It's the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) blog hop! In an IWSG post, we writers bring our writing challenges and problems out into the open to share with each other and try to offer solutions. I apologise for missing last month. That month kind of got off to a bad start. That week after Easter Sunday I had allergy attacks and a bad cough, the latter which I'm still trying to recover from even though I've been doing way better. I talk more about this in my post from last week, which is also the Book-To-Movie review post for April. So, check that out if you haven't already.
I'm going to skip the optional IWSG question of the month which is What was the most inspiring feedback you received from readers, including agents, editors, and beta readers? I've gotten a lot of helpful and inspiring feedback from people who've read my work that I just can't remember a specific instance at this time.
Book Progress
It was just at the end of last week when I finished double-checking my manuscript for "Bad Apps", my upcoming book of short fiction, for "errors" that the word processor underlined. Most of those words and phrases I had intended to present with certain spellings or certain forms which the programme misunderstood their contexts. Well, it's Word 2019, and so it's pretty old, and so the automatic spelling and grammar check features aren't as efficient as those in today's version of Word. Even if they were, I wouldn't totally rely on the AI and so would still do my own spelling and grammar checks by reading the indicated errors in their surrounding contexts.
Since I'm done double-checking the underlined words and phrases in my "Bad Apps" manuscript, and have fixed any that happened to be actual errors, I'm now focusing on marketing and promoting the book during this pre-publication period. That includes the book cover, specifically the cover's illustration. I've been working on a concept sketch for the cover to send to the illustrator that I'll hire. (Again, beta readers of "Bad Apps" who gave me feedback will be getting a first look at the finished version of the book cover, that includes both text (e.g., title and byline) and illustration.)
Attempts to Write New Fiction
Well, the pre-publication marketing stage has put me behind in writing new fiction. Having to concentrate more on the technical details of marketing "Bad Apps" before it's published has put a stifle on my fiction creativity, and so I just haven't been motivated to write any new stories. I had to stop in the middle of writing one story a month or so ago because I had to put my attention on preparing "Bad Apps" for publication. Now I have to come up with ways to market and promote it. When I do have a little time to write new fiction, I just can't think creatively enough. I was probably putting a little more on myself than I had originally thought, and so for right now I just have to concentrate on announcing "Bad Apps" to people at large and continue making the concept sketch to send to an illustrator. I'll definitely let everyone know here at my blog when I return to writing new fiction regularly.
What was the most inspiring feedback you received about your writing? Have you ever needed to put writing new works on a hiatus while publishing and/or marketing a current book. Or can you do both simultaneously? If so, how do you balance the two out? Today’s IWSG is brought to you by these super co-hosts: Jenni Enzor, Jemima Pett, Jamie of Uniquely Maladjusted but Fun, and Kim Lajevardi! IWSG was founded by awesome author Alex Cavanaugh, writer of the Cassa Series of novels!
Until next time . . .
Marketing and getting ready for release suck up a lot of time and energy. Just focus on that for now.
ReplyDeleteYes, they take a lot of time and can be wearing, especially if you're not primarily an marketer or business-oriented like I'm not. So, I'm going to have to focus on the more business side for a while.
DeleteI'm not sure how old my Word program is but I don't always trust the spell check either.
ReplyDeleteIts always best to take control of your own when it comes to computers and that includes editing/revising your work.
DeleteI hope you have fun publishing! Deciding the book cover is definitely a hard thing itself---designing one is even more stressing. Good luck with that!
ReplyDeleteThanks! Yes, a lot of research goes into deciding what kind of illustration you want to put on your book cover. You need to see what styles are popular on the market in your book's genre while making sure the illustration represents the book's content and themes. A lot of balancing out that has to be done.
DeleteIt is hard to work with the self correct. I find it doesn't like my sentence fragments, even though that's how people think and talk. Happy ISWG!
ReplyDeleteWe're our own best editors in certain respects at least.
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