Editing Post II: Villains

How is your day going? What have you been up to?

I’m coming to the end of the hiatus I took from my novel, The Tome of Worlds. I begin the editing process Sunday morning, 8/18.

In the interim I have written a short story on the death of Edgar Allan Poe called “Reynolds! Reynolds!”, a short story centered around a door to another time and place called “The Door Frame from Yesteryear”, and I have conceived of another story–short or novel I do not know yet–of the life a handicapped man as a freak in a 1930s Carnival.

The last story requires research because the extent of my knowledge of depression-era carnivals comes from the cancelled HBO television series Carnivale, so I will soon begin reading a novel called Nightmare Alley by William Gresham, the story of a man’s downward spiral to the level of a geek in a 1930s carnival, the lowest of the low in carnival life. Has anyone read Nightmare Alley?

I don’t know where the story of the handicapped man will take me, but it’s a story I must tell.

But, on to editing. As with the last post, much of this advice comes from the editing novel The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass.

In my last post on editing I covered the following topics:

Summary for Editing Post I

• Always, always, always write with passion.
• Live through your characters. Feel what they feel. Use your own experiences to convey those emotions.
• Show villainy, loathing, and greatness through impact on the world and characters

For this post I will talk about villains.

Villains

Who are the memorable villains?

• For me Voldemort was not memorable as a villain. I sympathized with him, but he was not memorable in the same way as Harry, Ron and Hermione.
• The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss has a villain, but the villain is not memorable; rather, the villain is fleeting and ambiguous. He lurks.
• The White Witch from The Chronicles of Narnia? Still, no. She lures in and tricks Edward, is evil to children, but she is pure, black and white evil.
• O’Brien from 1984. Now there was a villain. He lured in the protagonist and betrayed him. O’Brien’s memorable quote was  “One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”
• Mustapha Mond from Brave New World. He wasn’t a villain, but he believed that they had to sacrifice certain freedoms for the good of society. His arguments were compelling.
• Moby Dick? A symbol of obsession? Or just a whale?
• Sauron was straight evil. He was a villain, yes, but he had no depth. Personally I found Saruman to be a greater evil because he was once good.

Depth. Great villains require depth. They cannot be a cardboard Mr. Evil. I must understand their motivation, which is why most of these villains fail for me.

Voldemort was evil, but why did he want to convert the world into a magical version of 1984? Just because he thought wizards were better than muggles? I saw a mix of Hitler and 1984 in Voldemort, but there was very little depth to Voldemort, little justification for why he became who he became.

1984

Out of the villains I list, O’Brien is my favorite. He lures Winston Smith into a trap posing as a member of The Brotherhood, an ambiguous revolutionary group Winston seeks to join. O’Brien appears, at first, to be friendly and sympathetic to Winston’s dislike of the party. He becomes Winston’s friend. In the end it is O’Brien who turns on Winston, tortures him, re-trains him.

O’Brien is evil. He believes he is right. Like Mustapha Mond he makes compelling arguments. During O’Brien’s initial interactions with Winston, O’Brien comes across as human.

Now, I have not read 1984 in twenty years, but I still remember O’Brien. When I set out to write this post I was not thinking about 1984, but when I had to think about villains, O’Brien came to mind instantly.

So what makes a great villain in your mind?

Donald Maass says that there is no villain as scary as one who is right. I believe that’s why I found O’Brien to be such a deep villain. I didn’t agree with O’Brien’s philosophy, but in the end Winston did.  If you, as a reader, believe in the protagonist, as I believed in Winston, as I came to be committed to Winston, then when the protagonist is swayed by the villain you are moved, too.

There are three villains in The Tome of Worlds:

• Naestrum, the master of a realm called The Deadlands, a place people go when they become lost
• The Seers, a group of creatures from another land who are believed to be all-knowing, all-seeing
• Tartarus, the embodiment of Hell from Greek Mythology

When I re-visit my novel I intend to put more into these villains. Donald Maass suggests you do the following, and I agree:

• Justify your villain’s actions
• Make them right
• Write a villain who could sway you
• Reject the idea of evil. Make the villain good (from their point of view)
• Don’t let the villain lurk, put them in your protagonist’s face

Once again I notice a theme in this advice. If you want the reader to believe in your villain, make your protagonist believe in him.

Editing Post III

For the next installment I will hit upon secondary characters and sidekicks, though the advice is similar to what I just presented for villains. The bulk of the post will focus on scene revision.

As always, if you have any editing advice please don’t hesitate to add your opinion. Thank you.

Editing my Novel, The Tome of Worlds

How many of you have edited a novel? What’s your process? Do you have any favorite books on the editing process?

I put the last word of my novel, The Tome of Worlds, to paper on July 10. Since then I have written and edited one short story on the end of Edgar Allan Poe and am at the end of another short story about an empty door frame standing in the middle of a corridor. That last short story has taken an odd turn and I want to see it to the end before I start editing my novel.

Since early July I have set aside reading fiction and have turned my eye to reading books about and taking notes on the editing process. I read The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass from cover to cover. I started to read Writing on Your Own Terms by Rebecca Dickinson, but put it aside after thirty pages because I felt that the book wasn’t going anywhere. Right now I am reading Manuscript Makeover: Revision Techniques No Fiction Writer Can Afford to Ignore by Elizabeth Lyon.

The FIre in Fiction by Donald Maas

Over the course of my next several posts I am going to discuss my editing process. The posts will serve several purposes. One, I hope to glean information from those of you who have edited novels. That editing advice can then be passed on to people who read this blog. Two, I can summarize my thoughts on the editing process. And three, I can hash out how I will edit my novel, because I am not quite ready to begin.

I have edited several short stories in my day, but this is the first time that I will edit a full length novel. I am looking forward to the challenge.

The Fire in Fiction by Donald Maass

Donald Maass does not give you a method to edit your novel. Rather, he hits upon what you should look for in a strong novel. Both editors, Donald Maass and Elizabeth Lyon, talk of writing with passion and emotion. In the second draft of my Poe short story I applied this thought process to the short story. I got into the head of my protagonist, Mr. Snod, and made his character come to life more fully. My readers say that the story is much improved.

Currently that story, Reynolds! Reynolds!, is going through the Critters Workshop.

But back to Donald Maass. In this post I will focus on characters, but specifically the protagonist. Donald Maass asks the following questions:

• How do you find the strong or human qualities in your protagonist?
• What will be most effective to portray?

He contends that the answers, as always, lie with the author.

• What is forgivably human to you?
• What stirs your respect?

That is where to start, he says. He also says that readers want to be in the characters’ heads. Readers want that intimacy. What do you think? Do you, as a reader, like to know what the characters are thinking? Do you want that intimacy?

A theme throughout Donald Maass’s book is that characteristics such as greatness, villainy, and humor are not shown through narration, but rather they are measured through their impact on the world and on characters around them. To that end, if your character, or one of the supporting characters thinks that someone is a savior or ‘the one’, and you can convince your readers to believe that character, then your readers will believe.

Do you think about how your characters impact the world around them as you write? Do you think about how other characters view your protagonist?

Summary for Editing Post I

• Always, always, always write with passion.
• Live through your characters. Feel what they feel. Use your own experiences to convey those emotions.
• Show villainy, loathing, and greatness through impact on the world and characters

Editing Post II

The second post will continue the discussion of characters. I’ll discuss why the protagonist must face tough challenges, why he or she needs secondary characters, and why a story needs a strong, empowered villain or antagonist.

Editing The Tome of Worlds and Writing “Reynolds! Reynolds!”

Yesterday I finished the transcription of the writing in my journal over to my computer, so my month away from the novel officially begins today.

Coincidentally I finished reading The Hemingway Hoax the night before, and now I can read and re-read some of the better books on writing that I have read.

Novel Editing

First up is a book on pruning your writing and squeezing the best out of each scene within a manuscript. Now, I know that there are oodles of books out there on how to prune a manuscript. If you have a favorite, please let me know.

Right now I am reading The Fire in Fiction: Passion, Purpose and Techniques to Make Your Novel Great by Donald Maas. I’m 8% into the book. It starts well. The first chapter shows you how successful authors have made people empathize with the protagonist, because, really, why read a novel if you don’t care about the main character? And even if you can’t empathize with the protagonist, because, say, he is evil and sadistic, maybe you can hook people with disgust? With tension?

The FIre in Fiction by Donald Maass

Also, I’m beginning to think of my novel in terms of a story arc though what struck me, after writing my entire novel and not looking at this structure, is how close I am.

Except for number 10, my novel is mapped exactly like this–unintentionally. I believe this proves that I have read just a few Hero Journeys.

Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey:

1. The hero is confronted with a challenge,
2. rejects it,
3. but then is forced (or allowed) to accept it.
4. He travels on the road of trials,
5. gathering powers and allies, and
6. confronts evil—only to be defeated.
7. This leads to a dark night of the soul, after which
8. the hero makes a leap of faith that allows him to
9. confront evil again and be victorious.
10. Finally, the student becomes the teacher.

How does this structure translate to a short story though? Is the structure the same?

“Reynolds! Reynolds!”–The Death of Edgar Allan Poe

I’ve written numerous stories, but I have never written a mystery or a short story, and by short I mean fewer than 3,000 words, so I decided to tackle both challenges in one fell swoop.

As I talked about in another post, there is a great mystery surrounding Edgar Allan Poe‘s death. He was found wandering the streets of Baltimore, incoherent, not knowing where he was, and in a severe state of distress. To top it off he was wearing another man’s clothes. The only name he mumbled was “Reynolds! Reynolds”, and to this day no one knows who that is.

I started writing the story the day after I finished writing The Tome of Worlds in my journal. A couple of paragraphs in I stopped myself because I didn’t have all of the information.

Thankfully there is a great website on his death written up by The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore.

If you have any interest in Poe I recommend that you check out their website.

I am still researching his death, taking notes, and once I finish I will start over again writing the short story. I have an idea already, but I want to see where the research leads me. I do fear that I will not be able to keep the story short.

Throughout I will have to keep a leash on the protagonist whose name right now is Mr. Snod.

Should be a fun exercise.

 

Related articles

• “Reynolds! Reynolds!” – The End of Edgar Allan Poe (christopherleedeards.com)

I Finished the First Draft of My Novel

Yes, I finished the first draft of my novel. I had some wine to celebrate the first milestone. Much  more work to be done, I know. Probably more wine, too.

The beginning

A full year ago during a family vacation to La Push, Washington I began writing my novel in earnest. While watching waves crash onto a log-strewn dreary shore I wrote those first words in a composition notebook bought in Forks, not knowing how long the story would take to write.

Turns out the writing would take me close to a year.

In Stephen King’s memoir, On Writing, he says that you should take no more than three months to write a novel. If you write, on average, 1000-2000 words a day, then yes you could finish a decent chunk of a novel in three months, but for some reason I could not average 1000-2000 words a day. In my (up to an) hour a day of writing I averaged 200-500 words per day.

On Writing

I didn’t really start clicking with the word count until late October 2012 when I put myself on a schedule. I began to wake up around 4 am and then wrote as much as I could–after my first cup of tea or coffee, of course.

Yes, sometimes I wanted this much

Still, even then my word count varied. After being a father and husband and holding a full time job, sometimes there was not enough energy in the day to hit my word count quota.

But I persevered. At times I wondered if the story would ever end. At times I didn’t see how the story could possibly end. And then, two months ago I saw the end, and ever since then I have been pushing and pushing until my hand ached to get to that ending.

I can now look back and see how the story and characters evolved.

I know it’s odd to say, but the main character, Aedinn Finn, grew on me. He was an amorphous blob to me when he woke up in the Tower in those first pages. At first he was an innocent in the world, still stuck in the memories of his previous life, but by the end of the novel, well, you’ll have to see. Let’s just say that reality slapped him around.

Janus Riberin, Aedinn’s mentor, surprised me. When I first envisioned him he was powerful, respected, and disciplined. He had little patience for Finn’s questions and feelings, but by the end of the novel Janus was showing a different side. He was still a curmudgeon, but a curmudgeon cracked by the same reality that had slapped around Finn. Still, Janus is not sorry for what he did.

Because I had written their histories I knew the fauns and faeries better than the men. Harguf the Elder and Pynnin had survived the Battle at Iardin and their stories were the first ones I wrote years and years ago. The role they played in the first novel was not quite what I had in mind when I started out.

In fact the novel as a whole did not follow what I had loosely (vaguely) envisioned many years ago. Instead the novel became the story of Aedinn Finn’s journey to reclaim his sanity and identity against the backdrop of a fantastical world losing itself due to the return of an ancient disease and the accidental attention of a once imprisoned God.

Let the editing begin…in a month. Wish me luck.

As it stands now the novel is the length of Harry Potter and The Half Blood Prince. By edit’s end I’d like it to be length of the first Twilight novel, which means I need to shave off about 15,000 words.

 

The End, July 10, 2013

 

Is there more pressure on female characters to be likeable?

This post made me think about how expectations of women in our society bleed over into the literature we write.
Also, I wonder if I could write a story with a strong female lead while not conforming to an ingrained sense of what makes a female character likeable?

The Asymptotic Ending

As I come to the end of my novel I find that the effort required to write is increasing exponentially in proportion to how close I am to the end.

All of the threads in the story are coming together and my mind is working overtime to hold all of them in place.

Plus, I have a fear that the story will not come to an organized end.

The last two scenes of The Tome of Worlds are an epic city siege of Koronan and an exhalation of sorts before the second novel begins. Even though I know how the battle turns and how the story concludes itself I find myself not wanting to put the protagonist, Aedinn Finn, into the fray.

These fears remind me of an awful story I wrote years ago called Threads of Time. I wrote the story during the summer of 1999 while I was working at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Los Alamos National Laboratory Sign (Photo credit: Cavalier92)

I had just won an award for science fiction writing at MIT, and I thought quite well of myself, so I tackled a story I had wanted to write for some time on the question of faith–God, destiny, and all of that.

In Threads of Time, the protagonist, let’s call him George, started to have dreams about a place that existed outside of time. The place he imagined outside of time was a bar where notable figures from throughout history came and mingled with each other. Each person within the bar thought they were dreaming, but while they were there they were inspired to the achievements for which they became known.

Einstein was there. Newton. Hemingway. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but that was not the point of the story. Threads of Time was about an approaching nexus.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I went with the idea that every time we make a decision, two possible realities are created–one reality for each decision you could have made. With billions and billions of people throughout our history there would be an exponentially increasing number of threads in the human existence.

In Threads of Time a nexus approached where all of the threads created throughout human history were coming together to one point.

Much like my novel.

In Threads of Time George had to push the human race through the nexus through an act of faith.

I was hoping I could do the same with The Tome of Worlds.

Threads of Time was a good short story idea, but in the end I could not bring the story together.

Oh, I finished it. Wrote an ending, but the ending was not satisfying. The story was my attempt at dealing with my own questions about and issues with the subject of faith.

As you can see, I didn’t deliver.

And now, as I come to the end of The Tome of Worlds, I feel that the curse of Threads of Time is coming back, but in a bigger way since The Tome of Worlds is much more massive.

If only I could dream of the bar, go there, and be inspired to finish the story.

Writing the penultimate scene as I wrote the rest of the novel, on faith and instinct, isn’t going to work, I realize. I have to organize the last battle, something I loathe doing, but I see no other way around attacking the problem.

Yesterday I drew a map of Koronan, which I had yet to do, because up to this point the only part of the story that took place in Koronan was the beginning when Aedinn Finn was imprisoned in Kol Uthera. He never went outside the Tower. 

I needed a battle map, similar to the maps I used when I played Dungeons and Dragons and Mech Warrior with my D20 dice.

Up to this point I had avoided any advice on writing, because I’d had my fill of writing advice. I have stacks and stacks of writing books that I read long ago. The last thing I wanted to do was read another piece about writing, but I needed a nudge.

I came across this site on writing fantasy battle scenes.

http://www.stormthecastle.com/mainpages/for_writers/writing-a-fantasy-battle-scene.htm

Common sense, really. Just organization, but I needed to see the advice even if I knew what I needed to do.

The point of my rambling in this post is that even though I have well founded fears about the end of the novel the way to attack those fears is to just write. Just do it.

Even if I go back and scrap the entire final battle scene just write it.

I wish a bar would open in my dreams and help me finish the novel, but that’s not going to happen.

However, I will go to a real bar when the novel is done.

Unintentional Love Stories

When I started to write my novel, The Tome of Worlds, I had no idea where the story would go.

You see, years ago I wrote an opening to the novel where a Jaunter (a person who can travel from one place to another instantaneously–see The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester) has come to the faun village of Biggleswade to investigate the disappearance of their statue, The Lady, who had been sent to guard their village after the fall of Panthea of Old, also known as The Four Mountains, the faun home created by Pan.

So much has changed since I wrote that opening scene.

Now Aedinn Finn wakes up in a room in a tower not knowing who he is or from where he came, but soon he is drawn into the mystery of why the disease that befell the fauns long ago and drove them out of their ancient homeland has returned.

I let Aedinn Finn find his way out of that room, and what happened from there on was a story that grew all on its own.

From that beginning somehow a love story developed. I won’t name the names or tell too much about the circumstances, but the love story spans time and multiple dimensions, or as I call them, tapestries. The love story is not the focus of the novel, but Aedinn Finn’s love is what drives him to figure out his place in The Nyre Lands.

I wonder.

Long ago, before my accident, I wrote a short story called The Prometheus Decision. The story is about a teen-aged boy who lives in a near future where a conscious artificial intelligence tells you what you should do with your life based on what’s best for the human race. The AI has the common good in mind, so every decision it makes is based on the need for the human race to survive and excel. When teenagers reach a certain age they make a symbolic trip to the Prometheus and ask what they should do with their life. The story was inspired, I think, by the classic science fiction movie Colossus: The Forbin Project.

I thought The Prometheus Decision had a good premise. I knew where I wanted to go with the story, but as with The Tome of Worlds, the story took on a life of its own.

Hector, the main character, had a love named Julia. For the story I knew it was important to convey how Hector felt about Julia. To that end I read a short story collection called Nothing But You: Love Stories from The New Yorker. I studied how masters of literature wrote about love. 

My takeaway from reading all of those short stories was the advice every writer receives. Show. Don’t tell.

I wrote and rewrote the scenes with Julia until I was exhausted and didn’t want to look at the writing anymore. To this day I feel that those scenes are some of the best I’ve ever written. But here’s the thing. The focus of The Prometheus decision was supposed to be about the society where an artificial intelligence answers the question most of us have at some point in our life, “What am I supposed to do with my life?”

Instead, the story turned into a love story focused on how Prometheus’ decision affects Hector and Julia.

How did that happen?

I wrote the story at a time when I was wondering what I should do with my life, but I guess I also had love on the brain. Or maybe Hector did. Who knows what I was thinking 14 years ago? I sure don’t. I don’t even remember what I had for dinner a week ago.

I wonder.

Maybe I didn’t have love on the brain. Maybe love simply finds its way into stories that move us? Even if the love story isn’t the focus of the novel or story you are reading you see love in virtually every story, The Dark Tower series. The Forever War. Even in YA books you see hints of love to come. Harry Potter. The False Prince. The Book of Three. 

Do stories have to have love in order for the story to move us?

 

Aikido and Its Role in The Tome of Worlds

If you’ve read the post How The Worlds Within Came to Be, you will know that Janus Riberin, and subsequently the whole setting for The Tome of Worlds, came to me after a bicycle-vehicular accident.

Before that accident I studied in an Aikido dojo in the Ravenna area of north Seattle. A couple days a week I would roll around the mats and practice throwing and being thrown. There is a dance, a movement to Aikido that is elegant and beautiful. Aikido is a peaceful martial art. Not violent. You dance with your opponent, bring them into your sphere and push them out. The Aikido philosophy is akin to meditation. Acknowledge your opponent (problem) and push it out of your sphere.

A classical aikido throw being practiced. Tori maintains balance and structure to throw uke, while uke safely takes a forward roll (mae ukemi). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Aikido is the basis for the fighting and philosophical bent of the Jaunters in The Tome of Worlds.

I did not set out to use Aikido as the philosophical core of the Jaunters, but as I was writing, particularly the fight scenes, I fell onto Aikido.

Jaunters engage in staff fighting, and Aikido’s movements are based on ancient spear and sword techniques, which translate over to staves. In fact the weapons training we did in Aikido used staves. 

The protagonist, Aedinn Finn, has been thrust into an altogether foreign world, and he has no clear memory of how he got there. How did he deal with being in The Nyre Lands? How did he make it through those first few weeks, especially as the Tower of Kol Uthera tortured his mind? Aikido.

Aedinn Finn does not remember that he learned the philosophy of Aikido, but its ways are imprinted upon his mind, and combined with his innate resiliency, he is able to deal with being thrust into a new land with no idea of his place.

Aedinn Finn takes to the staff, and at times he questions why he is a natural with the ways of Jaunter combat. He wonders how he learned to fight with the staff. How he is able to take problems in, acknowledge them, and then shrug them off. His innate sense of how to deal with problems, of how to be a  Jaunter come from when he studied Aikido in our world.

Aedinn Finn is younger than me. More rash. More prone to wading into conflict without a second thought. But in other ways he mirrors me. I took to Aikido like I had grown up practicing its ways, and its philosophy has served me well not only in the time right after the accident, but also in my day to day life since then.

If you want to learn more about Aikido without taking a class I recommend the book Aikido and the Dynamic Sphere. I quote its teachings throughout The Tome of Worlds, and I do not believe Aedinn Finn would be as sane as he is today if he had not spent time in that Aikido Dojo.

Traditional or Self-Publishing…that is the question

The lead-in question has been on my mind a great deal over the past couple of weeks. Why? Well, I’ll get to that, but first the journey…

No, not that Journey.

Over the weekend I caught up in transcribing my handwritten journal, a task I set myself to with abandon with my wife away for the weekend, because I have been frightened over losing the journal, and with it all that I have written.

Finished with the task I now sit at over 114,000 words, which, depending on how many words you assign to a page (I’ve seen a range of 250-400), my story spans between 280 and 400 pages.

What does page count mean? Squat, really. The story will end when it ends, but when I tell people how many words I’ve written they almost always ask me to translate the number into pages.

If you read the blog I posted several days ago about my trip to UCLA you will know that I now see the scenes on the path to the end. I call them waypoints. Probably from playing all those video games. As I talked to myself on the way to UCLA that day I found out that my mind had been doing work behind my back. Lucky for me the novel gnomes had been busy and finished the rest of the novel for me. Now I just have to put words to paper.

What does this mean for me? The end is in sight. Sure, there will be a part II. Again, my mind has gone there already, but I see a resolution to the current conflict and that’s where this novel, Part I, will end.

Oh, and I have a full title for the novel,

The Tome of Worlds, Part I of The Worlds Within

OK, now what? Where will I go with the manuscript after it’s done? Well, it’ll sit in a drawer (folder) for at least a month while I write a science fiction short story that’s been eating at my mind in parallel. After a month I will pull the novel out of the drawer and revise with what I hope is a fresh(er) eye. Then the novel will be seen for the first time by eyes other than mine. Several people have volunteered to read the manuscript, and I have an online group to which I can feed the novel. From there I will look at it again with my own eyes, revise, and then send it off to a copyeditor.

And after that copyeditor? Well, there’s the lead-in question.

I’ve read many points of view on the debate, but even some of the most die-hard self publishers say you should query agents. I will query agents, of course, but I am aware of the lottery I am playing, which is why I am proceeding along as if I am going to self publish. I am looking at distribution models, data analytics, and cover art.

Sad to say, but unless I do research all I have to go on is what draws my eye, and what draws me to novels is great cover art. Even if by some miracle I am picked up by an agent and publishing house I will still have to promote myself, and great art depicting scenes from my novel will help with promotion.

To that end I have asked family members who are talented at illustration to draw characters, landmarks and scenes from my story, which I will publish on my various social media sites when the illustrations are done. Also, I’ve started the search for cover artists, and so far I have two prospects, whom I’ve linked below. If you have an opinion on either one I’d love to hear it.

http://www.aaronbmiller.com/

http://steve-roberts.artistwebsites.com/featured/enchanted-princess-steve-roberts.html

But back to self publishing and the great debate (at least in my mind). Someone, somewhere attributed a quote to Louis CK, the comedian. I cannot verify if Louis CK did say this nugget of wisdom, but the words are stuck in my mind. I paraphrase:

“If you are good enough, you should go it alone. Own your work. Be your own publicist. Be your own agent. No one will have your passion. And if you aren’t good enough, no one will want you anyway so you might as well go it alone.”

Unless you sign your life away with an agent or publishing house, I don’t see why you can’t go promote yourself and have an agent and publisher. Publishing houses and agents open too many doors to be ignored. Besides, I have a family and a full time job. Even the limited amount of social media that I have been pursuing is eating up more time than I would like. I cannot imagine how I will organize my life if I have to self publish. Read Catherine Ryan Howard’s blog, Catherine, Caffeinated. She has a great post on the work you should be doing if you want to self publish.

On the other side of the coin, querying agents and publishing houses take time. You have to be patient. Can I be patient? I can. Scott Southard, who just released A Jane Austen Daydream, told me that an author querying agents should set a time limit for himself. If after 8-12 months you have not had success, self publish the book and move on to the next project.

And that’s where I stand now. Scott’s advice sits well with me. The first draft editing process has yet to begin, but my mind is at ease knowing that I have a plan.

What did Robert Heinlein say?

“Certainly the game is rigged. Don’t let that stop you; if you don’t bet you can’t win.”

Related articles

• Journey to the UCLA Medical Center (christopherleedeards.com)

Pinterest and My Novel

Pinterest is the fastest growing social network out there. Long ago I heard about Pinterest, but I never looked at it. Still, I know that a few authors I read have Pinterest pages, so I decided to make my own page.

Pinterest is a fun way to pass time, especially if you see clothes or shoes or furniture you like on a webpage, any webpage. Hit the Pinterest plug-in button and you can Pin a picture of the item in which you are interested to your board. It’s a great way to keep all of your ideas in one place, visually.

English: Red Pinterest logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

How have I used it? Well, I’ve added movie posters I like. Ways I would like to dress someday. Bookshelves I’d like to own. The way I’d like my writing space to look.

Also, I’ve used Pinterest as a way to visualize every aspect of the world I’ve created. Whenever I see an image, be it on Tumblr, fantasy art sites, Google+, you name it, I Pin the image to one of my boards.

I’ve made boards for Fashion in the Nyre Lands, Scenes from my novel, and Jaunter staves so far. I have a board hidden where I am putting together a story board that I plan to publish around the same time as my novel is published.

If you have a Pinterest account, or if you are interested in seeing how I see the world in my novel, please head over there and check out my Pinterest boards. I’d love to hear what people think.

http://pinterest.com/cldeards/boards/

And if you are on Pinterest, add me if you wish.