My last post got me a couple more followers, YAY! I’m on my way to fame and fortune and you can all say, “S. Earl? Gosh, I’ve been reading his stuff for years!”
Still nothing huge to talk about, but this is part of the whole Build Your Brand process that they talk about. Reaching out to all (33 at last count) of my followers to include you in my process.
And, speaking of process, I sat down yesterday with a deck of multi-colored 3×5 cards. pinkish for Emily, bluish for Alistair, and orangey for everybody else. I could have used plain cards, but the colored ones seemed more fun. Then, I just wrote down in a simple sentence or two some action that the character would take. Alistair plays piano while Emily sings, to use the example from yesterday.
I’ve got a nice sized deck of cards now and today I think I’ll shuffle them all up and then deal them out, one at a time. On the back of each card, I’ll make some notes if I can think of them, like what the character might be feeling at this time, or other notes about continuity… anything that pops into my head when I read the front of the card.
So that’s To The Skies news for today. I did a bit of research into the whole self-publishing thing for Long Chain Charlie. I was hoping I could just dash off a couple of first drafts and then sit back while the royalty checks filled my mailbox. Apparently, that isn’t the way this whole writing thing usually works. I wish they’d have told me how much effort this was going to take before I started!
Self-publishing, or even any kind at all, is pretty far in the future. I may actually take a shot at a traditional publishing house, just to see if I can collect a few rejection letters like any good writer. But all of that is quite far in the future, and I need to concentrate on some of the nearer alligators. So I will stick with the plan for now, let Long Chain Charley mature for a while on the shelf, and work on To The Skies. I will need to give LCC a good hard rewrite before it is anywhere close to submission standards, but it is a good feeling to know I’ve at least got a complete first draft.
The Next Great Novelist 