C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

See all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

05/14/2013 • 10:04 PM 9

Writers: Clean your manuscript with these enema tricks

There are mistakes in every book, but there are tricks to avoid some pesky problems. For instance, I’m in the midst of proofing This Plague of Days. In Scrivener, I do a quick and easy

A cross-genre flurry about society's collapse under the crush of the Sutr Virus combined with a boy's love for odd words, Latin dictionaries and his father.

Society collapses around a strange autistic boy with a deep love of odd words, Latin dictionaries and his father The plague is coming. Buckle up.

search for odd mistakes that creep in. Here are a few things I plug into the search box to search and destroy:

1. Hit the space bar twice and eliminate those pesky double spaces that find their way into your ebook (and look like chasms on a kindle.)

2. Put “the the” in the search box. Take one out unless it shows up as “the theme…” It’s startling how easy it is for the human eye to skip over a brain stutter like the the.

3. Search “awhile”. Change it to “a while” when appropriate. Here’s when it’s right to do so.

4. “Exact same” = A redundant expression we use in spoken language and in the excited flurry of our first drafts. Excise from later drafts.

5. Search “..” Double periods appear occasionally, usually from an edit you did instead of a typo.

The fewer mistakes you give your editors, beta readers and proofers to find, the fewer mistakes they will miss.

When you get all your revisions back and make your changes, do these searches again (and whatever common mistakes you discover you are prone to.) After the edit, the act of going back to make corrections often introduces mistakes. This is especially true if you’re working with extensive edits using Track Changes. It’s often helpful to bump up the text size so you can better understand where all the little red lines are pointing for edits. I prefer Scrivener and recommend it for writing, editing, compiling and publishing.

Also check the copy again once it’s published. I have had some file management issues in the past with Scrivener where I published an earlier draft, not the final draft. It was frustrating and embarrassing, but fortunately it was easy to fix quickly. Now that I’m aware of that potential, I’m extra paranoid so things keep getting better. Editing and proofing these little details can be arduous but, like a 10k run uphill, you’ll feel great about your work when it’s done.

Related articles

A free and easy editing program that works (chazzwrites.com)
How to Help an Editor (maasmith.com)
Editing ~ Michael J. Sullivan (silkscreenviews.wordpress.com)
Using Scrivener to Write and Publish an eBook (freelanceswitch.com)
Who Do You Need to Read Your Manuscript? (invisibleorder.com)
The Top Ten Reasons I Love Scrivener (theindieexchange.com)
Scrivener and Mr Blount (everythingscrivener.wordpress.com)

The Top Ten Reasons I Love Scrivener (theindieexchange.com)
Scrivener and Mr Blount (everythingscrivener.wordpress.com)

Filed under: Books, Editing, getting it done, grammar, publishing, writing tips, copyediting, editor, finding mistakes in books, Grammar Girl, Manuscript, proofreading, publishing, Scrivener, use of awhile, writer, writing, Writing and Editing

05/01/2013 • 11:05 PM 4

A free and easy editing program that works

As I revise my upcoming horror serial, This Plague of Days, I find some passages that I can’t wait to share. There are plenty of big reveals to come, but a few teasers along the way are fun (so click here to get a taste of horror and weirdness.) As I plod along, I’ve found a helpful way to polish the writing I want to share with you and improve my manuscript. The good news is there’s nothing to buy and you probably already have it but haven’t used the program in this way.

Before I tell you about this helpful editing program…

I have to tell you there are other editing programs that aren’t nearly so helpful. They aren’t as good as human eyes (so always keep some human eyes in your pocket.) You can subscribe to these programs at varying rates, from cheap to expensive. Some are better than others. I tested one and it told me there were 43 areas of concern in the first paragraph. Of course, even a terrible writer probably doesn’t have 43 areas of concern in one paragraph. It wasn’t even a very long one! I shuddered, cursed and looked closer.

The problem was the program threw up red flags (as in vomited red flags) everywhere. In an effort to be thorough, it overshot into ridiculously unhelpful. The grammar problems weren’t grammar problems. The spelling suggestions were all just alternative words. Stylistic choices were only that. Of the 43 problems, I found two things I might change. Might! I get that from rereading any paragraph!

The signal to noise ratio was clearly way off in the program. If I ever hate a writer with OCD, I’ll be sure to gift him or her a subscription. We’ll never hear from them again and they’ll never write another book.

So, to the “new” suggestion

It’s not new, but it is useful. I write in Scrivener (which I love). When I find quotes and snippets I want to reveal as appetizers at ThisPlagueOfDays.com, naturally I post it into WordPress. I’ve found the WordPress editor has helped me reconsider some things. It suggests neither too much nor too little. It’s elegant, free and easy to use for that little added polish to make you feel excited about getting to your last draft and publishing your book.

Grab a chapter from your WIP, paste it into WordPress, test it and consider adding it to your editorial production process. I like it.

6 Reasons Why Scrivener Is The Best Writing Tool EVER (wordbitches.com)
Must-Have Tools for Writers (friendsdontletfriendswrite.wordpress.com)
Scrivener and Why I don’t (everythingscrivener.wordpress.com)
Chapters in Scrivener (everythingscrivener.wordpress.com)

Filed under: Editing, getting it done, grammar, Arts, blogging, books, ebooks, editing, grammar, publishing, Robert Chazz Chute, Scrivener, technology, This Plague of Days, WordPress, writer, Writers Resources, writing

02/19/2013 • 12:29 AM 2

Writing and Production Schedules: What it looks like

This week…

1. I’m writing a non-fiction, instant ebook. It won’t be more than 10,000 words. I had 5,500 the first day and I’m finalizing it now. The turnaround time in total will be one week. Why? Because I found a topic I’m excited about. People will benefit from knowing more about the subject and use it to expand their businesses. One more day of research and writing and another bit of interviewing should do it. More on this soon. It’s also fun, and how rare is that?

2. I still have two books of fiction in production. One is the next Hit Man novel and the other is a massive post-apocalyptic tome. Two to three thousand words a day on these has to happen to make my plans move forward according to schedule.

3. With the help of my friend, Dave Jackson from the School of Podcasting, a new website for a new podcast is born. Details to follow once the website is prettier and filled out and curvy in the right places. This is just the beginning, though I think we’ll have a few podcasts up soon.

This will be an interview show, unedited and bouncy. I’ll talk to cool people for about half an hour about their businesses, their books and their lives. Think of the coolest person you know. Email me their contact information at expartepress@gmail.com. They could be a future guest.

4. Coordinate with my graphic designer, Kit Foster of KitFosterDesign.com for podcast and cover art. Don’t have to budget much time for this. Kit knows what he’s doing without me sticking my big nose in.

5. I’ll also have to get a new blog theme going and generate content for the new website. I’ve explored different options for a recorder for Skype interviews. Fortunately, Dave saved me some money by suggesting Call Recorder for that job. I recommend Hover for your website registration needs. They’re easy to deal with and there is no hard up sell of services you don’t need.

6. Record the original podcast, All That Chazz in a few days. Yes, All That Chazz will continue. These next nine months in particular are going to be a little more furious than usual. We’ll see what’s born at the end of that gestation period, literature-wise.

This week it’s another reading from Higher Than Jesus and I really don’t know what else yet. When I put my mind to it, something will come. Something always does come along. I hope it’s funny in the right spots for the right reasons when it arrives.

7. I’m going to resist an exhaustive listing of the rest of my to-do list because it’s mostly the mundane stuff everybody has to do. Sometimes I do actually write “floss” (so I will floss) and “brush teeth” because it feels great to cross an item of that damned list so easily.

When I get tired, I dip into Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men and remember what really great writing feels like. It spurs me forward.

I’ll get it all done. C’mon. Write your way to happiness with me.

#Podcast: Night & the City Edition (allthatchazz.com)
The Ticking Clock Edition (allthatchazz.com)
Podcast Hosts Told to ‘Cut Out the 4th Grade Fluff and be Professional’ (prweb.com)
Listen and Learn: A Guide for Creating Energized Podcasts (contentmarketinginstitute.com)
Seven tips about book marketing very few will heed (chazzwrites.com)
Podcast: Furious! (allthatchazz.com)
Author Platform: Problems, Solutions & Stuffed Speedos (chazzwrites.com)
What will you make of 2013? Help is on the way. (chazzwrites.com)
TOP TEN: Reach more readers with these blog tweaks (chazzwrites.com)
Podcasting 101 for Content Marketers: An Interview with The Podcast Guy, Dave Thackeray (contentmarketinginstitute.com)

Filed under: author platform, blogs & blogging, getting it done, All That Chazz, books, call recorder, Kit Foster, kitfosterdesign.com, Literature, new podcasts, new websites, Podcast, Time management, writer, writer's schedule, writing

03/25/2012 • 4:19 PM 3

Spooky weirdness and the books on my desk

A little story about writing and intuition

Once upon a time, as a healer, I engaged in counselling someone in a spiritual quest to free them from pain. It’s a long story I will not indulge today, but I will say that before each of those appointments, I meditated. I did that then. ow writing is the only meditation I seem to need. Before each of those appointments, I went to my bookshelves. I’ve collected books for years, so I have several thousand waiting to be rediscovered. Each time, one of those books would call to me. I felt a change in energy through my palm as I ran my hand along the shelves. I would then open the book at random…or seemingly at random. Something always arose in the client’s session that related to the passage from the chosen book. The woman I worked with used to be trapped in an electric wheelchair. She walks, drives, travels and lives a full life now. She became a healer and took my place. Make of that what you will.

When I’m stuck or need a nudge or a connection to an epiphany, I still go to my bookshelves. Call it inspiration, weird, or the hypnogogic state, pattern recognition, divine intervention or neural connection through confirmation bias. Call it nonsense if you want. I’m conflicted about it myself. Nevertheless, it worked. It still works. When I need it, that intuition can propel my narratives forward.

I’m now revising one book while writing another. As I survey my extra desk (spreading out is such luxury), there are several piles I either reference or keep close by just to stay on track. I thought you might be interested to know what I pulled from my bookshelves to draw from as I go through my process:

For my crime novel:

The Pool Bible by Nick Metcalfe (as in nine ball), Mobspeak, The Dictionary of Crime Terms (Sifakis), Writing the Private Eye Novel, Cause of Death A writer’s guide to death, murder & forensic medicine (Wilson), How to Write a Mystery (Larry Beinhart), New York City Day by Day and Frommer’s New York City.

For Editing:

The Artful Edit (Susan Bell), The Subversive Copy Editor (Carol Fisher Sailor).

For Inspiration:

Brother (William Goldman), Best American Crime Writing 2003, When the Women Come out to Dance and The Hot Kid (Elmore Leonard), Small Town (Lawrence Block), This Year You Write Your Novel, (Walter Mosley).

NEXT POST: Pantsing versus Plotting

Elmore Leonard: Rules for Writing (dangerousminds.net)
Author Walter Mosley on Writing Mystery Novels, Political Revelation, Racism and Pushing Obama (alternet.org)
A Drop of the Hard Stuff by Lawrence Block (fidlerten.com)

Filed under: ebooks, Editing, getting it done, My fiction, publishing, What about Chazz?, writing tips, Elmore Leonard, Hot Kid, Larry Beinhart, Lawrence Block, This Year You Write Your Novel, Walter Mosley, William Goldman, writing and intuition

02/19/2012 • 5:55 PM 1

Indie authors unite to help a young man with leukaemia

Click the image to go to IndieGoGo and learn more.

Indies Unite for Joshua

Filed under: DIY, getting it done, What about you?, #IndiesUnite4Joshua, Cancer, fight cancer, fundraiser, indie authors, IndieGoGo, Joshua, leukemia

01/24/2012 • 10:13 PM 1

Another Day in The Life

Things always take longer than you expect and it’s always later than you think.

Image by mshea via Flickr

8:00 AM: I’m up and getting the kids off to school. Got to bed early last night, so I’m actually functioning on six-and-a-half hours of sleep. Bonus!

9:00 AM: Kids are delivered unto the local indoctrination centre and nobody’s crying including me. Success.

Coffee x 2. Research some information and loiter over an argument about the merits and sins of book and music piracy.

Autograph a book for a friend who stops by. (This is an event, but I pretend I’m casual about it. “And who should I make this out to?”)

Holy crap it’s 10:30! In my research, someone wrote a blog post on how regurgitating from elsewhere is bad. This strikes me as funny because said article was rescooped via Scoopit! and that’s how I found it in the first place. (I love Scoopit!) Still, I haven’t written an original post on here for a few days, so I fire off a blog post on the virtues that tie the martial art of Hapkido and writing. I wonder where Chang Man Yang, my old instructor is now. After he was terribly impaired in a horrific car accident, I don’t know what became of him or his family.

11:15 AM Post is done and twittered. I follow up with a couple of readers about reviewing my books.

Call Canada Revenue Agency about a tax filing. Despite my misgivings, they are surprisingly polite and cooperative.

Fire off an email to Smodcast about an upcoming ad I’m running.

Lunch. (Nine and a half hours later, I have no idea what I ate. Apparently it was inconsequential. Even to me.)

1:00 PM Revisions to The Novel. It’s going to be good, but my progress is slower than I’d like, though this would be true no matter my speed.

3:00 PM Come up for air. Tend the fire and then grab my script. I’ve already written most of this week’s podcast, so I take half an hour to record what I’ve got. I’m getting more efficient and less tongue-tied on the mic so the podcast is taking less time.

3:30 PM Get a reminder of a writing contest that I had ignored. Inspiration strikes and I grab a couple of old non-fiction pieces to meld together for the contest. It’s all fully formed in my mind so cobbling it together goes incredibly quick…except for the frustrations of getting the files from the old computer (that needs an enema) to the new computer. Also? The main printer is out of toner. Damn.

5:30 PM Contest entry is submitted. I generally don’t do contests anymore, but I’m excited about the possibilities this one presents. Next? Check email, triberr, Facebook, and Twitter. There’s very little I have to say or deal with. Amongst this, the kids and SHe Who Must Be Obeyed have returned with tales of the outside world. It sounds grim out there. I stoke the fire higher and congratulate them for their bravery in facing what, alas, I cannot.

6:30 PM: I’m told to eat. As soon as that’s done, I ask the children to clean up the skinny pig’s cage as I head off into the darkness to Future Shop to get toner cartridges.

6:50 PM: They don’t have all the toner cartridges and I definitely need black. I am instantly reminded why I hate dealing with The World: The couple ahead of me takes more time to complete their purchase than I took to get the sale through on my house. I’m told Future Shop has one black toner cartridge for me. At the other Future Shop. At the other end of the city. While waiting, I have three times picked up and put down a back up drive I’m been debating about for some time. It’s $139.00 but I decide I can’t afford not to have the insurance and ease of the back up. Maybe the slow couple ahead of me work for Future Shop and they’ve just been waiting for me to buy more before clearing the way to the cash register.

9:00 PM Finally back home. Traffic was a bitch, but I have the black toner!

9:10 PM I’m informed the skinny pig’s environs are now poopless. Excellent. If only we could all say that.

I check email. The most important email message is at once reassuring and baffling. Last week I asked BookBaby about getting an ITIN so the IRS won’t hold back 30% from my book earnings. I thought my message had been lost or ignored but it turned out I’m just an impatient dick because they’re very busy at BookBaby these days. I’m informed BookBaby doesn’t hold back any earnings and just gives me the whole nut. Really?! If it’s true, it’s great because it greatly simplifies my tax reporting. I just can’t believe it’s true nor can I divine how it could be true. I will have to confer with my accountant. (INSERT INVOLUNTARY SHUDDER HERE.)

Bookbaby also informs me that I can easily withdraw my books from all other outlets but KDP Select if I wish, but if I change my mind later, it will be a whole new submission and I’ll be charged again for resubmitting each book to the other platforms. Hm. Okay. My plan is to go with KDP Select for all my books soon and for the long term, so fine. Not great, but fine.

9:44 PM This blog post is done. What’s next? Another chapter to revise or go to bed early tonight? And I do have books to read… Hm.

9:45 PM Decide to throw children in bed at high velocity. Must read a chapter of Eric Walters‘ Shattered to Boy or Boy will become difficult. Will pet the skinny pig briefly and see if I can engage She Who Must Be Obeyed in a taped episode of House before returning to the screen for another go at something or other.

Projected bedtime, 1 or 2 AM, depending. (Do something fun, like writing, and it’s never really work.)

Afterthought:

The writing contest thing was an exception to my regular routine and as I write this post, it is clear to me I must spend at least twice as much time on revisions tomorrow, stopping just before my brain refuses to continue.

I need some time on the treadmill.

And absolutely zero time at Future Shop.

UPDATE: The funny thing is that, after writing today’s blog posts, I googled my old teacher. I had done this some time ago but he was nowhere to be found. The last I’d heard, he was in a terrible car accident driving home from a class with a student. I had heard he was be permanently injured. Tonight, after mentioning him in two blog posts in one day, I idly plugged his name into the search engine again. My old teacher is alive and teaching in Halifax! What a great way to end the day!

Writing like Hapkido (chazzwrites.com)
Self-help for Stoners is now available on Stitcher (plus the Christmas message of hope and gooeyness) (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)

Filed under: DIY, getting it done, My fiction, What about Chazz?, a day in the life, Canada Revenue Agency, Chang Man Yang, Eric Walters, Hapkido, printer, schedule, self-publishing, writer's schedule

01/12/2012 • 12:23 PM 1

The ebook pricing and gifting experiment

Click here for your free story!

Self-published authors have found success in serialization.

Cross-pollination is the cousin to serialization that no one talks about.

I have some big promotional events coming up, but January can be the doldrums for sales. Many of us, me included, are sifting through our new reading from Christmas and looking forlornly at our VISA bills. Publishing is so easy now, but obscurity is hard. I thought it was time to do something to spark the imagination of readers. It’s time to build my readership and, I hope, new readers will review my books and spread the word.

That’s why, until the end of January, I’m giving away a very special story for free.

I have ebooks selling at various price points: 99 cents, $1.99 and $2.99 and one in paperback for $13.99. When the big promotional event hits, I expect there will be a run on the paperback and ebook of Self-help for Stoners. The Self-help for Stoners podcast is also going well with over 300 downloads already.

But why free and why now?

Honestly, my sales kind of suck so far and I’m trying to light a fire to signal rescue planes.

My gamble is that once I’m picked up, readers won’t want to stop the ride at just one story.

Book sales need momentum. Fortunately, I had just the right story in my holster to fit this pricing/gifting experiment. The story, Corrective Measures, stands on its own. However, two characters from this story appear in several of my other stories in two other books. I won an award for End of the Line, a short about Dr. Circe Papua. Hounded by an unscrupulous bill collector, she uses magical powers of persuasion to get him off her back. That story appears in Sex, Death & Mind Control (for fun and profit). Dr. Papua shows up in different incarnations in several stories in that book, but also appears in Vengeance is #1, an ebook on sale for $1.99.

My main character from Corrective Measures is Jack, a serial killer and Dr. Papua’s patient. He tries not to kill anybody unless Dr. Papua says it’s okay, but after a minor argument over a parking space, Jack wants to murder a woman simply for pissing him off. (By the way, The Parking Lot Incident, happened to me. And no, there are no warrants out for my arrest.)

Here’s where the cross-pollination comes in:

Jack appeared in another award-winning story, The Clawed Bathtub, which is the last story in Sex, Death & Mind Control. I love it when stories nest beside each other. In Corrective Measures, there is a reference to events in The Clawed Bathtub that answers a question that was left a mystery in that story. Read one and you won’t notice the seams. Readers who buy them all will get a bigger picture and enjoy the inside jokes. I didn’t write the stories with this strategy in mind. That arose organically. I only write stories I need to write. However, these characters I know so well keep popping up. In The Fortune Teller, Papua is an old seer at a fair. In another story from Sex, Death & Mind Control (The Express) Dr. Papua is the same psychotherapist from Corrective Measures, but she’s dealing with an older version of Paul, the man who is abusive to women in The Fortune Teller.

You don’t need a flow chart or to keep score. It’s just that as I wrote about these characters, I found they had more to say than could be shoehorned into one story. There’s no timeline to follow. It’s about characters who are so compelling, I had to revisit them and explore them further. Each story explores extraordinary people in ordinary circumstances and makes it funny, suspenseful and scary. I found that as I wrote these stories, I pulled back on the gore because, frankly, the battery acid scenes would shock some readers out of the story. The results are tighter, more clever stories that make you think, make you laugh and make you a little more wary of strangers.

Please accept my invitation to go grab Corrective Measures now while it’s still free.

I hope you will be inspired to spread the happy word to your friends and through reviews.

I’ll let you know how this pricing/gifting experiment works out.

Book Marketing: What I didn’t know about resistance to ebooks (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
The downside of cheap ebooks (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
Hot Sweaty Hottie Motivation (allthatchazz.com)
The unorthodox ebook license note: (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
The price and value of ebooks Part II (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)

Filed under: All That Chazz, book reviews, DIY, ebooks, getting it done, podcasts, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, readers, reviews, self-publishing, short stories

01/03/2012 • 5:13 PM 4

How Kevin Smith Changed My Life

I had a secret worry.

Our walls are full of books. My curse was that many of my books are about publishing and how to write. There’s a good chance I’ve read every book in English on how to write and edit. My secret worry was that I would die and my children would be left with all these books, each one a reminder of the books I had failed to write. The idea of my wife and children seeing me that way scared the shit out of me. But I still wasn’t betting on myself. I wasn’t all in.

Then in November 2009

(UPDATE: Whoops! That was actually 2010 so I made the jump in one year)

I saw director Kevin Smith onstage in Kitchener.

I expected to laugh a lot and I did.

What I didn’t expect was inspiration.

I had thought about writing full-time but I only thinking, not doing. I attended writers’ conferences and wrote novels I kept secret from the world. I had a few drafts written but hadn’t polished and submitted them anywhere. I’d won seven writing awards, but hadn’t leveraged that fact. I wrote the back page column in Massage & Bodywork magazine for several years, freelanced some speeches and marketing materials, ghosted a bit and edited for writers and publishers on the side. Still, I hadn’t committed to making a real change for me. I was helping to make other people’s dreams come true. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I was ignoring my dreams and I wasn’t setting goals for myself.

I was waiting for…something.

Image via Wikipedia

Don’t wait. Take your shot.

Life is too short to wait to pursue your dreams.

I figured out the math. The risk I wasn’t taking was more dangerous than failing to try.

No matter how this experiment turns out, I can say I tried.

As you can see from the video, things have changed for me.

I’m having more fun. I’m putting myself out there.

Self-help for Stoners, Stuff to Read When You’re High, is now available in paperback.

The Self-help for Stoners podcast is on iTunes and Stitcher and six ebooks are up for sale just about everywhere.

Look for three novels coming in 2012.

Thanks for the laughs and the inspiration, Kevin!

I went all in before it was too late.

The curse is broken.

Hot Sweaty Hottie Motivation (allthatchazz.com)

Filed under: book trailer, Books, DIY, ebooks, getting it done, publishing, self-publishing, What about Chazz?, Writers, book trailer, commitment, inspiration, Kevin Smith, resolution, start your business, video

12/31/2011 • 1:54 PM 5

Self-pub Highlights: The Best and Worst of the First and How to Succeed by Failing

Please click here to pick up Parting Shots.

When you can’t get out of the bathtub on your birthday, something’s gone wrong in your life. And by your life, of course, I mean mine. The other night I tore a rotator cuff muscle boxing. It hurts when you throw a hook and miss. I ripped it up pretty well. I’d had shoulder pain off and on for weeks due to to my incredibly sedentary lifestyle and the computer mouse. I sit very still to write. I can’t write and walk around at the same time. I’m chained to a desk by an intravenous tube that carries coffee. When the shoulder pain hit, I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was. The pain is enormous. I almost called my wife to help me out of the bathtub. On my birthday. Not one of my best birthdays, I have to say. In fact, it might have been the worst.

Long-term?

Pain is good.

I will use this.

I did manage to get myself out of the tub. Getting my shirt on? That was five minutes of hell and wishing the Advil would kick in faster. It didn’t. I’ve had shoulder pain this bad before (on the other shoulder.) When it hurts to laugh, you know it’s bad. When you have to devise new strategies to do mundane tasks, it’s makes you mad. When it happens on your birthday, it makes you sad.

However, I won’t let all this sadness and badness and madness go to waste. At some point, I’m sure I’ll have a hero try to fight the bad guy in a climactic scene and the hero’s shoulder will be all messed up. That’s the easy take away from this experience.

Let’s go deeper.

Staying home to write books full-time? This is awesome. This is the fulfilment of a dream. I am so lucky to be able to devote myself to this enterprise all day. However, if I don’t take better care of my physical body, I will lose this opportunity. When every movement reminds you of pain, it’s hard to concentrate on work. Pain saps productivity, whisks away opportunities and manufactures misery far from the site of origin.

But let’s go deeper.

The pain in my shoulder is not simply a rotator cuff tear. It’s a symptom. I have not been to the gym for quite some time. I have not been taking care of myself. Why is that?

My excuse…no…my dumb reason is that I have been swimming in the launch of my books. I have no excuse. I let myself forget that success is not a single facet. To get my shit together, I have to take time to take care of all aspects of my life: family, fitness and work. I am not of one dimension. I was so busy with work, it gave me the excuse to be lazy in other areas of my life.

Translation:

I have books to publish! I have no time for the gym! Publishing is so exciting I don’t even have to feel bad about not going to the gym because I’m being productive!

Yeah, right. But for low long, Spock? How long?!

Concentrating so much on marketing made the disappointment at the initial outcome darker. My sales aren’t anywhere near where they need to be (yet, goddamnit! Yet!) The reviews haven’t been rolling in (yet, goddamnit! Yet!) But I’ve started up businesses before. I know how this works…or doesn’t work. These things take time. Readers will get around to writing reviews. Word will spread. It doesn’t happen on a schedule. You may as well try predicting cloud formations as plot book sales. But I do have a strategy. While figuring out how to manage our time in the new year, I told She Who Must Be Obeyed that I think I’m through The Worst of the First.

The Worst of the First is the downside of that incredibly creative, energetic time when you start up a new enterprise. You have to get a business license and take care of paperwork that is not directly related to your success. You order business cards or figure out technical aspects that feel removed from the core of your enterprise. The Worst of the First is about trying to do everything at once, just to get things rolling forward. The Worst of the First is about the trivia that no reader ever sees. It’s the behind-the-scenes stuff no one cares about, including me, but it has to get done. It’s part of building inertia, too.

Then there is The Best of the First. Here are the highlights of my first couple of months as founder, president, author and Chief Dude in Charge of Wastebasket Emptying at Ex Parte Press: Three ebooks up on Amazon and just about everywhere else by November 1. Recorded a podcast, Self-help for Stoners, to help market my book of the same name. Tried and failed to get my first podcast published. Dave Jackson of the School of Podcasting helped me to get the podcast up and out there. He helped me get control of my author website, too (allthatchazz.com). Got the paperback formatted with Jeff Bennington’s help. Got new art for the paperback done with my graphic designer, Kit Foster. Published Self-help for Stoners through CreateSpace. Published three short stories in the last week (Parting Shots, Asia Unbound and Vengeance is #1) on Smashwords.com. Maintained my Scoopit! Page, three blogs, three Twitter accounts and published six podcasts. Now the podcast is also available on the Stitcher app as well as iTunes, so it’s everywhere.

When so much positive stuff was happening at once, I was riding high. But I wasn’t leaving my desk. I’ve been married to my Mac, which makes She Who Must Be Obeyed jealous. I’m through the imbalanced part now. My shoulder reminds me with every move that I have to concentrate on the core. That means publishing three novels in the next year, yes. That also means taking better care of me so I can accomplish those goals. It means eating right and getting to the gym. That’s also part of the writing process. It clears the brain and keeps my body ready for writing marathons. Sitting still for too long is too hard on the body. We’re made to move and if we don’t, we die.

On my birthday, I checked my book sales and found the accounting had finally come through. It wasn’t good, but the beginning is rarely good. I’ve been here before. I know the terrain. I know the pain hammering me in the shoulder is a reminder of what a low point feels like. The sinking feeling as I looked at my first sales numbers—on my birthday!—made me think for a moment that all my marketing efforts had been wasted. But no. It’s just a normal part of The Worst of the First. My readership hasn’t found me yet. You have to market your books when you think you should be using all your time to write. In weak moments I do think, All I should do is just write and revise and do nothing else. But then I remember this is not 1987. Seclusion is a luxury for old media authors. I’m a new media author. I must not hide from the world if anyone is to ever hear me.

The fattest kid at Fat Camp has the most potential. When you reach critical mass and are feeling low, you can look up. There is so much to learn and so much to conquer. I am grateful to have so much fun and trial ahead of me. When we succumb to the idea that the best times of our lives are behind us, we truly begin to die. This is just the beginning and there is so much to look forward to! Writing this post, holding tight to this pain and this disappointment? That’s going to make the triumph all that much sweeter, don’t you think? I’m going to appreciate the win more when it comes. And I’m through the gauntlet and into the glove already! I made it through the Worst of the First. Yes, there will be frustrating times ahead, but I got through the first couple of months of the enterprise. I got to the starting line. A lot of people dream of the starting line but never get there. They never get the chance, or take the chance, to run. Now I’m running and I’ve got some inertia behind me. I have you behind me. (I know because you’ve read this far.)

My resolutions for 2012?

I will use this. Failure is fuel.

Failure is only failure if you let it keep you stuck in the tub.

Happy new year.

If it isn’t happy,

MAKE IT SO.

Self-help for Stoners is now available on Stitcher (plus the Christmas message of hope and gooeyness) (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
Stuff to Listen to When You’re High (allthatchazz.com)
Self-publishers: Why I went multimedia (and why you should, too) (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
Book Marketing: What I didn’t know about resistance to ebooks (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
A Series is Born: Free ebook and Parting Shots, a new short story (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)
Podcast #3: How to Beat a Murder Charge with a Skunk and a Smile (allthatchazz.com)
How to sell cross-genre books in The Land of The Easy No (chazzwrites.wordpress.com)

Filed under: DIY, ebooks, getting it done, publishing, self-publishing, short stories, What about Chazz?, What about you?, Writers, writing tips, Advil, Amazon.com, Asia Unbound, iTunes, Parting Shots, Podcast, self-help for stoners, Stitcher, Twitter, vengeance is #1

12/29/2011 • 2:03 PM 0

How-to: What can you get done?

Some time ago a writer friend on Twitter asked:

“I have two novels I’m working on. I could write this or revise that, but I really am not invested in which one I should do first. Which should I do first?”

My answer:

“Do the thing that is closest to done.”

In the next week or so, we’re going to be inundated with advice about new year’s resolutions and changing our lives and making ourselves better people (sweating, remodelling and starving ourselves, if necessary.) I have something planned for that, too, so buckle up for more on that later.

As you evaluate what to do next, especially in your writing, do the thing that’s closest to done. You need to get your work done and out there. No, I’m not saying publishing is a sprint (though it is that and a marathon, too.) No, I’m not saying you have to change. Maybe you’re one of the few who have everything going for you. But probably not. That’s not saying anything against you. It’s just statistically likely that you’re just as screwed up as most everyone else. Few of us will keep our high-minded resolutions past January 15th. But we could. It’s our choice to screw up and our choice not to. You can do everything right and still fail, of course, b