Current Events > CE Writing topic -- This Time It Won't Purge? Edition

(+) Yeah! (+)

I thought of writing a series once, but I didn't feel confident I could fill more than a few books with my character and by the time I ft a few chapters in I felt like it was way too similar to other works/influences (Dexter meets Shaun of the Dead meets a few other things I was into at the time).

So the first full beta read is done for my book and I got feedback.

I got cutting to do hah.
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Between these three names, which do you guys like most? Trying to come up with a pen name/pseudonym:

Corbin Delaware
Grant Hellman
Kiran Hartman

How about Grant Hartman? That's my pick.

Always remember to google whatever name you pick first though! Make sure it's not some famous person or pedophile or something.
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DuranOfForcena posted...

i like Corbin, but not Delaware. the other two are okay, but i think Corbin Helman has a nice ring to it.

sound advice. the rendering of my name that i want to be my author name is unfortunately shared with a weird anti-establishment conspiracy theorist guy who rants on twitter about robots taking over. it's fucking aggravating. especially since his account has seemingly been abandoned for a couple years. i dunno what twitter's policy about deleting inactive accounts is, but i hope there's something about that in there and that it eventually gets taken down. because i really don't want to use anything else as my author name unless i absolutely have to lol.

Ah, that's a pile of BS :/ Any way to contact the dude and ask if he'll abandon the name?

I went with Kiran Hartman as my pseudonym, ran it by a few more people and they seem to like it. Decently close to my real name so it kind of has the same feel to it.

Oh! Oh! Someone pick my pseudonym!

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ApherosyLove posted...

Oh! Oh! Someone pick my pseudonym!

Writer McWriteFace
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So the cutting in my book is going along easier than I thought it'd be, I already got rid of 14 pages of fluff, and I'm still pretty early in too.
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I used to start writing novels and give up on them 1/3rd of the way through but now I cant even bring myself to start writing anything. Every time that I try I just end up procrastinating and thinking of excuses not to write. How do I get over this mental block?

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YookaLaylee posted...

I used to start writing novels and give up on them 1/3rd of the way through but now I cant even bring myself to start writing anything. Every time that I try I just end up procrastinating and thinking of excuses not to write. How do I get over this mental block?

I think it's kinda like working out. You either just wanna do it or don't. There's no magic trick.
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Sanderson's latest lecture is really good regarding world building, especially the first 25 minutes.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V2KpWOLTXx8
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Aw man I love his lectures. Homework for tonight!

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Anyone else plagued with self-doubt when they take a closer examination at their writing? What I mean is, usually I'm in love with whatever I'm working on at the time, and I sometimes think "this is my best work yet". Then a few weeks or months go by and the newness of the work wears off and I've had a chance to read and re-read everything I've written in that work so far, and I see things I'm not so sure I like anymore or I wonder, especially with my sort of stream of consciousness series of vignettes I'm writing right now about a variety of topics like mental health, relationships and addiction, whether anyone will actually get it or care enough about how carefully crafted the sentences themselves are or any of that. Like, am I making enough sense with this for anyone to even want to read it one day? Some days I'm not so certain.

Yeah I feel that all the time. I can count on one finger the amount of short stories I've written that I'm still proud of so many days later.

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DuranOfForcena posted...

yeah that's something that pretty much every writer goes through, i think. but that's what things like editing and workshopping and beta readers and stuff are for. almost nothing is really that good on the first draft, and distancing yourself from that draft for a few weeks or months to come back and analyze it from a more rational, detached perspective is an important part in improving it, so just know that even with the simple action of recognizing that it's not as good as you thought initially, you are taking a solid step to improving it.

Yeah, I'm already planning on cutting the entire first vignette. Just too overly cliche and self-indulgent.

I normally write an amalgamation of social commentary and comedy. There's many a time where I'm super proud of what I've done and other times I make myself cringe.

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SpaceBear_ posted...

I normally write an amalgamation of social commentary and comedy. There's many a time where I'm super proud of what I've done and other times I make myself cringe.

Interesting. I write mostly literary fiction and I have the same issue.

On a happy note, I've started writing again in the book the two publishers want and I'm gaining some good momentum with the story again. 22,346 words in, about a third of the way there or a little more.

I officially put in the order for my author proof copy. Damn it feels exciting. :O

6 x 9 inches. Cream paper. Matte finish.

I think it ended up being around 625 actual physical book pages?

I already saw an issue when I previewed it, but I know I'll change things anyway after I read the physical copy of the book, so I'll just wait until then. But basically, I have parts, as in Part I, Part II, etc. These pages really need to be on the right page, by themselves with a page after them, but the Kindle Create is treating them as chapters where they just come on the next available page.
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I know this is subjective, and most of the time my answer would be "however long it needs to be to best tell the story", I'm wondering what word count I should aim for for the book I'm aiming to sell. I still have two publishers interested, but I'm about to hit a crucial junction in my story and I'm at 22,987 words. I was aiming for roughly 60-80k, as I've heard 70k is kind of a sweet spot for new authors. Any shorter and it's not enough really and anything too long and people won't want to read it. My longest is 123,000 and my shortest is only 22,000, so reaching word count goals isn't an issue really.

Artisan1990 posted...

I know this is subjective, and most of the time my answer would be "however long it needs to be to best tell the story", I'm wondering what word count I should aim for for the book I'm aiming to sell. I still have two publishers interested, but I'm about to hit a crucial junction in my story and I'm at 22,987 words. I was aiming for roughly 60-80k, as I've heard 70k is kind of a sweet spot for new authors. Any shorter and it's not enough really and anything too long and people won't want to read it. My longest is 123,000 and my shortest is only 22,000, so reaching word count goals isn't an issue really.

Yeah if you're going for traditional publishing, and you're a first time author, you generally don't want it too long. Depends on the genre too. Anywhere from 60K to 100K, with larger genres like fantasy pushing 120K is what I've always heard.

Definitely not 170K. >_>;

In other news, phew! Just got done writing up the outline for my second book. Sequel to the one I'm in the process of publishing on Amazon. This is the first time I've legit outlined for anything, actually. I did write up a summary for my first book long before I wrote it, but that was mostly me kinda throwing out a bunch of different ideas, and many of them very vague.

I learned a lot from my first book though, and I'm trying not to make the same mistakes. The main way to do that is to actually outline. Before I always just kept the outline in my head. This time I wrote down the whole story in a firm sequence, almost chapter by chapter. I have a word count goal (80K), so I can plan and see how I'm doing as I'm writing it, if I'm spending too much time on the beginning or something.

I also outlined the main characters, and included their wants, their state of being at the beginning of the book, and their state of being at the end of the book, which shows their arc.

I was a little fuzzy on a bunch of details before writing all this down, and man I'm so much more confident now. Writing down an outline really does help hammer out some of those fuzzy details. I never believed it before but I'm convinced now.
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Link to that?

I'm pursuing a Creative Writing minor and the people in my workshop circle told me I used "said" too much. That's to say, I only used "said" and dropped dialogue tags during exchanges.

I'm not going to write "Gordon retorted" you amateurs >_> if they'd taken the W103 class they'd know this!

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Yeah I get ya. Yeah regular r/writingprompts is pretty rough too

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DuranOfForcena posted...

i don't know if i should really single out the entry itself, but here's the link to the prompt:

https://www.reddit.com/r/fantasywriters/comments/fhzuvm/fifty_word_fantasy_majesty/

that being said, it isn't advisable either to use "said" a lot, but sometimes the answer isn't replacing it with a similar word but to do an altogether different kind of dialogue tag, like one that demonstrates an action beat, or just forego the dialogue tag altogether if there is enough context to show who is speaking and there isn't anything else about the line that needs to be demonstrated. it's important to vary it up between all the different ways of doing it and not overuse any particular one.

I spot the one you're talking about. Yeah, when that happens, I cant even pay attention to the writing, all I notice is the tags. I once saw an indie book that literally used a different word every time and it blew my mind.
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I commissioned a friend of mine to do the two main characters of my novel. It's such a cool feeling to see them actually drawn out and stuff.

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Honestly, if an author uses said for every bit of dialogue I check out and it's super distracting. I'm not saying to use an adjective for every piece of dialogue, but just saying "said" gives me nothing. How did that person say it? What emotion/intent do/did they have? People don't just woodenly state things in life most times.

The point is that it's supposed to be invisible. Your dialogue should be enough to describe how they're saying it.
"Worst is when you add adverbs after," Alcie said, sardonically.

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What a dream. I currently use Canva to make mock cover art for my books. It's a lot of fun!

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My author proof copy arrived today. Man it looks fantastic. I was worried about the picture quality for the cover but it looks great in book form. I'm happy with the overall quality of the print as well, and I've heard people complain about amazon kdp before with regards to this.
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spanky1 posted...

My author proof copy arrived today. Man it looks fantastic. I was worried about the picture quality for the cover but it looks great in book form. I'm happy with the overall quality of the print as well, and I've heard people complain about amazon kdp before with regards to this.

Nice! Always feels amazing getting your proof copies imo. I never had an issue with the actual paper/print quality, but their formatting can be weird at times and leave your print copies looking disorganized if you aren't careful with how you edit them.

Artisan1990 posted...

Nice! Always feels amazing getting your proof copies imo. I never had an issue with the actual paper/print quality, but their formatting can be weird at times and leave your print copies looking disorganized if you aren't careful with how you edit them.

I'm using the Kindle Create software and it's been working pretty good.
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https://popculture.com/trending/2020/03/17/amazon-suspending-shipments-other-than-medical-supplies-staples-coronavirus

I picked a wonderful time to publish my book. :|
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I'm self isolated for 14 days.
Perfect time to work on the manuscript!

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Any pro wrestling fans here? Maybe we could work together and book a company in TEW2016? 2020 should be out in April

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DuranOfForcena posted...

i just ran across a great thread on r/writing that asks a very simple but very pertinent question: "Why do you write?" so, why do you write? my answer is I write because I have worlds and characters and stories with sociocultural relevance in my head that I feel the all-consuming urge to get down on paper and put out into the world in order to both entertain people and elicit critical analysis of our own society and history with in a digestible manner.

I write because it just feels good and I'm greatly influenced by media I consume. Sometimes it's cathartic writing, more journaling in literary form. Others u just have a story I need to tell.