Dragon Lake Books

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Writing

Jamaica? No, she would have done it anyway…

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photo of feet wrapped with chains

One of my many favourite things about writing is getting lost in research. Tracking down a fact, or answer to a question that might be useful or essential in taking the story forward.

I rarely share any of this because I’m terrified of giving the plot away. But is that just a wasted opportunity?

Would you be interested in joining me on some of these trips down a rabbit hole?

I wonder if it’s possible to share at least some of what I’ve found out on my research trips without giving too much of the game away.

Today’s (or yesterday when this is published!) fascinating expedition was to the Caribbean island of Jamaica. I just wish it had not only been virtual!

I found this article by Professor Geoff Palmer: Slavery, the Scottish Caribbean connection, which has given me an insight into one of my characters in the sequel to Fallen Warriors. It’s a fascinating read in any case, diving into Scotland’s connections with the slave trade, our hypocrisy in ignoring how many in Scotland benefited from slavery and tried to prevent abolition, and also revealing that in spite of a dreadful past, and maybe even because of it, there are thriving communities and people that have much to contribute.

It’s a complex and messy world out there. Have you ever been to Jamaica? What do you think of Professor Palmer’s article?

A new target

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Photo of street map of York

I’ve taken a couple of months away from contracting to work on the sequel to Fallen Warriors and ready another book for publication. I ended up needing almost all of the first month to ready that book and was finally able to send it to the printers at the weekend and am now focusing back on Fallen Warriors.

I like big targets for my writing. Huge, seemingly impossible goals that are quite at odds with how I tackle other projects. I had in mind that I would write 5,000 words a day and produce a 100,000 word draft by the end of May, then perhaps even go on to write the first draft of the final book of the trilogy in June.

I started actually writing today and managed 1,000 words.

Considering that I’m trying to switch my gears from editing mode to creative mode, that might not be too bad. In the last month of “editing” Fallen Warriors, I actually first draft wrote most of the final chapters. They were then edited, they were proof read, but the story just flowed out as ten years of subconscious thought made itself known. That was while I was working full time.

Over four weeks I virtually wrote 2,000 words a day in three hours or less. It should be possible to write 5,000 words a day when I’m working full time at it.

In theory.

5,000 words a day seems like a goal worth pursuing. The first draft of any book doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to get the story out and since with each of my books there has been a process of rewriting and editing, I know I can and will improve on the first draft. Also, I have always needed to delete scenes and chapters. So why waste time carefully writing scenes that may eventually have to be cut?

I already know I’m not going to have all of June available, other commitments have taken priority. It might take me a week or two to get up to speed, but that’s okay. My main goal is to tell a gripping and enjoyable story. If I can do that faster, fantastic.

If it takes a bit longer, that’s also okay. I’ll be posting daily updates from Thursday onwards. Tomorrow is a different kind of day, but more about that later…

Surviving Writers Block

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I thought I was making really good progress on the sequel to Fallen Warriors early this year. I’d put together a plot that seemed to allow me to tell the story I wanted to tell, I’d managed to write around 30,000 words, then I ground to a halt in the Spring.

It didn’t help that I’ve been working flat out all year, going straight from contract to contract, sometimes spending more time working than I’d hoped or planned. Yet I think the real problem was more practical even than that.

I was trying to write and edit at the same time. It just killed my ability to continue the story.

My first draft of Fallen Warriors was a glorious mess, full of odd scenes that had no apparent relevance to the overall story, but which I found myself writing simply because I knew I needed to write something, anything to take the story forwards. The plot was too complex, the characters… well there were too many of them. Trying to be creative and adhere to some sort of structure at the same time kept me stalling and was probably a major cause of the book taking ten years to write.

Those odd scenes ended up being some of the most beautiful parts of the story for me. The chance for me to explore who the characters were in more depth and understand what made them who they were.

I now feel I need the same freedom with the sequel, but last year and early this year I didn’t give myself that freedom and I ended up unable to continue.

I didn’t stop writing though, I simply changed track. Here’s something I don’t know if I’m ready to share, but here goes… My working title for the sequel was Fallen World. It would be good to hear what you think of that title, but you should know that I’m already considering another.

I wanted to explore what the title might mean and so began writing a couple of short stories set in the Fallen Warriors universe. My hope is that I’ll be able to publish these soon, allowing you a wider glimpse into where the story will go while I aim to complete the first draft of the sequel.

In addition, as I’ve had to focus on work far more this year, I’ve used that to motivate me to complete a first draft of a non-fiction book. If you signed up to my mailing list you’ve already heard about it and even had the chance to read an ealy draft and give feedback on it. If you’re not on my mailing list and would like to be the first to hear my news, you can sign up from the link at the top of the page or here.

I had a bit of a breakthrough last week with my thinking about the sequel and am aiming to take a new approach in January. I’d appreciate your prayers and encouragement.

I’ve two more Christmas/book Fayres to attend in the next couple of weeks, one in Argyll and the other in Dundee.

Poster for Dundee Book Fair on 8 December 2018

If you’ve any connection to Dundee, please share the above poster and let people know the book fair is on Saturday 8th December 2018 from 10am till 4pm at City Church, Tulideph Road, Dundee DD2 2PN. It would be great to see you!

What next after completing my 100X100 challenge?

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A major reason for challenging myself into writing 100 words a day for 100 days was to get myself into a daily habit of writing.

I was extremely tired after editing the final draft of Fallen Warriors and for over two months had been spending all my time proof reading and formatting. I had fallen out of the habit of daily creative writing. This challenge seemed like a great way to force myself back into that habit and to that extent, it has worked.

However, I’ve noticed that writing this blog has taken up time that I could have been working on the sequel and I can’t have that continuing. So, I’m now considering switching to a weekly blog post that will be linked to my mailing list, with maybe the occasional mid week post if there’s something urgent to share.

I’ll still be writing, it just won’t be visible immediately.

Kick-Starting Your Blog

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Do you struggle to regularly post to your blog? Would you like to blog more consistently?

If so, setting yourself a challenge to write and publish 100 words a day for 100 days may be helpful.

Today is my last day working towards this challenge. When I hit 100 words on the counter (and press the Publish button) I’ll officially have completed my challenge to write 100 words a day for 100 days.

It’s not easy. 100 words a day doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you’re trying to come up with a brand new post every single day, one that will be interesting to your readers, it requires a lot of discipline (you really need to follow the B.I.S method… 😉 )

[Editor’s note: you’ve reached 112 words!]

On the other hand, it has been easy. 100 words is a tiny amount. Unless you’re writing poetry or ultra flash fiction where you have to carefully consider every single word. I knew I could write 100 words a day as I’ve done it before while writing the first draft of Fallen Warriors.

Perhaps it seems too easy. Not worth your while? Consider the traditional newspaper columnist who has a limited space. They will have been given a topic to write on, each and every day. Maybe some of those columns are longer than 100 words: 200, 300, but regardless, they will be unable to go over as there is only so much space on a page.

Now, I’ve not limited myself to only writing 100 words. My longest post–10 ways to fail at publishing and marketing your book–came in at 2,172 words. My goal was to discipline myself to regularly publish, not to keep within a word count.

You could take this challenge further and try publishing exactly 100 words for 100 days, but I would recommend being clear about why you would want to achieve that.

You must have a theme

I probably have had too many themes over the last 100 days. I wanted to break down the 100 posts into ten categories in the hope I would find it easier to find topics to keep posting on. Having pre-thought themes has helped. Those have been churning away at the back of my mind throughout the last three months.

Yet I think I would have done better sticking to one theme and building on that throughout the challenge. I’ve seen wild fluctuations in views for each post as I’m targetting a different readership with each one.

Know your target audience

The most popular posts on this challenge have been writing related where I’ve offered useful information to fellow writers:

1. Making sense of chaos with Scrivener 501 page views
2. Amazon Academy The Detail 136 page views
3. 10 ways to fail at publishing and marketing your book 78 page views

Ultimately though, I want to find readers who will want to buy my novels and when I get round to completing them, my other books.

But, if that is my aim, then probably a daily blog is not the way to go. I’m seeing limited success with my limited marketing efforts and increasing marketing is more likely to result in increased sales than continuing a regular blog that few readers are finding. It wouldn’t make sense to focus on advertising this blog so I can find readers for it, when what I want to do is sell novels.

Spend time planning in advance

One hundred days is a long time to commit to a new project. As I’ve posted before, I haven’t always managed to write 100 words towards this blog each day. What I have managed to do is publish at least 100 words each day. I’ve done that by trying to plan out in advance what I wanted to write and by building up a buffer of scheduled posts.

Set a specific time to write

I’ve found over the hundred days that when I know in advance when I will be writing and stick to that, keeping my commitment is a lot easier.

Schedule in rest days and holidays

I originally planned to write two posts each Saturday so I wouldn’t have to blog on a Sunday. I wasn’t able to keep to that every week and sometimes ended up writing on a Sunday.

But, I believe that we need time off each week to recover, to be renewed, to allow our creative reserves to be refilled. I would encourage you to plan in time off each week for those reasons.

Also, be aware of the time of year you are planning to take on your 100 day challenge. I took mine over the summer and had a full week away at one point and a long weekend afterwards. It really helps during those times if you can switch off completely, but in order to do that, you will need to have a sufficiently full buffer of posts ready to publish.

Choose your pictures

It’s generally accepted that people are more likely to write a blog or online article that is presented with a relevant image.

I’ve not managed to be as consistent with that as I’d have liked, but I’ve started to become more comfortable using sites like Pixabay that offer a selection of free searchable images. Just type in the theme of your blog post or relevant keywords and you’ll get a range of images that might be suitable to use. Like the one at the top of this page. I searched on keyword: kick and ended up selecting this photo by nuzree. I edited the photo to add some text and then set it as a Featured Image which means it is automatically displayed when sharing your post to certain social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

Final word

If you want to kick-start your blog, then taking up the 100 words a day for 100 days challenge may be helpful. Why not give it a go and let me know how you get on.

Seven grams

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As I gradually start to get orders from bookshops for Fallen Warriors and The Great Scottish Land Grab, I’m learning how important packaging and delivery choices are.

I went to post my latest order from The Orcadian Bookshop in Kirkwall yesterday. Two copies each of Fallen Warriors and Land Grab. I’d placed the four books in a box, put the invoice in along with some flyers for Land Grab and wrapped the whole thing in brown paper. I weighed the parcel before I left home: 1.992 Kilos.

I got to the post office only to find the parcel actually weighed 2.007 Kilos…!

That’s a big deal. Currently in the UK we can post under 2 Kilos for £2.90.

Because of the size of the parcel and those extra seven grams, it was going to cost me £13.75! That would have wiped out all my profit and put me at a loss for the sale.

I asked for the parcel back.

I actually went to a second post office in the mad hope that maybe there was some difference in the scales that would have got me under the limit. Nope. Exactly the same weight. At least UK post offices are consistent in their scales!

Flyers. I’d put flyers in the parcel… I asked if I could borrow a pair of scissors, cut open the parcel, removed half the flyers and then asked for it to be reweighed. 1.940 Kilos.

I had been thinking I needed to buy more tape, so happily bought some, retaped the parcel and was able to post it at the expected rate.

Seven grams… It doesn’t seem all that much, does it. Crossing some boundary lines can be very expensive…