kyle d. duncan

Self Publishing and the World of Kindle

2013-05-29T18:06:00.004-05:00

Many people have heard about the allure of Kindle and the promises of hitting it big as a fledgling writer. After all, Amanda Hocking did it. So, why can't the rest of us, right?

Oh, if only it was that easy! There are many websites out there on the net with promises of making a whopping million dollars by e-publishing your latest undiscovered (although brilliant) novel. Have you seen all of those websites? If not, just do a quick web-search for them. Such articles are in mass quantities on the internet.

In honesty, it isn't as easy as a lot of people try to make it out to be. Amanda Hocking pretty much went from rags to riches through e-publishing her novels, primarily through Kindle. However, she had been writing for years and years and years. She submitted her novels to countless publishers who politely, or not so politely, sent her countless rejection letters in return. Kindle seemed to be her last resort. She wanted her work to be published, so she took it upon herself and made it happen.

For those of you who don't know Amanda Hocking's story, you should really look her up. If memory serves me correctly (sometimes it does) she cleared around 1.5 million dollars her first year of self-publishing on Kindle. She's quite an inspiration for the rest of us still struggling with our work.

It's still possible to make a living as an indie published author. Kindle and other e-book platforms have wonderfully helped to level the playing field, creating opportunities unheard of for writers before the tablet generation of readers.

Don't expect to put up one 100-page "novel" and made $1,500 next month. However, if you are a good writer, and you are able to write several books and build a franchise around your material, then you just might make good money. Kindle isn't a get-rich-quick scheme. It takes work and dedication, just like publishing in other formats. The difference is you will be doing all of your own marketing.

If you are willing to do the work and get your book(s) up on Kindle, use all your social media, friends, phone numbers, etc., to get the word out about your work. Get the word out to family, friends, and tell them to tell others. They will in turn pass the word along if they liked what they read. More success stories on Kindle are still to come. My entire point of this is that it isn't a given. It's a load of work, but worth it.

Personally I adore the idea of e-books. It's very much the new generation of publishing, and it allows unknown writers to get their work out there for the world to read. So, get to writing. Just remember -- writing your book is the first step. Next, get it out there and market! market! market!

The Long Road to Nowhere

2013-05-28T16:12:00.000-05:00

If you've been a writer for very long then you probably can understand how sometimes it feels like being on the long road to nowhere. At other times the work just whips right along and beckons us to keep up. It can be heartbreaking and exhilarating, all at the same time.

For the past year I've been working odd and end jobs, helped out by friends and family as well. My writing has blossomed and unfolded in ways I hadn't foreseen coming. I have one manuscript that will be ready for submission in about a week, and another that should be completed within the next month.

Writing requires bravery, stamina, courage. At the end of the day when it feels like you've been spinning your wheels, what do you do? Sometimes it feels that things stand still as we keep running. At the same time, I've also found that maintaining a steady forward pressure is the way to go. Eventually the door we're looking for will be scripted out of thin air, created by our writers' craft.

And if the door doesn't show up, just write something else exciting and blow a hole in the side of whatever wall it is. Then, walk on through to a brave new world.

Hemlock Grove! OMG!

2013-05-25T00:56:00.003-05:00

Ok, so first let me say that I'm not a big television watcher. I just do not have the time for it. However, I do catch some things on Netflix from time to time. Usually I'm writing away or working on some other project I have going on.

So it was a total shock a few days ago to discover Hemlock Grove, some new Netflix original show. I am absolutely hooked! I will admit to watching all of them in the span of two days. That is entirely NOT like me.

I'm absolutely enthralled by this show. Completely did NOT see that ending to the series coming at all. I won't say much about it, as I don't want to give away details that will spoil it for you if you haven't watched it.

If you have nothing to do and want a show to watch for a while, give Hemlock Grove a try. I'll probably watch the series a few times before I tire of it.

Here's an awesome line I really liked (and yes, I'm paraphrasing):

"The thing about whispers, is if you put a thousand of them together, they become a howl......"

Fleshing Out Brilliant Ideas

2013-05-24T13:10:00.000-05:00

I'm sure I am not the only one who has come up with a brilliant one-liner idea but was then at a loss as to how to take it much further. Even brilliant ideas can fall apart in the early stages of their infancy.

After successes and even more ~~failures~~ learning experiences, I came up with an idea that has proven extremely helpful in my writing. Maybe it will help you when you get into sticky areas as well.

Got an idea? Great. Write it down. Write down your entire idea in one complete sentence. Then, take that one carefully crafted sentence and expound on it, maybe a few sentences, maybe an entire paragraph. Go for the meat of it, not all the extra descriptions and details which will come later. For the moment just focus on the core of your idea, elaborating it to include key events marking its progression.

Ok, so that was fairly painless, right? Now your one sentence is a paragraph, perhaps long or short, either way it's great. Next, in your writer's notebook or in a word file, or wherever you do your writer's thing, write one sentence from your paragraph at the top of a different page. Then use that page to develop each sentence into its own paragraph(s), keeping focused on key events and actions that drive your story.

When you are done, you'll have 5 to 10 paragraphs (maybe more) detailing the progression of the plot of your brilliant one-liner idea.

This really works for me. I tend to get an idea and then get overwhelmed by the details of it. All those bits and pieces just flood my mind and I feel compelled to write them all, all at the same time. As you might guess, that doesn't work. Focusing on one sentence, and letting it grow bit by bit, has been wonderful in focusing me on the work. It literally saved my writing.

The last idea I had almost died after struggling with it for 2 years. Two years! I have lots of notes and all that jazz for it, but whenever I sat down to actually write on the novel, I just couldn't do it. After using the method above, however, the novel fell into place and made sense of itself while I watched and tried to keep up with its twists and turns.

Give it a shot! See if it works for you. Happy writing, fellow time traveler!

A Novel in 3 Days?

2013-05-22T14:51:00.000-05:00

Is it possible? Is it really possible for someone to write a novel in 3 days? It sounds a bit crazy. Actually it sounds a lot crazy. And yet, from what I've read, it's entirely possible. Also from what I've read, it's not exactly the most fun you're going to have this year.

I've read several blogs over the past few days about writing quickly. Along the way, the "write a novel in 3 days" sites started popping up. I was intrigued, so I read further. It's a daunting prospect. A few of the writers were writing about 18 hours a day for those 3 days. One recounted that he looked absolutely vampiric by the time he had typed the last word of the book.

So, is it possible? Yes, it's actually very possible. Possible, but extremely challenging. Am I planning on writing a novel in 3 days? Hmmm, nope. Not going to happen, not in my life. I know my limits at the moment, including the necessity of working another different job at the same time I'm writing.

However, what about setting the goal of writing a first draft within a month? Now that's doable, right? That should be possible for those of us who aren't able to take 3 days of to write 18 hours a day and then crash for the following week to recuperate from the round-the-clock writing binge.

As I mentioned in a previous blog posting, I've finally make a break through in the plot progression of my current writing project. Last night it continued to blossom and grow and expand while I sat in awe of the new life it is taking on almost by its own effort.

Something else I've learned:

Fast writing doesn't mean crappy writing.
Slow writing doesn't mean good writing.

Eureka! At long last!

2013-05-21T16:04:00.000-05:00

It's been an exciting morning for me. For a few years now I've been working on a writing project. Ok, so it's a novel I started back in summer of 2011. I worked on it probably 18 hours a day for several months, and then hit a complete wall. I couldn't figure out the root of the conflict.

My stack of notebooks, folders, and "look books" grew higher and higher, fed by notes, clippings, bits of dialogue, and notes on structure and plot progression. There was a lot of work put into that project. How frustrating it's been to not be able to do anything with all of that generated data!

I've written my entire life, for as long as I can remember. I have the first short story I ever wrote, about some magic key a kid finds in the woods. I even made it into a little book, with construction paper covers and crayon drawn illustrations inside. It was submitted for some young authors competition and won a blue ribbon. Yep, those were proud days!

I have a few old Samsonite hard-side suitcases filled with journals, notes, poems and short stories. I'm all on the bandwagon these days for working on the beloved laptop, but I still do a lot of my work by pen and old-school composition notebooks with the notorious black-and-white marble covers. I've continued to fill several of them while the "novel" has grown slowly, and mostly in silence.

So, where's this Eureka! I mentioned way back long ago? Okay, let's get to that before I divert my attention to another tangent......

This morning, while pacing the living room, nursing my third cup of coffee, the conflict dawned on me. Blam! Just like that. All of a sudden it dawned within the darkness of my writer's endless horizon of wonder. It's those moments of magic that keep me writing, day after day.

Conflict is important. Let's be honest here -- there are plenty of books out there that are poorly written, books that Faulkner, Wolfe, and Williams would scoff at. And yet, plenty of those books are huge successes! Some of them are published in the traditional method through a publishing house, and plenty are e-published through such platforms as Kindle, Nook, Smashwords, and iBooks.

Conflict, that underlying tension, drives a good story forward, even more than florid and complicated vocabulary. Don't get me wrong -- I am all about using proper vocabulary to delve into situations instead of over using a limited repository of trite phrases. That being said, even a basic vocab can be used to write a book that sells thousands and thousands of copies. We see it every day.

These past two years I've collected hundreds of pages of text. I have folders and folders of scenes I've developed, turning points for the characters. And yet, I couldn't figure out the key underlying conflict.

My story is about New Orleans, my beloved and sometimes despised home. It's about two families that have seemingly ruled the city from their positions in the underworld currents that run strong through Orleans Parish. The families are not your run-of-the-mill Uptown aristocrats that hold parties every week and show up in the society pages of the Sunday newspaper.

These two families have been at war with each other for hundreds of years, back to the time before they migrated to the New World. One family is an ancient coven of witches, and the other is a clan of another line of beings with their own particular lusts, needs, and demands.

This morning, the source of conflict between those two families finally dawned on me. The conflict needs to be very real, believable, able to sustain months of daily work, and days of a good read.

If you are having difficulty with your writing, my suggestion is to look at the undercurrent of it. Where is the conflict? What is the true source of the tension? I firmly believe that if you can find the tension, then the writing will begin to write itself as you allow it to come through you. When there's tension, the story propels itself, desiring resolution and completion of its own tale.

Hello Old Friend!

2013-05-17T13:58:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I've been a bit lax in keeping up with all my projects. That's clearly obvious today when I realized I already had this blog when I set out to start a personal one. I blog all the time, just not really for myself. So finding this old one is a bit like rediscovering an old friend.

I write a lot, other places. In addition to everything else, I work as a freelance writer on a few different projects. My novel has not received the attention I'd like to give it, so I thought, well, what the hell, blog about it!

WordPress? It's an excellent option, let's be honest. I've had several blogs on their blog platform. After years of blogging, though, there's something about Blogger that I still like. That's beside the point, and I'm getting distracted now.

Any way...... Welcome back into my life, old friend! Sooooo glad to have found you again! Looking forward to stealing some time during the days to come, and chatting a bit with you, revealing a bit of the contents of my mind. Cheers.

2012-05-07T23:31:00.001-05:00

2012-05-07T23:29:00.001-05:00

A Few Pictures of New Orleans, Home Sweet Home

2012-05-07T23:25:00.002-05:00

Scribblings on Blue

2012-03-19T23:37:00.001-05:00

I labored through five pages tonight, written with my favorite mechanical pencil on loose blue paper. To be honest, I wasn't in the mood for writing when I sat down at my desk.

Sometimes it takes pushing beyond that inertia to get things moving. Once I was started, it moved along quite well. There were a few times when I couldn't write fast enough to keep up with the outpouring storyline.

Started trying out a technique I read about a few months ago. Write until it gets really hot and you know exactly where you're headed with things, and then stop before you go cold. The next night (or whenever) it should prove easy to pick up where you left off. Much easier than starting back up from where things ran cold.

Five pages might not sound like much, but think about 3 months of it collecting. That's over 400 pages written as bare bones of the story. With the second draft, entering all of that into my laptop, it will quickly grow as minimally detailed scenes are fleshed out and dressed in their Sunday best.

You don't have to write 1,000 words everyday. But if you think of yourself as a writer, or you want to think of yourself as a writer, you just need to commit to writing everyday.

Theresa Andersson -- "Birds Fly Away"

2012-03-17T19:15:00.001-05:00

This woman is nothing short of amazing. I've been blaring her CDs today while writing (or pretending to write, depending on the moment). She brings tears to my eyes, as well as igniting so many memories from my past in New Orleans. Listening to her today reconfirms my ambition to move back home, sooner than later.

Pushing Through The Shadows

2012-03-16T21:44:00.001-05:00

Life is full choices. Thing is, most days it feels as though the decisions are already made for us. We can either do A, B or C, with the possible choices scripted for us. So, how is that truly free will? It gives the semblance of retaining our own volition while narrowing our possible actions. It's closer in many ways to voluntary control.

I try to live a creative life, keeping myself guessing, trying to step out of my comfort zone on at least a semi-regular basis. Funny thing is that after a while I find myself stepping out of my usual routine in a rather routine manner. Feels safe. Life, however, isn't about keeping things safe and in their own little box. Yes I admit I prefer my books stacked neatly, items on my desk arranged at 90 degree angles, pencils in the pencil cup, pens in the pen cup, and miscellaneous items in their own bin as well. Maybe calculated safety is a good thing, allowing a construct for the more dangerous moments to be allowed.

Writing is about letting go, allowing the unknown to rear its head and poke around on the paper. Maybe it's erased, lined through, or the victim of "select all" and then "delete." It happens. Perhaps the trick is to just let it happen.

Something that frustrates me is that unpublished writers are "aspiring authors." What about painters? Painters are painters simply because they paint, even before they land a solo showing of their work. So why are writers validated only upon publication? Might be on the shoulders of the writers themselves at times. Sure, I want to be published someday on old-fashioned paper with a gorgeous font and a beautiful glossy cover. Until then, I'm still a writer, capturing words, recording thoughts, exploring details of life I see in order to deepen my own experience so that resulting sentences delve deeper into mysteries that far too many people pass by and never notice.

Discipline. That's something I've been working hard to develop. Our creative work as artists of all mediums hinges upon random moments of madness. I find that to be the easy part of the process. The difficulty lies in then returning from that state of divine inspiration and attempting to capture it in the present medium at hand. The more you do it, the more you realize that it actually is work. It should be joyful work, at least most of the time, but it isn't always. Sometimes it's laborious, painful, and full of shadows.

The ability to push through the shadows is an important skill that must be developed. So many walls pop up, for some of us at least. Walls that must either be jumped over, or blown up. Maybe some walls should be walked around.

Keep pushing through the shadows. Keep taking risks. Keep dreaming. Very few societies value their artists. Yet I believe that the artists are necessary. Appreciated or not, the spirit thereof continues to illuminate the darkness and capture truths otherwise overlooked.

Circles

2012-03-06T22:17:00.002-06:00

My thoughts are running in circles tonight, just out of reach. I've been sitting at my desk for a few hours now. Have not managed to write a single word that's to be kept. Seems that as soon as I do get into the writing, and words actually find themselves on paper, that it's late into the night and my bed demands I warm it with my sleeping body.

Days slip by so quickly. Too quickly. So many of us say that, often. What happens then? Do we change anything about our lives? Most of us don't. Most of us think, oh well, life is speeding by, cannot do anything about it, so let's just spend our lives punching time cards and shopping sales at Macy's.

Felt like spring today in Colorado. Spring. New life. Time, yet again, to commit ourselves to openness and honesty with ourselves and others.

And now it's time I throw down the gauntlet and demand that my creative mind pours out a thousand words on my current project. Because we all know, the creative mind responds wonderful to demands. Sarcasm, oh sarcasm, my friend.

George Bernard Shaw's Writing Area

2012-01-08T17:01:00.000-06:00

Running in Circles

2012-01-08T17:00:00.000-06:00

I'm sitting here, actually for a few hours now, and all I've accomplished is weaning my Twitter account of people who haven't posted in the last year or who have simply never followed back. I have also cleaned quite a bit and I managed to do 3 loads of laundry.

The problem is that today was/is supposed to be a day of writing on my current project. I've always written. I don't remember a time when I didn't write in some form. Still have the first short-story I wrote back in first grade, as well as the ribbon I got at some school competition. I remember that story oh too well. It's titled "The Magic Key." I took printing paper, folded it in half to made leaves of a book, and then "bound" the pages into a construction paper cover. After I had written a line or two on each page (it was a short short-story) I went back with crayons and illustrated each page. I remember as a kid thinking that was so cool to have my story in "book" format.

Now, there's the laptop that takes the place of pen and paper, or at least some of the time. However now there's also Netflix, Google, etc. -- plenty of things to prove distracting. Distractions are only a problem if allowed to be a problem. Some days I allow them a little too much room for play.

Having ideas isn't the problem for me. The problem is usually I have too many of them. They all come at me all at the same and then all run away before I can manage to organize them in my head. So I've learned to keep either a pad of paper with me at all times, or I make notes on my iPhone while on the go.

All in all, I think the best advice is to simply keep at it, on as much of a daily basis as possible. Those moments when the heavens open wide and the words flow as if being channeled in a divine trance, well, those moments make all the other days of labor worth it. One just hopes that the days of writing eventually out number the days of distraction.

Chasing Thoughts

2012-01-02T22:02:00.000-06:00

There's a funny phenomena that occurs with my writing, or at least with my attempting to write. I have thoughts, ideas, plans all day long, simply running through my head. They take their time, stopping briefly, maybe just slowing down at times, and they allow me to get a good look at them. Sometimes I'm really amazed at the plot twists and character details that arise. That's during the day.

When it comes evening, however, and I sit down at the laptop, or grab a pen and open a trusty notebook, my mind goes absolutely blank! I'm currently working on a method to sneak up on thoughts so I can pen them without them getting suspicious that I might actually be doing something productive.

Amanda Hocking, Super Star

2012-01-02T12:57:00.000-06:00

For quite sometime I've read online about Amanda Hocking. She's now a millionaire, within 2 years of self-publishing her young adult supernatural romance novels. I finally got a Kindle (yay! love it!) and purchased the first book of her My Blood Approves series. Within a few pages I was hooked.

Imagine my surprise that I was enjoying reading a young adult novel! I'm now on the third book of the series, with plans on buying her other books. Her Trylle trilogy is being re-released in a couple of days of days, being published in paper by St. Martin's Press. She's become very success very quickly.

Actually, that brings up another point. People write about "over-night successes." Amanda Hocking is no "over-night success." She's been writing for as long as she can remember. She tried to get published traditionally for years before venturing into e-publishing. She worked a full-time job, drank lots of Red Bull, and wrote sometimes 8 to 12 hours after work.

Rock on, Amanda!

2011-12-25T13:47:00.000-06:00

I keep hearing about some movie called "It's a Wonderful Life." Never seen it. Holding out for the zombie version to be released.

Pumped up Kicks (Foster the People)

2011-12-24T22:49:00.000-06:00

Happy Christmas (by John Lennon)

2011-12-24T22:32:00.000-06:00

Beat Down and Scarred

2011-12-24T21:38:00.000-06:00

Society is based on control. As a system, it beats us down, keeps us in control. We work until we are numbed to our own existence. In order to survive we are quite frequently forced to die to ourselves, to deny our own basic instincts for living.

Survival instincts override the need for joy. We keep breathing, yet our lives are out of breath, run dry of our own basic vitality. Very much a zombie-syndrome society, walking about without feeling.

Our souls have become fibrous with scar tissue from repeated lashings incurred through self denial, through self deprecation.

2011-12-18T12:57:00.000-06:00

Still Waiting for Go

2011-12-17T20:39:00.000-06:00

There's a book I've been working on for too long, way too long. I feel I'm chasing the characters right off the stage. There they are, all doing their thing, until I show up. Whenever I attempt to put their words and actions onto paper or into the laptop, they all sit down quietly and behave. Totally not fun! Not cool! So I try to catch them off guard so they don't know I'm watching. Maybe I should pretend I'm nodding off and then listen try to listen through the wall!

Answers Not Forthcoming

2011-12-17T20:26:00.000-06:00

All of us have paths to walk. Do we have a choice in any of it? Even the choices we make, are they ours? We think they are. Many times, though, they are predetermined for us. Let's say we're given four choices (at best). We think we choose one of them. But guess what, those four choices were usually made for us, and choosing any of them is accepting another voice's determination of the progression of things.

Stay calm. Don't get upset. Follow the rules. Do what you're told. We're raised to believe that others in authority are looking out for our best interests. Is that always true? Yes, sometimes it's true, but not always.

I've spent years trying to get my life in order. Whenever I get close, something always happens out of my control which seems to spin me backwards. It would be refreshing if to fell supported and empowered. It would be beautiful if the artistic process was fostered instead of stifled.

Proper "language" is stressed in corporate settings, with the belief that if you say things the right way, you can get people to do most anything you want them to do. When you disagree with them, the language is then turned on you, to convince you that corporate thinking knows what's best for you.

If you please, I'd rather continue to think for myself.