Sneaky Sneaky! Chasing The Plot Bunny

Posted on September 2, 2010 by Kait Nolan

So it wasn’t Clockwork Angel.  That’s actually migrated to the To Be Read shelf (aren’t you proud? I resisted!) while I wind up Shadow Hills and The Demon’s Covenant.

My brain took advantage of my stepping away from Devil’s Eye to steer me toward the brand new shiny red spiral bound notebook that I’d forgotten about at the bottom of a bag of stuff I forgot to put away a month ago (life has been crazy, don’t judge).  Then it steered me toward my favorite pen, the Pilot Frixion (erasable!) and had me start organizing said notebook with parts from Pot’s Blueprint (which, on its own, has a tendency to make me to EEEEEEEP! and run away), a single chunk per page.

Then I just started spewing.  I did sprints with Claire and filled up about 15 pages with notes.  On Red. Yeah, the YA plot bunny that was SUPPOSED to be waiting.  I feel very driven to write this story.  In a rear up, grab me by the throat, pay attention to me damn it, kind of way.

Yes ma’am.

It’s all very old school.  I haven’t written stuff down by hand (owing to my truly heinous handwriting) in years.  I type so much faster and cleaner.  But it was kind of nice.  Having to write slow enough to be legible, I think it forces me to be better about organizing my thoughts before I actually put them down.  Which is not at all a bad thing.

So I’ve actually made HUGE strides toward putting together the skeleton of that book.  I would really like to sit down during my writing time this weekend and clearly hammer out my outline–all the scenes and what I want to show with them.

I think it kind of confirms something that’s been kicking around in my brain for a while: Too much of one thing does not a happy Kait make (unless you are talking about cookie dough).  I’ve been hanging out in this Mirus world for 2 years.  A lot of that time was developing lore and writing stuff that isn’t ever gonna see the light of day.  Forsaken By Shadow was the third or fourth thing I wrote in that universe.  But anyway, as much as I love it, I think I need a break from it and a chance to work on something wholly unrelated and different.

Somewhere in the middle of working on Red, I expect the solution to my problem in Devil’s Eye will rear up and say “Look at me!!!!”, and then I’ll go fix it.  In the meantime, I’ll keep moving forward on something new.  I think this is probably going to wind up being a pattern for me (I hope).  Where I finish 1 Mirus story and 1 something else (of which I have a loooooooong list of possibilities) each year.  I still plan on Devil’s Eye being my second release this year, albeit a very low key one, simply because it’s so much shorter and when the solution DOES occur to me, it won’t take long to finish.  But I’m definitely excited about moving forward with Red.

Posted in Personal, Work In Progress, Writing | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Taking a Break; It’s Not You, It’s Me

Posted on September 1, 2010 by Kait Nolan

I’m having one of Those Weeks.  You know the ones.  Where everything you write is complete and utter crap and all ideas you have to fix your flagging plot are predictable and dull?

I had high hopes of finishing Devil’s Eye over Labor Day, but I just don’t think it’s gonna happen because I’m cutting a bunch of stuff.  I pretty well hate my pinch points and everything following the midpoint.  And my ending was never REALLY that clear to begin with.  Blah.

I’m not abandoning the story–can’t very well let that fabu cover art go to waste.  But I think I need to step away from it for a little while to gain some perspective and come back with fresh ideas for how to flesh out the second half that are going to keep things interesting and action packed.  I need a better bad guy.  And he needs to file a formal complaint with Minions ‘R Us because the ones they sent over this round were totally lame and way too easily defeated. Monday I wrote what was quite possibly the LAMEST CHASE SCENE EVAR!

I’m trying not to beat myself up over this, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t freaked out about my apparent inability to finish anything this year.  Revelation stalled out after 21k.  Edge of Shadow hasn’t gone beyond outline yet. Devil’s Eye has stalled out twice.  Despite my long list of stuff I’ve accomplished this year on a professional or marketing front, the fact remains that I have not finished anything creative since I finished up Forsaken By Shadow at the end of January.  And now it’s September 1st  (Summer, you can go on vacation now and make way for Fall; kbaithx). I’ve written over 67k words this year.  August was the first month to come back to January’s level of productivity, which is yay.  But only one thing is finished and it bugs me!!!

Jamie Debree made a fabulous comment yesterday about how the self-publishing career is like a perennial plant: the first year it sleeps, the second it creeps, the third it leaps. I really love that idea.  So much that I want to print it and put it somewhere I can see easily as a reminder that right now I’m in that first year, and I need to give myself a break.

Possibly this is my brain’s sneaky way of manufacturing a hormonal crisis to clear my calendar for a few days to allow me to tear through Cassandra Clare’s Clockwork Angel.  I was planning to hold it for ransom and now allow myself to open it until I finish Devil’s Eye. But it’s calling to me, whispering sweet nothings and trying to seduce me.

Maybe I could use a fling…

But I’d really like to finish some of the OTHER books I’m in the middle of, like Shadow Hills, The Demon’s Covenant, and The Lightning Thief.

Posted in Personal, Work In Progress | Tagged , , , , , , | 8 Comments

What Makes A Financially Successful Indie?

Posted on August 31, 2010 by Kait Nolan

Can you dream a blog post?  I swear I was dreaming about this question when my alarm went off this morning.  I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately given that I, of course, would like to be one of them.  All those idealistic inkslingers who want to live the starving artist existence and not sell out for commercial profit (do those exist anymore?)–yeah, I’m not one of them.  Doesn’t lessen what I do any.  It just means I’m realistic and honest when I say I want to make a living doing it.  Nobody grows up and says “I want to work three jobs to make ends meet when I grow up!” So it is of fundamental interest to me what makes a financially successful indie.

The first example that springs to mind is, of course, J.A. Konrath, who is perhaps the most visible poster boy for the indie movement. It is regularly tossed around that he’ll be making 100k from epublishing on Amazon this year.  Many naysayers prefer to attribute this to his already established fanbase from having been a successful midlist author with his Jack Daniels series and his lengthy and impressive list of publicity feats.  And maybe this had something to do with it.  But he also was able to release a number of titles fairly close together.  He’s prolific.  As he’s able to write full time, he has the time to be.

Then there’s Karen McQuestion, less well known, no prior following from an established backlist of titles. Yet she’s making comparable money on her assorted titles.  From what I’ve gathered, she simultaneously released several things at once (or perhaps really close together).  She had a number of pieces just hanging around that she decided to polish up and put out herself.  She has six titles out, last I checked.

And now the latest success story, which I was delighted to hear about, is Amanda Hocking, who, with her latest release rocketed all the way up to number 25 in the entire Kindle store. Amanda’s story I find particularly interesting.  She didn’t put her first Kindle book out until FEBRUARY THIS YEAR.  FEBRUARY!  Like 7 months ago!  And it’s looking like she’s going to make 9-10k JUST in the month of August.  She’s turned in notice at her job.  Congratulations, Amanda!  She has 5 titles out.  It doesn’t appear she just had a lot of already written stuff lying around to release.  She really does apparently write that fast.

So what’s the commonality here?

Well, presumably all of them put out well-written, well-edited stuff to begin with.  Crap is not going to sell well, at least not for long.  All of them have consistently good reviews.   So the quality of their work goes without saying as a given.

The other consistent theme here is multiple titles. Particularly multiple titles out in a short span of time.  I find this both unsurprising and a little depressing.  I’m not surprised because once readers latch on to an author they like, they keep an eye out for the next books out by that author.  The faster the author can produce said books, the happier readers are.  Indies, not being bound by the constraints of traditional publishing, can satisfy readers in a matter of months instead of a year or more.

It’s a little depressing because, well, I just can’t do that.  I’ve got too much on my plate to turn out more than a couple of titles a year.  And this year those couple of titles are both short.  Novella and novelette (though, if you’ve been following me at all, you know that this is not at all a normal year for me).  I have no idea how prolific I might be if I could write full time.  I haven’t been in that position since I was in college and still had time for daily afternoon naps (oh how I miss afternoon naps!).

One thing is clear, they key to making decent money at self publishing centers around having multiple, well-written, well-edited titles out–no matter how long it takes you to get there.

Of course there’s still the issue of effective promo, but that’s a topic for another post.

I need to get back to work.

Posted in Me on Indie Publishing | Tagged | 16 Comments