Wednesday 20 September 2017

(vol 4) CHAPTER 05: "Creating Brisk Worlds - part 2"



Last Monday something amazing happened. 

I released my first ever self published book.

Check me out.



THE CLIMB

It's been a tough journey and, if I'm totally honest, it's been mostly my own fault that it's taken this long.

I've wanted to be a writer for many, many years. I wrote stories as a kid. I wrote screenplays while in college. And finally, in February 2014 I put it all out there and started a blog that would follow my process from zero to getting a book self published.

So many projects have been labelled 'the one' over the last forty three months. So many projects were talked about, promoted, started, restarted, all before finally being binned.

And then, as I mentioned in the last post, I realised that three years of Flash Fiction had given me a lot of material to work with without worrying about plot and characters across a 100k word count.



THE FIRST TIME ACROSS THE LINE

The release of BRISK WORLDS ended up satisfying two goals. The first was having a finished book out the in the wild with my name on, all a solo project. The second was to learn the process of self publishing.

Putting an e-book up on Amazon is equal parts simple and horrifically daunting. When I was growing up, I always knew that it was a tough door to get through and thus very few people did.

And then e-books appeared, and Amazon called to all of us wannabes and showed us that there would be no gate keepers. The readers would be the ones that decided. 

The only difference was that now a writers journey didn't stop at handing in that final draft word doc and signing off on the cover a few months later. Now, the author was on the train all the way until the final station.



NEW SKILLS

I spent a good couple of weeks going over my draft with a fine toothed comb (though I still missed a few spelling errors). 

I was starting to get sick of the words on the page. 

I was hating all of my stupid stories. 

The deadline I'd given myself was unrealistic. 

The cover was rubbish. 

I was going to fail. 

It was all a little . . . 

And then one Saturday afternoon, things unexpectedly snowballed. In a good way.

Frustrated with the project, I had popped over to Amazon just to have a look. To get away from the cover and the manuscript I thought I'd just see what the next step in the process was, get a little heads up, maybe see how bad the next part was going to be.

Suddenly I found myself creating a KDP profile. It was all very exciting. I was just window shopping. I thought that I'd just go as far as I could without putting the book up.

But before I knew it I had uploaded the manuscript and was checking it in the Kindle viewer (it's exciting seeing it on a mock up Kindle device). I clicked next page, and next page, and next page, all the way to the end. This thing I had created actually looked pretty damned good. And complete.

Later that afternoon I jumped ahead further. I'd given KDP my bank details and Tax info. I'd set a price and entered a PreOrder date. Before I could put on the brakes I was waiting for confirmation from Amazon to say my book was available.

I was buzzing (while the wife was getting sick of words like 'book', 'kindle', and 'I did it!'). It was early evening by then and time for my son to have a bath and go to bed. I left the laptop alone and headed upstairs.



SO MUCH TO DO

A little over an hour later my phone alert went off; fellow author Liz Hedgecock (who I had been bothering all afternoon with KDP chat) had sent me a link; my book was available to PreOrder on Amazon! 

I may have let out a little scream.

I was over the moon. It was such a good feeling that something I had created was available for people to read. I'd finally done it.

I should have closed down the laptop and stuck a movie on. I mean, I'd worked my butt off all afternoon. I'd earned a break, right?

Instead, I spent the next couple of hours doing more to prepare my books launch by setting up a couple of other things.

My Amazon Author's Page - here.

The books Goodreads page - here.

And I may even have popped over to CreateSpace. Because, let's be honest, a paperback version would be nice too.

Sure, the work of writing and editing and cover design are time intensive if you want to get it right. But once you have a product, I was so impressed at how simple it was to release it into the wild.

Now we have to see if people read it and, more importantly if they like it. 

And of course, my next book is snarling in it's cage, wanting to be released too.



FIRST JOURNEY COMPLETE

Thank you to anyone who has picked up a copy (hello mum). If you haven't had a chance yet, the links are below. And if you could leave a review, that would be equally appreciated.

And let me know what you think of BRISK WORLDS in the comments or on twitter @BrianSCreek (or use #BriskWorlds).

Next post I'm hoping to have an interview with an awesome Indie author.

Until then, go write.





Wednesday 6 September 2017

(vol 4) CHAPTER 04: "Creating Brisk Worlds - part 1"


Well, it's a day I've been working toward for some time and it's nearly here.

This coming Monday (September 11th) will see the release of my first solo project; a Flash Fiction collection titled BRISK WORLDS.


IT WAS THERE ALL ALONG

The last couple of years have seen me struggle to complete a solo project and release it into the wilds. Despite heavy denial, I've come to realise that I was irking over what my first release was to be, thinking it had to be 'super special' and 'absolutely amazing'. But that was holding me back.

I was constantly struggling to meet my own high standards every time I held a different first draft in front of me. That's the hurdle I've been stuck at for so long; the first f***ing draft. It's one of the toughest stages, but it's also still quite far from the finish line. 

So I would constantly give up on a project which held even the smallest of flaws, seeing the whole book as 'broken' and not worth the effort. Then I'd come up with a better project which would have a reason why it should be easier to complete or be received by more readers.


COMPLETE WHAT IS ALREADY COMPLETED

And then one day, not that long ago, while another project started to scare me off, when dark thoughts of complete failure were looming and I thought that this would be my last attempt, I looked up on my FlashDogs bookshelf. On that shelf are several impressive novels and novellas.

And in among these self-published works sat two small books that showed me another way.



These fellow authors had put together little collections of their Flash Fiction writing. When I read these collections, I recognised several stories from the various Flash Fiction contests I'd taken part in . These stories I was reading in a paperback book held by my very hands, hadn't I competed with these stories weeks, months, and years ago in the online contests. And here they were. In real life.

Why couldn't I do that?

And so I stopped everything else and got to work.




THE BACK-CATALOGUE

Over the last four years I have accrued many, many stories, but I knew immediately that I wouldn't be able to use them all; some of them are real stinkers.

I proceeded to upload everything I had written since THE LADY IN THE WOODS into a single Scrivener file. And then . . . then I began culling. I read the stories over and over, day after day. 

I then printed the book out (400+ pages) and carried on, trimming, pruning, destroying. Smaller and smaller the project got, with a  little editing here and there (some of it was typos, other bits were improvements). 

When I had my final contenders I began working on a cover (a process covered here). It was all coming together.




THE LITTLE BOOK THAT COULD

And that's all there is. BRISK WORLDS, a collection of my Flash Fiction written over the last three years. Some of those sites are gone now (Flash Friday!, Angry Hourglass, Micro Bookends), others are still going (Microcosms, Paragraph Planet). But without any of them, these little gems would not exist.

This project is a way to get my writing out there, but more importantly, it's a way to get over those first hurdles, and to learn what I can about the process of self publishing by doing it and not just reading about it. Its been educational, and everything I've picked up, all the tips and tricks, will go into the next project, and the next, and so on.

So, below are the links. I will appreciate every purchase and every review (the good and the bad - it's all part of the job). Thank you for taking the time to read this, and if you pick up a copy of BRISK WORLDS, thank you even more so.

Next week I go into more detail about the actual process from finished Scrivener file to seeing the book up on Amazon.

Until then, get writing.




We live in one world . . . 

. . . but inside all our minds are thousands more.