G’day.

I know I have not posted for quite some time. Health reasons and other factors badly got in the way the last 1/4 of 2017. I imagine it may have been the same way for others too.

However, for the others, why did you not? Laziness, disinterest, lost focus?

Okay, stop beating yourself up about it. This is a whole New Year and you can start again. We all can and it doesn’t even have to be a New Year.

Why we all jump on the bandwagon and often set ourselves up for failure by making promises to ourselves we know inside we cannot keep on January 1st has always been something that has never made much sense to me.

Why should it? People every day manage to set a path for satisfaction by starting something that is new, scary and who knows? They start a new job, get attached, have their first child, sign up for that weight-loss program and a stack of other things and it certainly is not January 1st when they start.

We can all do this if we really want to. Yeah, it’ s fun to throw yourself into a heap of stuff, but are you certain you will finish it? For instance last year, my cousin, full of vim, vigor and too much champagne, made her resolution known to the rest of the family. She would give herself two weeks to get into shape for a half-marathon.

Okay so the half-marathon was for older people and was only 5 kilometers, with a swim at the end. But 5 kilometers is 5 kilometers and a damn long way when you haven’t run any distance for 20 years.

The first day of training she managed to trot 1 kilometer and had to be picked up by car. The next day she managed to push aside all the aches and pains and achieve 1 and 1/2 kilometers. The third day she was bedridden for that day and the next.

By the end of the week she could just manage to trot 2 kilometers and that was because she wasn’t going to admit defeat. Long story short, she managed the marathon. Only to collapse after the finish line and spend a few days in hospital.

It didn’t turn out like she had imagined. Often things we think will make us happy do not.

I don’t mean that meanly. What I mean is sometimes what we think will make us happy does not or disappoints us so badly we never try again.

Sometimes however, if we tweak these plans/resolutions as we start work on the plan, then sometimes we come up with a much better ending.

With my cousin, she would have been so much better had she devoted a little time to getting ready to run or, in her case, trot.

But, whatever you resolve to do this coming year, try to make it as much fun as you can. If it is writing books, resolve to finish them. If it is getting healthy, take your time and try to stay off fad diets. They do not help your body in the long run and quite often may have a devastating long-term affect. If you want a new job that pays better, make it part of your resolution to find out what you need to do before blindly applying for one.

I don’t make resolutions. But one of my plans is to post far more regularly than I have been this year.

So, to everyone out there, have a wonderful start to 2018!

Regards and warmest wishes.

Rachael.

 

G’day, all.

Have you ever come up with a brilliant idea for a novel or story, started on it, found it is going to be  harder than you thought, and filed it away for a ‘better’ time? Or worse, deleted it completely?

NEVER delete anything that you have written, even  though you think it is junk.

I’ve said this a thousand times to friends, people who like to talk to me about their writing and myself too. After all what is the point of giving people advice if you don’t follow  it yourself?

There is only one thing that is worse than doing any of the above. And that is doing nothing at all. Fine, think that what you have written is the biggest load of horse apples that you have ever seen, you are the worst writer who ever managed to draw breath unassisted or any other downput you can put on yourself, but be aware that you CAN make sense of what you have written.

Deleting your work is not a good idea. Sure, file it away somewhere that you can find it again, put it on a USB and throw it in a drawer or simply put it anywhere out of your sight for a while. Just don’t get rid of it completely.

So why should you continue to DO something, even if it is nothing to do with what you are interested in writing?

Some writers get so disappointed with their efforts that they simply abandon ship, no matter what stage they are at. And they spend the rest of their lives disappointed, feeling a failure and carrying a burden in their subconscious of ‘what if?’ They may forget their aspirations and dreams, but a little seed still niggles at the bottom of the psyche and sometimes even puts a feeble leaf through the debris, only to be squashed again.

This is sad. So sad. Why do we do this to ourselves? So many would-be writers literally go to their graves regretting the fact they did not persevere with their dream.

Okay, life does get in the way. I’ll agree with that 100%. We all need to eat, have some type of life, rear a family, a hundred and one things to take our attention and leave very little time for ourselves to indulge in what our sensible selves think of as dreams.

This does NOT mean we need to abandon those dreams on the way to where ever.Everyone should have a dream and the more outrageous the better. After all, Man would never have walked on the moon if someone somewhere hadn’t had a dream.

So keep all your crap writing. Give it a month, a week, any time that it seems to have faded from the top of your thoughts. Only then take it out again and look at it. Even better, have something  else completed so your mind is no longer up close and personal with this particular work.

The closeness you have to your work is deadly to any concentration you can focus on the work. It is very much like giving birth. The child is perfect when he/she first appears. This is normal. But, as the child grows, you have to notice some changes in him/her. And sometimes not for the good either, if we are perfectly honest. They may appear shy, demanding, sweet, enraging,genius, gorgeous, all the facets of small humans.

But, like watching a growing child, we need to take a step back from our creation and look at it objectively.

Nothing that we write will ever be perfect. Get that into your head and you can create something much beeter than a first draft. You can rewrite your work as many times as you like, but it will never be perfect. But you can create something which other people will want to read.

So leave your snippet, short story, blog post or novel ‘stew’ for a while. Then take it out again and simply read it right through. Do not make any changes this first read through. Your subconscious will see what it doesn’t like, pick up bad grammar, wrong spellings etc.

Then read it again for story. This time you can make notes. Does your story  hang together? Are your characters believable? Have you introduced enough conflict that makes sense? Have you introduced something that does not make any sense?

This time, make yourself a pile of notes. Rewrite the whole thing, adding all the notes. This is  not extra work. It is a part of polishing. It will also add to your world count. In   the rewrite, also clean up grammar, wrong spelling and anything else you see.

You don’t do a third read through for the moment. Find yourself some beta-readers and ask them for comments. Try to get your manuscript read in a week or so, depending on its length. Then gather all the comments up and read them through.

You do not have to use all of the suggestions that may come back if you do not feel they can be of any use. But do be polite and thank your beta-readers. Without them, you may just put out a crap book into the world.

Now reread the book again, including all suggestions that you see fit to use. This will be your third draft. Which means your book is very close to being as good as it can be.

You might think this is a lot of work. But it isn’t. Your first draft is the heap of clay you start with. All the other work is to sculpt the clay and set it for firing.

These days, any book of any length needs all of the above done, even should you only have one beta-reader. It is also better to give your manuscript to someone you don’t know. Not only will you have a good chance of getting a very honest review,  but the person is not going to be trying not to hurt your feelings and go easy on the manuscript.

You might feel like all of this is far too much trouble and you should simply just go as quickly as you can to publishing, especially since self-publishing can bring you large amounts of money. If it is good. True, you can clean the manuscript up and publish, but be aware that readers will note each mistake and be not in any hurry to buy more of your work.

So it really pays to give your best in each manuscript you put together if you want to grow a following. All the followers in the world will not carry your book if it is not the best work you can deliver, so it is worth the time and energy.

And, if you do it properly, you will have another manuscript already working by the time you publish the first one so you will have something to follow up the first one so your audience does not forget you.

Take care and keep writing.

 

 

G’day.

It is so easy to fall into the trap of following everyone who you think can help you and perhaps slavishly buying every product they put out. This can be blogs, posts, courses and all that sort of stuff.

Unfortunately, a lot of these sites rapidly turn into crap. You are fed a little information, then, in order to get more, you have to sign up for a course or some type of seminar or whatever.

I am certainly not against bloggers and course creators making money from what they teach. Perish the thought. But, from the other side of the fence, I have bought into a lot of this stuff over the years and far too often it has been a waste of money. Not that most of the sellers have meant it to be that way, giving them the benefit of the doubt, but too often we are too lazy to go research for ourselves.

Creators of these products do deserve some credit. They have put in the time and effort to make them available. But do we really need 50 ways to use Scrivener for instance? Okay, so one creation teaches a bit of Scrivener which is not in the other courses but is that little bit really worth paying $20 USD or more? Can’t you actually not learn that bit yourself?

Scrivener is just an example. Grammar and spelling should be amongst your first learnings if you have no idea of them. And really you should have learned the basics of these at school. If you didn’t there are theasauruses anywhere you look online, so devote half an hour a day into educating yourself.

Following just a couple of people can be the best way to not get confused. You can do this the way people who organise their wardrobes do. If you have found the blogger or course creator or whatever is not giving you what you want now, then maybe it is time you quit them and found a new one to follow.

You know – that old blouse has really hit its useby date and I haven’t worn it for a year. Get rid of it and replace it so you are not really going without. Or, if you have found a new direction for your business then unload all of the old stuff, which more than likely you haven’t looked at anyway onto a USB stick so your computer does not look like a coleection of components which do not fit anywhere.

Again do not think I am picking on all the creators of courses and blogs. After all, everyone is entitled to make a living, good or bad, from what they create.

*I simply think we can have too much of a good-to-bad thing. One ruke I have always lived by is that I can eat only one meal at a time, be in one house at a time and pretty much everything one at a time. Yes, it would be lovely to own 20 houses in different countries, but when would I be able to be in them? Or would I spend my entire life just going from one to the other? After a while, it would pall badly.

So who to follow, listen to or buy the books, creations and whatever from?

This can be a sticky area. (A) has put out some awesome creations on how to write ebboks and that is your desire at the moment. But then they decide to put out a course on how to create codes. Are you really going to need that? Even down the track?

Far better to save that money for a good editor who will help your book. Or a good designer.

My personal suggestion is to choose 3 blogs on a subject and follow them for a while. And choose one comprehensive course to do.

Of the blogs, you can pick 1 which maybe posts once per week or even twice a week. Another one may be only once a month, but have a newsletter. The 3rd one can be whatever you like if the first 2 are on the one topic.

Pick the course that is comprehensive about something you are really interested in and will serve you, instead of one that caught your eye or looks interesting. If it has nothing to do with what you are aiming for – forget it.

I know a lot of people who have followed this system and thrived. If you know little or nothing about a subject, start right from the beginning. Don’t assume you have the basics down. You may, but in completely the wrong order, which will not help you at all when you put your work out there to be seen.

Of the 3 blogs, it is also helpful to choose 1 which is rather advanced, 1 which is less so, and maybe 1 which is just starting up. You do not have to contribute to these unless you want to, or there is something you really can help with. Not to start with anyway. Watch and learn until you feel you are capable of making a good input into the topic. Keep your personal opinions to yourself.

If, after a period, the blog or podcast or whatever does not seen to be giving you what you want, simply quit and try another one. You may not have to change 2 parts of this blog theory, only one. But as you gain knowledge always consider if you are going to get more from there or maybe you should seek out another one which is a little more advanced.

Go write and enjoy yourselves.

Regards.

 

I  have enormous respect for editors usually. They are, in my mind, an essential part of the story making process, whether they check line by line, improve the story or whatever their specialty is.

What I do NOT like, however, are those who probably charge an author a reasonable amount of money to edit and do a lousy job. These days, everyone knows to use an editor or two, if necessary. Whether that editor is a story editor, a spelling editor or any other type of editor, if they are being paid for doing this work, then they should do it properly.

Maybe if I hadn’t just bought three, yes, three, books by different authors whose work I wanted to read, one of whom was a well-known ebook writer and found ALL of them riddled with errors that editors should have spotted immediately I would not have been so annoyed. After all, in one of those books, four errors were on the first damned page and averaged one almost every page from there on.

This infuriated me. I had wanted to check the author’s styles out. I had  wanted to enjoy them and the techniques used. The money I spent was immaterial. I had simply wanted to enjoy them. It was the disappointment of owning three books which were second class because of the errors in editing that really hurt.

I don’t know if these writers did their own editing. If they did, perhaps they were exhausted and tired of the production. But that is no excuse for allowing poor work to go out into the world. If you are sick of the work, put it away for a day or so, do something else to clear your mind then come back to it. Or get someone fresh to read it and mark the parts they find misspelled or whatever. One or two mistakes in perhaps 10,000 words is acceptable if the story is great. Any more though and it smacks of disdain for the readers.

My advice to authors is to read your work at least several times before publishing it. I know – it sounds a drag to do so, but you will reap the rewards from your readers. Put your book or story away for one day at least. Then start the process below.

Make one read for the story, another for the spelling and grammar, and a third to see if there are any other things you can find to fix. Or you can use this last read simply to enjoy the story, although you probably know it by heart by now.

Then put it away for one more day and give it a final read. Only then self-publish or send it out to wherever you have planned to send it and start something else.

I know you are impatient to get rid of it, to see what readers think of it, have any numbers of reasons to want it gone from your drawer, laptop or tablet. There is no reason on earth to put out badly edited work into the atmosphere.

Just take some time to fix your errors before you disappoint readers. You would be amazed at the number of readers who have a bad experience such as I had and simply will not give those writers another chance. After all, there are so many books out there which are edited properly that they can  borrow, buy and enjoy. Unconsciously we expect the same experience, no matter how good the next work may be in editing or readability anjd we are not wired to repeat bad experiences, especially in reading.

On the other hand, editors should take care with EVERY piece of writing they work on. Especially if they charge writers good money for doing so. The read through, depending on what you are doing with the work, goes also for you.

Take your time, even though the writer is in a hurry to get their work back. It is also easy for the writer to blame the editor for a poor piece of work which, but for the lack of a proper reading and fixing, could have been good.

Like books, there are so many editors in the world these days and if you earn a reputation as a sloppy editor, then that is your livelihood wrecked, as that sort of reputation gets around quickly. Some savvy writers are now crediting their editor in their books, so it is easy to see how good/bad you are.

I am NOT singling editors out, but simply making some suggestions as to how writers and editors can add to the experience of a reader. The story may be lousy, but it can be easier to swallow if the work is without errors that can be fixed.

It is so easy to be tipped out of a book by a simple editing mistake. Some mistakes are just there and no one really notices them. I have one well-loved book in my collection which I have reread at least six times. The last reread only a few weeks ago has a mistake I have never noticed before. It is the last word on the line and is ‘Sire’ instead of ‘Sir’. I have owned that book for about ten years.

But this type of error is easy to ignore. It can tip you out of a story, but not often, unless the word is very important and the story good, which this one is.

So really read your work before you put it out for others to see. Mistakes will happen, as in the case of above. Often readers will come to your story, be interested and then be thrown out of it by bad editing. They will possibly forgive one mistake. But not several. And nine times out of ten, you will lose them forever.

Take care and enjoy your writing.