Remembering the plan

A Gift of Ghosts is on Addicted to EBooks today. (Scroll down. No, more. No, way down. Wow, there are a lot of books in the world, aren't there?)

I'm trying to remind myself that I'm not supposed to worry about marketing this book. It's available for sale, and that's all that needs to happen right now for it to feel like a success to me. Right now I need to be writing Thoughts. If I want to get distracted by another book, I should let it be the one that comes after Thoughts. Sales success isn't the point, not yet.

And yet, it's easy to think that. At the moment, it's impossible to feel it. I have six reviews on Amazon, two from fictionpress readers, two from Critique Circle readers and two from friends & family. I love all of them. Each one makes me happy, each one gives me little bubbles of joy when I look at it. I have no idea why it's such a big deal. Ghosts had 140 reviews on fictionpress, at least of dozen of which were from the final chapter, so about the whole book. But there's something really different -- oh. Ha. I just realized. It's the stars. Oh, I'm amused at myself. Five stars feels like an A, and of course, that external locus of validation training springs to the surface. Getting As just feels good.

Ironically, I picked up my final paper for one of my classes yesterday and the person who graded it gave me a 3/5 for writing quality because I used first person and she felt that was inappropriate.I was annoyed until I realized that if someone had said to me, "You can use passive voice and get an A or you can refuse to use passive voice and get a B," I would have taken the B. And since this wasn't a difference between an A or a B (I still got an A on the paper), I should probably not complain too much. I wouldn't write badly for a better grade.

But back to my point, it's much harder than I expected it to be to let go of Ghosts.  I'm trying to tell myself to just let it be, but I found myself browsing indie reviewer book websites this morning.

Updated: Dean Wesley Smith  tells me to get back to work. Just what I needed to hear today!

Razor Productions

When I filled out the form to submit my book to Amazon, there was a space for publisher. Duh. Obvious question. Why hadn't I thought about it? I had a choice, of course: I could leave it blank or I could name a publisher.

I went with Razor Productions. Back when I was a single mom with a ten-month-old baby and I quit my job -- an act that seemed highly irresponsible and yet entirely irresistible -- my plan was that I'd take the year I had enough money for and figure out the rest later. When I was down to $10,000 in savings, I'd start looking for another job. But meanwhile, I'd enjoy the time I had to spend with the fattest, smiliest, happiest Gerber baby that ever there was.

I lasted over three years freelancing before I had to take a real job. Three years that I mostly got to spend with a baby, toddler, preschooler, watching him grow and learn and become. And wow, the talking? It was just the coolest thing ever. I tried to count his words as he learned them, but between 18 months and 21 months, they multiplied at such a phenomenal rate. He was learning new words faster than I could write them down.

My freelance name was RaZoR Productions: it stood for Rory Zane Rafferty, and although I fully supported us with writing and editing, my big production was definitely the happy kid.

So I made it my publisher name. And I decided that if this writing business actually makes sense, maybe I'll make it official and set up a business and all that. But meanwhile, if you followed the author link to find out whether this is a legit publisher, your suspicions are exactly right. It's not. It's just a name.

Published

I think I just published my book.
What a weird feeling.

Part of me is sure that something's wrong with it: it's going to turn out to be the wrong file, or there will be mistakes that I didn't catch, or making the company name "General Directions" will get the owners of "Global Dynamics" mad at me . . . and that's just the typical stuff of being a high anxiety person. If any of those things happen, I'll deal with them, and it won't be the end of the world.

Another part of me sort of desperately wants to cry. This year has been the worst year ever. Cancer, heart attacks, death on all sides -- we've barely recovered from one blow when the next one hits. And through it all, I kept writing. I don't know what the crying is from: I guess I am both proud of myself and really sad that my mom isn't here to be proud of me, too. She would have been, though.

It is strange that I outlined Ghosts eleven months ago, and thought I was writing a light, fluffy romance. I don't think it turned out that way. Still, it's amazing to me that right now, having read the whole thing at least a dozen times in the past week, I still love it. I love my quirky physicist heroine who is mostly a coward and doesn’t believe in happy-ever-after. I love my easygoing, videogame-playing flirt of a hero who grows up despite himself. I love my plot which has nothing to do with people being stupid and everything to do with people making discoveries. I love the secrets I’ve hidden, the details that readers find out 80% of the way in, that make them say, “Wait, what?”

I should probably write a longer blurb for it, and maybe I will. But maybe I'll give it a month.

And meanwhile, Dillon is waiting for me. But first, laundry (I think it's been a month!), dishes, planning for Christmas cookies, and finishing putting up the Christmas tree. Eh, and maybe checking on my Bitizens. My tiny tower won't run itself

Minor tweaks

Tweaks. A few font changes, including playing with the shadow effect on the title to make it pop. I'm hoping to get it readable in a thumbnail, but since that's hard to judge in Powerpoint, I have to look at it online to be sure. Is this boring anyone else yet?

Getting close

I have the one big revision to do and I'm going to tackle that tomorrow. Then I'll start the read aloud, which ought to be fun. Then a copyright page, then deciding whether to learn how to create a real TOC for the Kindle. It seems as if it might be a good idea but I don't know whether anyone cares. Still, learning is useful.

Today was playing with cover files, though. I believe my preference is number 3. Maybe, anyway. I wish I didn't start to get so insane about the fonts. Powerpoint just doesn't have the right tools for them.

Credit where due

I just spent a frustrating hour searching for the image that I used on the Ghosts cover. I think I've basically decided that it is the real and final cover (maybe some tweaking), and so even though the image was public domain, I wanted to credit the photographer and the website on the copyright page. Argh. Of course, I bookmarked the site, but then I lost all my bookmarks.

For future and current reference: Lightning Strike by Adam Weeden is the original image.

Following the rules

Agents don't like . . . 

If you want to sell, you should  . . . 

I've heard that it's bad to use . . .

Using (word) slows down your writing, you should always . . . , Never put . . . , You should . . . , You must . . . You have to . . .

I've so appreciated the feedback I've gotten from other writers over the last few weeks.  Really, I have. But I need to vent anyway.

When did writers become so rule-bound? How has publishing managed to inflict such an endless list of shoulds and have-tos and musts on people who want to be creative? I'm not talking about knowing the fundamentals. (Although, frankly, I'm perfectly happy to break those rules, too. Most of the time, yes, your sentences should include both a subject and a verb. But not always.) No, I'm talking about writers following rules they don't even understand. Someone's told them a "rule," and suddenly every sentence with "was" should be re-worded, even if doing so changes the meaning of the sentence. How can meaning be less important than following a nonsensical rule?

I admit, when I was an editor, I was guilty of inflicting some arbitrary rules on authors myself. I remember telling one author never to use a pronoun. But his sentences were getting tangled. Forcing him to think about the real noun behind every "it" helped him clarify his meaning, and in some cases, probably his thinking, too. And I would not have told him to write pronoun-free fiction, nor would I have tried to make it a universal rule.

I do have some of my own rules that I try to follow. Most of the time, one exclamation point per paragraph or page, because I tend to get excited. Try to change "thing" to a real noun, because using it is easy but often unclear. Use vague language, including "just," "sort of," "kind of," "pretty much," inside quotation marks, but not outside, because it makes dialog feel real but writing feel sloppy. But I know the reasons for all those rules, and I know that I can break them whenever I want to.

I think the saddest aspect of seeing all these people following all these rules is the belief behind their actions: if I follow the rules, I will sell books. If I do everything "right," I will succeed. But book publishing doesn't work that way, never has. If it did, Harry Potter would not have sold. Twilight would not have sold. Danielle Steel, Nora Roberts . . . best-selling authors break the rules. And it's not because they became best-sellers by following the rules and then started breaking them. Harry Potter breaks the rules on page one. And yes, that's why it was rejected by multiple publishers before finally getting picked up. But last year over a quarter of a million books were published in the US. Most of them made it to print, but didn't make it to success. That's because publishers don't know what sells. Not really. Neither do agents. Neither do writing teachers. Neither do I, for that matter.

I do know, though, that writing for money is a waste of time. Most people would do better by getting a minimum wage job and spending their entire paycheck on lottery tickets. (Favorite writer joke: Know the difference between writing a bestseller and winning the lottery? You can improve your chances of winning the lottery.)

Writing for fun, on the other hand, is a wonderful way to spend your time. Writing for fun and then trying to sell what you've written so that other people can enjoy the world you've created? Also makes total sense to me.

 The dog is looking imploring and she's a half hour late for her walk, so off I go. And when I come back, I'm working on Thoughts. But tomorrow, I want to write more about self-publishing.