Any writers here ?

I like writing. I write in different ways like stories and plays as well as songs and poems.

I just came across this article, and I thought it was a pretty good fit for this conversation. I thought it reflected some of our thought processes well, and I think it could be a good help to aspiring writers.

https://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/3-ways-doctor-who-can-help-you-become-a-fantastic-writer/

I can relate to so much in that article. I can relate to reshaping my thought process through imagination, and I can relate to getting out of the box by getting into my own little box, and certainly to stretching things out in my mind to what others find amazing and unthinkable. And based on my interactions with people here, I don't think I'm the only one that would say that.

I love to write, and the fact that I've always had an extremely vivid imagination has helped with that. I write a lot of fiction, and I make mine character driven. I develop the characters and start writing with them until they start to develop their own personalities. After that, I put myself into their heads, use that to determine what they would do in that situation, and as such, they tend to more or less write the stories themselves.

I like to write. I wrote fantasy stories a while back but now I mostly write journals about my day and experiences. It helps with the anxiety as well which is helpful.

For me right now it's all about the software! 

My partner is currently kindly editing the manuscript of a book I wrote to go with a set of cards I designed. That was after not getting on with any of the software you can use to self-publish. Ditto for a series of short stories I would like to work on.

I don't know how I would get the MS printed independently without a POD software. I used to use Bookify on blurb.com for my art catalogues but Blurb have discontinued Bookify because it used Adobe flash. And Bookwright!!!!!!! is an absolute nightmare!

With Lulu you are even more on your own. Creative Space has a downloadable software but my laptop only has 32 not 64 bit so I can't use that and I was struggling with the software online. Abandoned ship. In any case, I would probably have to include plates of the artwork to make it something that would sell. 

My PC is 64 bit but that has given up the ghost and has an obselete OS anyway. But it might be worth getting it seen to if Create Spaceviscas idiot proof as Bookify. 

Any other hints on how to work on these coundrums would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks so much.  That's really interesting.  Did you go down the Hybrid-publisher route?

I’ve always liked the idea of self publishing and setting up my own little ‘publishers’ to give unknown authors (mostly in non-fiction) a chance to get a book published. I like the idea of giving really niche topics a space too. It’s actually an ambition of mine to create this model - it’s small scale but I have ideas how to make it work. 

Briefly

Self-publishing, figure out the software to typeset your manuscript and create or commission a book cover designer and publish your book on amazon yourself (no quality checks, requires learning new skills) but you keep all the money aside from amazon fees.

Traditional publishing - if a publisher thinks your book is worth publishing.... they take your manuscript and turn it into a book and do all the legwork to get it listed with traditional book shops and 'some' of the marketing, but they take a percentage of royalties for 100 years (no that's not a typo!) and you're tied-in to the contract for that time.  Typically this is a paid-for service unless you secure a publishing deal where the publisher does all the work for free but takes a bigger percentage of the royalties. You don't get an advance to do the writing unless you're JK Rowling or a proven author! Some won't do kindle/e-book versions. You have to buy a minimum of about 500 books (at cost price).

Hybrid publisher - pay circa £2k - £5k and give your manuscript to a team of people who: do editorial checks and give you feedback on readability (you do the edits and improve the quality), design a book cover (which you approve or give feedback on), do the typesetting of the final manuscript (which you approve), create the book for print-on-demand and kindle, list it on amazon. They take a sensible percentage of royalties for 5 years, after that you keep all the royalties or are free to move to another publishing contract. The downside is that you have to do all the marketing of the book.

For £2k you're basically hiring someone who then sub-contracts out the work to a variety of people on upwork etc that they likely haven't used before and you have to liaise with all of them individually.  For £5k you're paying a company that has people employed in the various disciplines to turn a manuscript into a book, or tried-and-tested contractors, and you only have to communicate with one person who co-ordinates everyone else and manages the work to achieve the agreed upon deadline.

hope that helps :-)

Daisy

Had no idea that this thread was started. I was reading a carbon copy of exactly what I'm like. I procrastinate far too much and stopped making progress on my story. I have one main novel and a sequel loosely based on the first. I started writing ideas down after I graduated from uni in a notebook. Everytime I had an inspiration, I wrote in the notebook. Rinse and repeated that for over 6 years but I have finally restarted writing again and slowly overcome the proscrastination after a trip abroad for Christmas.

But having a significant experience can help you reflect and overcome the barrier preventing us from writing. For some, it could be this situation we're all facing right now. Or just by writing in a different format such as a blog, you could get the motivation to consistently write quality content for your stories.

All the best, and hope you regain your momentum.

Interesting.  When you say it cost £5k to get a publisher, can you elaborate?  Is that £5k of associated costs or are you saying that you can pay a publisher in order for them to publish your work?

I am a published (non-fiction) No.1 best-selling author on Amazon. After procrastinating for three for 3 years, I hired a cottage for a week in the middle of nowhere and locked myself away (without broadband!) for a week and wrote the whole first full draft in 6 days. I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Doing the editing process afterwards is pretty tedious but I had a deadline with a publisher so that kept me focused. The editing process was done in evenings and weekends around my day job and took about a month.  It cost me about £5k to get a publisher - but having a deadline meant I got the job done and I've earned more than that in generating work on the back of the book (not from royalties). 

Have you ever done a www.nanowrimo.org challenge, I wrote my autobiography years ago and found working to voluntary deadlines and in a community of writers was a great way for me to connect with my writing vibe. Good luck.

Hey,

I've made an attempt at being a writer, but like you I have trouble keeping focussed. I tend to get lost in the worldbuilding, and lose momentum with working on the actual story.

I have several projects in progress, but my main one is the first part of what I envision as a series of novels. Again the same as you I have the beginning and the end but get lost when doing the bits in between. 

Although I've made quite a bit of progress it's definitely a labour of love, having taken more years than I would like to admit.

I recently started a short story to see if I could actually finish it, but now I've just ended up with several unfinished short stories as well as unfinished novels.

Now with everything that's going on in the world at the moment I've been too distracted and have lost momentum again.

Green,black swathes, .....Coiled!

Foaming swells abounds....relentless in their passions.

Textured air, obscuring the cold realities beneath. Whiles the twitching currents snake in sinew 

Toughened by its coarse.

Heaving !

 Weight so vast and widened .  Who can  fathom its depths..

Bones of times, far off

Its coarsened scales....and its rent and scratched true surface below....Lay the dead that breathed no more.

Congratulations on getting published!

I have got a series of short stories I would like to polish up, then maybe put up on Amazon or Lulu. Looks like I won't be poor in time on the next few weeks and I will be finishing my editing work on a series of cards I have designed. Two friends of mine both put up some good SF novels and short stories on Amazon 

I already do that on a Facebook group .

Des, how about putting some of your occasional observations in a poetic form. ;-)

My poems might be too controversial for here. ;)

An example of one of your poems maybe?

I do poetry - couldn't be arsed to even read a novel; never mind write one.