As a writer, we long to see our work in print. Thus, it’s no surprise that, even as a self-published author, seeing one’s book listed online in an official way feels like vindication.
Let’s just say today is a red letter day for me, and a LONG time coming. 🙂
Yeah, I know. The author really shouldn’t be the editor of their own work, for many reasons. We’re so deeply entrenched in our own stories that when it comes time to edit the story, it’s often hard (if not impossible) for us to detach ourselves.
Yes, I’m familiar with Arthur Quiller-Couch’s “murder your darlings” maxim. But I’ve never been a big fan of the pithy writing quote (Ray Bradbury is an exception), so I usually tend to respond to those with a “yes, that’s nice” and move on.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an auteur or an artiste in that respect. I’m totally open to comments and suggestions from beta readers, and I’m perfectly willing to delete something that is in dire need of deletion.
This current editing session, which I’ve been referring to as the Final Line Edit, has been fast and furious. I’ve deleted dozens of weak lines, removed filler dialogue, reworded sentences to make them shorter and stronger, and rearranged paragraphs to maximize the flow. I’ve used the Find feature a handful of times to fix continuity. This is how I work when I actually give myself a strict deadline with a specific date: I get my ass in gear. The “I’ll fix it later” becomes “let’s fix this now”. I become super-vigilant about anything that doesn’t feel right, and think of a way to make it better. I’m about halfway through this edit, and I’m already seeing progress. I’ve lost at least ten pages worth of chaff, and I’ll probably see another ten disappear by the time I’m done.
[The irony is that I was hopeless at deadlines during my school days. My essays and term papers were decent but always late. Go figure.]
So what have I learned this time out?
I’ve learned that self-editing can be done, if you’re up to it, know how to do it, and give yourself a plan of attack. I’ve kinda-sorta cheated because I’ve reread the entire trilogy enough times that I’ve lost count. It’s made me become ever so slightly detached from the story, becoming more its Reader than its Author. And the more I read it, I become less its Reader than its Editor. I can now see it with enough detachment that I can clearly see what needs work and what doesn’t.
That’s the trickiest part. Does this mean I’ll never enjoy my own writing? Far from it — just last night I just passed one of my favorite scenes and still got chills. I was amazed that I had written this! Me, the goofball who often trips up on his own words as he’s talking and gets brainfarts when trying to think of a word or a name. And that’s when I realized I was doing it right, at least in my own haphazard but ultimately successful way.
I’m sure I’ll have a lot more to say about this, but alas, I have editing to do before night falls!
Today’s work included taking the step of buying a stock photo and finally utilizing my sort of decent art skills for future profit. I used the most basic plan on Shutterstock: $41 for five downloads, four of which I’ll use at a later time for the other two books in the trilogy, and maybe a future project or two. That was the easy part.
The hard part was thinking three or four steps ahead before I even started. There are a few things that I had to keep in mind before I went anywhere with this.
—Image Resolution. Many places like Smashwords and BookBaby require high resolution of the finished product. This is so your potential readers will see a nice clear picture on their e-reader, and won’t cause pixelation (i.e., it won’t look all blotchy and fuzzy if you blow up the picture larger than necessary). Thus I downloaded the highest resolution, which I believe was 3400 x 3400 pixels. Much higher than necessary, but after cropping, it still looks good.
—Cropping ratio. This is something that is actually pretty important yet not too many people think about. The most common ratio for e-book covers, I’ve read, is 1:1.33. That is, 1.33 times taller than it is wide. And looking at this cover take, that makes sense, because it’s roughly the same shape as most tablet and e-reader screens. I admit I went a bit lo-fi here to figure it out: I took a ruler and measured the picture on the screen. In the above thumbnail here, it’s 2.5″ wide. If you multiply that by 1.33, you’ll get 3.325″, which is very close to the height I ended with.
—Fonts: color and placement. I have to thank album covers for being able to understand this one. For my example, the most important part of the cover, aside from the visual, is the title, right? So in this version, instead of bannering it up on top like the previous attempt, I chose to spread it down the entire center. The font had to be larger than the other two lines I’d be adding (the subtitle and my name). BUT — it also had to stand out. In this case, I asked for assistance from one of my artist friends: since I knew I’d be using this photo and that its primary color was blue, what is the opposite of blue? [This is actually pretty easy to figure out: here’s a color wheel chart you should save for reference!] In this case, it’s yellow, so I used a very light shade of it for the title, to make it stand out, even more than the subtitle or my name (both in standard white). The fonts themselves were provided on the free version of PicMonkey.com…the title is Geo Sans Light and the other two are De Walpergen Pica. All three were placed with a bit of ingenuity: I aligned the sides of the text blocks with the sides of the picture, and had everything center-aligned.
—Clarity. My original outtake in the previous post used the Edo font on PicMonkey, but here my wife suggested a different, plainer font. It’s a bit unexpected to be sure, because it doesn’t look like a genre font. It’s classic and plain, but it still looks professional. The trick here was to ensure that none of the words vanished in the white spots of the picture behind it; yellow stands out well against blue, but gets lost against white. Everything is readable, and that’s the most important part.
—Viewing it in different sizes. This is another thing that sometimes gets glossed over or forgotten, but it’s actually quite important, and ties in with everything else. Think of it this way — say you’re looking for that new book you know has just come out, but you need to scan the New Release shelves and the endcaps in order to do it. Chances are when you see it, you’ll be at least a good ten or twenty feet away. Same goes with e-books: when you’re browsing online, you’re not looking at the actual-size cover, you’re looking at a thumbnail cover. This is another reason I downloaded the high-res version: the picture itself doesn’t look too sketchy, but more importantly, the fonts are still readable. It’s okay if the subtitle is fuzzy; it’s not important. What is important is the title and my name, so I had to make sure they were large enough to be read. This is why I’d tweeted it right after I’d completed it: I wanted to take a look at it on my phone, to see how it looked on a much smaller screen, plus I’d get feedback from my friends as well.
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Granted, I already own Photoshop (a birthday present from a few years back), and I’m kind of lucky that I have a lifelong interest in art and a passable ability for it, so I’m able to do most of this myself, which is exactly what I wanted to do. Some of you may want to hire out a professional cover artist instead. There are many out there — The Creative Penn has some good links to a few out there, for instance. And many of them are quite affordable.
In the end, the cover still remains one of the most important parts of the book (or e-book), because it’s the first thing every reader sees. You can let the pros take control of the cover creation, and all you’ll need to do is explain the images you’d like to see. But if you have the ability and want to go it alone, definitely keep the above in mind. Don’t just throw something together and call it done, either; just like musicians, save a small handful of differing takes and use the one that works best.
Small steps. That’s what writing novels has been about for me. On the surface it may look like I’m one big mess of contradictions: deep focus on ideas but extremely haphazard drafts; some really tight writing balanced out with a handful of ‘screw it, I’ll fix it later’ placeholders; things that pretty much every writer needs to go through. We create a hell of a lot more than what ends up in the final version, and a lot of it does tend to be directionless wriggling, trying to figure out where the hell we want the story to go. A lot of small steps. Missteps, steps into slippery mud, and blind kicks into the air, with the hopes that the end result is instead a well-choreographed saunter down a red carpet, fans cheering at the sidelines.
And one giant leap, making the decision to publish.
Last week, I made the decision that I was going to work with one of the indie self-publishers and finally release the Bridgetown Trilogy into the big bad world.
This past week I’ve begun preparing myself for an early September drop date. Starting one final line edit of A Division of Souls, making various business decisions, starting a detailed spreadsheet for the accounting…and everything else that goes into releasing a book on one’s own. I’m even making my own covers, with the help and feedback from others.
The one thing I did not expect during this process? I’m enjoying the hell out of it.
The research into what publishing services would work for me? The images I’d want for the covers? What kind of expenses I’d be expecting to shoulder? That is, the business side of all of this? I’m really enjoying this part of it. Never thought I’d admit that. Certainly back in my early writing days, I was that writer who was all about the creative spark and saw the economic side of it as the death knell to creativity. [Thankfully I got rid of that mindset right quick.] Now? I’m finding the ‘behind-the-scenes’ work just as fascinating as the writing.
I think it’s because I’ve made myself see it similar to the music business, of which I have a decent basic knowledge and a keen interest. Bands rarely if ever go into the studio and slap down a perfect and complete album straight out. There’s a lot of working parts, a lot of outtakes, presales boosting, word of mouth and other bits and bobs that may not be obvious to the passive listener, but are quite important to the end result. Writing and publishing is very similar in that respect. I’m fascinated not just by the creative process, but the amount of work it takes to make it professional level, making all the pieces fit perfectly. I’ve not only been actively participating in all the levels, but I’m learning from them.
Am I going to be blogging about it as I go? Of course I am!
This is the part of the business not many writers and blog readers get to see…and more often than not, this is also part of the business that writers tend to want to ignore (often for good and legitimate reasons). In the process I hope these upcoming posts will also help others who are thinking of following a similar path.
So yeah. Here we go. One Giant Leap.
I’ve been hinting at a new and improved writing process for a while now. Taking a hard left and going in a completely different direction. Looking at my creativity from a vastly different perspective. Working with a new whiteboard schedule. Being more consistent with updating my WordPress blogs. Starting totally new projects, and seeing old ones off.
Well, it’s a little bit of everything, really. Let’s just say I have a very busy 2015 ahead of me, in a positive way.
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Let’s start with the new whiteboard. [For those not too interested, scroll down to the next break for some fun news!] Each day has something to do, as you can see from the picture…but noticeably missing is any mention of a main project. This is a continuation from what I’d been doing with the previous whiteboard the last few months. I know what main project I’m supposed to be working on, so I don’t feel I need to put add it to the board. Also, I’ve decided that this is not going to be a “this is what I’m doing today” to-do schedule but a “this is due by today” deadline schedule. This gives me more freedom to create something when I feel like it, and also gives me the impetus to create a surplus if need be (more on that in a few moments). Here’s what I have set up:
Sunday: Welcome to Bridgetown blog. Even though this blog is dedicated to the stories within the Mendaihu Universe that I’m writing, I will also be featuring more entries about the writing craft. My weekend blog entries (such as on the good old LJ) tend to be longer and more contemplative, and channeling that into writing thoughts and MU extras seems like a good idea.
Monday: Storyboarding. What is this, you say? Am I thinking of going into film or animation? Well, no, not as such, but this is something new I’d like to try out. It’s an exercise in brainstorming. It can be anything from brief outlining of a current work in progress to playing around with new ideas. But yes, it could even include art!
Tuesday: Art. Doing the Inktober meme last year definitely inspired me to start drawing again, so this is a reminder to keep that alive. This will also serve as reminder to post any ongoing or finished artwork up on the Tumblr site.
Wednesday: Poetry. I’m starting to be more consistent about this one lately, as I’ve often been using my daily word run on 750 Words as a playground for poetry ideas. It might be just a few stanzas, or it might be epic in length, depending on the subject and what I want to write about. These will most likely remain offline for now, although if I’m particularly proud of the end result, I may post it somewhere.
Thursday: Walk in Silence blog. This one remains my all-purpose blog to write about music, and I felt that moving this to Thursday would be perfect, for two reasons: One, new releases come out on Tuesdays and it sometimes takes me a day or so to connect with the ones I buy or download. Two, because in my aim to become more consistent in my blogging, I’m going to be posting micro-reviews of new releases, alongside other music-related subjects I may want to talk about. As with this blog, I’m planning on writing more entries than releasing them so I can create a backlog, and therefore have a more consistent release schedule.
Friday: Photos. I’m continuing to get better at my photography, learning more how to tweak pictures using Photoshop, and so on, and I’d like to feature more pictures on my Tumblr. Taking inspiration from a photographer I follow here on WP, I’d like to challenge myself by taking things other than panoramas or architecture; I’d like to try still life and nature, turn it more artistic, even if it’s just for practice.
Saturday: Music. One major project for 2015: start recording! I’ve got feasible software on my computer (Audacity), a small microphone, and a handful of song and melody ideas, so I think it’s high time I reignited the Drunken Owl project by making demos here in Spare Oom Studio. I’m not planning on anything big, so it could be anything from short snippets to revisiting old Flying Bohemians tracks, and playing around with them. I’d also like to do more research into more extensive software that could possibly let me record and mix multiple tracks.
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I should also add that a good portion of this year will also be spent submitting A Division of Souls to agents and publishers. I’m hoping to get the Mendaihu Universe out into the wild within the next year or so.
All this, in conjunction to whatever main writing project I have going on. And my day job. And a personal journal. And my daily words. Did I manage to leave some time for eating and sleeping, and hanging out with Amanda? Let’s hope so.
But wait, there’s more!
I’m proud to announce that I have not one but two self-published projects I’m planning on releasing into the world sometime this year as well! I’m thinking epub at this point, although print could be involved, depending on which self-publishing company I end up working with to produce and release it. These are two projects I’ve been working on over the last few years; one is complete and the other is about three-quarters of the way done.
The first will be a book version of Blogging the Beatles, the series I started over at the WiS blog a few years back, in which I listened and talked about the Beatles’ discography in chronological release order. I had so much fun writing it, and learned so much musically as I studied the songs, that I felt it would be perfect for an ebook. I’ll be revising it and adding new items as I do so, and hope to have this one out at least by midyear.
The second will be Walk in Silence itself. This one’s the biggie. I’m about three quarters of the way done on the more personal side of the story, with revision number two to add in more about the music. This one may roll into 2016 if other issues pop up, but the aim is to get it out into the wild by autumn 2015.
Of course, releasing books about popular music could be tricky considering the rights involved, but since I’m not directly quoting the music but only commenting on it, I think I should be okay. These are both books focusing on my love of music, in particular about a band and a genre that inspired me and shaped who I am.
So yeah…you should be seeing more of me here at Welcome to Bridgetown and elsewhere, so stick around–it’s gonna be a fun ride!
Welcome to Bridgetown 