I hate writer's block.  It's the bane of my existence.  It reminds me how much of an emotional process it is to bring a novel into reality.  If it were simply a matter of sitting at my desk for eight hours like a typical nine to five job, then life would be easier.  Fact of the matter is, creativity is a fickle creature.  It will play with you in grassy fields through scores of daisies, only to leave you an hour later when it wants to hide away in some unknown destination it has never told you of.  Creativity is the engine and when it stalls, you're left out in the cold.  I've tried long and hard to temper my emotions with discipline, but being a rather free minded person to begin with, it's been a rather hard road.  However, today I think I came across an idea that has appeared to have helped me, and could possibly bolster your writing career as well.

I've written three books so far so it seems like it would be weird that I've only just now come up with a sure-fire strategy to overcome writer's block.  Truth be told, I wrote my three Go books and my book on South Korea relatively quickly.  Writer's block did not have a chance to sneak up on me because my emotions were running high.  I was in a trance like state.  I simply HAD to get my thoughts down to paper, because the sooner I did, the sooner I could start telling people about my love of the game of Go.  Plus, I really felt I had hit upon a new way of teaching the game that would appeal to people outside of the usual suspects.  Yes, I did do it for the thought of receiving accolades, but that is not bad in and of itself.  Everyone loves to be acknowledged, and while it's always a good idea to keep oneself grounded in reality (after all, I don't expect to be J.K. Rowling any time soon) it's also good to build yourself up in your own mind and create a future where you'll be congratulated for doing such a great job.  It lends some buoyancy to your self esteem and keeps your excitement level at a good and sustainable level.  

For my next book, which I'm almost finished with, I had the excitement of doing NaNoWriMo to carry me through and push me to churn out thousands of words a day.  I finished the 50,000 word requirement, but the book was far from finished. It's a fantasy novel set in a land I invented while playing Dungeons and Dragons with some friends from college.  It has a typical set of adventurers: A paladin, a bard, a thief, and a priest.  I like to think the plot is fun and has some twists and turns.  I do really love the book, but it was the excitement of succeeding at NaNoWriMo that put me in my chair every evening.  I would fall in and out of love with different parts of the story, but it was the carrot at the end of the stick that pushed me to write more and more each day and focus my discipline.  After NaNoWriMo was over, I put the book down for over a month and found it hard to muster the energy to really go from third base to home.  Tonight, I've set about it again and I really have hit on how to keep myself going: control my level of excitement and maintain my positive thoughts.

Positive thoughts are like mental gasoline.  Envisioning yourself at a book signing, or perhaps being interviewed on television are great ways to boost your self esteem and give yourself that much needed lift to get through any rough spot in your writing.  Sure, none of that may ever happen.  Really though, who cares?  It's your imagination, and you wouldn't be a writer if your visual muscles weren't up to par.  Imagining your success, imagining yourself as an esteemed writer with all of the accolades and praise that comes with it is a great way to fuel yourself to keep writing. Everyone needs a carrot.  Sure, I know many people do it for the fun of it, as a side exercise to test their mental acuity or to explore their creative side.  To these people I say: fantastic!  That is your sponsoring emotion, the force that helps you progress to wherever you want to go.  That is the fuel for your engine, and might I add, a great elixir of the many to choose from.  For me, it is relishing my success and contributing something that other people will enjoy that helps me get through the rough patches, and focusing on that has proven my greatest weapon against my harshest foe: myself. 

So, Amazon has this new program where you publish one of your titles exclusively with them and they let people "borrow" your book.  You can still sell your book, but you're pretty much limited to the Kindle.  You can't even sell your book on your own blog, website, or through Smashwords or through Barnes and Noble.  Your royalties are based on how many people "borrow" your book during a set period of time.  Amazon puts forth a big pot of money, and then your percentage of total books borrowed is taken from this pot.  It sounds exciting at first, especially with all those big numbers, but...

For authors who aren't famous and do not yet have a fan base, this isn't all that appealing.  You need as many ways to get as many customers as possible.  Every little bit counts.  Sure, Amazon has the largest market share by far.  I sell probably 90% of my e-books through Amazon.  However, I wouldn't want to close down my own website, remove my books from my blog, and not sell on the Nook just to take part in this program.  If very few people know and trust me as an author, there is little chance they would borrow my book.  I looked at what books they have and I see nothing but big name authors and really famous works.  I've done decently with my Go books (I've sold about 3,000 so far), but I'm not ready to go toe-to-toe with "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People."  That's not happening in the near future.  I've heard some arguments that this program might be good for new authors to get someone to read their work when they otherwise might not spring for it.  If that is the case, I could give my book away free and get promotion that way; I don't really see the difference.  The exclusivity is the downside for me. 

I also feels that this unnecessarily disadvantages people who don't have Kindles.  I don't own an e-book reader, but there are a lot of them, and I wouldn't want someone not to be able to read my book because of their preference in devices.  There are probably plenty of reasons why people do not buy Kindles, and I don't want to disadvantage them when I'm trying to get a fan base going.  For me, the program is rather unappealing.  I can see if you're Michael Lewis or Richard Dawkins that this program would be up your alley.  It essentially lets people who already know of your book to finally give you a try, especially if they've been meaning to but haven't got around to it.  For those of us who are still in the background, trying to shine brighter than say, Stephen Covey, is not going to happen without a lot of luck.  I'd like to hear other people's opinions on this program.  Maybe it would be a good way to get one's foot in the door with new readers?  What do you think?

If you haven't heard by now I am participating in National Novel Writing Month, also known as NaNoWriMo.  It is a month long challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in the space of 30 days.  It's a highly popular event, with thousands of people participating.  I've written books before, but I felt that adding a time limit to myself would increase the challenge, and, if I were to succeed, feel great!  So far, I'm 21,000 words into my novel with 22 days to go, so I'm making excellent progress so far. 

My story is based on a Dungeons and Dragons campaign I played with a group of four friends a few years ago.  I was the Dungeon Master, and we played several long sessions over the course of many weeks.  They are excited to have their characters novelized, and I'm excited to finally put the story to paper.  So sure, I had most of the plot worked out, but since we played so long ago, I only remember general plot arcs and some specific scenes, so I still feel I am writing a novel mostly from scratch.  I started off really strong by writing 5,000 words on the first day.  I do a lot of writing on this blog, for my go books, and elsewhere, so sitting down and knocking out 5-7k words in one sitting has gotten markedly easier, even if I'm doing something entirely creative as opposed to a factual based analysis.  

There is already a ton on this subject, but I thought I'd throw my two cents in.  My experience with e-books was fairly unique due to the subject matter of the "So You Want to Play Go?" series.  I was writing about a game the average person had never seen or heard about, so I didn't have a lot of competition.  When I first released my books on the Kindle, there were no other books on Go in e-book format.  Cha-Ching!  However, I did pressure the other authors to convert their books to E-book form.  There had been a few books written by Western authors on the game, but after a few months, there were a ton (and by a ton, I mean six).  Being the only one in my class for awhile was great and I was selling between 50-100 units per month.  Once competition set in, I had a much harder time, as the other books had been out for years and were well known. 

My books were originally priced at $9.99.  I know, unthinkable in the age of 99 cent McE-books.  However I put a lot of work into my book and I wanted to be paid for it.  Besides, it wasn't a tawdry romance novel or the latest thriller.  It was a fairly long book filled with diagrams, and I felt I did a pretty good job of teaching people the strategies of Go.  Well, my customers felt $9.99 was a fair price.  Although something in the back of my mind started to gnaw at me.  I began to imagine invisible customers, browsing through amazon, and then turning up their noses at the high price.  Still, as long as the 50-100 some odd buyers came in, I made a decent monthly income, and I could buy the more expensive Ramen at the grocery store.  Then, the competition came.

First off, I was flattered at the way they priced their books. You know how on the Price is Right, there is always that last contestant who is completely asinine and bets 1 dollar above the second to last contestant just to seal their fate?  I loved the one time that didn't work, and the price came out to be exactly the price the third person set.  I assume the producers on that show were feeling capricious that day.  Anyways, the other Go themed e-books set their price from 50 cents to a dollar under mine.  I freaked out, and decided that I would start a vicious price war.  I would slash my prices to a nub, then watch as the invisible purchasers would smash through my door and leave my competition impoverished in the streets!  Yes, I would come out on top.  My Go books were superior, and now, I would get all the people who were on the fence!  So I slashed my prices, in half.  I know.  My ego kind of got in the way, and I hated the fact that the more famous Go book priced his 50 cents beneath mine.  I wanted to do more than pull the rug out from under the competition, I wanted to annihilate the floor. 

Well, I did destroy something, my revenues.  My price change did not result in more customers.  Quite the contrary, I've only had 45 some odd customers this week, when in previous months I could count on at least 70.  The difference is stark.  Without the added customers to make up for the revenue difference, my royalties are going to be a pittance, a faint glimmer of their former glory.  I've been trying to wrack my brain to figure out what happened.  I ran into a wall.  There are too many variables!  Perhaps September is a slow month for people buying E-books.  Maybe my earlier success had been to Go related events I was not privvy too.  Only recently did I find out that the Wall Street Journal did a video on the game.  That would garner interest in the game and might prompt people to go to Amazon in search of books.  WSJ could've given me customers and advertising, and I had been none the wiser!  I haven't done a whole lot by myself to try and advertise, as I just limit myself to twitter and any other free avenue, but there are hundreds of places where people could be learning about Go, and my book would pop up! 

Lowering my prices did not result in more sales, but I have no if it would be okay to jack them back up to $9.99.  I kind of want  to, but at the same time, I had a few reviews on Goodreads saying that the books were great, and because of the price, there was no reason not to get them.  A great compliment, but would that make up for the lost revenue?  I can't eat nice words.  I think my little experiment is over.  If I turn the price back to $9.99, then no would notice, and I'd be able to get away without angering customers.  If I wait too long, then people who were making plans to purchase my book, or who had heard about my book from a friend, might come to Amazon and see a jacked up price (from their perspective).  It's best to just sweep this experiment under the rug. 

So far I've been doing a lot of technical stuff, talking about how to create a cover or get your manuscript edited and ready for the presses.  Today we'll talk more about style and how to make your story sing with superior story structure.  Your reader has to connect with your book.  Human beings are well equipped for this, as our emotions are there, ready and waiting to be plucked by a skilled musician.  However, we can be fickle creatures.  A great chase is thrilling and gripping, but it has to end on the right note.  We love to watch two characters explore their romance and develop a strong bond, but we eventually want there to be some closure to the story.  You never want your reader to lose interest, or feel in some way the train of their emotions has derailed, leaving the passengers to scramble for safety before the eventual explosion.  That's why today, we're going to talk about pacing.

Your story shouldn't move too fast, and definitely not too slowly.  Pacing is best understood when you watch an action movie.  Great action movies wonderfully embody many elements of a good story: an interesting plot hook, lots of explosions and eye popping effects, and great one-liners.  Even with all of these features, an action movie is terrible if the pacing is off.  If the characters solve a problem too easily, then they seem superhuman and unreal.  If they take too long to resolve the oncoming danger, then the viewer is left in a state of anxiousness or nervousness for too long and can feel drained.  Action movies require quick pacing with down time for character development and planning, so watching a lot of action movies can give you that sixth sense you need for pacing.

Take Commando, for instance.  By all accounts this movie is terrible.  The plot is weak and the movie writers just rely on unique ways of killing people and Arnold to sell their movie.  However I love Commando.  I can never get enough of it.  No, it's not just Arnold holding two submachine guns while blowing away hundreds of third world Central American mercenaries.  It's the fact you always get your fix right on time.  Sure, you need exposition to move the story along.  However, always notice that action is always well placed.  If Arnold has spent too much time talking to the heroine, we can always cue a bad guy to come in and present a challenge.  Arnold will then blow said bad guy away in amazing fashion, while at the same time moving the story along and giving the viewer his reward for sticking with the story.  At no point in the movie do you find yourself thinking "Man, I wish someone would explode so this would get interesting."  The story writers knew when it was time for the bad guy to blow up.

This example may be facetious, but I really think that movies can help you gain a sense of timing.  You don't want your story to drag.  You most certainly do not want it to go too quickly!  This is the common lament of writers.  You have all of  these wonderful scenes and plot points dancing in your head, but it feels like your characters reach those points too quickly.  Oftentimes, this is because you do not add enough conflict in the interim to make your story gripping.  Let's say Detective Stoneface is tracking down "Silhouette", a sexy Parisian master thief.  You figure that Detective Stoneface will ambush Silhouette at the Louvre, setting a trap for her there by using a really large African diamond as bait.  Well, this is a really great plot point.  What you don't want, though, is for Silhouette to break into the Louvre, and get immediately captured by the Detective.  I mean, if the main character comes up with a brilliant plan, then by all means, the reader should share in his joy.  However, no one gets excitement out of a villain who is too easily caught.  Silhouette should instead prove to be far stealthier than Detective Stoneface ever thought possible, breaking through all the security systems, and outfoxing him to gain her prize.  Sure, maybe Silhouette could have incidentally left a small clue that would eventually lead to her capture, but simply taking her into custody so early in the story is not going to sell a lot of books. 

You should always mix up your scenes and provide interesting complications.  If your main characters make plans, come up with ways that intervening variables could come in, and show how they deal with what they could not have planned for.  Try to keep secrets!  There's nothing more satisfying to a reader than solving the mystery ahead of the main character.  Leave nuggets for your reader to find, and let your characters keep their own secrets to reveal them later.  Sure, Detective Stoneface could have told the Chief that Silhouette was aiming to kill the Chief later, but then he would lose the chief as bait.  This adds some mystery, and also helps you fill in spaces if you think your story is moving along too fast. 

Usually the biggest amount of money I shell out for a book is to get it edited.  This is kind of the one area where you cannot skimp on.  If you go live with your book, and it has poor grammar, haphazard punctuation, and fifth grade spelling, then it doesn't matter how gripping the plot is or how rich the characters are; your reader will be turned off.  You cannot edit your own work.  I know some people swear they can.  They spend long hours poring over their work, checking every sentence and stand vigilant against split infinitives.  I'm sure with enough elbow grease this works.  For many of us, though, we're too engrossed in our own work.  When I read what I wrote, I don't see the works and sentences as they are, I see them as I want them.  For me, my book is a mental movie that plays out before me.  I am simply transcribing the events as they happened in my fantasy world.  The words are representative of those images, so it's easy not to see easy spelling mistakes or grammar.  Usually the word processor will smooth things over, and a quick scan will remove all of the "there/their/they're" mistakes that one can make when typing fast.  However, even with all of that editing, you still can miss a whole lot.

When I first came out with "So You Want to Play Go? Level 1" I was really proud of myself.  I did the cover myself, and spent some hours putting in the word to edit my work.  I started getting good reviews, but I got some bad reviews from other readers who were not used to my conversational style and felt slighted as readers for all of my capitalization/punctuation mistakes.  I thought I had the kinks worked out.  Then I got a slap in the face.  My readers loved the content of the book, but they felt I hadn't edited the work and that it was sub par.  I felt this had affected my sales, and having a review like that was like the mark of Cain.  I began fretting over all of the sales I had possibly lost at appearing amateurish.  Sure, I didn't get my book edited, but having it professionally done was out of my price range. I was a student with a part time job and paying my own rent.  There was no way I could sink that much money into editing. 

I dusted myself off, and eventually found a way out.  I had to relearn punctuation and grammar.  I learned in grammar school like everyone else, but the age of email, texting, and an overall de-emphasis on quality writing can leave one with a lack of good punctuation and grammar.  I had to relearn the rules for commas, for capitalization, and some other rules I didn't know existed.  Since I could not go to a professional service that would charge anywhere from $30-50 easily, I relied on friends.  One of my friends is an English major and she was kind enough to charge me way below the market rate to edit my books.  She did a bang up job.  Through the editing process, I learned a lot about proper format and punctuation.  What this did for me was to prevent these mistakes in the future.  Future manuscripts came out much better. 

If you are having problems getting an editor, or if the price is restrictive, then having a friend edit your work is a great idea.  If that is not an option, you can go to your local library or university.  There are plenty of students willing to do the work for far less than the professional rate and are every bit as capable.  Sure, a lot of editors advertise that they know what publishers want.  They know the ins and outs of what that editor looking at your manuscript with their dark black, thick framed glasses wants.  To be honest, if you read with any frequency, which I assume most writers have, then you already have a sense of what's out there.  If you need to keep up with what's hot in contemporary publishing, then look no further than the internet.  A lot of what editors claim they can, besides be glorified spell/grammar checkers, is something that you can replicate, or even better, go your own way.  There are free online grammar and style checkers as well, that can do a lot of the heavy lifting.

As far as style...well, we can save that for another post.  It would go well into the night regardless!

Do you do a lot of prep work before you start your next great epic?  Do you write out an outline of your story, take time to flesh out your characters, and jot down great plot twists and interesting ideas?  For new writers, these are big questions.  I didn't for a long time.  I used to write straight out.  I would dance from idea to idea.  I would write out a scene until I was no longer interested, then jump ahead.  I still do this a lot, mainly because I have to maintain my interest level in my piece to make sure that I can stay on course.  However, once I started to outline my work and do a lot of thinking before the main event, the entire process would go a lot smoother.  I don't want to sound like your fifth grade teacher here...wait...maybe I do. 

In fifth grade I had an excellent English teacher who fostered the idea that I should write.  Her name was Ms. Elliot.  She was the quintessential school teacher.  She always dressed conservatively in long dresses, had her hair held back, and had a great love for the children she taught.  We had an English class where she discussed how to prepare to write a long piece of prose.  I usually looked forward to those assignments.  I already wrote for fun at home on my mother's word processor.  That thing had soul.  You would type out everything, and then you would instruct the machine to print.  It would start typing everything out, and I used to love the sound of the keys hitting the paper.  I would write short stories that were 5-10 pages long, so Ms. Elliot's assignments were cake walks.  I'd easily do three or four times what she asked for because it was enjoyable.  One day, she showed us how to write a short outline, then asked us to come back to class the next day with an outline.  I came back with the story already done, but no outline.  Ms. Elliot then showed me how an outline can strengthen one's story, even if you can just pop one out of your head.

An outline can help you catch problems in the plot or story before they come up.  Nothing is worse than writing fifty some odd pages of prose, only to have a great idea for a plot point, but nowhere to put it that makes sense or doesn't disturb the flow of the story.  This way, you avoid plot holes and outright contradictions.  Working that out beforehand will keep you from running into those snags.  If you think that it'd be great if the protagonist were to go turncoat, and betray his friends to switch sides and strike it out on his own, then that's a great twist.  However, if doing that stops the story, you might want to have that twist already planned out, as well as the subsequent story.  Plots that run out of gas will leave your reader confused or bored. 

Flesh out your characters.  Your characters should be treated like real flesh and blood characters. They should almost have a life of their own.  They should have dreams, aspirations, likes, dislikes, and back stories.  I'm not saying write a documentary fit for the Biography channel, but at least think about it.  I usually do a half page writeup on any characters I am going to work with.  If I get the inspiration for a new character during the course of writing out the story, I take a break to work him/her/it out.  What does your main character like?  Is he/her a jazz fan?  If they're a jazz fan, maybe they have a favorite spot to hang out to hear their favorite singer.  Maybe they go there to see their favorite singer to be seduced, only to have their advances slapped away.  The secondary effect of fleshing your characters out this way is that it can help you with developing the plot of the story.  If your character is especially paranoid and distrustful, then you can easily add some flavor to the stories by painting other characters in a paranoid light.  Whenever your main character meets someone new, he can scrutinize them.  You can paint even the most innocuous acts as sinister in some way.  It can really flavor your writing and set it apart from others in your genre.

An outline is also key to speeding up the process of producing your first draft.  A good outline is the best cure for writer's block.  If the action slows down, and the scene seems to just drag on and on, refer back to your outline and see where the next plot point is.  You know the goal, so just keep writing until you can logically connect the two.  For example, if one point is that  the main character steals the Jade Statue of Emperor Zhang, and the next point is meeting a potential buyer in a dark alleyway, a lot can happen in between those two events!  If you start to lose focus after he steals the statue, you can invent all sorts of great difficulties for him to overcome.  Maybe there is someone else after the same statue?  Maybe the local crime boss is waiting outside of the cave to spring a trap, taking the statue after the main character has done all of the hard work?  Maybe the main character receives a phone call, warning him of the shadowy buyer he will be meeting to pawn the statue off on.  The sky is the limit, and knowing that you will eventually go from point B to point C, will help you develop interesting ideas while you're building that bridge.