In this week's episode, we conclude our November Writing Challenge with questions from beginner writers. We also check in with our transcriptionist and see how she did with the challenge.
Bonus! The transcriptionist's official Writing Playlist:
Now I’m in It-HAIM
Build Me Up From Bones- Sarah Jarosz
Outnumbered- Dermot Kennedy
Pain is Cold Water- Noah Kahan
Orpheus- Vincent Lima
Flight Risk- Tommy Lefroy
If I Don’t See You Again- Wyatt Flores
Brink of Love- Teddy Thompson
The Wire- Patrick Droney
Coming Home- Leon Bridges
More Love- Sara Bareilles
White Flag-JOSEPH
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00 Introduction and Writing Updates
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 228th of The Pulp Writer Show. My name is Jonathan Moeller. Today is November the 22nd, 2024, and today we are discussing the fourth and final part of our November Writing Challenge, which will answer questions from beginning writers. Before getting into that, we will have an update on my current writing and audiobook projects and our Question of the Week.
First up, Cloak of Illusion, as I mentioned last week, is now out. You can get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, Apple Books, Smashwords, and my Payhip Store. There was a bit of a processing glitch on Kobo that slowed it down this week, but now the book should be available at Kobo, so if you're a Kobo reader, you can buy it for your Kobo reader or read it in Kobo Plus without any difficulty.
Now that Cloak of Illusion is out (and selling very well, thank you all for that), my next project is Orc Hoard. That will be the fourth Rivah Half-Elven Thief book and I am 44,000 words into it (on chapter 10 of 18, which means I'm over halfway through). I very, very much want to have this book out before Christmas and I will be doing my best to make that happen. I am also about 2,000 words into Shield of Deception, which will be the fourth Shield War book (and hopefully will be my first book in 2025). The outline has 31 chapters, which means this will be the longest book I have tackled in a while, so I'm glad I'm getting kind of a head start on it as the secondary project while I work on Orc Hoard.
In audiobook news, as we mentioned last week, Shield of Conquest is out at all the audiobook stores (as excellently narrated by Brad Wills), and you can get that at your favorite audiobook store. In other good audiobook news, Cloak of Spears (as excellently narrated by Hollis McCarthy) is now out at all the audiobook stores and if you are looking for something to listen to on your long Thanksgiving drive or plane trip, I should mention that Cloak of Spears is about 12 hours long, so it will have you covered.
00:02:01: Question of the Week
So that's where I'm at with my current writing and audiobook projects and let's move on now to Question of the Week. Question of the Week is designed to inspire enjoyable discussions of interesting topics and this week's question ties directly into what we just talked about: what do you do for entertainment while traveling (whether by car, plane, train or otherwise- podcasts, audiobooks, portable games, that kind of thing)? No wrong answers, obviously. The inspiration for this question, as you might guess, was the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, which for many people was a great deal of travel and finding ways to amuse yourself while traveling.
So in answer to this question, Justin says: music- classical, rock, movie scores, and video game tunes. If I'm traveling, I'm almost always driving. Music helps relax and entertain without demanding my attention.
Brett says: I read- very often one of your books. You've published 100+ books, but because I've read them multiple times, I may be at 1,000 plus reads of your books. (I got to say Brett has a good taste here.) If I'm driving, I don't usually have any entertainment.
Surabhi says: I love reading while traveling. Kindle is a nice advantage, being easy to carry, and I usually have easy to read books to read for traveling, which of course is why I have so many of your books in my Kindle Library. They're simple yet enjoyable to read.
I got to say Kindle does make traveling with books a lot easier. I remember in the old days all I had was space for two books to bring on a trip, and so I was trying to pick out which two books to bring.
Venus says: Reading and geocaching.
Bonnie says: about all the traveling I've done recently is to work and back, usually local radio station and ‘80s music.
Juana says: so my dad drove like he was in NASCAR. Consequently, I read books, because I was not brave enough to watch death coming for us. The habit is still with me.
Darla says: riding in car listening to Sirius XM, looking at scenery or talking to the driver, driving by myself- listening to radio or CD music and singing. On an airplane, I read hard copy books or ebooks on my tablet, maybe try to sleep.
Cheryl says: read the Kindle, but mainly keep an eye on the road, even as a passenger. You never know what is going to jump out into a country highway here in Australia.
Ashley says: I listen to audiobooks while driving and that has made working overnights more bearable.
Adeline says: Apple's Books app on my phone has been my best friend while on the move for years-planes, trains, London's public transportation.
MW says: while driving, I listen to either music or a podcast. When I'm being a passenger, I love to read or draw. I'm always carrying my Kindle and my sketchbook everywhere, or I try to catch some sleep. I generally avoid conversing unless I'm actually traveling with someone, but even then I reserve some time for myself.
John says: audiobooks while driving, Kindle on my phone while flying or lounging around, physical books while camping, though I use the phone at night. I like to hang out in restaurants and pubs at the bar, reading books and talking to strangers. If there's a beach or river, occasionally fish and walk around either the city, beach, or trail.
Jenny says: all the books or podcasts/radio shows. BBC has a fun one I have on CD called Cabin Pressure. It's hilarious. And if I'm alone in the car, singing along at full volume with my singalong playlist.
Just a comment quick, I did listen to all of Cabin Pressure in 2022 and early 2023, and it is indeed hilarious and I recommend listening to it if you get the chance.
JT says: when I travel, I generally intend to read and thus take several books. Instead, I listen to YouTube videos, audiobooks, music, play games, or nap. It is rather frustrating.
Brandy says: I haven't been able to drive myself since 2010, so I generally read books, coordinate meds, snacks, and travel stops since my partner is diabetic and I am epileptic. I navigate, take pictures of interesting scenery for attempted art later, bug people through texts, and Facebook.
Barbara says: if I'm not driving, I usually just watch the traffic and scenery. Of course, depending on whom the driver is, I may just close my eyes so I don't panic. Unfortunately, I have to board an airplane in a couple of weeks for an out-of-state wedding. I'll distract myself from the agony of the flight by reading.
Morgan says: I don't travel much, but I'm a delivery driver for work and I do a lot of audiobooks and podcasts, especially tabletop RPG actual play podcasts.
And Rob says: usually talk to the driver/navigate. If it's by bus or train. I read.
For myself, whenever I travel, most of the time I'm the one who's doing the driving, which obviously narrows down the entertainment options. So when I travel any long distances, I'm usually listening to audio books. A quirk I have with that is that I prefer to listen to audiobooks of books I've already read. So if I need to tune out the audiobook and focus on heavy traffic for a while, which happens often, then I don't feel like I'm missing anything.
00:06:30 Main Topic of the Week: November Writing Challenge Week 4
Now it's onto our main topic, the fourth and final week of our November Writing Challenge. As you know, if you've listened to the previous three episodes, our November Writing Challenge is sort of a let's call a low stress way to build a writing habit and get into writing and do writing because the traditional way of getting into writing in November, NaNoWriMo, may be a bit overwhelming for some people.
If you feel like you're missing out when others are working on a bigger writing challenge this month, and if you want to start writing but feel overwhelmed, a smaller writing challenge for the absolute beginner- 300 words a day or some other small number of your choosing. The key is that it should be small and something you can manage daily. Follow along with our podcast transcriptionist who has never finished writing a book and feels overwhelmed at the idea of starting one. Follow her progress and see what advice I have for her and other beginner writers.
So with that in mind, let's start with our transcriptionist update for the fourth and final week of the challenge. She says, “I completed another week of the challenge. I averaged 355 words per day, taking an average of 14 minutes per day. It's getting easier as the challenge goes on this month. For my overall challenge, I averaged 363 words per day, taking an average of 14 minutes per day to finish my daily word count. I finished three chapters of a rough draft even in a month where a lot of things happened in real life that ordinarily would've kept me from trying. I plan to keep going with the challenge in December since it feels like a habit at this point.”
So as we can see, our transcriptionist had good results from the challenge and feels like she's gone a long way to build a consistent writing habit. As I've said before many times on the podcast, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the possible and the achievable. And if a 1,000 words or 1,600 words a day just seems overwhelming, 300 words a day might be far more achievable. So that might be something worth looking into.
So now onto the questions I've been sent about writing from beginning writers. So we're going to go through these questions one by one.
#1: Do you listen to music while you write? Yes, I do. My preferred genre is soundtracks from movies, TV shows, and computer games that I like. And my listening habits tend to be a bit eclectic and not transferable to other people because if I talk to other people about my age, they prefer listening to bands they remember from their teenage years or their twenties. It’s true for everyone, whatever the music you were listening to when you were a teenager and in your early twenties becomes the gold standard for music for the rest of your life, and nothing else can quite live into that. But for me, I prefer listening to soundtracks from movies, TV shows, and especially computer games I enjoy.
For example, yesterday I was working on chapters 9 and 10 of Orc Hoard, and during that time I listened to the main theme from Dragon Age: The Veilguard like 15 times in a row. Am I going to play Dragon Age: The Veilguard? No, I don't have time for another computer game of that size, but I like Han Zimmer's music and have many of his soundtracks and I like the main theme to Dragon Age: The Veilguard, so I listen to it like 15 times in a row.
#2: Our next question: is writing fun for you most of the time? I would say it is fun for me most of the time. It's always an expenditure of energy, however. I mean there's always this temptation in the back of your mind or in my mind that I could knock off for the day and play Starfield all day, but then the words wouldn't get done, the books wouldn't get done, and then the books wouldn't sell, so I would have no money to pay my bills. So that is pretty good motivation to write for me.
But we're talking about beginning writers here and I'd say it's important to recognize that writing should usually be fun, but it's not always going to be fun.
Creating anything, whether writing a book or writing a song or painting a picture or building a cabinet, whatever it is, is always going to take an expenditure of energy and it is a form of work. Even if it's not as difficult as compared to say digging ditches or doing open heart surgery, it is still a kind of work and therefore there are times when it will feel like work and you have to make yourself do it. If you absolutely hate writing and don't enjoy doing it at all, then by all means you should not be doing it. Go find something else to do that you enjoy and you'll be happier and healthier for it, but if you do enjoy writing most of the time, then that is probably a good place to be.
#3: Our next question: how do you know how much worldbuilding is too little or too much? That is a good question because worldbuilding is definitely one of those writing adjacent tasks that can really be something of a rabbit hole that writers go down and then don't actually get writing any writing done. And I would say the answer is simple. You need to do whatever the right amount of world building is just enough, which I realize is very glib and pat answer, but it's true. You just need to do just enough worldbuilding that the story will be interesting, so that there may be mysteries for the character to solve. Worldbuilding is a bigger deal in fantasy obviously, especially fantasy that deals entirely with secondary worlds where you've made up the entire world and the history and so forth.
What you want to do is avoid info dumping. I did an earlier episode about that where the joke was that if contemporary novels written the way that a fantasy novel is written, when someone went to an American airport for the first time and they encountered the security checkpoint, one of the characters would stop and deliver a three page history of the TSA and airplane security procedures in the United States over the last 30 years, which is what you want to avoid. You want to do just enough world building that the story moves forward. You don't want to get bogged down into it. And depending on the nature of your story, you may want to keep some of the world building secret in order to help create a mystery that will hold the reader's interest and drive the plot forward. For fantasy novels, Brandon Sanderson is notoriously good at this where he'll design an elaborate magic system and keep part of it concealed from the reader, and then the reveal about the magic system or the nature of the world is part of the climax of the book.
Even in contemporary novels like mysteries or thrillers, you can do that with world building since obviously mysteries and thrillers have their own fictional parts of the world that you construct as part of the world building and so you can have reveals about your fictional police department or fictional spy agency be part of the world building. So to sum up, just do enough world building that you can tell your story, but don't get bogged down in it.
#4: Our next question: what's something no one told you about writing but you wish they had? Well, that's a good question. I think the biggest thing that I wish someone had told me, but it turns out I probably would've had to learn it myself, is the extreme value of persistence plus time plus experience. I saw an interesting Tweet the other day that said that your twenties are basically like being a level one character in an RPG where you have no skills, no experience, and you need to spend all your time level grinding on boring and repetitive tasks in order to acquire the experience and skills that will carry you through your thirties, forties, fifties, and hopefully onward.
That struck me as very true because in my case, I started self-publishing when I was about 30 and I obviously spent all of my twenties essentially learning how to self-publish even though I didn't know that what is what I was doing at the time because self-publishing in this current form hadn't come along yet. So as I was teaching myself to write novels and with my technology blog, teaching myself about how to write for the internet and search engines and so forth, I didn't realize it at the time, but I was acquiring these skills that would be very valuable to me in my thirties and forties as I continue self-publishing. So to sum up that question, I would say what I wish I had been told and really understood in my twenties when I was starting out was the value of persistence over time. Because if you look at it, the Grand Canyon is essentially water exercising persistence over time.
#5: Our next question: should I tell people I'm writing a book? Well, that is a tricky question and I would say the answer boils down to it depends, which again is a pat and glib answer, but it really does depend on your personal circumstances and your relationship with your family and friends as well. For one thing, a lot of people say they're going to do things and never do them. In fact, I'd say a lot of people who announced very loudly that they're going to lose weight or learn to draw or learn to write a book or learn to program, never actually get very far or give up on it. So there's something to be said for remaining quiet and just doing things and letting the results speak for themselves once they can no longer be kept quiet.
I would also say it really does depend on your relationship with your family, friends, and spouse and/or life partner. If you have a spouse or life partner who is very supportive of your goals and is willing to encourage you, then it's a good idea to tell them. It's not a good idea to keep secrets in that kind of relationship. But if you suspect your spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, or life partner is going to belittle and mock you, it might be a good idea to keep this to yourself. For your family and friends, it might, again, it really depends on the individual personalities involved in your relationship with them. Some friend groups and families have this very bad habit of crab bucket syndrome or tall poppy syndrome where if someone tries to exceed the overall average of the group, they try to pull them back down to their level.
That's why you occasionally hear stories of someone who gives up drinking or loses a lot of weight ends up losing their friend group in their process because it turns out their friend group was based on excessive consumption of alcohol or excessive consumption of food and something like that might occur with your friends and family as well. So I would say, on balance, it probably would be best to keep it to yourself unless you think your friends, family, and a significant other would be encouraging and welcoming of your efforts in this endeavor. But as always, it depends and your mileage may vary.
#6: Our next question is a pretty interesting one that people ask frequently: how long until I can become a full-time author? Now this is again a very complicated question that boils down to your circumstances, and once again, the answer is it depends. Terry Brooks, when he wrote a writing advice book about 20 years ago, said that his editor, Lester del Rey, advised him not to go full-time until he had a year's salary in the bank, and that was 40 years ago.
Nowadays, I would say at the bare minimum of going full time is you want to have a year's full salary in the bank and you would want to be making at least 40% more than you would be from your day job. Why 40%? Because once you are self-employed, especially in the US, you are responsible for paying a lot of things that your employer usually does, such as a variety of taxes and insurance costs. Also it's a very good idea, especially in the US, to have some sort of savings for retirement such as a 401K or something similar because there's absolutely no guarantee Social Security is going to be around by the time you retire. So I would say those are the absolute bare minimum before you would even think about doing this is to have a year's salary in the bank and you are making 40% more than your day job on a consistent basis. Again, it might be something you don't want to consider doing at all and you would need to ask yourself, why do you want to be a full-time author? Would it be the prestige of it? Would it be the fact that you really hate your day job?
I have to say the reality of being a full-time author is often quite different than the fantasy people have of it, and that there have in fact been many authors who very successfully wrote while also maintaining day jobs. Anthony Trollope very famously wrote for two hours every morning before he went to work for the British Postal Service, and he did that his entire career and some of his books are remembered as classics of English literature to this day. Glenn Cook the fantasy author worked at a GM plant the entire time he was a writer because the benefits and pension were quite good. J.R.R. Tolkien was famously a professor of philology for his entire professional career and he wrote on the side and that became Lord of the Rings. So there's absolutely nothing wrong with keeping a full-time job and also writing on the side as you're comfortable doing so.
So some writers have gone full-time, especially since the indie revolution started, found they absolutely hated it and then went back to working a day job and working and writing on the side. And again, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. And for many people it is in fact a very good idea, especially if you have children, more than one child (children are expensive) and they need medical care or if you or another family member has a sort of chronic condition and it helps to have it covered by your employer's health insurance. So again, I hate to keep saying this, but it really does boil down to your personal circumstances and whether it's the right fit for you and your family and your financial situation or not.
For myself, I'll give a few examples for my own life here. For myself, I've been a full-time writer for over eight years now. I've been very fortunate to be able to do that. Thank you all for buying the books and helping me to do that. I think my personality is pretty well suited to that because I have absolutely no problems writing for most of the day the way when many writers would find uncomfortable, and I have no problem doing a 6,000 word days or higher on a regular basis. That said, it was not originally my plan to be a full-time writer. I had originally planned to keep my day job and write on the side, but due to family circumstances, I had to move to a different state. And at the time I thought I could look for a different job or I could give full-time writing a go and see what happens, and I gave full-time writing a go and it's worked out pretty well for the last eight years. Thank you. So for me, in my circumstances at the time and the time since going full-time made sense and was a good choice. But again, and I hate to keep saying it, but it really does depend on your personal circumstances, finances, and family situation.
#7: Now our last question, does piracy and AI mean that people won't be able to make money writing anymore? The answer to that is a big old no. Let's address those one at a time-first, piracy. Piracy has been around since the existence of the internet. It is older than the internet. Both J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Dickens had American publishers who ripped off their works and made bootleg copies of them that led to a bunch of lawsuits. So piracy is nothing new. The internet has just made it easier, and we know that the way to beat piracy is to make getting your books easier and more convenient than it would be to pirate them. There's always going to be a level of people who pirate stuff no matter what.
And to be frank, you should not consider that being lost sales because the people who pirate everything are going to pay for anything anyway, though I've had a few readers email from me from time to time saying that they did pirate my stuff and felt bad about it and eventually went on to become regular readers and paying customers. So there's really nothing you can do to stop piracy and it's kind of futile to try and fight it. I do know one indie writer who spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to shut down pirate sites, and it was, in my opinion, while that was a noble fight, it was a tremendous waste of money. So piracy, it’s best not to worry too much about it. It is one of those things like retail shrink (which is what the big box retailers call shoplifting) that is always going to be with us. The way as an indie author to fight that is to make your work as available as on many paying platforms as possible so that it's very easy for people to get it legitimately.
While AI is a big deal, I think it is somewhat overrated, and I also think that it has some structural problems that it's going to run into sooner or later. For one thing when it comes to writing, while you could use AI to churn out an entire novel, it would require significant editing to make it palatable, in which case you might as well just write it yourself. For another thing, AI is very, very expensive mainly not for the individual users, but for the companies that run them. And I'm not at this point entirely convinced that AI has long-term profitability. I wonder if it's another tech bubble, like the way the Metaverse was at the start of the 2020s when Facebook thought that the pandemic restrictions were going to be permanent and that society was going to become entirely remote. Subsequent events proved otherwise, and Facebook ended up temporarily losing about two thirds of its company value on its whole Metaverse bet.
Finally, this is a bit on the fluffier side, but novel writing’s art and art is essentially about human emotion and human connection. And no matter how smart the AI gets, that is something that would be very difficult for it to copy -one's own unique voice, one's own unique writing style. Those are something that only humans can do. And so I don't think AI is a long-term threat to fiction. It might be a long-term threat to things like sports writing and instant news articles, but less so for fiction. So to sum up, I don't think piracy and AI mean that people will no longer be able to make money from writing.
And now for the final segment of our writing challenge episode, Jon's Advice Corner. We'll start with editing tips, what to do once your rough draft is done.
So first, what should I do to edit the book once it's done. For myself, what I usually do is I do a first read through using track changes in Microsoft Word, chapter by chapter. And what I focus on then is reducing length, getting rid of sections that don't make sense, reducing excess words, tightening up sentences, making sure there are no continuity errors. I very often in this phase will split up chapters and do smaller chapters or rearrange scenes or move things around. Once that's done, I do a second edit where I essentially have my computer read the book aloud to me, and that's for typo checking. And sometimes you notice things when read aloud that you wouldn't have noticed on the page.
After that, I have a couple different people who check it for typos for me and then we publish. Then I do another typo check, and then any typos that I find after the publishing process, I upload and correct as I get them. So that's my process. People would say that you need to hire an editor, and I think for many people that's true, but for myself, after 157 books, I'm reasonably confident I know what I'm doing and so I am confident doing it myself, even as I recognize that's not good advice to give to younger writers.
Our next question, how do drafts work? The standard term is the first draft is just the first writing you do, getting all the writing down on the page. Depending on the writer, some people do second, third, and fourth drafts where depending on the writer, they might rewrite it entirely from scratch or just do editing on what they've already written. And then the final draft is one you are done with and comfortable with.
Next question, how do I know when I should stop editing? That's a tricky question because many beginning writers fall into the trap of endlessly polishing their book over and over and over rather than writing new things. I would say once you've done your edits, once you've had a couple of beta readers look at it, eventually just decide that it is done and that we are going to move on and write new things because no matter how well you write, it's never going to be quite as cool as it is in your head when you are imagining it. I mean, you can get close, but it's never going to be quite there. So I would say a quick rule of thumb is maybe do two drafts, have your beta readers go over it, and then that would be a good place to call it quits because the truth is you can endlessly repolish the same book over and over and over again, but that may not be the best use of your time.
Next editing question, how many beta readers should I have? It depends. I heard of one writer who has like 30 or 40 beta readers, and I think that might be a bit excessive, but if you can do three to five people whose opinions you trust and who aren't going to just say complete nonsense, that would probably be a good idea to do. I'd say around three to five (though as I mentioned, some writers can go much higher).
Once you're editing is done and you have a final draft, you decide if you want to self-publish it or look for an agent.
Here are things to avoid while publishing. For one thing, you really need to avoid predatory publishers. If you are approached by a publishing company that wants you to pay in any capacity to publish, it is probably a scam and you should avoid it. If you are self-publishing, you will need to come up with your own cover design anyway. But if you are approached by a publishing company that offers you a package where you pay $1,000 or $3,000 or even more, that is probably a scam and you won't get good value for your money. This is again, my opinion. I think new writers and in fact writers at all levels of experience would be better off self-publishing, but I would recommend avoiding agents and avoiding publicists.
Hiring a publicist for your book is just going to waste your money, and an agent will probably not get you anywhere these days. It really helps if you want to be traditionally published to be famous before you try to get traditionally published-like a former president of the United States. If a former president of the United States decides that he (or someday she) is going to write a book, the former president of the United States is going to have absolutely no trouble finding the book a publisher whatsoever.
If a music star or a movie star on the level of someone like Taylor Swift or Tom Cruise decides they want to write a book, they also will have no trouble finding a publisher. But for regular people like you and me, you are probably better off self-publishing and learning the skills to market and the various related publishing skills yourself. Things you would want to understand well before proceeding with these is finding a cover designer. Unless you are proficient with Photoshop and familiar with book covers, you should probably hire a cover designer, and this can be very affordable since many of the big cover designers offer premades where they just drop in your name and title for around $150 to $200 (though custom cover can require more). Hiring editors-this is again, something probably you should research and check out various writing groups on Facebook for recommendations.
You want someone who isn't that expensive. You'll want someone who comes with good client recommendations. Hiring narrators is also something to research well in advance. But it might be a little early with your first book because audiobooks are so expensive.
So that's it for our questions, and that is it for our November Writing Challenge. As a bonus, our transcriptionist included her official writing playlist, which I'm not going to read here, but you can see it on the show notes if you are curious. And I would include my writing playlist, but as I said, it's mostly random computer game, movie, and TV show soundtracks that I enjoyed.
So that is it for this week. Thank you for coming along for our November Writing Challenge. I hope you found it helpful and informative. Thank you for listening to The Pulp Writer Show. I hope you found the show useful. A reminder that you can listen to all the back episodes on https://thepulpwritershow.com. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave a review on your podcasting platform of choice. Stay safe and stay healthy and see you all next week.
