A character popped into my head last night for a future prison project, so I figured I'd do a character rant for him so whenever I do get around to the story I don't forget him.

Warning: This series is gonna be dark, so the imagery of this rant may be disturbing.

Words. That's what people said. They were just words. Such small, insignificant things. Like air. Insubstantial. Fag. Bitch. Punk. Just words.

But the 44 Magnum I brought to school, not words. When I took all the hate and the pain and sent it back to it's source, the gun spoke for me. Guns are more powerful than words.

After that no one talked to me anymore. Only about me. The teachers talked to the police. My classmates talked to the press. The lawyers talked to the jury. A tornado of questions and speculations surrounded me, and I sat at the quiet center barely aware of what was happening.

As I sit in my cell, some distant part of me knows people think what I did was wrong, that I overreacted. But I don't think they understand. I think they just don't know. They have no idea how blissful the silence is.

For the life of me, I will never understand taking a process and turning it into an identity. Yes, I plot before I write. But I also put the toilet paper on the roll hanging over and not under. I don't go around identifying myself as an Over the Topper.

I guess the reason it never quite made sense to me is because I don't believe it's significant. Each writer has their own methods but most of them aren't that unique and while they make a difference for the writer that chooses them, they probably wouldn't help writing as a whole if we all adapted the same methods. I mean unless you're writing with a bag of chicken bones hanging from your neck, your process probably isn't that special. Though if you are writing with a bag of chicken bones around your neck, feel free to declare yourself a proud and out Chicken Boner. I won't judge.

However, I do judge people that announce they are a Pantser or a Plotter in a way that implies we're receiving any significant information from that label at all. Guess what everyone! I tend to favor my left when I sleep at night. I'm a Left Sider.

The funniest part is most people fall somewhere in the middle. They plan a little, they wing it a little. So it's not even a true dichotomy. As writers we don't really need to draw lines over silly stuff like our process. Don't we have enough knock down drag outs over adverbs and passive voice?

Conflict in stories seems to be different from what we think about when we consider conflict in real life. In real life we think of fights or wars or other inherently dramatic things.

But the string of a red balloon two inches out of reach is conflict.

Are you wondering why your reader would give a crap about a red balloon? Things matter to the reader because they matter to the character.

For example: Mike just discovered he has a four year old daughter. They go to the park on their first trip alone together. His little girl sees someone selling balloons and asks for the last red one.

He agrees to buy it and her face lights up. As he's handing it to her, it slips from his fingers and floats away. She starts to cry.

That's not just a balloon. That balloon represents the first promise he ever made to his daughter. That balloon represents his ability to protect and provide. That balloon is the difference between his daughter's first day with him being a dream or a nightmare. That is the most important balloon ever.

He offers to buy her another balloon, or several balloons. But she doesn't want a blue one or a green one, red is her favorite color. She wants a red one and that was the last one. So he takes her to a party store.

He buys her a BAG of red balloons. He blows one up and hands it to her. She thanks him but he can tell she's still disappointed. She's sad because this balloon doesn't float like the other one did. So he goes back in, spends another 50 bucks on a portable helium pump. Now she has a floating red balloon on a string. A hat made of hastily tied red balloons. And she is gleeful.

He now has fifty bucks worth of helium, which he's inhaling to make himself talk like a smurf, much to his daughter's amusement. He goes from a idiot who can't hold a string, to a magical figure that can do anything. That can make anything happen for her. He's the hero of red balloons.

Show of hands, who still thinks red balloons aren't worth writing about?

For me the hardest part of the writing process is drafting. Just getting something on the page, anything on the page can feel daunting. That blinking cursor has mocked us all at some point. But the best way to start drafting is to figure out which method of drafting works best for you. At different points in your life you may need to change your method or you may use some combination of methods. Here are four different kinds of draftmen:

The Wordsmith
Every journey begins with a single step.

Wordsmiths count their progress in word counts. They set a daily, weekly or monthly goal and do their best to achieve that goal. Drafting as a Wordsmith is most useful to people that are good at scheduling and hitting their goals. The type of people that can make a declaration like "I'm going to exercise 20 minutes every day" and follow through are the ones that would get the most word done by being a Wordsmith. One of the downsides is that if you miss even a day writing, you may feel as if you've fallen behind and end up discouraged. If that happens, increase the number of words per day or if the number gets too high, push back any self-imposed deadlines and give yourself more time.

The Watchman
Tick Tock.

Watchmen regard writing much like a job. They clock in. They produce. They clock out. Mid-sentence. Mid-paragraph. It doesn't matter. Their time is up and they have to put their writing aside. People with really busy lives often use the Watchman method of drafting. If you get off work at four and your five kids get home at six, then you have less than two hours a day to write. Sometimes Watchmen get discouraged when they don't produce much in the time they have allotted. Muses don't work on schedules, they come when they feel like it. But don't let that discourage you. With a busy schedule, finding time to write at all is a victory in and of itself.


So, which method of drafting do you use?

It's been exactly six months since someone told me "no matter what you do, don't self-publish" and being the contrary person I am--I did exactly that.

I've read through a zillion blogs. I've looked at success stories and horror stories. I've been told what I should do, and what I should never do. And now I'm going to add to that abundance of unsolicited advice by sharing what I've learned in these past six months.

• Be a cheap-ass.  Almost all the horror stories I've read about self-publishing start with someone spending thousands of dollars on their book. Um...bad idea is bad. Sometimes, I see blogs/sites suggesting this. Before I self-published my first book, I had no experience in self-publishing. A few of my stories had been published but I had no idea about the process. Those works vanished into the ether after I signed my contract. Why would I spend thousands of dollars on a business I have no experience in? If I decided to sell cookies, I'd bake some, package them, sell them to neighbors and slowly expand bringing in help as needed (my first employees would just happen to be blood relatives), and maybe even starting my own website. I would not take out a loan and buy a bakery on day one.
  
  When it comes to your first book, you need to be Scrooge McDuck. Make them pry every penny out of your cold dead hands. Demand to know why you should spend 300 dollars on a professional cover when you can't tell any difference between that and the 30 dollar pre-made covers you can find on several website. Work under the assumption you will never get back a single penny you spend. Then you won't pour money down from the sky like you're a baller making it rain.
  
  

• Publish short stories individually. We're used to seeing short stories published in collections. And we are used to hearing how no one reads short stories anymore. I strongly believe those two things are connected. I'm not going to pay 6.99 for a book that has one story in it that I'm interested in reading. However, I would pay 1.99 for just that story.
  
  Plus, the more "books" even super short ones, you have out there, the more attention you draw to yourself as a writer. Every book you publish is an advertisement for the rest of them. Just don't publish a novel one chapter at a time. People realizing the power of multiple works have started doing that and it just makes readers angry.
  
  
• Have someone that doesn't like you read it. Your mom and closest friends think it's great. It must be ready to publish, right? Wrong! Your mom will lie. Your friends will lie. Or even if they aren't lying, they are so impressed you wrote it that they can't give an impartial view.
  
  Do not put your stories out there until you've gotten some hard hitting advice from people who have absolutely no investment in your happiness. Because people that buy the book, they'll write reviews as if the author can't even read them. So put forward your best work or you will be burned alive in the court of public opinion.
  
  
• Keep writing. So you've published your first book. Great! Now write another one. I know it took you ten years to get it just right. But guess what? How many famous writers can you think of with a single book? Off the top of my head I can think of one. The woman that wrote To Kill a Mockingbird. Other than that, famous writers have books, not a book. So, stop trying to pimp your book and start working on the next one. Books sell each other. Way better than you or I could.
  
  
• Dream moderately. People often use the statistic that half of self-published authors make less than 500 a year. I heard that and thought, wait! That means half make over 500 a year! Woot! So if I work hard, spend wisely, and get lucky. I may just make a profit off my passion. Sweet!
  
  I think a lot of sadness and disappointment comes when people think they will upload a book and be famous a day later. It doesn't work like that. Most of the time, these things take years of hard work and good planning. But if you're willing to invest in yourself and your writing. In time, you may come to find yourself extremely pleased with the result. It's only been six months and I'm damn proud of how far I've come in this venture.
  

Time and time again I hear that people should avoid friending other writers on Twitter. That writers are basically useless friends for other writers. That when promoting a book, a writer should seek out readers. I never understood this reasoning because:

Writers are readers.

I have always been a reader, even when I hadn't written anything in years. Most of the writers I know not only read, but read hundreds of books a year.

I could understand if we were trying to sell waffle cones. Then that logic would make perfect sense. If I own my own waffle cone factory, then I don't really need anyone else's waffle cones. But who reads their own books for entertainment? Books are a case where suppliers and consumers overlap.

But that's not the only reason it's great to have writer friends. When you are stuck or going insane or feel unmotivated, your writer friends understand the exact hill you're trying to climb because they've had to climb it too.

They are founts of valuable information. Just reading my friends' blogs about what has worked for them and what doesn't work for them gives me all kinds of ideas about writing, marketing, etc. And most importantly...

Writers aren't in competition with each other. No one reads just one book. That means there is no reason that writers can't work together to promote each others' books. When I read a book I like I scream it from the rooftops. Why? Because if I enjoy a book, then people that like my writing will probably like the books I enjoy. That way people get extra value for listening to me blather on.  I help them find things they like. And that makes me feel all warm inside.

So go hug a writer today.

I made a handy dandy Excel spreadsheet to keep up with all the writing I'm not currently doing.

I so need a tag called "procrastinate much?"

I don't believe perfection is obtainable with something subjective because we all have different taste, so what one person loves, another may hate. That being said, certain things are concrete, we know what a filter verb is and what affect it has, we know what affect head hopping has, there is no "sorta head hopping". So we can fix the concrete things to get a few steps closer to that abstract notion of perfection.

Otherwise it's the same mentality of "why wash my ass, it's just gonna get dirty again". Even if there is no concrete finish line, since there is always room for improvement, I say improve til the point you're proud to show others what you've done and are willing to stake your name and reputation on your work.

Some of my pieces I feel like "this is me, this is the best I can do with the resources I have, one day I may become a better writer, but right now this is the best of Ms. Morgan".  And there are other pieces I feel, "uh...we're going to put this in the drawer here, close it, lock it, and leave instructions for the pages to be burned upon my death." So to me it's not all the same, there is SOMETHING to strive for, even if it's not perfection.

I can't lie. I read reviews for my stories. I try to avoid them because nothing can be more cruel than what someone believes to be their anonymous opinion of your baby. But even so, I read them.  And every now and again some scathing review makes me pout for a few hours.

However, I'd like to think once you make a billion kajillion dollars from your writing you can't hear the criticisms over the loud rustle of all your money. But I guess that's not true.

When a random blogger wrote about how much she hated one of Anne Rice's books, so much so that she cut it up and used it to make decoupage, the news somehow reached Anne Rice who then posted a link to the entry on her Facebook page.

Cause we all know, 740,638 fans are going to be super understanding about someone hating your book so much they cut it up. Here are some choice quotes:

HOW DARE YOU EVEN COMPARE SHITTY ASS STEPHANIE MEYER TO THE QUALITY WORK THAT IS ANNE RICE HOW DARE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YOU FUCKING HAG, I HOPE YOU GET HERPE

You bitch! >:(

Thank you! Wow, this chick is a moron!

So yeah, Anne Rice literally sicced her posse on this poor girl for not liking her book. Anne Rice, the original gansta.

I just hope if I ever become that rich and famous and some little blogger hates one of my books, I'll take the noble path and just go cry on my fat bags of money.