Tell me about your new book

Some days, an outside job filling pot holes sounds more appealing than an inside job filling plot holes. | Le Festival des Pot Holes…. (Photo credit: caribb)

I don’t know about you, but I sure haven’t been blogging much since the start of the new year. What I have been doing is plugging away at two novels in progress, both of which seem to grow farther from completion with each new plot hole I fill. It’s funny how that works, isn’t it?

You know, sometimes revising a novel is kinda like when you think you’re just going to quickly replace a bathtub in your 100-year-old house only to realize that by removing the old bathtub, you have now exposed a whole host of other problems you didn’t know existed, including rotten floor boards and termite ravished support beams. Yeah, revision can be a lot like remodeling a bathroom in a house that maybe should have been condemned a long time ago…

Needless to say, blogging hasn’t been as much on my mind lately as it once was.

How much does it cost to self-publish a novel?

CreateSpace (an Amazon company) is just one option for print-on-demand services.

I recently decided I would like to self-publish my current novel project and have been considering all of the hard work that will go into such an endeavor. For example, I am an excellent editor. However, if I want readers to spend their hard-earned money on my product, then I need to hire someone to come along behind me and clean up any errors I might miss. Who knows why it is easier to spot mistakes in someone else’s work than in your own, but it is. So an editor I must hire.

I will probably need to hire a few other people as well. I could probably figure out how to format my own book. But again, I want it done right. If I can find someone to do it properly, I will likely save my readers a great deal of irritation on the back end. One thing I have no confidence that I will ever be able to do is design a captivating book cover. The sad fact is, readers often judge books by their covers. Yes, I need to hire a professional book cover designer.

What do you know about Kickstarter?

Kickstarter (Photo credit: Scott Beale)

I stumbled upon Kickstarter quite some time ago and played around with the idea of launching a Kickstarter project to fund my writing. Unfortunately, I really didn’t have an actual project to work on at the time. It was more of a general wanting to settle into the writing life and write *something.* Not having an actual project to launch, I gave up the idea and moved on. But recently, my professor and fellow writer, Shana Deets, brought up to my class the idea of setting up Kickstarter projects for our current novels. So, I headed over to the website to give it another look.

Thinking about “Kickstarting” a new project

Image via Wikipedia

I am disgusted with my work today. Not the teaching, the teaching is going fine. But, my writing really sucks lately. Well, not even just lately, but for the past couple of years. I spend so much time just hacking it out, making just enough money to keep the bills paid, I don’t have any time to spare to write anything that I am truly passionate about. The bottom line is, I am unhappy with what I am doing lately, and it’s time to make a change.

I hate complainers. You want to know what crosses my mind when I hear people complain? “If you don’t like your life, do something to change it. Otherwise, shut the hell up about it because no one wants to hear it.”