WritingTips 6

The Occupational Hazards of Writing

We are well acquainted with hazards of many occupations. Chemical plant workers are exposed to dangerous chemicals and the always present danger of explosions. The Discovery Channel has brought us the dangers of deep sea crabbing. We can just imagine all of the hazards of coal mining, logging (the most dangerous job in the world) and perhaps wild animal training.

Some of our more sedentary occupations have their built in occupational hazards. Office workers are exposed to chemicals in synthetic rugs and chemicals from printer and copier toner. And of course we can’t rule out the psychological hazards of office work such as being exposed to toxic bosses and/or co-workers. We can see how office stress leads to weight gain and even mass killings. Something is going on in America’s offices and it’s not being talked about at the coffee bar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_safety_and_health

Writing has its own built in set of occupational hazards. Most people think of writing as someone lying languidly by the beach sipping a cool drink (perhaps in the south of France--whatever that means), and day dreaming about the next plot. Or some conger up the image of a guy hunched over an old type writer, with a pile of cigarette butts and crumpled papers lying about, grimacing and taking a swig from a bottle. I think the latter is closer to the truth. The hazards of writing:

1. Failed Relationships (What’s a relationship?)

2. Alcoholism http:/moreintelligentlife.com/content/tom-shone/when-novelists-sober

3. Suicide (  http://www.amazon.com/Suicidal-Authors/lm/R2E1FREVX7PCZB

4. Ill health

Writing is not easy. It’s even harder in today’s publish yourself digital world. In the old world of publishing, you got an agent to hold your hand (if you were lucky) and coddle you through the process. Then the editor and you battled to produce a “good” book, which of course meant sellable or saleable. Now it’s all about you and the reader in almost direct and instant interaction. Well the writing might not be instant, but the publishing is and so is the reader feedback when you are writing in the popular genres (romance, urban, vampires). If you don’t want instant feedback, perhaps write poetry or call your book literary. So you ask yourself:

a. Is my character believable?

b. Is there a big hole in my plot?

c. Are the scenes in a chronological sensible order?

d. Are there moments where my dialog sounds robotic and canned?

e. “Oh my god! I’ve used “nad” for and three times!” Yes grammar and spelling mistakes.

Of course it’s easy to correct those errors once your readers happily point them out to you with ratings of one * out of  a possible five ***** stars and comments such as “Did you use your pre-schooler as your spell checker?”

Being prolific and well ranked has some down side too. You’re churning out blockbuster after blockbuster, getting those five ***** nad (haha) AND making that paper. But your diet is pizza by the cardboard box load and maybe diet soda. There’s no time for the gym or sex. So we battle the bulge until fat wins the war.

So nope writing is not easy. I have a sneaking suspicion the only folks enjoying the South of France are the widows and widowers of famous dead writers. However as we head into the new year, let’s resolve to bring balance into our life.

1. Find time to get out of the house at least once every couple of days.

2. Hit the gym twice a week

3. If you must, write like  a maniac 330 days a year, but then take a month off.

4. Take a break between books. (Of course tell that to the muse who’s now the new spouse in your life making you feel guilty)

5. Watch your diet

6. Open the venetian blinds and let a bit of life in.

Cheeseburger

Red Underwear

My Manhood is Very Important to Me

The Amazon Zanies -- Come one Come All - Have A Prosperous New Year

Coming Soon

The Democratization of the publishing world does produce some zaniness out of this world. Yes even the mentally ill can get published. But I like a Democracy. It's all about freedom and choice. As the Pastor says, "The Doors of the Church are now open." The days of having Agents and Publishers slam doors in your face are soon to be a thing of the past. How do you make it happen for you?


1. Write Well
2. Revise Well
3. Edit Well
4. Market Well
Make 2012 your year to get published.
Amazon KDP   Barnes&Noble Pubit  Smashwords  CreateSpace




And now the zany...If this person can navigate their way to Amazon and get published, surely you can.

Re: My book size is small compared to my original document.  Posted: Dec 17, 2011 9:52 PM    in response to: sunever    Reply First, to answer Mr. notjohn, about me not having a credit card and thus not being worthy to publish, you must understand that not everybody on earth is supposed to have one, did you ever try to get one as a socially assisted? You can't, probably half or more of this planet never touched a credit card and they are as good as you, and that bring me to your second surprise as to the how in hell can I be so incompetent with word as to end-up with a 7.5 MB book! Well, this book is a lifelong investment, I spent 12 years on it, it got a million, yes sir, a whole million words, and that's why it is big, and that's why I'm under social assistance and can't get a credit card, you think you can write a million word books on weekends? I started this book at 26 as French Quebecker that barely understood English, and I didn't have time to make a stash of money for my old days, so I’ve been under social assistance until now to write this book and nothing else. And another thing you must understand is that when you start such a quest, you don't think of the money at the end, or when you'll be done, and your sole goal and reason of existence is the book, so it just happen one day that you're finished. So one day I woke up and said the book was done, but I woke-up to the reality that I lost contact with the whole world too, I never used the internet in my life before finishing the book, in fact, this is the first ever text I write on a forum. As for the book, nobody ever read it until now, i battled a panoply of publishers at all sauces to come to the conclusion that they were only after money and they didn't want to read a line of a book, nobody ever published a million words book it seems while there are dictionaries and bibles all over the place, and the argument don't even stand as at .9 size it can fit as a thousand pages book, anyway this whole industry is a mess of profiteers, so either I self published for 12000$ while I can't spare 10$ or I abandoned and I would have done all this for nothing. But I discovered Amazon and until now, I’m very happy they exist. Finally I’ll thank Mr. bkhitch and Mr. bigtoad; each answered half my question, but I’ll mention that I already passed my book through a few different previewers, with satisfactory results, I did mention that the online previewer showed things to be relatively good, nobody seems to have read that phrase, my problem was just that I was not sure about the end result as sold since it was almost half size. Thank you all for your help. And by the way, if you want to know what a million words book look like as fat paragraphs, “a flower to life” is the book.

His Book: A Flower to Life
Disclaimer: This in no way represents the quality of Amazon books and stories.

My Stories
Cheeseburger
My Manhood is Very Important to Me
Betty's House
Roommates
Red Underwear
The 520i
The Cicadas

The Butterfly Killer

This is a sample from my upcoming Novel tentatively titled THE BUTTERFLY KILLER. This is my NANOWRIMO Project.

National Novel Writers Month

Excerpt

My name is Elliot. Gram called me Sweet Pee. P E E. I pissed the bed often. Another thing Gramp didn’t like. Said I made the house smell like amonia, except it was piss. Gram said I would grow out of it. Said my mama was a pisser until she was twelve. I was only six. Might as well get used to it.

“Only thing I gotta get used to is dying,” Gramp would say to her.

“Well I figure a butcher ought to be used to the idea of death.”

“You used to Carrie being dead?” Gram shut her mouth.“I ain’t used to nothing. Everyday is a new day and a new mystery. Everything I gut got a different soul. And that soul ain’t used to being dead. So it leaps right into something else.”

“I don’t know if hogs have souls.”

“Everything has a soul. Ever brute God made got a soul.”

“Do it hurt to die, Gramp?” I asked him

“Does it hurt,” Gram orrected me.

“I don’t know, Sweet Pee. The hogs don’t complain. It hurts to live. That’s where the pain is.”

“Is that why Mama and Daddy died, ‘cause they were hurt?”

There was silence. Just the scraping of forks against plates. Gramp took a big gulp of water. I watched the knot in his throat bob up and down as he swallowed. I once tried to swallow a jawbreaker whole so I could have a ball in my neck and it go up and down as I swallowed. All I did was turn blue and get a good whack in my back from Gram making me spit the thing clear across the floor.

“Well I wanna die so I don’t hurt,” I said.

“Hush your mouth, child,” Gram said in her high pitched church singing voice. “Hush your mouth. 

Other Works Available on Amazon

Cheeseburger

Red Underwear

Betty's House

My Manhood is Very Important to Me

I Did The DooRag

Roommates

Free on Smashwords

The Handshake

Writing Tips 5

The Process

Make sure you are enjoying the process. Writing is a good deal about focus and and sacrifice. In fact in the early part of one's career, it's a great deal about sacrifice. You sit down to write a book or story that not one person has asked you to write. You might feel a little foolish at times as you're sitting at the kitchen table at 2am on a Saturday night banging those computer keys while the rest of the world is out partying. It takes a great deal in believing in self to take on that first book.

Focus is the next hurdle to climb. The late Steve Jobs had an almost maniacal obsession about details of product design. Your book is your product. Your words are your design. Focus on each word in your product.

Some Helpful Tips

1. Focus -- Find that quiet space to work and only do work. Don't surf the net. I personally like to have the net up to allow me to do some quick fact checking on google. But if you're not disciplined, turn your connection to the net off. Put a mark next to the thing you need to check and do it AFTER you've done your writing.

2.  Sacrifice -- "What should I do this weekend?" "I know! Go to your local library and write!" Sounds like fun doesn't it? But it may be the thing you have to do to get away temporarily from the demands of family. Nope you cannot help find socks or comb hair or run Johnny to soccer practice right now. So it has to be your "Fun." Writing isn't a job. It's a way of life. If it ever becomes a chore, stop!
Of course don't sacrifice health and family to the point the kids are starving and becoming juvenile delinquents. But carve out every bit of time that you can to write and remain healthy and connected to family.

3.  Attention to Details -- You words are your design details. You have to be interested in the details, or else why write? Plots are great. But the details of spelling, grammar, vocabulary, and tone are equally important. It's all about you.

4.  Have Good Tools Handy -- Keep an online dictionary/thesaurus  bookmarked in your favorites folder or toolbar. Have a handy online Grammar guide available also. And by all means run your work through some kind of editing process. If you think a human is too expensive, try the many online editing tools out there. Make a small investment. You don't have to obey an Editor or editing software as if it's gospel. But if they suggest a change, consider it.

5.  Stay Involved -- Do as much of the work as you can yourself. Some people might want to farm out the formatting of their manuscripts. In my opinion formatting is a part of editing. You can catch a lot of things as you're going over and over your document as you get it in shape for publication.

Please feel free to comment and add to the conversation.

Harvey's Amazon Author Page
Harvey on Smashwords

These are not endorsements. Just tips and suggestions
Dictionary/Thesaurus Link
Grammar Link

Writing Tips 4

Be a Different Bait to Catch a Variety of Fish

This simple and somewhat cliche-est analogy came to me the other day. There's a lot of fish in the ocean. The successful writer has to offer different bait to catch all of that fish.  In essence the fish are the reading public (which includes writers.) The bait is the genre that lures them in.

To be a success in this new publishing model (or world) that is emerging, means you want to catch as much of the fish as possible for yourself. In order to do so, it is imperative to use different bait.

You might consider yourself to be strictly a literary "serious" fiction only kind of writer. But you might be limiting the amount of fish you catch and thus stunting your earning potential. Consider branching out into other genres. Perhaps you have work that while not totally successful in your normal genre, can be quite successful in the Murder Mystery world, or Erotica, Urban Fiction, Vampire or Paranormal World. Maybe all it needs is just a few tweaks and you're off into another genre. You've switched your bait and can catch more fish.

If you want to use a different Pen name, that's cool. Yes it is about "art" and it is about having a successful career.  Whatever genre you do, write your best..

Cheeseburger
Coming Home Tomorrow
Red Underwear
Roommates
The Handshake

Chicago Tribune plans books section, at an extra charge | Marketing/media | Crain's Chicago Business

Chicago Tribune plans books section, at an extra charge | Marketing/media | Crain's Chicago Business

Good Writing Tips 3

Erotic vs Porn


Many people wonder what is the difference between erotic fiction and porn fiction. Some mistakenly lump it all under the category of "nasty." But that's just plain elementary school thinking.


Erotic vs Porn


1. The erotic is as much about story as it is about sex. More so. It is about the relationship between characters. In most porn there is very little relationship. In porn people meet, they drop their clothes, and go at it. Even though the sex is steamy, there is no story. One wonders, who answers the door naked and start having sex with strangers? You might see this a lot in gay porn.
Erotica allows for the slower buildup. The reader has time to immerse themselves in the situation of story and sex. Sparks the imagination and allows for daydreaming.


2. Erotica allows the taboo in a tasteful manner. The relationship between Minister and Church member, Professor and student, Coach and athlete. Who is going to seduce whom? Let your imagination run wild with the taboo. Imagine the prim and proper young English teacher being seduced by the star athlete (age appropriate of course). Why is the young woman on her knees in front of the handsome minister? Erotica addresses the taboo.


3.  Setting is important in erotica. You're not in the bedroom after midnight under the covers. I like to place characters in unusual settings and situations. Imagine the kitchen as pots steam on the stove. What could be going on behind the huge door of that mechanic shop with all of those chains and hoses, and the old car seat in the back office.  


4. In erotica, you're creating a world where people don't normally think of as being conducive to sensual and carnal pleasures. Being descriptive is very important. You don't need a page to describe the professor's study, but just mention a few odd objects he has on his desk and make us wonder how might they be used in the story.


I get bored easy if all I read is sex. Give me a story. I like to give you one. Even if it's short.  And of course no children allowed.  Please add your two cents or eight inches to the conversation.



On Amazon and Barnes&Noble

Roommates
The 520i
I Did the Doo Rag
Coming Home Tomorrow

Also on Ibooks by Apple