Category Archives: Uncategorized

We Want You!!!

— Mark Paxson

We started this blog around nine or ten months ago with an idea. We wanted to develop an on-line community of writers who would share their lessons and wisdom and support each other in the pursuit of creative magic.

Berthold and I started, Audrey joined us shortly thereafter. Then Richard jumped feet first into our video chats. Chuck Litka offered an occasional guest post and now is a full member of the blog able to post at will.

Yesterday, we recorded another video chat that will be posted soon. The topic: our greatest fears and grandest dreams as writers. What I found fascinating about the discussion was how much we each wanted to be part of a writing community. That idea played a part in our dreams.

It’s why we started this blog. And I’ll admit that I haven’t done as much with this blog as I would have liked. I wanted to put forward writing exercises to motivate people to participate. I have yet to do that. I started a Resources page, but haven’t touched it in months. I wanted to blog much more regularly here than I have.

Life gets in the way, you know.

We’re still here and enjoying our conversations and the opportunity to discuss this thing we all like to do.

But … it’s not a community without you. If you’re a writer and are interested in contributing posts or participating in our video chats, let us know. We really want to talk with other writers about their work, their process, their views on the creative life.

We want you. If you’re interested drop us a comment or shoot us an email at writinghelp2021@gmail.com.

A Month in Vella

Since I didn’t want to miss Amazon’s Vella bus, I dusted off a 40 year old SF novella (my first), to use as a setting, and adopted the new plot from the comic book version of that story that I had penciled a decade later. Out of those sources I produce a 26,000 word SF novella in 20 episodes for the new serial story platform. Vella and my story have been live for a month. What sort of business has resulted?

In one month, my story has one thumbs-up “fave,” with a grand total of 13 episodes read, including 8 of the locked episodes. I’ve not made a cent so far. Presumably the 8 paid episodes were paid with free promotional tokens.

So how does my offering compare to other stories? Well, the top faved story, “Wolf,” is a paranormal, “wolf shifter” romance. It has over 9,000 faves and 44 star reviews. The next most popular is “The Marriage Auction,” a steamy, arranged marriage romance adventure, with almost 2,700 faves and 14 stared reviews. A close third is a witches, werewolves, & vampire fantasy SF story, “Demon Accords Beginnings,” also having nearly 2,700 faves and 15 starred reviews. The authors are not unknown authors. They brought their fans with them to Vella.

Closer to home, my story, as a space opera, is one of 125 stories in that category. As an adventure story, it’s one of 900 stories. The highest faved story in space opera, “Forgotten Planets,” is a sexy enemies to lovers space fleet story with just under 500 faves, and no star rating. The highest faved adventure stories ranged from 2,600 to 1,300. The one with the most star reviews, had 21. In both categories, once you start scrolling down the list, you quickly reach stories with double to single digit faves, and many with none at all. The vast majority have no reviews.

I have found a recent thread on K-Boards where Vella authors recounted their experiences on the platform. All of them tell similar stories. Little engagement, no money, and, so far, a waste of time and effort. It seems that unless you brought your readers over to Vella, you’re not likely to find many readers. In part this is due to Amazon. As far as I know they have not widely promoted the service. Vella is almost impossible to find on the Amazon homepage on the web, and I gather it’s just about as hard to find on the Kindle app in iOS. Apparently they are launching the service very tentatively – basically a beta version, likely to work out the bugs before going big.

Of course it is too simple just to blame Amazon. Clearly I hadn’t written a story for the type of readers Vella has attracted to date. If I had to take a guess I’d say that most likely the readership skews towards young, predominantly female romance and paranormal readers. Not my readers.

So how have I responded?

First, I’ve not abandoned hope. It is still early in the game. I did change the name of my story and rework the blurb to be a little less, shall we say, staid. Second, I’ve taken the option to publish a completed Vella story as a book on Amazon after 30 days. I slightly revised, reformatted, created a cover, and published the novella in the KDP program. Though I have released all my books wide, going all in on Amazon has been an idea I’ve toyed with off and on for some time. Now, since this story is already tied in with Amazon, it was the perfect vehicle to experiment with that option. In its first four days I’ve sold two copies at $.99 (half of the price a reader would pay on Vella), but have no page reads yet. I’m not holding my breath.

Am I disappointed? Not really. I had no great expectations. I just didn’t want to end up kicking myself for passing up the chance to be on the ground floor of a big new thing. My primary goal was, and still is, to use the Vella story as free advertising for my other novels. Plus, I got a novella written out of the project, so all in all, I think that I’m on the positive side of the ledger. Just.

To sum it all up, I have to say that if you don’t have a story on Vella, you haven’t missed anything. And I would be in no hurry to get one in. Maybe once it gets on its feet. If it does. And if you write the right type of story.

I’m not sure how much of my Vella experience, or Mark’s recent one with self-publishing his literary fiction novel The Dime are working to support writers, which is the title of this blog. I can’t say that we’ve offered very many hot tips to success. What we are doing is showing things we’ve tried. Things which you might consider either trying, or avoiding, in your own publishing endeavors, while keeping the bar of success pretty darn low. Which I hope is some comfort to all.

An Update 16 August 2021

Amazon posted some information about the Vella program that may change the calculations a bit. First they said that there are over 9,000 stories on Vella. That’s a lot, and not a lot, depending on where your story falls. It certainly gives creators a lot more room than publishing a story on KDP.

Secondly they said that they will pay creators royalties on all paid episodes, even if those episodes are paid with free promotional tokens, at least through the end of the year.

Thirdly, they announced the creation of a $200,000 bonus pool for the month of July to be paid out to creators based on episodes read, number of followers, and faves. Apparently this will be a monthly feature, much like what they pay out in the Kindle Unlimited Program. I was paid $12.82 out of this fund for July based on my rather modest performance. This all but guarantees that I will be able to order out a pizza with my 2021 Amazon royalties.

The most significant takeaway, I think, is that it does indicate that Amazon is serious about Vella, willing to make changes to make it work better, and that they are in it for a long haul. The payment of bonuses will no doubt motivate creators to do what they can to get their readers engaged in the program and grow the platform. Perhaps this is enough to make Vella an option for you, especially if you think you could create content that might appeal to its potential readership.

It seems that I’m now on the bus. We’ll have to see where it goes.

A Publishing Update

— Mark Paxson

Months ago, I posted that I was going to try the traditional publishing route with my latest novel. That effort didn’t last very long. Queries sent, queries rejected. Or just not responded to at all.

So, I decided to go the indie publishing route again. Only, I was going to put a little money into the effort for the first time, beyond some editing costs. I paid for a Kirkus Review of my novel.

The Kirkus reviewer provided a decent review, with some quotes that could be used for marketing purposes, but … the reviewer referred to the novel as a novella and the summary of the story line only included content from the first third of the novel. Which makes me wonder if the reviewer bothered to read the whole thing.

I asked them to fix the reference to it being a novella. It took more than a week to get that done. As the review was finalized, I pushed publish on the e-book version of the novel, while I finished up the formatting for the paperbook.

Let’s just say that the formatting experience became a gift from hell. Or something like that. There are certain things about Word that simply are not intuitive and never will be. Every time I work on formatting something for publication, I have to learn it all over again. It took me days and days and days to get it done.

One of the things I did with this book was to pay for a professional cover. It looks incredible and I never want to DIY on covers again. But that was another $300 down the drain.

Once I pushed publish on the paperback, I ordered author copies from Amazon. Twenty copies to hand out to people as I wish. Unlike when you buy a book from Amazon and it takes two days, sometimes a few more, for delivery, author copies take about two weeks. And for some reason, Amazon split my order of twenty copies into two separate orders. One order was … nineteen books, while the other was for one book. That one book showed up about a week later, and I waited and waited for the other nineteen books. They never showed up. Yesterday, I ordered twenty copies again. Let’s see what happens.

Meanwhile, I’ve entered the book in a couple of book contests, primarily ones focused on independently published books. I await the results. That was another couple hundred bucks invested.

And I’ve tried some promotional websites. EReaderNewsToday, which was so good for me with my first novel eight years ago, has been a difficult nut to crack this time. I submitted the book for their consideration a few weeks ago. Their website said that they were pretty booked and to make sure to submit for a date more than 30 days out. But the submission form required a date within 30 days. So, I requested a date within 30 days, and the book was rejected because they didn’t have enough room.

I re-submitted the book to EReaderNewsToday with a proposed date that was more than 30 days out. They rejected the book because they didn’t have room. Sheesh. Before I started writing this post, I tried for a third time — which is always the charm, right?

I also tried another promo site — GoodKindles. For the small fee of $45, they featured my book. Which means it was the lead book of the day in their emails and tweets to their subscriber list. My book ran on August 2 on their site and in their subscription communications. It produced a grand total of … zero sales.

A couple of days ago, I set up an Amazon ad campaign. I committed $150 to the campaign, which only costs me something if somebody clicks on the ad. What I set up was a campaign for Kindle screens. When you turn on you Kindle or it goes to the lock screen, ads show up, typically for books, but occasionally for other things. The campaign started today. As I write this post, 48 people have seen it, one of them has clicked on it, and none of them have bought the book. But at the moment, I’m only out .32 for that one click!!

This is all a long way of saying that nothing is working and I’m close to being at a complete loss for what to do next. I try to remember Berthold’s words on this topic in previous exchanges. To write for the pleasure of it and for the interaction with whatever readers I have. Between the Kirkus Review, the cover, and the promo efforts I’ve tried, I’m in for more than $1,000 now on this book and it’s actually sold worse than my last book. Even though I think it has more popular appeal that that last book.

What do you do when you get frustrated with results like this? Or do you not get frustrated? This goes back to a concept we’ve discussed frequently around here. It comes down to objective. While I don’t expect to ever write and sell a bestseller, I’d at least like to write books that reach an audience beyond my family, friends, and social media buddies. I’ve yet to figure out how to do that. I’d like to at least make some money at this and not just break even, or in this case, lose money.

It’s a mystery. How to do this in the indie publishing world is becoming almost as opaque as the traditional publishing world. Part of the problem is that there are so many of us. Literally, everybody is publishing a book now. Okay, not literally — almost everybody. It’s hard to find a spot in a limited world when it appears that there is an unlimited number of books out there competing for that spot.

I’m frustrated at the moment, but I’m also oddly motivated. I want to get to my next half completed novel and push it out there and see if that’s the one that can be a breakthrough. And, if not that one, the next one. I haven’t given up. Yet.

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.