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Recap: My First Goodreads Giveaway
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Last week I listed my first giveaway on Goodreads and this is the promised recap for those interested.  My goals for the giveaway were pretty simple and pretty modest.  I didn’t have any numbers in mind.  I wanted to see how the process worked, so this was a trial run.  I also wanted to drive interest in Grinder’s Keeper.  West of Dead seems to do alright on its own.  It’s short, inexpensive, and it has zombies in it, which are still popular now.  I love WoD, but I personally think Grinder is a better book.  It’s a more involved story and Caine actually has a more compelling arc.  This seemed like a good way to get people talking about it, or at least looking at it.  I offered three signed copies for eight days.  I checked in mornings and evenings and kept a few notes as events unfolded.

Day 1  The giveaway was on the first page of ‘recently listed’.  I was doing other stuff and didn’t get to check in until 5:00 pm.  68 people had entered and 3 had added it to their ‘to read’ shelf.  By 10:00 pm, 87 people had added it.

Day 2  Pushed back to the 6th page of ‘recently listed’.  I started my giveaway on the 31st so it got pushed back when all the ones scheduled for the 1st opened.  If I did it again I would schedule it to stay closer to the front.  102 people entered in the morning and ‘to reads’ up to 40.  By evening 132 people had entered.

Day 3  Still on page 6 of ‘recently listed’, but also on page 6 of ‘ending soon’.  This is the reasoning behind a shorter giveaway, multiple listings for exposure to people browsing the giveaways.  154 people entered in the morning, and ‘to reads’ up to 64.  181 entered by evening.

Day 4  Still on page 6 of ‘recently listed, page 7 of ‘ending soon’.  199 people entered in the morning, and ‘to reads’ up to 64.  211 entered by evening.

Day 5  Page 10 on ‘recently listed’ and page 6 of ‘ending soon’ (but near the top).  230 people entered, and ‘to reads’ up to 80.  242 people entered by evening.

Day 6  Page 12 of ‘recently listed’ and page 4 of ‘ending soon’.  259 people entered and ‘to reads’ up to 93.  289 entered by evening.

Day 7  Page 14 of ‘recently listed’ and page 3 of ‘ending soon’.  305 people entered in the morning and ‘to reads’ up to 110.  344 people entered by evening.

Day 8  Page 16 of ‘recently listed’ and page 1 of ‘ending soon’.  416 people entered in morning, ‘to reads’ up to 130.  513 people entered by evening.

Day 9  All done!  Final count was 544 people entering and 239 adding it ‘to read’.

So, was it a success?  A modest one I’d say.  I checked the popular giveaways and there were plenty well into the thousands.  Like an Amazon giveaway this is probably counting on small percentages, so the bigger the base that percentage comes from the better.  But it did at least get 553 to look at the cover and read the description.  All it cost me was the postage to send the winners their books (of course two of my winners were in the UK so it was a bit more than a couple stamps).  If I do it again I may run it longer.  The short duration gives you more exposure for people browsing, but overall the increase seemed pretty steady.  If that kept up for two weeks I could have doubled the numbers.  One thing to remember is Goodreads is a social site, not a sales tracking site.  Just because someone marks your book as ‘to read’ doesn’t mean they bought it, or that they ever will.  That can be frustrating when you have a beige bar where your sales should be.  But sometimes you have to take a long view and just try to build momentum.

If you’re interested, this blog gives the advice I followed to write the description and schedule the giveaway and this is what mine looked like.

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How Fighting Prepared Me for Writing
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English: Print circa 1824 of the boxer Tom Spr...

English: Print circa 1824 of the boxer Tom Spring. This image has been modified and edited by the uploader from the book cover of Tom Spring, Bare-Knuckle Champion of All England by Jon Hurley. ISBN: 0752424041. Original work is public domain by virtue of age (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sometimes when people talk to me about writing, they’re not really talking about writing.  They don’t want to know how I get story ideas, or write believable characters.  They want to know how I worked up the huevos to step into that weird publishing world.  I suppose there’s some pat answers available.  The hackneyed “just do it”, or the accurate but kinda snarky “I just don’t think about it”.  There is a little more to it though if you want to know.

I trained for several years in Krav Maga, an Israeli developed system of fighting and self-defense.  It’s a no frills system, no forms or meditation, just straight forward techniques designed to end fights quickly.  The basis of the training is drilling those moves over and over in increasingly adrenalized/physically tired states.

But then there were the fighting classes.  These were full classes dedicated to contact sparring.  They were brutal and they were awesome.  You never knew quite how a class would go.  One night might be all stand up handwork, the next might be kickboxing, another might be anything goes.  Yes, that includes groin shots.

I’ll never forget my first class because I got my ass handed to me.  There’s just no way to be prepared to fight twenty other people for an hour.  I think Mike Tyson said, “Everybody has a plan until they get hit in the face.”  There’s so much going on, so much to learn that it’s overwhelming.  So what do you do?

You get hit.  There’s no point in sugar coating it.  You’re going to get hit.  But taking a hit isn’t the end of the world.  When you realize that, you can stop worrying so much about it and concentrate on doing things that make you get hit less often.  Some of the hits you take as an author are inevitable, a bad review maybe.  Some will be on you, say a bad book cover.  Work on the ones you can and ignore the rest.

You are scared.  The fight or flight reflex is one reflex for two different outcomes.  There’s no value judgment.  Your lizard brain feels the same whether you stand and bang or un-ass the area.  Since you’re going to feel that regardless, don’t let it rule you.  Let it happen and keep moving.  I’ve only got two titles out there.  Maybe when I have ten it’ll go from sheer terror to anxious excitement when I hit the publish now button.  But there will always be some kind of nerves.

You don’t get it all the first time…or maybe even the second time.  So, don’t try.  Pick one thing to focus on per class.  You can still do everything else, but really get that one thing down.  It doesn’t have to be fancy, it could be as simple as keeping your guard up, but do it with intent.

If you know you don’t write great dialog, really focus on that.  If you want to have consistent output on your blog, focus on that.  Write a list of things you want to learn or improve.  Start at the top and give time to each one.  I don’t care if it’s a month or a day, as long as you focus on getting that one thing right.

You stay positive.  If you’re working on your guard while sparring here’s what you shouldn’t say to yourself, “Don’t drop your hands, don’t drop your hands.”  Instead you should be saying, “Keep your hands up!, Keep your hands up!”  It might sound like a small difference, unimportant.  The difference in mindset is huge, and the difference in performance is out of all proportion to the change in wording.  Learn how to stay positive even when it doesn’t seem warranted.  That can keep you going when you want to stop.

You don’t do it alone.  Not if you’re smart anyway.  I lucked out and had some truly great instructors in Krav, but it wasn’t just the teachers.  The students were all there to learn together and make each other better fighters.

I’ve written about the community out there for indie authors.  Take advantage of it.  Join some discussion groups and talk to other authors, trade war stories.  Subscribe to writing podcasts, or hell, make one of your own.  Watch the Books and Beer Hangout and get in on the Q&A.   It might be cool to be a brooding loner, but friendly folks have more fun (and get more sales).

You never stop learning.  If you go to a fight class for a year, you’ll be an entirely different fighter from when you started.  Possibly no longer recognizable.  But there will still be a ton to learn, or infinite ways to refine what you have learned.  You’ll have to learn how to fight a southpaw, or someone a foot taller than you, or how to use your footwork to take control your opponent’s reach.  It never stops.  That’s a good thing.  How would you feel if one day you realized you had it all down, there was nothing left to discover?

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There Are No Small Victories
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I was splashing around in a social media stream this morning, and came across a post from John Ward about the idea of incrementalism.  The idea that nothing big starts big, everything starts small.  This is the old “Rome wasn’t built in a day” or “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”.  There are a myriad of sayings along those lines, so they can tend to fade into the static of platitude (plastaticitude? yeah, that’s a word now).

The thing is it’s true.  You aren’t going to get anywhere unless you get moving.  We’ve all known someone who has great ideas or lofty goals, and never does a damn thing about it.  There’s nothing wrong with daydreaming, but if all you ever do is dream and talk, all you’ll ever have are regrets.  Do yourself a favor and go after something, really try, and you’ll never regret it.  You might not succeed.  You might go down in an epic face plant, but you had the guts to make a play.

So why do so many people find the idea so overwhelming?  Well, because it is overwhelming.  That’s why you don’t think about the big goals.  Set the big goals, write ‘em down even, but don’t obsess over those.  Break it down into smaller bits, find that one step and take it.  Then keep taking it, keep putting one foot in front of the other.  Every step becomes a small victory, and enough small victories add up to a big victory.

In September of 2011 I attended the Digital Publishing Workshop for Authors.  It was a smallish seminar by ePublish Unum.  It was a great overview of what digital publishing looked like, and went into some of the things a writer needed to think about if they wanted to take that next step.

At the time I had been writing pretty much as a hobby.  There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s a great hobby, but the itch for more had been growing in me.  I was approaching a big old fork in the road.  If I wanted to be serious about getting published, I had to stop thinking about it and get my ass moving.  That’s really the first step, deciding you want something enough to get your ass moving.

The seminar was a big second step, a little information gathering of what you’re in for.  After the seminar I went home and smoked a pipe and thought (thinking is always more productive while you’re smoking a pipe).  I knew it was something I wanted, but that’s when I decided that I wanted to do something about wanting it.  There was a lot I had to do, and a lot to learn, but sometimes the best learning is in the doing.

I dug a notecard out of a desk drawer and scrawled this on it.  “Do At Least One Thing Today to Move Closer to Publishing Your Work“.  That’s it.  That’s my mission statement.  The underlines are what I felt were most important.  I hung it up where I had to look at it.  It’s a goad when I’m slacking off, and encouragement when I’m following its orders.

It works because it’s only one thing.  Everything I do is a small victory, a success.  I try to do more than one thing a day, there’s no point in dragging your heels, but sometimes all I get is that one thing.  That thing can be damn small sometimes, but it’s something.  Small or big, they all move me forward.  Now I have two titles out, and a third one in the works.

I’m not rich or famous yet, and I may never be either, but I’m enjoying myself.  When you focus on the small steps in a big journey, you’re enjoying the journey.  Two of my sales last month were paperbacks and I jumped up and down like a maniac because that was a hundred percent increase in paperback sales over the previous month.

That’s my experience because writing’s my personal lunacy, but it applies to everything.  I don’t really care if you want to start a Dio tribute band or learn how to juggle.  Take the steps and savor the small victories.

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Writing Tips for the Rookie (From a Fellow Rookie)
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St. Augustine writing, revising, and re-writin...

St. Augustine writing, revising, and re-writing: Sandro Botticelli’s St. Augustine in His Cell (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Now that I’m a writer, or at least tell people I am, I’m starting to get questions.  Not just about the stories, but about the process.  The actual mechanical act of writing a book.  It’s more than simple curiosity.  One person told me they literally had no concept of how it was done, how an idea in a person’s head became a book.  Some people even ask my advice, which is awkward.  Not because I don’t have any, but because I’m still new at it, still figuring it out.  The fact is, the creative process will probably be different for everyone and advice won’t really help.  But as far as the mechanics of sitting down and writing, well it’s not black magic or anything.  How do I do it?  Like this:

Do it first.  You have to put a priority on your writing to value it.  The easiest way to build that value (and build habits while you’re at it) is to do it first.  Make the first thing you do be about your writing.  If you have a real job, get up an hour early and write for an hour.  Whatever else happens, you’ll have that hour under your belt.  At the very least do it right after you get home.  Give it the same hour, but make that hour a minimum and make it writing.  If you go over the hour, that’s great, but if you don’t you’ll at least have that hour in.  That won’t change if you do it full-time.  You should always be writing, so make that the first thing you do.

Manage Your Time.  I don’t think time management is natural to the human.  I don’t know anyone who is just an instinctively good manager of their time.  If I did I would probably hate them.  But if you don’t do it, you’ll piss away your time.  It’s just that simple.  An hour or two flipping through the channels, another couple surfing the net…that’s all time you could have been writing.

Fortunately, even though time management might not be natural, it is learnable.  And the techniques are usually pretty simple and instantly applicable.  I use the Pomodoro technique and recommend it with religious fervor.  I have a great app on my iPad so I have my activity inventory, my to do list, and timer all in one spot.

Minimize distractions.  This actually goes hand in hand with time management.  A great deal of our distractions, after all, are ones we willingly engage in.  Like watching TV.  But there are also ringing phones, nosy spouses, noisy neighbors, traffic…the list is pretty much endless.  Part of this is identifying a distraction.  Most people are compelled to answer a ringing telephone.  I was not born with this compulsion and rarely answer the damn thing even if I’m not writing.  If you’re a normal person and your impulse is to pick up, then turn off the ringer and let the machine get it.  Some people can write with music on and some find it distracting.  If you find it distracting, sorry it’s gotta go.

Identify, eliminate!

Turn Word Count Into Your Friend.  Usually a blank page is intimidating.  If you want to write a novel you’re going to be shooting for eighty thousand words, give or take.  That sounds like a lot, but if you look at it that way you’ll be intimidated.  This is a glass half-full kind of thing.  You need to turn it around and make it a positive.  If you’re managing your time and minimizing distraction, you’ll get words on paper.

So break it down.

If you set a goal of 2000 words a day and write five days a week, that’s 10,000 words in a week.  In a month you’ll have 40,000 and be halfway done.  In two months you’ll have 80,000.  Mission accomplished.  If you really only have that hour before work, you might not be able to get 2000 words.  So set a goal you can make.  Don’t think about how many words you have to go, that’s the half-empty part and it’s negative.  Think about the words you have and how you’re building them up into a book.

That’s a positive.

Use a Mantra.  Staying positive is important.  Because you’re all alone in there and already listening to voices, it’s easy to start listening to the negative ones.  You’re a hack, nobody cares about your story, you’re an idiot to even try, et cetera, ad infinitum.  Find a simple mantra to keep you going that ignores all that other stuff.

Before I published, my mantra was ‘tappa, tappa, tappa’.  That’s from the Simpson’s episode where Lisa takes dance lessons.  The only instruction, advice, and encouragement her teacher gives her is ‘tappa, tappa, tappa’.  Instead of tap shoes that was the sound I used of me tapping on my keyboard.  As long as there was ‘tappa, tappa, tappa’ I was writing.

After I published, I found a whole new set of discouragement and distraction.  Like trying to maintain a social media presence, think of ways to plug the books without sounding like a pimp, and watching sales fluctuate.  Or even worse, flat line.  None of that is writing though, so I adopted a new mantra which I got from another cartoon.  It’s Dory from Finding Nemo, but instead of swimming it’s ‘just keep writing, just keep writing’.

Yes I sing it.

Aloud.

You do what you have to, man.

 

 

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I Don’t Want to Talk About It
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English: A world war 2 operational security po...

English: A world war 2 operational security poster. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My last post was a bit of ranting about how a writer could take a minor annoyance (interruption) and pretty much freak out.  So is this post.

People love to talk about writing process, but the truth is I don’t understand mine very well.  At least not yet.  It’s a weird hybrid of rational mechanics and emotional ticks that border on superstition.  For example, I suppose I don’t need a cup of coffee (for morning writing) or a beer (for evening writing), but I can’t imagine doing it without them.  The problem occurs when non-writers (normal people) don’t understand how important those emotional parts can be.  I suppose that’s how we get a reputation for being eccentrics.

One of my big ones is that I do not want to talk about what I’m working on.  I’m terrified to talk about it in fact.  So of course it seems like that’s all anyone wants to talk about.  Now to be fair most just ask ‘how is the book going?’.  That already makes me nervous, but if I say ‘it’s going’ and they drop it, then we’re fine.  The other day though, someone actually asked ‘where are you in the book?’.  My heart almost stopped.  I wouldn’t answer and it got a little awkward.

Now I do have pretty solid reasons for not doing this.  I have a book on my shelf called Robert’s Rules of Writing by Robert Masello.  Rule 4, out of 101 rules, is “Zip the Lip”.  He says “A book is like a hydraulic engine, and the more you talk about it, the more you let out the power that’s needed to make the thing run.”  Great metaphor and he gives more reasons, but it boils down to this:  if you’re talking, you’re not writing.  All that talking actually muddies the writing.

For me the process just feels so damned delicate.  I need to get the story from my head, to the page.  As long as it’s in my head, I feel like it can get lost.  I feel like if I talk about it, it just goes out into the ether and that’s it.  If I write it, it’s on the page.  It’s permanent.  I don’t always know what my characters are going to do, or what’s even going to happen to them.  I need to find all that out while I’m writing, while I’m discovering the story.  I don’t need a bunch of other people talking and thinking about it and wearing off all the mojo.

When will I talk about it?  Well, I absolutely won’t talk about it until the story gels.  There’s a magic moment when I’ve got the beginning of the story, I’m far enough in that the story is going forward, and then somehow there’s enough word-weight that I feel like it won’t blow away.  Before that I don’t even want to tell you what it’s about.  Since I have a recurring character I can say ‘It’s a Caine story’.  But that’s it.

Past that gel point, I usually have to go a little further and there’s another moment where I think ‘hey, I can finish this’.  That moment is different for every piece and it’s always a surprise.  But there’s still all kinds of stuff that can happen from then until you type ‘the end’.  I don’t really want to say anything until I have that first draft done.

Then I won’t shut up about it.

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Do Not Disturb The Writer (He’s Disturbed Enough As It Is)
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English: Common Do not disturb sign of a hotel

English: Common Do not disturb sign of a hotel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was nine years old when I saw The Shining on cable.  That may sound young, but I watched all kinds of horror movies starting way earlier than nine.  That didn’t mean The Shining didn’t scare the hell out of me.  I still consider it one of a handful of truly terrifying movies.  It has a bunch of memorable scenes and most people have at least one that just flat out scared them pissless.

I don’t want to talk about those ones.

The scene I’m thinking about now is one that happens before things really go south for the Torrance family.  Wendy tries to talk to Jack, but Jack is working.  On a novel.  He bangs on the typewriter keys and says “Do you hear that sound Wendy?  That sound means I’m working.”

Jeez what a jerk, right?

Well yeah, until you become a writer yourself.  If you watch that scene after trying to write something, you sort of nod your head a little bit.  What the hell is wrong with that stupid Wendy anyway?  She could hear the sound of the typewriter.  That sound means he’s working.

Writing is work and it is hard work.  Not hard like working at a lumber mill, but hard in it’s way.  For me it’s about concentration.  I need to get the story going, try and keep the flow right and the plot moving, keep all the characters straight, and keep all the story beats in my head while I’m writing between them.  Once I get that momentum I need to keep it going for as long as possible.  And I need to do it every day.

That might not sound like a big deal, but that concentration can be incredibly fragile.  Especially at the beginning of a work before the story ‘gels’.  Distractions are freakin poison for the process and most people aren’t going to understand.  They say they get it.  But they don’t.

They don’t realize that the moment they knock on the door, they’ve become a distraction.  “Am I bothering you?” they’ll say.  Yes, yes you are.  “Sorry,” they’ll say.  An apology doesn’t take away the original distraction.  It’s just one more distraction.  Don’t be sorry, just be quiet.

I suspect that this sounds like artsy, prima donna whining to most people.  I don’t care.  You need to concentrate and you need to protect yourself from distraction.  If you live alone it shouldn’t be a problem.  Unplug the phone and you’re good to go.  If you live with someone else…well, it could get ugly.

By all means politely ask people to respect your writing time and space.  I hope that works out for you.  But if you don’t get that respect by being polite, get it anyway you can.  I take that back, don’t go to a haunted hotel and try to kill everyone with an axe.  But do lock your office door.  Hang out a ‘do not disturb sign’ or something. And if interruptions continue to be a problem, stop being polite.

I don’t want to be a jerk about these things.

But I will if I have to.

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