Finishing the manuscript is one step.

Doing the revisions leads to more.

And then, with luck or daring, there’s publication.

But you’re hardly done.

Maybe the hardest part’s still ahead.

The part they call marketing. It’s a major topic of conversation when authors get together.

~*~

One of the small but important changes I’ve made in my presentation in the past month is expanding the available links to my ebooks. I’d previously said “at Smashwords and other fine ebook retailers.” But then one of the retailers, the Apple Store, pointed out I wasn’t mentioning them as one of the options, and that got me looking at the others as well.

What it’s led to is something like this for me in general:

Check out my author page at the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Smashwords, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook retailers.

And something similar for each of the particular books, with the added sentence: “Or ask your public library to obtain them.”

~*~

After informing one of my Web-savvy younger associates, I was surprised that she really didn’t know anything about Smashwords.com. No, I was really surprised.

That got me thinking. My sense is that adding Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Sony as details boosts my credibility.

What do you think?

“What’s it about?” is one of the more difficult questions for an author. A novelist wants to reply with a summary of the plot, while a non-fiction writer is tempted to launch into a lecture.

Coming up with the right flash reply is a blessing.

My elder daughter, for example, pointed me to the “recovering from deep personal loss” theme of What’s Left. Yes, that’s what it is ultimately about.

Finding an appropriate – and hopefully catchy – title is hard enough. One or two words, if you can.

And then there’s the cover design – another long consideration regarding a quick impression.

For books on paper, there’s the back cover and the spine for added impact.

Ebooks have the blurb on the screen beside the cover.

A related challenge comes in giving a potential reader a good welcome to the volume at hand – a sense of what to expect. Is it playful or tragic, insightful or superficial, emotional or witty?

I’ve often flipped a book open and sampled a sentence inside, which has often been all that I’ve needed. Not an option with an ebook. You first have to download a sample of the book itself.

~*~

Over the past month, something that should have been obvious all along has finally come to my attention.

Novels don’t have subtitles. Non-fiction usually does, as you know all too well if you’re doing scholarly citations.

So why doesn’t fiction?

I’m sure there are exceptions, and maybe mention of being part of a series could be considered one of them. But none of what I’m pulling off the bookshelf parts from tradition.

Still, I started playing and realized a subtitle would be a big boost.

Rather than redoing the covers or the blurbs, I decided to put the subtitle on the title page inside as an extra touch in easing the reader into the text.

Here’s what I’ve come up with:

~*~

• WHAT’S LEFT … Within a daughter’s own living Greek drama
• DAFFODIL UPRISING … The making of a hippie
• PIT-A-PAT HIGH JINKS … Of housemates, lovers, and friends
• SUBWAY VISIONS … Along the tubes to Nirvana
• YOGA BOOTCAMP … Welcome to Big Pumpkin’s ashram
• NEARLY CANAAN … With an enduring promise of snowy mountains
• THE SECRET SIDE OF JAYA … A vagabond’s surreal and fantastic encounters
• HOMETOWN NEWS … Reports from Trump country

~*~

What do you think? Do the subtitles help?

And by the way, how do you settle on a title? As a reader or as a writer?

Here’s to all of you who are setting out on drafting a novel this month. I salute the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) program for encouraging aspiring writers to compose 50,000 words during the period. Good luck to you, stick with it, and learn tons – about yourself and your world – as you do so. Keep your eyes and thoughts on that goal.

I want to add a caveat, though.

That finished first draft is where the labor really starts.

As one observer noted: Talent goes into the first draft; genius, in the revisions.

~*~

I’ve come to be a bigger believer in those revisions. They move the text from being what’s important to you privately and on to what’s important to engage with the reader.

The revisions are where you dig under the surface to liberate the unexpected ore and lore of universal value. The process requires clearing away a lot of the vegetation and dirt, as it were, and it gets messy.

The core of my own published fiction arises in three large drafts I composed in a year I took off as a sabbatical back in the mid-’80s. While those stories were ambitious and original, they also rambled in search for a focus. One now spans four novels. Another, three.

During the next quarter-century, in addition to working full-time in a newspaper office, I kept returning to these at home in my free time, along with a slew of poetry. One book – Subway Hitchhikers – was published in 2001 but got swallowed by the first Iraq war, a terrible book-selling year overall.

~*~

Starting in 2013, the revised novels began appearing in Smashwords editions. I’ve been touting the works here at the Red Barn.

While most of them dealt with aspects of the hippie era, something still felt unfinished, at least in my mind. What happened to the movement? What are its lingering accomplishments?

The thoughts were gathering but not coalescing. I knew where I wanted to start, had a new character to run with, even came up with the trigger, but the next steps pointed nowhere.

Then, in 2014, I came across an unusual structure for a novel that ignited my imagination. Rather than the usual 20 to 24 chapters typically arrayed in chronological order, this one had 16, and each one was a kind of panel or module that could be moved about somewhat randomly or even as elements of a mosaic. Yes, some of these would have to appear later than others, but there was an overall freed of ordering. It was like wandering about in a room of paintings.

Bingo!

Continue reading “Beware, that finished novel is only the beginning of the job” →