Jade, Showcased

Why did I start writing? Who are my favorite authors? Find out -- and get lots of other stuff about me -- in my interview at the Indie Writer Showcase.

Bestsellers May Get Purchased, But Not Read

Bestselling books have a way of becoming their own self-propelling machines. Once readers hear that other readers are in love with a certain book, they run out to buy it. Everyone has bought a book simply because everyone else was talking about it. But the question is: did you read it? 

Are People Really Reading Bestsellers?

Some books have a way of becoming fashionable. Right now, the book everyone's talking about is Fifty Shades of Gray. Some swear it's the greatest piece of writing ever produced by the hand of man, while many critics have deemed it practically unreadable. The point is, they all bought it. When it seems like everyone's got a certain book, it's the in thing to go out and get that same book. How else can you join the conversation? 

Some studies suggest that bestsellers may get inflated sales numbers for just this reason. Instead of being read, bestsellers are getting purchased to serve as shelf and table decoration. One bookstore that wanted to test the theory stuffed coupons, redeemable for $5 cash, inside 70 of the store's most popular books. 

Not one of those coupons was turned in. In 1985, when the test was conducted, $5 was nothing to throw away -- and if I got a coupon for five bucks today I'd run right down to the bookstore with it in my hand. So why didn't those coupons get redeemed? 

One theory is that the books didn't get read -- but they did get bought.

Sales feed sales, but that doesn't mean those sales are firing up more readers. Some bestsellers absolutely inspire new readers and introduce people to books they've never before considered...but those big bestselling numbers night not reflect total readers.  Have you ever bought a bestseller because everyone said you should but never finished it? 

Haven't we all?

Jade's Cards on the Table

Visit Little Book Star to read my most recent interview, and find out which character's been giving me the most trouble during the writing of the Deck of Lies series. The interviewer asked some great questions about Justice, the first book in the series, and writing in general. Go check it out! 

Writing 101: Learn How to Type

It struck me today while I was working with my eyes closed that, in all the many Writing 101 topics I've posted, I've been neglecting perhaps the most important of all: proper typing. If you don't know how to do it and you're hunting and pecking your way across the keyboard, you've got to stop. Don't write another word. Before you ever create a book, or even think about creating a book, you need to learn how to type -- the right way. 

Getting Back to Basics

Everybody's got their own way of doing things, and it's important for every writer to develop their own writing style and their own habits. You need to feel comfortable when you're writing. All of this is very true. But it's also true that, no matter what, you'd better be typing the right way whenever you're writing. You might have your own system that works for you, and that's great...but you still need to learn the proper, tried-and-true method of typing.

Why? Carpal tunnel, for one, and that's just the beginning. If you're not typing the right way, you could be doing yourself severe wrist damage. The longer you type improperly, the bigger the problem is going to get. It is possible to do permanent damage, the type of damage that can make it all but impossible for you to type in the future. This is not a joke. You can also be doing damage to your back if you're siting strangely at your keyboard. You may end up with hunched-in shoulders and a sloped back if you keep it up for a few decades. 

Maybe the way you type won't cause these problems, what do I know? Maybe your wrists are well-supported, your posture's great and your fingers are flying across the keyboard. You still need to learn how to type properly. Improper typing is going to lead to more mistakes, and it's going to make it more difficult for you to keep writing without looking at your hands. If you can't type your books with your eyes closed, it's time to re-learn how to type. And yes, it is possible to write books with your eyes closed. I know because I do it all the time. 

Proper Typing

It's incredibly easy to learn proper typing, and all you have to invest is time. You can find ten free exercises online that help you master the basics, very in-depth text-based lessons that will walk you through learning how to type and really good interactive lessons that virtually teach you how to type step-by-step. When you're all done learning, take a typing test to see how well you've mastered all your lessons.

When you know how to type properly, you won't have to look at the keyboard or at your hands. You won't have to worry about doing damage to yourself. You can simply write your books, and that's what it's all about.

Winning Look

The Deck of Lies Diva Challenge is over, and a winning outfit for Rain has been picked!

Diva crystalstone32 designed this stylish number to win herself a free copy of Justice (Deck of Lies, #1). Thanks to everyone who played the Diva Challenge at Fashion Fantasy Game. All of the outfits looked great. 

For everyone who didn't win the giveaway, you still have a chance to grab a free copy of the book. Look to the left of the blog to find a link to a new giveaway, and sign up for your chance to win!

Writing 101: Conscious vs. Conscience

When I went to type the title of this post, I misspelled both words. Conscious and conscience are both hard to spell all the time, and that's not even their biggest problem. They sound alike and they have similar meanings -- but they're different enough to make it a terrible writing faux pas if you put one where the other ought to be. There are a few tricks to keeping them straight, so you don't have to pull up reference material every time you want to use one or the other. 

Conscious

The word conscious can be used in a lot of ways, which only adds fuel to the fire of writing confusion. In the main, it really means aware. You can be conscious of the fact that you're reading a blog, you can be conscious of your surroundings, you can feel conscious guilt.

But you also have a conscience. 

Conscience

It's that inner voice that tells you something is wrong. When you feel bad about something you've done, it's your conscience making you feel bad. It causes guilt, and regret, and all those other feelings. That's the main thing you need to remember about conscience -- it creates feelings. Conscious, by contrast, is awareness. 

To make matters even more confusing, the word conscientiousness exists. Clearly an extension of conscience, it means something like listening to your conscience. It's usually used when someone is doing something with great care: She wrote her blog posts with conscientiousness.

Sorting Them Out

Conscious and suspicious both end with the same suffix, and if you break them down to basic meaning they are closely related. To be suspicious is to be especially aware of someone's questionable behavior, yes? You have to be awake and aware to be in that mindset. I use tricks like this to link certain words in my mind; then, I can remember that you have to be awake to be conscious.

Your conscience can keep you awake at night. It's got the word science in it, and naturally this makes one think of crickets. This leads naturally into Jiminy Cricket, who is (wait for it) a conscience for Pinocchio! 

Really that's not a very easy trick even if you are very familiar with the story. Here's a better one: science is the opposite of feeling (since feelings can't really be gauged on a machine), so add con to science and you have conscience, feeling. Conscience is also longer than conscious, letter-wise, so you can always try to remember that the longer words go together. Conscience = feeling, conscious = awake, long long, short short.

It's easy to mix up even the simplest words, and I do it all the time. Every writer does, because the fingers are often faster than the brain. You're going to make mistakes when you write, so don't worry about that. Always go back over your work, and catch all the errors in the editing. Don't stop yourself while you're writing to worry over grammar problems, because you should be making mistakes when you write. Sometimes, mistakes actually help you create something even better. But if you don't go back and edit, I won't feel sorry when your conscience bothers you!

Writing 101: Pacing

Everyone has their own ideas about what makes writing "good" or "bad," but if your pacing is off there isn't going to be much of a competition between the two. Pacing is incredibly important...yet it goes ignored by many indie authors. If your characters make the decision to take a trip, buy the ticket and board the plane all in one paragraph, you really need to learn more about pacing in your writing. 

What Is It? 

Okay, so what is pacing? Every book has a pace, and usually it falls somewhere between two extremes: fast and slow. You can tell the difference when you read, even if you don't think about it consciously. Some books feel like a quick read -- you start them and them finish them and don't even know where the last 6 hours went. Other books that may take the same amount of reading time feel like they're dragggggging by; you look at the clock every hour, wondering how it's possible that five or six haven't passed since the last time check. That's pacing. In some books, events come hot and fast right on top of each other. In others, you may read many pages or chapters before anything new develops. 

Ideally, you want to establish a perfect pace in every book: not too fast and not too slow. The problems with a slow pace are obvious: readers are going to be bored, they're going to be aware of the time that's passing and they may grow tired enough to stop reading and give up on the book altogether. 

 Slow Reading

A slow pace makes lots of books absolutely intolerable to certain readers, while others may like the more serene feeling.

 In the main, you want to avoid writing a pace that's just too slow. Read your book and look for clues like over-writing and extreme length, which are often indicative of a very slow pace. Always remember that each and every scene ought to serve a purpose: it advances the plot and/or it offers the reader information the reader needs to know. If you're writing a bunch of scenes that do neither, your pace is too slow. Things need to happen. They don't have to happen in every single paragraph, but they should be happening every few pages. Otherwise, the reader will feel bored and won't feel a whole lot of motivation to keep reading your story. 

A very slow pace makes the book drag, and drag, and drag...is that how you want people to describe your book? Does that sound like something you want to read?

 Fast Reading

Carrie hung up the phone and bought the train ticket online. She threw a change of clothes into a bag, left her apartment and went to the train station to board the train to Connecticut. When she stepped off the train two hours later, she was home. 

Readers have to have some time to process what's going on in your book. If events are coming right on top of each other, readers are going to have trouble absorbing everything in the story, keeping track of characters and remembering events in their proper order. It comes across as bad writing, and there's a good reason for that. When the pace of your book is super-fast, you're not leaving much room for descriptive writing. You're not even leaving much room for readers to breathe. No one can absorb information if it's coming at them every single second. You shouldn't be lobbing your words at readers like bullets.

Pacing

Pacing that's too fast is every bit as problematic as pacing that's too slow, and that's why writers have to learn how to stay within a happy medium between the two. The best way to do this is to vary your writing. Toss a couple of pitches that are quick and unexpected, then ease off a little and take your time with the next pieces of information. Change between fast and slow pacing to keep the reader engaged and in suspense. Being consistent is good...being too consistent is boring. Speed it up and slow it down to create a good pace overall in your writing, and re-read your words to make sure you aren't mixing up your pace too much. 

Pacing is an art that every author has to master, and even very successful writers struggle with it constantly. Keep working at your craft and be mindful of your pace, and you'll find yourself getting better and better all the time.

From the Trenches: Mother Nature's Son

Some of the world's greatest writers never become famous in their own lifetimes. One of America's best never made much money with his writing, and by the time he died only two of his books were in print...because he paid for them himself. 

Henry David Thoreau, who was born David Henry, paid to have 1,000 copies of his book A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers printed...less than 300 sold. He built himself a shack in the woods after being schooled at Harvard, and many of his contemporaries thought he was quite odd. Maybe they weren't wrong -- but he was still a brilliant writer.

It just took a long time for anyone to realize it. 

Into the Woods

He was born in Concord, Massachusetts and went to Harvard in 1833 to study science, philosophy, math, rhetoric and the classics. But as an adult, Thoreau decided he wanted to escape the polished atmosphere of city living...and all the rest of society. 

In his own words, Thoreau went out into the woods "to live deliberately." He built a shack on a friend's land out by Walden Pond, to learn what he couldn't learn in college...and to write. He was told in 1845 to "build yourself a hut" and then to begin "the grand process of devouring yourself alive" by Ellery Channing. Thoreau followed the advice and just two months later, he was in the woods.

Here he wrote A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, but couldn't find a publisher. It was Thoreau's friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson, who suggested that Thoreau self-publish. He did, but very few copies of the book sold. He left Walden Pond in 1847 and worked to pay off various debts he'd earned. For years, he worked on his second book, Walden, which talked about his adventured in the woods. 

Today, it is considered to be a very important book. It's studied, and re-studied, and cited as a fantastic work of literary art. Back then...well, opinions were slightly different.

Publishers and critics weren't really interested in Henry David Thoreau. He wrote for himself instead, keeping journals and writing essays to the very last day of his life. Bedridden with ill health for weeks, Thoreau wrote frantically until the very end. His only fans were a few close friends who believed in his writing. They were the only ones who did.

Friends like Ellery Channing and Harrison Blake helped to publish some of Thoreau's very prolific writings after his death. The first were published in 1906, and slowly began to grow in popularity. It wasn't until the 1920s that literary critics began to discover him, and his talent. Today, the international Thoreau Society is dedicated to honoring and spreading awareness about his vast writings, in particular his famous Walden.

Henry David Thoreau wrote in the writing trenches when no one really considered him a writer...and he kept on writing, even after he failed at it commercially. He died with very little money, but he did have a circle of friends who believed in his genius. They were right, and because they kept trying everyone now knows the name Henry David Thoreau. He waited a lifetime to share his books, and never benefited from his patience. But the rest of the world did, and I'm pretty sure he would be pretty happy with that.