5 Things You Should Know Before Self-Publishing

1) Your First Book Won't Be Your Big Break

Take a deep breath. Now exhale.

Your first self-published work probably won't launch you to the top of bestseller lists or turn you into an overnight rockstar. This is okay. It's normal. You are not a failure.

The market is overflowing with indie books at the moment, and that will not be changing anytime soon. Readers want to see that an author is dedicated to their calling and capable of producing multiple works sometimes before taking a chance on them. Chances are you might not see a huge jump in sales until after you publish your third or fourth work. That's okay. It's normal.

Focus on creating good art and nurturing other artists, and in time, you will succeed. You have to prove you have the chops to keep at it even if it seems like stormy waters at first.

Tips: 

• Books 200 pages and longer tend to sell better. Your cover is pretty important, but a good cover is worthless without a blurb that can keep up with it.
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• $2.99 is the best price point, but 99 cent deals do have their limited power.
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• If you can afford a placement (I can't) Netgalley is a lifesaver, and will help your book find readers better than almost anything else. Even I use it to find books to read, and end up reviewing and rating a large amount of them on other sites.
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• Writing an entire series to completion before publishing the first installment, so the reader has less wait time between books, is a genius idea, if you have the patience to carry it out.

2) You Need to Multitask

You can't just be a writer. You need to be an editor and a marketer, a cover artist and an agent, a website moderator and a social media guru, all while presenting a strong brand and personality. It seem impossible - supporting other writers and creators while maintaining an Instagram account while writing your next book while editing another manuscript while you format paperbacks and launch marketing endeavors. You will find your stride, though, I promise.

Sometimes this work can be overwhelming, sometimes it will feel like you are drowning. Turn off the wifi, pour a glass of wine, open a blank word doc, and go crazy. Or don't - open a new Chrome tab and binge on American Horror Story. You deserve it, you golden angel, you.

And when you're in a better place, and you feel like the superhero you are once more, get back to doing what you know you're meant to.

Tips:

• If social media makes you gag like me, it can be best to stick to one site and make good friends, so it feels like less of a chore to use it. Twitter has a great community of authors.
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• Self-publishing forums like those on Reddit and Absolute Write will teach you everything, make you feel less alone, and save your ass ten times at least.
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• People will tell you not to work on more than one project at a time: those people are boring and lack vision, but to each their own... I find multiple projects at once keeps me fresh, on my toes, and focused on what I'm doing. I tend to draft one project at a time while editing one or two others, and I'm constantly working on new outlines. I know it sounds overwhelming, but being able to jump from project to project and still feel productive might just be a godsend for you like it was for me - you do not want to feel trapped by your own art.
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• Building a network feels like less of a chore when you're making friends and helping authors achieve their dreams as well. Make friends, do your best to support them and take a genuine interest. It makes this so much easier.
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• Be yourself. And when I say this, I mean it less in the corny, 'They'll like you for who you are!' way, and more in a 'Don't be a fake, phony asshole!' kinda way. Don't be fake. Don't feel like you need to perform or change yourself to please others or move product. It will blow up in your face: nobody likes a fake bitch, not even when she's writing The Next Big Thing TM.

3) Focus on What Interests You

I've written a lot of books. I've put my heart and soul and blood and tears on paper (Shadows of Ourselves), let myself get lost in a pretty, captivating daydream (Souls of Salt & Seawater), and written simple, bubbly commercial novels, just for fun (Storm of Masks), and you know what I learned?

If you are working on a project that you love and believe in, a project that feels like a part of you, you will work faster. You will work better.

When I truly love one of my books, I'm more willing to champion it, more willing to put my stock and money and time behind it, and this work feels less backbreaking.

AKA, do your best to pick projects you will have fun with and see through to the end - don't force yourself to write something to an audience that you have no strong feelings for. A book you love will write itself, a book that isn't right for you will feel like torture to complete.

Tips:

• Let an outline or idea sit for a time before leaping on it, to see if it takes over your subconscious mind. If a world or character won't shut up, it's probably worth exploring.
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• Do not ignore early warning signs, or you will end up scraping 30,000 words and having to start a book again from scratch. Or, worse, abandoning it entirely. It is not fun throwing out days worth of hard work, people.

4) Don't Lose Patience

Rome was not built in a day. If your work is out there, it will find readers. Somehow, some way. Sometimes it takes a shove, or a gentle nudge. Sometimes you have to let it find its own way. Just trust yourself and keep moving forward. Letting yourself stagnate and your muscles atrophy serves nobody. All authors have that one book that under-performs. Do not let it be the end of your art.

Tips:

• AT LEAST ONCE in your writing career, but probably way more times than that, you will find yourself sitting on the floor in your underwear, getting drunk and crying, wondering if you're throwing your life away. You may or may not try to ask your dead relatives for advice from beyond the grave. They won't give it to you, though, selfish villains that they are. This is normal. This is the stress of being a living, working artist. But you know why you got into this and you know what it means to you, so don't you fucking let your stress win. We've all felt like we were facing doomsday at one point or another, legacy or self-published, and those storms always pass. It doesn't matter if you're a first-time indie or the next Suzanne Collins with hype and a big six publisher and a movie deal at your back - you have undertaken a huge project, and you are allowed to have a human moment about it, okay?
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• Sometimes you need to unplug your wifi box, turn off the lights, crawl into bed with a pizza pocket and a good book, and lose yourself. Sometimes you need to spend four days not writing, just watching an entire season of a TV drama in one sitting every day, in order to give your brain and soul a rest. This is alright, you are not awful and you are not a failure.
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• Some books are a success right off the bat, others do not find an audience for years. The guy who wrote Moby Dick didn't get famous until after he died, and we all love that ugly ass white whale and the rugged sailors who hunt it now, don't we?
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• You may stress eat an entire box of crackers, half a cake, ten greasy burgers, and an entire bottle of wine. It's part of the job: don't beat yourself up.
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• Books go through many incarnations; a future edition with a new cover or marketing angle might do better, so never lose hope!

5) Have Fun

Don't worry if what you're trying is what other people are doing or if you don't fall enough into line with conventional wisdom. History has been made by those who left old paths behind and formed new ones!

At the end of the day you cannot force yourself to do something you don't want to do. If you have to ignore marketing to finish a book, do it. If you have to sacrifice social media followers to finish a project or you have to spend more time on each book than other authors do, so be it. Do whatever feels right for you - and whatever is effective. You're aiming for results, not another way to blend into the herd.

Once again: TRUST YOURSELF, and know that if you're having fun, you've gotta be doing at least something right.

Tips:

• Let inspiration take over. A few days before publishing Shadows of Ourselves, I took the book in a new direction at the last minute - changing the cover and pitch focus of the book. It turned out to be (at the time, though I think Divinity may have surpassed it by now) my most successful book yet. I was very weary of making changes like that so late in the process, especially since I'd shared the old cover widely, but it was worth it. I put out the book as an Urban Fantasy instead of a Paranormal Romance, and it was a very good idea, even though it scared me at the time. Don't be afraid to listen to your inner voice and follow your instincts. It pays off.
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• Some days you will write 15,000 words in a day and gain twenty new followers and sell thirty books and feel like you're flying. Other days managing 500 words feels like pulling hairs from your head, and your zero sales so far do not help, and so you will end up on the couch rewatching Confessions of a Shopaholic because you have an insatiable crush on Hugh Dancy. It is all good. Don't be too hard on yourself.
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• Remember that at the end of the day, life is a journey. My biggest goal in life used to be becoming an author. Once I actually became an author, I realized letting the people in my life know I love them and experiencing new things is vastly more important to me. Your work is not everything. You are not building the great wall or saving millions of lives or changing the world - you're telling a fun story. Go write your YA robot war manifesto complete with cheesy love triangle and chosen one trope and just have fun with it. You'll be okay.

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Discussing YA: How Queer Characters Make Your Book More Realistic

Look, queer people exist. You don't have to like us, you don't have to want to write about us. But we exist. And if your fictional world doesn't at least acknowledge that we exist, it's gonna feel unrealistic, and at least a third of your readership is going to think you have ingrained homophobic tendencies. Seriously.

I can not tell you how many times I've had the immersive experience of a book ruined simply because it felt so unrealistic that every character in it was heterosexual.

And the thing is, you don't even need to write queer main characters. I mean, you should, yeah. Representation is important, and a big chunk of getting over ingrained self-hatred and internalized homophobia is about seeing healthy, happy reflections of yourself represented in fiction. But that said, if you, for some reason, be it personal preference or publisher interference or just the fact that you're one of those trash human beings who really thinks queer people are evil, don't want to or can't, write queer main characters, you can still include them.

Stephanie Perkins included two gay dads in Lola and the Boy Next Door, which created valuable representation and added a note of realness to the novel, but they were still minor, background characters. Kiera Cass mentions that girls can like girls without ever introducing a lesbian character in her book The Heir, and Marie Lu show both minor and major characters having same sex attractions without it taking up the focus. Jessica shirvington had a gay couple develop as frenemies, to friends, to lovers in her Violet Eden series, while only confirming it as romantic in the last book.

You can include diverse depictions of humanity's interaction with sexuality and gender without it being all about that, or taking focus from other aspects of your work.

Look, I'm not here to argue that queer people aren't evil. Why? Because it's 2016, and I don't feel like I should have to defend us in that way. If you're still hanging onto those beliefs, you're delusional, and I can't cure mental illness and paranoia through a computer screen.

What I can do is reason with you, so here's some reasoning: ignoring the existence of queer people, no matter what you think about us, both marginalizes a chunk of potential readership and also makes your art suffer.

It doesn't feel realistic to read a book where every single character falls into a straight romance with a heteronormative bow wrapped around it.

It doesn't feel realistic to read a book where every single character is just presumed to be straight when we know so little about them.

It doesn't feel realistic (or entertaining) to read a book where characters so obviously fall into a storyline or situation where an exploration of their sexuality or deviation from the straight 'norm' would make for a better journey or story, and watch it not happen.

I can name a slew of YA books where queer people just ... don't exist. Readers can handle queer characters. What's more, we want them.

A large fraction of your readers, even if they aren't queer people themselves, know someone who is gay, have a relative who is lesbian, are in a club at school with a kid who's trans, are talking online with peers who are asexual - if you think they aren't ready for this representation, or that they aren't actively interested in reading it, you're dead wrong.

There is no end to the benefits of writing a queer character, or having these conversations. At the end of the day, the only one you really need is this, though: we exist. We exist in the real world, and our absence in your books is out of place, a glaring elephant in the proverbial room, and it hurts the quality and tone of your work.

If you're too afraid to write queer characters because you think it will somehow bog down or ruin the entire book to have a gay person in it, you should probably be worried about your writing skills as a hole. Just saying.

How I Edit

A lot of people liked my post about fast drafting the other day, so I figured I would write more about my process. Specifically, editing! Even more specifically, making editing fast, easy, and fun.

If you haven't read the last writing post yet, you can find it here: How Long It Took to Write Each Book

So, editing used to scare me. When I wrote the Lilac Jones stories, my editing process was to go from start to finish several times, cleaning up different issues I hadn`t previously caught and generally trying to polish the work.

It was slow and mentally exhausting, and it made me hate my stories and my writing abilities.

Then Rachel Aaron saved my life. (Again.) If you haven't read her writing book 2k to 10k, it is, without a doubt, a lifesaver. It revolutionized the way I wrote, edited, and even interacted with my books. You can buy it here.

Seriously, any advice I give you will be fractionally less fantastic than hers, and she has more full length novels and more years of writing under her belt than I do, and has been traditionally published in the past. (Shoutout to hybrid authors, because they're like superheroes to me.)

Anyway, after implementing her advice and and toying around with different takes on editing and looking at different aspects of my own process, I came up with the process I use now.

The one that makes editing actually feel. . .refreshing, if I'm being honest. Fun.

I'm editing Shadows right now, so I'll give you a glimpse at my editing sheet as an example.

Once I finish a draft, I let it sit for a time while I draft something else. Then I come back to it, do my read through (without changing a word) and make a list of the book's most pervasive problems as I go.

I list problems in rank of their importance, with Sky & Hunter's relationship being the biggest issue, to the representation of the Seelie court as more minor. As you can see, I include space below each to write about the problem in detail, how I plan to correct it, and where it pops up in the novel, which chapters I'll have to work on the most to cure the issues.

Using this guide, along with my timeline (another Rachel Aaron advice bit that saved my ass while writing this book) and my chapter outline, I can jump around in the manuscript, correcting one problem at a time, instead of reading through my draft several times from start to finish.

Problems in books aren't linear, and it simply makes no sense to edit linearly, from start to end, when a problem might first appear in chapter one and not rear its head again until 12 chapters in.

Once I've got my list down, I start to flesh out each item on it. I won't show all of them, because, you know, spoilers (I do actually want people to read Shadows of Ourselves when it comes out, after all!) but here's an example of a full item:

As you can see, I include the actions I'll need to take in order to fix problems, as well as the chapters in which I they're most present.

Using the list as a tool, I can jump around in my book, fixing issues as I see fit, until I feel I have a stronger draft all around. This is my first round of edits, going through my list and fixing big problems.

Once everything on the list is crossed, though, it's time to start my first line edit. This is where I read my draft start to finish, again, without changing anything (at this stage I usually make an epub copy and read on my kobo) taking detailed notes of each scene.

These are rough, bulletproof notes that I'll use to do my chapter-by-chapter edit, and they look like this, jotted down in a notebook I keep beside me as I read:

• Expand conversation with Riley at the bar, they should catch up more.
• The change in the atmosphere has to be a sharper transition.
• sky should latch onto mention of "others."
• Examine Hunter further in office.
• Riley should be rolling her eyes at this.
• Sky should be making barbs about toxic masculinity.
• Make Riley grab Sky's arm.
• Lucie and Destiny should be featured more here.

And so on and so on. I go on like this until I have at least five or six chapters worth of notes, and then I sit down and implement those edits. These aren't large-scale things though, just little moments and details that I feel could be sharpened or made stronger. I also focus on language and word choice here, cutting small things and readjusting awkward phrasing.

Now it's time to send your book out. I have a core group of people who are allowed to read at this point, and I specifically ask for their opinions on certain elements of the story and try to implement their feedback. I pick and choose which criticisms I think are most valid and do my best to make changes that reflect them. Always remember, other people's eyes catch things yours won't!

Once this edit is done, the manuscript is almost ready to be formatted and published for real. I just need to do one more read through, not changing any prose or plot points, not writing anything new - just doing a copy edit, cleaning up spelling and grammar as best I can.

And then, well, then I'm done. It's time to ready your book for publication, sending it either to your agent or sending out arcs to book bloggers, finalizing cover designs, if you haven't, all the nitpicky business side of stuff that will lead to your book sitting on the Kindle Store, you know?

So that's my editing process. It's made it a lot more fun, a lot faster, and a lot less likely to see me pulling my hair out in bunches.

Resources:

2k to 10k

Let's Get Digital (Free!)

How Long It Took To Write Each Book + Wordcounts! (How Do You Write So Fast?)

So today I thought it would be interesting to write about the books I've written and how long the process took for each one. Not all of these are published, and I'm only counting novellas, collections, and novels - not individual short stories.

I have a fairly quick writing process; I take my initial spark or idea and come up with a few loose scenes, and usually the ending of the book. Then I create a character sheet with every character, a brief description of their looks and personality, and an outline for the book. Drafting itself takes around two or three days for a novella, and around fifteen to thirty days for a full-length novel. Editing can take days or months, depending on the manuscript.

I attribute my fast writing to my detailed outlining strategies, which I developed after reading about how authors like Amanda Hocking and Rachel Aaron outline, and try to emulate the attitudes of writers like Jennifer L. Armentrout, who write for 6 to 8 hours a day when working on a book.

It should be noted I've been writing stories and starting books since I was twelve, but didn't actually finish a novel until I was seventeen, so I did have plenty of writing practice and time to figure things out before I actually began to finish things.

So, here's all the books I've written, their wordcounts, and their writing lengths, in the order I wrote them in. The wordcounts aren't exact - rounded up or down to the nearest thousandth.

* = published

Stars Full of Lies:
Wordcount: 48,000 words.
Writing Time: 27 days.

(Note; this is my first book, and also the only book I wrote without an outline. Both those things show in the manuscript.)

Demon Moon:
Wordcount: 25,000 words.
Writing Time: approx. 14 days.

*The Lilac Jones Adventures:
Wordcount: 17,000 words.
Writing Time: 2 to 3 days per story.

Blood of Midnight:
Wordcount: 52,000 words.
Writing Time: approx. 20 days.

Shadows of Ourselves:
Wordcount: 73,000 words.
Writing Time: 14 days.

(Note; this is both my longest book to date and also, in my opinion, my best. I'm editing it for publication now, and the fact that it was fun to write definitely made the process faster. I highly recommend writing books that are as fun for you as they are your readers.)

*Things We Saw At Midnight:
Wordcount: 13,000 words.
Writing Time: 1 day.

(Note; I was able to write this in one day for lots of odd reasons. I'd been awake for two days, was stoned out of my mind, and had more caffeine in my system than is probably healthy. I don't recommend any of this, especially not the part where I smoked a bunch of pot -drugs, even ones as relatively harmless as weed, are not integral or even truly beneficial to the creative process- but I admittedly had a lot of fun writing this and think it's some of my strongest work.)

*Frenzy:
Wordcount: 15,000 words.
Writing Time: 2 days.

*Souls of Salt & Seawater:
Wordcount: 32,000 words.
Writing Time: 17 days.

*Rage:
Wordcount: 16,000 words.
Writing Time: 5 days.

So there you have it. I highly recommend Rachel Aaron's 2k to 10k for fast writing advice, especially if you want to draft quickly without sacrificing quality or artistic vision.

Fast drafting is about accepting that your first draft isn't just allowed to be bad, but that, to a certain degree, it exists to be. It's supposed to suck, in parts. A lot, sometimes. Editing exists for a reason, and is both fun and revolutionary for any manuscript.

As I mentioned above, I drink a lot of coffee when I'm writing. An unhealthy amount, even. I also make sure to drink a lot, if not more, water. 9 times out of 10, if my writing is interrupted, it's because I need another drink or I have to pee.

I also sometimes smoke pot, although I'm trying to do that a bit less. It can help with anxiety and distraction sometimes, but more often than not it puts you to sleep. I definitely work best while sober, so I don't really think this bolsters more creativity or work ethic, it's just something I do from time to time.

Mostly I put my fast writing times down to a few things:

1) Outlines.

My outlines have saved me more than once. Winging it can be fun, but going into your novel with a guide, structured to make the story the most exciting, fleshed-out, and intelligent it can be before I even write the first paragraph is always helpful. My outlines range from highly, highly detailed, to just one sentence per scene, and I always give myself permission to switch things up and introduce new elements while drafting. Your outline shouldn't restrict you, rather, it gives you more room to play around where it really matters.

2) Butt in Chair.

• Sit down. Open Scrivener. Stare at my outline.
• Put on my 8Tracks playlist. Scroll through my current projects Pinterest board.
• Do not look at Facebook or Twitter. Do not go on Tumblr.
• Write your damn book. You want it, you have to work for it. It's as simple and as difficult as that.

3) Dedication.

I dedicate myself to my writing and my current project. Don't start something unless it's something you care about or know that you can at least have some fun with. If you're bored or frustrated you're less likely to work on things and finish them. I'll admit some of my titles, like Rage and Souls of Salt & Seawater, have been harder to write than others. But that said, for the most part, writing should be fun. It should be intoxicating and enjoyable. If it isn't, you need to change things up until it is again.

4) Enjoyment.

Make your writing fun. Look up some graphics tutorials on Tumblr or Deviantart and make images and edits for your books. Posts quotes of WIPS to social media and make 8Tracks playlists for your projects or certain characters.

The plus side of playlists is you can listen as you write. I made one for Shadows of Ourselves (particularly for my main character, Sky) just tonight;

Listen here: http://8tracks.com/jinx-king/tiny-blonde-mess

Why do I recommend things like this? Because if you think like an actual fan of your novels would, you'll enjoy writing them more, and utilising multimedia to foster your creativity will give you a richer experience with what you're trying to create.

There are so many things you can do to make writing more fun, more fast, and more effortless. It's not supposed to feel like a complete chore. So there you go, that's how I write so fast.