Tag: blogging

Uncategorized, Writing

Why Get Published?

carolyncordon

What does ‘getting published’ mean?

Getting your words published can mean many different things to different people, and the reasons for wanting it to happen can also be quite varied. For some, posting your words to your own blog, or perhaps getting a letter to the editor in the local paper is enough, for others, getting published by a major book publisher with world-wide distribution is what they want.

There are many variations too. Some people post their words to literary magazines, either print or online, some people publish newsletters with their own words in them. Some people have their words published in newsletters such newsletters, and find that is enough for them.

If you have a hobby and like to write about it, you may write comments or articles on Social Media and find satisfaction in that way of ‘getting published’. And the reasons why can be varied too. Some people are more interested in spreading the word about only one thing, and there is nothing wrong with that. Other people are interested in a wide range of things, and write about a great many things, for many different publishing avenues.

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‘Publication’ benefits

Whatever the method you find to be published, if you are a writer of any kind, getting your words ‘out there’ is bound to be beneficial. We writers tend to have a desire to tell other people about the things we find important.

So obviously being published is going to be a necessary part of letting other people read our words, and so share our story, tell our truth, teach a lesson, or entertain and amuse people. These are all valid and fine reasons, and being able to do them will help the writer to feel validated, valued, understood, and appreciated by others.

That is a benefit for the heart and soul perhaps, but another less ‘spiritually worthy’ reason for desiring publication is to get payment from the publication of your words. This may be by having books published and sold by a mainstream publisher, or by a printer, or even by photocopying your words and selling little mini-books.

All of these are valid methods for publishing your words, depending on what you write, how you want it to be presented, who you want to read your words, and so on, but all of the methods can result in books you can sell for money. Having a website where you can display your book/s for sale will certainly be beneficial, if you have a book, or books that will attract an audience that will want to buy themselves their own copy.

If you live in Australia, and you publish a book, if a copy of your book is sent to the National Library, and your own State Library by you or by your publisher, you may well receive Public Lending Right, which is a payment the author may receive for each of their books in libraries. It will also show your book to libraries and others wishing to buy books.

 

Getting your Story Out

If you have an idea, a theme, a life story that you feel others will benefit from, you will want to let others know about it. Getting published is the best way to spread the word about your words. Others may want to know about your story, so if you can get the news of your book, your words published, in the media, such as newspapers or magazines, this will be of great value for your cause.

Having a website is a great and easy way to be ‘published’. It doesn’t have the obvious benefits that a book to but has, but it can lead to other people reading your words, for sure. And if you write enough blog posts, you may well have enough words eventually on your blog, for them to be published as a book, either by you, or by another publisher. If getting financial recompense for your words is something you want, then it’s certainly possible to sell copies of your book/s via your own website, or that of your publisher if your books are published by another publisher.

Self-publishing is becoming more and more an acceptable method for books to be published, circumventing mainstream publishers. Libraries will buy self-published books, if the books are deemed good enough and interesting enough for the libraries readers.

Without being ‘published’ in some form, you will have to rely on less effective ways to spread your words. Word of mouth is useful, but even if you have hundreds of family and friends, they may not all talk about your writing, and may not know many relevant people to talk up your book to! It is a wonderful feeling to sign a copy of your book which someone has just bought!

So if you can get word about your books published, it can lead to more of your books being published, which can encourage you to write more of your words, and that is a fine thing indeed. We can never have too many books in the world!

 

poetry

Multiple Copies are Great!

carolyncordon
I had an accident today, and deleted all of the poems in the file n my laptop that is my poetry collection that I want to send off to a publisher soon. My intention is to have some other people read the collection, and give me feedback. If I couldn’t get give them the poems, they wouldn’t be able to do that. I wouldn’t be able to send it to a publisher, either.
 
I nearly freaked out, but I took a deep breath, got myself a calming (?) coffee and searched my laptop, for help. I found some of the relevant poems in emails I’d sent to myself, and that worked for finding some of them, and then, hooray, I found another copy of the file, on my laptop, an earlier one I’d emailed to our PC, to make a photocopy,  that had almost all of the poems in it, phew!
When I say ‘I nearly freaked out’ it isn’t true, really. I did take a big breath, and get that coffee, but I would have looked calm to anyone present. I methodically considered my options, and worked away and cutting and pasting, taking poems from various places, and putting them in a new file.
Did my work with looking at Stoicism help me with this? Hmm, I think it may have. I felt quite calm, once the initial ‘oh no!’ feelings calmed down. Once I was sitting again, coffee and laptop present, I worked at it all afternoon, and got it done. I went outside, let the dog out and back in, and she and I both had lunch, but I did a good afternoon of work on it.
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                 Missy slept through most of it, she’s calm like that, most of the time!
It was an interesting chance to look at these poems again too. I did some editing, making several of the poems better, and I added two new poems, and took out two other poems that I felt were too weak. So this ‘disaster’ was actually a good thing after all. I will remember that, and keep calm and work methodically if I ever need to work like this again!
This laptop is still new to me, and I’m very much in the learner stage with it. Using the home PC is easier for me, but of course, I can’t take my PC with me anywhere, and I can’t sit on the sofa with the PC comfortably on my lap!
So now that I have the poetry collection put together in the one file on my lap top, and the other copy there too, marked as Do not delete, it should all be fine. I’ll send that document to the PC tomorrow, and then hand that hard copy on for the review of others.
I’m so glad I found those versions, that’s for sure. And I think this collection is looking far more publishable than my most recent one, that was rejected. When I looked at it again, once I was over the hurrumphing angst of rejection, I could see that it was a bit of a mess, with little to say. Some of the poems were ok, but that isn’t enough, just some …
In this new collection, all of the poems have interesting things to say, and they blend together in good ways, in my opinion. I hope my readers will back up my thoughts on that, and if they don’t, that they will be able to give me pointers about where any failings are.
Giving a poetry collection to others feels like giving your newborn to a stranger, in some ways, but of course, that is something that all writers have to do, if they want to have their words read. And only a strange kind of writer wouldn’t want to be read by others, surely?
What do you think? About having readers before sending off to a publisher, and about how it feels to let your ‘babies’ go? Please leave a comment, if you have something to say about this!
Writing

Being Happy as a Writer

carolyncordon

I’m happy with my writing life. I’m not a widely read writer, or a rich one, or a writer who is speaking to hundreds of people about my books or writing. But I am a happy person, a happy writer, who has written about many things in my life, and things I’ve ‘made up’.

Life is what I write about, life in its many forms, from sad to happy and many things in between. I (obviously) would love to sell more copies of my books. I would love to talk about my books, and about the things I know about and am interested in, a lot more.

But this year, I have begun thinking about what the Stoic life is like, and it is helping me to think about what I really want in life, and what I have. And further to that, I’ve been thinking about bad things that could have happened to me, but didn’t, and that kind of consideration makes me grateful for all I have. I have a great life. IMAG0579.jpg

Sure, others have big publishers wanting to publish their books, and have thousands of fans, who write them fan mail. They have thousands of dollars in royalties, and get constant requests for interviews. I don’t have any of that. I am a self-published poet, editor of a community newsletter, writer of a self-published series of humour books.

Oh, and blogger, of course. I am a blogger with fewer followers than I’d like, but there are at least some people following my various blogs, including this one.

But I’m particularly enjoying my most recent blog, one about Stoicism, where I explore various aspects of life, my life in particular, from the point of view of a Stoic. This is my most recent post from that Blog – if you’d like a simple look at what being a Stoic might entail, take a look at how I’m doing it!

And just a couple of minutes ago, in the previous paragraph, I wrote something that got my brain ticking over, with a brand new idea for another new book, and isn’t that a great thing? I certainly think it is, always! The possible new book would be another book in the Buster the Dog Series. 20190505_114825

I am definitely going to do another book, the fourth one, for this ‘Buster the Dog’ series, and it is planned to be launched about this time next year. That one will possibly be called “Dog Says, Cat Says”. But the book I had the idea for as I was writing this blog post, was to look at Stoicism as a dog might see it … I’ll have to consult with Buster the Dog, on that one. He’s the dog who lives in my head and who I wrote the books with, in the photo above.

He’s not a terribly stoic dog, I don’t think. He’s more of a bark first, contemplate results after kind of creature … As I said, I’ll have to consult with Buster the Dog.  (He’s not a real dog in my head, he’s a figment of my imagination. I know that. I’m not sure if Buster knows it though.) Imagination is such a wonderful thing to have!

The dog in the first photo, right up the top of this, that’s Missy and she is a real dog. She lives in my house and in my yard, and is a lovely dog. Some of what Buster the Dog does in his books comes in part from things his ‘father’ used to do. Buster is based on a schnauzer and a pharaoh hound, which were the two breeds of dog we had when I, well, Buster the Dog and I, wrote our first book, the one about gardening.

The fourth book is going to be something new for me, I’m going to write it with a friend, and she will be doing the cat part, bringing in McTavish the Cat. Having friends who also write, that’s an important thing to, to be with people who are also interested in something that interests you.

Living with Missy also helps make my writers life a happy one – a dog will always remind you about the important things in life. Eat, go outside, enjoy yourself! If you have a dog that reminds you about these things, and other, leave a comment, I’d love to read it!

 

Writing

Wasting Words, or Just Wasting Time?

carolyncordon

I am a poet, a blogger, a Facebook User, I use Twitter, I’m writing a novel, I write short stories (sometimes), and I put out a monthly newsletter for my local town. I enjoy doing all of those things, and some of them I do every single day – the Social Media pieces of writing, commenting on Facebook, and tweeting on Twitter. I blog at least every coupe of days, and often post a new blog post once a day or more. I am a writer.

I’m a member of a writing group that meets once a week, and another group that meets once a month, and I will always write something new either at, or for those groups. The thing I most want to be though, I think, is a published novelist. So why don’t I write a novel?

I sort of am, writing a novel. The writing I do at the weekly writing group, is often a short piece that will go into my novel, eventually. I think on the writing prompt for the session, and think on my main characters from my novel, and about what I’ve written so far for my novel, and I write, and there is another fragment of writing for that novel I’m working on.

But is this a way to actually write a novel, I wonder? I have short pieces, perhaps 150 to 300 words, and that’s it. a week or so ago I actually managed to write a new piece for my novel that followed directly from the piece I wrote the week before. I happened to have the same notebook with me, and so it was simple to look at the previous week’s work before starting on the writing exercise for that day.

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I’ve used various notebooks for the writing exercises, and I’ve written other parts of my current work in a file on my laptop. I’ve written other pieces on my phone, other parts on our PC. If I gathered up all of those pieces of writing of that novel, I’m not really sure how many words I’d have. It may be 50 to 60 thousand words. But am I putting all of those bits of writing together? No, I’m not, I’m happily doing other kinds of writing, the blogging, the comments on Facebook, the tweets on Twitter, and the poems at other times.

I’m writing words, but as the title of this blog suggests, I’m wasting my time, if that is what my writing aim is … Or am I? Living my life, thinking about things, being a part of my various communities, these all add to my knowledge of life, and five me ideas about things. And surely writers have to have interesting things to write about, ideas, thoughts.

So perhaps I’m not wasting my words, perhaps I am writing that novel, and perhaps this novel, these characters, will finally make it out into the real world. What do you think? Will Meredith and Travis, my main characters, beat the bad guy, and then finally commit to a relationship together? What do you think?