It's the beats, Daddy-o.

It's been a bit hectic around here lately. Besides all the usual holiday prep, my editor is visiting for the weekend. Among other things, we're kicking around ideas for projects for the coming year. One of the projects under discussion is an editing service. We're using, as a springboard for the discussion, David Antrobus's recent terrific series of Indies Unlimited posts about hiring an editor and about editorial pricing. If you're looking for an editor (and if you have a book to publish, you had damn well better be) or if you're thinking of hanging out your shingle as an editor, I highly recommend that you check them out.

In my own book news, I'm scheduled for an interview at Lucy Pireel's blog on Tuesday. And on Wednesday, in honor of the first anniversary of the start of the events in Seized, the Pipe Woman Chronicles Omnibus goes on a special Kindle Countdown sale at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. The regular price for the five-book set on Amazon.com is $8.99, but on Wednesday, the price goes down to $3.99. Friends and neighbors, that's less than a dollar a book. The price will gradually rise over the course of the following week, until on Christmas Eve, it'll be back to $8.99. The UK pricing is similar -- starting at 99 pence on Wednesday and going up to the regular price of £5.61 on Christmas Eve. It's going to be an amazing, dirt-cheap deal for somebody. Please let your friends know! Thanks!


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One comment I often get from other writers is, "How do you write your books so fast?" To which I usually do sort of an awkward shuffle (which looks really awkward online, let me tell you) and say something lame like, "I write short books." Which is true, to a point.

But mainly, my technique is to draft what I've taken to calling a rough outline-ish thing. I talked about it briefly in my pre-NaNoWriMo post this year. Basically, it's a paragraph per chapter, more or less, about what I plan to accomplish in that chapter. It doesn't include every twist or nuance, mainly because I don't always know what form each twist or nuance will take until I sit down and write the scene. But it does give me a rough road map to follow. And it's hugely useful for battling writer's block; when I sit down for a writing session, I can look back at the last page or so that I wrote the day before, glance over my outline-ish thing, and know immediately where I need to start writing today.

Turns out there's an official term for what I do: "story beats." I discovered the term while reading a post on David Gaughran's blog earlier this month. He talked to the authors of Write. Publish. Repeat., by Sean Platt and Johnny B. Truant. And it turns out that they use my system for drafting an outline before they start writing their fiction pieces. They find it helps them divide the labor in their multi-author works. But it also helps them stay on task and on target:

Stephen King says in On Writing that he thinks plotting is clumsy and anathema to creation. Overall, we tend to agree. Some books — often fast-paced thrillers — suffer from a mechanical style of progression, where everything is really convenient because it has to be lest the structure crumbles. But we also think, for us at least, that having some idea of where the story will eventually go is absolutely required to avoid a meandering narrative. Stories should be tight and focused, even if they’re quiet pieces without serious action. Beats will help that. We don’t think Stephen King would object to the idea of beats (not that we need to impress him) because they’re not rigid. You think you’re going here, but if you end up there? Ain’t no thang.

We write our beats with the idea that we’re predicting what will happen rather than requiring it to. Sometimes we guess right, and sometimes we guess wrong.

If you guess wrong but still feel that something must happen, this is where the “pantsing” part takes over, and you deviate from beats on the fly. Here’s the rule: You’re allowed to manipulate the environment, but not the character.

In other words, if you need for your character to be in New Orleans in order to set up the next chapter, you can't have your character do something out of, well, character, to get there. For example, your broke but moral-high-ground protagonist can't rob a bank to get the money for a plane ticket.

Anyway, if your writing is bogging down, you might try writing some story beats and see whether they help you get your story moving again.

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These moments of bloggy beats are brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

The story behind my IU blog post.

When I'd been in radio for a few years, I had a job that I was increasingly desperate to get out of.  I'd loved it at first, but we had had some staff turnover and I had begun to see things in a different light.  Then, too, a promising romance had turned sour.  And I was tired of the town I was living in, too.  In short, it was getting to the point where I wanted to go back home.  So I applied for a job at a radio station in a bigger city much closer to where I grew up.  The news director called and asked me to come for an interview, which I did.  I liked her, and the station seemed okay.  And so I was thrilled when she called me, not long after the interview, and said I was her first choice.  In a flash, I wrote up my resignation letter and turned it in.  I was also asked to fill out a separation form that asked, among other things, why I was leaving. Not only did I tell them, but I was kind of blunt about it.

A few days went by.  Maybe a week.  And I didn't hear anything from my new employer.  So I called and asked the news director when she wanted me to start.  And she said, "They said no."

"What do you mean, they said no?" I cried, confused about who "they" were.  "I've already quit my job!"

It turned out that the news director who loved me didn't have final say on staffing.  That was up to station management, and they'd told her to keep looking.  So I had to go back to my current employer and tell them that the job had fallen through and I hoped I could stay on -- at which point I was informed that they had already advertised my position, and while I was welcome to re-apply....

As luck would have it, our crosstown rival had an opening, and they hired me shortly thereafter (and I learned very quickly just how good I'd had it at my original gig, which is another story).  But the whole thing was certainly A Learning Experience.

I was reminded of this episode a few days ago, when one of my Indies Unlimited compadres mentioned in the minions' lounge that she'd received an e-mail from a woman in Europe, asking IU for publicity for her book.  We do author interviews and book features and the like, so the request made sense.  But it devolved that English was not the author's first language, or her second, and it showed, in both her blurb and in the book itself.  She was contacted and informed, and that's when the story turned interesting.  It turned out that the author had found an editorial service on the Internet and paid them several hundred dollars to edit her book.  Clearly, they hadn't done a damn thing.

The IU troops rallied and gave her tons of advice on what to do next.  But the capper was when she admitted that she didn't have the money to hire a new editor because in order to promote her book, she had quit her job.

You can see how that resonated with me.  So the story of the Dude and Annie Abby became my post for IU this week.  Miz Abby's question -- "Why are you helping me? You don't even know me!" -- is more or less a direct quote from the European author after we gave her all of our advice.  But you know, that's just what indie authors do.  We do it because we've been there.

But I meant the post to be not just a celebration of indie authors; I meant it as a cautionary tale, too.  This Brave New World of e-publishing is a great place, but it's anything but serene.  Those waters that look so warm and inviting are infested with sharks -- sharks who are eager to bite you in the wallet.

I hate those sharks.  I really do.  I hate how they take advantage of innocent, unsuspecting people who dream of being published.  I hate how it's legal for them to do that.  And I hate how the sharks' parents never taught them that being kind is better than being wealthy.

Anyway, this is why I tell you guys to be careful when you pursue your publishing dreams.  Don't pay somebody money you don't have for something you can do yourself.  And please, please, please don't quit your job until your next step is a sure thing.
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Thanks to everybody who voted for Seized in Big Al's Books and Pals Readers' Choice Awards!  I lost to Hugh Howey's Wool, but I appreciate your support all the same, I'm still grateful to have been nominated, and I don't see any shame in losing to the 800-lb. gorilla.

Congrats to my fellow nominees, including IU staffers K.S. Brooks and Laurie Boris and alumnus David Antrobus.  And a big round of applause for Laurie and David, who won in their respective categories.  You guys rock!

Speaking of the 800-lb. gorilla, he had a great post in Salon this week about our Brave New World.  In the article, Howey says he can't envision a scenario in which self-publishing wouldn't be the best choice today.  That prompted Chuck Wendig to post the opposing view on his blog.  Both are entertaining reading; Wendig's is shorter, if you're pressed for time, but my money is obviously on Howey.

Oh, one more thing:  You'll see, at the top of the column to the left, a place to enter your e-mail address so that I can send you a little newsletter thingum when I have really big news to share.  Like, for instance, Annealed's release date.  I'm not going to spam you and I'm not going to sell your address to anybody else, I promise.  Thanks!

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This moment of cautionary-tale blogginess is brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.