Charlotte’s Babblings

Look over on the side bar and you’ll see my little video of reading a story embellished and condensed from a story told to me by Bruce Cannon some years back. Is it True? What is truth? But it does describe a life-changing experience, and fiction is allowed in the rules of the Simpleology Best Selling Blueprint contest at Bethenextbestsellingauthor.com.

I want to acknowledge the use of a portion of  “Say Old Man Can You Play that Fiddle” performed by  EJ Ouellette & Crazy Maggy as the background music,  available at Tradebit.com.  Fiddle rock jam is a perfect description and it was perfect for the story, most of which was left out for time.

Maybe I’ll post the rest of it here one day, but Idon’t want to squander my best source of narrative all in one day.

I really like the post Get Out of the Zone from James Brausch today.  It makes me smile. I feel all warm and fuzzy. My whole week is made. It flows in the vein of his practical and somewhat iconoclastic philosophy of the 2%.  The title  has a mildly cute twist on a psychobabble clichè.  But that’s not the only reason I should feel this way about that article. It makes clear to me what my true passion is….writing! And well it should.  I wrote it.  An then there’s the article on Weight Loss Dude about how your keyboard makes you fat.  I really like that one too, for the same reason.

 Unfortunately, I’m only batting 666 (how appropriate is that!) as I didn’t make the Costa Rica HQ blog. No surprise there–those articles had no actual connection to my experience.  I must not have used enough imagination. No excuses though. I can write about alien planets, but nobody will ever follow my characters footsteps and prove me wrong. I take that back–I’ve read Podkayne of Mars, who dies on Venus in a plantation explosion…they didn’t know about Venus back in the 50s, so the story was based on what they did know, and now that story is just a fantasy.   I don’t know beans about Costa Rica, except for what I read online, and so much of what I read is real estate and vacation hype.  I just didn’t do enough research.

 I’m one of hundreds (about 4 hundreds if I’ve read correctly) of Brausch’s minions (okay, he calls us interns), and the writing was work for hire–not the first ghostwriting gig I ever had, nor the best-paying one. But what a nice surprise to find it today on my late trek through the afternoon–even better than the monetary award in my paypal account, which was also much appreciated.  Many of the posts on his blogs are written by interns, some closer to his style and voice, others not so much. I feel very good that some other minion thought the articles were good enough to post. I could live for the feeling of someone else publishing my work.

What I learned from that task was that I could write a heck of a lot more than what I am doing–at least if I didn’t do so many other things like intern tasks–and it does not matter that I didn’t know much of anything about the topics. I can research them and come up with something that will work. I can see that it does make a difference if I can relate the topic to my own experience, and I do know how to do that from writing fiction. Time to get out of the blog zone and into my writing.

Marion Gropen is one of the pros on the Yahoo Self-Publishing group that consistently has good, down to earth, tested advice. Check out her blog at http://www.gropenassoc.com/blog/

An article that caught my eye today was What is  a Publisher?    She tells us what wise authors need if we plan to self-publish:

• A block of ISBNs (10 for about $200 from Bowker-the more you buy, the cheaper by the each)
• Book design skills 
  • Graphic design for the cover, a marketing skill
  • Interior design of typesetting and layout
• Editing, copyediting, and proofreading
• Marketing skills and strategies for appropriate audiences
• Distribution channels for appropriate markets
• Industry and market expertise

If you want to be a publisher, you need to have these skills or be able to contract for them. Marion is also associated with Wexford Press ( a printing company) that can be your source for some of these these skills. 

A traditional publisher pays you for the rights to spend their capital on producing your book, selling it for you, and distributing it for you .  If you are the publisher, then obviously, you are spending your own capital.  Before you put a lot of your own capital with the blood, sweat and tears that you have put into your manuscript, do some research.  Remember that the more of your time and effort you spend to produce your book and sell it, the less time you have for writing the next one.  Make sure that you understand what a contracted service will do for your money and what is still up to you to accomplish.

If you are considering self publishing, do consider joining the free Self-Publishing yahoo group where you can ask questions and get the benefit of others’ experiences, good and bad.