Time to write?

Time to write, what a precious thing! Book three is done and in manuscript format and the book four is plotted. However, there has been a pause, a rethink, an evaluation. The most common complaint I have received from the few who have read the books, is TOO MANY NAMES!

I have long practiced using names; reading the name tag at the grocery store, asking the name of the customer service on the phone, asking the name of the person next to me on the plane. As I write dialog, I want my characters to indicate who they are talking to and who else is in the room. So, I give them all names. And the few who have read the books have complained. “Do I need to remember this person? There are just too many, Pat!”

So, I am slowly re-editing the books. Names and scenes are being dropped. I have a large file where I save the scenes I am dropping, and all the names are saved in a spreadsheet. I may use the scenes as short stories, but we’ll see. (I am also working on a Prequel book.) I will begin replacing the files on the web site and once I have it all done, I will change the contents of the KDP files. I have asked Amason to take down the first attempt of the first book, but they have not responded beyond it is not available.

To have you read the story, that is my main goal. David grilled me on this. What exactly did I want out of this book? Recovering the amount of money I have spent on it is a fool’s errand. Even the big-name authors struggle with royalty payments. Steven King and James Patterson are well known, but they too have to produce yearly if they want to keep the lights on.

There are literally thousands of authors trying to get their stories before your eyes. The traditional publishing industry has been totally disrupted by the advent of digital publishing. Anyone who has the software, and most of it is free, can throw together thousands of words, convince themselves it is a major contribution to English literature, and offer it for sale on Amazon, Barnes & Nobel, and other outlets. There are companies that will promise you the moon for a price and publish what every you provide, no matter how awful. (Just an aside, Amazon Digital Publishing does a grammar check on your manuscript and struggles with dialog.)

So, what does that have to do with how to spend your time? When you are self-publishing, you do all the work. You write, you edit, you proof, you format, you upload, and you promote. If you are fortunate, you have beta readers who point out your errors and turgid prose. All the while, you struggle to work on the next volume of the series or your next book. Of course there is a next book! No one has just one story in their head. Yes, I write like I talk, lots of words, lots of details, lots of sidetracks to explains the why, but what else does an eighty-year-old woman have to do?