Archive for category: Writing

Now is the best time to be a writer, ever.

It’s not because the internet, Amazon and Kindle publishing, or ebooks has made it so easy to publish a book. It’s because more people can read than ever before. (UN statistics).

Recently Joanna Penn on her Sep 10^th, 2017 podcast interviewed author Micheal Ridpath. He said that he made most of his money on foreign translations. He’s a UK author and has traditional publishing contracts for the UK, United States, and Australia.

It is still hard to get a book into overseas book stores. The publishers overseas have a strangle hold on the book distribution their country. This is no longer the case in the United States. So even if you hire a translator it is hard to get the translated book into books stores in the country of that language. I have faith that Amazon will not let that last much longer. Besides there are many people all over the world that speak and read English. Foreign publishers will pick up books in English for translation and sells in their country, but it often takes an agent.

If your going to write a book, now is the time to do it. There are more readers than ever before.

The paranoid among you may be thinking why would I, an author, give away the secrets to writing a novel to you for free. If the secrets were any good you could use them to write a book and take away my readers.

1. Authors don’t own readers.

2. Voracious readers are always looking for another book to read. We can both sell our books to the same reader.

Now let’s look at the math of writing a book. OK, that just turned off two thirds of the audience. (Your all sitting there going I’m a writer not a math teacher)

Surveys show that 96 % of people want to write a book. An often quoted statistic.

Only 3 % of those who start a book finish it. (from Jyotsna Ramachandran of the HappySelfPublishing.com web site).

Of that 3 % only 20 % publish the book. So out of a 1000 people I talk to, who go on to start a book only 3 % or 30 writers will finish the book.

Of the 30 that finish the book only 6 will publish the book. That’s point 6 % (0.6 %) of people that start a book publish it.

If you want to join the 1% go publish a book.

How many people who want to write a book, but never even start, I haven’t found that information.

If you finish your book, don’t give up. Get a professional to edit it and then publish your book. That’s an edit from a real professional, not a relative, teacher, or just anyone off the net. Research editors extensively before committing to one. There are many scams out there.

More bad news. Only a minuscule number of first time authors sell over 100 copies of their book.

Again, don’t give up. Many authors (published writers) I’ve talked to said that you have to write 5 books before you start to produce professional level books. I’ve lost count of the number of book signing I’ve gone to where the author has said that they have 1, 3, 5 or more books in a drawer that will never see the light of day. Those are usually the first books they wrote.

You may say that the author of Wool, Hugh Howey did it. Sold millions of his first book. Well Hugh had an old style publishing contract before he started writing ebooks. He wrote 7 books before Wool.

You say J. K. Rowling did it. Yes she did, but she spent 5 years pre-writing (I consider that a type of outlining) and doing character back grounds (in long hand) before finishing the first Harry Potter book. I think that taking a year to finish a book is about right for a writer with a child and a job.

Ms. Rowling spent five years working to become a better writer. That’s studying, reading, working at her craft.

5 years at 8 hours a day is about 10,000 hours. 10,000 hours to become an expert at something, that sound familiar. (See Malcolm Gladwells book Outliers).

Now go prove me wrong and write a best selling first book.

Stay strong, write on. Professor Hyram Voltage

If it gets you in the mood to write use accessories. You don’t need accessories, but anything that helps you write go for it.

You can write with nothing more than a pencil or pen handed out by your local insurance agent or you scarfed at a writers convention and on a brown paper trash bag. Better yet you can write on a computer at the local library and save stuff on a free Drop Box or Evernote account.

More writers should write at libraries. It’s quiet and there’s plenty of reference material at hand. The big draw back is they won’t let you bring coffee into the library.

A fountain pen. What’s more 1880s than a fountain pen? What’s more Steampunk than to sign your book than with a fountain pen? I use a Pilot brand Metropolitain fountain pen with a fine or medium nib. Well made, you can get pre-filled ink cartridges or a fountain pen converter to load ink from a bottle. The pen cost $11.00 to &20.00. See the YouTube videos by the Goullet Pen company. Mine is a Black Plain pen although I liked the Gold Zig-Zang one. I thought a gold colored outside was too flamboyant for a serious writer like I am. Checkout The Goulet Pen company and give Mr. Goulet a call and ask him what he thinks is the most steampunk pen he sells.

I use Noodler’s No Feather ink. Feather is where the ink bleeds away form the line you drew. The Pilot ink is good too. If you buy enough ink from Noodler’s you get a free pen, but a 4.5 ounce bottle will last a long (years and years) time.

The one draw back with the Metropolitain fountain pen is that you can not see how much ink you have left. Other pens have clear windows or clear bodies that show how much ink is left. They don’t look steam punk.

Another steampunk writing accessories is a roll top desk. I just got one. Get a solid wood one, not one made from particle board. Do I need a roll top desk? NO. But it sets the mood for writing steampunk and I wanted one since I read a story that featured one in Analog Science Fiction magazine when I was in high school.

Surrounded by real, dark stained, oak. This is better than the old door held up by two, two drawer file cabinets it replaces. I typed on that lash-up for years and years. This desk has class. The desk is not new and I saw a blog where that author also got a roll top desk too. Must be something going around.

If it helps you write and doesn’t hurt anyone then do it.

Stray strong, write on.      Professor Hyram Voltage

My book was accepted into the contest. That can mean one of two things.

1. That my book is better than I thought.
2. The contest will accept anything that has a cover and words underneath. Is my insecurity showing? Yes. There will always be authors out there that are better than me. I’m competing against everyone. I don’t expect to win. But I entered and I was accepted. Which will frost some people that think my writing is terrible. Which may be true, but the people running the contest have not offered to sell me anything yet. They haven’t offered a “place higher in the contest by taking this course” promo. And it didn’t cost me anything to get into the contest.Could the book be better? Yes, but I don’t know how to make it better yet. I’m working on it. I will be working on becoming a better writer for the rest of my life. And you should be too, or I’ll past you.I sent my second book manuscript off to two Beta readers. I only need four more Beta Readers, at least that is what an author I respect said. I will read your manuscripts for Beta Reads of mine, if your willing to Beta Read reply via email at Professor@professorvoltage.com.

   This is something I have learned and is a step to make my second book better than the first. If it works out I will send the first book to these Beta Readers. Hey, I hadn’t heard of Beta Readers when I wrote my first book. Of course after I fix up the first book I will have to send it off to be edited again. That’s expensive. I hope to have better luck the second time I work with an editor.

   Stay Strong, Write On.   Confused, insecure, afraid. Professor Hyram Voltage

Sung to the tune of Draggin’ the Line, Sewer line that is (sung to the tune of the theme song of the Beverly Hillbillies).

Fourteen feet doesn’t sound that long. It is if you have to crawl under a house, a long way under the house, and dig out fourteen feet of four inch, cast iron sewer line with a short handled shovel.

Things I do on my day off. It took, two of us, three days to finish the job. That cast iron pipe is heavy. Had to cut it into three pieces to drag it out from under the house.

It may have been dry under the house, but it was dirty. Had to wash several loads of clothes after we were done.

The plastic pipe we replaced the cast iron with was much lighter. Gluing is much easier than hammering lead between the joints of cast iron pipe like they did 60 years ago when they put the cast iron pipe in. It was a drain line so there was no risk of lead poisoning.

In a couple of places the cast iron pipe had rotted into a cast iron trough.

Stay strong, write on.    Professor Hyram Voltage

I like the editor I used the last time, but. There’s always a but. It was a sterile relationship. The editor worked for a company. There was not much back and forth. I don’t even know the editor’s name or if I was dealing with a man or a woman.

I got a lot of good inputs from the editor. I think the editor did a good job, but I don’t know who it was.

I’m looking for an editor that will do a lot of work. I’m not good with the English language and I need a lot of help. I also want re-edits, edits of what I corrected, at a reduced rate. Hey the editor has looked at it already. I can make more mistakes fixing something than were there in the first place. I don’t do this on purpose.

I was lucky to get the last editor I got. It was a lot of work to find him/her. During this busy time of year it’s hard to find time to write let alone search for an editor.

Stray strong, Write On. Professor Hyram Voltage