S.M. Butler's Blog, page 32

Off Her Game’s book tour starts today! First stop is Babbling About Books, so don’t forget to stop by and check it out when it’s up. If you come hang out on the tour, there are some gift cards up for grabs. You can see the whole tour schedule on this post.

And don’t forget about the Goodreads giveaway. That’s going on until March 26th!

I’m also guest posting at the ROW80 blog today, so don’t forget to stop by there too!

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I’ve often told myself that writer’s block doesn’t exist. It’s just fear, or in my case, it’s my subconscious telling me that I’ve gone the wrong direction. I’ve been stalled on the sequel to Off Her Game for months. I’ve restarted it six times. But somehow in working on Off Her Game’s release, it started to become real to me, and I started getting excited about the sequel again. But at the same time, I’m afraid to try to write it again, in case I run into the same problems.

This has had me stopping to look at my issue with this book closer. Why am I blocked on it? Why am I terrified to write it?

Seriously. The writer’s muse is a fickle, fragile being. It’s sensitive and spooked easily, so we have to guard it, feed it, and help it to grow on its own if we want it to continue to work with us. So what can we as writers do to help our muse?

Give it time to recuperate.

Yeah, I’m guilty of this. I push myself super hard. All the time. I always feel like I’m falling behind. I wear All The Hats and I have to do All The Things. But this week, with finals and the release for Off Her Game and the blog tour, I just stopped writing. I’m so frazzle-brained right now that I just couldn’t work. And that’s partially why I’m sitting here blogging instead of actually writing.

We’re supposed to blog and tweet and write guest posts… I’ve written 14 of them this month, plus interviews and wrote up my Off Her Game release newsletter (which will go out next week). All those things take up some level of creativity, and brain power.

So what to do? Find a balance. I’ll admit, I shut down on blogging this month because I just didn’t have the brain power to do it. It sucks, because I do enjoy blogging. But I couldn’t handle it. I also cut out writing, which isn’t the best thing I could have done. Writing is my job, and it needs to come first. I need to remember this lesson for the next time I pile on All The Things.

Stop scaring the poor thing.

I said before, our muse is a fragile being. It spooks easy. Putting pressure on creativity can make a muse go into hiding. Some people LOVE the pressure of a deadline. But for me, and others like me, it’s detrimental. Failure makes me want to hide. It does not make me want to write. So the fear of failure or missing that deadline makes me want to crawl under a rock.

It took someone else showing me that I didn’t have as many deadlines as I thought I did. Most of it was self-imposed. And because of those pressures, I got the fear of failure.

I go through a phase where I hate the book I’m writing. Hate it. I think that it’s not good enough, that it’s never going to work… The characters suck and it was an unrealistic idea… It passes, but in the moment, fear reigns.

The muse does not like this.

What can we do as writers to combat this?

Write for YOU first. Draft the story that you want to read. This is your story. Your characters. Your world. They exist because of YOU. So stuff that inner editor in a box and duct tape it shut. Let the magic happen. Write the story. And worry about Inner Editor and First Readers and Critique Partners and whoever else later.

So now let’s talk about you. Have you ever had a serious block on writing? Have you ever abused your muse so much that it flipped you off and ran away? How do you nurture it and make it work for you?

Blog tour that is. Off Her Game comes out ONE WEEK from tomorrow. So if you’re wondering why I’ve been radio silent here on the blog, that’s why. Because I just hustled a bunch of guest posts out the door for other folks, answered some interviews for others.

Oh, and in case you missed it this week, I sat on the Book Tart’s interview couch and played mad libs. She also kindly reviewed Off Her Game, which was totes awesome of her.

I’m so ready for this book to be out there, y’all.

I’ve been working non-stop to get it out the door. And as soon as I think I’m done, something else comes up that I need to do for it.

Honestly, I’m ready to sit back and let it find its way into readers’ hands. I hope they love it. Because I truly love this book and I want to see it do well.

And with seeing pre-order trends, it seems that some people are ready to love it too. I can’t wait. I’m ready. At least that’s what I’m telling myself until it’s actually in people’s hands. Then I’ll just hide from the world.

Okay, so, here’s the tour schedule. Come see me and keep me company each day.

3/18 – Babbling About Books

3/19 – The Reading Café

3/20 – Books, Books & More Books

3/21 – Jeep Diva

3/22 – My Secret Romance

3/23 – Happily Ever After Reads

3/24 – Ramblings From This Chick

3/25 – Riverina Romantics

3/26 - Scenes From A Chaotic Mind

3/26 –  United by Books

3/27 – Reading Between The Wines

3/28 – Scorching Book Reviews

3/29 – Book Lovin’ Mamas

3/30 – Cocktails and Books

3/31 – Book Monster Reviews

Oh, and I’m doing a giveaway of 4 Amazon or Barnes and Noble gift cards. You can enter below starting the first day of the tour. But make sure you come hang out at the different blogs this week. It’s going to be fun!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

I’m gonna get all serious on you guys for a minute. I want to talk about self-publishing and what I’ve learned over the last three months or so. Because as much as I researched the process before I started, I’ve learned so much more since I did it.

One of the best things I’ve learned is that I’m now wearing all the hats, and it’s just like any other business that a person owns. Those that self-publish have to be entrepreneurial. They have to see this as a business and make business decisions without their hearts getting involved. This is hardest for me, because I love every one of my books, and I don’t want to make decisions that will harm any of them.

All authors run their own business, whether they are traditionally published, self-published, or e-published. I think this is the fact that easily gets lost. Many new writers think about seeing their book on the shelf and being able to write all day, but even a traditionally pubbed author will say… They have to take care of business sometime.

Those that write by definition are small business owners. Or maybe aspiring business owners if they don’t yet have work out there for the public. But it’s never too soon to treat it like a business. But that’s a post for another day. Today, I just want to talk about a few of the hats that authors need to wear.

Writer

Obviously, this is clear. You need a product. You need a good product that is the best there is. Self-publishing is not a shortcut to writing. You still need to put out the best book you can.

Editor

This goes along with above. Edit. Re-edit. Budget for edits, if you’re self-publishing. Barter for services if you can’t afford it. Get a content edit. Get it copyedited. Proofread. Your book is the product.

Formatter

You can find a decent formatter for pretty cheap. I didn’t expect it to take as long as it did originally. I’m pretty tech-savvy, and I’m familiar with HTML languages and CSS. But still, it took several days, and that wasted time i didn’t have. So, I made the decision that while I CAN format, it might be prudent to hire someone else to do it for me.

·     Cover designer – Figure out your cover design as well as overall book design. Even if you can’t do it yourself, try to learn about covers, find out what looks good and what doesn’t – placement, fonts, colors, jacket copy – and know your book enough to figure out what concept you want. Whether you pay someone or not – you need to know how to define quality work.
Cover Designer
I could go on and on about cover design, but this is my field. Right now, this is what pays the bills over the writing. Someday that might change, but for now, that’s how it is. If you’re writing a series, you need to think about how you’re going to brand that series. Each book needs to have a similar look and feel to it. You need to research your genre, see what looks good, and know the basic concept that will sell your book for you. Whether you pay someone else to do the cover or not, you need to know how to define quality work. A bad cover will tank your sales more than any other tool in your publishing inventory.
Project management
Those are ugly words. I know. But you do have a budget and a timeline, or you should. Courtney Milan had an awesome post on profit/loss statements that every author should read before publishing a title. You need to take advertising costs, cover designers, editors, websites, swag all into account. I have an overall Profit/Loss Statement for my business, and one for each single title.
Distribution
This is tricky. If you have the time to go to every retailer individually, great! The more the better. But even big publishing companies use a distributor. I thought about the time involved, and how many titles I’m eventually planning on having out, and I just didn’t have the time to mess with uploading separately to retailers. So I signed with an ebook distributor, and now when I need to change the file, I upload once, email my customer service rep and let him know. It takes about 2 weeks to filter through all the channels.

But ebooks aren’t all you need to think about. While they might be the “wave of the future” print books are still very much revered. Will you be going POD or small print runs? Where are your books on consignment, what libraries have them? How many copies will you need for upcoming conventions and conferences?
Accountant
You need to know what money you have coming when. Some are daily checkers. I’m not. I might check once a week if I’m curious. But I always know what money from what retailer I’m getting when. I know when my distributor pays out and I know how many units I’m getting paid for. You’ll also need to find out the best way to manage your taxes. And while I’ve been handling this myself, that might change when my business gets to a certain point.
Don’t forget to research

This process is fraught with complications. It’s important to have time to get online and find the answers to your questions in a timely manner. There is no detailed guide. It’s your business. It’s also important to keep up with the market changes, because it will affect your business.

More hats?

Of course there are more. Marketing, Social Networking, lawyer, problem solver… Being a multi-tasker is exhausting. Time management (which I’m still learning) will help out immensely.

All of these hats can be hard to manage, especially if you have a family. Then you have even more hats: Mom, Dad, Friend, Wife, Husband, Chef, Chaffeur…

You’re running a business now.  Don’t get taken in by the many people who say writing is an art. Yes, it is, but if you don’t eventually put that business hat on, who will see your art?

Goodreads Book Giveaway


Off Her Game
by Suzan Butler

Giveaway ends March 26, 2013.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter to win

 

This week’s retro quote is here! I hope you guys are enjoying them as much as I did making them.

“She was losing herself here. With every magical touch of his lips, she was losing more of her resolve.” –Off Her Game, coming March 25, 2013.

You can pre-order Off Her Game at Barnes and Noble right now!

Can you guys believe it’s almost the end of February? I’m going crazy here.

Here’s another teaser for Off Her Game!

“Everything about him overwhelmed her. The warmth of his body, the soft scent of his cologne. The world vanished in light of him.” –Off Her Game, coming March 25, 2013.

You can pre-order Off Her Game at Barnes and Noble right now!

I’m been super busy lately, guys, and I haven’t really had time to blog much. I’ve also been skipping both my Healthier Me checkins and my ROW80 checkins. I feel like a bad author. But then I think about why I started Slow Blogging, and I realize that it’s okay I don’t have all that time to blog. I don’t want to burn myself out in a place that should be about who I am as a person, and a place that I enjoy coming to play at.

So what have I been up to?

Most importantly, I’ve been gearing up for Off Her Game‘s release next month. The paperback is ready to go, and let me tell you. That was a crazy formatting time! It’s not hard, but it was tedious and very detailed work. I had to redo both the cover and the interior several times until I ordered the proof, and then all of a sudden, there were numerous errors. So I needed to reformat the interior and then transfer the changes back to the ebook so all the version were the same.

The experiment

The other thing I’ve been doing is that I’ve been trying to get Off Her Game up in all the places that I can for pre-order. I’m not sure how much difference it will make on the first week of sales. I’m not a super seller being a relatively new published author, but heck, I’ll take whatever boost I can.

I’m putting a lot into this book, because I really believe that it’s awesome, and I want everyone to read it. There is a blog tour coming up, but I don’t have a confirmed schedule yet. I’ll let you know. I’ll post it here, probably.

Appearances

That word looks so weird to me. Appearances. Like I’m someone important. Anyway, I’ll be at the Dreamin in Dallas conference this year at the end of March. This is a writing conference put on by the Dallas Area Romance Writers, a chapter of RWA. But what’s super exciting for me is that I’ll be signing copies of Off Her Game there. The booksigning is public and on Friday night, so come by and see me.

And I think that’s all I got right now. I’ll update if I can think of anything else.

What have you guys been up to?

 

Here’s this week’s retro quote! Don’t forget to check out the current teaser for this week, too!

“His aftershave tickled her nose, her heart thudded as he came closer. Their lips touched, gently, almost like he was afraid she’d push him away.” –Off Her Game, coming March 25, 2013.

You can pre-order Off Her Game at Barnes and Noble right now!

Here’s another teaser quote for you! Don’t forget you can pre-order Off Her Game at Barnes and Noble right now!

“Darren’s sweatpants hung low on his hips. His torso looked like it had been chiseled out of marble. This was such a mistake.” –Off Her Game, coming March 25, 2013.

 

Here’s this week’s Retro Quote of the Day!

“Without thinking, he touched his fingertips to her cheek. She flinched but didn’t push him away. He brushed his thumb over her cheekbone. Her skin was as soft as he’d thought.”  –Off Her Game, coming March 25, 2013