Oh, Yes I Did!

My very first book outline complete! Now for just a few super quick character sketches and then on to writing!

LtUE: Day 3 + Final Thoughts

I hope that you have enjoyed my recap of LtUE thus far. Today I'm going to wrap up the final day and my overall impressions of the conference.

I only went to one panel on Saturday and it was on the Pros and Cons of Self-publishing. My thoughts and views on self-publishing have come a long way in the last year thanks to last February's LtUE. You can read about just how big of a 180 I made in this post. Basically, self-publishing can be pretty awesome. There are definite drawbacks, but some pretty sweet payoffs as well. For me, the amount of control over every aspect of the book and the marketing that self-publishing affords is exciting. I also like how flexible it is. I set my own deadlines. But that also means that I need to be way more intrinsically motivated. No one will come breathing down my neck if I don't write.

So, if you haven't figured it out, I had a blast at Life, the Universe and Everything. I will definitely go again next year if we are still in the area. Last year, I kind of felt like a deer in the headlights and absorbing everything that I had learned was a bit overwhelming, albeit inspiring. This year I feel inspired in a different--hit the ground running--sort of way.

 I will have my first novel roughly outlined by the end of this week with hopes of starting to write by next week. Is just nice to feel like I can accomplish something. I know its a long, uphill process, but I think I can do it! And I will keep updating here with my progress, so make sure to check back soon.

LtUE: Day 2

So hopefully I can take a few more minutes on this post as I was running between workshops during the Thursday recap which can be seen here. Hence it was a bit rushed.

LtUE  wrapped up yesterday. I will be doing a recap of yesterday's workshops in th next few days as well as an overall LtUE review. Look for that soon.

Friday was Valentine's Day and my loving husband worked from home so that I could go to a full day of workshops and panels. I learned all sorts of things, but below are a few of my favorite panels/workshops.

Sandra Taylor did a workshop on building a community among your readers. I think the biggest thing I learned is that it takes awhile to get a following--years even--and that that is ok. I'd rather build slowly and have a real community of people actually interested in my work than just a bunch of likes on facebook/ followers on twitter that really aren't interested.

Next I went to an awesome panel on how to see your short stories. This was fantastic! I have a few short stories in various stages of completion, but I have always found it difficult to figure out where to submit my work. This panel helped me tremendously. The (Submission) Grinder just by itself is going to be amazing to use. It allows you to search a beta database of places that are currently accepting submissions. For example, I plugged in that I have a horror short story of 1500 words and it gave me a list of 136 potential places I could submit. Of course, I'll have to go and whittle that list down, but at lease it gives me a starting point. It also allows you to keep track of your submissions. Pretty cool. They also mentioned another site (ray[something].com) but I didn't get the spelling. I wish that I would have spoken up and had them spell it. Ah well. Live and learn.

After lunch, I went to a panel about using Folklore in your writing. Super duper cool and helpful. It was just neat to listen to how the authors have taken elements of both popular and obscure folklore and woven them into some very original and awesome stories. One of the panelists, S.A. Butler, talked about one her books that looks amazing. Its on my Kindle now and I can't wait to read it.

Another great panel was all about Edgar Allen Poe. It was super duper small, which was a bummer because the topic was great. But the smaller crowd made for a more intimate discussion. I was obsessed with Poe when I was in about 5th grade. It was cool to hear form other people that were and are just as obsessive as I am. Did you know that he self-published his first two books? Pretty cool.

The last panel that I attended was about learning from you mistakes. It was another great one. One of the things that one of the panelists said was this: "Writing is crazy--you take the worlds inside your head and put them down on paper in order to try to create a world inside someone else's head." And another: "Writing is crazy--so embrace the mad scientist inside and accept that it is a crazy thing to do." Super good stuff.

After all the workshops, there was a mass book signing. I got to meet all kinds of great people and do some networking. A few of the people that I met and that I'd recommend checking out are Fiona Ostler, Christy Dorrity, Mikey Brooks, Jenniffer Wardell, and Ariadne Kane.

All in all, my experience on Friday was great. Look for my final recap and review of LtUE coming in the next few days. Anyone else out there attend? Let me know in the comments.

LTUE: Day 1

LTUE is here again! Last year was a blast, and this year is going great so far. There are still 2 more days to go, so if you have some time, stop on by. Below is a quick recap of the first day.

I got to meet and chat with some great artists and authors. Jess Smart Smiley has some exciting things that he is working on, and Michaelbrent Collings is nominated for a few Bram Stoker awards. Winning a Bram Stoker is one of my dreams, so I was cool to meet him.

I also went to some great panels and workshops. Most of the ones I went to focused on writing for youth. I feel like I got some great insight that will help me as I continue to write my current book. One workshop in particular by J. Scott Savage (author of the Farworld series) was really beneficial. He discussed how motives determine whether your book will be an easy ready, middle grade or YA. Good stuff.

Today I've got some great panels to attend as well. As a matter of fact, I need to head off to a panel called "Selling Your Short Story." Check back tomorrow for a recap of today!

Jumping Back into the Fire

My little break from writing has proven to be restful and chaotic at the same time. Our cruise was fantastic--and, yes, we did go into the Bermuda Triangle. We also made a last minute decision to move back to my hometown in Florida for the rest of the summer. I am enjoying being around family and friends.

I am also excited to start back in on my writing. And what better way to do that than Camp NaNoWriMo! I'll be attempting 50,000 words in the next 31 days. I've done very little prep for the story--some kids run into the Florida Skunk Ape while camping in Myakka State Park. It should be a fun time.

I hope is to write some updates through out the month to help keep me motivated. For now, I am off to write!

Post-College Recovery

April has come and gone without a post from me. Hopefully someone found my last post on self-publishing at least interesting if not helpful. The last month has been quite crazy. I finally managed to graduate college! I wasn't sure if this day would ever come. I also found out that I had Mono for most of the semester! So I haven't gotten a whole lot of writing in. But that is okay.

I am going on vacation this month to just relax and recover from the last couple of months. I'm going on my first cruise at the end of May as well. It is with Carnival, so I am hoping to have smooth sailing, especially with all of their recent mishaps. If something does go wrong, however, I hope it is something like blowing into the Bermuda Triangle and sweeping away to some crazy magical location for a day or two. That ought to give me something to write about.

A Bit on Self-Publishing

A few weeks ago, I had the chance to attend an awesome writing symposium. I wasn't sure what to expect as it was my first venture into any sort of writing conference. As stated in the last few posts, I had a great time and I learned a ton. I think the thing that stuck in my ribs the most was the information on self-publishing. For me, self-publishing went from being something to be snubbed and looked down upon to something to be enthusiastically excited about possibly trying.

I wholeheartedly and sincerely apologize and repent of my former feelings.

Now, I am not saying that I will definitely go the self-publishing route in the future. There are pros and cons to both sides of the coin. I just thought that I would outline a few of the things that I learned about why self-publishing isn't just for those who can't get published the traditional route. 

First off, I was amazed at the ease of self-publishing. Now by ease I do not mean one click of a button and you will be a bestseller. But there are so many options and you really can get your work out there quickly. If you want a good product, you obviously would want to spend some time making sure your product looks good, but there are plenty of ways to get your product out there.

 And you don't have to pay a dime out of pocket! I always thought that self-publishing entailed forking out a bunch of money to get your books printed and then storing them in your garage until you could get someone to buy a copy. I'm sure that there are those who still go this route, but there are other options!

For starters, you can do a Kindle version of your book through amazon.com. There is also CreateSpace, amazon's partner company. They do have some paid-for services, like formatting your book, or designing a cover, which can be helpful. But if you are savvy and can do these things yourself, it costs $0 to get your book out there. They are a print on demand site, so when someone orders your book on amazon, they print it and ship it. They then take a cut (and that is how they get paid) but then your get your percentage of the cut--and it is nothing to sniff at.

This leads me to one of the other perks of self-publishing. If you go the traditional route, after the publisher and your agent get their cut, you'll probably get around a 7-9% royalty. So on a $10 book, that's about 80 cents. Not too bad if you can sell lots of books. With the Kindle books, you can make as much as a 70% royalty (if the book falls within a certain price range). So on a $5 dollar kindle book, you would make $3.50. That's pretty great! The royalty is not as large on CreateSpace, but it can still be pretty good (it depends on the length of the book)--a 300 page book set at $10 would give you $1.55 in royalties. That is almost double the traditional publisher.

So there are definite pros to self-publishing, but there can be a few drawbacks. For one, if you self-publish, you have to do all the marketing of your book by yourself. This can take a big chunk of your time. At the writing symposium that I attended, traditionally published authors said that they spend about 15-20% of their time working on marketing. Those who were self-published said they spent around 50-60%. That's huge. So if marketing isn't your thing, self-publishing may not be the way to go. I did learn, however, that even when a publisher wants to publish your book, they expect you to have your own marketing plan of how to get your book out there. So you wouldn't completely escape marketing either way.

Personally, I like the control that self-publishing offers. I also like the indie culture. Although in many ways more difficult, the idea of pushing through the crowd to be successful has appeal. 

Crowd funding has also caught on as a way to get your writing (and other cool projects) out there. If you haven't had a chance to check out Kickstarter, I highly recommend it. Basically, you have a creative idea, and others help fund the endeavor and are rewarded with things that you will give them for helping you out. For example, one of the people I met at the symposium is trying to make a monster look-and-find book. He has various rewards for those who help fund his project, like copies of the book and original art work. Kickstarter has a whole section just for publishing. Its a great tool to potentially utilize. 

So yeah, those are a few of the things that I learned. I was amazed to find out that there are authors that make a living--pay a mortgage and raise a family--just by being a writer and self-publishing. How awesome is that. 

There were a few authors in particular at the writing symposium that helped expand my views on self-publishing. You can find links to their websites below. You should definitely check out their work.

Michaelbrent Collings

Tracy Hickman --yeah, THE Tracy Hickman, co-author of the Dragonlance series

Jess Smart Smiley

Aaron Patterson