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Typos: How May Are Too Many

— A Guest Post by Chuck Litka

As a reader and/or a writer, how many typos are too many? One, you say? We’re talking about self-published books here. Still one? We are talking in this world, not heaven, right? Okay, having no typos is an ideal to aim for, but realistically, how many are acceptable? Still none? Be that way.

Putting an actual number to the acceptable number of typos (more than none) is hard. The real world measure is likely the ratio of typos to the quality of writing, i.e. is the writing and story compelling enough to overlook the errors, or not? Still, let’s see if we can try to put a number in that ratio.

I’m going to compare software code to writing. A line of software code does about the same thing as a word or punctuation mark in writing – it conveys a bit of information. And software has errors – bugs. A line of code usually has more letters – things that can go wrong – then a word, but we’ll make adjustments for that as we go.

It is estimated that a shipping software program might have an error rate of 3 to 5 errors per 100 lines of code. This is eventually reduced to somewhere around 1 error per a 100, to 1 error per 1,000 lines with bug fixes after shipping. For writing we’ll consider misspellings, wrong words, missing words, double words, missing or wrong punctuation, and missing or double spaces as typos. In writing 1 typo per 1,000 words, or about 1 every 3 to 4 printed pages is pretty high. If we cut that rate in half, to 1 typo in 2,000 words, we’d get 5 typos in 10,000 words or 50 typos in a 100K word novel, roughly 1 typo in every 5 to 6 pages, on average. I think that we’re now nearing the ballpark, if perhaps still a little high. However, if we cut that rate in half again, to 1 typo in 4,000 words we’d have only 25 typos in a 100K word novel, which I think is an acceptable error rate.

While 15 to 25 typos in a typical self-published novel might still sound like a lot, a significant number of them will never be seen by most readers, just as bugs in software do not affect most users. I send my manuscripts out to 5 or 6 beta readers after we do our in-house proofreading who report the typos they find back to me. Some find more than others, but time after time their lists of typos have remarkably little overlap between them. Different readers find, and miss, different typos. Hopefully between them they find most of my typos, but individually, most of them find less than half of the actual typos present. And these are readers looking for typos. This suggests to me that most readers will notice significantly less than the total number of typos in a story. There are, of course, natural born proofreaders who see every typo. And some of them get annoyed when they bump up against them – and mention it in a review. However, these readers are edge case readers, and I’m not sure whose problem it is.

In software, it is possible to achieve a zero rate of errors, and it’s necessary when human life is at stake – think of self-driving cars. To do so, however, is very expensive and time consuming. The same can be said for eliminating all typos in a manuscript. Traditional publishing has a series of procedures with multiple editors going over every aspect of the work to eliminate all sorts of problems. But this is an expensive and time consuming operation, and it is reflected in the cost of traditionally published books. Self-publishing authors do not have the resources to conduct multiple edits by different professionals. And even self-publishers who spend the money to do it “right” and hire professional proofreaders still aren’t guaranteed a zero error copy. I’ve seen a review that mentioned the “typical self-published” typos for a book that I know had been professional proofread. Still, there may be self-published books with zero typos. Indeed, I find them all the time, but then, I’m blind to typos.

Being blind to typos, I likely underestimate how annoying typos are to most readers. And as someone who has never mastered spelling the idiotic language of English, I’ve long since realized that for a person to know that a word is misspelled, they must know the correctly spelled word – which means that the misspelled word actually worked – it did the job of the correct word. The reader simply had to spend a fraction of a second to translate it. However, I understand that for some readers typos derailed and bump them out of the story. Ideally, all authors would like to prevent this from happening. Our name is on the cover of the book, and its imperfections are our imperfections. However, given how expensive it is to even get close to zero typos, I don’t think it’s realistic to expect a traditional publishing level of copy in a much less expensive self-published book. As I see it, when it comes to books, one can either be persnickety or cheap, but not both. Self-published books are cheap. Very persnickety readers might be more comfortable with the more expensive traditionally published books.

So to sum it all up, I feel that if a writer has a process in place that reduces the rate of wrong words and punctuation down to 1 in 4,000 words or fewer, they’re as close to perfection as any reader of self-published books can reasonably expect. And that’s a hill I’m prepared to die on. But what about you, dear reader? What do you think is an acceptable rate of typos, either as a writer and/or as a reader? Am I being too cavalier about typos? Am I being too dismissive of the adverse effect of typos on readers? What is your standard?

The Afterlife of Self-Published Books — Is There One?

— Guest Post by Chuck Litka

Have you ever thought about what will happen to your self-published books once you’re no longer on the sunny side of the lawn? Have you ever talked to anyone about looking after your literary estate once you no longer can? Have you made actual plans and shown someone how it all works? Have you looked into the legal aspects of it? Do you have any idea as to what someone will need to do in order for Amazon and the other retailers to pay royalties to a new rights holders? Heck, do you actually care what happens to your books after you die? I probably would have to answer “No” to all of the above. So take that as your baseline. Do you care more than I?

This site’s Mark Paxson is a lawyer, so he might have some insight as to what you would need to do for your books to live on with Amazon and the like after you’re gone. I suspect that unless there is just one heir, or the disposition of your intellectual property is spelled out in a will, it might be a rather expensive prospect to transfer your intellectual property to someone else. Certainly in my case, the revenue stream would be unlikely to be worth the expense, unless someone makes a movie of one of my books very soon.

But that’s just one side of the coin. The other side concerns the ebooks you’ve sold. It seems likely that most ebooks will die with their readers. At the very least, all those books on a reader’s devices – ebook readers, tablets, computers, and stored in the cloud – will face an uncertain fate when their owner dies. Will the survivors even know the passwords to be able to access the deceased’s digital library? And would they have any interest in it, even if they could? I may be a little bitter, but I have a wall of books that I’ve collected since my youth, and neither my children, nor my grandchildren have shown any interest in them, except for the Harry Potter books, so I doubt that many ebook collections will be passed along – assuming it’s even possible. If they are stored in the cloud, it might take legal expertise to gain access to them. And if they have DRM, they may not be transferable at all. All of which to say, It would seem that ebooks are very ephemeral things. I doubt that many of our ebooks will still be around fifty years from now.

That said, pulp magazines were pretty ephemeral things, as well. They were read and perhaps passed along, but they were pretty much designed to be forgotten by the time the next issue was released. Of course fans saved them, and not all of them were tossed out by mom along with the baseball card collection, so that today some of them still exist – as brittle yellow objects in plastic sheaths on the shelves of several hundred collectors, various university libraries, and used book stores. And they still have fans, even 80 to 100 years later. Some of these fans are scanning them and posting the scans on the internet so that they won’t be forgotten. Perhaps something like that will happen with self-published ebooks as well. Maybe the young people growing up reading ebooks today will someday collect and post them on some site as well? Who knows, stranger things have happened.

Our paper books, on the other hand, will have just as good of a chance of living on, as any commercially published book. They will make their way down through history via boxes in the attic or basement, garage sales, thrift stores, antique malls, and used books stores. They’ll be very rare, of course, but who knows, 50 years or more from now, they might be very collectible because they are rare. And the great thing is that you don’t have to lift a finger to make it happen. They can look after themselves. So in the end, I think that it will be our paper books that carry the torch of our creativity, however humbly, into the future. We may or may not be famous after our death, but we’ll still have our name on more things than on a tombstone, which is more than most people can say.


Write What You Know … Or Branch Out

— Mark Paxson

We’ve talked about this on our video chats and, who knows, maybe one of us has posted on here about this, but recently Audrey wrote a post on her blog about writing from the POV of somebody not like you.

Audrey writes about the reasons writers can do this and offers some tips about how she goes about trying for authenticity when she writes from the perspective of a character who has lived a life that is not like hers. I think her ideas for how to go about it are spot on, and get to a few things I want to discuss here.

First, she mentions drawing on observations made over the course of a lifetime. Absolutely 1,000%. If writers aren’t observing the world and the people around them and using those observations to ground their stories in authenticity, than I’m not sure how they write. Audrey mentions both conscious and unconscious observations. I think that’s key. It’s not just about what we consciously notice, it’s also about the things that happen that don’t register, but they inform our sense of human nature, which can go a long way towards informing our imagination and how we might write a story from a POV that is not exactly our own.

Second, Audrey talks about how important is to read and obseve characters, in books and in movies and on television. Again, the importance of this cannot be emphasized enough. People ask me how I write what I write. How I come up with some of my stories. The only answer I have to that is that I have read my entire life. It is simply what I do, more than anything else, I read. After 50 years of doing so, I have an idea of what a story looks like, how characters do things, and how to structure stories. I don’t know how a person can write fiction without also reading it. Wallowing in it. And learning from that.

I get a giggle out of one of the reactions I’ve seen from some readers of my first novel. The story was a legal “thriller.” A criminal matter that meandered towards a trial that … well, that’s all you need to know. A novel about a criminal case that ended up in court. I’m an attorney. Some readers have commented that my knowledge of the law and criminal law made the story more believable, more authentic. But, here’s the secret.

I’ve never practiced or done anything as a professional involving criminal law. Nor was I ever a litigator, so I never spent much time in courtrooms. Yes, I get it, as an attorney, even if I didn’t practice criminal law, I have a bit of knowledge that others may not have. I took Criminal Procedure. I took Criminal Law. I spent four years in law school. That can add something. But, here’s the deal — how did I come up with the detail for the courtroom scenes and the jury selection and the questionining of witnesses, and the ultimate outcome of the novel? Through all of the reading I’ve read over the years. Through the observations I’ve made in watching people in real life and in movies and on televicion. All of those stories and visual images helped inform how to put my novel together.

Meanwhile, as I’ve said in our video chats, the stories I am most proud of are the ones where I can say, not just that the POV is not mine or based on any experience I’ve had, but that the entire detail of the story is contrary to anything I’ve experienced. A story in which the narrator is a 14-year-old boy with cerebral palsy. A story in which the narrator is a young white woman dating a black man in the racist South. A story in which the three different primary narrators are two 16-year-old kids and a 20-year-old, two of the three being female. The list could go on.

I get the idea behind “write what you know.” At least from the start. When I wrote that first novel, I could put myself in the place of the main character and write based on the idea of “how would I react to this situation,” but at some point I think writers should try to stretch the boundaries. Use your imagination. Use your observations. Use what you’ve read and seen over the course of your life time. And make something new and creative. See what you can do.

A Video Chat — POV, Character Names, and “Published Authors”

Here’s our lateset video chat. Audrey, Berthold, and Mark cover a range of topics. How do we decide on the point of view for a story, come up character names, and is an indie author a “published author.”

If you have any questions for us or suggestions for future chats, drop a note in the comments section or drop an email to us at writinghelp2021@gmail.com.

Some New Favorite Indies

— Mark Paxson

A couple of weeks ago, in our last posted video chat, Audrey, Berthold and I talked about our favorite indie authors. After the chat, I decided to read books from several of the authors we discussed. Mostly from authors I had never read before. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve read three books on that list. Here are my thoughts…

Shame (F.L. Rose)

This is the newest book from an author I recommended. F.L. Rose has also published under the name Fallacious Rose. She has written and published stories that can be placed in many different genres. Shame is her newest novel. Here’s the description of the tale from Amazon:

When Julian Fitzwarren asks them to investigate the death of his ex-wife Diana on a remote coastal property, their history comes back to bite them. Alix’s house of cards will soon come tumbling down around her, while Kate too must confront her demons.

Who was Diana? Is Fitzwarren truly driven by grief over the death of his ex-wife, or does he have a hidden agenda? And who was really responsible for Diana’s lonely death?

In general, this is a murder mystery. Although whether it is even a murder is part of the mystery. But, it is about a lot more than just the murder. This story packs so much more into it than a simple mystery. It is about sisters and family. Abuse and violence. Male domination and manipulation. Dishonesty and secrets. The abuse of the aboriginal people of Australia. And more. So much more. It is a well-paced story written by somebody who knows how to pull the reader in and keep him or her wanting to turn the page to find out what’s next. I highly recommend it and just posted a five-star review of the book on Amazon. Go check it out. F.L. Rose deserves a larger audience. (Actually, all of the authors mentioned here do.)

Eagle Ascendant (Lorinda J. Taylor)

Eagle Ascendant is a science fiction tale about the human race several centuries in the future. A time when interspace travel is common, but scientists and government officials are working out the details to jump beyond our galaxy and to travel much deeper into space.

I don’t read much science fiction anymore, so I wasn’t sure what I’d think of this story. I shouldn’t have worried. It’s a really good story. Taylor does a good job of providing some technical details about space flight and the concept behind jumping through space to get out of our galaxy, but she doesn’t overdo it. This is much more a story about the people behind the effort and the main character’s dreams of flying to the stars, than it is about the science aspect of the fiction.

There is one drawback to the story. This is the first book in a multiple-book series telling the story of Robbin Nikalishin. As such, the reader can’t expect a fully complete story at the end. The problem, however, is that the book ends in the middle of the climactic scene. To find out the ending of the scene, therefore, requires the reader to buy the next book. I’m all for writers finding ways to motivate readers to keep reading and buying their books, but I think the quality of the story was good enough to do that. I definitely would have bought and read the next book, but now I’m not sure I’m going to because of this issue.

Why does this bother me so much? I don’t know. It didn’t bother me when I read The Lord of the Rings multiple times over the years. It didn’t bother me when I read other science fiction and fantasy books that covered multiple books in my teens and 20s. But the thing is, more recent trilogies I’ve read, and even some of those older ones, haven’t done this — drop the ending of one book right in the middle of the story’s climactic scene and force you to buy the next book to know what happened. I’m thinking Hunger Games, Twilight, Harry Potter, Divergent. I may be wrong about some of those, but my recollection is that most, if not all of them, gave you a clean break at the end of each book. Harry Potter and Hunger Games definitely did that.

I still gave the book four stars because the storytelling is that good, but be forewarned about how this book ends.

The Bone Wall (D. Wallace Peach)

Essentially, a dystopian tale that includes some elements of fantasy and science fiction, The Bone Wall is a hard, dark story to read. If you don’t want to read about rape (not in detail, but referenced frequently) and war and conflict, don’t read this book. If you read it, you’ll read a great story about a world in the future when the human race has been divided into different camps. Some are in “gardens” protected by walls and domes that are failing. Most are outside those gardens. Called Biters or the People, those who are outside live a horrible existence and constantly seek to attack those in the gardens.

There is more. A Colony and a Fortress, each with different rules and ideas about humanity than those who live in the gardens. But I’ll skip any more details because you just need to read the book. Peach subtitles this book A Post-Apocalypic Search For The Truth. There is a lot to be said for that subtitle. The Biters are violent and vicious and sadistic. Doing whatever it takes to survive. Those who live in the gardens are believers in God’s law and that compliance with that law will keep them safe. The occupants of the Colony are trying to find a way to move the human race beyond its divisions and conflicts and to forge a path towards a more peaceful coexistence. The occupants of the Fortress are doing the same, but with a different set of rules and conduct that compels them to reject many of the occupants of the Colony.

This all sets up a story that is more than just a story, but a search for, as Peach says, the truth. What is the best way to move forward as a human race — war and violence, following God’s laws, seeking unity but only for those who are worthy and whole, or seeking unity among all, regarding of their worth or completeness. Beyond those big questions, the characters are well-developed and, by the end, you can feel their pain and loss, joy and happiness. As dark and desperate as this story is at times, it is actually a beautiful story that ends on a note of hope.

Now, I need to go leave my five-star review on Amazon.

* * * * * *

I purchased another book from our discussion, but I only made it a few pages in before I realized that it just wasn’t going to work for me. I won’t name that book here. We’re here to support writers.

The books described above are incredible examples of the value and quality of indie writers. I encourage you to check them out, as well as the other books by these authors.

One final word … whether you are a writer or a reader, when you read an indie book that you like, please post a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads. Your reviews help indie authors pursue promotional opportunities to get their books before more readers — opportunities that typically can only be taken advantage of with a minimum number of reviews. And, if you have social media accounts, whether Twitter, Facebook, a blog, or something else, again, if you like a book by an indie author, let your followers know.

Another Response to Berthold

–Audrey Driscoll

Having read Berthold’s post and Mark’s response, I thought I’d better offer my view. I’ve been writing a first draft for the past six months, so I’m in a great position to ponder the question. Why is writing so hard?

First, do I think it’s hard? Answer: yes. It’s certainly not like when I wrote my first novel in 2000-2001. As Mark said of his early writing experience, back then I couldn’t not write. Part of me was always in the world of my novel, throwing out ideas, Even at work I’d stop and scribble them down, or sketch entire scenes. I could hardly wait to get back to the manuscript. I wrote for at least 2 or 3 hours every night, after a full day at work.

Now? I’ve been retired for five years, and all the stuff I jammed into weekends and days off has expanded to fill most of my free time. (Weird how that happens.) And writing? Well, that’s different too.

I’ve written six books since that first one, and each one has been harder than the last. I work on my present WIP for an hour a day if I’m lucky, often way less than that. I have to get in my page a day first thing in the morning, and if I don’t manage that, I fall behind my self-declared schedule. Still, I am more or less where I hoped to be by this time, but the first draft is a mass of scribble that may deliver some unpleasant surprises when I return to the beginning and turn it into an editable document.

As to why it’s so hard to produce that first draft, well, here’s my list:

  • It’s unreasonable to expect every writing project to be as exciting, fun, and easy as the first one. The next novel or story will be freighted with expectations and experiences created by the first, so it can’t possibly be the same, Goodbye, innocence.
  • The writer probably “incubated” a first novel or story for a long time before sitting down to write it. That’s why it poured out with little effort. Sequels or later stories don’t get the long development period in the writer’s brain; hence the hard labour of creation in front of the blank page, Having become an actual writer rather than an aspiring one, the person has to write every day, to create a body of work or crank out a series. Because that’s what real writers do.
  • I wrote my first few books with minimal exposure to the internet. I had access to it at work but not at home. I became connected at home in 2010 so I could publish. Along with that came blogging, which exposed me to a deluge of advice to writers. A good deal of it is useful, but it certainly empowers the inner critic. I’ll be scribbling away, laying down the story, when that little voice whispers things like “Uh-oh–filter words!” or “That’s a cliche,” or “Don’t you know ‘was’ is bad?” The critic’s finger wags and the writer’s pen stops moving.
  • Nascent stories are fragile. An idea, a fleeting glimpse of a character, a ghost of a plot. Sometimes it feels like turning these figments into prose is like sculpting an ice cube–it melts and disappears, despite the writer’s efforts. Fear of this happening may be enough to keep one from writing.
  • There is also fear of brevity. For all the praise of spare, tight writing, it’s disconcerting if something intended to be a substantial novel (80-100K words) ends up as a 40K novelette with a flimsy little plot. A desperate effort to remedy this may be pages of padding. Padding is no fun to write. It takes the form of unnecessary scenes, unnecessary detail, or unnecessary dialogue. Watching cat videos is more fun than writing that stuff.
  • Fear of making wrong choices. There’s the opening scene and an intended ending. Or maybe just the opening scene. (Pantsers, I’m looking at you!) In between is an infinity of choices, an infinity of decisions to be made. Each decision eliminates a world of possibilities and may lead to places the writer doesn’t want to go. Just thinking about this has a paralyzing effect.

I think the love/hate thing is part of being a writer. When the hate (or weariness) overcomes the need to turn idea sparks into stories, we just stop writing. But as long as we have the desire to embody ideas and imaginings in words, we’ll force ourselves to sit down in that chair and beat out the story. Grumbling and grousing, but pushing on. And appreciating the moments of true inspiration.

A Response to Berthold

— Mark Paxson

Here’s my response to Berthold’s post about the difficulties of a writer.

Most days, it’s a real struggle for me to get started on writing even a paragraph in one of my stories.

This is me. I have plenty of free time these days, and each day begins with my solemn vow that I will write today. Even if it just a paragraph. I will make progress, no matter how small. And yet, most days pass without a single sign of progress. Why? Well, that’s the mystery of many things, isn’t it?

Once in a great while, I’ll be struck by some inspiration and then it’s just a matter of getting the words down as fast as I can, but that’s rare.

These days that doesn’t happen much for me. It’s one of the things that concerns me. When I first started writing, I frequently spent my non-writing hours still living in the story in my head. Thinking about it, writing it mentally, and then when I got to my laptop, having no problem writing more. Now, however, I rarely live in whatever story I’m working on. And when inspiration does strike, it’s frequently as I’m drifting off to sleep. I say to myself, “Okay, remember this when you wake up.” I rarely do.

Instead, with all of this free time I have these days, I surf the internet, check Twitter out one or five times, my email, some blogs, CNN, ESPN, and then I do it all over again. Or I choose to read or bicycle or cook. Why?

I’ve written about this before a number of times. Writing takes energy and when there are distractions that allow you to “engage” but do so in a less taxing way, in a way that doesn’t tap into those energy stores, well, the distractions win all too frequently. I’ve become convinced that one of the single biggest reasons writer’s block hit me and has yet to release its grip is the energy issue.

For a number of years, I worked in a stressful job and continued the job of raising my two boys. There were many stressors along the way. Although I was able to write a lot in the evenings and on weekends for a few years, those stressors eventually overwhelmed me. When I got home from work, I wanted to do as little as possible. So I just surfed the internet, read and went to sleep. For weeks and months.

And now, those habits have become ingrained in me, replacing the writing habit I had for those few years. I’m still struggling to break these habits and return to writing. Why?

I have to consciously force myself to stay on task and write something down. If I manage to do that, most of the time I hate what I’m writing up until I finish, at which point it starts to seem possibly decent. But the whole time I’m doing it, I feel like I’m doing lousy work, and moreover, it takes all my willpower to even do that.

Why is this? Writing is supposed to be what I like doing. No one is forcing me to do it—it’s what I want to do.  But then why am I strongly tempted to avoid doing it, like it’s a job or something?

Exactly. That inner critic, the one who remained silent for the first few years of my writing journey, began to speak up. To literally yell at me — I mean, seriously, the echoes of the inner critic’s voice are still echoing in the corners of my mind.

And I struggle with the idea Berthold expresses here. Writing is supposed to be fun. If it isn’t anymore, than why am I doing it? Why indeed? The only answer I have for that is that I enjoyed writing stories for a period of time and I haven’t given up on recapturing that magic. Of being able to write a chunk every day or almost every day and to see the story spinning out ahead of me and knowing that I can do this and it’s going to be incredible when I do. I’ve lost that feeling. Can somebody find it for me? 😉

The simple and obvious explanation is that writing is active. You have to consciously do something to make it happen. Whereas reading the news or watching cat videos is passive—you just find your way to the site and put your mind on cruise control.

Yes … all of these distractions we have are mostly passive. When I first started writing, social media was somewhat in its infancy. Twitter did not exist. Blogs were few and far between. The internet in all its forms had not yet become such a pervasive presence in my life. But then it did and all of this technology provides wonderful opportunities for us to “engage” but to do so passively.

My next-door neighbor has had all kinds of hobbies over the years I’ve known him, from shooting guns to building model airplanes to mixing drinks to, yes, playing video games. And he doesn’t seem to need a huge amount of willpower to make himself work at any of his hobbies. Why is my hobby different?

I think there is a fundamental difference between those types of hobbies and the “hobby” of writing. Which, to be honest, I don’t consider writing to even be a hobby. It is something else entirely.

There is no creativity needed in shooting a gun. Nor is there much needed in building a model airplane (which basically is just following instructions and putting the pieces together. And while these are “active” pursuits, like playing video games, they are not necessarily mentally and emotionally active like writing and many other creative forms.

I compare it to one of my newer hobbies. I’ve taken up acrylic pour painting. It’s a fascinating creative outlet for me. There are countless different techinques that can be utilized to create different designs and looks. Countless color combos. Countless of a whole lot things.

And while I struggle sometimes with “wanting” to do it, the struggle is nothing like with writing because there is an element of acrylic pour that is about letting go. There is only so much I can do with the techniques and colors before the paint does its thing with very little input from me. As a result, it is not as mentally or emotionally taxing as writing. Because writing a story is entirely dependent on me and what comes out of my imagination. I can’t just mix a few words up in a cup and pour them on the paper and let the words and paper take over to complete the story. It’s that pressure that comes with writing that creates, in part, the difficulties I have with wanting, once again, to sit down and try to write a piece of fiction.

Ta-da! This explains the mystery of why writers procrastinate. Procrastination is something you do when you are assigned a task by other people, and writing feels like that because that’s how we’re trained to regard it. It’s the same reason we all procrastinated when our teachers assigned us to write a paper on such-and-such-thing-no-one-cares-about.

Maybe. Probably. The question of audience is one of the things that has held me back the last few years. Dissatisfied with the small number of readers I have had with my last few books, I have questioned why I continue putting this much effort into the thing when the thing isn’t very widely read.

But, on the other hand, I don’t necessarily know that I write for my audience. I’m still picking at ideas for stories with the idea “can I do this?” I don’t typically think about the audience and what they’ll think while I’m writing. My internal thought process, my internal motivation for the stories I write revolves around whether I can pull something off the way I want to when I come up with the idea.

Now, it’s possible, if not likely, that part of “the way I want to” comes down to whether or not readers will like it. In fact, I can’t deny that, since virtually everything I write I publish, either on my blog or in book form. So, yes, there is some dependency on the audience for what I do, but … well, I just don’t know if “writing is for somebody else” is necessarily the driving force behind my procrastination.

So my advice is: don’t worry about making sense. In fact, I’ll go even further: actively try to avoid making sense on the first draft. Just put down the most basic, sub-literate version of what you want to convey. You’d be surprised how hard it is to not make sense—your unconscious mind will keep you at least within saluting distance of it most of the time. After that, you can just iterate until your visceral idea has been refined into something your readers can understand.

Sigh … if only it were that easy. 😉

As a pantser with a healthy inner critic, I’ve never mastered the art of just writing. The couple of times I’ve tried NaNoWriMo, or similar exercises, I haven’t made it very far in any of them because I simply don’t write that way. I wish I could be one of those writers who writes a couple thousand words a day without a care in the world, knowing that they are going back to it and editing the hell out of the thing to get it in tip-top shape. But I don’t. I write slowly, editing as I go, pondering what has already come and what will come (which, as a pantser, frequently isn’t known until it hits me in the head). I put the pieces together as I write. Tinkering here and dithering there, and eventually I manage to squeeze a story out of the ether. And once I figuratively type the words The End, I rarely go back and do much editing myself. My first complete draft is frequently pretty much my final draft — except for those things my beta readers and others point out to me in the reading before publishing.

Oh, to be able to write just to write…

Why Writing Is So Hard: A Hypothesis

[I posted this on my blog back in 2017. I’m re-positing it here to hear what the WSW community thinks of this idea. I’d be delighted to hear your comments! –Berthold]

Most days, it’s a real struggle for me to get started on writing even a paragraph in one of my stories. Once in a great while, I’ll be struck by some inspiration and then it’s just a matter of getting the words down as fast as I can, but that’s rare. The more normal case is something like this:

 I need to write something where X happens.

 [Write a word or two]

Huh, I wonder what’s going on in the news.

[Half hour later, force myself to write another sentence or two]

Are there any good videos on YouTube?

I have to consciously force myself to stay on task and write something down. If I manage to do that, most of the time I hate what I’m writing up until I finish, at which point it starts to seem possibly decent. But the whole time I’m doing it, I feel like I’m doing lousy work, and moreover, it takes all my willpower to even do that.

Why is this? Writing is supposed to be what I like doing. No one is forcing me to do it—it’s what I want to do.  But then why am I strongly tempted to avoid doing it, like it’s a job or something?

At first, I thought maybe I was just a lazy bum. But I follow lots of hard-working writers on Twitter, and they frequently report this same problem. I even did a poll of my followers, and while the sample was small, 100% reported they procrastinated.

So, it’s not just me being lazy. Other writers face this problem too.

The simple and obvious explanation is that writing is active. You have to consciously do something to make it happen. Whereas reading the news or watching cat videos is passive—you just find your way to the site and put your mind on cruise control.

But this doesn’t totally explain it. One of the ways I procrastinate is by playing video games. And that’s not passive; I still have to press buttons and make decisions to get the outcome I want in the game.  Yet it’s far easier for me to play a game of FTL or computer chess than it is to write. I don’t have to will myself to play a game.

My next-door neighbor has had all kinds of hobbies over the years I’ve known him, from shooting guns to building model airplanes to mixing drinks to, yes, playing video games. And he doesn’t seem to need a huge amount of willpower to make himself work at any of his hobbies. Why is my hobby different?

Part of the problem is that I’ll write something down and then think, “Well, that’s not any good”. This feels unsatisfying. And at some level, I think procrastination is a defense mechanism. Skimming the sports headlines may not yield much satisfaction, but at least it won’t be as disappointing as writing something imperfect.

But why should that be disappointing? After all, no one else is going to judge me by the first draft. No one else will even know it existed unless I show it to them. So why am I bothered if it’s not right the first time? I don’t get discouraged if I don’t win a video game right away. On the contrary, losing a game just makes me want to try again.

Writing, unlike other activities, is more closely associated with having an audience. After all, if you’re just writing for yourself, why bother writing? You know the story already—the only reason to write it down is to communicate it to others.

That’s the heart of the difference: When I play a video game or exercise or any of the other things I do for fun, my only audience is myself. If I’m satisfied with my performance, that’s all I need.

We are trained very early on that writing is different. Writing is what you do when you want to tell other people something. As a result, when you write, you are subconsciously trying to please other people.

Ta-da! This explains the mystery of why writers procrastinate. Procrastination is something you do when you are assigned a task by other people, and writing feels like that because that’s how we’re trained to regard it. It’s the same reason we all procrastinated when our teachers assigned us to write a paper on such-and-such-thing-no-one-cares-about.

Some of the most common advice I’ve seen from successful authors is stuff like “Write for yourself,” “Ignore your inner critic on the first draft” and perhaps the most common, “Lose your fear of writing”.*

This advice always puzzled me. Of course I was writing for myself! Who the hell else would I be writing these weird stories for? And my inner critic? Who’s that? As far as I knew, I didn’t have one. The fear thing seemed the most sensible, although for me, the fear wasn’t so much of writing as it was of publishing.

But now I see what all those famous writers were saying: you think you’re writing for yourself, but you aren’t really. In your unconscious mind, you are still trying to figure out what the readers are going to think of what you wrote. It’s a deeply-rooted habit, probably one that evolution instilled in us—the societies where people could clearly communicate their ideas to one another were the ones that flourished.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t write so that other people can understand you. But the point is, that has to come later. First, you have to treat writing as a personal challenge between you and the part of your mind that wants to stop you from doing it. It’s like working out: you know it’s good for you, and you know you will feel great afterward, but you have to overcome the natural instinct that tells you it’s easier not to do it.

The precise way to do this can vary from person to person. You’ll discover the method that works best for you as you go along.

One exercise that I think can help teach how not to write for an audience is to just try writing stream-of-consciousness. For this post, I deliberately tried an experiment where I turned off my sense-making filter and just spewed forth whatever came to mind. This is what resulted:

Grey window skies empty noises and duahgter nothing al dhpauiw hope thjat move listen coffee  righ fjor wdesk need time hope sk

Sitting on a cold day that is grey and deporessing why am I doing this write exercise imagine plains vision skies weird black nebulous

This seems like incoherent babble, but it’s really not all that random. For context: I was sitting at my desk by a window on a cold grey day, drinking coffee. I could hear people outside talking and someone said something about a daughter.

For the second paragraph, the other people shut up, and I started to let my imagination roam, which led to visions of Lovecraftian weird cosmic horror, because that’s my favorite genre, or at least the one I’m most familiar with.

As sloppy and gibberish-filled as that is, you can see my thought process even through all the errors and downright nonsense. Which brings me to my point: as in many other fields, “true randomness” is actually pretty hard to achieve in writing. Your brain will work very hard to force you to make sense. Which is helpful in many other ways, but the problem is that our brains have become so good that they will try to prevent us writing anything less than the perfect sentence on the first try. That part of the brain would much rather procrastinate than risk writing something nonsensical.

This is what all those famous writers mean when they say “Write for yourself” or “Don’t worry about the audience” or “Ignore the inner-critic.” It’s all true, but it’s not specific enough, because when you are tempted to put off writing and procrastinate instead, you don’t realize you’re writing for someone else, or that it’s your inner-critic, or your fear of the audience. It feels like you’re just trying to write something that makes sense, and for some horrible reason, you can’t.

That’s because it doesn’t make perfect sense, and your brain hates that. But it’s okay. You can fix it later. Editors and beta readers will make sure of that.

So my advice is: don’t worry about making sense. In fact, I’ll go even further: actively try to avoid making sense on the first draft. Just put down the most basic, sub-literate version of what you want to convey. You’d be surprised how hard it is to not make sense—your unconscious mind will keep you at least within saluting distance of it most of the time. After that, you can just iterate until your visceral idea has been refined into something your readers can understand.

FOOTNOTE

* As Phillip McCollum has observed, fear can also be extremely useful for writers. But that’s fear of other things, not writing itself.

Opening Pandora’s Box

— Mark Paxson

Months ago, I decided to try traditional publishing with my just-completed novel. That didn’t turn out so well, so I moved on to publishing it myself. I also decided to put some money into the publishing effort for the first time. I’ve paid for a Kirkus review, which I should get in the next week or so. I paid for somebody more talented than me to do the cover. I also joined the Independent Publishers Association, which has all sorts of “benefits” for its members — reduced prices for various editing, marketing, cover design, review, and all sorts of other services the indie publisher desperately needs.

Meanwhile, over on Twitter, I’ve started following a few Twitter accounts that promote books to their followers. Most of them boast follower counts of tens of thousands. One of them has over 114,000 followers. Each of these accounts will tweet out your short blurb about your book with a link to purchase it.

Now, I’m feeling overwhelmed by the choices and the options. I’m the type of guy who would prefer returning to the days when there were only plain and peanut M&Ms, only one kind of Snickers, only three channels on the television. I have Spotify and I absolutely love that pretty much every piece of music ever recorded is available there, but sometimes, I just don’t want all of that choice and I find myself wanting to curl into a ball instead of being confronted with the world of endless options we now have.

Which is where I’m at with my current publishing journey. As the title states, I feel like I’ve opened Pandora’s Box. I have unleashed the kraken. Everywhere I look, there are more sites that will promote your book, more services that will review your book. All of these things, of course, come with a fee attached. Everything from $25 to have your book pushed through one of those Twitter accounts to $500 for a discounted review through my IBPA membership. $500!! For a review!! And that’s a discount!!!!!! (Side note: yes, I paid almost that much for a Kirkus review, but I’m not doing it again.)

Meanwhile, those Twitter accounts that promote your book with tweets to their thousands of followers? There is almost no engagement on those tweets, and I know I pay almost no attention to them. Twitter isn’t where I go for book recommendations, you know what I mean.

There are a few places that will provide a review for free, and when the time is right, I’ll pursue those.

Beyond that … see above about wanting to curl into a ball. There are just so many options out there and I can’t help but feel like it’s an adjunct to the whole vanity publishing concept we discussed a week or so ago. Sure, we’ll be happy to promote your book, pay us, and … bwahahahahaha, good luck!

We’ve talked about this here before, but if you’re an indie author who has used any of these services — particularly the review and promo services — I would love to hear from you, and I’m willing to bet other writers would too. What worked? What didn’t? How did you decide which ones to use and which ones to stay away from? How did you decide how much pocket change to throw at these things? In other words … what’s the secret recipe to success?