Long Tail Writing

One common phrase that is often said to authors is “write to market”. The idea behind this is to do research into a genre, figure out the tropes, figure out a little bit of a spin, get the work completed and edited quickly, and put a professional cover on it. Then go ahead and post it on the marketing websites and things will take off! However, that’s not always the case. In addition, it may feel difficult or boring to try and write to a genre you don’t care about. So authors may take a more fulfilling route: Writing what their heart desires. In this route, you may not be able to make your investment back. This can lead to a frustrating cycle of pouring in lots of money into a pit. That’s correct, authors can dig themselves money pits. When confronted with such a pit, authors are told to simply: write more. If you keep trying and keep paddling, eventually you may make it to shore. The problem I’ve found is that when one effort doesn’t work, a pe...

I know the point of NaNoWriMo is to not only build a daily writing habit, but to built a book. The hope is that after 30 days of trying to write quickly that you’ll have something. I am trying it again, because I just can’t seem to get into a regular routine with writing. It’s been a quick thing to get out of the way and I don’t want that. I want the writing habit to be more of a vacation, if that makes sense. I think part of the problem is that I don’t have a great way to get started on all this. If I knew I was going to work through a particular chapter per day, that would be helpful, but right now, it feels like I need to take a lot of time to get to that place. It’s the cold water problem, and I wonder if I am going to suffer from it my entire life. The cold water problem being you don’t want to dive in, because the water is cold. Once you swim a little, you get used to the water temperature and have fun. I think the very first thing I need ...