Wise Words from Around the Web

I recently discovered Keyboard Hussy and her wonderfully, refreshingly opinionated blog about her exploration into the world of self-publishing. One post in particular has really inspired me, and it's this one. In it, the author discusses the pros and cons of worrying about poor self-published authors, and concludes that she's just going to get on with her own writing, rest of us be damned. I agree that good writers will ultimately triumph over rubbish ones. I left a little comment thanking her for her thoughts and got a reply from someone else which I liked so much that I am posting it here. I'm not sure he's right about everything, but I do think what he says is quite insightful, and it's given me something to think about.

~~~~

Elenya,

“You know, your point about not caring and just getting on with writing has totally made my week. Why worry about what you can’t change when you can worry about how you’re going to one-up them all by being awesome?” (This was quoted from my comment.)

Yoda to Luke:

Control, control. You must learn control!

You’ve got it. You, and only you, control you destiny. Which doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen to other people. You should. But you should analyze what they are saying, and what it means to you.

"You're pretty heavy for a small guy."

Take my prediction that Brick and Mortar book stores will be mostly dead by the spring of 2013. To most writers this sounds pretty scary. To me it sounds like a huge opportunity.

I write odd stuff. I’m working on a non-fiction book about agriculture in the Province of Ontario. While it’s mostly about Ontario, it will be of interest to farmers, and farm equipment fans worldwide. It’s not the sort of thing that traditional publishers would publish unless a government grant was going to cover the publishing costs. Since I’m my own publisher, and I’m publishing it as an EBook, my costs are pretty low, so I should make out by going totally electronic.

Genre fiction writers will also do well. The latest Harry Dresden book just came out. We bought the EBook version, it arrived on our IPad the morning of the release, we didn’t even have to leave the house to get it.

On June 14, 2011 I ordered David Weber’s How Firm a Foundation from Amazon. It will arrive in the Kindle App in my IPad on September 13, 2011, saving me fuel to drive to the store, time, and $13.03 in cost. Oh yeah and it weighs several pounds less. I have over 500 books on my IPad including De Bello Gallico and Other Commentaries by Julius Caesar in English and Commentarii de Bello Gallico by Julius Caesar in Latin thanks to Project Gutenberg.

So keep pushing. If my predictions are right, we are on the verge of a new age for artists (with artist being used as a word defining a creator of any sort, whether of a classical sort of artwork, i.e. painting, sculpture, stained glass, mosaic, etc., of written works, i.e. poet, fiction or non-fiction writer, of music, i.e. singer, singer/songwriter, musician, of well, just about anything that requires creativity, which is a pretty wide range of endeavour.

Of course the publishers would have you believe that we are coming upon a huge disaster. What they don’t want you to know is that out of a $10.00 EBook sold by a publisher, you will get about $1.00, while out of a $2.99 EBook sold by you directly through Amazon you will make $2.09!

Think. You would only have to sell half as many EBooks through Amazon direct to make a living as through the publisher. Another way of looking at it is that you are giving the publisher $5.98 for each EBook sold if you allow them to have EBook rights.

Do the numbers add up?

They of course will tell you that this is standard with all new contracts. You should sit back and think. If they want the rights so badly, just how valuable are they to you instead, and why shouldn’t you keep them, and tell the publisher to drop dead?

Anyway, it’s two hours past bed time, and I have some heavy duty editing to do tomorrow.

Have fun, and keep on writing. YOU are in control. Show them how good you are.

Wayne

The commenter's website is here, by the way, should you be interested in looking.

~~~

What do YOU think? Please let me know!

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Sub Face

I'm apparently on holiday. I'm not good at taking holidays. I find it a bit difficult to slow down. I've been a very busy person for as long as I can remember. I always have to be doing something. My leisure time especially is usually spent doing something I consider "constructive." Even if I sit and watch TV I like to scrapbook or sew. If I'm talking to someone, I fidget with things. It's like there is a part of my brain which needs to be occupied constantly in order for the rest of me to function.

BDSM has been a bit of a revelation to me in some respects. Whilst I get a sexual kick out of playing, the main benefit is that of incapacitating me. The first time my husband and a playmate tied me up they went off to make dinner without me and I nearly freaked out because I couldn't do anything to help. Now, you tie me up and I realise I can't do anything and my brain just... shuts down. It's a bit miraculous. So, forgive me if this a bit of an odd holiday past time, but I spent much of yesterday like this:

"I know you've got a camera there... oh, fuck it."

Of course, two blokes and an incapacitated me leads to other things, but that's a story for another day....

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Lessons in "Oh." (A Review)

I bought “Lessons in 'O' : Deep Throating /Oral Sex / Three Some/ Lesbian” by Gemma Parkes from the Amazon.co.uk Kindle store because Parkes tweeted that it is number 17 in Best Female Erotica 2011 list and I presumed this was based on sales. I realise now it was just a list by someone on Amazon. A lesson for me in more careful purchasing. There aren't any reviews for this particular piece but there are reviews of other works by same author and they're generally quite good so I presumed this would be alright.

I bought it, despite the fact that the tag words are in the title, and “threesome” is left as two words rather than combined into one. I bought it despite there being no front cover, so to speak, just a slightly odd CGI image of a pair of lips which looks like it wasn't actually rendered, it was lifted straight from a work in progress on a 3D modelling package.

My second impression was about as great as my first. The formatting was annoying – I had to turn the font size down because it was enormous. There are no proper line breaks or tabs for new paragraphs. There's a serious lack of punctuation right from the off. I was at this point feeling distinctly disappointed. I make no secret that I've not read a lot of erotica lately that I've enjoyed, but I still wilt a little when I try someone new that doesn't raise my expectations. Looking over the comments I've written already I'm wondering why I still went ahead and I bought it. I didn't want (perhaps unwisely) to judge the book by it's cover.

The premise is... bizarre (slightly creepy, I thought), but gets points for being original. Ellie's guy would like her to read his ex-girlfriend's book about oral sex in order to become better at it. Being a good girlfriend, Ellie does try it – and then invites the author/ex-girlfriend over, and lesbian antics ensue.

There's a lot of quite well written sex and it's quite light hearted, but that was about it, really. The dialogue is very clunky and made me cringe more often than relate to the characters. The ex-girlfriend is painted as intensely irritating (and a bit mentally imbalanced, if I'm honest) and I found myself wondering what Ellie was doing with her. There was no “Three Some”. Overall I felt it was confused, with the issues overshadowing the occasional glimpses of potential brilliance. Nothing that a few solid edits couldn't fix, perhaps, but not ready to be in the Kindle store yet, even at £0.86.

Conclusion: Not without merit, but not worth paying for. 2 out of 5 stars.

In the interest of constructive criticism, here are some (hopefully) helpful comments:

• First impressions are incredibly important. It's unfortunate that many readers will judge your book by it's cover but it's the truth. Make sure that your work looks professional from the outside.
• Please, please, PLEASE get someone with a decent grasp of grammar to check over your work before you publish it.
  
• Check that your work is properly formatted for the medium you're selling it for. If you don't have a Kindle, find someone who does. Your reader will thank you.
  
• I don't like to judge an author based on one piece of work, but many readers will do just that. You could be selling hundreds of other stories but work like this may well be putting off many more “come back” readers that you would otherwise be attracting. It pays to get it right all the time. This leads me to....
  
• ...if you go back to a story like this and realise that it is letting your other work down, take it out of circulation and fix it. Don't just leave it there like a bad smell.

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No More Mrs Nice Reviewer

Last week I wrote a blog post about editing. I was very nice in it and only named one author that had pissed me off. I was extremely tactful even though I was so angry that I actually had to stop reading for a bit the other night because everywhere I looked I saw spelling mistakes and I could barely see the rest of the story.

Since then, I've thought a lot about how tactful I should be when reviewing others work. At first I thought I would just not mention shoddy work, as it seemed unkind to name and shame people. I wondered how to tell an author tactfully that their work isn't great. Then I read something very interesting in a book. It paraphrases to this: by putting your work up for sale, you are saying that you as the writer and editor of your writing have decided that it is fit for public consumption. This means that you aren't asking me for my critique as a writer, you are asking for my money and my opinion as a reader. I have limited time and money to spend reading, so I feel that what I'm reading should be worth it. I could point out that I also have a desire to let other readers know when something isn't worth paying for, but that is a minor part. It would be hypocritical to let you assume I'm that altruistic. I have a lot of opinions as a reader, and I'm about to start expressing them.

Oh, I am so talking to you.

Yesterday I bought a story from the Kindle store. I read it, despaired of it, and asked for a refund. I'll be damned if I'm giving any more of my money or time to poor work without expressing my opinion about it from here on in. I am done with paying for work that isn't finished.

I'm no longer afraid to say what I want to say about writing I don't enjoy. I don't owe you constructive criticism, self-published author. Since you've already published you're basically telling me you don't need it. So you'd better get used to the idea of people telling you your writing sucks, because that's what it'll come down to if it's not a polished product when you put it up for sale.

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Nosce te ipsum

If I ever get a tattoo, I think it might be this one.

“Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster.” ~ Sun Tzu

This past week I've written thousands and thousands of words. None of them have been fiction. Not all of them have been on my own page either – they have been through twitter, in comments on blogs, via MSN and text messages. I've spoken to a lot of people and written about that too.

There have been many, many words about editing (and lack thereof) and if and how that affects quality of content. I have considered where inspiration comes from – how do you write realistic erotica straight from fantasy? How do you inject fantasy into real events to make them fiction? How do you write a first draft without getting stuck? How do you do anything without getting writers block somewhere?

I have thought about the background of various prolific authors and the demographic to which they appeal. I have wondered why these authors are doing so well when I don't think their content is particularly good and I haven't enjoyed it much. By extension I have considered which demographic I am a part of, since it isn't theirs. I have begun to think about how to differentiate between “erotica” and “vapid romances with explicit sex”. I've pondered how one would set up a classification system for different themes in erotica in order to find the stuff that I'm going to enjoy, as my pot luck approach is not serving me well.

I've discussed erotica as a genre and its place in the wider world of fiction. I've thought about how it is presented to outsiders and considered that in order to be taken seriously, something has to give. I have wondered how to give erotica as a genre the stamp of professionalism which will make it comparable to other genres of writing, but which many erotica publishers don't appear to consider important.

Moving that discussion along, I've looked at self-publishing. If you can't trust a publishing house, how and why do you publish yourself? I have worried about how I am going to make a name for myself as writer when there is so much shit out there putting people off trying indie authors. Should I be concerned about them? Is there something that I can do to change the status quo?

There are so, so many opinions and suggestions about all these subjects. I have considered how to express my own opinion without burning bridges with the writers that I should be impressing in order to market my own work. Can you be really, truly honest without pissing people off? What if you're scaring off people that would read your published work if you weren't criticising other authors they really enjoyed? I have been advised to be completely honest rather than dumbing down my opinion. I have been thanked for my honesty but then removed a tweet in which I criticised somebody's work because I was concerned I'd upset the author. I've stopped myself saying a whole number of things that I feel very strongly about but which I feel aren't beneficial to express.

To return to the quote at the beginning of this post, I realise that writing is not really an enemy. I do, however think that in order to succeed at anything, it is vital to know what you are up against. I'm sorry if I haven't come across coherently as I would like. I've tried to condense a whole lot of thoughts into a much shorter space. I have barely scratched the surface of this art but I already feel I've learned a lot. I'm beginning to understand myself not only as a writer but also as a reader. (Don't ignore readers – without readers there would be no writers.) Most importantly though, I think I'm beginning to understand my place in this industry of writing. I have a plan, of sorts.

I also have a whole lot of thoughts and opinions, and you can bet your ass I'm going to share them with you. And I'd really love you to share your thoughts and opinions with me. We are, after all, all in this together, are we not?

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On Editing (Or Not)

As a disclaimer: I don't really want to offend or upset anyone with this blog, but given the perhaps sensitive nature of the content, I guess it might be taken as a personal dig at various people. It's really not. Also, I appreciate I’m setting myself up to be a hypocrite. I’m not perfect and neither is anyone else and that's not the end of the world. I’m mainly asking for a bit more vigilance on this matter.

I’ve just sat down to write a review of Alice by Selena Kitt, and you know what? I can only think about one thing. A characters name is misspelled twice on page one. This was at first confusing, and then so annoying I nearly stopped reading the story there and then. How could someone have published something with such an obvious mistake so early on? I had however paid for it, and it seemed a waste of my money to stop reading it, so I persevered. My expectations of the rest of the story has bottomed out. I thought “if she can't spend the time making sure her characters names are spelled right, why should I assume she expended any effort making sure the story is any good, or the grammar is understandable?”

See, you laughed at that, didn't you?

In fairness to Ms Kitt, Alice is an excellent story once I got beyond that, and I promise not to overdo this gripe again in my review. But the point stands that rather than going on and on about great the story is, I’m sat here ranting about the spelling. Is that really what you want your work to be remembered for?

I’ve come across a lot of poor editing in recent months, and it's really starting to get to me. Before I read erotica I think perhaps I took editing for granted. You'd come across the odd misspelled word in a book and it'd be funny. But since I began to read erotica, I routinely come across sentences that don't make sense, words spelled incorrectly, and grammar in all the wrong places.

Admittedly, most of the erotica that I read is free, and the quality varies wildly, which is what I expect of self-published fiction and is probably one of the reasons why self publishing is prone to bad press. Lately though, I’ve been buying more erotica from seemingly reputable publishing houses and I’m astounded to find that the issues persist there. It's making it very difficult to know what is and isn't worth buying. Slowly but surely, I am losing my faith in published erotica as a genre worth taking seriously. And that makes me very sad, because I like to think I’m good at what I do and I wouldn't want someone else to dismiss my work off-hand because they'd had bad experiences with other pieces of fiction.

Will somebody please think of the children?!

My most serious issue is with authors that charge for their work because they truly have no excuse. I think it's demeaning to your readers to expect them to pay for mistakes that you could easily have fixed. However, to authors that put their work out for free I say: don't do yourself down by failing to edit properly. Not charging for your work is a poor reason to put out any old rubbish. I recently read a story with a friend of mine which would have been average if it had been edited for grammar and misspellings, but which was truly dismal because the incorrect punctuation made a number of sentences almost unintelligible. Thankfully, we laughed our asses of so it wasn't a wasted time, but I feel for the author as I seriously doubt it was her intention that we mock her story rather than enjoy it. I read a free story by another author which was quite good for content but poor on grammar and I’ve been seriously put off looking at the work they have for sale because I have no reason to expect it's any different.

Perhaps this is a bee in my bonnet because I am a writer and spending my time nit picking my own grammar and spelling is what I'd ultimately like to be paid to do. If, however, this is as widespread an issue as it seems to be, then people need to be standing up and complaining about it until things begin to change. Lets not allow the poor editing of some to ruin the reputation of everyone out there that is writing genuinely fantastic erotica.

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My Very First Submission

Hooray!

I have done it. I have submitted my first piece.

It has been an impressive journey to here already. It began in November when I wrote Need, and stepped up a notch in January when I began this blog. The Erotic Meet in London in May further spurred me on to believe in myself and to try and put my stuff out there. I thought I'd get here quicker, honestly, but I'm still a beginner so I'm trying to be patient with myself.

I worried and worried over this piece. I love it, don't get me wrong, but editing and re-drafting and reading it to other people and hearing back that I wrote naval when I meant navel... Well. It has been quite an experience! But the first of many, I hope. This is only the beginning, obviously. I won't know for a while yet if the piece has been accepted, and even if I'm lucky then the publishing is still a way off too, but it has begun.

*pats self on back* Well done, me. :) And thank you all for being here for me and encouraging me. And helping me with this piece and telling me it doesn't suck.

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Things I've Learned From Being a Lousy Full Time Writer

Some of you will know that I was made redundant at the end of May, and that I'm going back to university in October. This has left me with a big time gap, and rather than try to get another job, I decided that I wanted to spend the time writing. Writing full time is one of my pipe dreams, and I was looking forward to devoting some time to honing my craft and (hopefully) making a little money.

I was all fired up and excited about getting to spend more time writing, and yet the amount of writing I'm doing doesn't seem to be much greater than it was when I had a full time job. I've achieved some things I'm very proud of, but I'm disappointed that I haven't managed more. I have learned some stuff though, and I thought I'd put down a few of the things I've picked up. (Mainly to remind myself, actually.) Here they are, in no particular order. (I'd like to point out that some of these are not original. I have plagiarised from things I've read, but in a roundabout fashion rather than a quoting word for word. Sorry I can't remember who half of them are.)

Why does anyone do this?

1. Set Targets

I thought about setting myself targets - get a book finished, write 10 short stories, write at least 5000 words a week, that kind of thing. I then didn't set targets. Mistake. My biggest achievement thus far is finishing my first novel, which I managed by setting myself the target of finishing it in June. If I had set more goals, I would have managed more before then.

2. Turn Off Twitter

I can waste hours on social networking, and MSN, and texting, and petting this kitten. In fact, I very rarely achieve anything in a reasonable length of time if I don't turn it all off and make myself ignore all those distractions.

3. Have a Plan

Still learning this one - I'm reading Nail Your Novel by Roz Morris, which I wholeheartedly recommend. It's about making your writing life easier by planning and editing in a controlled fashion. In the last two days I've written 6000 words - basically more than I've managed since last November - because I'm working to a plan of how the story is going to go. I wouldn't say it's actually easy, but it's certainly much easier than anything else I've written for a while.

4. Find Encouraging Friends

Finishing my first novel has been an epic battle. I've been writing for years and yet until last month, I'd never finished a novel. I'm convinced the key to my success is a good friend of mine who poked me every Thursday, week after week, and said "finish your novel." If I ever get it published, I'm dedicating it to him. People who make you write when you don't want to and tell you that you're awesome when you're convinced you suck are a Godsend.

5. Chill Out

Almost as much as under-thinking stuff, I tend to over-think things. I get so wound up in a scene that I will swear at it for hours and not put words down. They just stick in my head and won't go to my fingers. Stop for a bit. Make some tea. Go for a walk. When I've untied all the knots in my head it's much easier to go back and finish something.

6. Get On With It

I don't care that it's hard. Just finish the damn thing, will you? It won't write itself if you sit and complain. Sometimes I just have to sit and slog through something. I hate every word and every minute, but the writing gets done. And it's not usually all that bad, either.

7. Choose Your Battles

Initially I found that I had so many ideas that I couldn't focus on one to write it. I had loads I could think of, but I wasn't achieving anything. Now I have a board on my wall. It has notes on all the things I want to do. I put one or two in the WIP column and try and forget about the rest.

8. Always Carry a Pen

The number of times I've been struck by inspiration at the gym and not been able to write it down and then I've forgotten it. Damn, that's frustrating. Now I have a pad and a pen. I make notes everywhere. They're very useful.

9. Read About Writing

Not more than you write, obviously, but reading about editing and how to structure my time and how to improve my output is already making me a much more effective writer. I've got a long way to go before I'm turning a profit, but I can see the standard of my work has gone up, even in a few months.

10. Try Anything Once

Ah, it always comes down to this. My little mantra for life serves me so well on so many levels... As much I hate the idea of properly writing a plan, or writing in 25 minute stints and taking a break, I've found they really help. I thought being a writer was this fantastic, whimsical thing where I get to do what I like, and it's not. It's bloody hard work. And I'm still not working nearly as hard as I need/want to be. But everything I try makes me a better writer. And it's not all completely unenjoyable. As in everything in life, there are bits I enjoy, and bits I don't. I bet I've barely even started. I've made positive steps though, and when I go back into full time work in October, I know that these things I've learned now will help to output more and better quality writing than I was before. :)

Gosh, this is a long post. Well done if you made it this far. Have a small, slightly green looking monkey. I'm sure he's very friendly. :)

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Establishing the Connection

I wrote this post a while back, and I was slightly disappointed I didn't get any responses, as I'm genuinely interested in finding out what people think about what makes a good sex scene.

As I read more published erotica, I am finding that as often as not, I do not find the writing sexy or arousing - characters that I cannot identify with, settings which are quite frankly unbelievable, descriptions which are brilliantly written but do little to tickle my imagination. I understand that erotica is all about delving into fantasy and finding heat in people and places that do not necessarily exist, but there has to be an element of realism or I simply do not connect - I am an outsider, looking in but left out of the action. In this respect, erotica is no different to any other kind of fiction.

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Solving Mysteries, and Leaving Them Unsolved

Recently I have been writing about the same characters a lot. I didn't set out to do this, I just had lots of ideas, and as they've come to fruition I've realised that the tone and the behaviour of the pair slots together. The story of these characters has become a jigsaw puzzle to me, all the pieces in the wrong order with the gaps just begging to be filled.

I don't want to write a chronological account of the encounters of these characters, as I feel it would lose a lot of the romance. Nor do I want to fill in ALL the gaps, as I think it would ruin the mystery of how the characters connect. All I know is that I cannot stop writing them, nor do I especially want to as they can be sickeningly cute at times and so gut-wrenchingly heartbreaking at others.

I've never felt so controlled by characters that I knew so little about. I don't even know their names. The male protagonist is occasionally referred to as Andrew, but the female has never revealed her name to me, and I wonder if it's silly of me to think that maintaining her anonymity helps the story to be more relatable, as if she were not one person but many.

Strange times. But writing is an adventure - you never know what's going to come at you next. I wouldn't have it any other way.

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NB:

I feel very strange about posting a sex scene for the first time. I tend to focus on the erotic nature of a moment, rather than the actual act of sex. But I'm quite glad I have posted it. I think that sex can be beautifully and passionately written, and I hope that I have captured the wonder of the moment that I feel for my characters when I am writing them.

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Turning Up the Heat

Since I began this blog I have been reading as much erotica as I can put my hands on. I wasn't really all that obsessed before, I just liked reading the odd bit and writing the odd scene, but I have been devouring things lately, and now I'm curious about what makes a good sex scene.

I'm not much of an expert, I just like what I like, but I've found a lot of erotic writing to be very bland. Boring almost. Lacking passion and excitement. The characters were excited and passionate, but the scenes were not. The fact that there is a bad sex prize proves that a sex scene must have a certain something to make to it sizzle, or else you will not be turned on, you will just laugh.

For me, a sex scene must leave enough to the imagination. If my character puts her hand down a man's pants, I know what she will find there, you don't have to tell me. Tell me what she thinks of his manhood and my imagination will extrapolate that he is excited. I want to know what a person is thinking and feeling, not just what they are doing. Turning sex into an analytical exercise isn't going to make me want to rush to my lover and get on with it. Teasing me with delightful and pleasurable experiences is much more interesting. I want a sex scene to make me feel like I am the one having sex, not that I am simply observing someone else doing it, as if it were a science experiment.

I'm interested to see if anyone else reading this shares my opinion, or if sex scenes are a more personal thing? Is there a formula for a good sex scene, or will it differ depending on circumstances and characters?

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Guilty Pleasures

I've caved in and started reading the Tales of Atlantis boxset by Gena Showalter that I picked up before Christmas, and I was a little thrilled at the idea of giving into a guilty pleasure when I got in from work this evening. And it started me thinking, why is it that erotic/romance/chick lit novels are usually termed as "guilty pleasures?"

Chocolate is a guilty pleasure, because it has calories in it which if consumed in large quantities, can negatively impact your health and should therefore only be consumed in small quantities as a treat. I've never heard the same said of romance novels.

My train of thought led me to consider that it perhaps it is that these books are badly written. But there is obviously more to a good book than how well it is written.

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A Beginning

An awakening, or perhaps just an acceptance, of the thoughts of a mind.

Of stolen moments, and forbidden desires, of love and lust and all that falls between.

In the end, the heart wants what it wants.

And who can deny the heart when it pleads so softly and yet with such persistence?

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