Searching for the Creative Voice Within

I'm looking for my creative voice.  It's around here somewhere. Some days it's so loud I can't stifle it with a stuffed pillow.  And I never know what it's going to say. 

I do need that voice. A writer does not live by white-out alone.  A search warrant is in order. "Single white female in search of inventive perspective. Touch of humor and dash of whimsy essential." Too dry.

"Brazen wench seeks bizarre attitude. Prefer voice that laughs so hard it bleats." Better. 

Perhaps the voice is simply distracted today, not sure when to show up or what to do when it gets here.  I can always tell when it's having an identity crisis.  Every speck of dust in the house stands out.  They insist on obliteration; a vacuum or dust cloth will do. The dust distractors appear most often when I'm on deadline.

Wait. The voice was thinking of meditating. Damn. I hate it when it hangs out with that crowd. Comes back all mellow. No bite at all. Might as well stay in that darkened room with the silly paintings on the wall. A woman with tendrils coming out of her head. A man playing a lute as he rides a unicorn. Should be a warning sign.  "Artist on meditation, hide the paint."

But, I don't think the voice is meditating today.  I'm too calm.  It usually only mediates after we've had a disagreement.  Like the time we debated whether "The Little Engine that Could" really exists, or if it was just the author's way of trying to brainwash a couple generations of kids. I won, of course. I often do.  Then the voice pouts. Could be for just a few minutes. Sometimes for as long as a couple of days.

It comes back.  I'm convinced it misses me as much as I miss its quirky incantations. Where did I find it last time?  Ah yes. At the keyboard. Actually, I think it was hiding in the computer screen. I had finished DEP--dust elimination procedures--and tackled all the weeds in the flower garden. Thought the voice might be in with the June bugs. Couldn't think of anyplace else to look, so I just turned on that sucker, and there it was. 

"Where were you?" it asks.  "I've been waiting." 

I know its wiles.  Trying to make me forget I'm angry that it's been in hiding. 

Perhaps it's in the computer again today. I approach the contraption, sneaking up on its blind side, so the voice doesn't sense I'm coming. Once you turn on the computer, the voice can't escape.  Can still hide, of course. 

Aha! There it is.

There's always an excuse for being away.  "I've been collecting my thoughts," it says. 

"Collecting or concealing?" I ask. And we're on our way.

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Author's note: Sometimes writing a blog post is a good way to escape the creative voice. To see more about my writing, go to http://www.elaineorr.com.

Typo Avoidence Strategies

Typos are the bane of every writer’s existence, and they annoy readers. When people tell me they can't afford to hire an editor, or even a proofreader, I suggest they look for items to sell on Craigs List or have a garage sale. I'm not being a smart aleck.  Your unwanted stuff can polish your product.

Before you work with a proofreader, you'll show copies to a critique group or send several chapters to a potential agent. To reduce errors in a draft, take a look at these Typo Avoidance Tips.

1. Time and distance are your friends. The longer you let a draft sit in a drawer or in electronic limbo, the easier it is to spot errors later.
2. Stop rewriting. Yes, you want your book to be the best you can make it. But at some point the book is done. Every time you rewrite a paragraph you can make new mistakes.
3. Read slowly. You expect to see words in a certain order or names and places spelled a certain way, so that's what your brain sees and it keeps moving. If you slow down, you'll see the errors.
4. Read your book out loud. It does take a lot of time, but you are asking a reader to pay for your book. They deserve this much more of your time.
5. If your education did not include a formal grammar course, buy a book or take a community college or online course. Writing is likely your second career. Imagination may not be teachable, but a good command of the language can be learned.
6. Keep track of regular errors to better recognize them in the future. Mine include leaving off the closing quotation marks or leaving out the apostrophe in the word its when it's supposed to be a contraction. But I'm not picky, I vary the mistakes.
7. Use the search feature in your software to locate those regular errors. You won't find left-out words or missing punctuation marks, but you may see many oops items.
8. Do a paperback rough draft. If you are self-publishing, you will do a paperback via Amazon, BN, or another source. When you review a printed proof, many errors will jump out. It's worth doing an early paperback version, even if you later redo it.
9. Each device you have registered with Amazon has a Kindle address. (Look it up under "Manage Devices and Content.") Send your book to Kindle email address and it appears on your Kindle as a document (as opposed to a retail book). Just as with a paperback, your words will look different than they do on your computer, so you may spot errors more readily.

One caution. You don't want to pay attention to typos as you write those early drafts. Keep your focus on the story.
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Learn more about Elaine or her writing by visiting http://www.elaineorr.com  .

First Person Versus Distant First Person

I write all my mysteries in first person. Until now. I think. I decided to employ what I've seen referred to as distant first person for the Ancestral Sanctuary Series. What is the difference?

In the first person point of view, you are in the character's head and the character (in my case always the sleuth) refers to him or herself as "I." The reader sees the world only from that individual's perspective. I like it because I believe the mystery is stronger. No one 'tells' the reader anything. That said, most of the books I read (Beaton's Hamish Macbeth, Connelly's Harry Bosch) are in distant first person.

In distant first person, a reader still sees the world from the character's perspective, but the sleuth is referred to in the third person. The best example is my all-time favorite, the Harry Potter series. Once Harry is in a scene the story is told only from his perspective. Other times, a narrator speaks. However, that's relatively rare.

For example, In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (the U.S. title), Chapter One opens into the world of the Dursley family and closes on the street outside with Professors Dumbledore and McGonagall, and Hagrid. We know what these three are doing and some of their feelings, but it's from their actions and words, not their thoughts.

From the second chapter forward, the reader is in Harry's head only. Being in scenes without Harry lets the reader know more about what's going on beyond Hogwarts or the Dursley home. But because we don't know, for example, all that Albus Dumbledore knows, the author doesn't have to reveal everything. Readers get to solve the mysteries with Harry.

This general term for this kind of first-person writing is that we have a character's perspective but there is narrative distance. A great blog post on POV and narrative distance is one by Beth Hill.

It will take me a while to get used to writing in distant first person. In fact, a few days ago I wrote two scenes in first person. I miss it, but a different kind of writing will let me explore characters in new ways.
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To learn more about Elaine, go to elaineorr.com or sign up for her newsletter. 

In the Minds of Pets...

I enjoy having cats and dogs in my fiction -- fiction I write or that of others -- as long as they don't dominate most scenes. Only in my Mildred Mistletoe Christmas series is the story told from an animal's point of view. I believe the black cats I've owned have cast a spell on me.

When we started redoing the covers of the Jolie Gentil series, I realized that Jolie had taken care of and relied on her cat, Jazz, in every book. Jazz was her primary concern when moving into Aunt Madge's B&B at the Jersey shore (would she get along with the prune-eating dogs?). Jolie also worried that Jazz would feel overlooked after her marriage and growing family. No worries.

Thus, Jazz is featured on all the new Jolie Gentil covers. You could say she's the series glue.

Now I'm writing a new series, one that features an amateur family historian named Digger (birth name Kathy, but it was overtaken by events). Digger has a large dog named Bitsy, and her uncle Benjamin has an oversized cat that goes by Ragdoll.

The working title of the series is the Ancestral Sanctuary Series.

I'm paying more attention to where the pets are when action is underway. For example, Digger would be upset if she found a body, but so would the dog. And probably the cat, but cats won't act like anything matters.

I've been writing too slowly, so I've given myself two months to finish through first draft and one full revision. Gulp.
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To learn more about Elaine, go to elaineorr.com or sign up for her newsletter.

It's All in the Appearances

“The mystery story is two stories in one: the story of what happened and the story of what appeared to happen.”
― Mary Roberts Rinehart

The next line should be, "The great mystery writers can manipulate appearances without being dishonest with readers."

I just finished Louise Penny's book Kingdom of the Blind, an Inspector Gamache novel, which has a great premise -- the suspended head of the Sûreté du Québec finds himself drawn into the estate of someone he's never met. The elderly woman must have had her reasons for naming three seeming strangers as her executors.

Add to the requisite murder associated with the strange will is Gamache's intense need to locate a cache of drugs he's let loose on Canadians. While done in the interest of solving crimes in a prior book, the potential deaths weigh heavily on him. And the earlier decision has caused his suspension.

As I neared the end, I told a friend I knew she would enjoy it. Then the end arose and it turns out Penny had two unreliable narrators throughout the book. So, it wasn't just that what appeared to be was not. The author thought she would lie to her readers.

As much as I have enjoyed prior Gamache novels, I won't be able to read another. What's the point of being drawn into a plot when you are in a character's head but (throughout the book!) you don't know what the character knows?

A sleuth, professional or amateur, will often learn (or understand) something before the reader does, but the reader isn't kept in the dark for too long.

I wish books with the so-called unreliable narrator would have a stamp on the cover. Then I wouldn't waste my time.

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To learn more about Elaine or her writing, go to www.elaineorr.com or sign up for her newsletter. 

The Power of Persistence

When asked if one thing helped them succeed, authors are likely to mention persistence. Of course the book or poem has to be good. Much of what is written and submitted is.

When a new (or experienced) writer accepts feedback and keeps writing, they are likely to achieve what they define as success -- publishing a book, having stories appear in literary journals, being asked to read their work in a bookstore. The people who get discouraged after a bunch of rejection slips and stop writing or submitting won't get there.

Sounds simple. No magic formula, no particular writing style, just persistence -- and perhaps a teflon ego.

Today someone asked me for general advice to a new writer. Without thinking much, I dashed off the following.

My basic advice is always the same. Nothing is finished until you place your fanny in a chair and just keep at it. It's really important to get that first draft done. It will not be (cannot be) perfect, so don't take time to try to make it so. Give yourself permission to do some good rewriting, but at some point stop. If you go over the same work a lot, it can lose its edge, and you won't be doing anything new.

C'est tout.

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To learn more about Elaine or her writing, go to www.elaineorr.com or sign up for her newsletter. 

Increase Book Availability via Smashwords and BN Paperbacks

I tend to write more about writing than marketing these days. However, I had puzzled about how to reach more readers on ibooks, Kobo, and BN (via Smashwords), and have come up with something that works for me.

Many authors give away free ebooks sometimes. I decided to make the first four books of the Jolie Gentil cozy mystery series free and wait to see if it made a difference. 

These are not books I sell on Amazon -- you cannot price a book less on another site than you do on Amazon. You agree to this when you publish with KDP.

WHEN SALES INCREASED

Waiting was key. For the first few months, Smashwords reported no downloads -- keep in mind, it was free. Three months ago I saw downloads of the free book and sales of the NEXT box set began to grow on Apple. Since sales are up (I assume) my books are showing higher in Apple search results.

 Sales have also increased on Kobo and Barnes and Noble, but not as dramatically. This could be because I already had more sales on these sites. 

Pretty much the only promotion I do is regular tweeting about the free box set. I occasionally mention it in a cozy mystery Facebook group.

BN PAPERBACKS

 

I now do my books also as BN paperbacks as well as Amazon. It means people can walk into a Barnes and Noble store and staff can immediately find a book and order it. There is no independent bookstore in my town (Springfield, IL) and BN has become very supportive of local authors.

A book uses the same Library of Congress Preassigned Control Number in all paperback editions. I choose to use a different ISBN from my own company, but I believe BN gives them free for paperbacks. If you use a site's free ISBN, they are listed as the publisher. The author still holds the copyright, of course.

Books have to be priced a dollar higher than on Amazon, where I no longer do expanded distribution. They could be priced the same, but the revenue per book would be less.

BN lets you work on covers in three pieces (front, back, spine). You can create them in Microsoft Publisher or jpg, and convert/load the front and back as pdfs. They do the spine. I like this method very much.

My books are largely self-published, which is why having easy access via BN stores is so important.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

My Tarot cards and crystal ball have malfunctioned for months, so no predictions here. The experience does tell me it seems to pay to offer a free box set for Apple, BN, and Kobo -- via Smashwords. I publish some single books directly to those websites, but it's simply easier to do one big book via Smashwords. You only fix the epub once if there are errors.

Caveat. Free books used to increase sales a lot on Amazon. I'm not sure they do now -- at least not mine. Of course, books in KDP Select do pay some when people borrow (and read) them via this exclusive-to-Amazon marketing program.

Perhaps there are fewer free books on the other sites, so free still attracts readers. Keep in mind the book has to be a good one for readers to then buy the next books in a series. And keep writing more.
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Learn more about Elaine and her writing at this blog or at http://www.elaineorr.com. Or sign up for her newsletter.