Lessons Learned; First 30 Days of Self-Publishing — Joynell Schultz

I could just about add this to my blog intact as my experience, save I haven’t gone the paperback route and my parents don’t have a zoo selling my novel. But the rest stays true to my experience. It’s been a learning experience. After learning for a while, you reset, or as Bob Mustin posted, you go back to Square One.

My three biggest takeaways from Joynell’s post:

1. The digital marketplace is a swamp.
2. Not one single good source exists out there.
3. Despite the body of knowledge about publishing (self, traditional, e-publishing, etc), you end up doing a lot of trail and error to find what works.

Bonus fourth: it’s hard work. Far easier to write a book than to publish one, even if you publish it yourself.

February 18, 2017 1

Reasons

There’s a reason for the man you hate,

and another for the one you embrace.

There’re reasons for where the sun shines,

reasons for why the blind man’s blind.

Reasons for getting drunk as a skunk,

reasons for staying chaste as a nun.

There’s a reason for why that man lies,

and another reason for why that woman dies.

There’s reasons for hoarding gold,

and reasons for selling your soul.

Just remember reasons always abound,

and try to find reasons that remain morally sound.

February 18, 2017 0

Today’s Theme Music

Today’s song is one that used to start up whenever I’d hit the road during my military and civilian career, or during holidays. For a while, it was a lot of traveling. It looks glamorous on paper between all those countries, states and cities, but it wasn’t.

It’s simple beat and lyrics make it a terrific song for singing while walking around, to. From 1980 and the movie, ‘Honeysuckle Rose’, here’s Willie Nelson with, ‘On the Road Again’.

February 18, 2017 0

Hell Or High Water

This contains spoilers about the movie, ‘Hell Or High Water’. If you’re planning to see the movie, don’t read further, unless you’re okay knowing some important matters.

My wife and I watched the Academy Award nominated movie, ‘Hell Or High Water’. It stares Ben Foster, Chris Pine, Gil Birmingham and Jeff Bridges. There are women in this movie but this is about men, men and their relationships to one another, life, and women.

It’s a harsh movie, mournful and painful. Watching it, you think, “Jesus, people in Texas are really angry and (or) mean.” And you know, almost from the beginning, what will happen. If, after watching five minutes, you asked me to write down what events will take place, I would have written this down.

Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton (Jeff Bridges) will be alive. His partner, Alberto Parker (Birmingham) will be dead.

Tanner (Ben Foster) will be dead. Marcus will kill him. Tanner will nobly sacrifice himself for his brother, Toby (Chris Pine). Pine will be shot but he’ll live. Pine will get away with the robberies.

Toby will not reconcile with his wife. He’ll remain estranged with his boys. Hamilton will visit Toby after ‘it’s all over’ to try to confirm Toby was part of the robberies.

All this happened. Yet, expecting them to happen didn’t detract from the movie. This film was about relationships and the nuances their existences create, and how relationships continue to live and drive behavior even after some of those involved in the relationships are dead.

The movie, while about Texans Rangers and bank robbers, law and society, men and their women, and brothers and their family, is ultimately about love and betrayal. The largest betrayal is their belief in the land and the country, and how their expectations of what to believe betrayed them.

When the movie ended, after Toby and Hamilton have their conversation, and Toby invites Hamilton to come by and finish it, my wife commented, “That was an odd ending.”

“No, it wasn’t.” It was exactly about the title to me. Although the line, “Hell or High Water,” is used in reference to getting some money to a bank on Friday regardless of hell or high water, it’s clearer to me that the title is about relationships and life.

They are the hell or high water that’s endured.

February 17, 2017 0

Inspirational Quote # 552

I laughed when I saw this just now, because that’s exactly what I realized that I’d done – tensed up, closing off my creative power. It took a few days to recover the lessons I’d learned before — and before, and before, and before. Maybe, learning it with repetition, it’ll start to stay in my mind.

Today, You Will Write

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February 17, 2017 0

Any requests for “Writing Glitch” topics?

If you have a writing glitch, or have an issue and haven’t found a decent answer, reach out to Thomas Weaver.

February 17, 2017 0

A Call for Beta Readers

Thomas Weaver is seeking beta readers. Contact him if you’re interested.

February 17, 2017 5

Smarter Than Me

I was back with Philea in ‘Long Summer’, the sequel to ‘Returnee’. Her part in the novel and her situation are complicated and unique, and I struggled to write the most recent chapter featuring her. I tracked the problem back to several causes.

Philea is a woman. I’m not.
She resides several hundred years in the future.
She’s been time-traveling.
Her intelligence is higher than mine, and she’s educated. She’s the only Human (on the Earth side of the split) that has the grayware to dismiss needs for external augmented memory.

Contributing to my problem is that, complicated as the story’s part is for her, I’d not written about her and her parts recently. The situation straddled my strengths and weaknesses. Strengths: imagination and analyzing abilities. Weaknesses: inability to recall what I’ve written and over-thinking matters. The last paralyzes me.

The complications inherent in her story arc forced me to re-acquaint myself with those arcs for continuity. That took some time to do. Then, once caught up, I thought, now what happens with her? What does she do?

Fortunately, the character knew what to do. No doubt she resides in some sub-conscious cubicle in me. My strengths and weaknesses were constraining her. She couldn’t get out of the cubicle and onto the page. Meanwhile, I’m struggling to write, wondering, what’s going on?

She finally made it to the page yesterday afternoon. Boom, once she was there, she carried the scenes forward. Out of her cube, she kept going later in the day, pointing out changes needed to progress.

So, yea, rollin’ again. Once again, I’ve concluded I need to get out my way and let it happen. As the writer, I’m the least important part of this process. I hesitate to confess this realization, but I’m…just a tool.

Now it’s time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

February 17, 2017 1

Today’s Theme Music

This album had the honor of being the last piece of vinyl that I bought. I was living on Okinawa in Japan, then, assigned to the 603rd MASS at Kadena AB. DVD players arrived during my tour’s final year, so I bought one for $400. That’s since been replaced by less expensive players with better quality many times over. Before CDs, I bought music on vinyl or cassettes.

This album, ‘Come On, Feel the Noize’, by Quiet Riot, was bought while we still lived off base on the economy in 1983. I had Bose 301 and 910 speakers with a Sansui amp. The combination filled the tiny apartment. Ah, to be young and stupid. We moved onto base housing the next year but rotated to the U.S. by the end of ’84.

I no longer have the album, selling it at a base yard sale.

The song was originally released by Slade in 1973. For fun, here is a video of them with that. It’s such a tamer version but their clothing was very interesting, very glam rock. I was surprised that people commented that they’d never seen or heard Slade in the states. I remember buying and listening to their album in 1973.

February 17, 2017 0

Square One, Over and Over

Bob Mustin posted about the struggle independent writers face trying to publish, establish a presence and succeed. As it’s known with most creative enterprises, it’s more than just hard work and talent. You also need a little luck, but in a sense, you must push, put yourself out there and keep yourself out there for the luck to find you.

Gridley Fires- The Blog

My second novel proved schizophrenic in several ways. I wanted to write something in the vein of the Tony Hillman mysteries and, in fact, in researching for it I drove many of the roads mentioned in the soon-to-be novel, which was originally named The Good Road. I signed it, via my agent, with the Canadian publisher who launched my first novel. When the Canadian firm went under and before the book could go through the editing process, I also lost my agent, whose husband had created some unpublicized malfeasance that killed the agent’s career.

So back to square one.

I shopped the manuscript around myself and eventually signed with a second agent for a six month period. She did nothing with it, and I moved on. At this point I began being interested in small indie publishers. I signed with one in Texas, and a year or so later they wrote me that they were folding; they would…

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