How to write a 50,000-word First Draft

It's scary how easy it is to lose time and *not* write.

My first drafts clock in somewhere around 50,000 words. They come with huge gaps and hardly any description. But it's a first draft, and as everyone knows, first drafts are crap.

So why do they take me so long?

Ten or so years ago, I wrote 50,000 words in two weeks. Two freaking weeks!
It was utter dross, but I wrote it.

Then, a few months later, I did it again!
It was more dross, but I was really enjoying myself. 25,000 words a week, or about 3,500 words a day.
It was awesome.
I've also never achieved this level of output since. But somewhere along the way, I *think* the writing improved, so there are payoffs to being slower.


Here's how to write 50,000 words. 

By writing the words!

Writing 100 words a day, every day, will take 500 days (1 yr, 4.5 months) to get to 50,000 words.

Writing 250 words a day, every day, will take 200 days (nearly 7 months) to get to 50,000 words.

Writing 500 words a day, every day, will take 100 days, or about 3 months and a week-ish, to get to 50,000 words.

Writing 1,000 words a day, every day, will take 50 days, or less than 2 months, to get to 50,000 words.

Writing every day means writing on weekends as well. This isn't always practical or even possible.

Writing 1,000 words a day, 5 times a week, will take 10 weeks, (less than 3 months) to get to 50,000 words.

Obviously, if I write more words each day, I'll get there even faster. But I don't want to put too much pressure on myself by setting unreachable goals and failing to meet them (and subsequently feeling like a failure).

I'm going for the 1,000 words a day model, with weekends off.

Today I added 1,000 words to a mansucript that's now at 23,600 words. Which means I *should* finish this draft in the next five weeks, right?

Have I mentioned lately what a hypocrite I am? I'm GREAT at dishing out advice. Terrible at taking it. Even my own.

How To Plan

Planning is something we do every day, sometimes deliberately, sometimes subconsciously. 

The way plans really work is to write them down. Just as I wrote this talk down first. (And deleted the waffle. Oh the waffle!) 

Setting Goals:
A mountain climber doesn’t wake up one morning and set out for Everest on a whim. In the same way, a writer can’t simply ‘decide’ they’re going to write a novel in one day.

The Novel is the Mountain:
We’re standing at the bottom of it, looking up. It’s insurmountable from here. Especially as we haven’t done the training and we don’t have the equipment. Just as Hillary couldn’t get up Everest without Sherpa Tenzing and a tank of oxygen, we can’t write a novel without the equivalent in chocolate and cheer squads to help us navigate the way.

The non-writer’s idea of Goal setting:

Step 1. Write a novel
Step 2. Get it published
Step 3. Profit
Which is a lot like the underpants stealing gnomes in South Park.

1. Collect Underpants.

2. ? 

3. Profit!

Publishing is changing drastically. Advances are falling. I hear publishers in the UK are cancelling contracts. (I don’t have hard data, but I’ve heard it now from two personal sources so maybe there’s some truth in it?)

Back to setting goals:
As the mountaineer begins a rigorous training regimen over many months, so too must a writer. Writing every day flexes the creative muscles and gets them in top shape.

So here’s how writers really plan. We plan by setting goals for ourselves, then breaking things down into smaller and smaller achievable steps along the way. Measurable steps. Achievable steps.

1.Write down your goals

2. Create a PLAN

3. Break the plan down into achievable steps

4. Do the steps in order

5. Reward yourself each time you reach one of your steps.

6. Keep Going. 

HERE IS A BONUS. IF YOU GET THE HANG OF SETTING GOALS AND MAKING PLANS FOR WRITING NOVELS, YOU'LL FIND WAYS TO INCORPORATE THIS INTO YOUR CHARACTERS - WHO ALSO NEED GOALS AND NEED TO MAKE PLANS TO CARRY THE STORY FORWARD.

Stage One.
1. Have an idea.

2. Write it down.

3. Write every day.

4. Read books you enjoy.

5. Read books you don’t enjoy.

6. Write every day.

7. Read about structure.

8. Read about plotting.

9. Read about creating believable characters.

10. Write every day.

11. Write though the saggy middle.

12. Write every day.

13. Write the black moment where all seems lost, there is no way out and love is not enough.

14. Read more books that you love and hate.

15. Write to the very end.

You have completed a novel. Congratulations. 

Now put it away and start again.
Have another idea.

Write another novel. Repeat steps 1-15.

What’s not in the plan?

Blogs, websites, twitter, facebook and the rest of them.

Personally, I wouldn’t worry about blogging or building a twitter following at this point, because it will take time and energy away from finishing the novels.

Would you open a furniture store if you were still whittling? No.
Editing isn’t in the plan yet. Editing is the next stage.

1. Take the manuscript you haven’t looked at for three months

2. Read it without making any changes.

3. Read it out loud to get a sense of the flow and dialogue.

4. Have you made it to chapter 2 without cringing? Good for you.

5. Edit

6. Edit some more

7. Edit

8. Edit some more

9. Is it worth saving? Probably not. Set it aside and start on a new manuscript.

These multiple stages and myriad steps highlight how long it takes to write novels, and how much effort and work goes into them.

If you’re impatient or setting yourself impossible deadlines, your writing will suffer. Take time to make all the mistakes now, in private, instead of rushing to publication before you’re ready.

Stage three

PUBLICATION

1. Research.

2. Research.

3. More research.

4. Yet more research.

5. Even more research.

6. Figure out if you need an agent.

7. Find out if that agent is taking queries. If not, go back to step 1.

8. Find out if your chosen publisher will accept unsolicited manuscripts.

9. Craft a query letter or pitch for your chosen agent or publisher.

10. Throw it away, it will be terrible

11. Craft another query letter.

12. Get a friend to help you make that letter make sense.

13. Read, read and read more on how to write a proper query letter.

14. Follow the agent or publisher’s query guidelines exactly. If they don’t take romance, there’s no point in sending them your romance manuscript.

15. Steel yourself for rejections. They are a fact of life.

The ‘publication stage’ can take months or years. Use that time to read more books and write more novels.

If all these stages and steps look like far too much hard work, you’re right. It is hard work. If you don’t want to do the hard work, that’s OK. You can still write and gain enjoyment from writing. Nobody is going to stop you.

But if your ultimate goal is to be published in the traditional sense, by an advance-paying publisher, then you can’t skip any of the steps.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Lao Tzu.

“The phoenix can fly only when its feathers are grown.” Monkey Magic.

Being In Control

Turns out, I really am a control freak.
How about that.

As a writer, I am really enjoying this "going indie" caper. I control what I write, and I set the deadlines. (Which is fine because I'm self-driven and am good at setting goals ... and meeting them.)
I'm in control of the stories and the covers.

But the biggest thing I'm in control of is setting the cover price.

I'm also in control of the advertising budget and where that advertising is going.

It's incredibly liberating. Sure, it's hideously frightening too, because I don't know if anyone is going to be interested in parting with their money for my books. But then, when I'm with a publisher, I'm not in control of the deadlines, the promotions or the prices.

That's not to say I've turned my back on traditional publishing. I still think all writers should aspire to traditional publishing. For me, being offered a contract by a publisher means I've passed several tests of quality and potential profitability from their point of view.

So much has changed since I signed my first contract waaaaaay back in 2008. Five years ago, there simply weren't the options for writers that there are now. My original contract didn't even mention digital books. (I signed an amendment for that a year or so later.) I'm sure these days, every publishing contract would have a digital/ebook clause.

In hindsight, I shouldn't have signed that ebook clause. Because I can't control the prices for the UK and Commonwealth sales. At the moment my novels are listed for £4.12 on kindleUK , which is about $6.25 Australian (or about $6.40 US).

$6.25 is too much for a 60,000 word ebook. Especially when you can get the paperback for only a pound more in the UK or a couple more dollars in Australia/US with free worldwide delivery.

Do you know what I'm getting from those digital books? 25% of 'net'. The net, dear readers, is not the amount the reader pays for it ($6.25) but the amount the publisher gets from the retailer. Which could be as little as $3 per book. In other words, maybe 75 cents per sale.

And the sales are ... let me choose my words carefully .... UTTER CRAP, which I partly blame on the price point.

The 'sweet spot' for ebook purchases - for an author to attract readers while still being able to make a living - is between $2.99 and $5.99.

If I'd held on to those digital rights instead of signing them away FOR NOTHING, I could have been be selling the ebooks myself, for $2.99 and taking home 70% of the sale price, which would be $2.10 per sale.

So, I only have control of the US digital release, (and Japan and ... wow, Moldova!) because I didn't sign that right away. Thank goodness.

And I have full control of the next two books in the series. I'll be setting the price in the sweet spot.

I'll be in control.

Humanity Fail

A regular, everyday public relations disaster happened in Australia.
(This is nothing to do with publishing or writing per-se, but I do love how people operate and how they make life worse for themselves. I'm so morbidly curious that way.)

The CEO of a major department store company (who earns $1.8 million a year) thought a household levy of $350 per year (that would go to people with disabilities) would be a bad thing for his company. Why? Because the people paying that levy (higher earners) were their customers, which would be $350 less they would spend in his stores.

Quick backstory: the NDIS is a National Disability Insurance Scheme that, as the name suggests, will go towards supporting people with disabilities.)
Quick disclosure: My son was diagnosed with autism aged 4. He's now 9. For the past 5 years he's received a small disability payment each fortnight that some of the way towards his paediatric, psychology, speech therapy and occupational therapy fees. He also loves getting money for his birthday and spending it at department stores . . .

Here's the news article about Myer's foot-in-mouth-itis in all its proper context.

Retailer Myer has warned the proposed increase to the Medicare levy will hurt sales at its stores, since it will affect its direct customer base.
The federal government confirmed today it planned to increase the Medicare levy by half a percentage point, which will cost the average household at least $350 a year. The levy is to part-fund the proposed national disability insurance scheme (NDIS).
The estimated $350 for the Medicare levy increase ‘‘is something they would have spent with us’’, Myer chief executive Bernie Brookes told a Macquarie Investment seminar earlier today.
The proposed levy ‘‘is not good for our customers and may have an impact’’, Mr Brookes said.

(My emphasis in bold. I've also corrected the spelling of his surname to put the e back in. E is emportant.)

My first reaction (after deleting all the swears) was 'oh, you out-of-touch FOOL!'

• The NDIS will directly support people with disabilities. Everything from acquired injuries from road trauma or workplace injuries, to people born with cognitive, physical or mental impairments. 
• People don't mind paying levies and taxes when they know where it's going and what it's doing. And also, hey, score one for humanity, we kind of LIKE helping people out who THROUGH NO FAULT OF THIER OWN aren't exactly winners in life's genetic lottery. People like, oooh, I dunno, my son, who has autism.
• Gee whizz, Bernie Brooks is so out of touch he doesn't get that people with disabilities are human beings, with consumer needs and desires too.
• Brookes's attitude seems to be the $350 per annum will disappear into some kind of black hole, when in fact all it's doing it taking a circuitous route through the government and then back into the community.
• Brookes thinks Myer's customer base is well-off and don't have any disabilities of any kind. Or have any relatives with disabilities. Or know anybody with disabilities.

The backlash on social media was swift and clever. Their are calls for boycotts of Myer, so what he said yesterday turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.

and this one:

But I wanted to know how Myer would respond. Because often you can issue a fabulous apology and acknowledge your error of judgement and try to make things better.

Um..... no.

All the 'nopology' did was pour petrol on the heat. Confirming that the CEO didn't just speak off the cuff in a brain-fart of stupidity. That they really think this is some kind of "money being taken out of our entitled cash registers to disappear into the ether" kind of thing.

And so the storm rages on.

Via facebook, and apparently on twitter but only between 9-5 Monday to Friday.

At the time of posting this, it's nearly 10am on Thursday. The poor, poor staffers who monitor the tweetstream for Myer are probably locked in the toilets and saying all the swears.

UPDATE: Bernie Brookes issues an apology.

Oh no, it's one of those "sorry if" apologies. And then he goes back to try and create wriggle room and reiterate his original sentiment, before another apology 'to those who have taken offence'. Hey, I'm one of them. I think. But it's so nebulous it could be anyone or no-one.

I apologise to those who may have been offended or hurt by the comments I made.As a business, we are sensitive to imposts on the consumer by the government as this adds to negative consumer sentiment and that adversely impacts sales, profit and jobs. Ideally we would like any government initiative to be funded within the revenue stream it has, rather than through a new or additional tax take.
However, I do apologise to those who have taken offence to my comments about an increase in taxes.

You know what? "Those who may have been offended" means the speaker didn't really mean it, and if you're offended, that's your problem. 

Nice.

The tweet stream was short and to the point. Nearly there.

The Same But Different

Why am I going "Indie"?
Good question. I know it's good because I asked it.

Here's why I'm going Indie.
Because publishing is changing and my Ondine books don't fit the traditional mould.

It doesn't mean they're rubbish, it just means they don't fit the way publishers do business these days.

Way back when I signed a deal for Ondine with Egmont UK, it was for UK and Commonwealth rights only. Which meant my agent and I still held the rights to sell into the USA.

Later, when the books came out in the UK to rave reviews, my agents tried to get USA interest. However, the times were already changing and the USA publishers weren't interested.

In rave reviews!
In a ferret hero!
In a diabolically funny romance!

They weren't crazy, they were being ultra cautious. Because publishing was changing. And also, ebooks were storming on in and everyone was NERVOUS. And that global financial crisis thing. Upshot being, if a US publisher was going to pay out for a book, they wanted as many rights as possible so they could get back their investment. And we'd already sold most of those rights.

But, I have the rights to the USA, which is why I'm releasing the first two Ondine titles, as ebooks, into that territory. The clever thing is, I can geographically restrict the sale of these titles to the territories I still have rights to, without infringing on the deal I've previously made with Egmont UK.

So, I'll be releasing the first two Ondines into the USA-only in June and September, and then . . .

The NEXT TWO ONDINES will be released as ebooks WORLD-WIDE in December and then March.

Are you still with me? Excellent.

Here's where things get tricky. That global financial crisis? It kicked in.

I wrote the Ondine trequel, and in 2012, Egmont UK passed. Not because it was crap, but because the first two books hadn't sold enough to warrant further investment. Traditional publishing is a business and they are in it to make money.

But I still had a story to tell, and for me, it was worth the investment of my time and money to write the next two books and deliver them for the fans. I hired a freelance editor (who, as luck would have it, used to work with Egmont). All up, it will cost me a few thousand dollars to release these four books, and I'm confident I'll get that investment back.

The downside is, the covers won't all match. If you're in the USA, and you're buying all the ebook versions, they will match. But if you've been a loyal fan who bought the paperbacks in the UK, books 3 and 4 will only be on your ereading device, rather than your bookshelf. I can only apologise for this, and for the different covers. I've tried to make the most gorgeous covers in the world, so that you'll be happy. Ultimately, it's what's between the covers that will count, and I've written the best books I can as my way of thanking my existing audience, while appealing to new readers.

Speaking of counting, I'm counting down the days. It's May now, and that means THE SUMMER OF SHAMBLES will be available in the USA next month. NEXT MONTH!

I have work to do.

I missed a turning point!

I've been reading over the first two Ondine novels and noticed in Ondine: The Autumn Palace, that I'd skipped over a pretty huge turning point - where Ondine takes the easy way out and decides to cheat on her tests - with Hamish's help.

Hamish wants to help her any way he can, so he's not doing it to be horrible or anything.
Ondine wants to stay with Hamish, so she's only resorting to cheating in order to maintain her grades and not be kicked out of school, and therefore the palace.

And yet in the paperback version, I completely fluffed it! I can't believe I skated over such a big turning point with exposition, told in past tense.

Here's how it was: (I've emphasised the problem in bold)

There just weren’t enough hours in the day to study properly, so although she did her best, it wasn’t good enough.

Which meant she caved in and accepted Shambles’s stolen notes containing answers to her exams.

On this particular morning, classes had finished, but Ms Kyryl asked Ondine to go into her office. Ondine wasn’t thinking particularly psychic thoughts, but she knew it couldn’t be a good thing to have to stay behind. When she yawned, it only made things worse.

“Ondine, please sit.”

And here's how it will be in the USA ebook version. It shows Ondine making the choice between sucky and suckier (As Debra Dixon would say). The important thing is, it's happening on the page.

There just weren’t enough hours in the day to study properly, so although she did her best, it wasn’t good enough.

On one cold and dark night, after everyone had gone to bed, Ondine woke to find herself asleep on her desk, a trickle of dribble blurring her notes.

“Psst, lass, there’s another test in the morning.”

Groggy, she rubbed her eyes to find Shambles under her desk. She was so tired, she didn’t even have the energy to wish he was his wonderful self instead of the little animal. “There’s a test every morning.”

“I have the answers for ye, just in case ye need them, like.”

No energy to fight, Ondine took the folded sheet from Shambles and staggered into bed, fully clothed.

The next morning, as classes finished and they broke for lunch, Ms Kyryl asked Ondine to go into her office. Ondine wasn’t thinking particularly psychic thoughts, but she knew it couldn’t be a good thing to have to stay behind. When she yawned, it only made things worse.

“Ondine, please sit.”

Which goes to show that I'm my own worst student. I hate it when important moments happen off the page - and I've gone and done it myself. I'm a hypocrite. Then again, I'm only human.

Budgeting

As I prepare to launch all four Ondine books out into the USA and somewhere called The Rest of The World, starting in June, I need to keep an eye on where the money is going.

Two of the books were released in paperback (and later ebook) into the UK and Commonwealth by Egmont UK. These are the ones I'm releasing into the USA as ebooks. They are 'done' so to speak, so I spent hours and hours and HOURS reformatting them from the proofreading files back to word. But at no 'extra' cost, aside from months of my life.

Money, money, money, money .... money!

Months where I could be working at ALDI instead.

Back to the books. The next two novels are more expensive. These are new novels, not contracted to a publisher, so I can release them worldwide. I want them to be even better than the first two. That means I've put heaps of pressure on myself to write something AMAZING, and then I've hired REALLY SMART EDITORS to do a structural edit and then a line edit/proofread.

I've paid them for their high skills and knowledge. Because if you want good people, you need to pay them good money. This translates into about $1,000 per book.

Each of the four books will cost me around $200 for formatting and cover creation #. So that's $800 for formatting and $2,000 for editing. Whoa, that's $2,800 for the set of four before I even begin promotions.

I'm looking at an advertising budget of around $750. So .... wow, $3,500 out of pocket before I start selling.

I better hope these books sell!

Being $3,500 in the red means I need to sell about 2,000 copies at somewhere around the $3 mark to break even. (or 500 of each title). Obviously, I want to do better than this. Much, MUCH better than this. But in a basic look at the numbers, this is what I need.

It's why I need to budget. I simply can't sell the titles at 99c each or give them away indefinitely, if I want any chance of paying off those debts.

Some might say an outlay of $3,500 is exorbitant, and that I should be doing this on the cheap.

But if I 'go cheap' the results would be less than stellar.

These titles will be competing for people's attention - people who don't have a lot of time and will despise me if I waste theirs. People who read 'properly' published novels and want the same quality and attention to detail in an indie published novel. I want my Ondine novels to be up there competing with fans who love The Princess Bride (The 'good parts' version abridged by William Goldman) and Maureen Johnson's legion of fans and readers who love Paranormalcy.

I can't ask them to lower their expectations and give me extra consideration. I want them to be so caught up in the story they don't care where it came from, only that they want the next one.

My novels are about entertaining the reader, respecting the reader and delivering a high quality product.
If I skimp, or do it 'on the cheap', the results will be reflected in the end product.

I don't want that, and I'm darn sure readers don't want that.

So now I have a budget and a rough idea of how many books I need to sell. I'm mildly terrified.
I've already spent the money, too. So there's no backing out now.

#. I am getting the covers for hella-cheap prices because I'm fortunate to have an awesome relative who is the shizzle with graphic design. No, it won't be my 9-y-o son, he's busy doing the covers for my Skylanders fan fiction.

I have got to walk away from Facebook

Cue the meme:

Aside from a great excuse to run a pic of Sean Bean, the meme is true. How do you leave Facebook? It's driving me insane, and every day I see things that make me want to scream. It's no good for my mental health and it's making me dumber.

The adverts down the side are insulting enough, what with the '97-year-old who looks 14' or some crap. I mean, really, does ANYONE click on those?

In the . . . six or seven years I've been on fb, I've bought ONE item using the side ads, which was something so specifically tailored to me it was perfect. Ferret jewellery, and it's gorgeous. But that 'one weird food that sheds 14 kilos of belly fat in two weeks' has to be tapeworm eggs, surely? I don't know, I'm not crazy enough to click on it.

But do you know what's more annoying than the ads down the side, or the more recent ads in between posts?

The people.

Granted, this is my fault for friending them in the first place. But my giddy aunt, THE PEOPLE!

The people who share 'motivational' quotes from Anonymous. (So profound, yet so anonymous. Because looking quotations up first to verify the author is such a time slurp, am I right?)

The people who share life-affirming mantras from some Hopi Indian medicine man. The people who 'love their daughter with all their heart' and have to share it with everyone, especially if the font has little hearts where the dotted i's should be.

OK, OK, I shouldn't be such a curmudgeon. It's harmless fluff, right? They're just being hideously nice and there's nothing wrong with being nice, right? Except for the fact it sends my blood pressure soaring, they're making the world a better place by sharing heartfelt emotions.

And pictures of cats.

And chances to win an iPad (as long as you like the scammer's fb page and then share it and then make sure all your friends share it.)

And warnings about immolating laptops that could kill you in your sleep

And terrifying stories of women attacked by gangs of men in supermarket car parks that may or not be near you but you must send the important message on for every woman to protect herself just in case.

And the warnings about vaccinations leading to autism (even tho the bloke who kicked all that off in 1998 has been struck off the medical register in the UK for MAKING THINGS UP!)

And steering clear of sunscreens because who knows what those nanoparticles are doing?

Don't even get me started on the spelling.

I have to walk away, because it's doing my head in. Never in the history of human endeavour have we had so much accurate information at our fingertips, via the internet. But what do we do instead? We warn people against common sense and proven health benefits and spread scams, because clicking 'share' and saying 'I wonder if this is real?' or 'Can't hurt, can it?' is preferable to looking things up on snopes.com or hoaxbusters.org.

The stupid. It burns.

Why do e-books cost so much?

I have no idea. But the topic is due for an airing because there is so much debate about ebook pricing (and physical books as well).

Dean Wesley Smith's giving the subject a nudge, and it's really got me thinking about price points. Too low and readers will assume it's cheap and nasty, too high and I'll price myself out of the game.

As a reader, I had no idea what was even involved in making books happen. I thought an editor grabbed a writer and said 'here's bucketloads of money, write a story with flying turnips, I'm off to Monte Carlo.'

As a writer, I have learned the hard way how intricate and DARN SLOW the process is.

Writing the first draft - at least six, more usually nine months for me.

Then beta readers and critique partners. They are human beings. They read at the speed of words and it takes time. At least a month, sometimes more. This is 'free' in as far as they are writers I know and trust, and I'm reading their work at the same time they're reading mine, and we make lots of suggestions back and forth.

Then it's another couple of months of me pulling the story together again, making it the best it can be.

Because it's going out in public.

But as much as leaning on my writer friends for help along the way can be fabulous, if I want this book to be the best it can be, I have to hire somebody who knows what they're doing to edit it.

A good freelance editor is around $50 per hour. Editing a 60,000 word novel takes about 14 hours.

If my editor had rushed it, she would have done a lousy job. Also, $50 an hour is a reasonable rate for freelancers in Australia. It's about paying people for their skills and labour and allowing them to support their families.

Also, my first two Ondine novels went the traditional way, through a publisher. The story and structural editing took several months, then the copy editing and proof reading took another few months. By highly skilled, incredibly fabulous editors who wanted the book to be the best it could be.

The reason I'm now hiring editors for my new Ondine novels is because I want this third book to stand up alongside those first two and be just as good (if not better). It's the least the fans deserve.

But it also means I embark on self publishing with some debts to pay. If I price the books too low, I'll need to sell thousands and thousands of copies to break even. Even when all four novels are on sale (by March next year, yikes!) if they're on sale for .99c I'll get about .25c per copy so I'll need to sell at least 4,000 copies before I even start to make a profit.

I don't want to sell them for .99c. I might do this for a week or something as a special deal, but at such a low price they're likely to be treated like crap.

Case in point, several friends of mine are traditionally published, and are also releasing other titles independently.  They begin selling it at $4.99 or $5.99 and earn fabulous reviews. Not a lot of them, but the reviews are 5 and 4-star great.

But then something horrible happens. The authors put the price down to .99c to gain more traction. They sure gained traction, but also gained a whole troll-load of 1-star reviews complaining about how awful the books are. By dropping the price they appealed to a new audience - and it's not good. People who hadn't read more than the first few chapters still felt entitled to complain via the reviews, misspellings and all. Oh the irony! It burns!

So you see, I need to price my books at the $3.99 or $4.99 mark to pay debts. So do hundreds of other indie authors, who have hired editors and other clever people along the way.

But I'm also pricing the books to keep clear of people who want things for next to nothing and will never be happy.

Because I'm not doing this to make cheap strangers happy. I'm doing this for the fans, and I'm doing it to make myself happy.

And I'll be buggered if I'm going to do it for next to nothing.

Keeping Time

You know that horrible, rage-filled emotion of having wasted your time? Your precious, scarce, more valuable than gold-pressed-latinum time?

I was tweeting with a friend who'd recently seen a movie which filled her with screaming resentment. She was stuck there watching, and all she could think was, "This is a massive waste of my time. I want to get out of here. Now!"

Time. More please.

I've had a morning like that. I sat at school assembly which went on and on and ON. An hour. Yes, assembly is important, but oh please kill me now. An hour!!!

After which, I had volunteered to do a cooking demonstration, so I had to sit through assembly. But then, because the assembly went so long, people walked out and nobody came to the cooking demonstration!

Cue white-hot-rage-resentment episode.

If we'd been told assembly would take an hour, but there would be yummy biscuits (ie mine) afterwards, it could have been OK. But I felt trapped by the uncertainty of not knowing what was going on or how long it would take. That clawing "I've got to get out of here" feeling took over.

I would have been desperate to get out of there and get on with the day too.

So, after all that resentment rage, I came home, cried, cancelled the physio appointment so I could claw back some time and got on with writing.

Which led me to this epiphany. I've read books where that "I've got to get out of here" feeling came over me. But with books, all I needed to do was close it and move on to the next book on the TBR pile. I don't get "trapped" with it.

The thing is, you never want your reader to feel like they're trapped in your book and they want to get out. Because they will get out, and they might never come back.

Here again, is where structure will help you. (You knew we'd get back to structure, right?)

State the plan. 
Like a James Bond movie. Here's the villain, here's what he's up to, you have to stop him. And blow EVERYTHING up at the end like a good Bond.

Show where it's going.
Have characters openly acknowledge what they want and how they think they're going to get it.

Give it a time frame.
This adds urgency to the issue and keeps the pace tight. "If we don't solve this crime by midnight, the perp goes free." or "If Hamish doesn't get his work papers before the immigration inspectors come back next week, he'll be deported. To Scotland!"

Give it all you've got.
Above all, reward people for giving you their precious time. Write well, then write weller.