Category: tech

Changing things . . .

Over the past month or so, I’ve been serialising Regarding Avalon on WattPad. It’s an experiment in getting a bit more exposure for my writing, which by happy coincidence has also given me an excuse to read the whole book again. (Being a vain sort of writer, I don’t need much of an excuse to re-read my own books, but if I do it as often as I’d like then I’d have no time to read anyone else’s.)

Odd thing about reading your old stuff though: new stuff pops into your head. You think to yourself:

‘Oooh, now what if she’d said this?’

or

‘Now hang on; it would have been a lot funnier if he’d done that!’

Ideas that are sometimes better, sometimes just a different take on things.

In the bad old days, once your book was out then it was out. If you wanted to make sweeping changes then tough buns (This is probably why I’ve come across so many spelling mistakes in books over the years.) But now, with the miracle of digital distribution, you can go back, make changes and release it again. Hell, you can rewrite the whole book under the same title if you want to.

But that doesn’t mean you should.

For one thing, it’s a little bit unfair on the folk who’ve already bought your book, unless you can get the revised copy to them with a note of apology:

‘Dear reader; I woke up in the middle of the night and decided I’d prefer to kill Susan in chapter 4 instead of chapter 9. Here’s the new book; just start reading from chapter 4 – everything else is more or less the same.’

No, not fair, especially if, a week later, you decide that Susan’s one-in-a-million mishap with the power drill was better in chapter 9 after all:

‘Dear reader; you haven’t started on that new revision yet, have you?’

I’m a consummate meddler (I think the correct medical term is ‘George Lucas Syndrome’); if I let myself then I’d be changing released works every week. So years ago, I established a single, simple rule for myself:

Once it’s out, it’s done.

Sticking to the rule means that I don’t rush stuff out because I think I can fix it later. The book gets read, changed, edited, changed, read, edited, copy-edited . . . You get the idea; it has to be best it can be before I hit the ‘publish’ button.

And if I have new ideas and new directions for the characters then that’s what the sequel’s for.

eBooks and Self-publishing @ the Henley Literary Festival

Now, I almost didn’t go to this talk; the travel wasn’t a problem, it was the timing: ten-thirty on a Sunday morning. I haven’t seen ten-thirty on a Sunday morning in years.
Still, I managed to roll out of bed, into the shower, into yesterday’s clothes, into the car and into Henley – on time.

The talk was a chat and a question/answer session with three authors:

Angela Levin – journalist and author of the eBook Diana’s Baby – Kate, William, and the Repair of a Broken Family
Clive Limpkin – an award-winning Fleet Street photographer who has just published his memoirs, Lost in the Reptile House
and Emma Clare Lam, author of A Sister for Margot

It was a very entertaining and very informative chat, during which each author skillfully matched their own experience and perspective against each question. It was light on technical detail, which was fine by me; I’m equally blessed and cursed with a background in IT,  so I probably know a lot more about the nerdy bits anyway.

henleylitcover

What I was interested in was the difficulties and stigma they encountered in self-publishing. Clive pointed out that the term ‘vanity publishing’ had been coined in the 1940’s, and literary endeavour had been set back ever since. I wasn’t sure I was convinced until he pointed out that both Lewis Carroll and Mark Twain were self-published authors. I did not know that.

Emma went into considerable depth on her writing process, and talked about how difficult it was to find time to write her second book because of the effort needed to market her first one. This I can relate to; I should blog more and tweet more, but it gets in the way of the writing, which always seems a little self-defeating to me. Angela came up with a possible solution: eBook publishing houses. In return for a percentage of the sales, they’ll handle the formatting, the cover design and the marketing for you. It did sound a lot like vanity publishing to me, but since there’s no upfront fee to produce the book, then maybe not. Worth a look anyway.

The real takeway for me that morning was the realisation that there are a lot of people in the same boat as me: no agent, no publisher, but still keen to get their work out to an audience beyond friends and family. That does take hard work, dedication, effort and unfortunately means taking time out of your writing to put your name (or pseudonym) about.

So then the question is, what do you really want?

A while back, I got discouraged after a couple of ‘near-misses’ with finding an agent and the collapse of a television pilot project , and so I decided to put the writing on the backburner and get out of the study for a couple of months. The cats were pleased; they like the study, but don’t like sharing it with me. And I was pleased because I’d forgotten what ‘outside’ looks like. I came back to writing a few months later with a different attitude, and it was only after listening to Clive Limpkin speak that I realised what the change was.
Clive just wanted to write. He wasn’t too fussed about setting the autobiographical world alight or getting a guest spot on Chatty Man. Clive spent forty years writing his life story and just wanted to see it ‘out there’, and I think a lot of people moving into eBooks and self-publishing feel the same way.

I like stringing words together, and seeing if I can invoke an emotion while I’m doing it.
That’s it. That’s what I do. That’s why I wrote stories when I was a kid, and that’s why I write them now (though hopefully, I’m a lot better).

Beyond that? Well, what else is there?

🙂

Anyway, it was a great session, and I’m glad I got out of bed to see it. If you see a talk by any of them at your local Lit. Fest then it’s well worth an hour of your time to go along.
If not, buy their books (I’m especially looking forward to reading Emma’s).

A Sister for Margot by Emma Clark Lam

Diana’s Baby by Angela Levin

Lost in the Reptile House by Clive Limpkin (also available on the Kindle).