Author House POD Ultimatum

So in the months and years that I’ve been researching POD and alternative publishing methods I found my way to AuthorHouse’s spam mail. Every few months they check in to see just why I’m not paying them to publish my book yet.

Well for starters this is the exact definition of ‘Vanity press’. I will neer pay to have my work published, that’s not being published that’s being ripped off.

So I finally sent them back an email informing them to either take on my product pro bono or stop sending me emails begging for my monies.

Personally I have a feeling they’ll just keep emailing me, they certainly will never take my ultimatium seriously, because they’d be fools and it would prove that POD doesn’t work.

but hey who knows. Keep an eye out folks.

Stay Strong,
-SamProof

Congratulations Nanorwimo writers and Winners from 15x

See more comic strips here

Winning Nanowrimo – the Final Push

So here it is I’ve been up forever, in the last 24 hours I pushed out over 12,000 words to make it over the finish line and beyond with 50,216 words. I went a little head strong , couldn’t bare the thought of having to wait to that last moment, so I pushed and pushed all day writing for a few thousands words a stretch and then going off to do something else briefly, eat pizza, get a cup of coffee, go live on stickam.com and talk to friends. But I kept forcing myself back to writing. And now at 3am I’m going to fricken sleep.
2 days ago the Nanowrimo Report told me it was going to take something like 11 days for me to finish the novel. So to that I say eat this:

Look for a new Path to Publication video about the strategy I used this year, and what’s next to come with my nanowrimo novel manuscript! Look for videos here: The Path Video Playlist

Nanowrimo Nay Sayers

There’s a lot of people out there, presumably writers that scoff at Nanowrimo, look down upon it, mock it openly. They say things like “it’s quantity over quality” or “I like Pepsi better than Coke”, ok maybe that has nothing to do with Nanowrimo but those people are crazy as well.

Here’s the thing, given a different point in my life, or if I’d just learned of Nanowrimo on a bad day I might easily have fallen in to being one of Those People. Hell when I hear from a friend that some friend of theirs “won nanowrimo” and was apparently gloting about it, I’m like “wtf, you didn’t win a pulitzer, you wrote stuff”. But hey that’s what it’s all about – writing stuff.

Nanowrimo - anyone can be a writer...

So here’s the deal, these people out there saying all you’re doing is sacrificing quality to write a novel, well hell they’re exactly right. That’s the goal, get it done at all costs. But when those same people imply that they could some how write a better novel in 30 days, well they’re full of shit.

The goal of nanowrimo is not to have a polished book at the end of 30 days, anyone that thinks they cant sit down and have a 50,000 word novel finished and have it be worthy of publishing in one shot is delusional.

If you’ve come this far and you’re still questioning you’re own abilities, if you’re losing steam, if you’re doing what I’m doing and finding yourself 5000 words behind the daily goal (and you’re bloggin instead of writing) then here’s what I’m going to tell you:

This isn’t over Dec 1st.

Winning and losing Nanowrimo is exactly what the little sarcasticlly funny poster says. It’s Arbitrary, it’s just a goal to get you pumping words out. So stop reading this blog and start pumping words out.

The thing is, like I said you’re not going to have a perfect novel Dec 1st. No writer has ever sat down and pumped out a perfect novel. Not Stephen King, not Dostoievski, not me and not you. The best writers are re-writers. They’ll go over the same manuscript several times, not just cleaning up grammer and punctuation, but scenes, story lines, entire chapters.

These things aren’t set in stone once you’ve written them, so go crazy and write crazy because you can clean it up later, you can make it make sense later, you can make the prose float across the page later.

Now, you need to be writing.

Enough from me, I need to be writing. I’m at 34k words! Got a hard push coming.

So how far are you?

Are you going to make 50k?

Nanowrimo The HalfWay Mark

Hey folks,

So Novemeber is half over.

Please feel free to run about the room, arms flailing over your head yelling “why why why, I’ve done nothing.. nothing!!”

If you’re keeping on pace you’re at 25,000 words. Are you?

Let me just say this, congrats that’s awesome. Kick it up a notch tomorrow. You’re clearly being too east on yourself and need to push even further.

Are you one of the 76% that have already fallen behind? It’s ok. You can still do it, Maybe it’s time to reschedule. You can do this. In the mid part of Nanowrimo 2007 I tucked myself away for the weekend and pulled 16,000 words out of my ass over 2 writing sessions and several hours.

Don’t go crazy, you don’t have to attempt to do what I did. I was pulling the weekend warrior gig, and I only hand the weekends to write in the first place. Consequntly I burned out after that marathon session and barely came back to the project at all.

So figure out how many words you have left, and re-calculate. divide it up over the remaineder of the days and adjust how much time you’re going to spend writing every day.

And then push yourself harder. If you’re finding you need to write an average of 3000 words a day now, make it 3500. Push yourself to get ahead! You can do it.

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Nanowrimo – Day 9

Been alot of talking about how you can do better in Nanowrimo, so it’s time for me to own up to how I’m doing.

It’s day 9 and I’m currently sitting on 14063 words (the average word count or 1667/day should put me at 15,003 so I’m not too far off. But if you’re like me you’ve started to get to a point where you constantly stop typing finding yourself thinking “Shit did I say that guy wanted to be a writer or an actor”, “Does that guy drive a Mercedes or a Hummer?” “what was that biblical story from the dead sea scrolls I heard about 5 years ago that I thought would fit amazingly in to this!?”

Then you find yourself scrolling back up through the story to try and find it and before you know it 20 minutes have gone by and you can’t remember where you ever wrote the damn thing.

So here’s the thing, I’m not going to tell you to take better notes while you’re writing. Nope.

I’m going to tell you the opposite. Stop trying to track everything, stop worrying about remembering everything. Just write.

Here’s the thing, if the notion of something is strong enough it’ll stick, it’ll poke it’s head back up, it’ll Make sense and thus won’t fade away from your vision. If something has drifted off, it’s not important enough, or it doesn’t fit strong enough, or something better is trying to come out and you’re blocking it.

So just start writing, make a choice, make it up, make it happen.

This is not a final draft, don’t pretend when December rolls around you’re going to have a final draft ready to go off to a publisher and grace the shelves of Borders. It’s not going to happen. When this month comes to an end you’re going to take some time off, celelbrate your accomplishment and everyonce in a while peer off to see the manuscript collecting dust on an end table.

Eventually you’ll pick it back up and read it through and you’re going to get readily excited that you bought that red gel pen and go just a little crazy.

So in December you can remember why you wanted that character to be a writer instead of a director, or find out that he shouldn’t drive a Hummer or a Mercedes, it’s an Audi all the way!

So for now, stop fighting yourself and just write.

Whelp looks like I’ve got another few thousand words to crank out tonight so I get a ittle bit ahead of the game.

Anyone wondering where all the new path to publication videos are, beyond the fact that I’ve been pretty busy with writing for nanowrimo and blogging in general the truth is my 500 GB external hard drive crashed and my laptop is full to the brim with previous projects I don’t want to just erase. So until I can get a new hard drive I’m a little out of video making. If you would like to help speed things along you can contribute a small amount at indiegogo or via the amazon wishlist button

Nanowrimo – Being More Efficiant

You’re failing.

You’re taking longer than you want to get to your word count.

You’re not even getting to the word count you set for yourself.

You sit there looking at the screen and you’re kicking yourself over and over again.

So what’s happening? It’s 5 days in, the first week is almost over. You should be at 12,500 words very soon but you’re not even close are you? You probably already know what you’re doing wrong, where your wasting all your time, how you’re procrastinating on this.

Cut Out All Distractions
When you sit down at your computer, word processor, pad of paper, w/e tell yourself you’re there to write and that’s it.turn off all other applications & Programs. Check your email for the last time and close it. Quit your instant messenger program. Close facebook. Tell your friends and family that knocking on your door will result in death by firing squad. Turn off the phone – and if you find yourself being distracted by the TV or iTunes turn it off.

• shut off all programs
• turn off your phone
• hide from friends and family
• turn off the tv/radio/iTunes

Do Not Edit
One of the biggest things that will impede your writing is editing while you write. Just learn to leave mistakes. Don’t go back and fix thigns just cause MS Word has underlined it in a red or green squiggle. You’ll waste your time. This month is called “National Novel Writing Month” not national editing month.

• Do not spell check
• Do not grammar check
• Do not research

Stop editing. They beauty about your built in spell check and grammar check, is that those little red and green squiggles will be there 30 days from now when the month is over and let you go fix those mistakes at that point.

Fixing things as you type not only wastes your time but it actually slows your creative flow and puts barriers in the way of your progessing the story. So let it pass.

Lastly don’t go off in the middle of your writing session to research “the ideal name for this character” or “that capital of Sri Lanka” or “is there an insect that can kill an elephant?”. Again you’ll impede your flow, hinder your creative process and waste time with which you could be writing. Make something up, and if you can’t make something up, make a note of somekind.

Keep writing.

And for god’s sakes don’t stop writing just to write a blog post about what’s hindering your own writing process. … Oh shit… Gaaaaah!

Nanowrimo Comic strip

Check out More comic strips http://15xcomic.blogspot.com

Happy Nanowrimo! Follow my progress at http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/246963

Prepare to Fail Nanowrimo

Welcome to day 2. So How’d it go yesterday? Good? Tough?

This year an estimated 130,000 people will pick up the pen, flock to their keyboards, and Type as if their lives depend upon it. And about 20,800 of them will finish. That’s 16. 16% of all writers that attempt Nanowrimo don’t make it to the 50,000 word finish line.

So that’s it, give up. Abandon all hope ye’ who enter and so forth.

I want you to really take this in. If you thought writing 50,000 words was a daunting task, good you get it. You’re half way there to defeat already. If you think you can do it, if you’re cock sure, if your blood is pumping.

You’re screwed.

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with.
-William Faulkner

Take a minute. Take a breath. Take a look around you.

Everything there is real, and what you’re planning on doing is fake. So fake! You’re just going to pull things out of the air and make an entire world populated with people and places and things, time? You’re going to make time!?

Are you overwhelmed yet? Good.

Here’s the deal. You can’t win this going into it thinking “I’m going to kick ass, take names and come out of here with an amazing novel.”

It’s not going to happen that way.

What you’re planning on doing is cram. You’re going to sit down and for 30 days you’re going to have the worlds largest brain storming session ever. The end goal is a book. But I want you to go in to this thinking of it more as a brain storming session.

Let yourself admit defeat, let yourself acknowledge “This is going to be utter crap”

Because it is. It’s going to have major flaws, you’re going to forget something important can’t happen, because something else happened… you’re going to change a characters name halway through the manuscript, you’re going to just completely forget to ever explain why little Timmy is afraid of asparagus.

Shits gonna go down, and if you go in to this thinking you can do no wrong, when you do and you figure it out (usually 10,000 words later) you’re going to shoot yourself in the foot and throw away weeks of work to either give up or start a new.

I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.
-Truman Capote

The point of Nanowrimo isn’t to fluster you in to never writing again.

The point is to motivate you to creating a first draft. Novels aren’t sold on a first draft, they’re re-written and edited several times over. So what you’re doing is giving yourself as a blanket as possible to work with after November.

If you think you’re done with this project when December rolls around, you’re wrong.

If you have any dream whatsoever of seeing your name on the shelf at Borders or Barnes & Nobles, then you’re job is just starting when Dec 1st hits.

You will reread and rewrite this manuscript alot. Maybe 5 times, maybe 20.

So When you sit down tomorrow and start writing again, let yourself know:

“This is gonna suck, and that’s ok. I’m going to make it amazing in time.”

If you acknolwedge it’s going to be bad right now, you’ll avoid getting stuck in your head with why things aren’t working – which will help you avoid writers block!

I’m not a very good writer, but I’m an excellent rewriter.
-James Michener