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— Mark Paxson

I finally finished a novella I started writing over ten years ago. I’m trying to get it published by the end of September. So, why am I screaming?

I’m cursing the formatting Gods. The Microsoft Word Gods. I … just … can’t take it anymore.

One of the challenges I’ve always had with publishing paperbacks is getting the headers and footers right. I gave up years ago on having headers that say my name on one side of the page and the name of the book on the other. Page numbers are a different story.

As I’ve always understood things, the front matter in a book should be numbered with Roman numerals, but the title page shouldn’t have a number. The Roman numerals start with the next page. And the pages of the story itself should be regular numbers (what are those numbers called), but you don’t start the numbering until the second page of the story and then you start with 2, with numbering going on from there.

I’ve learned over the years that the key do getting headers and footers and page numbering right is to use section breaks. With previous books, I’ve been able to figure this out, although never 100% perfect. A recent book has the Roman numeral “i” on the title page and the number “1” on the first page of the story. But at least I could get Roman numerals on the front matter and new numbering for the story.

This time around … Microsoft Word is scoffing at me. I decided going into the formatting of this book, I wouldn’t bother with the Roman numerals, just start with the “2” on the second page of the story. I’m a silly, silly man.

Whatever I did before that worked is no longer working. No matter what I do with the section breaks, I can’t get it right.

I asked a couple of writer friends if they knew how to do this. One said something that made no sense. The other said she uses Atticus for this, but she also offered to run my manuscript through Atticus for me. I didn’t want to do that because then I’d have to do that every time I publish, and I’ve got more stuff coming.

Based on her recommendation, I went and purchased Atticus. $147 later, I had it on my Chromebook and MacBook and started fiddling with it. After a couple of hours last night and the entire morning today, after more than a dozen uploads of the manuscript followed by deleting it and making tweaks to the manuscript to address issues, I think I finally got it.

The final product isn’t perfect, but it does have headers and footers now. The biggest problem is that the second page of the story is actually numbered “4”. I have no idea how it came up with that, since that first page is actually the fifth page of the document. I’m going to let that slide.

The good thing about Atticus is that it formats the manuscript much better than I ever did. It gets the margins right. It gets the headers and footers right. Maybe this was a good investment.

But why, oh why does Microsoft Word have to be such a hellscape for stuff like this?

Meanwhile, the next issue is this. I’m going to use Draft2Digital’s ISBN, but as near as I can tell, they don’t tell me the number before I have to upload the manuscript in PDF (which means it is unalterable). But I have to include the ISBN on the copyright page. So … how do I do that without going through the entire process and then starting over, once I get the ISBN and then upload the corrected version of the manuscript?

I’ve send D2D a question about this.

What are your publishing horror stories? Please tell me you have some.

— Mark Paxson

Over on their personal blogs, our very own Chuck Litka and Berthold Gambrel have had a few things to say about the growing impact of AI on writing and other creative pursuits. Here is what Chuck had to say. And here is what Berthold had to say.

Here are mine. We’ve already lost this battle, if not the entire war. When I sit in my local writing group, the subject comes up now almost every single month. Our monthly lunches usually include 10-15 people. Not a single other participant objects to the use of AI. They all seem to have accepted it, and use it in various ways. I’m not saying they are using AI to write their stories, but can I actually say that with confidence? Nope. And some of them seem absolutely giddy about how AI helps them. One uses AI for editing and creating covers. Another uses AI to handle the “non-creative” stuff so she can focus her energies on the “creative part.” To which I just want to know what parts of writing a story are not a part of the creative stuff.

It’s just very disappointing. If it continues, I will likely drop out of the group.

Meanwhile, AI and generative AI are now a part of virtually everything we do on-line. Every single app and platform and website now has some kind of AI functionality that you have to opt out of, instead of opting in to. The last update on my iphone made some significant changes to the email app. The biggest, most noticeable change is that now each email comes with an AI-generated summary of the content of the email and the email chain that the email is a part of. Google now produces an AI-generated answer to most search requests I submit.

At work, we have so many apps we’re using for communication and project management and every single one now has a generative AI component that has to be turned off if we don’t want to use it. Which is what we’re supposed to do because our employer is still coming up with policies and rules to govern our use of generative AI, and we aren’t supposed to use it until those are finalized. But!!! The question isn’t going to be whether or not we use generative AI. Nope. The only question is how to incorporate it safely and securely. A co-worker is incredibly concerned about how this will impact people — as in, people will lose their job because of AI.

What I’m most worried about is how all of this will affect our humanity. We’re already losing a piece of it because of all the things our smart phones do that we used to have to do ourselves — remembering phone numbers, figuring out how to get from Point A to Point B, playing games against a computer on a tiny screen instead of in person with real human beings, and so much more. The way in which our schools now teach children — for the most part, it’s all about doing well on the standardized tests — means our kids are losing important skills, like critical thinking and analytical thought processes, and also the ability to write in a serious and compelling fashion.

When we give up the very human desire to create, we might as well nail the coffin shut. Yes, there will be people who won’t use AI, but I’m not sure how that will look in the future. If enough people give over this aspect of their humanity to AI, those who don’t will be overwhelmed by the flood of AI-generated product. Us indies already find it difficult to be noticed in a crowded sea of books published every day. With AI-generated books, that will only get worse.

I can see a world in the near future in which a lot of people are not just unemployed but are unemployable, a world in which the movies we watch have nothing real in them, books are soulless vessels, and all too many are dependent on what AI does because, if I’ve figured out anything over the decades, it is that there are all too many humans who would be perfectly fine with this kind of world.

Not me. I’ll just sit over here and write my stories and maybe eventually finally learn how to paint. And some day, I might also just finally throw my smart phone into the deep end of my pool and grab back that piece of myself that damn phone has taken from me.

Here’s my hope for those who decide to use AI to “create” their art — acknowledge that so those of us who want nothing to do with it can make an informed decision.

— Mark Paxson

Let’s say you’re a writer and you’re nearing the end of a final draft on a story. The story will be novella length, getting close to novel length. What does your runway to publishing look like?

Beta readers? ARCs? Editors? More edits by you? Hesitation to pull the trigger? Joy? Sadness?

And as you move towards your publication date, what kind of pre-publication promotional efforts do you engage in? ARCs? Set up pre-orders? Paid reviews like Kirkus? Line up a blog tour? Set up a GoodReads giveaway? Line up some of the promo sites? Beg on social media for people to buy your book?

And once you publish, then what do you do?

Asking for a friend, because nothing I’ve done with the last few books I’ve published has done a thing, so I’m curious what has worked for other people. We’ve talked about this on our occasional chats, but I’m not sure any of us are finding answers to these questions.

— Mark Paxson

When we started this place, one of my rules was that we could not promote our own books here. Other than in the bio section.

Sure, when we have our chats or post articles here, we may mention what we’re working on, or some lesson from something we’ve written before. But, I’m proud to say that we have stuck to that promise.

I’m not going to promote one of my books here, but I am going to assert the privilege of being a site founder and talk about a book written by one of the other key people here.

Our friend and co-host, Audrey Driscoll, has published a new book that I found to be wonderful. Winter Journeys tells Ilona Miller’s story. The story travels along two tracks — one when Ilona is in college and becomes obsessed with Franz Schubert’s Winterreise, an obsession that leads to her unraveling. And the other track, twenty years later, when Ilona unravels again.

I can’t really say much more than that because detailed book reviews aren’t my thing. But here is Berthold Gambrel’s review of Winter Journeys.

All I know is that I thought this story was incredible. It is a quiet book, if you can call a story about a woman’s unraveling ‘quiet.’ But that’s what I thought as I read it. It’s just quiet and it is the type of book that makes the world of indie writers much more interesting than traditionally published books.

Winter Journeys is an example of why we write and why we read.

Over on Twitter (yes, it is still Twitter), I “met” another writer last year. Saffron Asteria, who is launching a website intended to support indie writers. It is called Indiosyncrasy.

Saffron has done a huge amount of work in the last few months to get the website up and running. Each author who has signed up has a page dedicated to their published work. Each week, a author is featured on the landing page with more information about their writing and themselves. She also posts a weekly podcast in which she talks about writing with the authors who have signed up. A weekly newsletter to subscribers.

She has much more in store. Writing exercises. Maybe writing competitions with prizes. At some point, she will also have sections for other professionals who contribute to publishing success — editors, cover artists, etc.

Check the website out. Saffron is doing a huge amount of work on the site and supports indie authors like nobody I’ve ever seen (except maybe for Berthold).

When you’re writing, what do you see in your mind’s eye?

I think I have two perspectives while I write. When I’m writing a scene, it’s like a helicopter view. I’m above the scene and seeing things from an elevated position. But what I’m seeing is what the characters are doing. I’m not necessarily seeing other things that are there or nearby. My attention is focused entirely on the characters.

When I’m writing dialogue, I’m standing in the middle of the people talking. But the weird thing is that I don’t actually see their faces. I’m looking at their chests or torsos. And I’m pretty close up. Again, this means that I’m not really seeing the environment they are in while they talk.

I wonder if this is why I struggle so much with description and providing details of the environment when I write.

For a few years, I attended a monthly writing workshop led by Zoe Kiethley. A lot of her exercises were designed to get the writer outside of that narrowly-focused perspective and see and hear and smell and touch other elements of the scenes in which our stories take place.

Unfortunately, she is no longer offering those workshops and I feel like that has significantly and adversely affected my story telling. I really need to get back to seeing the big picture as I write a story. To take the time to focus on the details that may not be apparent, but can help establish the context and environment the characters are in.

So … what do you see when you’re writing?