A Cooperative Press for Indie Authors discussion

Welcome to the Author's Confessional. If you'r thinking it, you might as well say it (if it's about writing, of course.)

The best advice I ever got was that 'all my words that I write are not golden' and 'don't fall in love with your own words.' Edit ruthlessly. I am reminded of a quote by Ernest Hemingway, who said, "Ninety percent of what I write is crap--fortunately most of it ends up in the waste basket." We can all agree that Hemingway was a talented writer. If he admitted this about his own writing, then we should all be just as honest with ours.

Another little thing that pays off big. If you use Microsoft Word, if you have never met the "Show/Hide" feature, get acquainted. It is a little symbol on the toolbar on top that looks like the symbol for pi, sort of. Just click it to reveal all of the formatting marks in your document. I use it all the time to make sure my formatting is correct. This makes for a cleaner document sent to publication, especially if you are sending it to Create Space.

My wife gets to read my chapters hot off the printer. She reads them even before I edit for typos and all my other messiness. Today, I hand her a short chapter on her lunch break and she is barely touching her lunch as she reads. Out of the blue, she yells “NO”.

I’m confused.

“What?” I ask.

“You #$%!, I am not turning the page!”

Now, I'm really confused.

My wife cusses me for the next 5 minutes refusing to turn the page. I am in hysterics because I have never heard so much vulgarity come from her in such a short amount of time.

She stomped around for a few minutes while I laughed at her before she finally gave in and turned the page. I remained quiet until she finished.

I won’t spoil the ending, but what made me feel good about this was she was so emotionally invested in the characters that she had this outburst. That told me I was doing something right, at least for her, but she is my most important reader. :)

Lol. That's funny J.W. Well if you can get a reaction like that out of her then just imagine the reaction you will put on readers faces when they read it.

That's what I'm hoping for. :)

Has anyone else had any interesting experiences with beta readers?

SPOILER

One of mine punched me quite hard because I killed a character that she rather fancied.

:) No physical violence for me yet.

Sorry for being inactive on here guys. I've been hard to work getting ready to release my upcoming novel Opium Warfare. So far so good as it met requirements on Createspace and I'll be getting a proof copy soon. Given that it's all good I will be releasing the book on Sept 25th.

I haven't had any kind of reaction like that from a reader - because I've had very little reaction from my very few readers.

I'm concentrating (between novellas) on a couple of short stories right now, but I'm also trying to fulfill a commitment I made to myself.

You know that whole "write at least four pages a day" thing? It's not for me. (For various reasons - see my blog if you're interested.)

But I'm endeavoring to write at least four words a day. Basically: open up MS Word and try to write at least something every day.

I don't want to waste my time writing stuff that I know for certain is just going to be deleted (I can better spend my time outlining) but making it a habit to open up the program and see if anything comes out - that is working for me.

So far. I'm not very disciplined, so don't know how much longer it will last...

Hey guys,
I apologize for the inactivity in this group. I've been busy working on my book which will hopefully be released next Thursday. I have a minor issue right now that I'm working through but hopefully if it's good to go then I can perhaps promote and market it and who knows maybe I'll looks to the group here to help me with a few small things.