the second episode of the Section Five serial, because I’m already past the point where I need that to be done. But I have all these ideas knocking on the door for attention and my brain is just going nuts trying to sift through and organize it all.

I’m just about done with the first episode’s edits, and I’m formatting it later today (well, today for me, but probably later for you, since I’m scheduling out the post). So now, that book is going into business mode. Which means, blurb writing, cover designing, and formatting to get ready for publication. I’m kind of excited to have it done, but also, it seems that my brain doesn’t want to switch to business mode for that book yet.

I suppose the cover design and blurb writing are another creative part of the process, but I’ve always seen those as business tasks. I can’t sell that book without either of those components. I’m having a lot of trouble with this first cover, because it’s going to be a template for the rest of the serial covers, kind of. There will be some similarities for all the covers, so that it’s obvious they all fit together. I guess I can always change the cover, but I really like getting it right the first time.

Anyway, here’s the thing. Creativity breeds creativity. That’s why writers have more ideas than we can every get around to writing. That’s why it’s hard to answer “where do you get your ideas?” because we don’t really know. It comes from everywhere and anything, and sometimes, it’s in the middle of a book that’s got a serious deadline. The more you write, the more you think and create, the more ideas you’ll have. And eventually, you might actually learn to determine if these ideas are viable, and how to develop them into something you can actually write.

I’m still working on determining which ideas are viable. I just want to write them all.

 

Want to hear more? Read the serial before anyone else? Check out my Patreon page for more!

 

My mind has been on business this week so far. Today was the day that I wanted to launch my Etsy shop for my paintings and illustration stuff. If you are a member of my Patreon, I talked about why I didn’t do it in a podcast a couple weeks back, which kind of bled over into last week’s blog post about redoing my Five Year Plan.

Today, I’m looking at all the stuff I’ve given myself to do over the next few months. I need to finish the current chapter on the second Section Five episode, work on that proposal of the young adult idea I had to see if it’s viable, finish the Seekrit Projekt that I completely sidelined to finish Marked’s first episode the last few months, and update all my older ebooks with new links that aren’t broken from the Website Nuke of 2017.

It’s a lot, just listing it in a general way here. Because a lot of those tasks have sub-tasks. I think I need to go back to using ToDoist again. It worked amazingly to keep me on track back when I was using it regularly. And it was the perfect supplement to my bullet journal. When I took the writing hiatus, I kind of stopped using it entirely.

Between my bullet journal and ToDoist, I should be pretty well covered. Provided I actually use them. What do y’all use for keeping organized when you have a ton of stuff in the pipeline?

Okay. I have to get some sleep so I can get up in time for work tonight, but I still don’t have my words in for the day, so I gotta get to it. See you guys later!

When I recording the Patreon podcast last week, I mentioned that I really tend to throw myself full-time force into an idea, and then it tends to fizzle out after a couple weeks. I do this with new writing ideas too. I’ll write like crazy for a week, and then suddenly the story fizzles out on me. I have entire notebooks of these stories.

I’m starting to think about where I want my writing to go, how I want my business to progress. I spent two years doing nothing and it shows. Now that I’m picking up the pieces, I have all these ideas of where I want to go with it, and what I want to do.

The biggest thing I want to do is diversify. I can’t afford to produce audio books, so that’s on the back burner. The initial cost is just too much. A new genre sounds fun, or maybe trying traditional publishing to get into the paperback market more.

I think the big thing I need to do before I start making new decisions is sit down and write out a new Five Year Plan. I’d talked about that on my old blog, before I nuked the whole thing. A Five Year Plan is a living document about your business, about your life, about where you want to be in Five Years, that outlines how you’re going to get there. I think it’s time to sit down and redo it, and figure out exactly how my business is going to fit in my current life, which is quite different than what it was when I first created my Five Year plan in 2014.

Not achieving that plan makes me feel like a failure, but I know that’s not it. Things change, life changes us.  That’s why it’s a living document, a plan that grows and changes as you do.

So this coming week, I’ll be working on that plan. Who knows? Maybe I’ll surprise myself.

Hey everyone! I can’t believe it’s almost April in a few days. It’s ridiculous how fast this year is progressing. It’s getting closer to the relaunch of my writing business, so I’ve been really thinking long and hard about what I want it to be. It seems easy to say, “write a book, and put it out there.” At the core of the writing business, yes, that’s what it is. But I can point you to a hundred different authors on Amazon that this is all they do for their business and they’re floundering.

So, I sat back and tried to think about what I can do with the limited time I have. It’s been a long few months as I figure out how to manage my time on my business while I’m working a full-time job. And that got me thinking… many writers work a day job while they’re pursuing publication or while they’re self-publishing. What makes me special? Why can’t I do what they do?

Maybe I try to do too much at one time. Or maybe I do too little.

Patreon is a staple of my new business plan. It’s small now, but it’s going to grow. It’s part of my long term plan, because I believe that it will work. As long as I’m consistent. I believe that community is everything. I love you guys, and it’s because of the emails I got, and the comments on my old blog that I realized I couldn’t just let it die. Because I love the friends I’ve made because of writing, and the readers that send me emails and tell me how much they love my books.

Which is the big thing. Nothing happens if I’m not consistent, and the last two years, I’ve been anything but. I’ve disappointed a lot of people. But I came back, because I can’t not write, and I can’t not put myself out there. It’s scary, especially now when it’s kind of new in an old way. If that makes sense.

It’s also exciting. When I see what I’m going to do for the next few months, it’s like I’m myself again. I spent two years floundering like those authors that do nothing but put a book out into the world and hope people find it. I’m not willing to go quietly into the night. I will not vanish without a fight. Ok, so that’s dramatic but I started typing and the Independence Day quote just jumped out at me. I couldn’t help myself. *shrug*

Okay, it’s time for me to get back to edits on the serial, and then get a little bit of writing down before I hit the sack. Love you all. Talk to you soon!

OMG, you guys. I’ve been working on this serial for so long I feel like I’m going to be lost once it’s launched. I’ve been doing the final edits for the first episode, and I just love these characters. The more I flesh out Naomi and Daniel and Jet, the more I just want to write all the things about them.

I wasn’t sure relaunching my Patreon page was going to be the right move for me. I’m still not sure. But my heart says it is. I love these characters, and I think they deserve their own place too. I meant for this to be the side gig, but it hasn’t turned out that way. It’s a risk, because it’s not going to make me money immediately, and maybe not at all, but I can’t stop myself from trying it.

Not to say I won’t write anything outside of Patreon. That’s obviously not true. It’s just been this big thing that I wanted to do.

I have this tendency to overthink things, overanalyze, and take too long to take a plunge. I’m one of those people that can’t just jump in the cold water. I have to get used to it by dipping a few toes in first. But eventually, I have to get in and swim.

There’s nothing wrong with being cautious. I think it’s a good way to be.

But at some point, there is a too cautious. You have to think about what’s right for you. I’ve missed out on a lot of fun things because I was too afraid to try, or I took too long to make the decision. I’ve lived my life erring on the side of caution. But maybe that is why Patreon will be good for me, and consequently, good for you guys as well.

Patreon is a risk for me, as a writer, and a person who isn’t that open of an individual on a daily basis. I’ve never really talked about me as a person, mostly just me as a writer. That is why I started allowing myself to be a creative, and not just a writer. I’m more than that, and I think I should show that part of myself more.

I should take the risk.

2018 is about Change for me. That was the word I chose to describe what I wanted to do with my year. Change is hard. Change is about pushing your limits. Change is taking risks.

My January word was Rebooting. Wiping the slate clean, getting ready for the changes I wanted to make.

February was Focus. Clarifying and streamlining my thoughts and feelings. I wanted to pick words each month that would relate back to Change.

My March word is Courage. Courage to take the risks I need to take. Courage to take the plunge into the cold water. I’m scared to death of it. But if I don’t have the courage and force myself into it, I’ll always think about it, but I’ll never do it. And that… I’m not going to be ok with that.

I dream big. I think many of us do. March is about doing one thing that scares the shit out of me every day. It’s about having the courage to conquer my own fears and hesitations.

I hope you guys will join me in my journey. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, mostly because of fear. Fear of success. Fear of failure. Even fear of being stagnant. This year is different. This month is about courage and risks. I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know that any of us do, honestly.

But I’m gonna try anyway.