Doing it for the fans

Okay, I'll admit it. I've been a bit of a douchebag the past year with my writing. I published Part 1 of Euphoria in March, but I haven't been working on the Part 2 for quite some time. Keep in mind that Part 2 is actually already written--it just simply needs to be edited. Extensively edited. Would you believe it if I told you the runes, as of now, aren't even in the first draft of Part 2? Well, believe it. And I already regret my word choice of "simply". There's absolutely nothing simple about it.

Writing is hard. That much is unquestionable. To seriously commit to writing a book, it takes time, and a vast amount of energy and ambition. Somewhere along the way, between finishing the first draft of Euphoria (both parts), and beginning to edit it, I lost my fervor and that delicious spark of ambition. Too many problems from the real world, like increasingly strenuous schoolwork and bills, pulled the blinders over my eyes, and I stopped writing for awhile altogether. Right as I was pushing myself to write every single day, as I once did, I discovered self-publishing with Amazon and released Part 1 of Euphoria.

However, that seemed to draw me away from writing too. I was more concerned with finding reviewers, marketing the book online and everything else. And then some of the reviews came out, and although a few of the more critical ones still gave the book four or three stars, they disliked certain aspects of the book--the most horrifying of which was that some of them didn't like my main vampire character, Remaunt. Even after the achievement of publishing my work and having real people from around the world read it, I still was morose. I felt like it was hopeless to come out with a sequel because it wouldn't make it very far anyway and it would be self=published. The entire summer I didn't work much on Part 2 at all.

It was a few weeks ago that I realized the error in my way of thinking. A particularly good review came out from Bonnie over at Hands and Home blog, over in wonderful Canada-land (my best friend and editor hails from Canada herself, so I have a special affection for all things Canadian). In her review, she celebrated many of Remaunt's character traits, and said she looked forward to reading the second part. Hers wasn't the first review to say such things, but it WAS the first review that ripped those blinders off my eyes so I could see what a fool I was being.

I have fans. Legitimate fans. They may be incredibly small in number, but I do. I thought back to all the other really positive reviews I had read, and from how many people had said they were eagerly awaiting the second installment. I know for a fact I've heard it from at least ten; one awesome girl even found me on facebook to tell me how much she'd loved it. Another girl posted a discussion on the Amazon Product page asking when Part 2 would be released and said she rarely reviews books but that mine was an exception because she liked it so much. And I thought to myself, "Ten is more than enough."

I realized that it doesn't matter if you have ten fans, a hundred fans, or ten thousand fans. I can't waste life moping around, thinking, "If only I was a NY Times bestselling author and had thousands of people celebrating my work I would be more motivated to continue." If people are interested in your work, whether it be writing, music, or whatever else, and they want more of it, and if it's something that makes YOU happy, you have an obligation to give it to them. Writing does make me happy. Reading reviews makes me happy. Making other people happy, with my book, makes me happy as well. And people are waiting for Part 2. And THAT means I have a responsibility to get Part 2 out there, if not for myself, for my fans.

In the past three weeks I've been writing more than ever. I already finished the edit of a chapter that I had been on/off editing for the past YEAR. I'm well on my way into the next one. It's going to take time, but with my reignited fervor and determination to deliver to my miniscule fan base I should have it done in early 2012. My current goal is to complete it before the publication date of Part 1, which was March 5th, 2011.

My plans don't end there. I intend to put out a full print version, including both parts 1 and 2, to be available on Amazon as well. In addition to that, once the product is finished, I still intend on trying to get a literary agent for the project and see it professionally published. If the positive reviews have told me anything, it's that there is still an audience for this genre and that Euphoria is a refreshing change of pace from all of the popular vampire novels that already exist. With luck, maybe we could even see it on bookshelves in a few years. (Dare to dream!)

So, if you're a fan of Euphoria, I want to thank you. For your support, your readership, everything. I'm doing this for you guys. <3

Finding my blogging style

So, I must admit, I'm not that masterful when it comes to blogging. For years, I've read really well thought out and meticulously organized blogs, like literary agent Nathan Bransford's blog, or blogs from other authors. It seems they always have something worthwhile to post about writing. That was sort of what I was aiming for when I began this blog (if you look at a few of my earlier posts that might be evident) but now I've come to face that my blog may not be exactly like that. However, I think that's okay--there's no mandatory format or formula for a blog, and my blog probably won't even have one.

Keeping up this blog is going to be a bit of challenge for me, or at least it will be until I hopefully grow accustomed to blogging consistently. That's why I'm not going to put too much pressure on my posts for now--by which I mean that every post isn't going to be some insightful thing I realized about writing or whatever whatever. I'm going to try for a wide variety of things--posts about writing, posts about how Part 2 of Euphoria is going, book reviews, and other random things. I just feel like I'm a little crunched between the pressures of real life--like credit card payments, working, saving for vacations I'm taking this summer, and trying to upkeep my social life and have a little fun with my friends--often dominate my writing interests, and when I do actually have time to come to the coffee shop and get down to writing business, I'd rather be writing the entire time instead of focusing so much effort on upkeeping a blog.

However, a blog is a necessity these days, and I am happy to have one. I simply wanted to let anyone who may be reading not to put too much pressure on my posts, because they'll likely be sporadic and encompass other topics than just writing.

In other news, I am happy to announce that Euphoria Part 1 received two four star reviews this past week from Krystal and Eva, whose blogs can be found below with the review:

Krystal's Blog and Review of Euphoria

Eva's Blog and Review of Euphoria

Anyway, I'm afraid that's it for today. I think I'll be back soon with a book review or two, since I've been catching up on some reading. Until next time!

Coming out about self-publishing

So, I've been meaning to write this post for at least two months now, but I kept procrastinating and life was pretty hectic the past couple of months, with finals for school and training at my new serving job. But now that school has disappeared from my life for three blissful months, I have more time on my hands and I'm running out of excuses, so here it goes.

Originally this blog was meant to chronicle my writing endeavors, and my attempts to query a literary agent and get my first novel, Euphoria, published. It's still going to chronicle my writing endeavors, but the difference now is that Euphoria is already published--at least, the first part of it is.

So, here it is. I'm coming out, and saying that I have self-published my novel. But before you scoff, or roll your eyes, I want to explain my decision and the reasoning behind it, because self-publishing is no longer as lame as you might think it is, and this definitely does not mark the end of my quest to obtain a literary agent and get published with a legitimate publishing house, one with the resources to market my book and put it into actual bookstores.

In mid-March, I made the decision to self-publish my book as an e-book with Amazon. Quite a few factors led me to this choice, and I want to start from the beginning. In the beginning, like most people, I scoffed at self-publishing too. Firstly, it costs money to print your book--your own money, since you don't have the resources of a publishing house behind you. You then have to market it and physically sell the books on your own, and in most cases, it's difficult to succeed that way. I never wanted to self-publish, because I knew I wouldn't be able to reach a wide enough audience, and I did want to go the traditional publishing route, because that's usually where the money is at.

Then, in January of this year, I read an article about a woman named Colleen Houck. I don't remember where I read it, but it basically said that she had self-published her novel, Tiger's Curse, on Amazon as an e-book--and it eventually sold so well that a real publishing house picked up the book to put into actual print. You may have already seen it in stores. The article I read said something about Colleen paying $17,000 dollars to get it published as an e-book. I looked at her story and said to myself, "Alright, well if I fail with every literary agent I query, I'll save up all my money or take out a loan or do whatever it takes to self-publish my novel as an e-book like Colleen did."

At that point, I'd been writing off and on (much more off than on) over the past year of 2010--that's why there's only about five posts that exist prior to this one. I started this blog when I was still going full steam ahead with my writing (as in I was writing every single day--this was around January 2010), but then shortly after that all my creative writing classes really took off and I found that I wrote a lot less on the novel. So, this January, inspired somewhat by Colleen's story, I went back to editing my novel, vowing to finish editing it by the end of the year.

Then, near the end of February, on one of my favorite literary agent's blog, I read about a young woman named Amanda Hocking. She self-published around 9 or 10 Young Adult novels as e-books on Amazon, and in the past year, she made millions off of them. Obviously hers is a very unique case, and I'm not saying that this is what convinced me to self-publish my novel as an e-book--however, learning about Amanda opened up many doors to lots of new information that I hadn't had the slightest clue about. Like, for instance, that it doesn't cost $17,000 dollars to publish your book as an e-book with Amazon. In fact, it's completely free.

Colleen Houck must have paid extra for specialized editing, or perhaps I read the article wrong. Either way, this was fascinating to me. With Amazon at the helm, self-publishing no longer seemed lame, or impossible to reach an audience with. Instead, it seemed incredibly awesome. For instance, if I was to print my books and try to sell them myself, my audience would be limited to those around me, and in my city. But with an e-book, on Amazon--essentially the world's biggest online department store and book store--I could reach millions of people, all over the world. I could also market it online, through book websites, or whatever. The internet is a powerful tool.

But I was still not convinced of anything, and I did a little more research. I started to actually look at the Kindle store, specifically the e-books that had been self-published. Most self-published e-books are priced low to entice the reader into buying them over the higher-priced e-books from traditional publishers that are usually around eight or ten dollars, so they're not hard to find--they usually run about 99 cents or $2.99. I investigated some of these novels, especially those that were self-published in the Young Adult category.

My breaking point was when I read the reviews on one self-published novel that was priced at $2.99. The reviews were mostly low, and they said that the novel was riddled with spelling errors and grammatical mistakes. But still, despite all of that, there were seven reviews, which meant that at least seven people had paid for a novel that hadn't even been edited properly. However, when considering how few of people actually take the time to review a novel, I could guess that quite a few more than seven people had bought it. I also thought the cover looked like something I could have done in paint when I was in 4th grade. I thought to myself, If a book like this could sell, why wouldn't mine? I know that sounds mean, but it was true. I knew my book might have a few typing errors, but it certainly wasn't full of errors the way reviewers were saying this one was--and, most importantly, even though this one did have errors, it was still selling.

The problem was, I wouldn't be able to self-publish my book right away. My novel is 130,000 words long, and I had only finished editing the first half of it. And when I say editing, I don't mean simply looking for grammatical mistakes--I mean editing like re-writing, cleaning up bad writing, adding new scenes, getting rid of scenes that don't work, and tying in a new plot point that I had added into the first half of the novel. But then it hit me.

130,000 words is pretty long. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is about 107,000 words, if that's any indicator of the type of length we're talking about. While most Young Adult novels are getting bigger and 130,000 words is becoming a pretty average length, 65,000 words is still enough for a book to stand on its own. And, within my novel, I had two "Books"--like the first half was "Book. 1" and started with a quote, and the second half was "Book 2.". It was fully intended to all be in one physical book though--originally at least. But I thought that I could split it into two smaller books, and self-publish the first half right away, and publish the second once I finished.

I felt a tingling excitement in my veins. I was considering it--more than considering it. I had pretty much decided. I just had to get the opinion of one of my best friends and editor, Alana. She said that she thought I should do it, and a few weeks later, after re-editing the first book and checking it for mistakes, I uploaded it to Amazon.

The first thing I had to do then was market it. I sent e-mails to several book bloggers asking if they would review my novel on their blog. Amanda Hocking, the self-published millionaire that I mentioned earlier, attributed her success to book bloggers, so I thought it was a great place to start. I also joined a website called BookBlogs, a place where you can make posts asking for people to review your book.

The first month--which was really only half of March--I sold something like 37 copies. Most of those were people I knew that I had told about it, but a few of the sales were random readers. In the second month, April, a few book bloggers reviewed it and I sold around 70 copies. This month, as of May 31st, I've sold 170 copies, and to my knowledge, those are all random readers. I've only made around $100 so far, but that's because I'm selling it at 99 cents and I only make 35 cents off of each copy sold. If I was selling it at $2.99 I'd be making about 2 dollars off of each copy, but right now I think it's prudent to keep the price low to expand my readership. I'll likely sell Part 2 for $2.99 though.

So, that's pretty much my story. I neglected to come onto the blog and start it up again, or announce it on social networking, because I was a little conflicted about whether or not it had been a mistake to self-publish, and I was kind of embarrassed. But after this terrific month of May--where, on Amazon, I received two five star reviews from random readers, and sold 170 copies--I'm more at ease with my decision, and excited, because now I actually have legitimate fans awaiting the second part of the novel. Even if it's only a few people, it doesn't really matter to me. People are reading my writing, and that's all that matters in the end.

And, lastly, I must say that this in NO way marks the end of my endeavor to get traditionally published. I just realize now that this might not be the book that I do it with--or, maybe it will be. There's absolutely no legal restrictions stopping me from still trying to get a literary agent to represent the novel, as I retain all rights to the material--Amazon is simply the middle man. Time can only tell what kind of success I'll have, but for now I'm simply going to work on getting the second half of the novel out and seeing what that brings. So, without further adieu, here is the link to Euphoria (Part 1 of Book 1), in the Amazon US Kindle store:

Euphoria (Part 1 of Book 1)

Also, since there is a link to my blog in the acknowledgments section of the book, this means that I will be attempting to upkeep this blog regularly. I've never blogged consistently before, and I'm not even sure what I'll be blogging about--probably random things about writing, updates on my progress with Part 2, my own book reviews of other YA novels, and whatever else I suppose! Bear with me, as this is a new adventure and untraveled road. I'll try to write as often as possible! Thanks for reading, and happy Tuesday :)

KISS

Alright, so I am well aware that I promised to come back with a post revolving around editing, but a thought just struck me as I was editing, and I felt that I had to share.

Now, most seasoned writers know this, and although I've been writing my whole life and steadily writing for over a year now, I still struggle with this concept. I'm getting better, but I have a tendency to revert back into my old ways without even realizing it. I also have a tendency to talk and talk about something without actually saying what it is (see what I mean?)

The thing I'm talking about is overwriting. It's my personal writing demon, and it rears it's ugly head whenever I get into the zone, catching me unawares. Then, my faithful beta will read the chapter I send off to her and be like, "You need to cut this sentence." And, unfortunately for me, it's not just her--I've heard the same thing from many other people as well.

Now, this is not to say that all of my writing is overdone. However, there will be the occasional paragraph that is too dressed up and gaudy with adjective use and commas. And, as I sat here writing tonight, one sentence of my novel hit me hard in particular. Because I have zero shame, I'll share it with you here:

A tiny, miniature pond glittered in the center of a circle of willow trees, their long and spindly branches swaying in the light breeze, slow-dancing with the evening air.

Overwritten, without a doubt. I quickly changed it to this:

A small pond glittered in the center of a circle of willow trees, their spindly branches swaying in the light breeze, slow-dancing with the evening air.

Much better. And, although I already know this, it struck me: Simple is sometimes for the better. For instance, I usually shy away from simple descriptors like 'small' and opt for something like 'diminutive' or 'minuscule' instead. Which may be fine if that's one of the only adjectives in the sentence--but the rest of the example sentence is so full of description that a simple word like, 'small' serves only to compliment the remainder of it.

It seems that often times as fiction writers we feel like the writing has got to be the best thing in the universe in order to make it in the cutthroat world of publishing, and this can lead to making mistakes--trying to write too long of a book or too short of a book; trying to write about something you don't really know because it's the current trend in the market; or overindulging in the writing itself, like I do. If you're like me, you'll occasionally slip into the subconscious mistake of trying to shock and awe with overwriting. Don't do it--it can massacre your goal of a lower word count and take away from your plot and characters.

There are two extremes that I would suggest avoiding. One is obviously overwriting, but the other is also keeping it too simple. There is danger in each of them, and I feel like they're both equally as damaging to a book. People might cite examples of overwriting or over simple writing, like Tolkien and Hemingway, but they were the exception to the rule, and that was also a handful of decades ago. They each have their own style, and they were both brilliant, but for today's market I would say that in most cases the writing should fall somewhere in-between.

This whole post is a little hypocritical because I AM addicted to words, but I'm on the path to recovery. I still relapse from time to time, but I'm getting better about it. So, from one word addict to the rest of the writing population, I'm going to tell you KISS: keep it simple... sometimes.

Happy Monday.

Missing in Action

Greetings and salutations, my wonderful readers (the few of you that there are). It's a Sunday afternoon and I have a paper to write and a novel to finish reading, but I thought it would be a good idea to take a little break and scrawl down an update for the old blog.

To my great sadness, school has been strangling my writing life lately. When I made the switch to Creative Writing from Political Science, I knew, deep down, that I would be doing a TON of reading and writing, and that it might affect my editing of my actual novel. However, it felt like the right thing to do, and I'm still convinced that it was, even if I rue the decision at times like these.

So, in short, I have been having to do so much reading and writing lately that it isn't even funny. The last time I sat down to work on my novel was over a week ago. Though I've been absolutely detesting editing lately, I miss it more than I ever thought I would. I can't wait to get back to writing--unfortunately, I have to wait a few days.

The blog has been neglected due to my school work as well, but as soon as I get the chance I'm going to post my next post, which will deal with editing since that's the journey I'm currently on. Hopefully that will be sometime next week.

And, for fun, here's an excerpt from my novel:

The farewell glory of the California sun enveloped my mother and me, cascading down upon us as it continued its inevitable descent into the victorious, swallowing Pacific. I breathed in deeply, savoring the nautical air and the salty fragrance of the water, and took in my surroundings: the shadowy silhouettes of the palm trees; the trail of colors stretching across the sky and reflecting upon the water; the sun inching into oblivion as it exiled itself to a world that existed beyond the horizon. Children laughed and shrieked as they played in the waves, and the gulls cawed in sharp contrast. I sighed as I was stabbed with the premature pangs of nostalgia. I knew it would be a considerable amount of time before I would be provided with the chance to gaze upon this landscape again.

Annnd I'm going to leave on that note, while I fantasize about being in California right now. Keep an eye out for the next post!

Knowing You're Not Alone, Editing Sucks, and Life Happens

Okay folks, I am going to be unabashedly honest with you all, right here, right now. At this point of my journey with writing I have reached treacherous waters and rocky roads--and by that I simply mean that I am having the roughest time writing that I have had in... well, forever.

I've been beating myself up about this for weeks, but for now I have decided I'm going to place an indefinite hold on the mental flagellation. Why, you may ask? Because I have realized three very important things that vindicate this difficult time I'm having with writing, and tonight I am going to share them with you.

1) You are not alone.

And neither am I! Every single writer that seriously commits to writing a novel goes through these exact same trials. Hanging around people that are endeavoring to complete the same task you are, whether it's finishing a novel or running a marathon, is extremely comforting and enlightening. Since I don't have any friends--yet--that have reached this point in their writing, I hang out around the right people right here on the internet. There are several links I've happened upon recently that have helped me realize that I'm not alone--and here they are:

Nathan Bransford--How do you deal with the "Am-I-Crazies"?

In this post, literary agent Nathan Bransford basically says that every writer deals with what he calls the "Am-I-Crazies" at some point or another in their writing career. If you're wondering what the Am-I-Crazies entail, it's exactly what it sounds like: you tearing your hair out and repeatedly asking yourself if you are insane for ever even thinking you could write a novel. The comments section in the blog is overflowing with tons of ways to seek relief from the Am-I-Crazies, and also serves as solid, concrete proof that you are not alone if you are experiencing them.

The second thing I found that brightened my spirits and made me realize I wasn't alone was this interview with authors Cassandra Clare and Lisa McMann. One of the first questions asked is, "What is the hardest part about writing?" Lisa McMann responds that, "The hardest part some days is actually starting to write and open up that word document and actually getting the document open and ready to go." Tell me about it--that's how I've been feeling on a daily basis for weeks! It was incredibly soothing to know that other writers undergo the same difficulties that I'm having right now.

2) Writing is hard... Editing is harder.

So I'm at least 99.9% certain that the reason I feel like I'm going to explode is that I'm editing, not writing. Sure, the two are very closely connected, because a majority of the time you write fresh material when you edit, but they are also galaxies apart. Author Natalie Whipple helped me understand this with her amazing post entitled "Do It Anyway".

She talks about writing (and editing) and how ridiculously hard it is, but also about how fantastically wonderful it can be. This ties into my "You are not alone" theory in many ways. For one, half the feelings she described in that post have been a consistent factor in my life for some time now--but on the other end of the spectrum she reminded me that those glorious feelings of perfecting a description or nailing a line are absolutely insurmountable. It's those moments that make it all worth it.

Editing is a crazy, unpredictable ride. As Natalie said in another post, "Even my biggest first drafting struggles pale in comparison to my challenges in editing." I second that completely for an infinite amount of reasons. The words are already there, but it's hard to decide what to do with them if they're mediocre. Do you try to spice the sentence up, or do you delete it altogether? In addition to that, patching up plot holes or adding new material is also a tricky task. But the hardest of all is making the writing match. For me, the writing in the first half of my novel is radically different from the second half. This is because I hadn't written in years when I began the novel, but by the end of 7 months of writing every day, I had blossomed and grown as a writer, making the writing way better in the second half.

Every one will experience different challenges and tribulations when it comes to editing, but if you're like Natalie and me, my best piece of advice is this: Take it slow. Don't rush the editing process, or let the editing process rush you. If you think you're on a deadline, forget about the deadline. The cost of speeding through editing is much higher than taking it slow.

3) Life Happens

Nathan Bransford was absent this week, so he enlisted several guest bloggers to fill the blogging void while he was away. Though all the entries were awesome, there was one that I found particularly compelling. In it, Bryan Russell talks about how he had a perfect, painstakingly detailed plan for his writing career, and that it basically got derailed by life--but that's okay. The moral of the post is that things will not always go the way you expect them to, but that that's alright.

Personally, I wholly agree with him. I thought I'd have my first draft finished by April 2009, when in reality it became June. I thought I'd be querying literary agents by the time the fall semester started at ASU, but that didn't happen either--by then I hadn't even fully edited the first three chapters! And most recently, I thought I would finish my first draft edit by the time my winter break expired--yet here I am, concluding the first week of school, and I'm still on only chapter nine of eighteen.

So yes, life happens, and often gets in the way of our plan of how we think things are going to go. But the best you can to is realize this and accept it, and keep on keepin' on. You can do it--and so can I.

And Bob Marley's 'Three Little Birds' is playing at my coffee house right at this moment. I think I'll end on that note. Have a wonderful rest of the weekend! :)

The Beginning

For a long while, I was under the impression that writing was a dead passion for me. Though I had been writing since the 3rd grade, I hadn't really written anything substantial in years. The furthest any project of mine had gotten was 47 pages on Microsoft Word, and that was something I had written in 7th grade. By the time I entered my freshmen year of college, I was convinced that, while I used to love writing and could write well, I had lost all interest/talent that I may have once had.

I remained living in that world until November of 2008. At the start of the month, I started thinking about writing again, and I tried to write a few times, but I was largely unsuccessful. But one night near the end of the month, I arbitrarily wrote down a one-page piece of work. It was clear that it was the beginning of a story, but as to what the story was I had no idea. I never intended to do anything with the piece of writing--it was just something for fun, and after all, I had no plot to continue with anyway.

I started thinking about the story from 7th grade, and how far it had gotten. Though I had come up with them when I was 13, I still loved my characters, and I wished I could find someway to utilize them again--but the plot seemed silly to me now, and I couldn't figure out how to rework it. After I had given up, I was at work one day, bored out of my mind, when it hit me. I suddenly saw how I could make the story work, how I could update the characters, and where I could set it. I realized that the one-page piece of work from a few days ago could become my prologue. I wrote the first chapter a couple of days after that.

I started in late November, and finished on June 28th, 2009 at 110,000 words. My genre is Young Adult Fantasy. As of today, I am almost halfway done with my edit of the first draft. I have the skeleton of a query letter than needs some serious work, but I have a decent list of agents that I want to query. Right now I'm continuing to edit the first draft, and when I've finished that I plan on reworking the query letter--after that, and once I feel the manuscript is ready, I will begin querying!

So, sans the life story up there, that's exactly what this blog will be doing: chronicling my writing endeavors as I take my first foray into the extremely intimidating and seemingly cutthroat world of publishing. On the way, I'll post my thoughts on writing as well as things I learn as I grow and mature as a writer. Hopefully there will be advice and ideas that can help you learn and grow as a writer too!

The blog is called Writer By Night because I do a large part of my writing after the sun has vanished into the west, holed up at my favorite coffee shop until four in the morning. I do write during the day, but much less often. As for now, because I'm just starting out and returning to school, I'm afraid that there won't be much of a structure with my posts. They'll tend to be sporadic, but it is my intent to post as often as I can.

Thank you for reading and tagging along on my adventure with me!