I am feeling very blessed at the moment. This evening, there are 794,236 Kindle ebook titles listed on Amazon, and on Grace Awakening‘s second day of sales, it is rated #39,234. I’m trying to figure out the math. Am I right? Is that Top 5%? Can it be possible?
I am beyond thankful for the people who are supporting this great adventure and buying a copy!
Thank you!
Thank you!
Thank you!
Thank you!
Thank you!
Thank you!
It’s an odd feeling when a dream comes true. After the initial euphoria of seeing what you may have wished for and worked for accomplished, there is a only a brief sense of completion and satisfaction.
While it’s fantastic that the dream has been achieved, one can’t just bask forever in achieving one dream, can one? And so, while it was heart stopping to suddenly see Awakening Dreams listed on Amazon’s Kindle store today, and to know that my work was now available to the world, already plans are at work on the next dream! Several books and miscellaneous other projects call.
Let the dreaming continue!
“You don’t believe in natural talent?”
“The premise can be insidious. If we find something doesn’t come naturally, we might conclude we have no talent for it and abandon the pursuit, even if it’s to our detriment.”
“So what causes success?”
“If you believe in deliberate practice, artfully designed hard work and always stretching beyond your abilities. It’s not as simple as ‘Practice makes perfect.’ It’s continually focusing on your weakest elements and trying to improve them. Those who persevere are high achievers.”
“…The key lies in knowing what you deeply want. The more you want something, the easier it is to sweat through the deliberate practice.”
“So you make your own luck?…”
Kerry Reichs in Leaving Unknown
Kerry seems to be describing Gladwell’s Rule of 10,000. The concept is quite simple. If you put 10,000 hours into something–anything–you will be successful. Whether you begin with ‘natural talent’ or not, those hours (3 hours a day for ten years apparently) will turn you into a master. If you aren’t willing to put in the time, you’re not going to have the success.
This might explain who so many first time novelists are in their 40s. If you’ve been raising kids, you probably haven’t been able to get in your hours!! I tend to think there is something to this. You have to apply yourself to your passion. Luckily, passion makes the hours go quickly.
So what do you think?
The last 48 hours have been filled with working on covers for Grace Awakening Book One: Awakening Dreams. Several people have been contributing their skills to this process and the results are impressive! You can see the final 5 concepts here:
http://apps.facebook.com/fanappz/poll/vote?id=29791
Feel free to vote!
Here’s a picture of my day. Today’s project was translating a sonnet from Petrarch’s original Italian into English. I had received permission from Penguin to use a translation by Anthony Mortimer of Canzoniere 13 for Grace Awakening, but after the publisher went out of business, I let the deadline to pay for the use go past. I still wanted a Petrarchan Canzoniere in that particular section of the novel though, and that meant I had to do my own translation. I also wanted it to rhyme following Petrarch’s strict scheme, and I wanted it to be in iambic pentameter.
I started with the public domain version of the original Italian sonnet 61:
Benedetto sia ‘l giorno, et ‘l mese, et l’anno,
et la stagione, e ‘l tempo, et l’ora, e ‘l punto,
e ‘l bel paese, e ‘l loco ov’io fui giunto
da’duo begli occhi che legato m’ànno;
et benedetto il primo dolce affanno
ch’i’ ebbi ad esser con Amor congiunto,
et l’arco, et le saette ond’i’ fui punto,
et le piaghe che ‘nfin al cor mi vanno.
Benedette le voci tante ch’io
chiamando il nome de mia donna ò sparte,
e i sospiri, et le lagrime, e ‘l desio;
et benedette sian tutte le carte
ov’io fama l’acquisto, e ‘l pensier mio,
ch’è sol di lei, sí ch’altra non v’à parte.
My next step was to plug the poem into the Google translator to get the basics. The result was this:
Blessed be ‘the day, et’ the month, year et,
et the season, and ‘the time, et the time, and’ the point,
and ‘the beautiful country, and’ the spot where I arrived I was
da’duo beautiful eyes that tied m’ànno;
et blessed is the first sweet breath
ch’i ‘I had to be combined with Amor,
et l’arc, et Whence the arrows’ point was,
et the wounds’ Nfiniti go to my heart.
Blessed are the many voices that I
calling the name of my wife or esparto,
and the sighs, the tears et, and ‘the desire;
Blessed are all the cards et
known where I buy, and ‘s my thought,
which is only about her, yes that another party does not v’à.
Writing draft- false start and then the better flow
As you can see, while not perfect, it’s certainly good enough to know where he was going, and to catch the Italian words I wasn’t familiar with. I could fill in the blanks from there. I spent some time on http://www.Rhymezone.com, which is my go-to site when I’m creating a complex rhyming poem, and played with various options. I baked a cake. I instant messaged a friend in France. I went to a farewell party. I watched Star Wars Episode IV (which is really still Episode one, to me). I had a bath. I read the editor’s most recent comments on Awakening Dreams. I wrote lines. I re-wrote lines.
As of this moment, I am satisfied with this result, although it may not be the final version. I finished it at 2 a.m. so it’s allowed to not quite be perfect yet. I have my iambic pentameter. I have Petrarca’s ABBA ABBA CDCDCD rhyme scheme. I have stayed true to Petrarch’s intent in this poem, I think, and that’s the most important thing.
Most blesséd be the day, the month, the year
And blesséd be the hour and the moment
When I arrived to find my own torment.
Her lovely eyes completely tied me here;
So blesséd was her breath as I came near,
That Love entangled me within her scent,
Against the arrows left me impotent,
And bound my heart to hers, so thus endeared.
Dear blesséd voices call my lady’s name
And weave her glorious beauty in my verse.
My sighs, my tears, and my desires contained,
Most blesséd are the papers I disperse,
To share my thoughts that bring me fame,
The thoughts of her that are my joyful curse.
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Translation (c) Shawn Bird 2011
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When I was writing Grace Awakening, I didn’t write linearly, I wrote scenes from all over the book. I moved from exposition to climax and into rising action in the same week. This technique helps to keep the writing from being boring, and makes it interesting toward the end of the process when the author must take all these disparate puzzle pieces of story and manoeuvre them into a proper picture.
It creates some difficulties as well, however. The main one is keeping references to time appropriate. If I say “two weeks later” but the events referenced have 3 Fridays between them, I have to fix it! Or perhaps the logical sequence puts a spring activity in December. My biggest consideration was working around the date April 6th, when Petrarch first met Laura. The scene that references that must occur at that time. The last couple of days I’ve been working with an editor on finding these time anomalies and making sure it all works together.
It’s kind of interesting that in some 40+ reads I’ve had of the book, and a dozen or so beta readers, no one else has caught these concerns before. I realise this means that not everyone is going to keep track of the calendar, but for those who do, it’s important that it matches up. So I’ve drafted a calendar, and made sure all the events sit where they should. Just as I researched the times for the sunset when Grace and Ben dine at the Calgary Tower, the little things need to be correct. It’s a respectful nod to the reader. “I care enough about you to create a world that is consistent.”
At least, I’m doing my best.
I like this alphabet introduction to Zadie Smith who is a Penguin author. I like the framework that she has used to tell us something about herself. It makes me ponder how I could use a similar framework for myself, but I’m too busy editing at the moment, so enjoy Zadie’s for now, instead.
http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Author/AuthorPage/0,,1000049267,00.html?sym=MIS
Jane Friedman is a professor and blogger. She was a publisher with Writers’ Digest, and is still a contributing editor for them. Her blog is at
http://blog.writersdigest.com/norules/
Today, I’d like to direct you to this blog: http://writerunboxed.com/2011/06/24/5-things-more-important-than-talent/
Enjoy!
This is the week of re-posting interesting writing blogs I’ve come across recently. Check out this insightful analysis of why authors fail from Penny Sansevieri of sellingbooks.com. There are some good tips here.
Shawn L. Bird 
Smashing! July 24, 2011
Tags: e-books, ebooks, postaday2011, Smashwords, writing
According to the July 21, 2011 site update from Smashwords.com, they uploaded 6,500 titles in the last 30 days. Wow. I had heard that Amazon was getting 1000 titles a week, but if Smashwords alone uploaded 1625 titles a week in the last month, there must be closer to 2000 titles being uploaded every week.
Wow.
Say it again,
Wow.
That’s a lot of authors taking advantage of the opportunities offered by e-books.
If you have an e-book reader, you already know some of those opportunities for you as a reader: the convenience of carrying an entire library in one slim volume, the ease of acquiring your books, the huge numbers of books available to you, etc. You may also have discovered the pitfalls, in particular the large amount of poorly written books to weed through. The preview is the most valuable defense against this. I dismiss a lot of books a couple pages into the preview.
For an author, there are different considerations. If they are already published, it provides a way for them to release out of print titles. If they are not published, it allows them to skip the long, painful process of waiting for a publisher to take interest in the book, and go straight to the readers.
There’s a problem with this though, because sometimes it isn’t a good idea to go straight to the readers! Too often authors are in love with their words and their ideas and they don’t recognize that they need to edit for flow, form and grammar. There can be a little bit of conceit here or a bit of naivete.
The story has to follow the rules. It has to make sense. It has to be written properly. It has to have good grammar and punctuation. If it doesn’t, the readers are not going to come. If you upload a novel before it’s ready, you’re just shooting yourself in the foot, and earning a reputation as a poor writer.
The easy road can be a dangerous one. The harder road provides enough road blocks for the project to be perfected along the journey.
Of course, we’ve all come across books by reputable publishers that made us shake our heads and wonder how it came to be published. With the e-book scene growing like crazy, hopefully we’ll soon see many talented authors that don’t have paper editions, developing a well-earned following. Those authors aren’t getting there on their own, though. They must have a team of readers and editors helping them to fine-tune their work.
Success is a team effort. In e-book publishing, the author is the one in control of the team, so it’s important that it’s a good one!
If you’re considering e-publishing, there is a lot to know. Read and learn. Ensure that you’re putting out the best possible product. Know your audience and your genre. Be sure that your work has been read and reviewed by your audience. Your reputation is important, you need to keep it shiny.
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