How the writing goes: Some books flow easily from brain to (not paper, but) Word file; some do not. “The Assassin and the Pianist” (working title for now) is one of the latter. My goal, adopted from Stephen King, is to write 3,000 words per day. I don’t often hit the mark, but anything over 2,000 I consider a success. Large sections of this latest story are moving forward at 500 to 1,200 words per day.
Why is this? It’s a sometimes the need to stop and research a locale, a fact, a situation and then continue. It’s sometimes the thread of the story gets vague and I have to find my way forward, like a tracker that lost a trail and has to course back and forth to find it again.
Never panic: All this doesn’t mean the story isn’t good. I don’t panic; it’s happened before. I just resolve to keep plowing forward, knowing there’ll be smoother sections up ahead.
New honor: On the marketing side of things, I want to let you know that I have been invited to put Payback into the Amazon Prime reading program. This is a curated list of books Amazon puts together, usually the first book in a series, to offer to their Prime customers. It’s a free download on their Kindle.
This is the second time for me. Last May I was invited to put After the Fall: Jason’s Tale into the program. I did a bit of research about it, not having heard of the program before. I entered the book and saw a strong, steady improvement in the book’s ranking. I’m hoping for similar results for Payback. Needless to say, I wasted no time in signing the book up for the program.
The author life: An Indie author’s life is a balance between writing and marketing, the creative and the business side of this profession. I’m still working on finding that balance. The key to being a self-published writer for me, the absolute bedrock on which I operate, is to write good stories with engaging characters that you enjoy reading and want more of. When readers say they want to know what is next for a character, or how things will work out for them, I know I’ve done well. To make characters come alive for readers as they are in my head and to put them into compelling situations is the ultimate challenge in writing well. Thankfully, so many of you have told me that I have accomplished that. I will keep working at my craft as we go along this journey.
