The Hows and Whys of Daniel

Two weeks ago, nearly to the minute, I made a decision.  A big, scary, and, honestly, ill-advised decision.  I was going to self-publish a silly little story I wrote last fall.  And I was going to do it by the end of the weekend.

There were at least two reasons for this big, stupid goal:

1. My family needed the positive cash flow, no matter how small.
2. I had something to prove.  To my husband, whose favorite greeting is, "You finish that book yet?" (Grr!).  And to myself, who rarely asks myself if a book is done because she knows how annoying that really is.

Let's get one thing straight: I'm not afraid to share my stories.  Against all common sense, I'll type the last words of a first draft and send it off to someone, anyone, who wants to read it.  That's not the way it's supposed to work, so other writers tell me, but it's the way I work.  The excitement of sharing and getting that early feedback from the poor shmoes who have to slog through my typos--well, it's what makes this writer thing feel more like a village and less like solitary confinement.  Not that I have anything against solitary confinement.

Two weeks ago, "Daniel the Draw-er" was literally half the story it is now.  Like, 6k words to its now-finished 13k.  I knew the story needed to be more substantial, size-wise, but I didn't know how to do it. Some friends who read through pointed out some plot issues, mainly having to do with resolution of the various conflicts in the story (Daniel's mom's desire for Daniel to make more friends, Daniel and his best friend Annie's argument, etc.) and how the timing was way off.  Story structure.  It's a thing, apparently.

I would save myself a lot of time if I just learned how to outline.  Know where I'm headed, what needs to happen, that kind of thing.  But nooooooo.  My imagination insists on working free of the constraints of detailed lists, especially when I'm operating as a nine-year-old boy with a magic pencil, where the sky is the limit.  They call someone who doesn't plan out their writing a "pantser", meaning they're flying by the seat of their pants (versus the more serious and responsible "plotter", a. k. a. People I Don't Really Get).  The fun part about zero planning is that every single thing I write is a surprise.  I make myself laugh a lot.  Sometimes my weirdness scares even me.  But, anyway...

For a week and a half I spent night and day working on the story, holed up in my writing room in the basement listening to Bon Iver on repeat and eating cinnamon Fire Jolly Ranchers (!!).  My friend Courtney sat across from me and dished out tough love ("draw a plot diagram," she said. I threw a tantrum like a two-year-old, no lie). I spent almost an entire day working at a Panera Bread.  Two of my doula babies were born.  We said good-bye, for now, to a beloved family friend.  Life happened.  A whole lot of life happened.

This story is important to me in a much different way than my others have been.  "Daniel" came to be when I participated in an online writing course called The Story Cartel.  Our assignment was to identify the audience we felt we were writing to and write a short story with them in mind.  I didn't want to write a short story to teenage girls and bored housewives (you know who you are.  I am one of you!), I wanted to write a book for my boys like Tolkien wrote his classic tales as bedtimes stories for his children.  Like Dav Pilkey without the constant references to bodily functions and underwear. So I turned to my eight-year-old and asked him a good name for a main character.  He picked Daniel.  Then I wrote on, with my son peeking over my shoulder and laughing at all the funny parts.  He soaked up every word, waiting for me to peck them out in my usual slow manner, until it was late and I had to send him to bed. This story is my nod to my boys--the introverted Daniel who doesn't mind having only one friend.  The boy who hates meatloaf but loves pizza.  The boy who fixates on capes (for us, it is hooded sweatshirts).  The endless sketches of made-up creatures.  That's all of them lumped up in one fantastic boy.  That's why.

And now the "how". There are many facets to self-publishing that most people don't fully consider beyond just writing a story. Here are a few major points:

Editing 

Like, thorough editing.  It's best to use someone who edits as their profession, but I didn't have that option (see Reason 1 above).  Instead, I recruited a handful of people to read through and make sure I caught typos, punctuation, that kind of thing.  Then I gave it another read-through right before uploading it to Amazon and CreateSpace.  I'm 100% positive I, and my troop of beta readers, still missed errors.  I take comfort in knowing that even New York Times' bestsellers still have errors undetected by the people paid to do so.

Formatting  

I write most of my novels using Google Drive because I insist on making my friend read along. Amazon and CreateSpace want authors to upload Microsoft Word files (or one of their other preferred file formats).  Most of that formatting process wasn't a huge deal because I've been training myself to be better about indents and all of that mind-numbing detail.  I did spend about three hours one night doing battle with Word 2011 about page numbers and section breaks while my family went to the school carnival.  Bummer.  Although I did hear, in great detail, about my eight-year-old's meltdown while waiting 45 minutes in line for a balloon animal.  So, I'm chalking it up as a win in my column, even though I wanted to hurl my Macbook more than once.

Cover

Not surprisingly, the cover of any book might be the most important thing ever.  I drew what I thought was a pretty cool cover, a cat with a pencil in his mouth.  The charcoal on a plain white page was pretty drab, so I flipped it into a negative and thought it was good to go.

Except it frightened kids and adults, alike, so I had to draw a second cover.

And then I had to bug my brother to do about a million things to it until it was ready to upload at both Amazon and CreateSpace.  Poor guy.  If it had been up to me, the thing would never have a cover.  Never, ever.

Marketing

I'm still in the middle of this, and it's all trial-and-error because I should have done things different, if not for the self-imposed time constraint.  Cover reveal?  Psssh.  Blog tour?  Ha!

BUT, you can buy a digital copy of Daniel the Draw-er here.
You can buy a paperback copy of Daniel directly from CreateSpace here. (In a few days the paperback option will be live on Amazon, just not yet).

Book reviews are very helpful, too.  Even if you didn't buy your copy from Amazon, you can leave a review here for future readers.
If you use the Goodreads app/website, you can leave a star rating or a review for Daniel there, as well.

Side note:  I am open to other methods of marketing, as I'm reaching the end of my friends and family and need to figure out other avenues of getting the book noticed.  If you think of anything, comment here or contact me the way you know how.

So there you have it--a little peek into my hyper-accelerated process for the debut of my novella, Daniel the Draw-er.  While it's certainly no War and Peace or Harry Potter or anything, I'm hoping it leads to bigger and better things in the future.  I'm hoping Daniel is my little bit of magic.  

2 Legit, 2 Legit 2 Quit.

I need help.  I need your help.

I need you to throw anything you have at me--prayers, good thoughts, jingles, spare coins, whatever.

It's an unholy time of the morning and I am up because my blistering shoulders told me to get up and rub the lotion into the skin (I really did NOT want the hose again).  Once the lotion soaked in, though, my mind couldn't turn back off.

This publishing thing has me all sorts of conflicted, y'all.  Reviewing the facts (or lack of facts) I have on my prospective publisher, I should continue on my merry little way.  But here I am, pausing.  It makes no sense.

A friend of a friend told me that if my goal was getting my book out there no matter what, even at the cost of my own legitimacy, to go ahead.

At the cost of my legitimacy?

Ouch.

My work--my status as a writer--could be construed as unworthy should I chose Publisher B over Publisher A?  Or, in another example, self-publishing vs. traditional publishing?  I presented this idea to my husband, who assured me that reasoning was flawed.  "If you're on the worst baseball team in the division, that makes you less of a baseball player?"  Some would say yes, but I understood what he was trying to get through my skull.

I get it.  I wouldn't have asked this friend of a friend to drop some knowledge (or, at the very least, scathing opinion) on me unless I didn't really want to hear it.  And I'm trying to be open to what is coming back to me--good and bad.  The problem with this particular company is that it sounds so promising, but it is so new that that's all there is right now--promises.  I'd sincerely hope that people would caution me about what I'm considering.  I'd likely do the same in their shoes.

The answer to all of this seems so clear sometimes, and, at others, I can appreciate the views on the other side.  Frustrating.  Where is my Magic 8-Ball when I need it?

I'm obviously still weighing the plusses and minuses of this particular company and publishing traditionally at all, and I'm still on the fence.  That being said, I'm supposed to talk with their contract guy later today to explain their process.  I'll update when I know more, if I even know how to decipher any of the legal mumbo-jumbo into words any of us can wrap our brains around.  In the meantime, I'd reallyreallyreally appreciate it if you could think of me and help me to receive clear direction as to whether I should proceed or not.

Thanks.  You're a peach, I don't care what the others say about you.

Like Falling In Love

I'm currently in a holding pattern, waiting for beta-readers to finish up with my first book and get back to me with their comments.  Another writer confessed to me that the waiting period always makes her nervous.  It made me think.

As a writer, you spend thousands of hours pouring words onto a page or screen. Ideas are born, full of promise and excitement.  You grow and change with each character.  Together you encounter a full range of problems, from tiny bumps to impassable mountains.  When tears roll down their cheeks, your tears follow suit.  Heart in throat, you wait by their side as their last breath falls from still lips.  After 'The End', you discover that you've become someone richer in experience than the person you were before it all began.

To share that with others, especially others whose goal it is to point out your scars and imperfections, is frightening.  It is opening yourself--and your new friends--to attack, no matter how well-intentioned your attacker.  It is lowering your defenses in the hopes that the arrows will serve to build you up rather than fatally wound.  You make yourself vulnerable.  Vulnerability is unnatural for us.

In many ways, this feedback process is like falling in love.  It is delivering your beating heart on a platter and hoping it returns safely--that they love in return.  It is trusting that the other person has only the best intentions, only the purest motives.  It is the hope that they are skilled in architecture and demolish only what they must in order for us to rebuild stronger and more complete.

There is such great and awful responsibility in love and art.

Maybe you don't write and you find it difficult to relate to my illustration because of that.  That's okay.  I think it still applies to many of our passions, not only the crafting of sentences.  Do what you do with love, because of love.  Accept the help of others with love.  Extend your hand to others with truth and compassion.  

Making yourself vulnerable and opening your heart to others is scary.  Sometimes you'll bleed and wish you'd kept your shield tucked tight around your chest.  At other times, bringing others alongside you on the journey reveals unspeakable beauty.  The joy is nearly always worth the splinters along the way.

Plan B

Hours ago I watched a baby slide into this bright world to the shelter of loving arms.  A family's joy and wonder was renewed with the cry of life.  For me, it was an evening of learning more about new friends, laughing together until baby was near and undeniable.  Walking from the hospital with a grin--a nice reminder of how rewarding and powerful it can be as a birth worker.

At the same time, I know my days as a doula are numbered....  Or, at least, my days as a semi-busy doula are.  The on-call lifestyle is difficult on families, bodies, and just about everything else.  This week it is more apparent to me after a night spent away from home and the subsequent day lounging around the house required to recharge my energy.  

I admitted it on the phone to one of my sisters this morning.  My sister, in all seriousness, replied, "You need to write."

Where has she been hiding for the past year-and-a-half?  Or, maybe, where have I been hiding for the past year-and-a-half?

In her defense, she does not waste much time on the Internet, so she has missed my million-and-one Facebook statuses/blog posts about my books.  I'm sure she believed she was shedding light on something I'd been passing over all this time.  At the very least, it made me laugh to myself several times throughout my morning.

Really?  You think I should write?  Eureka!

Make-up writing was my only weekend plan (besides make-up sleeping), but a simple text message looks like it may throw a wrench in those plans.  Books never text with emergencies, and books can be written accompanied by a nice meal....  But books, as wonderful as they are, don't hug you at the end of the day with appreciation for the minuscule role you play in their life.

Solitaire

They keep talking about how lonely it is, the life of a writer.  Authors are driven to drink every day, taunted by their own words and the overwhelming quiet of it all.  We're changing that, they say.  Now you can connect with other writers who are on the verge of crazy, too!, they say.  See Twitter, Facebook, Skype, meet-up groups, a million blogs from Joe Schmoes just like you--you get the idea.  There's no reason to slog through this alone when you can share the [sometimes] torturous process with others.  And when the madness strikes all of you, well, at least you're not drinking alone.

This morning I am feeling the isolation.  I'm also confused because I don't know whether I should feel sad or if it is acceptable.  To me, writing is exciting but also weighty.  It's the warmth of sun on my face as well as the dark outline of a thunderhead off in the distance.  This is what I want to do...  But I feel the pressure of it, the frustration from wasted moments while pursuing other things. Or, on the other hand, there is the sadness from looking family in the face and saying, "It's been a long time.  What have you been up to?"  Then there's the agonizing decision of spending an extra hour or two to write in the evening or turning in early because I know I will end up at a birth sooner or later.  Even taking the time to post on this blog seems foolish, a wasting of words, when I should be concentrating on my other works in progress.  What's the payoff to hiding myself away in order to THINK, or sitting alone in a cafe with earbuds and a keyboard (besides the obvious--people-watching and caffeine!).

Balance.  Reality.  What to do, what to do.

I read somewhere that writers shouldn't write in order to be read, to which I agree to a point.  But, really, I can't figure out why someone would spend hour upon hour building a story unless they planned to share it, at some point.  All of this has to be worth it--has to reconnect you to the world in some fashion, or the world slips from your grasp.

It feels egotistical to say, but I need a writing village.  Who's in?

Just the Facts, Ma'am.

WARNING:  Letting my geek flag fly uninhibited for this one.  I usually try to be a little bit more covert.  Moving on....

I began this blog back in June of this year as a way to write about things that come up that are too long or personal for Facebook fodder.  Also, as I go through the process of writing my first (and now my second) book, I wanted to get my feet wet, in terms of building a following with readers and other authors.

I'm ridiculously horrible at Math, but I love analytics.  There's something addictive about checking on the statistics of my blog and my business website and seeing how many people visit, where they're coming from, what pages catch their eye, etc.  It's humbling too, because I am aware that more than half of my blog posts are mindless babbling and the other half are me mourning my horse.  Certainly there are better uses of one's time, but I appreciate that so many have spent a little of theirs here anyway.

Over the past six months my blog has received 1701 pageviews.  I'd hoped to hit 2k by the end of the year, but there was really no reason for that number in particular.  Most of my 70 blog posts receive an average of 20 views, with the highest ever being 120 views for my entry the day I lost Moe ("Broken").  For successful bloggers, 1000 views is a slow day, but I'm happy with where I am.  Maybe someday I will be interesting enough to hit triple+ digits.

Thank you for stopping by and bumping up my numbers--for humoring my inner geek on this one thing.  Even though you guys rarely comment, I know people are reading, which encourages me to keep sharing (and oversharing).

If you've stuck with me this far....  I'd love to hear from you, the twenty-or-so peeps who take the time to at least blindly click to this blog every few days--what do you like about this blog?  What would you like to see more of?