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Writing-GAF: Writing, Publishing, Selling |OT|

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zulux21

Member
so I am wondering. does anyone else in here have a small collection of videos on youtube to quickly jolt your mental state into a different place?

for example cat videos = happier mood
chester interviews talking about his demons = depressing mood ect?


I have playlists for stuff like that, but I am thinking some videos to quickly jolt me would be good too.
 
C

Conkersbadfurday

Member
zulux21 said:
so I am wondering. does anyone else in here have a small collection of videos on youtube to quickly jolt your mental state into a different place?

for example cat videos = happier mood
chester interviews talking about his demons = depressing mood ect?


I have playlists for stuff like that, but I am thinking some videos to quickly jolt me would be good too.
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If I want to go dark, I just queue up some random black metal music and let it hit me. Every BP6 chapter in Toyland was written to black metal, and I edited my previous book (horror + depression) to black metal.

That shit will take you for a ride.
 
Z

zulux21

Member
Conkersbadfurday said:
If I want to go dark, I just queue up some random black metal music and let it hit me. Every BP6 chapter in Toyland was written to black metal, and I edited my previous book (horror + depression) to black metal.

That shit will take you for a ride.
Click to expand...

yeah as I said I have some playlists of music, but it can often take me a bit to get in the right mood.

thus I might try some videos.

I tend to let my emotions run wild while writing, and thus if I am writing in scene where the character I am focused on is crying and emotional I tend to get close to that in real life. I've lost track of the number of times I had to pause because I couldn't see from the tears in my eyes.

I've also lost track of the number of times I got distracted kicking and punching around the living room to see how the fight goes makes sense at all lol.
 
C

Conkersbadfurday

Member
zulux21 said:
yeah as I said I have some playlists of music, but it can often take me a bit to get in the right mood.

thus I might try some videos.

I tend to let my emotions run wild while writing, and thus if I am writing in scene where the character I am focused on is crying and emotional I tend to get close to that in real life. I've lost track of the number of times I had to pause because I couldn't see from the tears in my eyes.

I've also lost track of the number of times I got distracted kicking and punching around the living room to see how the fight goes makes sense at all lol.
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I'm super guilty of that as well :p
 
A

AngmarsKing701

Member
I have a writing playlist that I *sometimes* play when I'm in the mood to hear background music while I'm writing, but for the most part I like it quiet when I'm working. The music tends to distract me too much from the scene. I like to visualize what I'm writing, and try to see how the scene would play out on screen, and like to hear the dialog in the different voices I imagine in my head for my characters. Music tends to disrupt that part of my brain that can envision all that, so I rarely have it on.

And now ... GAF Writing Challenge Update!

The second collection (novellas 4-6) is now up on Amazon: The Knight's Journal II.

We are into the legend now. Anyone following along knows who Aidan is in history/fiction. You'll know who the monk is. The question is whether you can properly identify all of Aidan's "knights," for the legend casts a broad net and this is really just the beginning of his journey.

I am spending a good deal of time researching other aspects of the legend now, as I've grounded the basics. I'm 25K words into Book 7 now, with introduction of a key piece of the legend along with two new future "knights."

Still having a blast. I know the end game (what will happen in Book 12). The fun part is making sure these characters actually get from where they are to where they need to be while keeping the readers interested. All ... 4 of them.

The business side continues to be sparse, unfortunately. Random reads on KU, occasional book purchases.
 
C

Conkersbadfurday

Member
FlowersisBritish said:
Congrats. Is that the most bites you've had this quickly?
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Naw. Well, hard to say. I've been shopping the second book around for almost a year now :\ Like next week it will be a year.

But it IS better than the first in some respects. I've gotten more with the first, but only because rejections for this book have lead to "well what else do you have? I'm curious"
 
A

AngmarsKing701

Member
Looking for suggestions on marketing. I've just released the 2nd collection for The Knight's Journal, so I'm looking to get both collection 1 and 2 on a sale at the end of August, heading right into the Labor Day weekend, which will coincide with novella 8 coming out.

I tried Fiverr per a recommendation from Soulfire a month or so ago and pretty sure I got el zippo out of that one. :-(

Is BookGorilla worth it? An Amazon promo? Facebook promo? Something else? I'm willing to cough up something ($50ish?) to get some traction, but not sure I want to go all crazy. Most of the Amazon stuff I think starts at $100.

Ugh. I know: you gotta spend money to make money.
 
F

FlowersisBritish

fleurs n'est pas britannique
The most I know about marketing is for FB ads because I use them for focus groups so i'll just dump some info on you.

I don't know if you need to pay to use the app(you might?) but they have a flexible variable amount for their ads that is determined by "clicks" So if you pay fifty bucks, and each click charges you a dollar, than you get fifty clicks before your ad space runs out. It also targets people using data like if they like pages for fantasy, or books, or other stuff. From my limited use of them, FB ads are pretty alright and I will probably use them for self-promotion in the future with my own books.
 
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NipplesAndToes23

Member
I was reading Racing the Dark by Alaya Dawn Johnson today and checked the back and saw that this was her first novel. It's 386 pages while mine is 471. I think I'm going to start looking for agents again. After y'all told me I think a year or two ago that my book was long for a first time author seeing hers being a little shorter than mine makes me feel like I do have an opportunity. Besides, I have been trying to finish up this novel for some time and still haven't managed to do it when I only have two chapters left.

I'm also tired of being poor. Is AgentQuery still the place to go to find authors?
 
S

Soulfire

Member
AngmarsKing701 said:
Looking for suggestions on marketing. I've just released the 2nd collection for The Knight's Journal, so I'm looking to get both collection 1 and 2 on a sale at the end of August, heading right into the Labor Day weekend, which will coincide with novella 8 coming out.

I tried Fiverr per a recommendation from Soulfire a month or so ago and pretty sure I got el zippo out of that one. :-(

Is BookGorilla worth it? An Amazon promo? Facebook promo? Something else? I'm willing to cough up something ($50ish?) to get some traction, but not sure I want to go all crazy. Most of the Amazon stuff I think starts at $100.

Ugh. I know: you gotta spend money to make money.
Click to expand...

I'm sorry fivr didn't work, I've had good results from ENT, Robin Reads, and one day I hope to get a Bookbub. My books are romance so milage will vary based on genre. A few years back I did a BookGorilla and got nothing, but it's been a few years since things may have changed and again genre.
 
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NipplesAndToes23

Member
It's hard getting back into writing query letters and especially synopsis. I want to just copy and paste an old one I did, but if those didn't lead me anywhere then I guess it would be smarter to start from scratch.
 
C

Conkersbadfurday

Member
NipplesAndToes23 said:
It's hard getting back into writing query letters and especially synopsis. I want to just copy and paste an old one I did, but if those didn't lead me anywhere then I guess it would be smarter to start from scratch.
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Probably. They're a complete bitch to write. I know I got one I'm shopping around on this or the previous page, but I'm sure I'll go back and change it up pretty heavily before I end up using it.

Plot summaries are an awful, awful animal of awfulness and I do not look forward to writing another one of those ._.
 
M

Master Milk

Member
i went to a local meet up last night and it was really fun talking to other writers about how we and why don't actually write lol

i really should have started doing this a long time ago

i'm going to make a concentrated effort to shit out as many words as possible for the rest of the year
 
D

Durrzerker

Banned
30 day streak, 400 words a day so far. Just about to hit forty pages on my novel. Finally feels like it is coming together.

August 1st bumping it to 500 a day.


Also I am new here. Is it considered okay to potentially link a short excerpt from my story to see how it reads or not so much?
 
S

Soulfire

Member
Durrzerker said:
30 day streak, 400 words a day so far. Just about to hit forty pages on my novel. Finally feels like it is coming together.

August 1st bumping it to 500 a day.


Also I am new here. Is it considered okay to potentially link a short excerpt from my story to see how it reads or not so much?
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Congratulations on the streak! It's hard to break it when it starts to get high isn't it? Which works out great because you're not as likely to make excuses.
Other people have linked to excerpts in the thread before, for whatever reason I never have, but you're welcome to.
 
D

Durrzerker

Banned
Soulfire said:
Congratulations on the streak! It's hard to break it when it starts to get high isn't it? Which works out great because you're not as likely to make excuses.
Other people have linked to excerpts in the thread before, for whatever reason I never have, but you're welcome to.
Click to expand...


Thanks! And yeah admittedly I'm slightly nervous, I've never shown anyone but close friends/family my writing, and they of course tend to be more kind than a stranger would be.

https://pastebin.com/eXNWvHsZ


This is the first two pages of my novel I'm working on, The Redeemers. I'm still working on the blurb as well, but long story short, it's about a futuristic Pittsburgh where three protagonists - a cyborg operative for a shadowy organization, an ex-military police officer, and a teenaged girl dabbling in the dark arts - cross paths as they each discover a supernatural conspiracy to consume the city as an outpost of Hell itself.
 
JasonMCG

JasonMCG

Member
Did my first person-to-person reading over the weekend (i.e. read my nearly-finished 2nd draft aloud) to a willing party. It was nerve wracking, but man...what a thrill. In fact, it went so well that I'm really excited to do it again.
 
A

AngmarsKing701

Member
The 7th Entry of the Knight's Journal just went live!

Past the halfway point now and still chugging along. I'm actually 5K words into the 8th Entry, so a little ahead of pace at the moment. Which is good, because I have to travel for work this week which may impact my ability to keep up with the 1k/day approach.

As for the business side of things, it remains on this wild up and down ride. I sold a copy a week ago. And then two days ago I got 765 KU pages read, which is pretty cool (apparently someone plowed through the two collections, Knight's Journal I and II) in one fell swoop.

Thank you, random fan!
 
Smiles and Cries

Smiles and Cries

Member
My Art Book report:

This is the results I have gotten from self-publishing with 2 different POD companies
I got some PMs asking what I used so I wanted to post my experience here if it could be helpful to some of you guys.

I used CreateSpace (amazon) Free setup
and IngramSpark (Ingram Content Group) $45 set up

DGGwyXIVYAE52Gh.jpg


I had 255 sales on Amazon the last 15 days of June and only 31 sales showing up for all of July I said showing up because I know 30 books were purchased I watched the person make the purchase and get the books delivered and were donated to a hospital. But the sales did not show up on createspace yet. I got zero sales showing up from June from IngramSpark although I know early copies were purchased from Barnes and Noble.

I read createspace could take 4 months to report some of your sales so I have no clue why the second month crashed so low but I do know 30 books are not reported.

no idea why no sales shows up for ingramspark seems like a waste of $45 if I could not even make a return on it.

I released my volume 2 today CreateSpace was faster turn-around already up on amazon and returned 4 sales showing up for just today.
DGGw3PrUQAAWMan.jpg


IngramSpark had some issues with the cover so release being held back until I go through the file review process again.

anyone here have used IngramSpark and not see sales after 45 days?
 
N

NipplesAndToes23

Member
Conkersbadfurday said:
Probably. They're a complete bitch to write. I know I got one I'm shopping around on this or the previous page, but I'm sure I'll go back and change it up pretty heavily before I end up using it.

Plot summaries are an awful, awful animal of awfulness and I do not look forward to writing another one of those ._.
Click to expand...

I'm never sure how much of my plot I need to put down in queries or synopsis.
 
JasonMCG

JasonMCG

Member
Question: Editor before Beta's or Beta's before the editor?

My 2nd draft is nearly done and I'm eager to get it out to Beta's, however (being my first novel) I wasn't sure if there was a "proper", established order.

Thanks!
 
C

Conkersbadfurday

Member
Draft for of Toyland is done, clocking in at 66k words. It's so short yet so vulgar...My mom wanted to read it, so we'll see how that goes.

JasonMCG said:
Question: Editor before Beta's or Beta's before the editor?

My 2nd draft is nearly done and I'm eager to get it out to Beta's, however (being my first novel) I wasn't sure if there was a "proper", established order.

Thanks!
Click to expand...
Beta first, I'd say. I mean, if you're looking for like copyedits and stuff, getting feedback on the actual content is more important. You can fix grammar later. Plus, your beta readers will find some of those copyediting issues for you :p

But I've never used an actual editor, so I don't know what else they'd be looking for that a beta reader might not be.
 
F

FlowersisBritish

fleurs n'est pas britannique
JasonMCG said:
Question: Editor before Beta's or Beta's before the editor?

My 2nd draft is nearly done and I'm eager to get it out to Beta's, however (being my first novel) I wasn't sure if there was a "proper", established order.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Beta readers first. Editor should have a final say.
 
JasonMCG

JasonMCG

Member
Conkersbadfurday said:
Draft for of Toyland is done, clocking in at 66k words. It's so short yet so vulgar...My mom wanted to read it, so we'll see how that goes.


Beta first, I'd say. I mean, if you're looking for like copyedits and stuff, getting feedback on the actual content is more important. You can fix grammar later. Plus, your beta readers will find some of those copyediting issues for you :p

But I've never used an actual editor, so I don't know what else they'd be looking for that a beta reader might not be.
Click to expand...

FlowersisBritish said:
Beta readers first. Editor should have a final say.
Click to expand...
This is what I figured. I guess with my being a perfectionist, I wanted to give my Beta's the most polished manuscript possible.
And will as much as I am able
 
A

AngmarsKing701

Member
Conkersbadfurday said:
Draft for of Toyland is done, clocking in at 66k words. It's so short yet so vulgar...My mom wanted to read it, so we'll see how that goes.


Beta first, I'd say. I mean, if you're looking for like copyedits and stuff, getting feedback on the actual content is more important. You can fix grammar later. Plus, your beta readers will find some of those copyediting issues for you :p

But I've never used an actual editor, so I don't know what else they'd be looking for that a beta reader might not be.
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At least one wild ass query. I want to know if you get a bite going completely off the wall.
 
C

Conkersbadfurday

Member
AngmarsKing701 said:
At least one wild ass query. I want to know if you get a bite going completely off the wall.
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The query I posted up above (page 98) is probably what I'll use. I'll give it an edit or two again, but it's basically the premise and spirit of the thing.

I think any bites I get will come from the "66k" words at the bottom. That's more inviting than 130k words :p
 
F

FlowersisBritish

fleurs n'est pas britannique
All this novel talk reminds me I should give more thought into this novel idea I have kicking around in my head for the past month. All i've got so far for it is the opening hook. I really should do some outlining or something
 
W

Wafflecakes

Member
Finally figured out what was really holding me back from building momentum on my current project.

While I have the entire plot planned out and virtually all the character's personalities fleshed out in my head, I was lacking a backstory for my protagonist that would properly motivate him to make the decisions that he needed to make. I was trying to avoid the cliche of the orphaned hero, but having immediate family in the picture would kind of make the character a scumbag for what he does.

Definitely have to remove them, or at least place them somewhere that they can no longer impact the story, at least for the moment.
 
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UCBooties

Member
I have had a story accepted to an anthology! Given that the anthology in question will be sold through a Kickstarter (hopefully, lol) it's unlikely I will make enough per word to consider the story published at professional rate. But it was still gratifying to write a story for a specific anthology prompt and get it accepted.
 
A

AngmarsKing701

Member
UCBooties said:
I have had a story accepted to an anthology! Given that the anthology in question will be sold through a Kickstarter (hopefully, lol) it's unlikely I will make enough per word to consider the story published at professional rate. But it was still gratifying to write a story for a specific anthology prompt and get it accepted.
Click to expand...

Congrats!!!
 
V

Valdfellgar

Banned
Well getting ready to work on a synopsis to send alongside queries for my first book. Going to work on it inbetween putting my second novel together. Does anyone have any suggestions/tips for it? I used to write synopses for screenplays, but I'm not sure if end result is similar for novels. How do you guys approach putting one together?

For screenplays the desired result was very by the books, matter of fact, dry and beat by beatish.
 
V

Valdfellgar

Banned
Random Human said:
- Have two, one that's one page and another that's two.

- Give away the entire thing, including ending

- Matter of fact is good, you don't need flashy writing for it

- Don't stress this too much, supposedly no one reads them even if they ask for it :/
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Ah okay, so sounds like it's still very much like a synopsis for a screenplay. Straight to the details, borderline bland writing, and ultimately a waste of ones time. greeeaaat. Thanks man.
 
C

Conkersbadfurday

Member
Valdfellgar said:
Ah okay, so sounds like it's still very much like a synopsis for a screenplay. Straight to the details, borderline bland writing, and ultimately a waste of ones time. greeeaaat. Thanks man.
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Pretty much. The best I can offer is: keep it bland, but that means keep the writing itself really polished. Sentence variety, some action words, etc. If you're this far in the game, you know what to do :p

It just sucks :(
 
U

UCBooties

Member
Random Human said:
- Have two, one that's one page and another that's two.

- Give away the entire thing, including ending

- Matter of fact is good, you don't need flashy writing for it

- Don't stress this too much, supposedly no one reads them even if they ask for it :/
Click to expand...

Yeah, no cliffhangers in your synopsis! I've heard more than one editor rail about that.
 
C

Conkersbadfurday

Member
I got me another agent bite for my YA horror book. That makes five! They even wanted the entire manuscript, which is cool. They already had a plot summary so hopefully unlike the last guy who went "i didn't like where it went," they'll know where it goes and be okay with it.

Gonna set an outlook reminder to be real sad in six weeks and post back :V
 
A

AngmarsKing701

Member
Got a great review for Knight Descendent, the 1st Entry in the Knight's Journal.

Woo-hoo!

Hasn't translated into sales. Arrgghhh.

Makes it tough to keep plowing through when you know what you're writing isn't being read at all, but ... shrug. At this point I'm on Entry 8 out of 12 and I have a pretty good grasp of how I'm getting from where I am to where it ends up. And I'm still having fun, though at this point the legend is revealed and the mystery behind who the characters are is out.

Anyway, gotta get to it tonight. Long day out of town watching my son play some football as part of the opening weekend. I'm tired. It was hot. I'd rather stare vacantly at a TV and drink some scotch, but I have to power through.
 
C

Conkersbadfurday

Member
Man, my mom did NOT like Toyland. She tried to be nice about it, but really it boiled down to, "it's a disorientating mess and way darker than I thought it would be."

It's not a thing I can really fix easily. There are a lot of characters, and I can't just start deleting without extensive rewrites.

I also don't want it to be lighter. DARKNESS CONSUME ME
 
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NipplesAndToes23

Member
Watching One Million Yen Women is helping me at least a little bit back into writing. I'm still having roadblocks where I can't figure out how to proceed. Thought I could just do mindless character stuff until I decide to how continue the plot, but then I get stumped on casual conversations and probably overthink them.
 
K

kevin1025

Banned
NipplesAndToes23 said:
Watching One Million Yen Women is helping me at least a little bit back into writing. I'm still having roadblocks where I can't figure out how to proceed. Thought I could just do mindless character stuff until I decide to how continue the plot, but then I get stumped on casual conversations and probably overthink them.
Click to expand...

Do you like to write in order or randomly jump about? I find that if you know certain points of story, and are kind of stuck, it can be well worth jumping forward to help get things back on track. Plus it can be fun to try and connect back together later.
 
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