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~ Tales of a freelance nerd

Wood the Writer

Monthly Archives: October 2016

Writing Lesson of the Week – Don’t Write a Lot of Books

25 Tuesday Oct 2016

Posted by Jessica Wood in freelancing, indie, musings, self publishing, story, Uncategorized, writing, writing advice, writing lesson of the week

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author, book marketing, book promotion, books, professional writing, publishing, self publishing, writer, writing

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I don’t normally read The Huffington Post since they don’t pay their contributors, but I did come across this one post I couldn’t help but agree with which says that self-published authors shouldn’t write 4 books a year.

Like most writers, and most non-writers actually, I would love to do nothing but sit at my desk and write books all day but I don’t just yet. Not only because it’s impossible but because it would involve using a writing and marketing model I don’t want to use. There is a growing trend of people who claim that the ease of self-publishing and online promotion makes it possible to publish a high quantity of books and make a living off of them. You just have to spend 6 hours a day writing and another 6 on marketing. I don’t mind that part, I know how arduous the writing process is and how hard you need to work at marketing. But they also claim that you can use the ‘write, publish, repeat’ model to put out 4 or even more books a year. The problem I have with that is you can’t just write whatever you feel like and expect it to sell enough to earn a living. You can only succeed with this model by succumbing to public demand or writing gross porn, neither of which particularly interests me. If I forced myself to write that, I would probably lose all passion for writing. It is true that I have to use a similar process to write the SEO articles I churn out for bread and butter money, but an 800 word article serves a different purpose than an 80,000 word book.

There is no problem with publishing so many books if you are a competent enough writer to put out 4 good books a year, but few writers are. Even traditional book publishers only expect their  writers  to put out 1 book a year at most. That’s because it takes time and effort to write and publish a book that is of good quality and will actually sell, even if you do spend 6 hours a day on writing. Writers put their names on everything they publish so they can’t afford to ruin their reputation by putting out an inferior product, and that is what you will get if you try to write a full length book in 3 months. Yes I know that pseudonyms are a possibility, but they make branding difficult and it is annoying to have to constantly switch between them.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I am taking my time with my first book on purpose. I’m turning 28 next week and I would ideally like to publish 1 book before I turn 30, but that’s just a projected timeline for motivational purposes. If I had hastily written and published the book before my skills were polished, I would be looking back at a problematic book that I couldn’t be proud of. Perhaps in years to come I will look back on my first book and feel embarrassed by it, but at least I will know that I put my full effort into it and learnt how to be a better writer from it. I don’t even know if anyone will like this book, but that’s not the reason I’m writing it. While it is true that you need to write an awful lot of crap to learn how to be a good writer, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to publish all of that crap.

Once I become more accustomed to self-publishing, hopefully I can publish books quicker and perhaps even do it full time, but not with the 4 books a year method. I still like my freelance work and I don’t want to give it up entirely. But through this freelance work I see far too many books that were written to fit supposed consumer demand or were published half-heartedly lurking at the bottom of the Amazon rankings. I have too much respect for the industry and for readers to put more books like these onto the market with my name on them. I may not have 100 books to my name by the time I’m dead, but I’d much rather have 1 book I put my whole heart into.

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Writing Lesson of the Week – How to Write a Series

18 Tuesday Oct 2016

Posted by Jessica Wood in adaptation, Common Criticism, fantasy, film, musings, story, writing, writing advice, writing lesson of the week

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books, fantasy, fantasy story, film adaptation, plot, publishing, publishing a book, reading, series, structure, the lord of the rings, tolkein, trilogy, writer, writing, writing fantasy

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I’ve taken a brief break from writing my novel as I’ve had a major freelance job come in, which means completing about a month’s worth of work in 9 days. I’m happy to be working, but also kind of questioning why I do this to myself.

I did see this post on another author’s blog about series books which are devoid of an exciting plot, devoting the entire first book in the series to the rising action with no real climax or a satisfying conclusion for the reader. It’s incredibly common especially for fantasy writers to write trilogies or series, myself included, but when publishing a book, I think we should learn the correct way to write them.

Tolkien started the trend of fantasy trilogies with The Lord of the Rings, but ironically this was actually unintentional. His book was published in three parts due to post-war paper shortages, which is why the end of The Fellowship of the Ring especially just sort of ends unexpectedly and picks up again in The Two Towers as if there wasn’t a break. The film adaptation handled it much better, by moving Boromir’s death to the end of Fellowship, providing a conclusion to his story arc, and ending one part of the story to begin another.

This is why all film trilogies are structured so that they can be watched and enjoyed as separate movies, rather than a single story told in three parts. If the credits started rolling after a random scene simply because it’s a third of the way through the story, you’d feel pretty cheated and wouldn’t be back to watch parts two and three.

Books should work in the same way. I initially planned my novel as a single story but had so many ideas that it will now be three. But I’m keeping the basic structure of the first book, with only a few unanswered questions and unresolved sub-plots, and even then only very minor ones, so that readers can still enjoy it as a coherent story and decide for themselves if they want to read the next book. While I am planning a plot twist for the end of book two, I still plan on wrapping up the story and main plot of that book and I hope that readers who have reached that point will be invested enough that the ending won’t bother them.

While I do wish there were more one-off fantasy books, I do still enjoy a good series, but only if it is written and structured correctly.

Writing Lesson of the Week – Changing Character Details Half Way Through a Draft

04 Tuesday Oct 2016

Posted by Jessica Wood in Editing, fantasy, musings, self publishing, story, writing, writing advice, writing lesson of the week

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book editing, book publishing, editing, fantasy, fantasy writing, novel, novel writing, publishing, self publishing, writer, writing, writing a book, writing advice, writing tips

 

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This is a new weekly feature I’ve started for this blog, which I intend to use for sharing writing tips I’ve picked up, updates on my writing progress, observations on what I’ve been watching or reading, or maybe even some short pieces of writing.

I’m about two thirds of the way through my novel’s second draft now, hoping to finish it by the end of the year, and I was a little annoyed by a revelation that caused me to change major character details. Specifically, there were two characters in my novel who used wind and earth magic. I initially put this in along with a fire mage and water mage for a four elements thing, five if you count the character who represents spirit. But I noticed that the wind magic user reveals her powers early on then doesn’t use them until the climax. The earth magic user is also a skilled melee fighter, which factors much more into the plot than her magic abilities. So I decided that as cool as the magic was, it had to go. The wind magic user now has her maturity, leadership, and manipulation as her key skills while the earth magic user can stick to being an awesome fighter. The fire and water mages can stay as their magic serves the plot much better. It also makes more sense to only have two magic users in the main cast as I’ve established that natural magic abilities are rare in my fantasy world. I can still have the two characters represent the elements of air and earth while not necessarily have them use elemental abilities.

While it is a good thing I picked up on these flaws before I published the book or sent it to agents, it’s still annoying that I’ll have to go back and change two thirds of this current draft. It’s inevitable that multiple drafts are required when writing a book, but it does make me worry how much stuff I’m going to change and how many drafts I’ll need. What if I keep on editing and never get around to publishing the book?

Even worse, what if I notice something after the book has been published but it’s too late to go back and change it? I’ve heard that a lot of writers feel this way. Sometimes they go back and re-write their old work, other times they just leave them and feel embarrassed whenever they’re brought up. Perhaps it’s just another part of being a writer that we all have to come to terms with. Or perhaps I’m being paranoid and the third or fourth drafts will be just fine. Either way, it does make me glad that I’m taking my time with writing this book rather than rushing it out so I have time to improve my skills and notice flaws like these before I put out my first book.

photo credit: Dunechaser <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/12426416@N00/469027719″>Elemental Mages</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a&gt; <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/”>(license)</a&gt;

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Jessica Wood

Jessica Wood

I'm a freelance arts and fan culture writer living in Ylamylly, Finland with my husband. I write mostly YA fantasy, fairy tales, and historical stories.

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