Going into the New Year, I have decided to focus more on productivity, time management and tracking. This is my seriouser serious year. 

Last year, my goal was to publish my first book. This year, my goal is to publish the final four Second Star novellas, to finish out the series and begin work on the two other projects I have sitting in my TO WRITE folder. Hell, I may even do something crazy and work on a few projects simultaneously.

The word-count spreadsheet I used last year, tracked daily, weekly, monthly and yearly word counts. This year I’ve kicked it up a notch, and started tracking avg. daily word counts as well, as well as non-fiction words. After all, a lot of my “work-time” is spent writing blog articles (like this one) and interviews and reviews. Too many days on my calendar were blank last year, because I didn’t track those words. NEVA AGAIN! Muahahaahaa…ha…

So…anywho,

Writing…it’s what I do.

Because I’m so close to releasing my first book, Second Star: Breaking Through, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m trying to get out of this whole “writer” thing. What goals am I trying to accomplish and how am I going to measure success? Of course, numbers are important, but is that all it really boils down to?

Yesterday, while watching my writing partners swim around aimlessly in their own little private world, I decided that numbers weren’t really the driving force for my writing, and that I would count it a success if I sold one copy or one million copies. Hell, I’m going to be writing anyway, I’ve been doing it for years before I even learned about the world of Indie Publishing.

I mean, if I’m going to be writing anyway, whatever money I make is just a bonus, right?

As I was writing Breaking Through, I constantly worried about it if would sell or not. Of course, I want people to enjoy the book, but for some reason I had it in my head that if it wasn’t a breakout hit, it would be a failure.

This weekend, I read an article about Elmore Leonard, an extremely successful and popular Hollywood author. It covered some details about his life and described how he struggled to become that popular writer. You see, he wasn’t always successful and popular, in fact, it took him thirty years of writing to finally have a breakout hit. Thirty years.

That’s when my own light bulb came on. DING! I didn’t have to write a breakout hit with my first book. Don’t get me wrong, that would be awesome, but I was putting so much pressure on myself thinking that if the book didn’t immediately soar to the bestseller list in its first week then what was the point? When selling books really isn’t the point at all, its writing them and knowing that people are reading them. Even if it’s only twenty people.

I write because I enjoy writing. 

You say, “But doesn’t it cost a lot of money to publish your work?” Well, sure, it does, but then I would come back with this, “what hobbies don’t cost money?” And my follow up would be, “and how many of those hobbies pay you back?”

Now, granted, I’ve only made a grand total of $5 on my first published story, The Watch, but I’m completely okay with that. There are people out there that have read my work, and from the feedback I’ve received, it appears that people enjoyed it. That’s enough for me.

Now, I’m not saying that writing is just a hobby for me; I take it very serious and dedicate a lot of my time and energy to perfecting my craft. Whether it's working on posts for my blog, doing reviews or author interviews or playing around with cover art, it's all part of my passion to create. 

I don't plan to hit it big; in fact, I don't even plan to hit it any size. I plan on writing stories, then making those stories into the highest quality book I can and putting them out there for people read. If it took Elmore Leonard thirty years to make it big, why should I care if I make it big with my first book?

When I was considering going back to school a few years about, I was talking with my Dad and I told him it was going to take forever to graduate. I said, “Dad, at this rate I won’t graduate til I’m 40.” His answer to this was so profound I literally blew my mind and changed the way I look at almost everything I set out to do, he said, "Well, son, you're going to be 40 anyway, so you can be 40 with a degree or 40 without one." 

Mind. Blown.

If by some anomaly it sells a gazillion copies, well, I’ll probably freak-out for a few days and then I’ll write the next one. If it doesn't sell a gazillion copies then I'll still be writing the next one, and the next one, and the next one. 

It’s what I do.

First off, I’m not sure if I went through some kind of time/space portal-wormhole-rift or what, but I’m pretty sure I lost a whole month.

August was a busy month for me and when I sit back and think about everything that happened, I’m surprised I was able to get any writing done at all.

I spent a week working in a completely new unit at my day job, spent a few days learning how to train people to do my current job, oh, and I had a baby. Let’s not forget that! Of everything that happened in August, that was notably the most important. Baby is healthy, cute as can be and already giving Dad fits! I wish I could sleep half as well as she can.

…and one of my fish died…

August also marked the first time I sent work out for beta reading. I was nervous as hell, and really not sure what to expect. I set a fairly conservative deadline for my beta readers and gave them a list of everything I was looking for in the way of feedback. I imagined the process going one of two ways: either they’d all love it, or they’d all hate it. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The feedback I received was extremely helpful, even though some of the things people pointed out I had to slap myself on the forehead while thinking, “How in the world did I not see that?” From little things like spelling and grammar, to bigger things like story and consistency. 

To say that I’m grateful would be an understatement. Jimi, Tricia, Ruth, Chris, Scott, and Samantha, you guys are the best! Thank you so much!

So now, after spending a few days working through beta feedback and another round of self-editing, Second Star is off to my editor. While I wait, on pins and needles, to see how badly it gets ripped apart, I will continue working on Book 2, squeezing in writing between feedings and burpings and changings and sleepings. I’m excited about bringing all these characters to life and exploring everything they have to offer. The first two books have changed slightly since I plotted them a few months ago, but the heard of the story remains! 

I can’t wait for you guys to experience it!

I also did a little work on Second Star’s cover, but I think I might have been a little premature in posting the “final” cover art. I’ve had some feedback over the last day and a half, which suggests a different take on the font used for the title. So, work on the cover continues. But so far, here’s the newest version:

I’m hoping to have the book back from my editor in the first week in October and I’m aiming for a November release! *crossing fingers*

And now I have to go feed the baby…

The other day I received my first “How do you write?” email ever. My first thought was, um…you do know I’m just a rookie right? But my second thought was…how DO I write?

I emailed him back and gave him the best answer I could: I write. 

What a completely crap answer, and somewhat of a dodge. That’s the answer every writer always gives…and it’s really not very helpful. Of course, write…duh…but sometimes the actual writing is daunting.  You’re excited when you type that first word, but then you think of the 79,999 words you still have left to right and you think, how can I possibly write all those words?

Until recently, a lot of my time spent as a writer was looking at a blank screen thinking I’m never going to write anything as beautiful as Peter F. Hamilton or as fun as Ernie Lindsay. 

One of the biggest issues I had with my writing is that I lacked detail and my characters and scenes were very black and white. Example: Jack jumped over the candle stick. You understand what is going on, but that doesn’t make for a very interesting scene. I would write a scene like this and think, everything about this sucks and no one is going to like it…trash!

What I didn’t understand then, was that these first words are just my first draft and it’s allowed to be shitty. The second draft is where you flesh out the story, and so is the third, then you start cleaning it up in the fourth and fifth drafts.

I was reading a post by science fiction writer Jamie Todd Rubin the other day and read something that made everything I’ve ever read about writing make sense. I’ll paraphrase: “The 1st draft is for you (the writer); the second draft is for the reader.”

Mind. Blown.

I’ve read many books on writing since deciding to take my writing seriously, and all of these books have good material on structure, plotting, character development and so on…but not a whole lot give advice on the actual writing part.  

The all say the same thing: just write.

So after I gave the exact same answer, I decided to sit down and actually think about what I am doing to write my stories.

It came to me, as most of my great ideas do, in the shower. But I’ll skim over those details…

Earlier that day, I saw a video on YouTube of an interview with Peter F. Hamliton and twice it shows him typing on his computer. I assume these shots are of him doing some actual work on his projects, but who knows.  Anyway, I re-watched these parts several times and paused it to see what he was doing. 

It appears that he is writing a bunch of fragments, clumping them all together and then going back to flesh them out later. If you’ve ever read any of his books then you know when I say, “flesh out” I mean he fleshes them out. His writing is always extremely descriptive, to the point of being beautiful. He has a real talent for painting memorable vistas and vivid landscapes with his words. I just assumed that all that description and detail flowed out of him in some endless stream of words, never once did I imagine his work being crappy and bland.

This is where the light bulb came on.

Yes the first draft is trash, it sucks and no one should ever read it…ever. It also doesn’t have to be “complete.” Get the basics of the story down: who, what, where, when, why and how, then go back and fill in the details. 

The details are what always killed my writing. I could see the scene in my head, but after I’d get it down on paper, it wouldn’t look correct. I would work endlessly on that scene for days and never get it right, become frustrated and shit-can the entire project instead pushing through and going back later to fix it.
So…back to the shower (and not like that either…sickos)  

There I was, pondering the method and it came to me: My style of writing was like that of a painter creating a piece of art. He doesn’t start with the color, he starts with a sketch and then progresses through several stages, until eventually, at the end he paints a masterpiece. I decided to apply this idea to my writing:

The Sketch Method

First stage: “The Idea” For me this is where I sit down, brainstorm, and jot everything down. I use Scapple for this and during this stage I am outlining, plotting, and creating my characters.

Second Stage: “Penciling” Turning those ideas into words (really crappy words) but by the end you know where the story is going end and how the characters are going to get there. (You are just telling yourself the story)

Third stage: “Shading” This is where you add detail to your scenes, expand on the dialogue between the characters, you are creating scenes that when your audience reads them they will see what you see. (This is telling the story to your readers)

Fourth stage: “Color” This stage is adding the touches that will make your work shine: more detail (but not too much!), putting everything together so that instead of several different beautifully written scenes, now you have a beautifully written story.

Fifth stage: “Clean up” This stage actually happens simultaneously with the Third and Fourth stages. This is where the “Red Pen o’ Death” appears and ravages your manuscript. You’ll be hitting the delete key a lot, trying to figure out how you could possibly write such crap, but that’s okay, everyone does this. By the time you get to the Fourth stage, you should be fairly proud of your work.

It’s extremely simple but it works for me. And when it really boils down to it, that’s all that matters: what works for you.

Bam! That’s ten minutes of your life you’re never going to get back! You’re welcome. And now that you’re done reading my ramblings, go and find out what works for you. There is no one “absolute” method to write a book. You might like some parts of mine and parts of someone else’s, take the parts you like, smash them together and make them work for you.

Once you figure out what works for you there is only one thing left for you to do: WRITE.

As a preface to this rant, I say this: I am only a rookie in terms of my writing career, but I have been a science fiction freak for as long as I can remember. I’ve seen every single episode of Star Trek—”All Good Things…” was probably the best series finale ever—Battlestar Galactica fraking rocked and Firefly…well…hold on I need to have a cry…

Also, it’s quite possible that I have ridiculously high standards. I can’t count the number of times I’ll comment about this or that during a show or movie and my wife just looks at me with this are-you-kidding-me” look. She points out that no one else in the world would see the things I see when it comes to pointing out discrepancies or flat-out mistakes during movies. 

I beg to differ. I think there are many people out there, just like me, who see the same things I do and grit their teeth and bare it just like I do. I mean, there has to be right? Tell me I’m not the only one!

Oh, God…am I the only one?

Herro? Greorge?

Alllllrighty then, moving on.

I was looking through recent sci-fi shows the other day to see if there was anything good out there to sink my teeth into and to my surprise was disappointed. I found a show called Defiant and thought it looked intriguing; cool looking aliens, interesting idea…why not? I face-palmed in under thirty minutes. Oh, it started out promisingly enough, but after an extremely arbitrary fight scene—the main character needs cash and decides sport fighting is the easiest way to make it—I had to shut it off.

I consider myself an educated Sci-fi fan and in my considerable educated opinion, I thought Defiance sucked a big fat huge one. I mean seriously, horrible. I laughed. My daughter can write better dialogue with a crayon...and she has.

All the characters fit into nice little cookie-cutter science fiction stereotypes; the hero, the ugly scheming villain, a doctor with a bad attitude, and I’m almost positive there was a Chewbacca knock off thrown into the mix. (You don’t mess with Chewy! He'll rip your arms off!) It may have turned out to be a decent show, but I couldn't get passed the first 30 minutes. Aren’t the people that come up with this stuff supposed to be professionals? 

Okay, it might not be their fault, they had crap plots and flat, uninspired characters to work with, but come on! At what point do you tell the dude with the money...that's stupid...sci-fi fans are smart...let's not have the hero fight some abnormally large guy we all know he's going to punch in the nuts to win. Geesh, once Kirk does something...

How does crap like this get picked up for a second season and Firefly gets the boot!? I miss you Mal!

So I went old school...okay not old old school...only somewhat old school, and started watching Fringe. I'm not sure what kept me away from this series when it was on TV, and after the ridiculously-horribly-catastrophic-stupid-no-good-I-want-to-shove-bamboo-rods-under-JJ-Abrams-finger-nails-ending to Lost, I'm trying to keep my expectations with the show low. But so far, it is enjoyable, smart, and usually unexpected.  We’ll see.

So that brings me to my Thought O' The Day: Don't eat a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch in bed while watching a crappy-over-budget-lazily-written-sci-fi-knock-off-of-every-other-lazily-written-sci-fi-show-ever-made. Milk and cereal is hard to soak up.

I have dabbled in writing off and on for the better part of twenty years; it’s always been a fun hobby and until recently, I never really thought about it as actual work. I can’t count the number of projects I’ve started, loved and worked on, only to get bored and lose focus halfway through. The amount of unfinished stories I have laying around is silly. Maybe one day…

Throughout my life there have been times were I would write every day for hours, but usually those periods of inspiration were separated by weeks—even months—of not writing a single word. Little voices in my head told me I would have time to finish the book later, that eventually inspiration would hit and the book would write itself. Surprisingly, this never happened.

Until recently, my “writing career” has consisted of unfinished projects and ideas that never seem to make the transition from my brain to paper. It was always been just a fun pastime, something I really didn’t take very seriously. Of course, I’ve always dreamed of seeing my books on bookshelves, even thought about becoming rich and famous, something always held me back. I’m not exactly sure what that was either. Maybe it was the dread of submitting the completed manuscript to a publisher or worse: that people would hate my work. (I know on some level that fear is still there.) 

But you know what I discovered? If I don’t ever finish a book, no one will ever have the opportunity to hate it and more importantly; love it. About the same time this light bulb went off a second blinked on right beside it: books don’t write themselves. They take work, and finally for the first time in my life I made the decision to take that work seriously.

My first hurdle was not having a deadline. Anyone that knows me can tell you, I’m quite possibly the biggest procrastinator in the entire world. Hell, I put off vacuuming until 5 minutes before my wife gets home when I’ve had all day to do it. Not having a deadline was killing my writing. I could put off working on a project indefinitely because it wasn’t due…ever.

So, I stated this blog and decided that no matter what I would have something posted every week. I planned several post for this blog, as well as posts that I will write for my reviews page, and gave myself deadlines for everything. Looking at my “work” calendar can be slightly overwhelming sometimes, but having something due every week reminds me that I need to sit down and write.

After developing my work schedule for the website I decided to push the envelope even further and give myself a daily word count that was completely independent of the words I wrote for my blog or reviews. 500 was the lucky number and I created a spreadsheet to track and calculate my daily, weekly and monthly totals.

At first, I told myself I needed 500 words EVERYDAY but after the first week, I realized writing seven days a week wasn’t the best idea either. I didn’t want to burn myself out. There is a reason the workweek isn’t 7 days, body and mind require rest to work properly. So I decided to give myself a break during my writing week as well. I set aside two days during the week that I’m not required to work, even though I probably will.

Week 1 is officially in the books and so far, I have met my goals (with the exception of Sunday--Bad Josh!) What’s interesting is that the more I hit “Publish Live” on by blog and the more numbers I punch into my spreadsheet, the more I want to write. Finishing a book is a great goal, and one that you should work hard at, but sometimes that can been too much to handle. If you’re anything like me, that goal seems so far away that some days I doesn’t even seem reachable. So, instead of having one massive goal give yourself smaller, more manageable ones. 

Having reasonable and attainable goals will keep you motivated and make you WANT to reach the next one. Sometimes it feels like it takes forever to reach that 500th word, but other days I surpass it and keep right on typing. Even Stephen King can’t write a novel in a day but he can (and does) punch out a few hundred words each day. 

Set yourself a goal: a page a day, 500 words a day it doesn’t matter. But whatever it is, stick to it no matter what. So, finish reading this silly blog, pull up your project and start typing. They don’t have to be good words; they just have to be words.

Because if you don’t take your writing seriously no one else will.

Now go write.

Josh 

Growing up my family moved around a lot. My Dad served in the Army and every 2-3 years he would get orders to a new base and we would pack all our things, load them on a big truck and move on to a new place. When I was about 13 or 14 my Dad was stationed at Fort Drum, in upstate New York and during our first winter we learned that "lake effect" snow isn't like any other snow we'd ever experienced before. The first time it snowed took my Mom, brother and I, the better part of three hours to shovel out our driveway. Of course, after all that work there was some serious fort building that followed. My brother and I quickly became the Official Snow Fort Engineers for the block.

Coincidentally, this was also the time in my life when I started writing. I wrote a story called “The Final Frontier” in a one-subject notebook with a red cover. I've kept it in a black briefcase and carried it around with me wherever I've moved. As you can see it was TOP SECRET, and it will remain as such. Likewise, its sequel “Armada” (which I also still have) will remained stored in an unmarked box in the garage. I never submitted these outstanding pieces of literary history--the market just wasn't ready for them. (And I had no idea where I'd submit them even if I'd wanted to.) Had I submitted them, I have no doubt they would have been picked up by any number of agents or publishers...and promptly thrown in the nearest dumpster.

Where was I?

Oh yeah, New York.

Unfortunately for our Snow Fort Engineering Career, winter doesn't last all year--even though sometimes it seemed that way and we had to find other ways to have fun. Luckily for us, warm weather brought with it baseball, and that meant plenty of afternoons watching the Watertown Indians play. This farm team for the Cleveland Indians, played in a small stadium, had a dirt parking lot and most importantly; had hot dogs that weren't $15. 

The Minor Leagues were just as enjoyable as the Major League games we went to and we could go to a lot more simply because they were cheaper.  Interestingly enough, in all the games I went to, I never heard anyone say they would rather be at a big league game or that they wouldn't come to another game or that the game-play was sub-par to the Majors. Sure, much of young talent still learning but they were honing their skills and putting the work in to get better.

For every Major League athlete making $50K a game, there are a hundred Minor League athletes making $100 a game.  It doesn't necessarily mean they are worse players either; the right scout just hasn’t seen them at the right time. Indie authors, in my opinion, fit into this category.

For every big name author out there, there are hundreds of midlist writers just getting their start. Hell, some aren’t even on a list. They put their time in, sitting in front of blank computer screens, furiously typing away for hours before holding the backspace key down and deleting everything. Then they start again. The process is the same for Indie authors and traditional authors, well mostly. Write, edit, rewrite, edit, delete, write, edit, and publish.

There seems to be a lot of resentment of Indie authors, I read a blog post the other day that said independent authors shouldn’t call themselves “authors”. Really? I'm sure that every person playing on the Watertown Indians considers themselves a baseball player! It's not like they have to score a specific amount of home runs before they can call themselves a real baseball player. 

What's difficult for me to understand about people not liking Indie authors is that the "indie scene" has been around for years. Ever heard of the Sundance Film Festival? I've seen many Independant Films that blow the socks off most of the movies coming out of Hollywood these days. That not good enough for you? How about music; I Googled "indie music festival" and only got around 114 MILLION hits. I’m sure, the person singing in a cover band downtown at your local bar considers themselves a singer. So why do so many people look down on Indie Authors?  Even with the amount of Indies that publishers are picking up and the amount of midlist authors putting out great books, there is still this stigma surrounding it. 

I don’t like the phrase “self-publish” because what we do is much more than just “publish,”, but I am a proud Indie. I also don’t like to call myself an author (not yet anyway, maybe someday); I’m a writer. But I'm a writer putting in work now so one day I can call myself an Indie Author, and when I do I'll be proud to do it.

The Minor leagues is a great place to be and with the tools and resources like CreateSpace and Amazon and Nook available right now, it’s a great time to be here. And most hot dogs (or books) are only $3 or less.

Below is a list of some great Indie Authors, writers that put in hard work and are creating great books, check them out and show your support! 

www.journal.michealbunker.com

www.scottmoonwriter.com

www.samanthalafantasie.com

www.jasongurley.com

http://www.hughhowey.com/

http://www.jakonrath.com/