James Noll's Blog

So you've set up your automation, you've got a long-term marketing plan, and you're feeling pretty good about your open and click rates. You don't have to stop there, though! You're probably working on things all year round (or you should be). If one of the goals of email marketing is to keep your list up-to-date with your work and efforts (so they get to know you better, right?), send them an email whenever something cool comes up. Here are some of the new things I've sent my list outside of the automation.

Book Launches

I'm new to the book launch. However, the entire strategy behind this first year and a half is to build up enough fans and followers behind my first three books to be able to launch my new book and series to a dedicated audience. I won't go into a ton of detail about the launch in this post, but I've already sent out a few updates on my progress and an offer to vote on the cover design. As I get closer to releasing the novel, I'll use single emails to let my list know about any of the readings, signings, or other events I'm doing, too.

Customized Short Stories

Last year at Heroes Con, the artist at the table next to me did a lot of business on commissions. He drew caricatures, inserted his customer's faces onto drawings of their favorite superheroes, etc . . . . I decided to offer the same thing, only since I'm not an artist, I figured I'd do it with short stories. Thus, my Customized Short Story service was born. The idea is simple: pick a template—Zombie, Post-Apocalyptic Death Cult, Rapphannock River Monster, or Be the Murderer—and choose whether you want to live or die. There are also two levels. The template version allows you to insert your name into the template. The premium version allows you to provide three details that I have to somehow work into the story. One customer had me weave a bottle of mustard, kittens, and a plane crash into the Rapphannock River Monster story ("Steps"). Another wanted one of his friends named Out-Run-David to die in the first scene, as well as mentioning Weird Al Yankovic, and the Borg into the Post-Apocalyptic Death Cult Story ("The Deepest Cuts.")

Novel Chapters and Outtakes

I'm in the middle of writing two different novels right now. One, The Rabbit, The Jaguar, & The Snake, is the first book in my Bonesaw series. It's a sci-fi, post-apocalyptic, horror mashup, and I'm about two months away from releasing it. The second one, Twitty Carson's Third Act, is still in the early drafting stages. It's my first attempt at writing straight up literary drama, too.

The Rabbit, The Jaguar, & The Snake is about 99,000 words long, and throughout the process, I've cut out a lot of chapters, sections, and digressions—anything that didn't serve the narrative in some way. As I get closer to my launch, I'm not getting rid of them entirely. I'll use those as teasers into the novel's world. They'll get the full treatment, too: cover art, .mobi/.epub files, theme music, and an audiobook. I'll also send out some of my favorite chapters or passages that did make the cut, too, along with all the extras!

I'm not sure if I'll do all of that with Twitty Carson's Third Act. It's a different genre from what my list signed up for, but there are a few suspenseful passages that they might like, specifically "Run For Your Life," the opening chapter of the novel, so I'll send that out to them.

One note of caution: If you already have your list on a scheduled automation, you probably don't want to bombard it with emails. It'll feel aggressive, like you're trying to sell something, and if they feel like you're trying to sell them something, they'll unsubscribe.

Next up: Host your own event

CLICK HERE to join my email list and receive a free short story, audio book, and theme song for "Beta":

A monster terrorizes an isolated village in the mountains of Eastern Europe, draining the blood of its victims, leaving them frozen in the snow. The villagers hunt wolves, decapitate “vampires,” but the murders continue. As each new body is found, the residents grow more and more paranoid. Who will be next? Will it ever end?

At the time of this post, I've just finished my first year of direct sales and building my email list, starting in May 2016 at a local library-sponsored Comicon (The CRRL Con), and ending at the 2017 Gaithersburg Book Festival. I'm also gearing up for my second year, which starts with my second time around at Awesome Con.

At first I was a little fanatical about checking the stats of my email campaigns and worrying about the amount of people signing up, mainly because I wanted to see if it worked, but as the year wore on I was able to settle in for the long haul. That was the original plan: spend a year going where the people who like my work are and build my list.

If I've made a sale at a conference or a convention, that's great. But the chances of ever meeting that person again are slim to none, which was why it's always amazing to me when I see other authors or vendors at the cons and festivals I attended who don't build their lists. Some blow it off. Some see what I'm doing and say "Can I steal that idea?" (like I came up with it.) I don't pretend to be a marketing guru, but I know that having an email list is really easy, and if you're publishing more work (and you should be), it's a great way to stay in contact with the people who, having already bought and consumed your work, might want to buy and consume more of it. In terms of a long game, your goal is to keep them in the loop for the next thing you're doing. And the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing.

One of the first steps I took was to set up an automation string of emails in my Mailchimp account. It costs $10 a month for automation, but it's pretty easy to use. Essentially, once a fan signs up for my list, he or she gets placed in a queue and cycles through a series of pre-written material.

Each automated campaign should have a specific goal in mind, and each email—like good storytelling—should follow an arc to get to that point.

For example, the purpose of my first automated campaign was to:

1. Start the funnel

2. Talk to my list about what I'm doing

3. Market my news series (The Bonesaw Series), the first book of which (The Rabbit, The Jaguar, & The Snake) is due out in the fall of 2017.

The Funnel

I started with the free stuff: An ebook version of "Beta," the audiobook, and the theme song. In fact, if I promise something for free in an email, that's the first thing I add to the top: links to the free stuff. And I give away a lot of free stuff: short stories, music, illustrations, audiobooks. I use it to create a segment of my list who I can retarget with ads for something that costs a little more, like an ebook version of one of my books (A Knife in the Back, You Will Be Safe Here, and Burn All The Bodies).

Talking to my list

After the free stuff, I wrote an intro email that just said "hello and welcome." I explained the purpose of the automation, added a disclaimer about my sense of humor, and thanked them for reading. One week later, the automation sends out my second email: an offer for my Customized Story Service (Be The Star Of Your Own Horror Story!) One week after that, my list will get a CTA ad, what is basically an image of my first book, reviews, and a link to buy. Then it's back to the newsletter. That's how the whole series works: I write about my life, my take on creativity and creative strategies, I offer something free or talk about a new service, I send out a CTA. By the time that first campaign is over, my list will have received twenty eight chances to get to know me and read my work.

Market my new series of books

The first book in this series, The Rabbit, The Jaguar, & The Snake, will be released in September 2017, so the last couple of emails in the first campaign are geared toward marketing that book, and prepare my list not just for its release but for the next automated campaign.

For the new automated campaign, I'll release some of my favorite chapters, talk about the editing process, and share pictures of all the notes, notebooks, and scrap pieces of paper I've filled up writing the novel. I'll also release other marketing materials I produced: a few free pieces of flash fiction (with audiobooks) which are basically outtakes from the novel, music, illustrations, and other goodies. I'll also give people a chance to win a free copy in exchange for a review, invite people to my launch day reading, and then, when the launch is over, release the audio from that event.

Notice that I'm not trying to hard-sell anybody. I look at email marketing as a way of keeping up with anybody I met out on the road who was kind enough to buy my book(s). If it results in a sale, awesome. If they unsubscribe, no worries. (Just don't call me a spammer. I'm not.)

I suppose the only negative aspect to this kind of marketing is that it does require a lot of planning and work; however, the benefits of being able to interact with fans year round (despite how far away they might actually live) are more important. And the list does work. Here's a great example of what I'm talking about:


I recently caught up with Mike, a reader who bought my first book (A Knife in the Back), about a year ago at Awesome Con. He was at the Tidewater Comicon. He read in my email that I was going to be there, stopped by my table, and bought the other two books in the series (You Will Be Safe Here and Burn All The Bodies.)

So that's it. Start your list. Interact with the people who like your work. Repeat.

Next Up: Tip #3—One-off email blasts

Are you a fan of horror or post-apocalyptic fiction?


Go here to join my email list and receive a free short story, audio book, and theme song for "Beta": www.jamesnoll.net

A monster terrorizes an isolated village in the mountains of Eastern Europe, draining the blood of its victims, leaving them frozen in the snow. The villagers hunt wolves, decapitate “vampires,” but the murders continue. As each new body is found, the residents grow more and more paranoid. Who will be next? Will it ever end?

Back when I was playing music, I used to see the other bands we played with signing people up to their email list. At the time, anything that had to do with the business end of music (or any creative endeavor, for that matter), felt phony to me. I just wanted to create, maaaaaaaan. I wanted to leave all that stupid business stuff to someone else. The problem was that the bands I was in were really trying to make a living playing music, and the only way to do that is to pay attention to the business end of whatever creative enterprise in which I was engaged.

Now when I look back on that period in my life, I see a lot of aimless production and events, and a lot of missed opportunity. That's not to say I didn't love it and benefit from it, and hindsight is always (well, you know), but there was so much we could have done with all of the content we created. Like actually market our music, build a fan base, and make money from CD sales (this was pre-digital revolution) and live shows.

I've said this before, but it bears repeating: In the winter of 2016, after three years of writing (sixteen short stories, three novels ) I got fed up with not being able to move any of my work. Sure they were on Amazon, but that by itself chalked up a grand total of zero sales. So I googled "Books on book marketing" and found Tim Grahl's Your First 1,000 Copies and Write. Publish. Repeat. by David Wright, Johnny B. Truant, and Sean Platt. Reading those books was, to say the least, eye opening, and thus I began my journey into book marketing and owning/running a micro publishing business.

The first thing I learned in those two books is that the tactic I'd been ignoring since the mid-1990's is one of the most important things I should be doing to market my work. In fact, EVERY book on book marketing that I've read overwhelmingly stresses the importance of regularly engaging your audience through email, and honestly, there isn't any reason not to do it. Here's why: The people who sign up for your newsletter are interested in your work. They are not bothered by your emails; they want to receive them. This is the primary difference between permission and interruption marketing (for more on this, read Seth Godin's Permission Marketing).

Even more important is the idea that the more people know, like, and trust you, the more likely they are to become your readers, which is the goal. I can't guarantee the like and trust part, that's up to you, but in the next three articles, I'll give you some tips for how to get people who sign up for your list to know you better, and recount my experience so far with building my own.

Next up: Freebies, Freebies, Freebies

So here's a disclaimer: The stories I'm talking about, the one's from which I recycled characters, aren't actually bad. In fact, I'm really proud of them. So proud, in fact, that I published them already.

However, a few years back, when I was drafting the early version of A Knife in the Back, I wasn't entirely sure they'd make the cut. I've already discussed how I did this with Topher, so I won't bring him up again. But I will talk about Jason Riddle. And the nameless main character of "The Unholy Triumvirate." And a minor character from Raleigh's Prep.

Jason Riddle

Riddle is a character that first appeared in "Under the Rocks." At the time, I'd been writing the stories that eventually became the first seven tales in A Knife in the Back. The idea was to put my own twist on some of my favorite horror scenarios. I wrote a vampire story, a haunted house story, a death cult story, a post-apocalyptic story, a zombie story, and a serial killer story. The last one was set in Fredericksburg, VA, and I wanted to write something having to do with the Rappahannock, so I wrote a river monster story. Here's the blurb for it:

Something evil is swimming in the waters of the Rappahannock River. Jason Riddle knows it. He and his brothers thought they’d killed it in the summer of 1932. Seventy years later, that evil has returned, and Riddle knows that he has to destroy it once and for all.

In its early incarnation, "Under the Rocks" had its strengths, Riddle being one of them. He's funny, strong-willed, and best of all, he's well past seventy. In the initial drafts, I couldn't find a rhythm for the story, it contained way too much exposition, and even worse, I could never nail the ending down. So I put it on the back burner while I wrote the sequel to Raleigh's Prep, Tracker's Travail. Since Tracker's Travail was also set in Fredericksburg, and since I hadn't really been able to finish "Under the Rocks" to my satisfaction, I decided to use Riddle and the premise, but subverted the whole thing. In his first appearance, Riddle is the hero killing the beast. In his second, he's the beast killing the hero.

The funny thing is that after I finished Tracker's Travail, I came up with a great ending for "Under the Rocks." Rather than change either story, I left them the way they were. It's more interesting that way. Still, if I hadn't written him as a villain, to see that side of him, I wouldn't have been able to bring out those unprincipled qualities in him in "Under the Rocks," and I wouldn't have been able to find the ending.

The Protagonist from "The Unholy Triumvirate"

Sometimes writers come up with characters that stick with them, characters that, for some reason or another, beg to be delved into more deeply than originally intended. That's the case with the main character of "The Unholy Triumvirate." He's probably one of the funniest and most profane characters I've ever written, and when I was casting around for new ideas for my next book, he kept coming to mind. I'd like to say I struggled with the premise, but I didn't. To me it was a slam dunk: put a gangster from 1920's NYC in a sci-fi/horror novel set after The Singularity and see what happens. The result was Bonesaw, which was intended to be a stand-alone novel. After some excellent feedback from an agent who agreed to read the whole manuscript, I decided to raise the stakes and turn Bonesaw into a series. So the first book became the last, and I wrote The Rabbit, The Jaguar, & The Snake. Here's the blurb:

When Bonesaw, an early 20th Century gangster, is rescued from prison by the Brotherhood, he doesn’t realize it is actually a kidnapping. They give him a choice: either compete in The Gauntlet (Golgotha, Hell, and The Battle Royale), or they’ll cut off his head. Of course, the contest is designed to produce maximum body count, and even if he can make it out alive, he won’t like what they have in store afterward.

Nearly a century later, Detective Katherine Wheeler investigates a string of murders with similar, horrifying details: each victim dies when something huge erupts out of their bodies. As the corpses pile up, she realizes that an invasion is underway, one that could wipe out all of mankind.

Finally, deep in the jungle of a primitive planet, Coatl faces his most dangerous foe yet: the monstrous tecuani. When they overrun the last stronghold in the empire, he decides that the world has one last hope for survival: Ka-Bata and his army. But no one has seen Ka-Bata in years, and nobody even knows if he’s still alive. To make matters worse, Coatl was infected by a tecuani, and the larva growing in his leg will soon mature and burst out. Can he find Ka-Bata in time before it does?

Separated by time and space, these three unlikely allies, The Rabbit, The Jaguar, and The Snake, must find a way to join forces. If they can, the human race has a chance to survive. If they can’t, it is doomed.

Mistress Chainwrought

Mistress Chainwrought is mentioned a few times in Raleigh's Prep. She is the evil headmaster responsible for the creation of the beasts that live in the woods surrounding the school, the monsters that simultaneously keep watch over the grounds and periodically kill the students. As part of the mythology of the novella, I always intended to tell her story, but since she existed prior to the three protagonists, and since I couldn't find a way to write a story set at Raleigh's Prep without them, I never gave it a shot. Until I wrote an early draft of The Rabbit, The Jaguar, & The Snake. Her section didn't make it into the first book, but she is a huge part of the second. Granted, I haven't even drafted it yet, but I know her role, and I know how to fit her in to the mythos of the new series, which is really exciting. Not only do I get to explore an evil character from my first series, I've managed to figure out a way to entwine her in my second series!

So when you're casting around for new ideas, or if you've written a great character in a story that just isn't working (yet), consider putting them in something that is.

Next up:

Writing Tip #3: Turn a strong scene into flash fiction

Are you a fan of horror or post-apocalyptic fiction?

Go to www.jamesnoll.net to join my email list and receive a free short story, audio book, and theme song for "Beta":

A monster terrorizes an isolated village in the mountains of Eastern Europe, draining the blood of its victims, leaving them frozen in the snow. The villagers hunt wolves, decapitate “vampires,” but the murders continue. As each new body is found, the residents grow more and more paranoid. Who will be next? Will it ever end?

It's still funny to me that John Fogerty was sued by his former label for plagiarizing himself. For those of you who don't know about this, his former bandmates argued that the riff he wrote for "The Old Man Down the Road" sounded too close to some of the riffs he wrote for CCR, specifically "Run Through the Jungle." The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled that is not illegal for someone to sound too much like himself, and Fogerty won the lawsuit. If you haven't read about it, you should. It sounds like a chapter straight out of Catch-22.

My point is that you are allowed to steal your own ideas. In fact, I strongly recommend doing it, whether you've created something awesome in a story that just didn't work, or something awesome in a story that did.

Salvaging the good from the bad

I mentioned Igor's Inn in one of my earlier articles. When I first starting writing, I was determined to create a trilogy out of a character named Topher and his crazy adventures. I decided to set Igor's Inn immediately after the first one. Topher and his friends arrive in an unnamed town meaning only to stay the night, but become enmeshed in something the townspeople refer to as "The Gauntlet." They soon realize that, a la "Hotel California," they are stuck in the town forever. Essentially, they wind up having to compete in series of ridiculous games. There's a rock climbing event with little homunculi attacking the competitors, and there's some kind of gladiatorial Battle Royale. The final race basically entails the competitors trying to outrun the townspeople, who have been armed with a variety of axes, pickaxes, shovels, and other blunt instruments. If they catch anyone, they kill them. When Topher and his team end up winning the whole competition, they're escorted into the basement of the hotel in which they were staying (the titular Igor's Inn) to collect their prize, and led down an endless flight of stairs all the way to Hell.

Actually, I might have to revisit that idea.

No, no, no. Never mind. It didn't work back then and I've moved on to other projects. Besides, I've already followed my own advice and scavenged the best parts, specifically the idea of "The Gauntlet." I liked the idea so much (the prize being nearly as brutal and ironic as Tessie Hutchinson's lottery earnings) that I transformed it into the penultimate scene in Burn All The Bodies, the final book in the Topher Trilogy.

Recycling the good

Many of my favorite authors like to connect the worlds of their individual books, sometimes to great effect, sometimes to not-so-great effect. Stephen King revisits Derry in a lot of his work, and characters and events from one story or novel are mentioned in another. Captain Trips first shows up in the short story "Night Surf" from his short story collection, Night Shift; later on it figures prominently in the novel The Stand. I liked that association. He also attempted to blur the lines between books in the Dark Tower series by adding Randall Flagg (from The Stand) to the plot, and allowing the Gunslinger to jump back and forth into worlds that are similar to the ones in his past work. Sometimes it worked for me. Sometimes it felt forced.

David Mitchell also connects the worlds between his works. Cloud Atlas is crawling with crossover characters, at least one of whom shows up in Black Swan Green. He also connected the world of The Bone Clocks (a novel I did not love) to nearly every book he's written so far, then wrote Slade House (a novella I absolutely loved), based on the ideas in The Bone Clocks. His meta-references, because he either planned them, or because of a little serendipity, work well.

I've always liked this idea. I tried it out in a novel I attempted to write in college, which was, of course, terrible. I can't remember the plot, but there were talking squirrels and sentient forks, and I haven't been confident enough, or experienced enough, in my writing to try it. I think I've finally been able to make it work in my latest novel, The Rabbit, The Jaguar, & The Snake. I used the alien setting of two of my short stories, "The Unan" and "Savages" (which I published in You Will Be Safe Here) and, to make things even knottier, I added the main town in "Salvation" (which I published in A Knife in the Back) to "The Unan". It, too, is mentioned in The Rabbit, The Jaguar, & The Snake (as well as another short story, "City of Salt"), and I'm thinking of making it more prominent in the sequel. In fact, as the next few books in the series are published, I also plan on revealing references to and events from "The Unan" and "Savages".

The challenge will be to intertwine them in a way that doesn't make them seem like throw-away references, and to use details from the short stories in a way that adds to the plot of the novels.

So what's my point? I have two:

Don't give up on good or ideas just because they didn't work the first time around. Being an author requires persistence, and persistence doesn't just mean seeing a creative project to completion, it also means harvesting everything you create, even if the initial packaging was subpar.
If it makes sense, have fun with your stories by seeing if you can recycle old settings and ideas in new books. Steal from yourself. If it wasn't already evident, even the supreme court says it's legal!
Next up:

Writing Tip #2: Use a strong character in another story

Are you a fan of horror or post-apocalyptic fiction?

CLICK HERE to join my email list and receive a free short story, audio book, and theme song for "Beta":

A monster terrorizes an isolated village in the mountains of Eastern Europe, draining the blood of its victims, leaving them frozen in the snow. The villagers hunt wolves, decapitate “vampires,” but the murders continue. As each new body is found, the residents grow more and more paranoid. Who will be next? Will it ever end?

I've said it before: Imaginative writing is tough. Most writers spend an enormous amount of time coming up with characters, settings, plots, and work endless hours to tweak, edit, and perfect their work (while avoiding perfectionism, of course.) I have plenty of good days, when the writing seems to just flow, when the dialog and plot seem to come out of me effortlessly. But I have just as many days when I spend an hour or two and crank out maybe five hundred words. Unfortunately, every amazing short story or novel an author finishes is most likely preceded by a dozen more manuscripts that only made it as far as the shredder. It's just the way creativity works.

But what should you do if you've killed a story that contains things you like, such as a character, a scene, a line of dialog, a plot point? It'd be a shame to ditch everything just because an overall idea isn't working, so don't do it!

In the next three weeks, I'm going to provide you with three tips for rescuing good ideas from bad stories.

Next up: Tip #1: Steal from yourself

Are you a fan of horror and post-apocalyptic fiction?

Join my email list and receive a free short story, audio book, and theme song for "Beta":

A monster terrorizes an isolated village in the mountains of Eastern Europe, draining the blood of its victims, leaving them frozen in the snow. The villagers hunt wolves, decapitate “vampires,” but the murders continue. As each new body is found, the residents grow more and more paranoid. Who will be next? Will it ever end?

www.jamesnoll.net

I only mean that metaphorically. What I really mean is "release some endorphins," but "get loaded" sounds better.

Okay, so let's pretend you've tried not to worry about the quality of the writing, you've squashed the troll, you've tried to force yourself to write, but nothing is working. It happens. Creativity is tricky, and sometimes the best way to stifle yourself is to try too hard. So rather than do that, don't try at all.

A few years ago, I was writing the early drafts of what eventually became The Rabbit, The Jaguar, & The Snake. I didn't have a plan. All I knew was I wanted to write something funny and cool. Every day I would write for a few hours until I reached a point where I couldn't figure out what was going to happen next. Then I'd go for a walk to purposefully NOT think about the novel. I let the rhythm of the exercise settle in, push myself a little harder, a little faster, and right when my mind was totally clear, I literally told myself "Okay, think," and invariably, I came up with a new idea. So by not trying to do anything at all, I got something done.

This isn't a revolutionary strategy. There is a connection between exercise and creativity, and there's a connection between taking time off from a creative piece of work and solving problems with that work. I know it because I regularly exercise it (pun intended).

So if you're having a hard time with something creative, if you just can't come up with the will to work on a project, or maybe you're just stuck, sometimes it really is best to step away, even if it's only for an hour or two. Yes it is important to stick to a schedule and set up a routine, but if all you're doing is staring at an empty page or a blank screen and you just can't move forward, adjusting that schedule and that routine will help. Here are a few things I've done to get past a hard day writing.

A. Do something else creative.

Creativity is a muscle that needs to be exercised, but just like physical exercise, you need to mix up your workouts. I'm a musician, so I get my creative outlets from a variety of places. If I just can't make anything work with my narrative fiction, I'll write, record, and mix a song instead. I also like videography, so sometimes I'll go indulge that side of my creativity. Whatever your interests are outside of writing, engage in them. You might not be making progress in your written work, but you will be flexing that creative muscle.

B. Exercise

I'm not just talking about rigorous physical exertion, although if that's how you prefer to exercise, go right ahead. And I'll skip over the obvious physical and mental health benefits (https://news.stanford.edu/2014/04/24/...) of exercise, too. When I say "exercise," like I said, it could be something as simple as taking a walk. (http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04...)

C. Take A Nap

The idea that more is better is a fallacy that continues to flourish, especially in America, despite plenty of evidence that actually proves the opposite to be true. In fact, in my experience, most of the people I've ever worked with who worked more hours than they were required were not very productive, but rather inefficient or ineffective, and they certainly were not at all creative.

So don't be your own bad boss. Take a nap. However counterproductive this might sound, napping, particularly a long nap, is a major factor in boosting human creativity (http://a3145z1.americdn.com/wp-conten...), and as such, can be one of the best ways to get things done.

Next up: Three writing tips for working with good ideas in bad stories

Are you a fan of horror or post-apocalyptic fiction?

CLICK HERE to join my email list and receive a free short story, audio book, and theme song for "Beta":

A monster terrorizes an isolated village in the mountains of Eastern Europe, draining the blood of its victims, leaving them frozen in the snow. The villagers hunt wolves, decapitate “vampires,” but the murders continue. As each new body is found, the residents grow more and more paranoid. Who will be next? Will it ever end?

I meant to write this over four days ago, but my troll got in my way. We all have a troll. Especially creative people. My troll tells me a whole lot of things: I'm too busy, my work is crap, nobody's reading it.

"Why are you doing this?" it says. "It isn't getting you anywhere."

"This isn't real work. Real work is toil. Real work pays minimum wage."

I hate that thing.

Most of the time, I can squash it pretty good. But if I am busy, as I've been for the last few days, he finds a way to sneak in. Which is why I haven't finished this article. Even when I carved out some time to work on this, my troll said, "It's too late. Just grab a beer. Watch a show. Didn't you want to set up your canopy in the back yard?" (I did, by the way. It's great, but I didn't need to spend an hour in the middle of the day doing it.)


So why does that troll exist in the first place? Because creativity is difficult. How difficult? More difficult than one imagines. The Self-Publishing Podcast reiterated this in a recent episode (SPP is produced by Johnny B. Truant, David Wright, and Sean Platt--the Sterling and Stone team), when they were talking about their experience at Robert McKee's Story Seminars. McKee apparently said creative writing was more difficult than brain surgery (which is an exaggeration, of course), but I think he does have a point. For me, the difficult part of the creative process is the first draft of a novel. This was readily apparent to me last summer when I was writing my first go-round of my newest series, The Rabbit, The Jaguar, & The Snake. Some days the plot and dialog ran out of my fingers, and I completed a few thousand words. I was happy with those days. But there were just as many days when I spent three or four hours and only managed a few hundred words. I hadn't lost my nerve or my talent; I hadn't run out of ideas or gotten blocked. It was just really, really hard to come up with something that worked. And that's when the troll came knocking, and I spent almost as much time squashing it as I did writing (after I finished writing, though. I'm pretty good at ignoring it when I'm trying to be creative).

So why does this happen? Why does the troll creep out from under that mental bridge? For me, it's an offshoot of worrying about the quality of creative work before it's ready to be judged. The most common version of this is to create a cycle of diminish-than-procrastinate. (Interesting aside: I just read a Ted Talk transcript about the connection between procrastination and creativity that argues in favor of putting things off.) Like I said before, that troll loves to trick you into believing that any creative work is not as important as something else more immediately pressing or seen as traditionally more worthwhile. It whispers things like "this isn't making any money, so it's not worth it," or "don't you think you should be [insert chore here] rather than this?" or "nobody cares about your project, so why do it at all?" It harps upon all of the insecurities with which most artists struggle, even when the work is going well, even when it's even selling well. The troll doesn't really want you to make money or clean the house. It only wants two things: fear and self-doubt.

Or maybe you don't have a troll. Maybe you're just really busy. Writing is hard. It takes a lot of effort, and some days it is difficult to muster the energy to engage. If you work full time and/or have a family, that makes it all the more difficult.

So here's a little tip to squash the troll or muster that energy. I learned it from my friend, Bill Harris. Bill is a very successful artist. He's managed to create a career from doing something he loves, and on top of that, he's an all around great guy. When Bill doesn't feel like painting, here's what he does. He goes into his studio, picks up his brush, and he starts to paint.

It can be that simple.

So the next time your troll is whispering in your ear, or the next time you've worked all day, drove the kids all over the place, cooked dinner, cleaned up the house, and you just don't feel like working on anything else, remember that right then is when the troll is at its strongest. That's when it will slime its way into your ear and start telling you you're no good anyway, so why not just give up? Instead of listening to it, go over to wherever it is that you write, paint, draw, or compose, pick up your pen, your brush, your charcoals, your guitar, or fire up your laptop and DO SOMETHING. Even if its only for a half an hour, even if you make very little progress, even if you're not entirely satisfied with what you've written, do it anyway.

Your troll will crawl back under that bridge if you ignore it, and that's how you squash the thing.

Next up: Take some time off

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Especially with a first draft! Like I said last week, a lot of my creative writing students struggle with this. When I teach a new concept or strategy, something that is meant to result in the first draft of a poem, a short story, or an excerpt from a script, I'll follow this process:

1. Read examples of professional work.

2. Discuss and analyze plot structures and different style points.

3. Provide exercises to develop basic ideas.

4. Provide an outline/planning method to work with.

5. Give them time to write.

(This process can take up to three eighty minute classes before they're even ready to start writing. That's a lot of work!)

Even after all of that, I'll still get a student or two who says, "I don't know how to start." What it usually comes down to is that the student is afraid of the work "not being good enough." To which I invariably reply, "It doesn't have to be good at all. It just has to be complete."

This, to me, is freeing, and most of the time it works for my students, too.

When it comes to drafting and coming up with ideas, avoiding perfectionism can be avoided by understanding something called "The Madman, The Editor, and The Judge." Maybe you've heard it before. If so, you can skip to the end. If not, here's a breakdown.

The Madman stage is exactly like it sounds. While I advocate for planning and plotting, I don't think a writer has to stick to it no matter what. That's too constricting. It doesn't allow for serendipity or, honestly, creativity. In creative writing, the only purpose of a plan is to give a writer a general direction in which to head, a way to jump start each day's work. But while in The Madman stage, don't worry about the work being perfect; just be, as the name implies, as crazy and inventive as possible. Take risks, be weird, make things happen because you need them to happen (a cardinal sin in the final draft, by the way). Speeling errors down't matter. punctuation errors, don't matter. (See what I did there?)

It gives you, as the writer of a first draft, permission to just write, to see where the plot goes, and be happily surprised at some of the outcomes.

(By the way, if you're wondering, "The Editor" is the guy who fixes all the stuff that needs to be fixed: grammar and punctuation, plot holes, consistency . . . pretty much everything a writer is supposed to ignore while in "The Madman" stage. It's impossible to lock The Editor out all of the time. Fixing sentences and changing words, etc . . . is all a part of the drafting process, but I wouldn't let I wouldn't let him have a serious crack at the manuscript until draft three or four.

"The Judge" is the guy who decides whether or not your work is worth publishing. NEVER let him in until you're absolutely sure everything is done or nearly done. If you do, you'll never finish anything enough to warrant his arrival.)

Terry Pratchett once said that "a first draft is just you telling yourself the story." In other words, have to have something to work with before worrying about how good it is. It's going to be messy and imperfect, but enjoying the mess and imperfections is part of the fun!

Next up: Just Do The Work

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A monster terrorizes an isolated village in the mountains of Eastern Europe, draining the blood of its victims, leaving them frozen in the snow. The villagers hunt wolves, decapitate “vampires,” but the murders continue. As each new body is found, the residents grow more and more paranoid. The cobbler's son decides to investigate, putting himself in grave danger. Who will be next? Will it ever end?

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--JN

In learning about the business side of publishing, I've confirmed something that I always knew was true: Creative Writing is difficult work. More so than the business and marketing end. (Business and marketing is work, and it can be hard, but nowhere near as difficult as the creative end.)

That's not to say creative writing is a chore. It's not, and I love it. Especially the good days. These are the days when the dialog, description, and plot seems to roll off my fingers, and I feel unstoppable. I'd say those come more often than not. But then there are also those days when the ideas just don't come to me, when I spend an hour or two writing and writing but barely make it through four or five pages, or when I've written a lot, but nothing I come up with works. The dialog is stale, the description cliche', and the plot boring and meandering, and it makes more sense to just drop the project altogether than try to push forward.

But that's not really an option. Sure, there are some projects that just don't work. But the time to asses that isn't in the drafting stage, and that's really what I'm talking about. If you've written eight drafts of a novel and it fails, then maybe you might consider dropping it. But when you're just starting it, if you're on the first draft, quitting before you even get something resembling a first draft should not be an option.

My students want to do this all the time. Granted, they're just learning about the process of writing, and some of them don't want to work. However, the ones to are really invested get frustrated if their drafts don't live up to their expectations. Here's what I tell them: the draft is just something to work on. You won't know if it's good until much later. It's like being a sculptor. First you have to take that block of marble, or clay, or whatever it is sculptors use, and get it into a something somewhat resembling the final product. That's your draft. You'll chip away here, chip away there, shape, mold, and perfect the thing later. Give yourself something to work with first, though, and don't even think about assessing its worth yet.

Will the writing always go well? Nope. Malcom Gladwell says it takes 10,000 hours to master something, and Colin Powell said this about grit: "A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work." (I would have put his name in the title, but John Wayne makes better copy, so I settled for an analogy).

Powell's right. So is Malcom Gladwell. But that doesn't mean that somewhere along the way the work doesn't become frustrating to the point where giving up might be an option. So here are some tips and suggestions for when you feel like throwing it all of your hard work away.

Next up: Perfectionism. The creativity killer.

Are you a fan of horror or post-apocalyptic fiction?

CLICK HERE to join my email list and receive a free short story, audio book, and theme song for "Beta":


A monster terrorizes an isolated village in the mountains of Eastern Europe, draining the blood of its victims, leaving them frozen in the snow. The villagers hunt wolves, decapitate “vampires,” but the murders continue. As each new body is found, the residents grow more and more paranoid. The cobbler's son decides to investigate, putting himself in grave danger. Who will be next? Will it ever end?

Sign up here!

www.jamesnoll.net

--JN