Delegate, Bitches! #AtoZChallenge #AprilA2Z ‘D’

Posted on April 4, 2014 by Raven ShadowHawk

D button for A2Z Challenge

I know Ileandra talked about this in brief a few weeks back when she mentioned Fiverr, but I want to take it a step further.

Buckle up.

Self publishing. I’m doing it. A lot of you are probably doing it too.
That means that a lot of you, as well as being writers (and everything else you do in your real life), you’re being editors, proofreaders, cover designers, marketers, salesmen and cheerleaders.
Cheerleader from openclipartPhew!

That’s a lot of work for one person and, guess what? For every book you release, you have to do it all over again. The work outside writing never stops! It goes on and on and on and should continue to do so if you plan to sell any books.
It’s hard. It makes your hair thin (or fall out if you’re really unlucky) and that beautiful thing called sleep becomes a far and distant memory.

But you can do it. And you can do it without running yourself into the ground and making yourself sick.
How, you ask?
Ahem *points to post title*
Delegate, bitches!

You can’t do everything yourself, nor should you try. Sure, if you have no other responsibilities and you don’t mind putting aside food, sleep, sex, human interaction and your sanity, then you can do all those bits yourself. If you have the skills to do all those things in an efficient and professional manner, then that’s even better!

Unfortunately I don’t. And lots of you don’t either.
So you need to pick and choose.

Delegate the things you can’t do yourself.

I have no skill in graphic design. None. I know nothing about Photoshop except the absolute basics (I made the Book Fairy sticker, for instance) and worse than that, I don’t have time to learn. So I delegate my cover design. I pay someone else to do it for me. Yes, I know this isn’t an option for everyone, but Fiverr really is amazing for getting professional looking covers on the cheap. If you can’t do that? Then make friends, network and instead of paying with money, pay with favours.
Example… you might have an excellent eye for detail and a degree in the art of spotting grammatical ballsups. Why not offer your proofreading services in exchange for a cover design? The barter system worked pretty well all those years ago, I don’t see why we can’t use it today.

Drag in your friends, your kids, your parents, your teachers, your neighbour, your dog… anyone!

I know that’s just one example, but I can give you another.

Marketing.
I know, I know. I hear the word and parts of me shrivel up and cower. But I have to do it. I HAVE TO.

waving penguin from open clipart

Hi! I’m here!!!

So… I pull in my friends and family.
Word of mouth is a VERY powerful tool; get your friends to talk to their friends about your book. They don’t have to do a hard sell (nor should they) but getting your work into general conversations is the first way to get it noticed. That’s a huge chunk of what marketing is; getting noticed. Letting people know you’re there.

Have a chat with the local library; most of them are so desperate to pull people in that they may well bend over backwards to help you (especially if you’re a local writer). You can arrange a book launch/signing hand in hand with your library and they may not even charge you.
How’s that for drawing in help?
And they have resources you don’t; they can put you on their website, in their newsletter (if they have these things) and it’s yet another way of getting noticed without having to spend hours and hours doing it yourself.

Make a list of all the things you need to do. Then look at that list and be brutally honest about what you can do. Not what you want to do, or feel you should do, but the things you are physically able to do well. And do those. The rest, get help for.
Trust me, it makes the whole process easier, more enjoyable and the final product will thank you for it.

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‘Cum’ vs ‘Come’ Is There Really a Difference? #AtoZChallenge #AprilA2Z ‘C’

Posted on April 3, 2014 by Raven ShadowHawk

C button for A2Z Challenge

Hi folks. ^_^

If you were unsure about what you were going to get from my half of these A to Z posts, then this should give you a clue. :p Decide for yourself if you’ll be reading my posts or just sticking to Ileandra’s going forward.

Anyway…

Cum vs Come.

There is a difference. Who knew?

Not me, that’s for sure. I remember back in August 2013 when I was working on Vicki & Lara, I was trying to decide on my ‘style’. My signature. My voice.
I made a few decisions that have been refined since then, but I’m still working on how best I want to present my characters through the prose I write when handling erotica. Yes, my tagline is Smut With Brains, but it’s the elements of myself and my voice that makes it so.

Anyway… Vicki & Lara; my editor picked up every instance of ‘cum’ and changed it to ‘come’. There weren’t many, but enough that I sat back and questioned it.
Why change it, I thought? Isn’t that ‘the way it’s done these days?
While I trust Karen implicitly, I thought I’d better do some digging into why she suggested this change, so as to satisfy myself. After all, everything else I understood and agreed with (or not) and made the relevant changes (or not).

My search for answers brought me here.
-_-
Talk about an eye-opener.

wide open eyes

If you don’t want to read the read the whole thread (and it is quite a long one) the summary is that ‘come’ should be used as the noun and the verb and that ‘cum’ is not only less classy, but also jarring to the reader as it is just a poor spelling and takes its root in slang. Lastly, ‘cum’ belongs not in erotica, but in porn.
Oh, ho-ho! Yes… see here for my thoughts on that particular subject.

And I was really cross with myself because my original instinct had been to use ‘come’ and I changed it to fit, what I thought of, as the accepted conventions.
HA!

I think this was the first clear indicator that I should trust my gut more. I should trust my heart and what I feel is right for me because following trends (or what you think trends are) doesn’t help. Worse than that, if the trends aren’t true to you, your brand, or the image you want to portray, then you do yourself and your readers a terrible disservice.

I don’t use ‘cum’ any more. My characters do, occasionally, but they tend to be the sort of characters who would use slang, or characters with their dialogue written to show little nuances in speech. In the narrative, you will only ever see ‘come’ (or something equivalent) to describe an orgasm. Hell… I might even just say ‘orgasm’. What’s wrong with that, anyway?

Oh, and while I’m handing out links for that forum, there was an excellent thread containing lots of resources for writers of erotica. Yes, the thread is quite old (2010 I believe) but there is still some very valuable (and interesting) information in there. Enjoy.

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BWFFs #AtoZChallenge #AprilA2Z ‘B’

Posted on April 2, 2014 by Ileandra Young

B

Day two!
I’m still alive, still here. Still buzzing. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Today I want to talk about BWFFs.
What do you mean you don’t know what that is?
Best Writing Friends Forever! Come on, you knew that, right?

Best FriendsI got past the idea of a BFF when I was about 18. I felt that it wasn’t fair to discount all the wonderful friends I had by giving one of them the title ‘best friend.’
These days I have a small cluster of extremely close friends, a larger circle of friends, and then a massive network of acquaintances.
That’s how I like it. It means that the give and take in that small, inner cluster is strong and productive and works for everyone, because nobody is spread too thin.

How does this apply to writing?

Well, really, I’m talking about writing buddies.
Those people you regularly meet up with to chat shop about your writing. Be that swapping work for critiques or just sitting next to someone who knows the value of silence/no interruptions while you work.

I don’t have a writing buddy exactly, but I know plenty of people who do. They swear by the relationship they have with this one other person and gush about how much they’ve learned and improved as a result. I think that’s wonderful.

And the beauty of this digital age is that this person can live hundreds, if not thousands of miles away from you. You can do all your meeting by email or Google+, Twitter or Facebook… there are dozens upon dozens of ways to communicate, meaning that you are no longer restricted to someone living just around the corner from you. Particularly useful since not everybody is lucky enough to have a writer living close by.

a pen and a pencil

Credit: Anonymous at Openclipart.com

In years past, I had the equivalent of a writing buddy.
She may not realise that I placed such importance on our relationship, but one particular writer in the RPG group I used to run, always set the bar with her excellent posts. I measured myself against her constantly.
I would eagerly await her sections of the game we were playing and measure her characters, pacing, plotting and prose against mine. And if I found myself lacking, I would step it up. I owe a lot of my current ability and skill to those early days with Cheryl. Heh, I should tell her, actually; I’m not sure that I ever have!

These days I have my writing group with puts me in regular contact with 17 other wonderful people of such talent and skill that I’m forced to step it up, just to stay semi-level with them.

But a single person with whom there is regular back and forth? No, ‘fraid not.
Do I want that sort of relationship?
…actually, yes. I think that would be nice.

I’m quite good at setting myself goals and keeping moving. However since I tend to focused on the ‘project of the moment’ I often forget to check myself by asking, ‘have I improved since the last project, or am I just plodding along at the same old pace?’ Because I can’t read everything I write at the critique group.

I think having a regular dialogue with another writer in which we bounce ideas off each other, critique each other, help each other, encourage and support each other, is the last thing I’m missing in terms of my ‘writer’s tool kit.’

Hmm. Guess that means I’d better start searching. 😉
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Awesome! #AtoZChallenge #AprilA2Z ‘A’

Posted on April 1, 2014 by Ileandra Young

A button for A2Z ChallengeWoo! First of April!
Woo! Self publishing conference!

Part of me feels that Raven should be writing this post, since she’s the one with self publishing experience to talk about, but since that’s what I plan to do too….

This conference is run by Troubador, traditional publisher with a self publishing imprint known as Matador. Both are cool. I went last year and fully intend to go again next year, if not for the sessions, then for the chance to talk to other authors. I think that was the most valuable thing this year. That, and confirmation that what I’ve been doing to date is ‘correct’ insofar as anything like self publishing, so much in flux, can be ‘correct.’

Work successfully with bookshops and libraries to sell your book.
First session of the day for me and a real eye opener. It’s not impossible to get self published books into brick and mortar stores, but it is bloody hard work. Without the backing of people who know the industry and already have the contacts, ie a self publishing provider (*ahem* Matador) then it’s harder still. Lots of leg work, lots of agony and, unless sales are awesome, probably not even worth it.
Libraries though. I’m in the lucky position that the speaker for this section (Maggie Boyd) is actually working with Leicestershire libraries. So it’s all incredibly relevant to me. But libraries are in a very bad way; funding cut year after year, no staff and very little time or space to give to helping out local authors. They want to, of course they want to (!) but their hands are very often tied.

How to work successfully with an editor.
This session was INCREDIBLY helpful for me. And terrifying. Given by a member of the literary consultancy Cornerstones, I found the idea of paying for consulting advice (structural editing, basically) to be a really attractive one. What I didn’t like was the price. But you get what you pay for and the level of feedback they provide is such that I really do believe it to be worth every penny.
But terrifying… it brought back to me all those fears about ‘Will SORB ever be good enough?’ ‘How do I know when it’s ready?’ ‘Have I shown enough rather than telling?’ ‘Is the plot boring?’ ‘Is the structure of the whole piece sound?’
All those things I was already worried about now brought back to me tenfold.
They cynic in me says they did their job right, because now I want to buy their services. -_- The other, more practical and pragmatic part of me says there’s no reason why I can’t release a perfectly good novel without forking out in excess of £600 for editing.
But it’s a confidence issue because, at the end of the day, it all boils down to one question:

Do I believe in my writing and my ability enough to put my work out there, doing the best I possibly can with the resources (money) I have available to me?

No idea!

But that’s one of the reasons why Da Shared Brain made the decision she did. Within a few months I guess we’ll have the answer to that question.

Creating and marketing your ebook.
Funny, but there was nothing in this session that I didn’t already know. And I know it by reading your blog posts, newsletters and tweets. Everything they taught or talked about is stuff that’s readily available within the writing community because you guys are all so awesome and willing to share.
So I want to thank you all for that. ^_^

If ‘the folk of the industry’ are giving the same advice as you fine people (outsource what you don’t have the skills to do yourself, make sure you edit your words, get a decent cover, proofread over and over, don’t skimp on formatting, don’t spam people, build relationships with readers, be real and honest) then we’re all in a pretty positive position.

Using your existing author website to the full.
Again, a session useful in confirming things I already know. And also wonderful for helping reassure me that holding back from setting the solo site to live isn’t a bad thing. I want it to be as good as it can be, meaning that my branding and my media needs to be complete. Rushing it won’t help me. Nor Raven.

This blog is healthy and ticking along nicely, so why rush and half kill myself with worrying when the time isn’t right? There’s no harm in waiting. In fact it’s better to wait until everything is ready and there are no holes to fall into it.

So that’s it. My second self publishing conference. Sorry it was such a quick run through (and so personalised, rather than general to subject matter), but I want to keep these posts from spilling beyond 500 words. Hmm… yeah… I’ll let you know how I do with that. 😉
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Can’t Count, Can’t Think, My Plans All Over In A Wink

Posted on March 31, 2014 by Ileandra Young

Good grief. :-/

30 days hath September, April, June and November
All the rest have 31
Excepting February alone, which has 28 days clear
And 29 in each leap year.
~school rhyme, credited to…. Anon?

Right. I know that rhyme. I’ve known it for years. And yet something told me that last week’s post was my last post of March. -_- I have no idea what’s up with my head. Nor do I have any idea what to write about today, as I planned to blog about yesterday’s conference. But that post is designed to be the start of the A2Z Challenge.

*sigh* Grump. Whine. Bitch. Moan.

Okay. Something else.

My Plans All Over In A Wink
It doesn’t do any harm to tell you about this now and leave tomorrow’s post for more about the conference. In fact, I’m going to open up this post to Raven so we can have a chat with you together. I think this is the simplest way to do it.

Simplest… heh. Yeah.
Okay. You all strapped in?

IY: Here goes. We’re changing up our plans.

RS: Yup. There’s too much on our collective plates and The Shared Brain is wimping out on us.

IY: Not wimping out so much as needing a change of pace.

RS: No, she’s wimping out. But it’s okay. I forgive her.

IY: Only because you’re first.

RS: Yep. *smug* And before you get all pissy about it, you’d better explain.

IY: Yeah, thanks.
The Brain is working on Slippers & Chains, the Meeting Each Other series and Silk Over Razor Blades all at the same time. Each project is at different stage so The Brain has decided to break things down a bit. Take each project one at a time and get them done. Done, as in, to the next stage, whether that be sent off to betas, sent to editors or submitted to small presses.

RS: So she’s going to do one project at a time. Get one done and move to the next and, once these big bi-hatches are out of the way, she can look at simultaneous projects again.

IY: Exactly. Well said. I guess.

RS: So Slippers & Chains is first. I’m going to work on that, getting those niggling edits done and sent out to betas.

IY: Then I’m going to do Silk Over Razor Blades. Finish my niggling edits and send the file to betas.

RS: Notice that Meeting Each Other hasn’t had a mention yet? That’s because I’m taking a break from it. The series is at the half way point so this is a good point to stop, take stock. I can get some of the larger projects out of the way (including those readings I promised you!) and come back to the series at a later date.
Don’t worry if you’re really enjoying the series; I will finish it. That’s a promise.
But Slippers & Chains is getting to that point now; you know that feeling of having something bashing at your head, over and over, desperate for your attention?

IY: Like a child tugging on your skirt?

RS: I was thinking more of like a dog humping your leg, but to each his own. Anyway, I think without focusing on it, I’ll never get it out there and that would suck big-time because that story deserves to be told.

IY: Snap. I won’t be starting anything new until SORB is moving and doesn’t need any more changes from me. All the good meaning and planning and organising in the world doesn’t mean anything until I just get it done. No more excuses.

RS: No more excuses.

So that’s the plan.

April is going to be busy, what with the A2Z Challenge, so there will be no ‘goal posts’ for the duration of the month. Our goals, Raven and I, are to edit our respective projects and get our daily posts done. I think that’s more than enough to be getting on with, don’t you?

I hope you guys are moving ahead with your goals and that your blogs (if you’re planning to do the A2Z Challenge) are all lined up and ready to go. I’m looking forward to visiting you through the course of the month.

To the rest of you… I’ll see you in May. Hopefully I’ll have some good news for you. ^_^
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