There’s NEVER a Good Time

Posted by Joanne Huspek

The last few weeks have been brutal.

Felled by sickness (I’ve been calling it the conference crud, because it started right after the San Francisco Writers Conference) a month ago, a lingering malaise that lasted nearly three weeks; moving on to moving my daughter-in-law back from Grand Rapids and seeing her back off to San Francisco after a non-existent job offer; followed by minor eye surgery (STILL surgery! and my EYES!); and capped off by the serious illness of my #1 Day Job office girl (in the hospital with double pneumonia, nearly died, OMG) – can life throw out any more lemons?

The answer is probably.

All of these major setbacks have thrown my writing schedule completely off kilter. I still have the ideas bouncing around. I have this Donald Maass online class I signed up for back in January, and I haven’t been able to keep up with the exercises, much less apply the exercises to my WIP. I probably should have dragged myself out of bed while I was hacking my lungs out, or tried to write via touch typing while my eyeballs were covered in miniature baggies of frozen peas, even though I’m pretty horrible at typing while blind.

In the meantime, I’ve tried my hand at writing some online articles, which I used to be able to whip off in my sleep. Okay, maybe not in my sleep, but back in the day, I could concentrate on work and writing at the same time. By the looks of it, this is a skill I have lost with the onset of old age. This one article alone took a full three weeks to write. Even the restaurant reviews are lagging in queue.

I have been harboring a huge case of regret at not being able to write. Fretting, actually. I miss my 3 p.m. time slot where I escape to my quiet house and write. Time is precious, and I don’t have a lot of it. I moved heaven and earth to make 3 p.m. my Good Time to Write.

All of this mayhem lead me to an observation: There is never a good time. For anything.

Think about it. Some people wait to get married and have kids. The excuse? “It’s not a good time yet.” They’re waiting for money, maturity, a pinpoint in the horizon when life will be carefree and the backyard will be a replica of the Garden of Eden.

People sometimes wait to buy a house. They’re waiting for a raise, a drop in the interest rate, or a market collapse. They’re waiting for their Uncle Charlie to die and leave them a boatload of cash to make the down payment.

Some folks will wait to quit a job. I waited 12 years to quit my crummy job at the Post Office, and the reasons were many. I didn’t have to drive very far. I couldn’t get another job to match the money or the benefits. Never mind that I was miserable in a hostile work environment, I had two little kids who seemed to get sick every other week. My husband had just started his business, and he wanted me to stay on in case the business tanked. We might have been left with only my income. It took a local postal shooting before I re-thought my mindset.

I know people who will wait to take up hobbies until they retire. They’re full of big ideas of the places they’ll travel to and the things they’ll do, but then Life grabs them by the balls. They run out of money. They get sick. They die. Unfulfilled.

As writers, we have to be diligent about writing. There’s never a good time to write. There’s never a good time to do anything in life. You have to get out there with your machete and carve out your own little niche.

Which I will be doing for myself later today.

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Words of Wisdom From the San Francisco Writers Conference

Posted by Joanne Huspek

I can’t believe it’s already been three whole weeks since the San Francisco Writers Conference! While Real Life has threatened to swallow me whole (and spit me out), I’ve been slowly unearthing all of the wonderful little tidbits of information I had gathered during my three and a half days at the conference.

Today, I decided to open up my iPhone and check my notes. Yes, this year, I took notes on my iPhone. This compact device does a lot more than remind me when it’s my turn for Scramble. It even does more than provide soothing hits of the ’60’s on Pandora. The bonus is that it’s small, discreet, and makes more sense to use for note taking, especially if you’re situated at a crowded table overladen with the best banquet food ever, with nine other people.

I pulled out the trusty iPhone when Lisa See spoke. She gave a writer’s checklist, of which I’ll give the Cliff Notes version:

1. Write what you know. (We know.)

2. Start where you are. (Sometimes we don’t know, but it makes sense.)

3. Write a thousand words a day. (I’m soooo bad at this. But yes, I’m kicking myself in the rear.)

4. Research. (It’s necessary, especially if you don’t start at No. 1.)

5. Write a charming note a day. (She means to fellow authors, to people who have helped you, to people you admire. In my case, I’m trying to write a charming thank you note a week, which is one more than I have before.)

6. Edit. (Absolutely necessary.)

7. Read books by people who inspire you. (I do!)

8. Support your local bookstores. (I wish there were local bookstores here. I’m having a difficult enough time supporting the big box stores.)

9. Be who you are. (You can’t write like JK Rowling because you’re not JK Rowling.)

10. Voice and authenticity. (? I can’t remember what she said here. I know. Old age.)

11. Be passionate. (Most artists are.)

12. Enjoy the moment. (Hell, yes!)

13. Remember the things that matter. (Meaning it’s not the heady rush of publishing, or even of writing. Sometimes the things that matter are the little things, the things that have nothing to do with writing. REMEMBER.)

14. Writing isn’t easy. (Who said it was?)

15. Cut to the bone. (Because we all know we don’t want the gristle.)

16. The word and your voice.

17. Art is the heartbeat of the artist. (YES!)

I’ll admit, some of the list items don’t make a lot of sense, but I was typing quickly and trying to gobble down dessert. However, the first five are the most important.

I’m not going to erase my iPhone note. Instead, I think I’ll set an alarm to remind myself to look at it at least once a week.

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Book Baby-ing It – Part Three, The Wait

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Ya know, writing is so much more than writing.

This revelation hit me like a ton of bricks the day after I finished the first novel. Editing, re-writing, writing query letters, writing synopses, pitching, attending conferences, editing some more, proofreading, promotion, editing even more, researching options on publishing, choosing an option, and finally wrangling what you’ve written into a format that your chosen option will accept with the most ease – if you’re not tired reading this sentence, I want to hire you to be my shadow.

After four days of careful inspection of my manuscript, where I probably still missed some glaring errors, and where I still don’t get why some things came out italicized when they weren’t on my Word document, and why some purposely italicized phrases on my Word document didn’t come out that way, I finally closed the book on my proof and sent the corrections back to Book Baby.

This is the point where I wish code, computers, and conversions would be magically impregnated in my brain during my sleep and I would wake up tomorrow infused with the kind of technical knowledge I need to make my travel from written word to e-book-ready word a skip down the garden path.

One thing I can say about Book Baby, they are helpful beyond words. I even received an email from the CEO. You know me, it’s all about customer service.

That’s not to say I’d use them again. For one thing, and it might be a long shot, maybe someday I can learn the Smashwords conversion. (I might have to be dropped on my head first.) But more importantly, the Internet is constantly changing. I can’t tell you how many start up similar businesses (to Book Baby) that I met while at the San Francisco Writers Conference. The indie book business is booming (more on that later), and with the boom comes the requisite people trying to fill a gap in the niche. Book Baby has been great so far, but what about all the up and comers?

Like it is with any purchase, if you decide to go this way, check out the company’s track record. Remember, you get what you pay for, so scrimping on this service is not a good idea. And most important: Customer Service. I have capitalized this because 1. you are the customer, paying for a service, and that service had better be stellar, and 2. you’ll appreciate it in the end.

Now that Virtually Yours is virtually put to rest, it’s time to work on the sequel. 51K words so far, but it’s a mess. See you in a few.

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Book Baby-ing It – Part Two

Posted by Joanne Huspek

When last you left me, I had uploaded my work onto Book Baby and was waiting for the shiny new proof of Virtually Yours to arrive in my inbox. So I waited. And chewed down my fingernails. And waited. And emailed. And waited and waited some more.

After ten anxiety-ridden days of terror, most of which included thoughts of “Should I do this?” “Am I nuts?” and of course, the perennial favorite, “Am I ready?”, word came of my proof being ready. Wha-zzaa! But wait (I’ve already been waiting, so I was used to it), by the time the congratulatory email arrived, I was still in San Francisco. I was also by that time terribly ill and not in the mood to tackle anything on the screen. So I thought I’d hang for a couple of days and see what was up once I was safely on my own turf.

Once back in Michigan, I opened the email, which directed me back to my Book Baby account. There I found instructions as to the next step. (Remember, I so judiciously decided to spend the extra bucks on the proof. Thank the Lord, as you shall learn a few paragraphs down.)

There was a huge problem with the proof, and the problem began before I even got a glance at the e-printed page. For one thing, one must upload the file onto an e-reader or iPad.

I have an iPad (older version), and had no problem in the past with uploading purchased books. But files…that’s another story. I’d never done it before. And you know me… s – l – o – w when it comes to the wondrousness of the Internet and our modern technology. This is the kind of technological clod I am: I’ll be texting my daughter, and write the response I want to give her down on a pad of paper before I realize what I’ve done. Like DUH.

I had to download the file to my computer, then upload (or backload, or sideload, whatever) onto the iPad. You’d think this would be easy, but noooo. For one thing, my computer didn’t recognize that my iPad was connected to it. Which is funny, because when I connect to iTunes, it knows my credit card information to charge me for books, movies, and music. I could see the actual file on my computer, but I couldn’t copy it onto my iPad, since it didn’t exist in my computer’s mind.

Stymied, on Saturday, I had to give up. I tried all three recommended ways of getting the file – through iTunes, through Kindle, etc.; it just wasn’t working. I also realized an e-book I purchased from Amazon while in San Francisco wasn’t showing up on my Kindle app. Snap. My problems were multiplying.

Yesterday I gave it another go. The iPad was dusted off (let me tell you, it was dusty when I’d unearthed it), charged up, and ready to go. I was feeling much better and had taken a couple of tylenol as a preventative measure. I followed the steps on the Book Baby site, as well as on the Apple site.

I’m not sure how it happened, but there it was! My book! It was in my library, along with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. (I’m downloading the weighty classics on the iPad. They’re so physically heavy. And this one was free.)

The cover looked fab (although I’m still having cover-second-thoughts), and the beginning pages were great! Then I noticed a few formatting glitches. And spelling errors. Oy vay.

I had to hold the presses, as they say.

My next step is to fix the errors and continue on.

More later…

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Another San Francisco Writers Conference, Another Kick in the Rear

Posted by Joanne Huspek

I love San Francisco, and I really love the San Francisco Writers Conference. It’s not the fine food and stellar accommodations, it’s not the rubbing of elbows with the glitterati of the literati. It’s not even the infectious positive energy that seems to be exuding from everyone’s pores. Nope. This is the one weekend of the year when I receive a much needed kick in the pants.

Lisa See was the luncheon speaker the other day. Her talking points regarding the life of a writer really hit home. Key among them is something I’ve constantly heard. “A thousand words a day.”

Seems like a simple thing to do, but it’s not. Well, it is, but if you’re a world class procrastinator like I am, you can find at least a thousand and one reasons to put off the daily write.

I’m old. I have limited time to devote to writing, and I should make use of that time judiciously. Consider me sufficiently mentally flogged.

This is why I’m up at 4 a..m. writing.

Not really. I’m up at 4 a.m. because I’m still on Michigan time. And because after four days of rushing up and down stairs at the conference and navigating the streets of San Francisco (also up and down, talk about a workout), I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck. Despite my sore muscles and droopy, jet-lagged eyelids, once I post this, I’m going to get busy. Again.

So thank you, Lisa See.

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Book Baby-ing It – Part One

Posted by Joanne Huspek

Over the weekend, I decided to take the plunge. After months (years) of writing, re-writing, editing, thirteen beta readers, online classes, queries galore, a cover design, and critiques up the wazoo, I have decided to finally *sigh* give birth to one of my written creations.

That’s right, Virtually Yours is virtually going live. I’m going to e-pub it as soon as I can.

As we all know, I am not a computer-internet geek-head, much as you might want to think so considering the setting in Virtually Yours (the internet). I only recently learned I was setting up my Word documents incorrectly for publishing. When did the world decide two spaces between sentences was one too many? Or that you should never, ever tab to indent?

I have suffered headaches just casually glancing at Smashwords’ user guide. To be quite fair to Smashwords, perhaps the guide is easy for those whose right brains are near normal. My brain, left or right, is not anywhere close to that level. Even with this online guru’s massive blog about self-e-pubbing printed and by my side, I still couldn’t figure out the conversion.

I don’t have a lot of time. If I did, I wouldn’t play on the internet more. I’d write more.

So…I have decided to enlist the services of Book Baby. For a nominal fee, they will convert your text, assign your book an ISBN, and release it into markets including Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Possible headache averted.

I decided to go for the premium service, which is $100 more. For that fee, a proof will be provided. I’ve proofed my novel at least ten times in the last month; I still miss the typos.

The site is easy to use. You upload your book and your cover, and voila! You’re on your way. While the process is relatively painless, there are a few quirks that caused me to pause before the final click.

One is that you’re warned about not being able to proof or that changes will cost more money. Wait a minute, I thought. I thought I paid for premium? Don’t I get a proof? I then used the “Contact Us” info to contact them. I wanted to be sure before I plunked down my cash for this service. Contact is made by email. There are phone numbers, but I was working on a weekend. I figured email would be faster.

If you’re wondering if it was faster, all I can say is that my email was sent Friday night. I’m still waiting for a reply.

After two days of waiting, I decided to forge ahead and worry about my dissatisfaction later. At the point of payment, the reassuring mention of proof was included. Ah… And then the standard blah-blah-blah about how long it might take (two weeks) but it also might take less than that.

I have no idea what is going on.

As soon as I find out what happens next, I’ll let you know. Also when the book is truly launched. And then my friends who have pledged to buy a copy (leaving me with enough for a Starbucks, I hope) will hopefully whip out their credit cards and PayPal accounts and get busy.

🙂

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Incredibly Horrible Malaise Scares Writer Back to Work

Posted by Joanne Huspek

The headline says it all…

It had to happen.

After bragging for three years about my relative good health and having extolled the virtues of yearly flu shots, last weekend I was felled by malaise.

Now, my family will say that my “illness” was actually a prolonged hangover (I did drink, not that much. I was happy. My son and his wife were in town, whaddya want me to do? Sit there with an unhappy face?); I also consumed some medium well pork roast and a ton of sauerkraut that spent an afternoon bubbling in a pot along with spare ribs – and ate a deceptively small potato dumpling that probably weighed a pound. (It was my homage to the Bohemian ancestors, again, whaddya want me to do? I don’t make this dinner but on special occasions.) The result: I couldn’t get out of bed Sunday, except to make a mad dash for the bathroom. After several mad dashes, which wore a trough into my carpet, I experienced hot flashes worse than any menopause, accompanied by alternating cold spells where I shivered uncontrollably under layers of blankets.

Obviously, I couldn’t write under these conditions. I couldn’t watch TV (hell, I couldn’t operate the remote), answer the phone, read the paper, drink more than a swallow, or be my usual, charming self to our California company under these conditions. And they were begging me to come downstairs and play Scrabble! I was so ill, even a word game couldn’t rouse me.

As I lay on the floor, wadded up in all the spare bedding in the house, thinking I was going to die, and wondering if I should beg someone to drive me to the local ER, I was hit by sudden panic.

MY BOOKS AREN’T FINISHED YET.

I’m in an online Donald Maass class over at Savvy Author, and I hadn’t completed this week’s homework.

MY BOOKS AREN’T FINISHED YET!!

I’ll be attending the San Francisco Writers Conference in less than two weeks, and was going to firm up my speed dating pitches, but no… been putting it off.

MY BOOKS AREN’T FINISHED YET!!!

I’m trying to finish up an ending for the first novel that makes sense. Gave myself a deadline of the end of January, and it’s still in bits and pieces. And yes, I know it’s February. The EIGHTH.

BUT MY BOOKS AREN’T FINISHED YET.

There’s nothing like a brief recline on the deathbed to get a writer off her fat and lazy posterior.

Monday I felt a little better. Not much. I prescribed myself home made chicken noodle soup (which my husband says was the best I ever made – but he says that every time I make soup) and decided to lay low. Tuesday found me hugely improved. Exhausted but in an upright and locked position.

Today I woke up with more spring than I’ve had in a long time. It’s time to write, people, and the only way I know to get there is to sit down and do it.

Which is where I’m heading after I post this.

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