Indie Life: Fifteen Minute Break-Character Vitals

I am continuing with the next installation of my series, Fifteen Minute Break. Today, I want to talk about characters.

Fifteen minutes is more than enough time to create a character development sheet. A character development sheet is a form used to record the attributes about your characters. It covers everything from physical features to occupation to family, all your characters vitals. Vitals is a good way to think about what's on this sheet.

Think of the vitals taken at doctor visits. The information recorded on the sheet may be very brief but very important. There is no arbitrary questions, not even height and weight (by the way, these are important for medication and dosing). These things give a snapshot of you, the patient and guides the doctor through his decisions.

You're character development sheet does the same thing for your character. They help guild you as the writer to properly develop your characters. You may not have long answers, especially if you're working in fifteen minute increments, but all of the information is important. Let's take the example from above. Your character's height and weight are very important because it will govern how they act and respond to the events in your book. If you have a character who is going to fight the bad guy to the death, you need to make sure he's physically up to the challenge.

Feel free to download my character development sheet or create your own. Take fifteen minutes and fill one in for each character in your book, but minor characters might not need as much work as main characters. Also remember this is just a starting point. As you get into your book, you may realize that some of the attributes that you've given your character actually don't work. That's okay.  Make the changes on the sheet as you go.

Creating a character development sheet doesn't only help you shape your character, it can also be used when you begin the editing process. Your character development sheet will remind you that your character's eyes are brown, not blue. It will remind you of any habits that you've given your character and of their personality. By keeping this sheet nearby when your editing, you can ensure that your character stays consistent throughout the whole book.

Indie Life: The Fifteen Minute Break

I have recently rejoined the workforce. The journey has been a major life adjustment. I actually have to plan my life (ugh) and learn to be more efficient in smaller blocks of time…namely, my fifteen minute break.

I get two 15 breaks at my job. When I first started working, I was convinced that I would just have to find time once I’ve gotten off work to write. I convinced myself that fifteen minutes wasn’t enough to work on my novel. Two months in, I wasn’t really making more time at home to write and had to make that fifteen minutes work.

For the next couple of Wednesdays, I will be sharing a series of posts on how to be more effective with just fifteen minutes. I’m calling them the Fifteen Minute Break.

The first thing is to get acquainted with fifteen minutes. You might think it’s short like I did, but it’s long enough to get short bursts of work done. To get a real time feel, set your oven timer (or whatever buzzing device you have) to fifteen minutes. Do this a couple of times. The key is to get a realistic feel for how much time you actually have.

Also, you can time tasks to see how long they take. Here is a list of tasks that take fifteen minutes:

• Brushing your teeth 7.5 times.
• Preparing 5 packages of Oodles of Noodles
• Downloading upgrades on a PC (maybe longer depending on the age of your computer)
• Pumping two tanks of gas (take a friend)
• Playing 7 rounds of Tetris Frenzy
• A long shower (you’ll need lots of moisturizer afterwards)
• Going through the drive through a Chick-fil-a (but it’s worth it)
• The time it takes the officer to get out of the car after he’s pulled you over for speeding (don’t ask me how I know)
• Finding your phone when you’re late for work
• Getting through the “express” line in the supermarket
• Washing a load of laundry on quick wash
• Saving money on your car insurance (Never actually done it so someone else will have to verify)

Come back next week and I’ll talk about the tools you need to be more effective on your fifteen minutes break. 

Indie Life: Back to School

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…at least for parents of school age parents. It’s back to school time. Even if you don’t have children or your children have all grown up, there is something changes at the end of summer. Vacations and play are over. Time to get back to learning.

Since we’re in a season when so many are thinking about their educational pursuits, maybe indie writers should do the same. Now would be a good time to go back and focus on the basics: writing craft.

So much of our indie lives are focused on marketing and promotion. Or on getting our website in order or scheduling our blog posts, but what about our actual writing? How much time do we spend becoming better writers?

A well-crafted book is the foundational of a successful indie life. There is no substitute for it. You can promote to the high heavens, but if your prose doesn’t shine, it will all be for naught.

Poorly written book is one of the stigmas of indie books, and unfortunately, in some cases, it’s true. Since indie publishing is so easy now, anyone with some free time and a Word document can have a book live for purchase in a few hours. I have certainly read my share of poorly written indie books with poor sales, but our books don’t have to end up that way.

Putting time into improving craft can be very beneficial to not only your sales, but to your as a writer. Learning something new will put fresh wind in your writing sails. Mastering a technique can boost your confidence. Pushing to improve as a writer can also cure writer’s block and eliminate any feelings of stagnation.

How do we go about improving? Most of us can’t enroll in writing classes (but if you can, I suggest you do), so our education takes other forms.

Read. I’ve heard the advice of reading in your genre, but I would suggest broadening that to reading everything. Some elements of writing, like pacing and character arcs, can be learned from a well-written book from any genre. Read more and pay attention to what is working and what is not in the book. Take notes and see if it can apply to your writing.

Read writing craft books. If you have a library card, you can improve your writing. Most library systems are well stocked with writing craft books. Check a few and read them. Pick up a copy of Writer’s Digest. Many of these resources will present different suggestions on tackling a particular technique, but keep reading until you find one that works for you.

Do your homework. Now that you are armed with information, it’s time to apply it to your writing. This will require you to really take a hard, objective look at your writing. Most writers already know what their writing weaknesses are. Practice some of the tips you gained on your weak areas. And don’t forget your strong areas. Yes, they are already working, but look at ways to make them better.

Get critiqued. This is a challenging one because most of us have had some interesting experiences in critique groups. That being said, having someone other than your mother or husband critique is very helpful. Find two or three people who are broad readers, people who read all genres, and ask them to read your manuscript. These people are called beta readers. Even if they can’t tell you what exact technique you need to improve on, they can tell you when something is not working.

Our writing careers started with us learning about writing craft, and that learning shouldn’t stop once we’ve published. We need to push to learn and improve. Learn something new today.

A Different Kind of Tough

I’ve come to the conclusion every writer needs to self-publish at least one of their books. That’s a cringe worthy statement for those who haven’t quite embraced self-publishing, but I believe it’s true. Self-publishing is challenging, heart-wrenching, confusing, and hard work.

Most authors are familiar with the hard work portion of writing. Crafting irresistible hooks and realistic dialog requires effort. An indie author, however, experiences another level of hard work, and in some ways, harder than traditionally published authors.

Now this post isn’t about us vs. them. That gets us, the writing community, nowhere. I’m not interested in belittling traditionally published authors or others who do want to go that route. I can’t because my publishing dreams include traditional and indie books. I am, however, saying that indie publishing is a different kind of tough.

There are several differences in the tough for indie authors. For traditionally published authors, the publishing house will ask for suggestions for the marketing plan. For indie authors, you come up with the plan, approve it and execute it. Same with promotion. Both traditional and indie authors need a good editor. The different kind of tough for indie authors is that we have to find one ourselves. We also have to look for a cover artist, give direction on how the cover should look and approve the final version.

The point is that indie authors are responsible for the whole book process. Again, not to minimize the struggles of traditionally published authors, just saying it’s different. Indie publishing requires time and effort beyond turning in a manuscript to a publishing house and moving on the next book. Indie authors are solely responsible for the whole process, the creative and the business side.

Those two sides are exactly why I think every author should self-publish. When you are responsible for everything, you develop a great respect for your work and for all the pieces that make it great. You want your book to be the best it can be because you have invested many hours of frustration, education and tears into it. As an indie author, you fully own the responsibility of putting out a great book. The sole responsibility adds gravity to the process of writing and producing a book. And when you realize the weight of that responsibility, you approach the process of publishing very differently than you have before.

You learn your craft because no one in their right mind would go through the process of self-publishing only to have you book fail because of bad writing. Or bad cover art. You market your book, run great giveaways because you’ve invested in this book. You intimately know what it takes to bring the whole product together. You learn to respect your gift. It’s really hard to be flip about your writing when you understand ALL that goes into publishing a book.

I am now working on the sequel to my first self-published book, and my approach is totally different than it was for the first one. Gone are my pie-in-the-sky, emotional responses to seeing my name in print. I am much more serious about this one than the last one. Not to the point of taking the fun out of it, but I respect the process more. I wouldn’t have learned any of this if I hadn’t lived through the different kind of tough of self-publishing. 

Indelibles: Living the Life

One of the laments I often hear when people are considering going indie is that the author has to do everything themselves. Not exactly an accurate statement since there are many tasks that an indie author has to outsource but I understand their meaning. The author is responsible for the whole shebang. You have to make the plan and execute it.

Of course, that can seem a little daunting but how hard is it really? It’s not really that hard…it’s no harder than life. Not to minimize the challenges of indie publishing or life in general, but if you manage to live, you can manage an indie publishing career.

Everyday, we make plans and decisions. We plan our careers and to go back to school despite having a full time job. We plan to homeschool our children. Some of us plan weeklong vacations…vacations that include children. Others plan the most effective way to live in the Sandwich Generation, caring for both elderly parents and children. We do all this and then carry out the plan. And if we don’t know what to do, we do the research and find out.

Becoming an indie author is pretty much the same thing. Yes, we are making different kinds of plans, but it’s the same principal. We decide what’s best for us, we make a plan and we carry it out. If there is something we don’t know, we do research and figure it out. Or we figure out that we can’t figure it out and find someone who already has. This is life, indie life, but life nonetheless.

So for those who are planning to become an indie author, or those of us who are already on that journey, just keep living life. Indie life can be a tremendous undertaking, but so is life.

Indie Life: Meaningful

I have good news and bad news. Being the optimist I am, I’ll start with the good news.

This month, I got two four star reviews of my novel on Christian Manifesto. I also got good reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. The biggest piece of good news of all? My novel is a quarterfinalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. Yes, I screamed when I found out.

The bad news…I haven’t sold one copy of my book this month. Not a single one.

So there is my stark honesty. My sales haven’t been great before this month, but I must admit, I haven’t been promoting my novel as I should. My marketing has been sidetracked by a series of bad migraines. I’ve had to stay away from my computer quite a bit. This month, however, the few sales I was getting dried up.

Now you may be thinking, good reviews and promising contest results should mean something. I was thinking the same thing. I thought they would mean more sales, but they don’t. That’s one of the challenges of indie life. You find yourself wondering what it all means. How do you interpret the ups and downs?

I think the best way to deal with all this is to remember that this is a journey and in every journey there is good and bad. The bad does cancel out the good. Nor does the good cancel out the bad. They co-exist in indie life and every other part of life.

It’s also helpful to remember that bad occurrences don’t make the journey bad and good occurrences don’t make the journey perfect. A balanced perspective is the key. This journey will have good and bad in it. We want it that way. When good and bad co-exist, we can use a better word for our indie publishing journey: meaningful.

Despite my lack of sales, my journey is meaningful. I had courage to believe in my writing. That’s meaningful. I’ve dealt with the myth that sales and good reviews validate my writing career. That’s meaningful. I’ve celebrated that my writing connects with my fans. All meaningful.

Regardless what my sales end up being, I’ve had a meaningful month. 

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