No Turning Back

 

Yesterday was a grueling day putting together my book materials and making sure they're formatted right. Everything's uploaded to KDP; there's no turning back.

I could, if I wanted to, turn my back on it and not give it any publicity. I could do that. But I won't. I will do the best I can on publicity, although this too scares me. 

Publishing Kringle Conspiracy is an experiment, to see what goes well and what I could do better next time, if there is a next time. It's a way of seeing whether this is a way I would want to go again. 

At the moment, I feel more exhausted than excited, probably because I spent six hours on it yesterday. I need to work on the positives to keep going.  

Wish me luck!

Panic time on the publishing front

 

So it's Tuesday morning and I'm having misgivings about publishing. I don't know if I'm doing it right because I'm not putting up advance reader copies (unless you'd like to read and review), I don't know if it's any good because it's not as complex or serious as other things I write, I just don't know ...

But here I am, on the verge of submitting my materials to Kindle Direct Publishing. The cover I made myself, the layouts I've worked on, the words that hopefully are important. 

What do I do? I'm panicking!

Odds and Ends

So, I spent a busy weekend getting writing things done. Finalizing my Pitch Wars packet, writing a piece of flash fiction for a contest, writing a little on a short story.  And then last night, the silly little Chloe woke me up in the middle of the night licking my nose. Slurpslurpslurpslurpslurpslurp.

Morning comes, and I feel absolutely tuckered today, but it is Monday and time to go to work. I hope the coffee gets here soon. I really don't know how to function without it today. 

Coffee is with me now. Brazilian coffee, deep and chocolatey. I think I'll live. 

***************

I'm pretty much ready to submit the book to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) except for one thing -- I don't want it posted to Kindle right away. The official book drop is November 1st, just in time for the Christmas season. I don't want it posted before then. I should ask KDP if they can hold off on posting the electronic copy before Nov. 1st. Otherwise, the timing is all nervewracking -- I know it will take a couple days for them to process it, but if things go wrong it might take more. How will I time that to get the book out of the 1st?  A frustrating conundrum.

I should put some well-thought-out emails today to the KDP people.

Pitch Wars

Today I submit Apocalypse to Pitch Wars. Pitch Wars is a yearly contest whereas writers submit what is basically a query package -- query letter, bio, synopsis, and first chapter -- into selected potential mentors, who will in turn pick a writer they want to work with. They will help develop and polish query materials and give the writer the opportunity to meet with industry representatives to pitch their novel.

I've done this twice before. I guess the odds are less than 1% that one would get selected. I'm okay with that; I'll keep trying. My novel has been improved. My query letter has been improved. I have grown as a writer. This may be the year.

Or it may not be. 

But it will never be if I don't try.

My not-so-secret double life

 

I now officially have a secret double-life.

Now that I'm self-publishing a novel (I understand my genre is called geek romance) I have to get serious on my professional presence. So now I have:

A writer Instagram (@laurenleachsteffens) vs a personal instagram (@lleachieishere).

A writer twitter (@lleachsteffens) -- I don't have a personal twitter

A writing blog (https://lleachie.wixsite.com/laurenleachsteffens) vs a personal blog (this one).

These are some of the many adaptations I've needed to make to get more professional. I now have a press kit, a timetable, and business cards. When things settle down on the COVID front, I may have to go to a conference or two. I will need to think about how to dress up a table there. 

It's a lot of work, but exciting work. I think I can handle it. I'm going to have to keep up the writing while I do so. It's a good thing I hate watching tv. 

My Feelings and Creativity

 According to my horoscope, my feelings today are not going to be mild or even moderate! I'm supposed to let my feelings out through creativity. Good thing I already do that, eh?

That's why I started writing -- to let out a surplus of feelings. As a child, my feelings weren't mild or moderate and tended to bewilder people. I wrote to keep my feelings manageable. 

Now that my bipolar medicine keeps my feelings more manageable, I write a greater range of emotions, varied plots, different poems. I still, however, write my feelings into my work, shaping the words to my feelings. 

Back to the horoscope. What will my feelings be like today? If the past two days are an indication, I will be impatient and frustrated. Great feelings for a poem.

Promoting my novel

 Someone in a romance novel group on Facebook asked if I had a promotion plan for my new book. I hemmed and hawed, and pointed out that I had made advertisements for it. Marvelously, she gave me many websites for making a promotion plan, and I've perused the first site, Quick and Easy Guides, which has a course called 75 Ways to Promote Your Book. (This can be accessed for a nominal cost). I liked this course because not only did it have those 75 pointers, but it featured instructions on how to write a media kit, how to write a "cold letter" to bloggers, and how to write elevator pitches.

I have been working through these suggestions for my new book (due November 1) and I have a bit of a way to go. I need to find 5-10 suggestions on her 75 Ways page that are workable for me and write it into a plan. I also need to actually follow up on those, because planning is not enough.

Here's a sneak peak at one of my promos:

A Snippet of Autumn

Yesterday afternoon, I looked out the window to see a maple tree striped with fire. 

Astronomical autumn came quickly. Soon, leaves will tumble and be brushed into piles smelling of dust and bark. Evenings will grow dark sooner, and the motif will change from flip-flops and seashells to pumpkins and dried corn stalks. It's time to reap the harvest and prepare to settle in our homes to wait for winter. Our schedules will not allow us that rest, but our bodies long for it as the days get shorter.

I will feel the temperatures drop, and I will wear a jacket against the chill. I will drink hot, smoky tea with cream to chase away the cold. I will feel the change of the seasons, even though my summer was spent inside and working due to the COVID-19. I will wish for a huge leaf pile, one that will accommodate my big, old bones. 

Soon, the snap in the air says. Soon.

COVID check

How is everyone doing? I'm thinking of COVID again after six months of wearing masks and socially isolating, and just wondered how everyone was doing. 

I'm not doing bad. I'm back to not going to the coffeehouse again because restaurants and other food establishments are the worst places if you want to avoid COVID. So my social life has been greatly cut back again. I'm getting a lot done. I'm getting the hang of teaching live while using Zoom. It's not easy, but I'm feeling accomplished again.

If there's one thing I'm still missing, it's a writing retreat. I really need a change of scenery, especially since the cafe is off line. But I am restricted from retreats for the same reason I'm restricted from the cafe -- too many people. Too many particles. 

I think some things are changing in my life. I'm talking to more people on social media. I'm getting used to not eating at restaurants. I'm dependent on mail order. I'm appreciating what I've lost.

I'd like my life to go back to normal. I would like to be mobile again. I would like to go to restaurants and hug people and have a writers retreat and not wear a mask. But for now, I'm doing okay.

A small triumph and some thoughts on improving

 I got two pieces accepted for publication yesterday! One was a flash fiction piece named "Literally" and the poem "Deep Touch", which is one of my more favorite poems. (The poem above is neither; it's just an illustration of what I write.)

I anticipate the journal didn't get too many entries, because this is an inaugural issue of a journal and it's not a high prestige literary journal. I'll take it -- I don't write lofty enough for a high prestige literary journal. I also don't use the modern convention of longer poems. My heroes are Emily Dickinson and ee cummings -- they didn't need more than about 24 lines. 

To be honest, though, I wish I could write longer poems. I wish I understood what people are doing in longer poems so I could at least see how they work. 

That's something I wouldn't have done when I was younger -- try to improve. I now have this burning desire to improve everything I write, and I think I have improved to the level of my instruction, which is why I need more instruction.

I will always need more instruction.

Plowing through everything

Saturday morning, and I am wondering what to do with my time. My husband is going to work, and I am done with the following: work for my class in improving my online class; the manuscript in both paperback and kindle; the cover to my book; several advertisements for the book; revamping my new blog; fixing some errors in the new blog ...

Oh, yes, I remember now. I need to start plotting Kringle in the Night. Even though it's still September and NaNo is a month and a half away.

Times like this I wonder if I'm on a hypomania binge because I'm SO productive. I still seem to be sleeping; in fact I slept in this morning.

If this is normal, I'll take it.

More on New Blog

 The new blog is up and running at https://lleachie.wixsite.com/laurenleachsteffens . At the moment, the blog entries are some of my favorite less "personal" items from this blog (i.e excluding the existential dread). I will discuss writing issues, creative writing products and books I publish. It's definitely a professional blog. I figure I will write in it once a week.

This blog will continue to be daily thoughts, essays about life, and more personal items. 

Come by and look at it! Join up1 Read about The Kringle Conspiracy!

Some News -- new blog

 

I will be writing a more professional and less personal blog weekly over at this site. I will continue to write this blog on a near-daily basis because it gives a more personal touch to writing. I will move a few selected entries over to the new site, but the site will focus more on writing and less on personal experience.

This is all part of making a professional presence. Wish me luck.

The Author Jitters

I've been focusing too much on the novel. Ok, maybe not too much. I have the cover properly sized and titled and the like, I have copies both for hardback and e-book, I have formatted and proofread (again!) and I'm still worried about whether it's good enough.

I'm dropping the novel November 1 (not November 15 as I said before). I am way ahead. Once I get my favorite beta reader's notes in, I could finish the submission. All is good, but I'm still panicking.

I have other things to focus on (besides work, of course). I could start plotting for NaNo in November. I will be writing the sequel to The Kringle Conspiracy, known as Kringle in the Dark. NaNo has a prepping self-guided class that will get me into November in good shape. I just need to focus on them.

I have to be a bit less antsy with this writing thing. 

I live to create

 In putting together the parts for the book-to-be, I discovered something important about me -- I like creating things. Not just for myself, but I like what I create going out to the public in tangible form.

I don't have the talent to draw, build, or knit. People keep me away from sharp objects like power drills and saws. (With good reason; I once had a power drill fall on my foot.) My kitchen is not organized enough to bake for others, like the woman who makes macarons in town. I can write. 

And now it looks like I can publish.

I don't know if I will put everything I've written into self-publishing. I need to see if this book can get traction. I need to see if my queries (now improved) can get traction. But I have time, because I am satisfying a most basic instinct of mine -- creating and putting forth into a hopefully irresistible package.

Getting excited about self-publishing

I'm excited about this new book thing.

I think it will be ready for a November launch.I have a cover for it, I have some blurbs to go on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. I have other things to do, but I think I can get them done in time.

I know I will probably not get too many readers. But self-publishing a little book like this breaks a curse I have in my mind that I will never get published. It also breaks me in on how to publish on a low-stakes book. (I consider my more serious books, the fantasy novels, high-stakes.)

And this particular book ... Kris Kriegel, the young toymaker with a Santa sensibility, has been with me as a character since high school. The first scene of The Kringle Conspiracy is basically the story I wrote in high school for my creative writing class. That was 40 years ago, and it's still as relevant now.

So I'm excited, and I'm looking forward to a Kringle Christmas.

I wish I could write modern poetry

 

I wish I was better at poetry.

If I believe the critiques I get, I quit writing before things get good. That's not my feeling at all. I don't want things to drag on; I don't want to put words in just to put words in. I'm writing moments more than histories.

I cut my teeth on Emily Dickinson, who didn't even end her poems except with a dash. But that's not fashionable anymore; poems wander for pages now, and I don't know how to do that.

I wonder how I can learn to write modern poetry without shelling out a lot of money for a master class or, worse, having to take a real college course. 

Poetry, ironically, is what I thought myself the best at, and it's now what I write the least.

Today is my 57th birthday.

 

Today is my 57th birthday. I tend to celebrate birthdays by making observations of the previous year, and this time is no different:

• I don't feel 57. I have the heart of a thirty-year-old. Unfortunately, I have the face and body of a 57-year-old.
• Writing-wise:
• I still have room to improve especially cover letters.
• I have options: I can self-publish if I want.
• World events:
• I knew we were going to have a pandemic; I didn't count on being this emotionally settled with it.
• It truly seems as if the world I had grown up with: women's rights, minority rights, gay rights -- in other words, true equality -- is crumbling. I need to find the right way to fight.
• Personal life
• I broke a curse that I had lived with all my life. I can't explain it all here, but the situation had all of the hallmarks of a curse. End result: I accept that I am loveable as I am.
• It's really not bad being in one's fifties -- It makes me nervous that I'm closer to 60 than 50, and I can't believe my high school graduation was almost 40 years ago. 
• I'm on a pretty even keel emotions wise, for which I am grateful.

In-between the disruption of COVID and the crimes of this political administration, beyond feeling overwhelmed by the changes in the world, the little crumbs of life are good -- laughing with my husband, playing with Chloe the kitten, watching Poirot, interacting with students (as strange as it is with small classrooms and Zoom meetings).

Tonight I will go to dinner at William Coy's with my husband and contemplate how I can make next year a better one.

A lull -- and jitters

 

I'm waiting for my favorite beta reader to react to my book. What she says will determine my final actions -- do I put the book out this November or do I hold it back to show to a dev editor?

I'm pretty confident about the book not needing a dev editor, because I read through a number of times for flow, for sense, for proofreading. 

No, I'm not confident, but I can't afford a dev editor right now. I'm excited about putting it out. I haven't had momentum like this in ages. In a perfect world, I'd have a quick and inexpensive dev editor. Maybe if I go through it one more time ...

How do people go through all this publishing a book? 

In the Flow

 I'm happiest when I have something to work on, something that catches my fancy. When that happens, I can give it intense focus such that I float within the bubble of my attention and time flies by without me.

This, in the psychological literature, is called flow. Flow takes a person out of time and place, and becomes almost a type of meditation. It requires tasks that one is competent yet challenged in. Flow is good for creating happiness. 

I've been creating book covers (both e-book and traditional) for The Kringle Conspiracy, which (depending on whether I feel it needs a dev edit) will be coming out in time for Santa. My favorite beta reader (Hi Sheri!) is on it, and my husband has already given it a good look through. Because it's so short and so simple for something I write, it may be ready. In the meantime, the cover is ready.

So designing that cover gave me flow. What else gives me flow? Writing, at least in the drafting stage. Reading. Sometimes teaching, but not lately with all the equipment I have to sling around. 

It's important to have flow, to take one away from worries and stress (like COVID) and the like.

What are your flow activities?

Judge this book by its cover

 

If I feel confident enough to go with self-publishing this Christmas season, this will be the cover to my book.

Maybe not a Christmas Present

 

 

 

So I'm editing Kringle Conspiracy, a book I'd put in a drawer for two or three years. My natural pessimism is setting in, and I stew about whether it will be good enough to publish. On the schedule I'm on, I'm going to have to do without a dev edit, and I'm rather uneasy about that. On the other hand, it's a pretty simple book.

The thing is, I want to get it online in time for the Christmas season, which means October. I don't think anyone can dev edit in a week, giving me two weeks to fix. I could save it for next Christmas and get a dev edit, which would be the great thing to do if I were patient. I'm working on being patient.

I'll let you know. I'll do this rewrite and let it sit for a bit, then decide if I need to hold back for a dev editor. So maybe you won't see this by Christmas.

Look! I might be self-publishing something!

 

 

Yesterday, I was trying to figure out what I would write for NaNoWriMo, which is in November, but it's never too early. Richard, my husband and partner in crime, suggested rewriting a Christmas Romance novel I put aside in despair thinking it wasn't romancy enough. 

I thought about that, and then looked for a tool to help it be more romancy (it's now a word, deal with it) and found Jami Gold's romance beat sheet. Walking through the beat sheet, it seems that there's not a huge amount of work I need to do -- emphasize some points, make sure the timing is right, fix a subplot. This can be done.

Then I stepped into Facebook and asked my friends if I should be fixing a novel that read a bit like a Hallmark Christmas movie. I got a resounding "Yes" with one of my friends, Heather, suggesting I self-publish it. 

And the bubble up giggle of delight broke out. Maybe this, a low-stakes publication, would be my entry into self-publishing! I don't think of myself as a romance writer, so I don't have much ego invested in this if it doesn't do well.

 So guess what I'll be doing today? Rewriting, daydreaming, and shooting for a mid-October publication date. 

 

Any of my self-publishing friends out there, please check in with me!

You are a writer

 

 

I believe I'm back from my writers' block. I don't know if I'm ready to edit/rewrite Gaia's Hands yet, and I certainly don't feel like writing one of those two books I have on debt (Hands and Gods' Seeds). The former would require me to go to Poland for a few months, and I don't have the time or the translator. 

But I'm a writer, and I can't escape this, even if I don't get published. Even if I feel bad about the fact that I don't get published.

I hope there are other writers out there who need to hear this: If you set paper to pen regularly, if you see stories out the window of the cafe or in a crowded cafeteria or on the street, or even in a collection of ants on the sidewalk, you are a writer. The world is yours to create with, and even if nobody else has seen your work, you are indeed a writer.

Not getting picked for a team

 

 

 Getting no likes at PitMad feels like not being chosen for the kickball teams in grade school. It's not current trauma, it's past trauma that complicates the feeling. I tell myself that PitMad doesn't determine my worth or the worth of my books.

It is a setback, sure, just as it has been with other #PitMads and #SFFPits. But it's more a testimony on my ability to write pitches, the matter of thousands of pitches flowing across Twitter at the same time, the glut of submissions in fantasy writing. 

I need to find a way around this. Maybe improving my pitches will help. Maybe I should work on making my query letters better (which I am doing). 

I can just quit or I can beat my head against the wall -- or I can improve. And, I guess, pray.

Redoing the Query Letter

One of the most important aspects of a query, or the way you introduce a novel or other book to an agent, is the query letter.

Yesterday, I learned that my query letter sucked.

I sent it to The Query Shark, where an agent looked through it and critiqued it thoroughly. So I have an expert opinion that it sucked.

This is good news, actually, because it may be the reason that my queries are bearing no fruit. It's not an easy fix, but an important one. The query is the introduction to the book, after which the agent will either request more pages or pass. The query letter is the first thing they will read in the query.

In a query letter, you have to accomplish several things: you have to introduce the agent to your book using a synopsis in a couple paragraphs. You must give specifics about the book such as genre and number of pages. You must provide a brief bio.

The problem with my query letter is that my synopsis wasn't capturing the spirit of the books, nor were they involving the reader personally with the characters' development. They were bare recitations of the plot, and they lacked the fantasy element. In a way, my query letter didn't sell my book at all.

I am working on that blurb, and it's completely different. I think I have the right idea this time. 

Fog

 

I wish I had seen the fog before it rose.

Fog smooths out all the edges of everyday life, softens the corners of the houses, tangles in the branches of trees, muffles the sounds of automobiles.

Fog obscures the view in front of us, defying even the illumination of headlights, and forces us to proceed cautiously.

Fog whispers secrets, like the witch in a fairy tale, and like the fairy tale, we can walk through the fog and never find the truth.

Fog reminds us that we can't see everything. We can't know everything.

Waking up my writing

 

I am trying to wake up my writing. My hectic schedule and the exhaustion that comes from wading through COVID-19 measures in the classroom, plus the lack of things that energize me (a movie, a writing retreat, something other than work or home) make the inspiration nearly absent.

"What do you want to write about?" No idea.

 I've even had trouble writing this blog. I missed yesterday; I've missed other days here and there. I started this blog with a desire to write daily, and I'm afraid that if I don't keep that up, I will just quit.

 But I'm here today, and that's what I need to do: keep showing up.

I'm doing some things to reclaim my imagination. Debbi Voisey (@DublinWriter on Twitter) hosts online workshops, and right now she's hosting a prompt workshop, where for the first seven days we take notes on a total of 21 prompts, and then write. I'm hoping to get a short story out of this that I'm proud of.

If you have any ideas about how I can renew my imagination in the time of COVID-19 (and its restrictions on travel) please let me know!