Category: Writing and Publishing Tips

How to write with kids under 10 without losing your mind

by Allie P., posted in General Tips and Tricks, Life as I know it, Life Hacks, Writing and Publishing Tips
How to write with kids under 10 without losing your mind
image courtesy of pixabay

Okay, so my headline is somewhat misleading. If you are attempting to write more than the occasional thank you note or note to the teacher about how very disappointed you were to learn of your normally charming daughter, Jenny’s decision to cut friend Mary’s hair in class, or why the teacher shouldn’t be alarmed when your son, Danny demands an extra seat at his desk for his imaginary friend, Mr. Hinklesworth, chances are your mind is already a little. . .well. . .off.

But according to my headline analyzer, “How to write with kids under 10 without losing more of your mind,” was considered too wordy.

1) Set boundaries

Set aside a little place in your world where you can go where you write uninterrupted. It is best if the only way to enter this place is by passing through a mystic portal accessed only by answering a series of three challenging questions administered by increasingly menacing figures, but I suppose any office, bedroom, or garden retreat or closet nook can do too. Just make sure that everyone knows that when mommy or daddy go to write they have effectively traveled to China (unless you already live in China in which case Kansas might do).

2) Actually enforce those boundaries 

Children can sense when adults want to do something that doesn’t involve them and it drives them mad. The little buggers will let loose a type of wall piercing shriek the likes of which the Department of Defense would pay billions to develop. Fight the urge to leave your writing sanctuary with every ounce of willpower you possess. You are supposed to be in China/Kansas, remember. Besides, it can’t be all that bad. As long as they are screaming, at least you know they are still breathing, right?

3) Schedule your writing in realistic chunks that fit your lifestyle

Yeah, who am I kidding in that last tip? No mind can withstand more than a minute or two of that sort of mental assault before caving. But once you leave your sanctuary, it unlikely your little hellions cherubs will allow you go back anytime soon, so you might as well plan accordingly. If you thrive on two to three hours sleep, writing in the early morning or late at night may work for you, but for those of us who require a few more REM cycles, it is easier to break up a day’s writing goal into a few fifteen to thirty minute sessions per day and can be an absolute sanity saver. Another blogger, Sacha Black, introduced me to this tip, referring to these micro sessions as writing sprints. She has written up a helpful piece to help you determine what size sprint is best for you.

4) Cut your cable

Better yet, turn the TV off altogether, but if you are like me and still occasionally need to veg out, do it smart. While the EU limits the length of commercial interruptions to no more than twelve minutes per hour of programming in the US, commercials can make up about 30% or more of air time. As much as it pained me at first, I’ve stopped watching live TV. Thanks to streaming without commercials, I can watch my favorite hour-long show in forty-five minutes. (It’s magic!) I now have an extra fifteen minutes to write if I so choose. Sure, it means putting up with some delayed gratification and extra heavy spoiler evasion, but we all must make sacrifices for our art.

5) Keep your deadlines long and your notes close

Even with the best of intentions, you aren’t going to be able to hit your goal every day, even with micro-sessions. You’ll have summer break or have to deal with yet another round of the bug that’s so fun to share that everyone in the family gets a turn. These things happen. The thing to keep in mind is unless you were offered a contract, the only one who cares about your deadline is you (yes, I know – I have a hard time accepting this too. I am all twitchy just to write it). Sure you might disappoint a few fans by failing to deliver as quickly as they would like (cough. . .cough. . . George R. R. Martin, I am looking at you), but they aren’t exactly lighting up your phone with offers to babysit (for free) so that you can write in peace, now are they?

6) Back-up everything!

Say you do all of the above. The children are blissfully asleep. Even better, they’d gone down with hardly a fight. Your partner is off taking a run (or doing whatever it is he or she does when you go all writerly on them). The house is wonderfully quiet as you revise the third draft of your latest novel. Only a few more chapters to go. You are in the zone. Suddenly the cursor on your screen moves and an ‘a’ you know you didn’t type appears on the page. Then another. And another. Suddenly there is a whole line of ‘aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaas’. Panicked, you bang on the ESC key. The cursor blinks at you as if it is not only aware of your fright, it is amused. Then the whole room is blanketed in a bright blue light coming from your screen.

You feel like Darth Vader just told you he was your father. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Sounds horrible? Yes. It. Was. I was able to recover my file. That time. But thanks to the school system exposing the young to computer skills at a young age, I can no longer trust that my children won’t download a virus or click on a ransomware link. Heck, I can barely trust myself not to do that.

7) Remember why you started in the first place

Were you doing it for the money? The fame? The accolades? (If so, I’d love to see your marketing plan. Really – I would! Please contact me). Occasionally take a step back so that you can see how far you’ve already come. You can do this.

How not to gain a literary agent

by Allie P., posted in General Tips and Tricks, Writing and Publishing Tips
How not to gain a literary agent
background image courtesy of Lissa R and Flickr

Ah, the quest for the elusive literary agent…

For my readers who are not writers, let me explain. You see a literary agent can seem much like a unicorn within the writing world. If you are fortunate enough to stumble upon one, the common belief is that they have the power to carry an inexperienced virgin writer to the doors of a major publishing house with a flick of their mane, and once there, they will have wishes like advances large enough to allow retirement from the day job bestowed upon them.

However, these magical creatures are elusive and prone to shy from abrupt noises or from anyone with less than the purest of hearts. And the quest itself isn’t without peril. Pretenders risk being torn to shreds by the unicorn’s horn and hooves, and that is assuming they find the real thing. There are plenty of other things out there that can destroy the would-be author’s dream, such as trolls hiding under coats of horsehide or fierce gatekeeper dragons.

The source of the unicorn myth likely stems from a misidentified oryx or ancient auroch, and a literary agent’s real powers are about as magical, but writers are dreamers. Over the last several months a few of my writer friends announced, with some trepidation, their intention to seek out potential agents. I understand their fear as I explored this option last year as well. Ultimately, I abandoned my search for reasons related to my goals for that specific project, but that didn’t prevent me from gaining some experience on the subject. So while I may not be in a position to advise on “how to” gain an agent, I thought I would, at least, share what I learned about “how not to.”

For those of you non-writer types reading this, the following tips can apply to job hunting as well. Just insert ‘resume’ for ‘manuscript’ and ‘potential employer’ for ‘agent’.

1. Send blanket queries to everyone in the phone book

Keep in mind that agents are salespeople and best salespeople are those who believe in a product they represent as much as they believe in making a dollar. Therefore, an agent who doesn’t enjoy gory horror isn’t going to appreciate your take on something like Saw. Save yourself some time, aggravation, and potential hope-crushing rejection by only querying those who are a) accepting unsolicited queries and b) into what you are into.

I had the most success looking for potential agents on Twitter. By reading their tweets, I was able to not only see what they were looking for but what kind of person they are as well. As a result, I was not only able to tailor my query letters to individual agents, but was able to rule out entire agencies where I didn’t see a good match.

In short, if you aren’t willing to take the time to get to know them, don’t expect them to take the time to get to know you. [update: If Twitter is not an option for you, alternatives like Mastodon, Discord, and Tumblr also have agents as active users]

2. Ignore the submission requirements

I haven’t stopped following agents on Twitter just because I didn’t sign with one. They have great tips and hint at what trends are selling (and where) which in turn helps me with my marketing. They also let me know about upcoming books to add to my to-be-read pile. However, just as often, they will bemoan about some would-be author who didn’t take the take to read their submission requirements.

Each agency’s requirements are different. Luckily figuring out what each agency needs to make a decision about your work is usually pretty simple. Go to their website and look for their rules. If a “Submission” link isn’t highly visible, it is a good indicator that they aren’t looking for new clients right now and you’d be better off searching elsewhere.

3. Submit an incomplete / unpolished manuscript

This one applies more to fiction than non-fiction.

You might be under the impression that you don’t need to polish your manuscript before submitting it to an interested agent because in addition to your big cash advance will come editorial services when they sell it to a publisher, so why spend the time/money now? This is a mistake. Apparently, no agent worth their commission has time to waste panning for gold with you. They are looking to sell ingots, not mud pies.

However, you can go ahead and start searching (better yet – networking) at any time. That contact you make a cocktail party, book fair, or conference might just remember you enough to spare your work a second glance when you finally are ready to get serious.

4. Protest their response

When my youngest starts to get tired, the rim of his eyes grow red and he tends to flop about on the floor, but the moment you try to pick him up to take him to his bedroom he will cry, kick, and scream about how not sleepy he is and every single time I will tell him that by acting the way he did, he just proved my point.

Agents aren’t going to be any more impressed with tantrums. If anything, you just firmed up their decision not to add you as a client.

5. Give Up

Of course, the best way to not sign with an agent is to simply give up. But Allie, aren’t you being a little hypocritical advising people not to give up when you admitted up top that you abandoned your own search last year?  No. To be clear, I’m not advising one way or another.

Signing with an agent is not for every person or every project. At the end of the day, every writer has to decide what works for them and the project. But regardless of the outcome, I believe querying is something that should be at least tried. Querying helps define your audience, refine pitch, and practice networking and if you are lucky, you may just find a unicorn. Happy hunting.

My First Time

by Allie P., posted in General Tips and Tricks, Indie book promotion, Life as I know it, Writing and Publishing Tips

My plan for world domination er I mean literary success continues. Upon hearing of my upcoming launch, Steven Capps was kind enough to feature me on his blog this week. Thank you once again, Steven.

Allie P.'s avatarBard & Books

Hi there guys, for this week I have the honor of introducing the talented Allie Potts onto the blog. Her newest novel, The Fair & Foul, was released earlier this week. It is a science-fiction story set in the near future where the lines between humanity and technology are beginning to blur.

FairandFoulFullwebHQ_02Juliane Faris, an ambitious programmer, shortcuts the next step in her career by undergoing an experimental surgery fusing her brain with a supercomputer. The procedure grants her unprecedented knowledge and cellular control over her body, but threatens everything she holds dear including her sanity. When others undergo the same modifications it becomes apparent that not everyone can afford the price that this technology demands. After reading her guest post, don’t hesitate to click on the cover and support an amazing author.

My First Time

Get your mind out of the gutter. This is a blog about writing, so of…

View original post 938 more words

Shiver me timbers, another sweet trade

by Allie P., posted in Book Stuff and Publishing News, General Tips and Tricks, Life as I know it, Writing and Publishing Tips

Well fudge ripple ice cream, my first book has sold more copies than I anticipated.

image courtesy of flickr
image courtesy of flickr

Before you start sending me congratulations, I should add that I can’t claim credit for all of those sales. I was googling myself, as I randomly do whenever I want to ruin a perfectly good day. My ratings on Amazon, B&N, GoodReads, and various blog posts were all in the top results (exactly what I want), but then I saw something a little lower in the ranking that gave me a pause. An interested reader was trying to find my book (not just any book) in their library and was complaining that their library charged a monthly subscription fee for books.

Oh dear! A frustrated reader (exactly what I do not want). I obviously haven’t done a good enough job advertising where you can currently find a copy in ebook format.

My heart went out to this would-be-reader, but then I read other comments in the chain and my heart went out for a completely different reason. Another ‘helpful’ citizen of the world wide web posted an image of my cover along with a link to a site offering books at a discount, followed by the original commenter thanking the second for the suggestion. “I was able to download four books for less than five dollars!”

Now you might think I would be excited that someone else is helping me to sell my book, but here’s the thing – unless the other three books were fifty cents or less, it would have been hard to purchase my book as well as three others for that price. Not to say that isn’t out of the realm of possibilities, it’s just highly unlikely.

I looked at the link again. It seemed I had seen the name before, but where? Then it hit me. Several of the blogs I follow had recently posted a story about a site hosting pirated books being taken down on Facebook. It had the same name. I had been victimized and didn’t even know it (sometimes ignorance is bliss).

I started drafting this post. A short time later I attempted to go back to the forum site to take screen shots, only the link was no longer in the Google search results. It wasn’t in Bing’s or Yahoo’s search results either. Where did it go? (Son of a biscuit eater!)

Blackbeards flag
Avast yee!

Had I merely stumbled across a cached page? (Me binnacle!) Had the site read my cookies and blocked my IP address upon realization as to who I was? (Weigh anchor and back to pirate cove!) Was it possible that the site and its content was taken down exactly at the same moment as I came across it? (Now you are just being a drivelswigger.)

I went to my browser history and scanned the places I had visited. What had been listed as booklibrary was now showing as http://www.allpdfs.pw, a site, by the way, that will now send you a guide on chicken breeds if you click the download button (buyer beware) rather than sending a copy of my book.

If you’ve read down this far I assume you are at least slightly interested in what I have to say. Maybe you’ve already read my book (if so, thank you very much, your support means the world to me – especially on days like today). Maybe you haven’t (where does the time go?) Maybe you’d like to read my book one day but have thus far been put off by the price? While I personally feel the price is market fair, I know that everyone’s financial situation is different and that not everyone wants to pay full market price, especially not on a new author. I understand, but those sales dollars help me finance my next books (editors, cover artists, publicists, and distributors demand to get paid up front – the nerve of some people!)

So let’s make a deal.

Contact me. My details are all there on my About page. Let me know your situation and how you can help me with some grass-roots marketing. Create a pitch video I can use in an IndieGoGo or Kickstarter campaign. Go to your local library and ask them to stock my book (I’ve reached out to Overdrive, they just have to pay for a license). Suggest it for your book club. If you can find a way to help me, I’ll find a way to help you back. Together I am sure we can work out how to get you that free copy without going through the hassle of using sites more interested in stealing your identity than honoring copyright.

Places you can legitimately buy my ebook at the time of this post:

Once again, my thanks to Chris the Story Telling Ape’s blog for not only alerting me to several potential pirated sites as well as providing very detailed instructions as to how you can fight back. I may have joked around a little in this post, but that doesn’t mean I take this event or other threats to my business any less seriously. Nor should you.

How not to advertise

by Allie P., posted in Design Tips, General Tips and Tricks, Life as I know it, Writing and Publishing Tips

On my way to work the other morning, I was stuck at a traffic light when I noticed a hand-made sign on the other side of the street. There are tons of these signs. Usually they advertise things like “Mattress Set – New! $550!” or “We buy ugly houses!” But the sign that morning was different.

Low cost dental

I would have taken a picture of it if I had been more awake that morning, but the light changed before I could fully process what it was I was seeing.

It was brightly colored paper with mismatched stick on letters and a hand written phone number advertising low-cost dental services.

To be fair, I don’t know anything at all about this company. The practice could have the best dentist in all of the US. He or she might be able to create filings that are the equivalent of the Mona Lisa in the world of dental arts. They may have intentionally decided to not to create a shinier ad as way of keeping their overhead costs low in order to offer patients the greatest possible savings.

Unfortunately for their practice, I, as well as several others who pass by that stop, likely will not be making an appointment any time soon. Why? Because a sign like that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. I’d rather save money by skipping a dental appointment altogether than have my teeth treated by anyone other than a professional.

As I’ve written before, the independent bookstore which has agreed to stock my book has a strict policy against carrying books produced by an Amazon company (i.e. CreateSpace). When I decided to change publishing companies I had to take their policy into consideration. I decided to try out Lulu which is a local, and highly rated, company for my on demand printing. For the most part their service is fairly straight forward. All you have to do is upload your manuscript and cover image, specify a few keywords and your price and Presto! You too can be a published author for the price of a proof copy and shipping.

Only it isn’t quite that simple. Some sort of black magic goes on behind the scenes as their servers manipulate your Word file into a file their printers can use (CreateSpace has a similar process. Smashword’s ‘Meatgrinder’ provides even more joy). You watch the status bar patiently… then not so patiently… Your family shouts from the other room, “are you coming to dinner?” You shout back, “Just a minute.” Ten more pass. You give up because your stomach is now growling and return later only to discover that your right page footer has been indented while your left page footer has not. You curse, make corrections, and hit the submit button again. The print ready interior that eventually spits out on the screen at you now has a random blank page between chapter 6 and 7.

Fifteen tries later, your interior is almost to your satisfaction, except there is an extra period on page 50 and, oh for the love of Pete, is that typo on page 217? Your children have celebrated another round of birthdays while you’ve been at your computer. You start telling yourself, it’s good enough. Your cover at least was done by a professional. No one is going to notice anything wrong with the interior.

Except that they do. The little things matter, especially when you are trying to grow a business.

My older sister visited not too long ago, and I showed her a rejected proof copy. I had rejected the copy because the cover wasn’t trimmed correctly, but that wasn’t what she noticed. Instead the first words out of her mouth were, “what’s up with the font?” I love that my family doesn’t hold back the truth when it matters.

I don’t want potential customers eyeballing my book on shelf to think of me (and my work) as anything less than professional. She forced me to return to my manuscript and start another round of submission roulette. Yay! I can only hope the hard work is just as eye-catching as its opposite.