Category Archives: indie

What #ChangetheChannel has taught me about online content creation

12 Thursday Apr 2018

Posted by in Common Criticism, criticism, film, indie, internet, musings

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You might have heard of a controversy that’s circulating the internet right now going by the name #ChangetheChannel. In a nutshell, it involves a website called Channel Awesome which hosts video reviews, recaps, etc about pop culture. It was started by Doug Walker as a place to showcase his Nostalgia Critic character but went on to host dozens of other reviewers. For years it was an incredibly popular website and I’m one of the many who used to visit it religiously. I used to have a lot of fun watching videos with my boyfriend (now my husband) and fondly remember watching Kickassia together and holding each other’s hands as we chanted ‘We believe in Santa Christ!’

But like any big company, it had immoral things going on behind the scenes. Previous contributors to the site have revealed that they were let go for arbitrary reasons and that the management was incredibly poor and misogynistic. In March, a Twitter thread and later a compiled document from over a dozen past and present contributors to the site revealed that things were much worse than anybody suspected. The worst allegation is that the higher ups in the site were involved in sexual abuse which went unreported.

I may create written content rather than videos, but this controversy has told me a few things about making content online, and I hope that other creators can take something away from this too:

It’s not the You show starring You

Ok I’ll admit it, I like being praised for my work. It’s just a natural human instinct. But if you become big enough, it’s easy to become elitist and snobby, which definitely seems to have happened to Doug Walker and the other Channel Awesome higher ups. Many of the website’s problems seem to have come from them treating Doug as a star who could do no wrong and neglecting the other contributors because they weren’t as important in their eyes.

Youtubers usually need to use themselves to brand their work, just as authors need to sell themselves to sell their books. But all creators, no matter how popular they get, need to remember that it is the content that is drawing in their audience, not just themselves.

Respond to controversy correctly

To add further fuel to the fire, Channel Awesome responded to the allegations with a non-apology statement, posted on Twitter, by far the best place for public apologies, which actually included the phrase “we’re sorry you felt that way”. This was basically saying ‘it’s your own fault if you were offended by the horrible things we did’.

Channel Awesome aren’t the first media producers to be involved with a controversy, but some others who have did at least acknowledged their mistakes and apologised for them. Some even voluntarily stepped down from the websites they were associated with.

While sincere apologies don’t automatically excuse you from bad behaviour, they are at least the right way to respond to controversy, rather than trying to weasel your way out of them and avoiding blame.

Being a critic doesn’t make you a creator

It’s almost painfully ironic that Doug Walker famously reviewed The Room, which is regarded as one of the worst movies ever due to the incompetence of its director. The making of the film was so awful that it has had books and films made about it (which I highly recommend, btw). Based on the testimonies made by CA contributors, when Walker made his own movies, he did similar things (not providing food and water, ignoring continuity errors, spending hours filming scenes which never made it into the film, etc) and has a similarly over-inflated ego.

I occasionally get paid book review jobs, but that’s more of a side hustle for extra pocket money. Learning what works and what doesn’t work in books can help with my own writing, but I know that being a critic doesn’t automatically make me a great writer, because criticism and writing are two highly different skills.

Don’t settle for a shitty company

I’ve worked for shitty companies before, both as a writer and in my previous career in retail. Thankfully I’ve never been involved with a company which has committed sexual assault, but I did briefly work for one which was involved with attempted murder.

The signs of a shitty company are almost always the same; poor management, lack of communication, overworking staff, no respect for employees, and those who act like paying others is a favour rather than an obligation. I know that financial necessity often leads us to settle for shitty companies, but the golden rule of ‘never work for exposure’ always stands. Your time and talent are worth so much more and moving on from an awful company is the best feeling in the world.

 

The nature of the internet is ever changing and some of the forecasts are scary for those of us who make a living from creating online content. But this controversy shows all online creators, be they writers, Youtubers, streamers, bloggers, podcasters, artists, or whatever else that if we respect each other and our work, we can still keep on creating the content that we and our audiences love.

This is the quality content I go online for.

Update: Right after I published this post (and I do mean right after), I found out that Channel Awesome has posted a more detailed response to their website. But this too doesn’t contain an apology and once again comes across as their way to try and weasel out of the accusations.

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Top Five Things to Cut From Your Next Draft

10 Monday Jul 2017

Posted by in author, Common Criticism, Editing, fantasy, indie, romance, self publishing, story, villain, writing, writing advice

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I’ve been reviewing and editing books for several years now and have only recently quit editing to focus exclusively on writing. In that time, however, I did notice several trends in multiple books which I had to either edit out or left me no choice but to give the book a negative review despite its positive qualities. These are some of the most common mistakes made by writers which you need to cut from the next draft of your own book if you want publish your book and avoid bad reviews:

Excessive Description

This is by far the most common mistake I see in self-published fiction. It’s why the last draft of my own novel was only 85,000 words in length. Many amateur authors who haven’t yet learnt about proper editing feel the need to provide overly long descriptions of nearly every element of their book, usually in the form of long exposition dumps. Perhaps it is the education system which gives them the idea that their fiction needs to go into just as much detail as their college essays. Readers don’t care about how much thought you have put into the sewage systems of your fantasy city. They don’t care about the flower arrangements at the funeral of the protagonist’s mother but rather in how her death impacted the protagonist emotionally.

Nobody is getting to the story until we answer all of these questions!

Tangents

Similarly, readers don’t like reading long author tracts or dialogue that spins off into a lengthy tangent. In real life conversations we often go off on tangents and they can even be quite fun at times, but they also distract from what we are supposed to be talking about. It works the same in fiction. Unless the tangent is genuinely going somewhere, cut it out and get back to the important dialogue.

Showing Off

Oh, so you have a degree in medieval history? You have a large vocabulary? You know all about ancient Persian refrigeration systems? Those are impressive feats, but I don’t care about them and neither do your readers. They want to read a good story, not an essay on what you learnt at the museum.

Forced Messages

Fiction is a great forum for sharing your views on real life issues, but it must be done so in a way which supports the plot and doesn’t feel out of place. There’s nothing worse in fiction than the plot being halted for someone to give a long speech about saving the whales or whatever forced message the author is trying to convey. What I love so much about the His Dark Materials series is that Philip Pullman wrote in his criticisms of organised religion in the form of an exciting adventure plot which incorporated many different elements from real life mythology. For me, half the fun of reading the books is spotting these references. They invite young readers to ask questions without turning the characters into preachy mouthpieces for the author’s own opinions.

‘But the plight of orphaned guinea pigs is important!’

I can’t believe I still have to say this but your personal prejudices should be left out of your books as well, as I still read far too many books which openly integrate the author’s own racist, homophobic, or sexist views. There’s a reason why prejudiced characters are usually the villains in books, not the heroes.

Pointless Romance Subplots

Personally I love romance plots and always try to fill my books with as many unique and interesting relationships as possible. Yet I have also cut out just as many relationships when I realised I was only putting them in for the sake of having a romance, not because they contributed to the story or the character’s ongoing arc.

Forcing in pointless romance subplots also runs the risk of including a female character for the primary function of serving as a love interest and not contributing anything else. For instance, Ygritte is one of my favourite characters in A Song of Ice and Fire and I greatly enjoyed reading her romance with Jon Snow. So you can imagine how disappointed I was when she didn’t contribute anything else to the story and barely impacted on Jon Snow’s long term development.

Remember that marriage, children, and a house in the suburbs may be the happy ending for some characters, but not for all of them. And it should go without saying but please please please do not put an incest romance in your novel. For the last time, we do not like them.

Their marriage fell apart when they realised they were a forced subplot.

Writing Lesson of the Week – Why we Need to Keep Writing

10 Thursday Nov 2016

Posted by in culture, indie, musings, self publishing, story, writing, writing advice, writing lesson of the week

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Like everyone else (and I do mean everyone, literally everyone I know is terrified right now) I was shocked and shaken by the election results. I responded initially with depression and despair, but eventually a new found hope to protect others and prompt change. There isn’t a lot that a newbie writer from a remote corner of Scandinavia can do, but I have always believed in the power of words, and now more than ever.

It was a reminder that young writers, and especially self-published authors, need to keep writing the type of stories that they want to write and readers want to read exactly because there are people out there who don’t want us to. They try to suppress our voices and change our stories. They try to control what people read and who gets representation in books. They try to skew the publishing industry in their favour.

When I was born Section 28 was in effect, which meant that school books couldn’t ‘promote’ anything to do with homosexuality. When my dad was born, just being gay was illegal in the UK. Both of these things changed because people said that they were wrong.

I’m not saying that my self-published book about yet another rebellious princess and her attractive boyfriend who start a revolution will have that much of an influence. I’m not just publishing it to make a stand or to be aggressively PC. It’s because as a reader, I know that readers need an escape sometimes. We know that bad things happen in reality and there aren’t always happy endings, but books remind us that sometimes they can. Heroes can still triumph over evil. Even after the moment when things seem their bleakest and there is no hope, the author has something up their sleeve to save the day. Lord of the Rings taught me that I can achieve something despite mental illness and hardship. His Dark Materials taught me that what people say is right and truthful isn’t always. Even books that don’t do that can still take your mind off your troubles and cheer you up, which puts you in a better mood to begin solving your problems rather than be crushed by them.

Even if only one or two people read my book, you can bet I’m going to fill it with a strong female character, a diverse cast, and several LGBT+ characters and romances (and I am actively avoiding the ‘bury your gays’ trope). Not just because it’s what I want to write, but because there a whole lot of people out there who don’t want me to write that.

Keep on writing.

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

25 Tuesday Oct 2016

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

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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.

End of Year Post

29 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by in blogging, christmas, Editing, freelancing, indie, musings, Short story, writing

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2015 is coming to a close and I don’t think I’m the only person who found this year emotionally draining. It was my first full year of living in Finland and my expat dream didn’t go as smoothly as I had hoped. The first few months of the year were downright depressing for me with no work at all and a dwindling bank account. But in a weird way, reaching that low point motivated me to set things right and do things properly. As such, my work load exploded from that point on and I now have several regular clients I am doing work for on an almost daily basis. Considering that in the last few years since I graduated, there were months at a time where nothing at all happened to me, it’s been quite an incredible transformation.

That wasn’t the only thing I achieved this year. I had my first print book editing credit. (Unfortunately I don’t have a photo to prove it. Thanks, Royal Mail!) I’ve had reviews and articles published on several websites, making up quite a nice portfolio for myself. I’ve been doing a lot of photography, which I really enjoy, and have even had some pictures published. I’ve kept this blog more or less constantly updated. Most exciting of all, I finished the first draft of my novel! I’ve been working on-and-off on it since university so I’m very happy about that.

Despite all these successes, I’m still not earning a whole lot more than what I was making when I worked part time jobs. Working from home does mean I’m saving money on transport and eating on the go and it is definitely preferable to working retail, but I do still have to work very hard to make just above minimum wage.

As such, my main goal for 2016 is to pitch to higher paying clients so I can gradually wean myself off of the low paying clients and write more stuff that I’m passionate about. Ideally I’d like to do the same amount of work I do now for more money. I know it’s possible. Other goals for this year are:

  • Learn Finnish. I know it’s awful that I’ve been living here for over a year and I know barely any Finnish. I’m maintaining a stereotype about British expats that I all too often complain about. I have had many other issues this year to deal with and I didn’t have any money for classes, but I’ll try to find a way to at least learn a little by myself.
  • Finish the second draft of my novel. I already have a plan in place and a very long list of books to read for research. I’ve already spotted a lot of plot holes and things I want to change so it’s going to be a fun challenge!
  • Practice more photography. Perhaps even get some more photos published.
  • Market more through social media. It’s such an important thing for freelancers but I’ve been neglecting it far too much. Apparently browsing on Tumblr doesn’t count.
  • Keep my blog updated.
  • Submit more short stories. I’ve already found a few interesting anthologies I want to submit to this year. I also have some old stories stewing around on my laptop that I want to get out there.

If like me you’ve had a difficult and challenging year, at least it’s over now and we all have the chance for a fresh start. Don’t let yourself get anxious or depressed because trust me, it’s not worth it and there is always a way to dig yourself out of whatever hole you find yourself in.

Here’s to 2016 not sucking quite as much as 2015!

Top Six Signs of Bad Writing and How to Avoid Them

17 Thursday Sep 2015

Posted by in Common Criticism, Editing, fantasy, indie, musings, proofreading, self publishing, story, writing, writing advice

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I’ve been editing and reviewing books professionally for a few years now and I can now recognise within the first few pages whether a book is going to be good or not. This doesn’t always mean a book with spelling and grammar errors or unnecessarily long paragraphs. Those are all things that can be fixed during editing. But I do frequently review a book and know that not even the best editor could have made it good or successful. One of my Creative Writing tutors had a nice metaphor for this – You can polish a turd as much as you want but it won’t stop being a turd.

Take for example a book I edited last month for a successful businessman. The book was well structured, had a friendly and conversational tone, and the author clearly knew what he was talking about. I’ve even been using some of the business lessons in his book for my own business. But by the gods, could this man waffle on! Maybe that’s a common thing with business people. The other editors and I had to change almost every other sentence to make the book readable and I had to cut close to 4,000 words of unnecessary padding, sometimes whole paragraphs at a time. But I can still tell that despite the problems it had at the editing stage, the book will still sell well when it is published because of the most important part – the content. If a book has great content then all you need is some editing to polish it.

Sadly, many of the books I see are lacking that crucial element. It is sad when I can recognise the germ of a good idea that would’ve made a great book if it had been written correctly but the author either didn’t have the skills to pull it off or just didn’t care enough to try. Here are some of the most frequent red flags I see so that you can avoid them in your own books:

  1. Stories that go nowhere.

In the book I mentioned above, the author used many of his real life stories to back up his points, which were effective as they gave his book a more personal touch. The trouble with many inspirational memoirs I read is that the stories aren’t structured and any point they are trying to give is unclear. They go on, blend into each other, or just peter out completely.

Similarly, authors often just stop the story completely to go on a long off topic tangent about how they feel about something. These are often hard hitting portrayals of important real life issues, but they don’t belong in the book that the author is writing. If you want to make a point about these issues, then you have to do it in a way that doesn’t take the reader completely out of the story.

  1. Archetypical characters.

Christopher Vogler in his book The Writer’s Journey (a great writing book, by the way) listed the archetypical characters that make up almost every story; the hero, the herald, the wise old mentor, etc. But these are just the base that make up characters, they also need motivation, traits, backstory, and numerous other things to make up a whole person.

Unfortunately, many authors never go beyond the archetypical stage and just have their stories played out by characters who could be replaced by planks of wood. The women like to drink wine and bitch about their husbands. The men like to go down the pub and say sexist things about their wives. No variation in between, except for the nice, hunky guy who the woman is obviously supposed to have an affair with. Nobody wants to read a story if they aren’t invested in the characters and they won’t be invested unless the characters have something interesting and original about them.

  1. Standard plots.

Not only do bad authors use building block characters, they also use bog standard stories. It is true that all stories are essentially variations of the same basic plots; the quest, the love triangle, rags to riches, etc. But each author approaches these plots in a new way and tries to give it their own unique spin. For instance, the ‘overcoming the dark lord’ plot in Harry Potter is nothing new, but it works because of the engaging characters and unique setting. Lazy authors don’t bother with this and just stick to ‘good versus evil’ or ‘rescue the princess’ or one of the other stories you’ve heard a thousand times before.

  1. Magic power for every problem.

Another crucial detail missing from bad novels is peril. Even when we know that everything will work out fine in the end, we expect to be taken on a roller coaster ride of emotion until we get there and have our expectations questioned a few times along the way. Bad novelists overpower their main heroes and give them an automatic solution to every problem. A wizard always has the right spell or the warrior can defeat any foe. If the characters aren’t challenged even remotely then the novel is boring and there’s no point to reading it.

  1. Dialogue dumps.

This is how dialogue works in normal books:

“I just upgraded my Windows 98 computer to Windows 10.” Said Brad.

“But how?” Russ spluttered his chocolate milk. “Everyone knows that’s impossible.”

“I’m just that good.” Brad replied with a coy smile.

This is how dialogue works in a bad book:

I asked her ‘which boy are you going to pick? We have to solve this love triangle somehow’. She paced the floor and said ‘I don’t know. If only I could be with both of them at once. Is that weird?” And I said ‘No’ and then ‘But you have to pick soon because we have to save the world.’ That’s when the wolverines came.

Which one is easier to read?

  1. Mundane opening.

A novel’s opening is considered the most important part of the entire book and thus the part which the author should focus on the most, and there’s a good reason. Aside from the blurb, it is the first piece of the book that anyone will see, be it a reader or a publisher. A weak opening will make them put your book down and pick up the next one.

It is best not to open your book with something completely mundane – a character waking up and going about their morning routine, the drive home from work, or a lengthy description of the weather while the main character moans that ‘life just isn’t fair!’. These may seem like ideal ways to describe your character’s life, but readers don’t really care about what cereal they have for breakfast, they really want to get to the action.

 

If you have noticed any of these errors in your own writing, don’t despair just yet. You still have time to fix them and improve your craft before you publish your story. Don’t try to put your book out until you have ironed out these issues, otherwise what could have potentially been a great book will fade into obscurity.

5 Unexpected Ways That Writing Helps Your Life

17 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by in freelancing, indie, musings, story, top 5 list, writing, writing advice

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Being a writer still hasn't improved my handwriting.

Being a writer still hasn’t improved my handwriting.

If anybody ever tries to tell you that writing is worthless or a waste of time, whether it is as a hobby or as a career, you are allowed to slap them because they are wrong. Ok, you probably shouldn’t really slap them, even if they deserve it.

Writing means different things for different people and can be done for any number of reasons. There’s nothing wrong with just writing because you enjoy it but if people ask, there are many valid reasons to write for fun and many ways that writing can affect your life in a positive way, often without you even realising it. These are just some of the ways that I’ve come up with.

  1. Providing an outlet.

Much safer and healthier than venting your feelings with violence or keeping them bottled up is venting them through words. Writing is a popular hobby amongst people who have no other means to express themselves, such as prisoners or people in long term hospital care. It feels good to have control over something in your life, even if it is an imaginary world inside your own head.

It is also more important than ever to tell things from your own perspective. You may feel that the characters in the media don’t represent how people really are or marginalise certain groups. This is because these characters are often the constructs of rich producers rather than regular people.

  1. Learning new things.

Writing will always lead you to doing some kind of research, even if you’re writing your own life story, which will help you learn and discover things you would otherwise not have found out about. You may be surprised at what new interests you find. This research will also prompt you to get out and explore more often to places you wouldn’t normally visit. This might turn into an adventure worth writing about in itself.

  1. People will be impressed with you.

Most people would like to think they have a book in them or say they’re going to write someday when they have more time but barely any of them will actually do it. This is why people are so impressed by someone who actually takes their writing seriously or works hard enough on it to finish something or even get it published. You’re guaranteed to always have something interesting about yourself to mention at parties. Just don’t get too carried away and become the insufferable genius writer who everyone hates.

  1. You’ll gain a rare skill.

If you do decide to start writing professionally, it can be overwhelming at first to see the number of freelance writers out there all competing for the same gigs. But if you write well, work hard, and meet deadlines then you are already in the top category of freelance writers, even as a beginner. Once you figure out the secret of how and where to pitch then you’re golden. (I’ll be writing a blog post about how I did this later on.) Writing skills will always be in demand even as society and technology change and writing can be done from anywhere with no formal education or training.

Even if you don’t want to write professionally, the skills you gain from writing as a hobby will help you immensely in your everyday life. Good writing skills will help you stand out from other job applicants, gain credibility in your work, and become more disciplined.

  1. A feeling of accomplishment.

Whether it’s a sales flyer you wrote in an hour or an epic fantasy trilogy you’ve spent years working on, nothing feels better than finishing a piece of writing. We all need this feeling at times to give ourselves a boost. Sometimes our society gives us the impression that if something doesn’t make money or benefit humanity in some way then it is worthless. Your writing won’t always be praised and it won’t always be great, especially the first time around, but if you enjoyed writing it and you got something out of it then it can never be considered a waste of time. You’ll never know what doors will be opened up for you when you begin to write.

Writers, what unexpected ways has your writing helped you in your daily life? Share in the comments below.

Five things I’ve learned about freelance writing since graduation

25 Thursday Jun 2015

Posted by in Editing, freelancing, ghostwriting, indie, musings, writing

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Next month it will be just about five years since I graduated from university with a ‘useless’ degree in Creative Writing. During my studies, one of my lecturers was kind enough to tell the whole class that none of us would ever write anything for the rest of our lives and we would all settle for boring jobs and become bitter old bastards like him. It was a good thing he warned me because I have been working hard ever since graduating to prove him wrong. I’ve had a lot of unexpected successes over these five years but a lot of embarrassing failures as well. The things I’m most proud of are:

Things that haven’t happened to me are:

  • Getting a Master’s degree.
  • Becoming financially stable.
  • Finishing my novel (which I spent my entire last year of university working on).
  • Becoming financially ruined.
  • Giving up on my dream.

When I graduated, I initially wanted to work in the media industry. When that didn’t work out and I was fed up with the endless cycle of applying for jobs I would never get, I decided to go freelance and focus on my true passion – books. While this did end up being the right decision and has made me very happy, it wasn’t easy and I do wish that I had gotten some experience at a publishing house before I went out on my own as I could have saved myself a lot of trouble.

For aspiring writers who are graduating this year, I wanted to share some of the most important things that I’ve learned in the past five years that I hope will help you too:

  1. Writing needs momentum.

When I graduated, I had a very clear goal that I was going to write for at least an hour a day and finish the first draft of my novel by the end of the year. Well it’s been five years now and that first draft still isn’t finished. Applying for jobs became my top priority because of course I needed to work, but the trouble was that I stopped writing even during my free time. I thought ‘when I get a job I’ll be able to write again’. Even then I knew that when I did get a job, I wouldn’t have time for writing anyway! It was a horribly depressing time with no creative outlet in my life but even after deciding to focus more on writing, it still took me forever to actually start. Only when I started to put writing time into my schedule and discipline myself to stick to it did my momentum pick up again and it became easier to write every day.

  1. Get mistakes out of the way early.

I’m out of the beginner stage of freelancing but I still make the occasional major goof up. Last month I sent my invoices out late and my fiancée was rightfully disappointed when I couldn’t pay my share of the rent on time. But now I know to send my invoices out early to avoid this situation, as I’ve learned from all my other blunders. It’s much better for me to make these mistakes now while I’m a relative newbie then several years down the line when I have a reputation to keep up.

  1. Focus on doing not learning.

As a writer, my first instinct when trying something new is to head down to the library, grab as many books on the subject as I can, and research it to death. Research is important and I did need to learn about things like income sheets and marketing techniques, but I did fall into the binge learning trap.

For a while, most of my work day was spent watching videos of rich people standing next to expensive cars and talking about how I could be as rich as them if I spent $2000 on their e-course. I still felt productive as I was learning something new, but barely any of their lessons actually applied to me. This was all time that I should have spent growing my own business. I’ve found that both writing and freelancing work best with a ‘learn by doing’ approach. I still follow some blogs, watch videos, and read books that I know will be helpful and relevant but I try not to let them take up my entire day when I have new clients to find and assignments to finish.

  1. Don’t apply for jobs you won’t get.
What society thinks freelance writers look like.

What society thinks freelance writers look like.

When I was unemployed, the Job Centre was so overstretched that they could only spend ten minutes with me every two weeks. In that time they had to find any job in their database that I was even remotely qualified for and if I didn’t apply for that job, plus a certain amount every week, then I would lose my benefits. Not surprisingly, this was the absolute worst method of finding a job, and is even worse for freelancing. Wasting time applying for jobs that I’m under or over qualified for isn’t going to get me anywhere. Instead I search job boards and apply only to jobs that I’m qualified for and send out speculative e-mails to companies who I know have a good chance of hiring me. This works out much better than sending out ten e-mails a day for jobs which I know I won’t get.

  1. Become indispensable, not disposable.
An emerging freelance writer.

An emerging freelance writer.

One of my lowest points of the last five years was being fired from my part time retail job. I felt that if I had failed so spectacularly at the safe option, then what chance did I have in succeeding with the risky venture? Eventually I figured out that the reason you can be fired from a minimum wage retail job for virtually any reason is because at that job, you are easy to replace. There is a whole box of CV’s belonging to people who want your job and more applications every day to replace them when they slip up.

It’s a disheartening thought so I decided that instead of being the cog in the machine that is easily replaced, I would be the essential part that can’t be replaced. I wanted to be the type of freelancer I’d read about who clients come to first because no one else can complete their project in the way they want.

I’ve already seen shades of this happen, with clients complimenting me for responding quickly, beating deadlines, and delivering great writing first time around. From what I’ve heard, these are surprisingly rare traits in a freelancer that clients are really looking for. This could already put me in the top category of all the thousands of freelance writers and editors out there, which is a comforting thought for whenever I’m feeling down.

 

A lot of unexpected things have happened since I made the decision to go freelance but not all of them ended up being bad. I never expected to be offered a ghostwriting job but it ended up becoming my big break into being a published writer. My interest in filmmaking developed (pun not intended) into an interest in photography, a hobby which challenges me creatively and forces me to go out and explore, which recently helped me to get over a period of depression.

To any writers who are graduating soon, you have a tough road ahead of you so start now on becoming indispensable so you can avoid some of the traps I fell into. You’ll make mistakes like I did and some days will really suck, but keep on writing and learning and discovering. In five years’ time your life might not be exactly where you wanted it to be, but you might just look at your life and say ‘this is pretty great’.

How not to market an e-book

10 Tuesday Feb 2015

Posted by in freelancing, indie, internet, self publishing

≈ 3 Comments

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Last week I wrote about six things to avoid if you want to write a good e-book. As difficult as writing a book is, any self published author will tell you that the writing isn’t the hardest part. Now that it’s finished, you have to market your book. I’m not a book marketer, there are many talented people out there who can tell you the right ways to market your book, but I do work enough in the industry to recognise the warning signs of when a book isn’t going to sell.

The good news is that if you followed the advice in my last post and have written a great book, then you’ve already given yourself a huge advantage. Read on and you’ll find out why.

  1. Assume the cover alone will sell it.

A good looking, professionally designed cover is essential for your e-book sales and it goes beyond sticking on a stock image of a sexy lady or a shirtless hunk (or whatever does it for your target audience). If you hope people will just pick up your book thanks to the cover and not bother to take a few moments to read the first page then you’re assuming your readers are idiots. Don’t think that you can sell an inferior product if it comes in nice packaging.

  1. Believe you can sell sand to the desert.

If you’re stuck with a hastily written book with a tacky cover, you might hope you can use your savvy sales skills to move copies. Any marketing professional will tell you that no amount of marketing plans and expensive advertisements will sell something that is terrible. You’ll save yourself a lot of hassle by putting the time in to write a decent book.

  1. Bug people online.

Social media is a great way to gain a following for your written works but you have to do it in the right way otherwise people will know you’re just trying to flog something to them. Sending hundreds of friend requests on Facebook will get you banned and mass following on Twitter won’t get you any genuinely interested readers. Also, don’t send hundreds of annoying messages asking bloggers to review your book, especially if they say on their website that they don’t review self published books.

  1. Order 2000 paperback copies.

Many self publishing services offer printing options but these should be taken frugally. If you had a new product you were trying to sell, wouldn’t you test it first to see if there was a market for it before you set up a factory and made a huge batch? Similarly, would you order 2000 copies of a book when you don’t even know if it’s going to sell a single copy?

It’s disheartening to order lots of books only for them to either take up room in your shed or be pulped. Instead, use a reliable short run printer that can print a few dozen books at a time so you have enough to sell at your book launch and can give one to your granny. Or alternatively wave one in the face of your old maths teacher to prove that all those years of daydreaming in class weren’t a waste.

  1. Ask anyone you know (or don’t know) for a review.

It’s still true to an extent that one of the best ways to move books off the shelves is to have an endorsement from a famous writer somewhere on the cover. That said, I’m not the only reader who’s becoming annoyed with the blurbs on the back of books being replaced with quotes.

Unfortunately, it’s near impossible for a self publisher to get one of these celebrity endorsements. Margaret Atwood wrote an entire poem about why she doesn’t provide blurbs, so under no circumstances should you ask a famous author for one, unless you’ve actually saved their life and they owe you a big favour.

Even worse is asking anyone you know who’s even remotely well known to give you an obviously fake quote. This becomes awkward when you see a former mayoress saying how much she loved a gory zombie horror book.

  1. Write in a genre because it’s popular.

It’s becoming depressing to walk into a bookshop and being surrounded on all sides by rip offs of whatever happens to be popular at the moment that were obviously put out quickly and cheaply to cash in on that book. It’s especially disturbing that currently that book is 50 Shades of Grey…

Once again this comes down to writing just to make money. If you genuinely enjoy reading and writing in that popular genre then go for it. But if you don’t, it would be a waste to try.

The best thing about self publishing is that you don’t have to worry about what’s currently selling down at the supermarket. You can be as niche as you like without having to worry about appeasing your agent or publisher. Your time is free for impressing the most important people in the publishing industry – the readers.

How not to write an e-book.

04 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by in Editing, indie, proofreading, story, writing

≈ 5 Comments

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I’ve been working with self published authors for a few years now and I can honestly say it’s the best job in the world. There’s nothing better than reading a great manuscript, helping to make it the best it can possibly be and watching the writer succeed.

I love that self publishing has allowed more authors than ever before to get their work out there without the rejection letters diminishing their confidence. But the downside is that it has opened the floodgates for every hack author to put their book out and hope it will mean instant overnight success. If you’re really serious about being a self published author, then these are the sins you want to avoid:

  1. Ask a friend to be your editor.

Asking a friend who got a C in GCSE English to edit your entire manuscript in exchange for a few beers isn’t a very fair exchange. Even a basic edit of a book takes time so it’s a pretty big favour to ask someone to do for free, meaning they’ll probably just half arse it and hope you won’t notice. If you want to sell any books, it’s worth the expense to hire an editor. If you really don’t have the money, at least ask a fellow writer to help you and maybe offer to edit their manuscript in exchange.

  1. Replace the plot with pages of dialogue.

Few writing sins will give you away as an amateur more than this one. I can’t tell you the number of terrible novels I’ve come across where the plot comes to a screeching halt for the characters to bitch at each other like they’re in a soap opera. Bad novelists constantly alternate between this and my next point.

  1. Describe every little detail.

When the characters aren’t arguing, they ditch the dialogue completely and describe every moment of the drive home from work and every random thought about cheating on their husband that pops into their heads. It drags the story down and makes it a chore to read. If this happens in your novel, then take out the red editing pen and cut mercilessly and brutally.

  1. Don’t bother with drafts.

You wouldn’t study for an exam by briefly looking over the notes you took in class and you would think writers wouldn’t put their books up for sale without writing a second, third or even fourth draft to eradicate any errors. It takes time and effort but the end result is a great book that will sell. Perhaps more importantly, the process will help you become a better writer.

  1. Ignore the craft of writing.

I think that the reason some writers do these things is because they don’t really care about being writers, or have a very warped idea of what being a writer actually entails. If you want to write a book, even as a hobby, you have to study and practice the craft of writing, just as you would for any other skill. This means reading as much as you can, joining a writer’s group, reading magazines and blogs about writing. The list goes on.

  1. Write a book just for fame and fortune.

This is the worst and sadly most common reason I see for people putting out terrible novels. They read rags to riches stories about people selling record number of e-books and think it’s an easy way to make money. Unfortunately, these success stories are rare and usually don’t mention the hundreds of hours and several failed books that came before the success.

Of course I believe that authors should do whatever they can to make money from their writing. At heart all of us just want to make a living doing what we really love and we should pursue that as much as possible. But there’s a difference from making money by doing what you truly love and pushing a book onto the market as if it’s any other product to be sold.

You only need to look at a few statistics to see how hard it is to make decent money from a book, which is why the truly successful, talented and happy writers do it as a labour of love, because frankly that’s the only reason you can do it.

 

These are just a few of the mistakes I’ve seen from the thankfully small number of hack writers I’ve worked with. If you’re reading this blog then that means you obviously care enough about writing to read about it and actually learn how to write a book.

But as all good authors know, writing the book is just half the battle. Next time I’ll tell you how not to market an e-book.