Becoming a Scrivener-er…a new adventure.

On Tuesday 21st May, I finally decided that I’d had ENOUGH of writing in Microsoft Word and took a long, hard look at Scrivener.

But why, you might ask, when more than half of the writers I’d spoken to said it was the best thing ever, had I waited so long???

Well, (long story short) I’d always been happy to use Word in all of its incarnations since before Office 95 was ‘the latest thing’.  But now, as I began to use Office 2010, acquired in March 2013, my heart sank. The darn thing seemed to have a mind of its own.

From paragraph formatting to bullet points it suddenly felt as if Word didn’t want me to be there any more.

I use *   *   * to separate paragraphs – have you tried to type that in Office 2010? It turns into bullets!!

Still, I persisted and wrestled with it for another four weeks, working around the peculiarities as I assembled articles, short stories and…my CreateSpace version of  ‘A Construct of Angels.’ Huge gaps between paragraphs and page breaks that refused to undo became the final straw. For three nights, I was forced to cut and paste sentences in order to get around this idiotic formating problem and when the time came to begin my next project, my brain cried ‘ENOUGH! I can’t go through all that again!’

So, in desperation to soothe my addled mind, I Googled the best price for the latest (or even the previous, for I am not proud) version of Scrivener.

Not so easy, for here in soggy England, we’re unable to take advantage of the NaNoWriMo offer price on Amazon (unless you know of a way around that…) as it’s only on Amazon.com…and we poor Brits aren’t allowed to download from there in case there’s none left for everyone else. We’re quite a ravenous bunch over here – we have been since WW2 rationing ended.

But I managed to uncover a trial download from PC World – priced at $40. Why dollars? Well the download linked to Literature and Latte dot com who seem to have no problems with feeding us hungry Brits.

And so I went for it, desperately hoping that this shining light, this gift from the Gods (they are there…they’ve just retired) was everything that it had been purported.

All right, Toynbee…don’t oversell it!

So far, so good. It downloaded (49MB), installed (even on my stone-age Windows Vista Netbook) opened and allowed me to explore. The tutorial looked daunting, but because it’s interactive (‘try this…see what happens; now try this…isn’t it good?’) it’s more kinesthetic than cramming.

I think that Scrivener and I are going to get along just fine. My ex (Word 2010) will still  be allowed to visit at weekends, but that relationship has definitely cooled.

I will let you know if romance blossoms with the new girl in town.

So, with Scrivener in mind, Write On!

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CreateSpace – Part II of my anticlockwise journey towards a paperback

Following on from my previous post, I have moved a little further along the road towards creating my first-ever paperback *shivers as a life-long dream seems possible*.

Firstly, I set up a CreateSpace account alongside my Amazon author’s account, then proceeded to navigate CS’s user-friendly set-up menu. I was offered a plethora of differing sizes for my physical book, and after having discussed this with other bloggers, I finally settled on the 6×9″ format.

I then downloaded the novel template (6×9″), after which ‘A Construct of Angels’ (already formatted in Word) was pasted into the template so I could make any adjustments to the layout.

Here’s where the gnashing of teeth began…

When I scrolled through the virtual book (complete with flipping pages feature…it’s looking more like a real book already), I found a problem. Not Major by any means, but nether was it minor.

For some reason, my the formatting contained within my original layout caused the whole MS to leave random (it seemed) spaces at the bottom of every page, giving it a chewed-off appearance . I had to spend three nights inside the Word document copying and pasting text from the top of the previous page into the end of the text from the one above. Sometimes there was only one blank line; other times there were five.

Weird. This was the point where I wondered if I should finally make the move to Scrivener…

Patience required, definitely. Still, I wanted it to be right, so I put in the time to set it all up properly.

Save, copy, paste and check the format on CS once again – more flicking through virtual pages with a beady eye on the spacing.

Then the next problem reared its head. I use two images within my text. CreateSpace’s automated formatting checker decided that the resolution of these images was too low to print properly. Now, this is an image of some handwriting - some very poor handwriting, as it happens…if you think ’spider that scuttled through a puddle of ink’ then you won’t be far off. Yes, it’s ncessary to the plot.

Guys, it doesn’t NEED to be hi-res.

I DID try to change the resolution using Paint and then PhotoImpact, but to no avail. I can live with it. The question is, will CreateSpace let it pass?

The next stage is the cover.

I sent the details of the size, page colour and page count to Ravven who has tweaked the original artwork to match.  Thanks, Ravven!

Now that the final piece is in place, and CreateSpace is happy with the format (low-res image notwithstanding), I have ordered the proof copy from the US printers (the proof has to come from the US, but subsequent purchased copies are created in the UK for UK buyers) and wait for its arrival with teeth gound and breath held.

The tension mounts…

Woot! Awesome! 200 followers!

I’m very please to share this congratulatory message from WordPress – fresh from yesterday.

Can I offer a great big

to everyone who has chosen to follow my random ramblings over the past ten months. It’s been a hugely enjoyable and education journey and I hope you’ve been able to glean at least one interesting or useful fact from my pages.

No laurels will be rested upon – the learning curve continues ever upwards!

In the meantime, Write On, everyone!

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CreateSpace – Part I of my anticlockwise journey towards a paperback

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, but never really imagined that it would be possible for me to have my novel on a shelf alongside the likes of of Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke and David Eddings (I did say I’d been writing for a long time).

But when I began to imagine that it could be possible, I began to write with a serious aim – to see my work in print.

However, I could never have imagine the circuitous, nay, labyrinthine route that my journey would entail.

I’d imagined that I would complete my book, send it off to a publisher and they would dance for joy at my having approached them. And for a while, I continued to entertain this (flimsy) dream.

But then things began to shift within the literary world. It became de rigueur to approach an agent first if any hope of publishing was to be entertained. So, with my first attempt at a novel completed in 2011, I began to make the Royal Mail postal service earn their keep by querying over one hundred UK-based literary agencies.  

To no avail.

I received a smattering of replies (less than half) from the agencies, during which time I began to take notice of the rumblings regarding self-publishing for indie authors. In July 2012, when I received John Jarrold’s extensive rejection letter, it prompted me to write my first-ever post and I plunged into the world of electronic authorship, swimming with my other published and want-to-be-published fellows. In the three months that followed, I learned a great deal fom my fellow bloggers (thank you, one and all!) and October saw me uploading y debut novel, ‘A Construct of Angels,’ to Amazon.

I couldn’t have been happier. I’d achieved a life-long ambition – to create a novel that could sell.

But now, thanks to potential buyers’ feedback, I find myself in the peculiar position of considering a paper book once again, except this time, I will be the publisher, agent, publicist and distributor. CreateSpace, the printing arm of Amazon, has opened up whole new possibilities for the independent author. Books and novels (for they are not the same animal) can be created for a modest cost and shipped directly to the buyer via Amazon or bought in bulk and delivered to retail outlets such as Waterstones.

This work-around route to getting a paperback novel published still seems a little crazy to me…but, hey, we gotta do what we gotta do.

I’ll keep you posted as to how this all works out.

In the meantime, Write On!

Practising my Author’s signature – with good reason.

This morning I used up four perfectly good sheets of blank paper as I tried to create an author signature that I was happy with.

No, I wasn’t being vain, or dreaming of fame and fortune. I didn’t even have Waterstone book signings in mind (*shudders* see my last post for why I DONT dream of such things).

The signatures were being prepared for something I’ve never done before – a signed copy of my eBook ‘A Construct of Angels.’  Yes, it IS possible to do such a thing.  There’s a feature called Kindlegraph that allows a reader to request an autograph via Twitter.

I haven’t managed to embrace such technologies as yet, nor do I envisage an electronic stampede from readers, so my Mark One version will have to do for now.

Using a pen, paper (remember them?) and a scanner, I managed to create a usable scribble. It’s not as easy as it sounds. If you bear in mind that most authors don’t write under their birth names, then creating a smoothly-flowing squiggle from an unfamiliar name doesn’t come naturally to the hand or the eye.

Try it – pick a celebrity name and pretend you are surrounded by clamouring fans desperate for the smell of a Sharpie. Now try to produce ten consistent squiggles. That was my problem this morning. ‘Andrew’ really is my birth name, so that was no problem…but ‘Toynbee’ threw my brain completely off the tacks.

So, anyway, after the forementioned sheets of paper had been sacrificed, this is the result;

So, I now have a .png version that I can add into my .html eBook file. By dedicating a page to each fan in particular and adding a personal message, I’m able to create a personalised eBook for them. I currently have six in my queue and each book that I create will be unique.

It’s an interesting exercise and it’s refreshing my memory on eBook formatting. Since October 2012, my leaky brain has forgotten about half of the fomatting process *sigh* and I need to get back into the saddle, as it were.

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Mingling with the rich and famous

I happened across a link to webstatsdomain.com whilst Googling – and found my name and blog listed on the same page as a couple of rather well-known authors.

Oh, the dizzy heights of fame…the glare of the spotlights…the disorientation of waking from a dream.

Oh, and my blog has risen in value from $195 (see previous post ‘I’ve been judged…’) to $689.

This time next year I might be worth a thousand…

Blog overload? Sheer indulgence? Why not both?

Today, WordPress sent me this notifcation;

It’s a milestone.  Thank you to lindaghill, my 100th follower and to my 103 other friends in the blogsphere.  You have made my (relatively short) journey a pleasure!

I say relatively short – I’ve been blogging since May 2010 but only sent out my first post in July 2012.  I’m sure there are other writers, artists and photographers who have been here for considerably longer.

My early blogging was mainly a journal was was retrospectively filled in to cover my early work back to 1999 -when records began.  :)

Before that, my writing was random and tended to drift from project to project.  I’d often lose focus or interest before anything of worth emerged from the pages – with one exception.  The germ of the idea that eventually evolved into Homeworld began during my senior school years (when they still used Roman numerals) and was always present in the back of my mind.  One day, I WILL go back to those 43,000 words and complete them – now that I know how the story is going to conclude.  Regular readers will know that’s always been an Achillean failing of mine – not being able to conclude a story – but I’m aiming to change that now that I’ve finally managed to (self) publish my first novel.

The title of this post may infer that I have doubts about following so many blogs.

Not at all.  I may not have the time to read each and every post in the same, leisurely manner that I did when I was following fifty bloggers, but that doesn’t mean that opening my ‘Blogs I follow’ tab isn’t a thrill and a pleasure.  It does mean that I sometimes have to skim a little more than I used to, but I’m soon pulled in by an intriguing headline or an amusing title and find simple joy in reading the wisdom of others – plus sharing what I’ve learned so far.

I follow in the footsteps of those who are wiser and more experienced than I am.

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Huffington Post article about self-publishing

Huffington Post article about self-publishing

This post was shared on Facebook.  Very interesting, it discusses the credibility of today’s self-publishing authors, pricing and lists successes amongst some of the luckier writers.

Jack versus Einstein

The question I am posing this week is this;

As writers, does it serve us better to be an expert – an absolute genius within a limited field…

…or a multi-skilled ‘Jack of all Trades’?

Having asked that, I will immediately concede that in order to write non-fiction and instructional works, a high degree of skill or expert knowledge is desirable.   But what about we writers of fictional works?

It took me a long time to reach my own conclusion on this.  Throughout my twenties and thirties (oh, such a long, long time ago) I harboured a mild, jealous resentment towards those who constantly excelled in their field of choice, grudgingly wishing them well whilst questioning those that administrated the Universe why it was that I struggled to master tasks, gaining only a limited skill (consistently in the top 1/3) in anything that I attempted.  I had immersed myself in many disciplines (mechanics, electronics, motor racing, sketching, painting, computer programming and numerous others) during those distant sepia-tinged decades, emerging each time without the satisfaction of having truly mastered the necessary skills.

It took me a long time to realise that whilst I couldn’t proclaim myself to be fully skilled in anything I attempted, I was able to turn my hand to a great many tasks – and take some pride at being reasonably competent at most of them.

Then I remembered a story my father told me about a pathologist he’d worked with.  The man in question was an expert in human anatomy.  He could dissect a body and proclaim cause of death without error time after time.  Often he could estimate the cause before he’d even touched the body (no, really!).  He would teach class after class of young proto-pathologists, leaving them staggered and wondering how they could ever match up to this great man.

He was an undoubted expert in his field.

But one day, following some car trouble and a rather large repair bill, he took my father (a mortuary manager and owner of a series of self-maintained cars at the time) aside, showed him the mechanic’s invoice and in a low voice he asked;  ‘What exactly IS a spark plug?’

It turned out that he was super-brilliant, but also limited in scope.

I have since learned to content myself with the notion that whilst I know very little about a great many things, I do know about a great many things.   The difference here is that, like a contestant on ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire?’ one who still has their ‘phone-a-friend’ option, I know that there many people, reference sites and numerous sources of information available to me in the world today.

I don’t need to be expert in any particular subject - I just need to know that the subject exists and where to find out about it.  Then I can research it thoroughly enough to weave the facts discreetly into a story.

I have finally concluded that knowing even a little about a great many things is a very useful position to be in.

Makes me wonder if I’d been born with an ‘expert’ brain – would I have ever embraced writing?

How do you view this?  Are you particularly skilled and able to use that skill to your advantage in your writing?  Or are you happy to be a ‘trawler’ like me, sweeping the internet for information, happy to leave the specialism to other people?

I’d be very interested to know if I’m alone in this…

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Write on!

Wednesday Worries

It occurred to me last night that most, if not all, writers fret about their content and I began to wonder about the whole process of worry and uncertainty.

Do natural worriers make good writers?  Do we excel at creativity because our brains are always active, imagining events that range from statistically probable to those that will never happen even in the pages of a bad novel?

My mind, sadly, seems to be on a constant drive towards pessimism.  Some days, when my fret gland is active, my Muse goes into overdrive, conjuring up a series of ‘what-if’ scenarios that leave me questioning my sanity.

For example;  I can be driving past a police car and my Muse will whisper; ‘What if they decide to pull you over?  What if some of the flour that you bought last week leaked onto the carpet?  They might think you’re a dealer and arrest you.  You could end up in a holding cell with a vicious biker gang that’s out to make a headline.  They could kill you.  By the time the police realise it’s only flour you could have lost an eye, or a limb.  And then what would happen to your writing?’

This is the point where I look my Muse directly in the eye and say;

‘Seriously – WTF?’   

She will calm down and take her meds as prescribed and become lucid for a time, but then, without warning;

‘You know how you think you turned the gas cooker off, but you’re not sure because you might be remembering turning it off yesterday and only think that you did it this morning, but you might really have forgotten and when you get home and you turn on a light, it could set off a spark and blow up the whole house?’

Me;  FFS – The house is all-electric.

Muse;  Oh.  I worry too much, don’t I?  I think I will take a tablet.

Me;  Thank you.  Please do.

Muse;  *Pauses with the tablet close to her mouth*  ‘But did you ever wonder about Lenticular clouds – you know, the ones that look like flying saucers?  What it they really were flying saucers in stealth mode and they were watching us?  And what if flying saucers weren’t aliens but visitors from our future and they want to know why it all went wrong so that they could guide us to a better tomorrow?’

Me;  Now, look…

Muse;  I know. I’m sorry.  I’ll take that tablet now.

Me;  No, no.  *searches for a pen*  Seriously, that last one is a great idea – tell me it again so that I can write it down.  It could become a novel – a series, even.  Maybe Hollywood will pounce on it and offer me millions.

Muse;  *swallows tablet* Hmm?  Sorry, what idea?

*Andy groans*

So, is your mind naturally over-active?  Do you, as a writer, constantly ponder the (often far-reaching) consequences of your actions?  Does your Muse deliver a stream of possible and impossible scenarios – one of which might be a gem of a story?

For the sake of my sanity, I hope it does.

For your sanity, I hope it doesn’t.

Please let me know if I’m alone in this.

If I am, I will seek immediate help from the family of accupuncturist hedgehogs that live in the fairies nest at the bottom of my garden…

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Write on!