First off, Zoe Winters is the shit. To be able to keep her calm as much as she does and still laugh about things... amazing to me.
Cover art: original artwork or graphic design?
Editing: Professional Editing, friends that have English majors, beta readers?
Layout: internal artwork, formatting, name displayed on every even numbered page and title on all the odd numbered ones?
Publishing: Traditional or Independent?
Good Evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my hell!
Whoever said writing the book was the hard part so very obviously lied their asses off. But yet again, this is just another blog littered with opinions of the writer behind it.
I will say that I am in no way saying this is writers as a whole, but for me personally, once I got off my rear end and actually started writing, the writing came very easily. I’ve listened to people say that writing the book will be the hardest thing you ever do, and not to sound cocky, so far it’s been the easiest.
Perhaps that’s because I’m indecisive when given too many choices, and let’s face it, in this world, choices are endless it seems. When it came to writing I knew everything that would happen, now it’s up to me to decide the intimate details of the look of the book, the appearance rather than the story, and I’m swimming in doubt.
Do I go with a simple indie site that does print on demand, to which the costs are minimal but which just about everything else falls back on me? Or do I go with another company that is a self publishing company, but they do all the work. I’m talking marketing (to an extent), printing, layouts, file formats, cover art, editing etc. This other company is a little more pricey, however from the people I already know who will be buying the book, I will make back what I will pay for publishing in no time.
Here is the thing… yes, this is totally my baby, and it has been a long time in the making, is it really so selfish that I want to be taken care of now?
I’m a realist and I know that this book is my first, and no I do not expect to have Hollywood beating down my door with movie deals. I know that I’m going to have to pay my dues just like everyone else, but I’m a writer. It’s what I do. I did my job and I know nothing of publishing and putting a book into print. Should I really be the most qualified one in charge of that? It would be like someone with no computer experience coming into my work and trying to tell me how to test server speed or pull data with SQL queries. I would smack them and tell them to sit down and shut up.
Well now that I’ve done rambled enough that I can sleep, I hope.
Friday, August 27, 2010
Friday, August 20, 2010
Looking Back... It all seems so easy now...
The Book is officially done.
Well okay, the writing part of it anyway…. Now comes the hard part.
There are very few people in my face-to-face circle that will ever understand the string of emotions that went into not only the writing of this book, but the finishing of it as well. All of you reading this are probably writers in some extent and you can possibly understand what I mean.
I had it all mapped out, how many chapters, how it would end, what my final line would be. I wrote the last chapter months ago just to have a point that I knew I needed to get to, just to keep me focused. But do you want to hear something funny? That last chapter isn’t the one that will be published as the last chapter of the book.
I sat down two weeks ago on a Saturday evening, determined to finish it that weekend. By my outline I had 6 chapters to write. Several hours later, after I’d promised my boyfriend two hours previous that I would be right to bed in just a ‘few more sentences’, I typed the last sentence of what was 3rd chapter left, per the outline. I sat there stunned for a few moments as I realized that was it. The story had been told and anything past that was just needless filler. Upon realizing this I burst into tears. A house full of sleeping children, pets and aforementioned boyfriend, I had to be quiet. 2:15 AM and I had just reached the biggest goal of my life, and there was no one to share it with.
Bring on TWITTER!
It was a blessing to be able to shout from the rooftops figuratively that I’d accomplished something. Whether or not this book ever makes it to print, I, Samantha Anderson, have written a book.
So now I sit and I look back over this process that in essence has been 6 years in the making… but not really. See I would write about the main characters, doing hobby writing in bits and pieces, never thinking more of it. Then I finally decided to write a book. Much procrastinating and what I thought would be at the very least a 2-3 year process of actually writing the book, only took just over 5 and a half months.
So needless to say I now have a big head and it seems like such a piece of cake. I’m sure by the time I start tackling the second book I will be right back to the fear and self-loathing that came about with the first one… who knows.
Well okay, the writing part of it anyway…. Now comes the hard part.
There are very few people in my face-to-face circle that will ever understand the string of emotions that went into not only the writing of this book, but the finishing of it as well. All of you reading this are probably writers in some extent and you can possibly understand what I mean.
I had it all mapped out, how many chapters, how it would end, what my final line would be. I wrote the last chapter months ago just to have a point that I knew I needed to get to, just to keep me focused. But do you want to hear something funny? That last chapter isn’t the one that will be published as the last chapter of the book.
I sat down two weeks ago on a Saturday evening, determined to finish it that weekend. By my outline I had 6 chapters to write. Several hours later, after I’d promised my boyfriend two hours previous that I would be right to bed in just a ‘few more sentences’, I typed the last sentence of what was 3rd chapter left, per the outline. I sat there stunned for a few moments as I realized that was it. The story had been told and anything past that was just needless filler. Upon realizing this I burst into tears. A house full of sleeping children, pets and aforementioned boyfriend, I had to be quiet. 2:15 AM and I had just reached the biggest goal of my life, and there was no one to share it with.
Bring on TWITTER!
It was a blessing to be able to shout from the rooftops figuratively that I’d accomplished something. Whether or not this book ever makes it to print, I, Samantha Anderson, have written a book.
So now I sit and I look back over this process that in essence has been 6 years in the making… but not really. See I would write about the main characters, doing hobby writing in bits and pieces, never thinking more of it. Then I finally decided to write a book. Much procrastinating and what I thought would be at the very least a 2-3 year process of actually writing the book, only took just over 5 and a half months.
So needless to say I now have a big head and it seems like such a piece of cake. I’m sure by the time I start tackling the second book I will be right back to the fear and self-loathing that came about with the first one… who knows.
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