Archive for year: 2018

I get accused of procrastinating. I’m an engineer, I have engineered procrastination to levels you can’t even dream of.

Distraction is my biggest enemy. A word flashes up with a red underline in what I’m typing. It’s misspelled and I can’t ignore it. I have to ctrl+alt+w and bring up the in-memory dictionary and fix it right now. I can’t just keep typing, no matter what others have said about writing a junk first draft and keep typing. Go back later and edit, I can’t do it. I’ll worry that I will forget to go back and fix it latter and if someone sees what I’m working on they will think I’m a dunce. It doesn’t matter that a complete document spell check will find the misspell and the the bad word will always be underlined. I have to fix it now. I can’t stop think about the bad word I left behind. It interferes with my thinking about the story, the characters, my writing.

I get up to get a drink of water. The kitchen sink is a mess. Food stains need a shot of cleaner (I’ve found that 409 works better than Fantastic) and a lot of rubbing. A two minute job. Yeah, it ends up taking ten to twenty minutes minimum and cleaning powder and scouring pads.

And don’t get me started on emails. I know that there are emails setting in the inbox screaming at me, begging me to be read. They need to be read, thought about, answered. And I get a hundred emails a day or more. And I just weeded out my email list, but the number of emails keep getting bigger.

Then I need to go to the store to get something I’m out of for lunch. On the way to the store I remember I need to go by another store to get something totally unrelated. And then I remember I need to go by another store and I should stop by somewhere else while I’m out.

I lose sight of the goal. I have a manuscript at an editor. She told me that while she is waiting for the check to clear I could incorporate the comments from the sample edit she did and any other changes I can come up with and send her the better manuscript and she will use that one over the one I had already sent. And here I am writing this blog. I had assumed that once I sent the manuscript in it was locked down and had gone on to working on another book. That’s what I get for assuming things.

The goal is to get the best manuscript to her before the check clears. Knowing Bank of America the check should take a week to clear, but they will clear it in a day since I need the time.

Bottom line; Distractions are Procrastinating by getting things done.

Stay strong, write on, and keep your goal in sight.

Professor Hyram Voltage

If you are stuck or unhappy with your writing then what you are doing isn’t working and you need to change.

What to change?

Writing is work. Go do something that is harder work, like a deep cleaning of the bathroom. I don’t mean wipe out the sink, I mean get on your hands and knees and scrub. If you work hard enough your mind will beg you to go back to your comfortable chair and write. Don’t give in.

Keep slaving away. But also think, would your protagonist clean the bathroom. Have you every thought of your main character doing ordinary things. Would your protagonist do things you don’t like to do or that you consider hard work in a way that is unique, fast, or even happily? Take notes for when you get back to writing.

It doesn’t have to be cleaning the bathroom. For one of my first jobs I had to clean the business’s bathroom every morning. Ten minutes later it was a mess. A fellow worker felt that someone else had to clean it up and he could make a big a mess as he wanted. It was always someone else’s problem, yeah mine.

Go out in the garden and pull weeds. That’s hot, dirty, or muddy work. Soon you’ll be longing for the coffee shop and the air conditioning. Don’t stop. Think about your protagonist gardening. You don’t think she would garden. Sherlock Holmes raised bees. Why wouldn’t your protagonist garden? Write it down and keep pulling weeds.

Maybe you just need a break. Are you a member of the write a book a month squad? Slow it down to a book every two or three months. Then dig out the grammar and writing books and make those books that take longer better books. If spending a couple of hours with conflicting grammar books doesn’t make you want to throw the grammar books against the wall and get back to writing the great American novel I don’t know what will.

Go read something for pleasure. If you have been writing too much and are burned out, you  haven’t been reading enough. Go read outside your genre, go read something for a guilty pleasure. Read a short story and make notes on how to write it better. Make notes on how to write it your way. Finish reading the book before going back to your writings. Better yet read two or three books before writing again.

Try doing some hard work that will make the old mind beg to return to writing. Do a deep edit of something you wrote. You think writing is hard work, why do they pay editors so much money to edit. Editing is very hard work and if it isn’t hard work for you then you’re not doing it right.

So if you’re stuck then get out of your rut and do something different. Don’t do something simple, do something hard. And finish that task. Don’t let the call of the coffee shop pull you away before you’re finished.

Stay strong, write on.

Professor Hyram Voltage

They tell us authors that we have to advertise our book, story, blog, etc. I had that point driven home again at the Oxnard Steampunk Fest recently.

It’s a nice little fest with live music and many great steampunk outfits.

Wandering around the Fest I saw a sign pointing down some steps to presentations. The presentations were being held in the basement of a classic restored house. I like going to presentations, you never know what you’ll learn. There were problems, the Fest did not have the program flyer ready to hand out the first day of the Fest. The program would have listed the time the presentations were going to be given and what they were about.

Attendance at the presentations was light (people didn’t show up). A classic case of; if they don’t know about it, they won’t come. They missed some good presentations.

It wasn’t because the presentations were held in a basement. The presenters needed to advertise. They needed to put a sign or banner, no matter how crude, up pointing to the underground rooms telling the attendees about the presentations and when they were. They needed a come on (called a landing page in advertising). This is just like your book, even if the reader likes what you write, if they don’t know it exists or what it’s about they won’t buy it. The presenters put up with low turn out, rather than going out and doing something to get more people to come to their presentation. If someone lets you down you have to take up the slack and do it yourself, even if you paid the person to do it.

Hundreds of books, courses, and blogs have been written about advertising your book or presentation, but if you don’t do anything you won’t get new readers. What’s the best thing you can do. That’s a moving target and depends on so many things there is no one answer. But doing something, even if it’s not the best thing is better than doing nothing. Life is too short to do nothing.

Be prepared. Have book marks, post cards, business cards ready to hand out. Keep a white board in the back of your car. Keep markers (in several colors) handy. Keep a flip board in your car. It’s crude and simple, but it means the difference between attendees and no attendees or sales and no sales.

It’s hard work getting out in front of people, some of the presenters were dressed in steampunk outfits. Outfits they put a lot of work into. Outfits that screamed look at me. Yet they would not take the extra step and advertise. It hard work doing something that someone else should have done, but you got to do it. If the other authors are not doing it and you are, then your book will be selling when theirs are not.

Remember doing something, even if it’s wrong, is often better than doing nothing.

Stay strong, write on, and advertise.
Professor Hyram Voltage

At the Gaslight Expo I talked to an author I know. She recommended an editor she had just used. The author writes graphic novels and had just published her first novel.

That and the fact that conventions get me fired up I went and contacted the editor. She asked for a copy of the manuscript.

I wasn’t expecting that. It’s Friday and panic time. I’m still working with the critique group on a review of the last chapters of the book and I haven’t cranked in their comments from the review of earlier chapters.

I had a presentation to do Friday night and getting that polished took half the day. The presentation went OK, but I was so tired that I was not thinking straight, and I did not get the comments cranked into the manuscript. I ended up asking the editor if I could send the manuscript in Monday and she agreed.

It’s Monday and I should be working on the manuscript.

I took a big leap and committed to getting an editor and stop trying to beat the manuscript into better shape.

Excuse me, but I have to get back to the manuscript.

Stay strong, write on.

Professor Hyram Voltage