Questions and Answers (September 2015)

This is the first Q&A Episode of NWP, and so I really just wanted to start off by answering questions I get asked pretty frequently.

These are my answers to things, so please, remember your mileage may vary and take all advice with a grain of salt.

 

 

The Four Questions I answer:

How do I overcome writer’s block?

How do I create a plot?

What advice do you have for aspiring authors?

Do you want to join a writing competition/write this book for me?

Episode 24 – Dictation for Authors

Dictation is an amazing tool. It can help an author get into the head of a character and up their word count. If you’re interested in details, check out Monica Leonelle’s Dictate Your Book.

For a look at the type of printout you can expect from Dragon (without using punctuation) check out the transcript made during this episode:

 

August was a good month for me in sales. I doubled my royalties from July. Writing… not so much.

I really struggled on finishing the first draft of the Space Opera and needed to sit down and spend some time figuring out why.

I also had my eyes opened to the need for a proofreader for my work, and am in the process of contacting proofreaders to try and build a relationship.

As for the monthly update, you can get the details after the break.

Wordcount for August: 71,998 Total Words

* Space Opera: 42,168 Words

* Essays: 4618

* Work: ~18,000

* Other: 7212

Sales Totals for the Month of August:

Book

Royalties

Sales

Downloads

TOTAL:

$58.91

33

168

Seven Keys Saga

Choices

$0.97

3

138

Fallout

$25.54

13

0

Summons

$13.41

7

0

Tragedy

$10.30

5

0

Purpose

$8.24

4

0

It Happened in Georgia

$0.35

1

0

Dinosaur Alien Invasion

$0.00

0

0

Alcohologist Chronicles

The Glaosheimr Situation

$0.00

0

0

“C” is for Apocalypse

$0.00

0

0

The Moenchurian Candidate

$0.00

0

0

Consensual Tentacles

$0.00

0

7

Last Call

$0.00

0

11

You Can’t Stay Here

$0.00

0

12

Complete Season One

$0.00

0

0

Dear Writer,

Why do you write?

This is the quintessential question every writer needs to ask themselves. In fact, if you don’t have an answer, I suggest coming up with one now. People are going to ask you. They will probably ask you this question as often as they ask you how you come up with ideas. Of course, no answer you give is going to actually going to provide an insight into the world of writing. It’s incredibly personal. The answer is different for each of us, but I think it is probably the most important question you can ask.

I can’t tell you why you write. I can’t give you a universal answer that will satisfy everyone who asks. I can only tell you why I write.

I write to survive.

In a way, I always have. Even when I was a little kid and would spend time staring off into space instead of paying attention in class. I was creating a world to deal with the issues inside my brain. Each quarter, I would come home from school with a report card filled with decent grades and a comment from my teachers saying something along the lines of “Matt is a good student, but he is easily distracted.”

Well, I am easily distracted.

My brain likes to spend time reliving the past or trying to invent a future. I find myself slipping away into endless fantasies. I rehash discussions and wish I could have said something a little different. I think of the small changes I could make to fix myself and the world.

Because, Writer, I am broken, and I write to be fixed.

I remember sitting in Mr. K’s creative writing class as a high school freshman. It was spring of 1998, and I was fourteen years old. I was younger than most of my classmates, a byproduct of starting school in a different state, and always felt alienated. All of my friends were older than me and I couldn’t always understand their world. I wasn’t just physically younger, I was an emotional late bloomer. I never felt like I fit in. I never felt connected.

Mr. K gave me a chance to change that, even if only on the page.

Our daily writing prompts allowed me to explore experiences and emotions I wasn’t able to handle on a conscious level. I was able to go places and live through things I didn’t fully understand and comprehend, and in experiencing them on the page, I was able to make them a part of me. I wrote stories to become part of the world. Without the awkward misgivings of my own voice standing in the way, those stories let me connect with others. I felt like I was part of something. I felt like I could bond with people. I felt human.

And, to the credit of the greatest English teacher of all time, I started to come out of my shell a bit. When we turned in final draft assignments, Mr. K would share some of the best with the class. I wasn’t always picked, but I was part of those standouts often enough other people in class began to ask me for advice on writing. Advice I was too broken and confused to give. It didn’t matter, I felt important. I felt remembered.

And I became addicted.

I spent the rest of my high school career trying to remember how much of an impact my writing could have. Of course, this led me to the one place every teenager in the late 90s eventually ended up, LiveJournal. I wrote down all of these harsh, irregular emotions in what is possibly my most prolific era as a writer. When you spend all of your time in egotistical navel gazing, words come easily. At the time, I even thought I was actually opening up and bleeding onto the page. Eventually, my little community of LJ friends grew, and I began to get regular comments and feedback.

Once again, I felt connected. I felt important. I felt remembered.

The addiction was sated.

When I dropped out of college in 2001 and moved 150 miles from home, I found myself once again isolated and alone.

This week marks the one-year anniversary of New Writer Podcast. The last year has been… something. The show has struggled to find its footing while I was going through very similar growing pains. It very nearly died, and I have to admit, so did my writing career. The reasons were not unrelated.

I had this idea in my head of what I wanted my writing career to be, and I had an idea in my head of what I wanted this show to be. Neither were panning out exactly the way I had dreamed. I got discouraged, and honestly, I got a little depressed. That isn’t really anything new for me. I just felt like I needed to take some time away. Fortunately for me, there are things in life that won’t let you give up on them and I started experimenting on new ways to get myself both back in the chair and in front of the microphone.

It probably turned out the be the best thing that ever could have happened, because just forcing myself to come up with 10-15 minutes of content every week made me really start examining why I wanted to do this show in the first place.

I came into New Writer Podcast with my original intention being to interview other writers on the same level I am, just getting started and having trouble finding and audience. It didn’t work, probably because I’m genuinely not good at reaching out to people and begging for them to come on the show. I’m also not good at corralling the guests that did agree to come on into actually appearing at any of the scheduled times. I had a lot of setbacks with the interview format that really just knocked the wind out of my sails. I lost consistency and drive.

When I finally just said, “Alright, I’ll just make content and keep making content,” I felt a shift in my entire podcasting experience. Things seemed to make more sense for me, and I felt better about them. I actually started doing things like figuring out my topics before I recorded. I got on a schedule. I’ve managed to keep it now for almost two months.

I opened up every author’s favorite software companion, Scrivener and began outlining episodes before I recorded them. To fill space, I put in the weekly update on my sales and writing. I kept going, and eventually I began to realize I enjoy doing this as much as I enjoy writing, blogging, and doodling. I might have to add “Podcaster” to my tagline soon.

What has solidified all of this as the right thing to be doing for me right now, though, was something I kept hearing pop up over and over in the Indie Author Atmosphere: Transparency.

That thing I was doing each week, giving out my sales data and sharing my word counts, it was something people needed.

It was something I needed. I needed to be able to say, “No, I’m still growing and doing okay. This isn’t about making millions instantly. It’s okay to spend time building everything up.”

I’m not a massive success as an author, yet. I’m not making a living. I’m not going to be able to sit here and tell you about how you can make your book sales soar. What I can do is tell you, “you’re not alone.”  And, I’ll do my best to find new solutions and tools for you along the way.

I’m dedicated to this in the long haul. Are you?

Since this is the one year anniversary, I wanted to give you guys a bit of a preview of the new format I’m going to have for Year 2. Basically, I’ve created a 4 episode rotation with a few slots open for wild cards. I’m hoping I can fill those slots with interviews, but if not, I’m sure I can find a good use of your time.

For starters, I’ve decided to move from doing a weekly update to doing a monthly update. Honestly, I love being transparent and sharing my sales and progress with you guys, but it really is counterproductive for me to check on my sales as often as I do, and I think it might be time for me to go nuclear on that. I think if I only let myself check on sales once per month, I’ll be a little happier.

The Weekly Update

Writing:

I’ve been seriously slacking this week. It isn’t a matter of motivation or dedication, either. I’ve just had some really crappy word count days. I’ve been getting up at butt crack early to write, which is what has kept me floating, but most night’s I’ve eaten dirt after work. I have managed to keep my 750 words streak going and am currently sitting at 45 days without missing.

Non-Fiction: 8040

Space Opera: 4901

Other: 6981

Total: 19,922

Book Sales:

I’m still having a surprisingly good August on sales. I sold 7 more books this week, meaning I’m still averaging more than a book every day. Of course, they don’t actually come in like that, but I’ll take it for what it is.

Something strange did happen this week, and my free downloads of Choices dropped pretty significantly in the last two days. I’m not sure if Amazon did something to the algorithms, but there is something worth investigating there if I ever get the motivation to do that.

I’ve reset my promotional goals, too. I don’t think I’m going to try to push on any of my books until I am where I want to be as a writer. I’ll talk more about that in a minute, but for now, here are the numbers:

Choices: 0 sales, 28 Downloads

Fallout: 5 Sales – $10.30

Summons: 2 Sales – $4.12

Tragedy: 0, 0

Purpose: 0,0

Alcohologist Chronicles: 8 free downloads

So, I am actually growing in sales numbers. It is incredibly slow, much slower than I would like, but I am growing. That’s all that really matters, right?

This week I’d like to take a little time to talk about some of my own limiting beliefs as a writer and how they have impacted my journey. Some of the things I’m going to touch on include non-fiction writing, essays, scripts, and writing for the joy of writing.

The Weekly Update

Writing

This week’s words have been slower than I’d like. I have continued my write every day streak, so that is good, but I haven’t made as much progress on my fiction as I’d like. There was substantially more writing this week for my day job, and that was part of why I decided to reconsider what I consider writing.

Word Count Breakdown

Day Job Writing – 6,983 Words

Blog Post Writing – 3,092 Words

Space Opera – 7,633 Words

Other – 5,632

Honestly, I shouldn’t be too upset with my word counts as long as I am moving forward, and I am. The big accomplishment this week is keeping that 38-day streak of writing every day going. I get another badge when I hit 100 days. Never underestimate the value of meaningless pixels as motivation.

Sales

By the standards of some authors, I had a horrible week, but by my own personal standards, I’m doing awesome. With the strange exception of yesterday when everything just kind of died for a day, I’ve had sales every day this week. I’ve sold a total of 11 books for the month. I’ve actually had more revenue this week than I did in all of May, so that feels pretty good. I’ve also noticed I’m starting to get a pretty consistent trickle of sales from the Amazon Germany store, and that always seems awesome.

I would attribute the uptake in sales to Book 5 launching, but so far the sales for 5 have been a little lack-luster.

Sales Breakdown

Choices – $0.97 3 Sales, 33 Free Giveaways

Fallout – $3.99 – 2 Sales

Summons – $2.06 – 1 Sale

Tragedy – $4.12 – 2 Sales

Purpose – $6.18 – 3 Sales

Alocoholgist Chronicles Freeruns – Total 20 Books download; 0 sales; 0 pages read

 

 

New Writer Podcast Episode 28 – Monthly Update for July

Monthly Update for July 2015

Sales:

* Choices: 186 Free Downloads, 2 Sales (Sorry Germany!) – $0.78

* Fallout: 5 Sales – $10.23

* Summons: 2 Sales – $4.87

* Tragedy: 3 Sales – $6.93

* It Happened in Georgia: 2 Sales – $0.70

* Dinosaur Alien Invasion: 1 Sale – $0.35

KDP Select Experiment: Alcohologist Chronicles

So far, episodes 1-4 have had free days:

* The Glaosheimr Situation: 12 Downloads

* “C” is for Apocalypse: 23 Downloads

* The Moenchurian Candidate: 11 Downloads

* Consensual Tentacles: 35 Downloads

KENP Read: 0

Writing:

* Space Opera: 27,108

* Seven Keys 5: ~35,000 (Final Draft)

* Blog Posts for MABrotherton.Com: 11,123

* Other Non-Fiction: 8,960

* All Other Writing: ~26,000

* Total Words: 112,674

Show Script

One of the big takeaways for me this month has been getting back into the habbit of writing every day. For a long time, I was only writing when I felt like it, and I wasn’t making very good progress on any of my projects. Now, I am actively trying to keep myself writing every single day.

One of the tools I’ve used to do that is 750Words.Com.

It wasn’t enough for me to have a 750 words account–I’ve had one for years–I had to actually sign up for one of the montly challenges and put my money where my mouth is.

After signing up for the montly challenge, I knew I couldn’t let myself down, and made an effort to get up earlier every morning so I could have the time I needed to bust out 750 words before I went to work. Once I started to get more comfortable with my dictation software this became more likely to be 2000-3000 words each morning.

Most of the words I used on my 750Words journey are not useable for anything, but I recently made the decision to focus on writing fiction in the morning and non-fiction at night.

I’ve only had a couple of days with that system because I’ve had quite a few friends come into town, and my mornings got chaotic. I still managed to do my 750words each morning, but not much else. Of course, I also write a substantial amount for my dayjob, which really bolstered my total monthly wordcount this month.

I’ve been talking a lot lately about how great Dragon Naturally Speaking is, and I really do want to encourage anyone who can afford to make that investment in using it. It does take a significant amount of time to set up, but it also helps me get a lot of words down on the screen very, very quickly. It let me write my “story beats” draft of the Space Opera (a little over 20,000 words) in about a week, and I’ve been regularly using it to write 2-3 essays a night.

Getting a good set of momentum going on my blog is a new heavy focus for me. I forgot how much I love blogging and how theraputic it can be.

When I was blogging before, I also let myself get into a trap of writing in bursts and then publishing as soon as everything was finished. I won’t be doing that anymore. My new schedule has me producing one blog post each Thursday morning, but I and writing a few essays each day. This gives me two benefits, one, I have a substantial amount of work already in the can and ready to go in the future, and I can pick the best from my stack and work on it to make sure it is perfect.

This is a big part of what I want to be doing as a writer. I have always wanted to make sure I was writing non-fiction as well as fiction, and I have harboured the not-so-secret desire to become a humorist since I started my b...

The Weekly Update:

Sales:

Sales have been steady, for me. I put the Alcohologist Chronicles into KDP Select and have set the books into a rotation of free days. Since we haven’t sold any of this book, it felt like a no-brainer. It hasn’t been a tremendous success or anything, but some people have downloaded the first three books, so we’ll see if that makes any kind of difference.

Now, I’m not telling you to go out and read Alcohologist Chronicles, unless you are either 100% certain you’re going to hell already, or you want to have a perfect excuse to hate me as a person.

Here’s the Numbers:

Free Downloads:

Choices – 24

“C” is for Apocalypse (Alcohologist Chronicles Episode 2) –  10

The Moenchurian Candidate (Alcohologist Chronicles Episode 3) –  7

Sales:

Fallout (Seven Keys Book 2) – $2.06

Summons (Seven Keys Book 3) – $2.06

Writing:

Total Words: 32,258

Words on the new book: 15,992

 

 

The Weekly Update:

Sales:

It’s been a little bit of a slow week. I’ve only had 58 free downloads, and $2.26 and sales.

All of my sales this week were on Amazon Germany, so that $2.26 might change with the Euro to USD exchange rate. Still, It marks a pretty big milestone for me. This is the first time the second book in my Seven Keys Saga series, Fallout, has been purchased in Germany.

Writing:

13,897 Words

This week is continuing to experiment with voice dictation. I’ve been using several different recording tools and experimenting with recording in my car on my way to and from work. So far, I’ve used my expensive Bluetooth headset, the microphone recorder on my phone, and my cheap digital recorder with several different microphones. So far, the best field results come from my ultra cheap recorder and even cheaper microphone.

Strangely, the best results don’t come from uploading the mp3 file or using the line-in from the recorder directly into Dragon, but putting the recorder down next to my Blue Snowball microphone and hitting play.

Of course, my desktop microphone is still the best tool for the job, but the other tools are getting better. Using my snowball, Dragon is probably around 90% accurate and getting better every day.

One Tip: Using dictation to transcribe handwritten notes to digital is a blessing. The punctuation is already there, you just have to remember to speak it. It is much, much faster than typing–especially if you’re like me, tiny handwriting and bad eyesight.

Planning for the Future:

This week, I read the Indie Author Survival Guide by Susan Kay Quinn (http://amzn.to/1Mhd2CO). I have to admit, I was putting this one off entirely because of ego. I thought I already knew the information in this book, and for the most part I did. That didn’t mean it wasn’t a good, useful resource for me, or that I was doing any of the suggestions.

Honestly, though, there isn’t a whole lot of information here you can’t find in other places–spread all over the internet. But it is spread all over the internet, often buried in podcasts, blog post comments, and obscure indie author forums. You have to go looking for it. This book puts it all in one place, backed up with anecdotal information about SKQ’s writing career.

Now, SKQ has been on a lot of podcasts lately to promote her second indie author guidebook, For Love or Money, out this week. I’m only about 25% of the way through that one, so I’ll tell you about it in a couple of weeks.

Taking Advice:

Since this podcast is trying to be a resource for other authors, I thought I’d put my money where my mouth is and stop letting my massive ego rule me. So, I’ve taken the action steps put forth by SKQ in Indie Author Survival Guide, building a Mission Statement, a Dream Lifestyle, a 5-Year Plan, and a production calendar.

Matt’s Mission Statement:

I am going to leverage my unique voice, humor, and insights to create entertaining and engaging products that make people reconsider their preconceptions. I’m going to invest time and money on improving my voice and ability to create compelling written and audio content. I will then use those creative endeavors to provide a path to economic self-reliance.

So what is that mean?

“Leveraging my unique voice, humor, and insights to create entertaining and engaging products” means I’m going to be myself

“To make people reconsider their preconceptions” means actively seeking out stubborn belief and examining the world from the other side. Mostly because that unique voice thing goes back to me being born to be a trol...