Musings About Writing Another Novel

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Interesting Reader Reply

 

Some folks have asked where I get ideas for the novels.  One person (who obviously does not live in a big city) actually thought a couple things were a bit outrageous. 

Just about everything I’ve interjected in the novels has happened in one form or another.  Yeah, of course I changed it some so as to not name names and whatnot.  But, it happened – and will probably happen again.

After all, I’ve been reading big city newspapers for well over 50 years.  And I have contributed articles about crime and corruption in the big city to newspapers over the years.  I remember many things that may sound totally outrageous to anyone living in any small town USA.  But, that’s life in a big city.

Also, I received messages from two major city public officials.  First they ask if I might be depicting their city in fiction.  Then they chastise me for putting their city in a bad light while not mentioning any of the good points of the city.

Funny thing is that I don’t even know their city!  Well, yeah, I know of it.  But I’ve never been there.  Don’t read their newspapers, either. 

What I know is that all major cities are having most of the same problems.  Crime and corruption are common in big city government.  Inner-city neighborhoods can be very dangerous.  There is often not enough police protection on the streets to get the job done.  And city workers pilfer from the various funds simply because there are seldom enough accounting protections of those funds to prevent that.

These things have been happening since man started living in large communities.  They are just more evident today because we have better communications.

If any big city politician tries to tell you that all the streets are safe just challenge said politician to take a five mile walk, alone, around the inner-city about ten some warm summer night.  They have big mouths, but they sure as hell know better than to try that! 

 

.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

Lots of Writing Going on Here

 

Apparently people actually read these blogs.  I received a couple messages in the last few days asking why I stopped writing here.

It’s a time thing, actually.  I see other writers who say they are writing a book playing on Facebook and Twitter a lot and also running a blog or two.  I’m wondering how they find time for all that! 

Sure, I have no problem writing a couple thousand words a day.  I edit as I go and every morning start out by editing what the wrote the day before.  That not only gets things corrected, it gets me back into the mood of the story every morning.

That “mood of the story” gets broken a few times a day, though.  Sometimes it seems that I’m called down for eating every hour or so – of course that’s not true, it just seems that way when I’m on a roll.  Then the dog wants to go out for a walk a couple times a day etc., etc., etc.

Fact is, I’ve been writing the third novel for the past three weeks.  It’s moving right along nicely.  If I go by word count alone, it may be a little over half done now.  But of course I don’t really go by word count.  When the story seems complete overall, and there is somewhat of a conclusion to all the threads in the story, I simply stop writing on that novel. 

Well, there’s that and the fact that the novel has to be long enough that the reader feels they are getting value for their money, too.  I’m not selling novellas, after all.  But I’ve never had a problem with not writing enough. . . .

So how can I put in the time necessary to write a half way interesting story in a reasonable length of time and still write to a blog, Facebook, Twitter, etc. every day?  When I started out, I thought I could.  But one of the first things I noticed was that I was running out of time.

Another limiting factor is that there are only so many hours a day that I can sit in front of a computer comfortably.  That time needs to be broken up by things like taking a walk and such. 

Then there’s this thing called advertising.  I haven’t really done any yet.  However, I am getting into that slowly.  What I’ve done hasn’t helped much yet, but I suppose it will be cumulative over time.  At least, that’s what those who have sold many thousands of books on Kindle say.

I’ll have three books in the Walker series posted soon.  While I’m writing the fourth novel I’ll pay more attention to advertising.  And while I’m writing the fifth novel I plan to spend almost half of my time advertising in various ways.

There’s still a major problem with book covers to get worked out, though.  When I find a way to make nice book covers, I’ll make the whole series of them at one time and be done with it!  But right now, I have no idea how to do that properly.

Oh, and I have been reading novels from the writers I follow and who follow me on Twitter.  There are some damn good writers there!  The last five novels I have read were easily “best seller” quality novels, as good as any that we have been paying six to ten times more for at the store. So I’m going to have to start writing some reviews for those.

 

.