Writing Archives - Page 13 of 16 - Writing As A Second Career

Choosing A Writing Conference

If you’re working full time (or more than full time) at another profession while writing, it can be a tough call to devote your a week off to a writing conference. It is worth it, though, if you can enjoy the time away from your usual work, learn about writing craft or business, and meet writers and other people who may help your writing journey.

If you write suspense, mysteries, or thrillers, one that should be at the top of your list is the annual ThrillerFest in New York.

It meets three important criteria for a writing conference:

Good Location (as in one you’d want to visit if you were taking a “real” vacation)
Quality Content
Helpful and Friendly People

Location – New York

First–New York.

I love visiting the city. There is energy in the air. There are wonderful wine and cheese bars. There are books everywhere. Once I passed a psychology institute on the way to a restaurant, and there was a cardboard box of free books left there for any passers-by to take.

I also always love returning home, as it makes Chicago’s downsides–traffic, air quality, crowds–seem so very livable by comparison. (Sorry, NY.)

The museums are fantastic. This time I visited The Brooklyn museum, which had a Georgia O’Keefe exhibit and an exhibit that was focused on the color blue. In that one, I learned that Nemesis was a goddess who punished people whose good luck made them overconfident. Who knew.

Content In Three Parts

ThrillerFest has three parts plus. There is CraftFest, where you can learn in smaller sessions about specific writing issues. For instance, I attended mystery author Hallie Ephron’s talk on the Web of Character. (More on that in a future article.)

Next is Pitchfest, where you can pitch your novel to agents and editors. This part starts with a talk the night before on preparing your pitch, which is mainly getting it down to about 25 words. The next day in a large conference room you have a chance to practice your pitch on established authors and agents and get feedback.

After that, you find the agents and editors you want to pitch in three or four smaller rooms by alphabetical order. You wait in line (usually 1-3 people ahead of you) to sit at a small table and tell them about your book.

To a person, I found them helpful to talk with, and the questions they asked about the work aided me not only in getting across why I thought they might be interested but in further refining my plot. (I was pitching my mystery novel in progress.)

Pitchfest also included the No Pitch Zone.

For two hours, several agents who were not accepting pitches were available to look over query letters and first pages. The agent I talked with struck two lines out of my page one that confused her.

That in itself was invaluable. The lines made perfect sense to me. But if she was lost, other readers will be too, and the last thing I want is for a reader to say Huh? on the second paragraph and walk away. (I hope my beta readers would have noticed the same line, but since they’ll be looking at the novel as a whole, they might not focus so specifically one page.)

Finally, the actual ThrillerFest portion includes multiple panels of well-known authors and speakers. Topics are as diverse as hostage negotiation (with an FBI negotiator), women’s roles in thrillers, writing gruesome horror, and marketing. (See this year’s schedule here.)

The fest ends with a dinner where the 2017 award winners are announced.

People

Volunteers, presenters, agents, coordinators–all were helpful and fun to talk with. The agents must get weary by the end of the second hour, yet each one smiled and took time to talk with me as if I were the first person rather than the fiftieth.

Attendees also were friendly.

It was easy to introduce myself to others and start chatting. This seems like it ought to be a given. After all, we’re all there because we love to write. But I’ve been to conferences where I said hello to someone in line and received a blank stare in response, or where I went to the evening dinner and all my attempts at conversation fell flat. At ThrillerFest, everyone acted happy to meet someone new.

The presenters, too, were accessible and willing to answer questions after sessions. I got good advice on where to seek an agent regarding trying to turn The Awakening series into a video series (such as on Netflix or through the other companies entering that space).

If you decide to attend next year, I recommend volunteering. While you don’t get a discount on the price, it’s a great way to meet people, all of whom I found to be friendly and fun. It also gives you the chance to hear inside stories from people who sold their books through contacts made at the conference.

In the coming weeks, look for posts on what I learned about pitching and in the craft sessions.

Until Friday–

Best,

L.M. Lilly

Books That Become Movies

Every novelist dreams of having a book made into a movie. The article 21 Thriller Novels That Had Adaptation Deals Before Publication, which appears on BookBub, describes novels that garnered film deals before the books were published. The 21 thrillers include recently-released, soon-to-be-released, and classic films (such as Jaws).

Reading each plot description can help you spot what draws readers and viewers in so you can use it in your own book descriptions, whether you’re writing sales copy or query letters.

Also, I found that how I reacted –as in either “that’s my type of book” or “not for me”–to certain words and phrases showed me which ones signal what type of thriller. (I ruled out the spy thriller until I saw Jennifer Lawrence will be starring it. I’ll pretty much watch anything she’s in.)

Finally, as a whole this list provides a good overview of what types of concepts and characters intrigue Hollywood.

https://media.bookbub.com/blog/2017/07/10/book-to-movie-thrillers-that-had-deals-before-publication/

Until Sunday, when I’ll talk about attending the Craftfest part of Thrillerfest in New York and pitching to agents.

Best,

L.M. Lilly

Set A Single Goal (And Stop Managing Your Time)

Time management gives me the chills.

When I’d been a lawyer for about three years, the large law firm where I worked sent an email about a time management seminar. A slow week for me was working 55 hours, and I was writing a novel on the side.

I saw the email and literally thought, “I don’t have time.”

Plus, the description reminded me of something I read once about stress management seminars. Most people attend not to lessen stress but to learn to take on more of it. This seminar sounded like a way for my firm to teach me to cram more into my schedule.

No thanks.

But can you cram in less and get more done?

The best way I’ve found to do that is to set a single overarching goal for the year.

The Single Goal

Choosing one major goal for the year creates time.

Most articles and advice about goals stresses ensuring that by a certain time or after certain steps, you’ll achieve something measurable. As an example, simply stating that my goal is writing a novel, particularly if I tell other people and add a time frame (such as “within a year”), makes it more likely I’ll do it.

But that’s only part of the benefit. An overarching goal helps you make the best use of the limited time you have and, more important, causes you to spend less time on tasks that won’t get you where you want to be and don’t add to your enjoyment of life.

Without goals, we can check things off To Do lists all day and feel like we’re accomplishing a lot without achieving what we truly want in life.

How Making One Decision Creates Time

No one schedules time to stare at a blank screen or an overflowing To Do list feeling overwhelmed. It just happens, and it not only takes up time, it undermines us. We feel less able to get things done and less sure we’ll reach our goals.

That in turn takes more time as we mentally reevaluate whether we set the right goal, whether we have time for this whole writing thing anyway, and whether we’d be happier focusing on something else.

Choosing a single main goal for the year eliminates those countless minutes (which eventually add up to hours).

Let’s say your overarching goal for the year is to finish one novel. That doesn’t mean you can’t write anything else. But your time split for writing will be 80/20 or 90/10 in favor of the novel. Not a short story or article or blog post. You do those things if you feel good about your progress on your novel for the week or month, but the novel comes first.

In other words, if you only have 20 minutes, you know what you’re working on.

Or let’s say you have books published and your main goal is to increase your earnings. You’ll still need to write, but you will need to devote significant time to business pursuits. You’ll probably do a 50/50 split between writing and business.

That’s where I am this year. My overarching goal is to earn $50,000 in gross income from royalties by the end of the year, which is a significant increase for me. (I wrote it on this index card to remind me.) To pursue this, I’m splitting my time equally between writing and business.

Breaking It Down

You’ll still need to know what to do with each small segment of time, especially if you have many other responsibilities and are likely to have only short bursts of time to write.

The single goal gives you the framework. Once you set it, break it down.

For the novel example, if you’re starting from zero, depending on your own writing process the pieces might be:

Characters
Plot/Outline
Scenes
Organizing Scenes Into Chapters
Revisions Of Plot
Revisions Of Dialogue
Copyediting

Now if you have 15 minutes, you can start on the next task on the list. In 15 minutes, you can write a few paragraphs or sketch out bullet points about a character (try my free Character Creation Tip Sheet for some questions to ask yourself). You can figure out one major plot point. If you’re standing in line for groceries, you can imagine a single scene in your mind so that when you get the next 15 minutes you can start writing it.

For me, if I have 15 minutes, I might watch a section of the Ads For Authors course I’m taking or listen to 15 minutes of a marketing podcast or research the latest book promotion sites by running a quick Google search.

Focus

The single goal also ensures you focus on what matters. If you’re like me and you like goal setting and lists (I love lists), you’ll probably set other goals for the year or month, and that’s good. You can see the top of my monthly goal sheet in the photo below the index card.

Your single major goal will help you decide if those other goals make sense. It also will aid you in knowing which to omit if you’ve taken on too much and which to push toward regardless.

On a task level, the single goal keeps you on track. If I’m tempted to check my KDP Dashboard (which shows book sales updated periodically) for the third time in a day, I look at my index card and ask myself if doing so will help me increase my royalties to $50,000.

The answer, all but perhaps once a week to see how different promotional efforts or ads worked, is No. Same for randomly checking Twitter.

All of the above isn’t to say that you can’t have any time where you are relaxing and not being productive in a work sense, where you’re spending time with your family or friends or reading a book. We all need that or what’s the point of life?

The single goal helps you focus and use all your time well, including short bursts of it, giving you more free blocks of time for other parts of life.

Rather than time being an unruly employee to manage or an enemy to overcome, it becomes your ally.

And who doesn’t need more allies?

Until next week—

Best,

L.M. Lilly

Scrivener (Tools of the Writing Trade No. 1)

Recently I tried Scrivener, a new software (at least new to me) for writing.

I started word processing when I worked during college. I temped at different companies, and I learned many word processing programs. (Word Star, anyone? Yes, that long ago.)

Of them all, Microsoft Word emerged as the winner in the business and legal worlds.

In my view, Word was clearly not the best, but because I used it for legal work, I used it for my other writing, too. No sense in confusing my finger/brain connections with multiple programs.

Now, though, once again you can choose from many other options.

In this post, I’ll talk about Scrivener.

Scrivener – Software For Writers

Over the last year, I kept hearing about Scrivener. In blog posts and podcasts, writers raved about it having been created specifically for writers and about its organizational features.

After using it for a 30-day trial, I bought it for Mac for about $40. I mostly used it to create blog posts, but kept writing novels in Word.

Recently, though, I started writing a non-fiction book (on creating characters) in Scrivener. I discovered I love the program.

Here’s why:

Non-sequential writing

I tend to write novels in order. I begin with a rough outline of five plot points, then I write from point to point. When I rewrite, I mostly do that in order as well, or I’m searching for specific character names or scenes.

Word works fairly well for that, though once the document gets past 50,000 words, I sometimes see certain functions (such as Spell Check) failing.

With non-fiction, it’s not always obvious what topics should come first. My topics on character creation include, among many others, how the character handles confrontation, how the character defines family and who belongs to it, personality traits, and impressions others have of the character.

Some topics lend themselves to entire chapters, others to a paragraph. I don’t always know which until I start writing.

With Scrivener, I can open a folder, label it by a topic name, and start writing, then create another folder and another. The names appear on the left, so I can easily see the topics.

I can also easily rearrange them with a click and drag. That, for me, is the best feature.

What you’ll see

Scrivener offers display options Word doesn’t, including a corkboard with index cards. With a click of a button, I can see my topics as if they were pinned to the corkboard.

I can rearrange them on the corkboard, too, again by clicking and dragging.

Organization

The folders are the equivalent of chapters. You can write directly in the folder. You can also create sub-sections under the chapters. It’s easy to switch a topic from a folder to a sub-section or to rearrange within a folder.

This is wonderful if you hit a point where you realize that a topic you thought you could cover in a couple sentences actually requires a few pages and its own chapter.

Research and notes

The right side of the screen allows you to enter all kinds of information, such as research or notes, that won’t appear in the manuscript but will be easy to access.

Referring to other documents

Scrivener allows splitting the screen.

You can view two different documents, such as an outline and the manuscript. Or you can view two different parts of the same document. This is particularly nice if you need to edit a section that may be repetitive or that refers to a previous or later chapter.

30-day trial period

You can download a 30-day trial version of Scrivener. The best part of that is that, at least when I downloaded it, that meant 30 days of use.

So if I worked on a manuscript for two days, then had a week where my law practice took up all my time, I’d only used two days of the trial, not nine.

Affordability

As I write this, Scrivener costs between $35 and $45 (a bit more if you want it for Mac and PC both).

The Downsides Of Scrivener

Scrivener does have some challenges.

For one thing, you will definitely want to use the tutorial. At least, I definitely did. While you can learn a lot by playing with different features, I don’t find the icons or the menus particularly intuitive.

In fact, I struggled a lot with certain features. Once I did the tutorials, they seemed easy.

Also, while Scrivener is available for Mac and PC, I’ve heard that it’s not quite as amazing for PC. It’s a good enough program that if you have a PC, though, I still encourage you to try it out. My guess is that it’s still much better than Word for long documents.

Have you tried Scrivener? If so, please share you experiences in the comments.

Until Friday–

Best,

L.M. Lilly

P.S. For software that will convert your files into ebook and print formats for publishing, see Using Vellum To Create eBooks And Paperbacks.

Learning About Point Of View From Donald Trump And James Comey

This past Thursday, during time I’d scheduled to work on my current novel The Worried Man, I found myself glued to the TV instead. I watched former FBI Director Comey testify about conversations with the President.

When the testimony was done, I flipped between commentators on different channels, then listened to the President’s personal lawyer give a rebuttal.

I felt like a slacker until it hit me—I might not be writing, but I was learning a lot about point of view.

Who Has The Most At Stake

A good rule of thumb in fiction is to write from the point of view of the character with the most at stake.

If, for example, an employee is called into the boss’ office on Friday at 5 PM to talk about an issue that might get her fired, odds are she has more at stake than the boss.

But it’s all a question of perspective.

If the boss is being scrutinized by her supervisor for unfair hiring and firing practices, she may have a lot on the line too.

The stakes of a story or a scene rest on a lot of factors. Going back to the hearing I watched, since we can’t know for certain what the facts are in the real life theater of United States politics, let’s imagine we’re writing a novel about a fictional President Grump and former FBI Director Spumy.

If President Grump really did or said something that could get him impeached, that’s high stakes for him. That would make watching the Spumy testimony through his eyes compelling.

Grump would anticipate every question, sweat over every answer, and worry about what words would come out of Spumy’s mouth next.

Spumy, on the other hand, has already been fired. That suggests that the stakes for him are pretty low. Using that set up, writing from Grump’s point of view is a no-brainer.

But it’s not hard to shift the scenario if you as the writer want to do that. If our fictional FBI Director Spumy is lying, he could be exposed as a fraud or eventually convicted of perjury.

To add to the imbalance, let’s say our fictional president is a lot like Jed Bartlet of the West Wing. Our Bartlet-like Grump would have acted in the best interests of the country at all times, and his confidence that nothing bad would come to light would be well founded. He wouldn’t sweat through the testimony.

In that scenario, Spumy’s point of view is hands down more interesting to the reader because he’s the one with the most at stake.

When Everyone’s Risking Something

The best novels–and scenes–are when both the protagonist and antagonist have a lot at stake.

In our example, let’s say Spumy is telling the truth as he sees it. He can still be stressed. His reputation is on the line.

To further raise the stakes, you could create a fictional former FBI director who feels strongly about being seen as truthful and reliable and, to up it even more, who dislikes the spotlight. (This is fiction, remember.)

All of the above would make testifying nerve racking for Spumy.

Similarly, even if Grump did nothing wrong but the way he conducts himself makes everyone think he did, he could still be in hot water. After all, it’s often the appearance of a cover up, not a bad act itself, that gets a politician in trouble.

So our fictional president might believe he did everything right but still worry about impeachment and watch the testimony with his phone on speaker with a direct line to his lawyer. (Perhaps with his hands cuffed behind his back to keep him away from his Twitter account.)

With these fictional characters, I’d write the scene first from one point of view and then the other. The contrast between how the two men see the same event and the same testimony would draw the reader in and make it fascinating to read the same scene twice.

Who’s the hero and who’s the villain? That’s for the reader to decide.

Until Friday-

Best,

L.M. Lilly

Children’s Books: To Self–Publish Or Not To Self-Publish?

Recently a friend asked me to review a children’s book she’d written and advise her whether to seek an agent or traditional publisher or to publish it herself. I don’t write children’s fiction myself, so I researched. I’m passing on what I learned for those of you who write for children or plan to do so.

To start with, I did try some children’s writing right after I graduated from college. For years I belonged to the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. It remains a wonderful resource. The SCBWI hosts local and national events, has regional chapters, and offers information and articles through its website.

This 2016 article from Writer’s Digest lists agents looking for children’s books with directions on submitting. It’s a year old, so you’ll want to check each of agent’s website to see if the directions are still accurate, but it’s a great way to get started if you’d like to find an agent.

Here is an article on writing query letters to agents or editors regarding children’s books. (The article provides a good overview on queries for any writer.)

Finally, if you think you might want to get an illustrator, or if you’ve illustrated your own book, this article on self-publishing children’s books from Huffington Post provides useful information.

Until Sunday, when I’ll be writing about point of view as inspired by real life events between the current president of the United States and the former FBI director—

Best,

L.M. Lilly

P.S. If you’re in the Chicago area tomorrow (6/10/17), check out the Printers Row Lit Fest. You can find me and my books under the Chicago Writers Association tent on Dearborn Street just north of Polk Street in Chicago. There are tons of writers, books, and events, including many for children, throughout Saturday and on Sunday as well.

When Working Harder Might Not Be The Answer (Part 1)

Setting specific goals makes it more likely they’ll be achieved, whether the goal is finishing a novel, improving relationship skills, or taking a trip around the world. That’s why I’m big on setting goals. To get to them, I use lists and schedules. (I like lists. I’m one of those people who adds a completed unscheduled task onto a list just so I can cross it off.)

What’s hard for me is how closely to stick to the lists and plans when the unexpected occurs, as it always does.

In the past, my answer was to say “I will work harder,” much like one of the animals in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. (Was it the horse? Maybe the mule, not that I want to compare myself to a mule.) I’d put my head down, cancel every non-work activity, and stick with it until I crossed off every item on the list and met every deadline.

That approach worked well in a lot of ways for decades. It’s why I was able to finish law school while working full time, write novels while billing the required hours at a large law firm, and later publish my first three novels while starting and running my own law practive.

The Illumination, Book 4 in The Awakening Series

It’s also part of why I got burnt out and often felt stressed and frustrated despite that I was doing work, both at writing and law, that I really enjoyed. Even when I was the one setting the deadlines, I resented working late every night and every weekend.

I was my own boss, but I felt as if my life were not my own.

My fear about being more flexible, though, was that if I deviated too much (okay, at all) from the list or schedule I’d eventually become someone who never finished anything and instead made excuses.

Recently, with the launch of my latest book, I ran up against this same challenge, though I’d tried hard to avoid it. One of my major goals this year was to release The Illumination—the fourth and last book in my Awakening supernatural thriller series. When I set the release date of May 15, 2017, I tried to plan well. I built in time for other efforts, as I still wear a lot of hats. I teach a writing and research class at my law school, I am a graduate-student-at-large at University of Chicago—which means I can take classes that interest me for credit though I am not pursuing a degree—and I still have a limited law practice.

My U of C class ended in March. My teaching semester ended in April. My law practice is down to a small number of cases.

May 15 should have been perfect.

It wasn’t.

First, I discovered that, contrary to my understanding, I couldn’t extend the university health insurance I’d bought through summer without taking another class. Because the Winter Quarter end date didn’t match the policy start date if I bought an individual policy, the only way to stay covered was to take a class in Spring Quarter. So I did.

The two major written assignments for the course were due within two days of my book release. The first assignment involved reading a book and writing an academic-type review of it. The second was writing a 20-30 page research paper.

Neither would have been too big a deal, even with the weekly required reading, if that had been the only thing. But of course it wasn’t.

I’d been waiting for nine months for a decision in an appeal I’m handling. Happily, when it issued, it was in favor of my client. Unhappily, my opponent decided to petition the Illinois Supreme Court to review the case. I had two weeks from when I received his petition to write my response.

When was it due? The same week as the book release.

My To Do list for the week before the book release now included:

verify that all The Illumination files were uploaded properly to all five ebook platforms;
schedule ads and promotions for the first book in the series, The Awakening, which is free in ebook format (it provides a good way to bring new readers into the series);
prepare and send a New Release announcement to my email list;
update my author website with Illumination links and the new covers I’d had designed for the previous books;
post on Facebook and Twitter periodically to let people know The Illumination was coming;
write a post on my author blog about the release (which also would appear on Goodreads);
arrange an in-person book release party for the paperback edition;
schedule a Goodreads giveaway of the paperback edition;
release a paperback edition of my standalone supernatural suspense novel When Darkness Falls in time for a free day on the Kindle edition (I wanted to run WDF free the same week as The Illumination release on the theory that each drew a slightly different audience that might cross over, and I wanted the paperback available to show a comparison price);
do the same for my non-fiction book Super Simple Story Structure;
write my book review for class (happily, I’d finished reading the book the week before);
finish my research paper (I was about half-way done);
write my answer brief.

Also, Mother’s Day happened to fall the day before the book release. For personal reasons, I wanted to write a post on my author blog about my mom, as it was the 10th Mother’s Day without her.

And, expecting it to be a very quiet week, I’d planned three dinners out with friends, one of which was an already-belated birthday dinner (for him, not me).

Had I cancelled all my social plans and worked fifteen-hour days, including through the weekends, I might have gotten all of that done.

But this time, rather than saying “I will work harder,” I stopped and looked at the big picture. Yes, one goal was to release The Illumination. But what was my larger goal? That answer was pretty easy–making a decent living writing books that other people enjoy reading.

Then I asked myself why. Why was that my goal?

The answer caused me to change my approach.

How and why? Check out Part 2 next Sunday.

Until then, best wishes for a productive and not-too-stressful week.

Best,

L.M. Lilly

Mother’s Day Thoughts

Because it’s Mother’s Day, this Sunday I’m taking a moment to remember my mom.

I like to think my love of creative pursuits came from her. She told me she would have liked to go to college and to become an author, but women in her time rarely went to college or pursued careers. She did, though, play in an all-female Croatian Orchestra, The Happy Girls Tamburitza Orchestra, during the WWII years.

My Mom and Dad in 2006 on their 50th Wedding Anniversary

This is my tenth Mother’s Day without my mom. There are so many things I wish I could talk with her about. Her life was ended in 2007, as was my dad’s, by someone else’s choice to drive while intoxicated.

As we move toward the coming Spring and Summer holidays, please celebrate safely.

Happy Mother’s Day to all.

Until Friday–

Best,

L.M. Lilly

The Sound (And Value) Of Silence When You’re Juggling Multiple Jobs

I love podcasts. There’s a list of my favorite ones at the end of this article. If you read my Friday recommendations, you know I learn a lot from them. I also find them entertaining. The same is true for audiobooks.

Not only can podcasts and audiobooks be fun or entertaining or both, listening allows me to make good use of time spent doing mindless tasks like scanning records to store for my law practice, putting away clean dishes, or sorting through and disposing of emails in my spam inbox.

Being able to multitask that way is particularly helpful for anyone juggling writing and other types of work and obligations. Otherwise, many of us would never have time to hear or watch, for instance, a 30-minute explanation of how best to use Facebook ads to sell books.

Recently, though, when a couple of my favorite shows ended, I briefly found myself listening less. To my surprise, I discovered that sometimes silence is better. Better for my creativity, better for my health, and better for my peace of mind.

Here’s why and how:

Creativity

While doing mindless tasks like folding laundry in silence, I often come up with good ideas for plots, discover the backstory of my characters, or solve problems I’m facing in fiction or life. But I don’t do those things by trying. Instead, as I smooth out the wrinkles in a T-shirt or fold sheets, my mind wanders. Soon, without any real effort on my part, ideas and solutions filter into my consciousness.

Sleeping

Because most of my work for writing, teaching, and law involves using my laptop, I get a lot of neck and upper back strain. I also tend to sit or stand in the same position for long periods. To ease that, I do a series of stretches at night before I go to sleep. I discovered that doing those in silence, while it can be a bit tedious, helps me sleep much better.

Instead of feeding new information into my brain right before trying to sleep, I let my brain slow down along with my body. That means I’m much less likely to wake during the night or to wake in the morning feeling stressed.

Time

Multitasking should make a person more efficient, particularly when it involves learning and listening while doing tasks that truly don’t require a lot of attention. Paradoxically, though, when I was listening to audiobooks or podcasts all the time, I felt more stressed and busier. I think it’s because that added to my feeling that I must be productive times two every minute of every day.

It was as if I was sending myself a message that I could not spare even five minutes to unload the dishwasher or make a cup of tea without also learning something new.

When I allowed myself instead to do some of these tasks in silence, I actually felt like I had more time. And when I did sit down to do tasks that required mental effort, I felt less stressed and so was able to focus more, think more clearly, and accomplish my goal more quickly.

Relaxation

This reason is really a combination of all of the above. When I let myself do just one thing, whether it’s stretching before I go to sleep or unloading the dishwasher, I can actually feel my muscles loosening and tension draining from my body.

Given all of the above, will I stop listening to podcasts or audiobooks when I’m folding laundry? No, not entirely. I love learning and I love listening to stories. Sometimes the prospect of one or the other is the only thing that motivates me to do tasks I’d otherwise put off, like cleaning out the email inbox.

Also, I live alone and work mainly from home now that the bulk of my workday is writing. On a day when I haven’t gone out, which occasionally happens, it’s nice to add some other voices besides my own and that of my parakeet (who does talk) to my day.

I have, however, stuck with leaving the phone off for 30-45 minutes before I go to bed. I also do at least one task during the day, whether it’s cooking or scanning documents, without any audio accompaniment.

Already because of this I’m making better progress on the first draft of The Worried Man, the first novel in my new mystery series. I’m feeling more relaxed while accomplishing as much or more than before.

What’s your experience with multitasking? Please share in the comments.

Until Friday –

Best,

L.M. Lilly

P.S. Here’s the list of my favorite podcasts:

The Journeyman Writer (no longer being produced, but many great episodes are available)

Self Publishing Formula

The Creative Penn

Sell More Books Show

Dusted (analyzing Buffy the Vampire Slayer from a story perspective episode by episode through the middle of Season 6)

Still Pretty (picking up where Dusted left off)

Paperback Writer: The Downsides Of Print On Demand Publishing

Most authors I’m familiar with who publish their own work do so via print-on-demand platforms such as CreateSpace or Kindle Direct Publishing, which I wrote about in Using KDP To Self Publish A Paperback.

If you choose to publish a paperback that way, the biggest plus is that you don’t need to pay for a large quantity of books and hope to sell them later, or to pay for any books in advance at all. Each book is printed when it’s ordered. The author is paid a royalty based on the purchase price.

But there are some downsides for the author, ones I wasn’t aware of when I started out with my Awakening series.

First, the cost to produce each book is generally higher, which means the author either earns a fairly low royalty or prices the book higher than most traditionally-published books.

Because I prefer to keep my prices in a range that’s similar to traditionally-published books, on trade paperback sales outside of Amazon, I typically make less than $.25 per book. (Sold through Amazon or in person, I earn a few dollars per book.)

Second, bookstores usually won’t carry print-on-demand (POD) books. The main reason is that the books typically aren’t returnable. If the bookstore orders five of them and only one sells, the store can’t send the other four back.

Another reason I heard from one bookstore owner is that Amazon is the competition and the stores don’t want to promote Amazon products. Because many authors use Amazon platforms CreateSpace and KDP for POD books, that rules them out. (If you want to try a different company, check out Ingram Spark.)

For similar reasons, some bookstores won’t carry a book that refers to Amazon anywhere on its cover, back blurb, or inside. I had no idea about that when I published Book 1 in my Awakening Series, though I probably ought to have figured as much. By the time I published the paperback, the Kindle edition had spent many weeks in the Top 50 of Amazon’s occult bestseller list (the highest rank was No. 1) and its horror list. I was excited about that, so I thought listing Amazon Best Seller on the cover was a great idea.

When I reissue the book with the updated cover (shown above), I’ll leave that off. It’s a bit of a tough call, though. When I sell at in-person events, that Best Seller reference tips some buyers over the edge to purchasing.

Finally, there are distribution outlets, such as libraries, that are unlikely to purchase books from CreateSpace.

Because for now I believe my time and effort are better spent focusing on ebook and audiobook sales rather than print despite the above downsides, I plan to continue using CreateSpace and KDP. If I explore other options later, though, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Until Friday–

Best,