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  • CREATING THE COVER FOR YOUR BOOK AND GETTING IT "PRINT READY" FOR SELF-PUBLISHING ON AMAZON
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Happy New Year for 2015!

12/31/2014

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Another quick post for 2014. Family time is taking up most of my time the last few days, but that’s how the holidays go. I’ll get back to my normal blog posts starting 2015. For now I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy New Year.

We are having a modern day Raclette for our company, a Swiss tradition that has made its way throughout Europe. Basically cheese and meats with onions and peppers, you can find more information about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raclette

Hope everyone has a safe and wonderful New Year’s celebration.

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How do you handle an attack from another author?

12/27/2014

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Unfortunately this is something that occurs more often than most new writers would think, or then again maybe I’m just naive to a point. For myself, I take my hat off to anyone who can go through the entire process and get their novel completed. Coming up with a story and getting it onto paper (aka a word processor) is by itself is a personal accomplishment, but the entire process of bringing that work to print is something that is truly amazing and for many of us the completion of a personal goal in our lives.

To put your work out there and see people enjoying your story is one of the most incredible feelings I’ve ever felt. Another cool aspect of writing is the other authors that you meet while doing events. Many of the fellow writers I have met have been really fun people to get to know. Fantasy and Sci-Fi writers share so many of the same interests that hanging out and chatting as a group is a blast. While this is wonderful and helps to encourage many of us to continue putting in the huge amount of effort that is required to continuing producing our stories for little if any actual monetary returns, there are those that would bash their fellow indie writers. Sometimes this comes from a simple desire to put other writers down in the belief that doing so will help their books become more popular, while other times it’s a simple desire to be king of the hill. Whatever the desire is that drives these authors; you will at some time be a target of these types of writers.   

From all of my research into this subject and my conversations with other more experienced writers. The recommended way to deal with negative reviews is to not reply back, but if you do decide to reply back I recommend staying as professional and non-defensive as possible. Also as an author it is important to get positive and negative feedback from people who enjoy reading the genre that you’ve decided to write in. Although that being said, not everyone is going to be a fan. Still I believe it helps to listen to what’s being said so you can determine how to make your writing even better. Sometimes it’s a simple as grammar or word usage, while at other times it’s the flow or consistency of your story. All of which are important to get feedback on. There will also be those readers who do not appreciate your concept or find something about your subject matter that they don’t agree with or cannot accept. Again this will be something that you will need to determine if this is something you want to work on improving or not. You will never write something that everyone will love. There will always be something about your story that some people find offensive or disagreeable. And you know what? That’s okay. If you wrote a story that no one could complain about then you’d probably have a very boring story that no one would particularly want to read.

While this advice works well with normal readers that for some reason do not like your story, this is much more difficult to do when you have fellow writers purposely trying to tear apart your book or take away your authenticity as a writer. Instead of being part of doing business as a writer, these peers who want to drag you down have suddenly made it personal. Although there are many different options available, it’s hard to know which method is the best approach.

One scary truth is that just being an indie writer breaking into the writing scene is enough to piss off some semi-professional and professional writers. Sometimes it’s a competitive issue, while other times these writers believe you’re just junking up the options out there for readers and taking away from their ability to continue to make the money that they want to make. At the same time, I do not believe this is every professional writer. Going to Youtube.com alone will show you many successful writers who try to give back to the writing community. At the same time, there are some small groups of writers who do target their competition to try to knock them down.

Unfortunately the nasty writers who subscribe to this ideology know how best to hurt your novel and damage your image as a writer. A good example of this is my current run-in with Stephen Blackmoore, which sadly enough I’m still trying to decide how best to deal with. I had never heard of his books before now, although I had a couple friends who know his novels as soon as I mentioned his name. I found out about this writer when I had a nasty one star review left on my book called Flight. The review was specifically worded to attack the validity of my reviews and my authenticity as a writer. There was little to no specifics about plot line or concepts discussed, but that my good reviews were faked. Giving “one star” is another way to get people to see your negative review and to purposely drag down the overall rating of your book.

I didn’t recognize the name Stephen Blackmoore, but I did recognize the attempt for what it was; a direct attack from a fellow writer. Unsurprisingly enough, I wasn’t the only target writer. Brondt Kamffer and Rosemary Fryth were on the same hit list. Brondt Kamffer actually had two books out of the same series that was targeted. All three of us were basically given the same carbon copy message. Google is a wonderful tool. One search on the name Stephen Blackmoore brought up who this individual was and the numerous books that the author had written. Instead of hunting down each of his books and leaving a similar nasty review, which is easy enough to do. I decided to take the higher road and simply link who he was in the review’s comments, discussed how sad it is when writers attack their peers and asked readers interested in my own story to simply make up their own mind as to the quality of my book and writing. Interestingly enough, the profile’s name was instantly changed to KM and I was immediately attacked even further. These additional comments I promptly ignored, taking them as I would a normal negative review. Everything I wanted to say was already said in the first comment. What more was there to add?

A twist to the situation that I wasn’t expecting was receiving an email directly from the author Stephen Blackmoore. He was cordial enough expressing is dislike for writers who participate in such actions and swearing that he was not a part of this attack. Kind words said in private, but none the less I am left in the quandary of what to believe. The evidence seems simple enough. Although it is possible some reader was using Stephen Blackmoore’s name, but if that was the case then why instantly change the Amazon Profile name before contacting me? Is my personal blog so wide read that Stephen Blackmoore was immediately aware of my posting about the situation? I would like to believe Mr. Blackmoore is innocent in all of this, but to be perfectly honest the evidence doesn’t quite fit. I can only list the facts as they occurred and let you, the reader and fellow authors, decide for yourselves.

Bad controversy is something that most writers do not want to be associated with. Although in some situations controversy can increase book sales, I believe the message of a simple blog can sometimes shed light on the nasty practices of some writers in the community that they would rather remain hidden.

Is this the best way to handle writers who try to attack you personally? To blog about their misdeeds after you discover their shenanigans? I’ll let you know as the story develops. To simply get a group of friends together to leave nasty reviews on the other writers’ books feels wrong to me. In my mind there can be no winners in such a situation, only a loosing situation for everyone concerned.

Maybe simply ignoring the review like what is normally recommended would have been the highest possible approach, but for better or worse that was beyond me at this time. I do believe people should be called to account for their misdeeds in one way or another by their own community.

Lastly, I hope this helps those of you who run into similar situations. As always I try to share my own experiences in the hopes that it will help those of you facing similar situations.

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Just a quick wish for everyone to have a happy holiday

12/24/2014

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I have two weeks off while my wife’s family is visiting from Poland, so we are hosting Christmas at our home. Being American, it’s neat to be a part of the traditional Polish celebrations that make up the holiday season. It’s definitely an experience. We combine the holiday, blending in my American traditions with my wife’s Polish traditions, which makes the season fun for everyone and a little different. I was debating on baking a ham or making a turkey, but decided to do a ham for Christmas and a turkey for the New Year. I have a pretty tasty recipe that I do whenever I cook a turkey that everyone seems to love. The Europeans always get a kick seeing a twenty-two pound bird sitting on the table and are always surprised at how tasty and juicy the meat tastes.

Kanchen, one of my four-footed boys, is recovering from knee surgery. He blew out a knee following some scent he ran across with his brother when we were out walking through the woods just before the start of the holidays. He’s doing much better now that the stitches have come out, but still has some pain he’s dealing with.

I was busy for the first couple days of my vacation baking up a storm. Everyone loves American cookies and I did up five batches for the holidays and then helped my wife make a tiramisu from scratch. The home-made tiramisu is my favorite though.

My time at cooking wasn’t finished since everyone loves to have an American style breakfast with bacon, home-style potatoes with cheesy scrambled eggs and stuffed French toast. I mean there are still a lot of dinners to be made with having seven people visiting, but that’s pretty easy. It pretty much gives me a good week before I have to really focus on cooking again, which will be a stuffed turkey. That means I’ll get some good writing time in. At least I’m managing to do that off and on since my Polish isn’t very good. It gives me some time to chill out while my wife visits with her sister’s family.

Anyway, this is just a quick post. I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Holiday however you and your family celebrate this time of year. Make sure to enjoy this special time of year with family, friends and the spirit of giving.

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A quick cover update for destiny, book two, and a word on the negative side of writing a good story

12/20/2014

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I don’t want to give too much away just yet, but the cover for Destiny is looking good. Leo really has done an amazing job getting the gist of what I wanted designed and is now putting his own twist on the vision. I’ll be doing a write-up on the progression of this cover once it’s finished. Hopefully it will help those of you new to the process in getting your own designs from conception to print. Now I just need to get the last part of the story finished.

I did go ahead and write out the specifics of the last part of the story. Also, I got some help from a few friends on giving me some feedback on the romance part I just finished writing. So far it sounds like I hit it right. I really thought long and hard on everything Elliott Kay had to say on the subject. I don’t know if the man ever shared out the information he put in the email he sent me on his blog or not, but it was some of the best information ever for writing romance/erotica. Not to mention we had some time to commensurate on the authors that give indie writers a hard time.

I’ve been getting pretty good at taking criticism on my writing. No writer likes to get their work banged up, but good authors listen because they know hearing the good and the bad is the only way they are going to learn how to write better. To be honest, I have learned a lot from both type of reviews. But every once in a while you’ll get an author who sees an indie writer doing well for themselves and then for whatever reason decides to just to a nasty review.

Typically I would say it usually comes down to having their book doing badly, but I’m sure that’s not always the case. I would say I expect that’s what twisted author Stephen Blackmoore’s panties, my most recent critic. You’ve got to love someone who in the header of their post says “To counter all the fake reviews” then starts out with “This story isn’t terrible, but” had to give it a one star. He ends the post review by putting in a spoiler on top of that. Unfortunately, no matter how many paid reviews you have, there is nothing you can do about someone just being nasty. I will say it’s one of the few nasty reviews I’ve replied to. I try to stay above such things. It’s what every experienced writer suggests, but this was the first time I’ve replied to one of these post. So Mr. Blackmoore has that distinction, at least with me. I tried to keep it light and asked readers to make their own opinion on my writing and to leave their own review after reading the story, while pointing out the lack of self interest by pointing people reading reviews to Mr. Blackmoore’s author web page on Amazon. Still, it’s a nasty cheap trick to do to a fellow writer.

Maybe that means people are starting to take notice of me, since Flight is still selling and doing well. The last time I had several bad reviews come in at once was when Flight hit number 23 on the top 100 list for Amazon’s fantasy superheroes category. Again it was from a batch of four fellow indie writers whose books had fallen in the rankings of their prospective categories. I can only assume they were upset that Flight was doing well, while their books were not. Still, I find attitudes like that hard to fathom. To me it just doesn’t make any since to bash another writer just because your own book isn’t doing well.

Anyway, for those of you starting out, such actions will be a fact of life if you have any success in writing. Maybe in some ways that means you’re on the right track, but it helps to be emotionally prepared in advance. It’s the dark side of writing a good story. As always, thanks for letting me get this off my chest.       

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how to find and communicate your thoughts to the artist doing your book cover part two

12/16/2014

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Coming up with a “cover idea” is not the easiest thing to do. In my mind, you need to find a cover that conveys the idea of your story or shows an action scene. The idea should be something that is eye catching. A book cover is a writer’s first means of advertising to their prospective audience. It should be something that catches a reader’s eyes and making them want to pick up your book to read the back cover, which is the secondary primary means of advertising for an author. (Wow, that whole back cover blurb should be my next blog series of discussions, but for now let’s keep the focus on the cover art.) The last part of this direct advertising is your front cover blurb and your sample pages from your novel.

In my opinion, there is nothing more important than your cover when it comes to your initial advertising. Getting someone to notice your book as a new writer and to actually check out what your story is about is the hardest part of advertising. I would go so far as to say that 80% to 90% of the people that decide to pick up your book due to the cover will probably choose to purchase your book if they like the back blurb about the story. What gets readers to get this far is the actual cover that catches their eyes.

Now for already famous writers this is not as important, but for us indie writers it is. We don’t already have a following of readers who want to check out our work, so we need to advertise and get people to notice our great story.

Now that we have an idea just how important the cover for your book, we can discuss the next part of the process. Before you can communicate your cover idea to your artist, you as the writer need to have a solid idea of what you want for the cover of your book. Sounds easy, right? Wrong, the whole process of coming up with a concept that rocks and then communicating that concept to your artist is extremely difficult. Also, you only have several tries with the artist you’re working with before they are going to say something like: We need to go with one of the concepts we’ve come up with or you’re going to need to pay me for all of the art work that you keep asking for. Also, covers are expensive and none of us have extra money to just throw away. Hell, as a new writer we are already gambling that all of the money we are spending now to get the book published in the first place is actually going to get enough of a return to pay for the initial cost of publishing our book, let alone actually make anything extra on top of that.

Once you have this mental picture of what you want your cover to be, you need to find a way to communicate this idea to the artist you’ve found. I do this in two different ways. First, I pull as many images that I can to convey the idea of what I’m thinking. I would post the file here that I use to do this, but with all of the focus on posting other people’s images illegally, I’ll just discuss the file I used to convey my thoughts instead. There are just way too many images to hunt down each artist to get permissions for this blog post. In the document I used to communicate with my artist I focused on several types of images. The first was the color pallet that I was looking for. I had several images that gave the impression of blowing snow with a bluish tinge to the scene. I also discussed the feeling I wanted to convey in the background of the picture. The second focus I had was on the art style I was looking for in the main characters. I was going for an anime with a slightly realistic look for the characters. I had a couple faces concepts that I wanted, but nothing exact. I had several pictures showing young women that were wolf-like in appearance. I wanted Starfire to look not quite human and to be a partial twin to the werewolf girl, Frostbrand, who is placed on the other side of Startüm. I had several pictures of the style of werewolf I was looking for. I also wanted the werewolf in question to look feminine and child-like. A tough request I’m sure, which Leo really kicked butt doing. Last, I had pictures of the armor style I wanted for the Startüm and the swords I wanted used.

Although I had specific ideas of what I wanted, I also left things loose for the artist’s own interpretation. I wanted to make sure I went with what the artist wanted to do to a point too. I did make some mistakes. I wish I had put Startüm as younger and with blonde hair to go better with the description within the pages of the book, but at the same time I really loved how the character on the cover looked Wolfish. It made me not want to change the image from what Leo came up with in that way.   

You can see the progression of the images from Leo. The first one was almost exactly what I was looking for. The only thing I didn’t like was the body language and the stance of the main character in Leo’s first try. Also, I wanted the character to look slightly more muscular and more aggressive. In the second try that Leo did I thought he hit this exactly, which is what I told him to go with. I wasn’t sure where the flame for Starfire should go. I initially had an idea that she was fiery all over, but I didn’t like the look in the first picture. Leo put it to her hand instead, which I thought came out great.

I’ll post information for the cover for Destiny and I hope this discussion helps those of you who are going through this process for the first time.  

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how to find and communicate your thoughts to the artist doing your book cover part one

12/12/2014

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There is a lot that goes into finding an artist to do the cover for your book. One of the first things I tried to do was to get an idea of the going rates for digital art work for book covers. When I looked at this a year ago the price range started at around $300/400 and up. This is the cost for a single character with background art. Having more than two or more characters and the price goes up dramatically. If you want a full battle scene and you’re starting to talk about special pricing.

This cost should cover the fonts for the front, back cover and sleeve. If you do it this way you really need to be prepared ahead of time. You want to make sure you have your name, the text for the back cover and the title completed exactly the way you want it and in the size for the book you’ll be using. I just want to point out that I don’t recommend doing it this way … except for making sure that the artist gives you a copy in the picture for the size of book you plan to use for your createspace cover. (I’m using createspace because it’s what I use for my physical book size. If you’re using another printer then you need to make sure your picture reduces properly to the size you need it to be. Most printers want a “print ready” cover. If your artist doesn’t do this for you then you will need to do the final processing on your own, which can be tough to do.) I went ahead and chose to do the fonts myself. Leo did do a title and name for me on the front, but left the image open so that I could change it around if I wanted to, which I did end up doing several times before I got it to where I felt it was right.

Finding an artist was extremely difficult. I searched through several different web sites like Diviantart.com, but the best web site for finding artists was Diviantart from my experiences. I also searched for the artists that did the covers for some of the book I love to read. Lastly, I found several graphic artist web sites. Even after all of that it wasn’t easy to find someone I wanted to work with. Out of the artists I made a list of that I liked their art style and wanted to have them do the book cover, I had to find one willing to do the work.

Out of the first fifteen to twenty artists I tried, one guy answered back and said sorry but he doesn’t work with individuals, only firms. That was because so many writers had tried to cheat him out of his money for doing the art work. He wasn’t nasty about it, but just explaining what he’d been through.

This prompted more research on my part once again. I got an idea for the normal process. Come up with a concept, have a graphic artist sketch out an idea, come to an agreement on the idea, pay half up front and pay the last half upon completion. Then I searched for some more artists. This time I got lucky and actually received three responses back. They all had good artwork and were nice and professional to talk with. The first response came from Leo Black, second from Mike Gauss, and a third named Ventrue. I also had an angle on some Chinese and Korean artists, but they were a little too sexual for what I was looking for on my cover.  As you know I ended up going with Leo. Good choice I think, just check out the cover for Book One, Flight.

My next post will be communicating the ideas you have to the graphic artist you’ve chosen.

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There is nothing like experiencing something for real to enhance your writing and an update on Destiny's book cover

12/8/2014

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Just recently I’ve been working on a chapter for my main chapters, Startüm Ironwolf, that has him being nursed back to life. When he wakes in the chapter he is being taken care of by a Wild Elf and is burning up with a major fever. I was struggling to get the 100% correct feel for the whole scene, but felt like I was missing something to the depth of the struggle he was going through with being sick. I’d been re-working the chapter back and forth several times to get the right feel, when suddenly I came down with a major flu with a burning fever for two days. Wow, let me tell you, there’s nothing like living the experience to be able to accurately write about it. Although in this situation I could have passed on the realness of the feeling to be honest.

For most of my writing I try to do two very important things. I try to picture each and every scene as if I were either there myself, or I do my best to picture the action as if I were watching it on a big screen at the movies. The reason I do this is twofold. First I want to make sure that the action going on is as accurate and realistic as possible. Even for my characters that are not exactly true to life. Startüm Ironwolf is extremely powerful and dense, so whenever action scenes are going on with I do my best to try to take into consideration the true physics of the real world in retrospect to his unique abilities and powers. The second part to this is that I want whatever rules I come up with for my world to be applied consistently throughout the story.

A good “bad” example of this is in the movie Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. Although I loved the visual eye candy and choreographed fight scenes, the main issue I had with the movie was that there was no consistency in the amazing feats that the fighters could do. During the major fight scenes the heroine was able to fly through the air, but when the hero, her lover, is dying. The heroine can only find a horse and take the long ride back to the town to get help. This lack of consistency in the rules of the world just made me really dislike an otherwise awesome movie.

A good “good” example of this is the Matrix, one of my all-time favorite movies. Neo is a hacker and he begins to hack the Matrix with his mind. The fight scenes, the upload of data to his mind the extra-physical skills of how the jumpers can bend everyday rules in the world. They all follow a steady theme that stay consistent with the rules that were defined within the world of the film. All of the “cyber-jackers”, the people that jump back into the Matrix, are able to hack the Matrix to a point. Their ability to “hack” allows them to bend the rules so to speak, but all within the overall rules that had been established within the film itself. For me this consistency of the rules of the world is essential in any story.

Maybe this is so important because so many of us like to try to guess what’s going to happen next. I know that’s what I’m doing whenever I’m reading a story. It’s always fun when the author comes up with a twist in the rules that saves the hero, and once it’s shown to me I’m like, “Wow, that was awesome!” On the flip side few things piss me off more when an author pulls out something from their ass that had nothing to do with the story or follows no established rules to save the hero or kill the villain. Even though I can’t think of any off the top of my head, I have no doubt there are a bunch of writers who are using this to good effect and are making money with their works, but no matter what it still just pisses me off whenever I run into a book that does this.

On another subject, I just sent Leo Black an email about getting Destiny’s cover completed. I’m going to do a whole set of blogs on this and the first cover art that I did for Flight, since I think it’s a good topic to cover, but I’ll save more on that for my next post. For now Leo really likes the concept I have for the book cover and things are moving forward.

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Coming up with a concept for your story

12/6/2014

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I’ve had many people ask me about how to write. Many of us are really into our genres and have a huge plethora of our own ideas when it comes to story ideas and concepts. In many ways, we are almost experts on our Fantasy or Sci-Fi. Unfortunately when it comes to writing our own stories, the hardest part is coming up with our own concept and where to begin the story.

An example of some of the amazing concepts out there are things like: Jim Butcher and the Dresden Files, the story is about a Wizard private investigator and moves along in certain ways like a typical detective story, but with cool magical creatures and magic stuff to move the story along. Patricia Briggs and the Mercy Thompson series have the heroine starting out as a mechanic that happens to be a shape shifter. The story takes off from there as all of these other magical creatures come into the story while the heroine tries to make a living being a mechanic. P.S. Powers and his infected series, that has superheroes as infected people with a special power and a terrible personality trait that goes with it. His people work as federal agents for the government helping to protect society from the bad infected humans. Richard Raley whose King Henry series have people with special powers that function as mages in his world. The main hero spends his life trying to make a living by creating magical devices and selling to make a living and free himself from being controlled by others.

In the examples I’m using above, these are all Urban Fantasy stories. A concept layered over our current world with a twist, which seems to be quite popular. Not just popular now, but in many ways forever popular. Think of Orson Wells and the Time Machine or Dracula or Frankenstein, it’s all just a twist put over the real world. For me, whether it’s done by science or magic or some pathogen, it’s really all the same. It’s just a twist on reality.

Another part that people make way to complex is coming up with unique abilities for their heroes and heroines. In many ways, this is just as difficult as the coming up with your unique character. Although in many ways it’s one and of the same and most of the stories around us are based off of old Dungeon and Dragons (wizards, clerics, monks, paladins), old mythologies of mythical creatures (vampires, demons, werewolves and such), magic (witches, wizards), superheroes or psychic phenomenon (telepathy, teleportation, telekinesis and such). It still helps to have your own twist to the concept, but if you look at most of the stories around. At their core, the concepts are in many ways the same.

These are some of the main ingredients to creating the world you want for your book, but what makes the story is the characters that you create and their adventure in this world. Hence why it’s so important to know what your character is doing, like in the above examples. It gives your characters a purpose, makes them identifiable to your readers and helps to move along the story.

A good example of this was from a critic complaining that I didn’t turn Startüm into a traveling surfer helping people around the world as he moves to each new location. I figure I can always do that in another series as I discuss Startüm’s early adventures on Earth. It was a great concept and something I can work on in the future. Things like this make a connection to your readers and give a base to tell the story from.

Anyway, I hope this helps in your own writing. Whatever it is that you come up with, go with it even if you don’t have everything figured out. Just starting your basic story opens up your mind to all kinds of things. Connections form just by the need of forming your basic concept and before you know it there is a huge story that almost is created on its own.

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Holiday craziness, weihnachtsmarkt's, writing and taking criticism

12/2/2014

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I wanted to wish everyone a belated Happy Thanksgiving Day, at least for those of you who celebrate it anyways. Now I’m trying to deal with the approaching rush of the holidays, while working and keeping up my writing for Destiny. Also, here in Germany they have Weihnachtsmarkts, which are holiday season open bazars with gluehwein (mulled wine) and “Fair” food. I’m not a big gluehwein fan, but they have this ciderwein that is just awesome. I’ll add in some of the pictures down below with today’s post.

After my first book was published, I’ve had to work with my wife on “when” I’m allowed to write. The plan we came up with is that during the week I am allowed to write at night, but weekends I need to save for the family, including Friday nights usually. Sometimes I sneak in some writing time anyway, but with all of the holiday fun I’ve just been too busy. Also, everyone wants me to bake U.S. style cookies =D I usually do chocolate chips, oatmeal/raisin/cranberry/chocolate chips and peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies throughout the holidays.

I’m still working on that first romance chapter. It’s incredible how hard the whole process is, but it’s starting to sound good. I just find it frustrating that sometimes “regular life” comes into play. With holidays and family time half the week can just be nixed out before you can get back to working on the part you want to finish.  Frustrating in one way, but also I’m glad to have the time with the family.

This week I’m going to try to get an email off to Leo Black about working on the cover for book two. Hopefully he can get it done by February or sooner. Last time he really liked the concept and knocked it out much earlier than expected. I just need to see what he thinks of the concept I want to work on for now and see if he thinks it’ll look good or not. He’s a great guy to run ideas past. I think it always helps to be open to suggestions from the artist you’re working with. Just make sure you have a good feel for their work though before going with any artist. Trust is essential to this process.

One of the things I’ve noticed is that it’s very hard for most people to take any criticism. Trust me, I understand how hard it is to hear that something is not as perfect or as good as you thought. Sometimes it can bring you close to tears, but the truth will also set you free … or at least if you listen to it from a good source help to make you into a better writer. You just have to seriously consider what’s being said and be honest with yourself. I say this because sometimes there will be those friends who just simply want to see you fail because for whatever reason they are jealous that you are writing and being successful. It happens, so just be aware of it. Unfortunately that makes it difficult to sometimes know what you need to pay attention too with the feedback you’re getting, henceforth the whole, being honest with yourself. I imagine most writers look at all the feedback they get and then do their best to look into their soul and the quality of their work.

I’ve seen some writers produce a good solid story, but then be unable to accept criticism to get the story cleaned up to be a good end product that people want to read. The worst part is that getting someone to give you “good criticism” is hard as hell. Most people want to not hurt your feelings and even if you beg them to hurt your feelings so that you can improve the story they won’t. Having that friend who is willing to tell you the truth that you need to hear is a rare and wonderful thing to have. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t make it hurt any less to hear the hard truth, but none the less you need to hear it. It’s the only way you’re going to get better. If you fight back or get snippy with this friend who has given you the gift of the truth to help you fix up your writing and story, then next time they are not going to say anything … or they won’t continue telling you what you need to know to get your story ready for production.

So if you’re writing, just remember to cherish these friends who are willing to tell you the truth as they see it. And once you hear it, work to get them to say more and be completely open and supporting. It doesn’t mean you have to change everything, but it’s a good point to work from. Also important is to make sure that if you’re writing a certain genre that the friend is into that type of story. Otherwise, you’re not going to get the criticism you need.

Anyway, I’ll make sure I get two posts in this month at the very least.   

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