Category: Learning curve

Posts in which I discuss things I’ve learned or need to learn about any of many topics.

It’s time for a permanent reduction in distractive reading

Lynn

I’ve started using the Mind the Time add-on for Firefox again, temporarily, to help me keep an eye on time I’m spending on things I need to cut out of my day so I have more time for reading fiction, watching TV, doing random stuff, all while still having plenty of time for writing.

See that number 1 in the picture above? Yeah. I’m not surprised, believe it or not. I know I have a problem with that site. And FYI, that 8:13 is hours and minutes not minutes and seconds!

Thirty-four percent of my time online is going to clicking through forum threads and reading them, and almost never engaging in actual discussion. It’s stressful. Maybe that doesn’t make a lot of sense, because why go there when I don’t actually enjoy it? But I do go there—every time I get a little antsy and start looking for a distraction.

I’m going to have to make it a rule that I can’t go there anymore. I really don’t know how else to stop this massive waste of my valuable time.

Same goes for news. Almost nothing I read has any relevance to my life at all, and yet, every time I get on my phone or tablets or my browser, I end up scrolling through the headlines, looking for something interesting to read. It’s like an addiction. I really don’t like feeling addicted to things.

Not only that, but I keep telling myself I’m going to watch more tutorials on design, I’m going to read more fiction, I’m going to study a language, I’m going to learn to draw, I’m going to write more every day, I’m going to go out more, I’m going to visit family more often, and yet I keep wasting vast amounts of valuable time reading news and forum topics that are just a repeat of what I read yesterday. It doesn’t make any sense to let it continue.

in light of that, I’m making a new rule for myself: no more trending news, no more NPR, no more Kboards, no more The Passive Voice. I already don’t watch news videos or television news, read newspapers, or news magazines, so I think that’ll cover it.

I’ve reduced my media intake before and I quite liked it. It’s time to make it permanent. It’s like that old adage of closing one door to let another open.

I will seek out the things that matter to me, and in the process, I’m sure I’ll come across other topics that I’ll feel are important enough for me to delve into in depth. No more skimming news items or forum topics looking for my next distraction.

Even writing that, I feel a huge sigh of relief just waiting to escape. It’s the right thing to do for me and I already feel better.

Ah… :D

Facing resistance and adjusting the plan

Lynn

You know how you make a plan and then immediately feel resistant to actually following through? Yes, well, that’s been happening to me.

So instead of letting myself get too far down that hole, I’ve decided to make a few adjustments to the plan.

I wrote a long post about this and then decided to cut most of it. Suffice to say, I’ve decided I might be better served to have a minimum daily plan that is, to be honest, a little more minimum.

That’d be 1,557 words, every day. Yes. I know some days life will interfere. I still want to write 1,557 words every day, even if I have to switch projects to get them done, or write something quick and ugly just before bed to do it.

I can do this in 3 hours or less most days (based on the fact that my real, I’ve-tracked-it average is about 550 words an hour). It might take longer some days but I’m confident in these numbers—they’re real, they aren’t overly optimistic, and this can be done.

It’s really all about training myself to write every day, because I am not good with habits once I start letting them slip. Seriously, it’s the way I’m wired or something but there ain’t a lot of middle ground with me. The only habits that stick are the ones that I make non-negotiable.

Not gonna lie. This is going to be hard as hell to get embedded in my brain: writing daily is non-negotiable. 1,557 words a day is non-negotiable.

All I have to do is show up and stay the course.

I think the thing I’ll have to remember is that if the writing is going badly, I’m going to have to write shit and just accept that. Some shit is better than no shit, right? :P

Now that I’ve thought this all out, I’m ready to get started with this TODAY. :D I have 412 words written and I need to write another 1,145 words.

I like this more reasonable plan. It’s one I can start working on late in the day and still expect to get done. Here’s hoping that will stop the excuses!

(Have I mentioned that a lot of these posts are totally me just writing out my thoughts and trying to make sense of them? Because, yes, that’s what I’ve just done.)

Practicing writing faster in 40 minute intervals

Lynn

*And was derailed by a kid emergency. I’ll have to save this one for tomorrow. Ugh! Nothing serious though. Well, nothing serious for ME. Kiddo sure thinks differently. :)*

Tonight I’m working in 40 minute sessions. I have quite a bit of writing I wanted to do today and somehow I put it off until now. I’ve completed three of what I wanted to be nine sessions today. Nine was a stretch I could have hit but definitely won’t after starting this late.

I’ll be lucky to finish six now. Probably won’t, to be honest, because staying up late and messing up my sleep rhythms again would be dumb.

I’d rather not do dumb things. :)

But that’s not what this post is about. This post is about me trying to practice writing faster. First thing I need to do is write more and stop less.

Currently, I stop, backup, and start over A LOT. I need to stop that. Or at least cut back on it significantly.

So I’m going to try to write as constantly as I can during this next session (which is probably going to be my last of the night) and see where that gets me. It’ll be a challenge to be sure.

Here’s wishing myself success! You can wish me success too, if you’d like. I need all the encouragement I can get. ;)

(You’ll notice I’m specifically not saying “luck” up there. Time to stop cultivating that mindset, I think! There’s a post in that explanation but it’ll have to wait until tomorrow.)

You think you got this and then you don’t do the work

Lynn

That title there? Basically the exact thing that’s happened today. I was sure I was on track after having two successful days of writing—successful in that I sat myself down and managed to write for four complete hours each day, even if it took me much longer than I’d have liked. But then today came and I let myself slip up.

I’ve done four sessions of the twelve I need to do to reach that same four hour goal and it’s already 7:45 pm.

To finish my 8 remaining sessions by a reasonable hour (say, 11 pm) I’ll need to do as many of the remaining sessions back-to-back as I can, and that’s just the truth. Because here’s the thing. I am accountable to me and I’m not going to let myself get away with not doing the work.

Not today. Not tomorrow. Not anytime soon.

I’ve said it before: To be the kind of writer I want to be, I need to change.

Missing a goal once in a while is no big deal and doesn’t feel anything like failure. Missing a goal every single time is not a good thing. There are repercussions to that kind of repetitive failure. I’m done with that. I just can’t be that person, that kind of writer, any longer.

If I miss today’s goal, it will be a 1:3 failure rate. That’s no longer good enough for me. I’ve set my boundaries and 1:3 ain’t it.

But I’m lucky, because this day isn’t over and there’s no reason to accept failure.

Getting back on track is as easy as saying it’s time to start writing again.

(I originally started a new post for today’s session log but I changed my mind and I’ve moved it here instead.)

Daily Accountability

Session 1: 307 words
Session 2: 217 words
Session 3: 48 words
Session 4: 20 words

Sessions are 20 minutes long and my goal for each is 250 words. Not there yet. Working on it. :)

Next day update: Well, shit. I didn’t do any more sessions. I had good reasons, but if I’d done my writing early like I should’ve done, this would not have happened.

A plan for the future

Lynn

I’m tired of lowercase titles. And yet, I continue to use them. :)

Today I have a plan.

20 minute blocks x 12 of them @ ~750 words an hour = 3,000 words

Yep. That’s my plan.

In fact, it’s my plan for every day for the indefinite future. I’ve been giving some thought to the need for change and some direction for the rest of my year. Those thoughts led me to realize I need to expect more from myself; it’s the only way to grow. I don’t want to be stagnant. A moribund life is not the life I want, despite the fact that my brain is all about strolling down easy street.

I made a note to myself last night. It’s important.

Write for fun! Do more than that though. Make time for other stuff. Don’t drag it out.

I need to write with focus. I need to focus on writing. I need to meet my goals early so I can do other things. Then as a reward, if I want, I can write more later. But always, I need to remember that the only way to meet my goals is to actually prioritize writing and do it first. I get to do it first and save all the stuff in my life that I don’t really want to do for later.

What I’ve typically done, though, is dawdle until I feel pressured to do these other things at the expense of what little time I’ve left myself for writing, because there are immediate consequences if I don’t. (Bills! Dishes! Laundry! Talking to relatives and friends! All of these have consequences for me that I’m not willing to accept if I don’t do them.)

I’ve always felt as if writing daily is a priority, and therefore I feel all the guilt one feels when one doesn’t do that important thing one should have done, but when it comes down to it, I haven’t treated it that way at all.

That’s the big thing I need to change about myself. That’s what I’m going to be focused on changing.

Write in the morning

Reach my word count goal

Or at least do the number of sessions I’ve decided I should be doing at a minimum each day

Then worry about the rest of life and whatever I want to do with my time after that, even if it’s just more writing

Simple. :D

And that answers that question about my paperback covers at CreateSpace

Lynn

Got this just a short while ago:

Congratulations!

Your interior and cover files for xxxxxxxxxxxxx, #xxxxxxxx meet our technical requirements for printing.

The next step in the publishing process is to proof your book:

FOLLOW THIS LINK TO GET STARTED:

Which I assume means the embedded fonts in the paperback cover are A-okay.  There was no additional message about corrections made for me, on my behalf, or anything like that, so this answers the question of whether or not the PDF cover files would be accepted by CreateSpace with fonts embedded instead of being flattened into the image. Should’ve guessed, really, but I just wasn’t sure.

I’ll be ordering a proof to check this out and compare the quality of print to the covers I didn’t embed fonts for (sending only a flattened image PDF to CreateSpace), and scouring over the digital proof from CreateSpace. If the quality of the text appears better, I’ll definitely be doing this extra step from now on. If it isn’t any better, then I’ll just use GIMP, and only add Elements into the mix when I need to use a font that brings out that unfortunate GIMP text rendering (?) bug.

Also, I discovered something with this round of paperback creation. I’ve consistently had a problem with my PDF cover as exported from GIMP having a transparency that CreateSpace fixes for me. I’ve not had that problem this time. The difference? This time when GIMP popped up the little message during the PDF export, I unchecked all the little boxes for things GIMP was offering to do for me during the export. And now, no transparency warnings from CreateSpace for the three covers I exported directly to PDF from GIMP. Pretty happy to have figured that out. I was exporting a completely flattened image to PDF so there shouldn’t have ever been any transparency anyway, but obviously something GIMP was doing during the export on my behalf was creating it.

New text justification bug in GIMP is bugging me

Lynn

I think I’ve found a bug in GIMP’s text justification feature. I thought about reporting the bug, but I do not have an account and don’t want an account and don’t have a spare email address where I’d enjoy getting spammed even if I did. The create a new account page warns of that possibility and I chose to take that warning seriously. (Updates below.)

So I’m just putting it out here because I’m frustrated. I spent all day yesterday trying to fix an issue with an installed font that I used for a book cover that turns out isn’t usable in Word for my title page headings because of some bug. If I’d known at the time, I’d have never used the font in GIMP for the book cover.

Lesson learned: when using a new font I haven’t used in Word before, test it in Word. Save the file. Reopen. Is the font still there? If it isn’t, delete the font, because I don’t want to run into this problem again.

I’ve been buying more font licenses lately,  but I still have a pretty big selection of fonts from fontsquirrel and Google fonts on my system that had the right kind of licenses for what I do and I guess I should have expected to run into a problem like this eventually, but I didn’t. I honestly thought fonts just worked or they didn’t. I didn’t realize they could actually be buggy with only certain software. :o

But back to the GIMP bug. Here’s what’s happened. (Update: Definitely a bug. I’ve figured out why it’s happening and I am sure it’s a bug.)

Yesterday I noticed that some of my back cover copy was getting cut off on the right side when I justified the text. I scaled it down a bit from 12 pt to 11.7 pt and it fixed it. This was with Adobe Garamond Pro. Today I have a different book cover in the works and I’m using Adobe Caslon Pro. I tried the same trick when I noticed it was also getting cut off on the right side but scaling it down hasn’t worked to fix this one. I’ve tried every pixel/point size I can in the range I’d be comfortable having this text and it just won’t stop cutting off the very right edge of the fonts.

It’s very frustrating! I definitely haven’t noticed this previously and I updated a few weeks ago to the 2.8.20 version of GIMP. I’d go back to the older version but I truly don’t know if it would fix it, because I’m so behind on putting out my paperback books and I haven’t created one in more than a year until I started doing these.

I don’t know what version of GIMP this issue started in or if it’s been there all along and I just didn’t notice because I wasn’t using these fonts. :(

Maybe I should be doing my paperback covers in Scribus or Inkscape but I do a lot of tweaking of stuff and I don’t want to learn another program with a steep learning curve.

So I guess I’m going to be using a different font for this book cover’s back cover copy.

UGH!

FYI: I’d still recommend GIMP but this kind of thing does make me rethink whether or not it’s worth it to keep putting off converting to Photoshop. I just HATE subscription services. I’ll almost certainly deal and just find a way to work around this problem, but I have to ask myself why I’m being so damn stubborn about it. I do not know.

Update: I figured out why GIMP is cutting off a bit of the right edge of the fonts. It has to do with fonts that have edges that are supposed to fall outside of the margin, in the same way some punctuation is supposed to fall outside of the margins. For example, in my specific case for this text block I was trying to use, the first letter of the paragraph is a “J”. The scoop that makes the bottom of the letter should hang over the edge just a teeny tiny bit (it does in Word and in Scribus and in Photoshop elements. It doesn’t in GIMP. In GIMP, that little effect causes the entire block of text to shift a minute amount to the right, making all the edges of those final letters susceptible to being trimmed by that same minute amount because they’re falling outside the bounds of the text box. And because this is happening no matter the size of the text or the text box, there’s no way to counter it, other than using a different font.

For me, what it meant was that I created my cover in GIMP as usual, saved as a tiff file, opened it in Photoshop Elements 14 (which I had honestly nearly forgotten I had), and added the text for the back cover there. Saved as a PDF, and realized at that point that Elements saves the text as embedded instead of flattened, and decided I’d try that out.

(Scribus did the same. I did get it to work, finally, but it was a PITA, and I don’t like using it. That was when I remembered I had bought Elements last year when it was on sale and that it was on my computer, ready to be used if I wanted to.)

If embedding the fonts produces crisper text on the cover, I might do all future books this way even though it adds another program/step to my workflow.

On the other hand, I don’t know if Createspace will even accept this, because I’ve never submitted a completely non-flattened PDF before. I flatten everything in GIMP, text and all.

But the reason I decided to give this a shot was because I read a paragraph of a page today on the Createspace website that says to make sure your fonts are embedded in the pdf file for the cover. So obviously it’s an expected thing, right?

We shall see.

Nope, one more day

Lynn

I got up too early this morning and I don’t want to write. I want to finish the project I sort of started yesterday but bailed on because it felt too damn tedious to continue. :D

Today I’m feeling much more up to finishing it, so that’s what I’m going to do.

Paperbacks, here I come.

I had planned to reduce the font size on my future paperbacks to 11.5 pt to make them less expensive, but I’m just not feeling it. I really think I’ll stick with the 12 pt. I like the 12 pt and I can’t imagine a reduced price of $1 is enough to make that much of a difference in sales.

I’d have to make some drastic adjustments to margins, leading, and font size to reduce the price more than that, or move to the larger 5.5 x 8.5 trim size, and I don’t like those ideas at all. In fact, I considered it a while back and decided I just didn’t want to change trim size. My pen name book has a 5.5 x 8.5 paperback that’s priced $3 less than my average for the books under my main pen name, and sales of it haven’t been notable at all.

The thing is, the paperbacks are a different market, but POD doesn’t compete well in that market anyway. So they’re mostly for people who like the books and want paper copies. Agonizing over formatting to get the lowest price at the sacrifice of what I want my books to look like just doesn’t feel like a good use of my time. :)

So I’m moving on, using the fonts, margins, leading, and trim sizes I like best, and not worrying about the price. Heck, half the time, Amazon reduces the price anyway. :D

Challenge day five (a renewed focus)

Lynn

I need to make this quick, so I’ve let myself have WiFi on my computer for this one post. Nothing else.

I’ve looked at my previous day’s efforts and concluded that for me to meet this challenge today I really need to pass 2,000 words before I stop for lunch, if not sooner, so that will be my morning’s priority.

I think I’ve given the writing too much focus and the challenge not enough and I’ll try to shift that around today. What I mean by that is that I’m too focused on the writing and making it “right” instead of trusting my gut with this story. (I have yet to decide if my gut is trustworthy, but for me to meet this challenge, I have to assume it is.) If I focus on the challenge and what I need to do to meet it, I can leave my subconscious unobstructed and free to work the story while my active brain fritters away the time worrying about words per hour and other numerical calculations.

So that’s the plan that aims to make today different than yesterday and it’s why I believe I have a chance of succeeding at this today. :)

Yesterday I had several instances where I forgot to start or restart my time tracker app, and that, too, I think make it easy to stop what I was doing (because it wasn’t recording anyway, right?) and interrupt myself with distractions that stole time from me and ruined my flow.

Seriously, I’m a huge fan of Gleeo, but I’ve always managed to make the whole thing much too granular and burdensome and every time I quit using it before I’ve really had a chance to collect enough data to be useful. This time, I set up one Domain for one Project with only one Task and it’s working great and giving me just the information I want.

(Writing→Fiction→Writing)

It’s repetitious, but it gets the job done and doesn’t distract me with minutia. ;) Today will be day five with it, and I don’t see a need to stop using it into the foreseeable future.

I’ve had cereal, have water beside me, and I’m ready to start. It’s 8:20 am.

Challenge morning three

Lynn

I’m just going to keep trying until I get there. Yesterday I fell far short of 6,000 words, so here I go again. (A phrase that totally just played through my head with music.)

I’ve had breakfast and I have my hot honey lemon water beside me and my WiFi off.

Estimated time to completion is again 10 hours. The last two days I’ve clocked in at just under 7 and enjoyed most of them so I can do this!

Also, it became very clear to me this morning why I’ve been writing so slowly but I’ll have to explain that later. Typing on my phone is much too slow.

Why am I writing this post instead of writing my book?

Lynn

I wish I knew the answer to the question in the title of this blog post, but I do not.

I have a suspicion, though, and it’s a bit unnerving to think about.

I don’t think I’m having fun with writing at the moment.

Not with this book, not with writing fiction in general, not with publishing and the biz.

I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I think I know why but I’m having trouble getting past it.

I worry too much about writing a good story. I worry too much about perfectionism. I worry too much about the procrastination I do and feel guilty because I do it instead of writing.

I worry about what other people will think of my story when it’s finished and finally out in the world. Even though I really don’t care what people think of it. Except obviously I do. But I don’t! But I must.

Too much worry!

How can one have fun when it’s all worry, worry, worry?

Anyway, time to go do some writing, because I’ve been feeling guilty for not doing any. And because I really need to finish a book and I’ve let myself get into a situation that I’m not sure I can get out of.

I’ll let you know if it works out.

Oh, and by the way, I updated this site to use HTTPS but I’ll be honest, part of me really regrets even having thought it was necessary. I’m really bothered by the idea that older browsers will throw a certificate warning with my particular set up (a free Let’s Encrypt certificate and no unique IP because this site earns $0 toward its own upkeep). I mean, I like having this site, but I don’t earn anything from it. :)

The reason the certificate warning bothers me so much is because I personally still have and use occasionally two older Vista computers, an Android phone using Android 2.3.4 (as a media device, because it’s not my primary phone anymore), and a laptop running Windows ME (I know, but yes, it really still works! Believe it or not, it will load Word and Excel faster than any other computer I have, although they are the 2000 versions). I checked out my site on the old Android device and sure enough, error, error, error with the certificate. I tried Vista, and same thing, error, error, error. I don’t get online with the Windows ME computer, just because it requires a cable and I’d hate to see what kind of trouble the outdated browsers would get into if I did. ;)

But I really don’t like knowing people using older software are going to get scary warnings when they visit my website.

Finally, the site is just slower on first load. It really speeds up after that, but frankly, if I was a visitor to a random site that took that long to load at first, it’s very possible I’d have already hit the back button.

All that to say I’m this close to just scrapping the whole project and going back to HTTP.

It wouldn’t be that difficult. I’d just reverse what I did to set it up.

First, I changed the General site settings in WordPress, changing my site url from https://www.perpetualized.com to https://www.perpetualized.com.

Second, I ran a couple of SQL queries on my WordPress database to change out the http for https where it was needed.

Third, I’d need to take out a few lines I had to add to my .htaccess file.

I could undo it all in half an hour or less.

Gah. I’m really considering it.

Anyway, time to go write and get this crap off my mind. It’s driving me bonkers.

My new favorite tool in Word

Lynn

I’ve just discovered a new favorite tool in Word. Despite how long I’ve been using the program, I still come across simple features I just haven’t noticed before that turn out to be extremely useful.

I had highlighted a word in my book (on my Kindle) that I thought maybe I’d been using too often, so I went to my document in Word, opened Find and Replace (Ctrl + F) and noticed the Reading Highlight button. I swear I’ve never noticed it before, even though it’s right there and I use Find and Replace all the damn time.

Here’s a pic.

So I clicked it, chose “highlight all” and then realized it also showed me how many times the word was highlighted! So now I have a quick way to count words in my document if I feel like I’ve been using one way too often.

And if you didn’t know about this little feature, now you do too! :D

Turns out I had not used the word nearly as many times as I felt like I had (not “yelled”) and so I don’t even need to worry about it. :D

I also checked for a few other words I do use too frequently and yep, definitely like that F-word. 155 times in all it’s variations.

Doubt I’ll change a thing! :D

But I really like this little tool. Very handy for the odd words you don’t want to repeat too often.

I’ve made a mistake I don’t plan to make again

Lynn

Yesterday morning, I read a good chunk of my current book. I was pretty damn pleased with it. But there were a few things I needed to fix. Only I decided not to highlight those things because I knew I was going to have to get back to the read through on the computer and what was the point?

The point was that if I’d just highlighted those little bits I could have sped through this second read. I forgot just how much time it takes me to thoroughly read 40,000 words. So today has not been the kind of writing day I really wanted it to be.

It’s a mistake I don’t plan to make again.

Note to self: Next time, just highlight the damn mistakes!

Trying to read a couple of craft books

Lynn

I’ve been stalled out reading a couple of craft books lately, but I’m going to make more of an effort to get through them as soon as I finish this particular book I’m working on.

A while back, I picked up the Kindle version of this one: 27 Fiction Writing Blunders – And How Not To Make Them! by James Scott Bell. I started it but got distracted, and I keep meaning to go back to it, but I just haven’t. I liked what I read, I just need to read the rest of it.

I got the paperback edition of this one as a gift: The Anatomy of Story: 22 Steps to Becoming a Master Storyteller by John Truby. I started it, skipped to the end because I do that sometimes and read several chapters out of order. Now I just need to start at the beginning and make it there.

This is my note to myself to remember to get back to these. Frankly, it might be time. It’s been a while since I’ve read anything about the craft.

I want to write every day

Lynn

How can I say this and it not be a goal for the year, for the month, for my life? I don’t know, but I have and it isn’t. It’s a statement of fact. I want to be the kind of writer who writes every day. It’s not a challenge and I’m not making it into an experiment. I’m just throwing it out there so that I can hear myself say it because it’s true.

I want to write every day.

Random thoughts: File naming conventions

Lynn

First, a new column for the blog, if you can call anything here columns: Random thoughts.

Second, I had one. :D

It led me to researching the accepted wisdom for naming files. I have a very confused set of file name conventions I just haven’t been happy with for a while.

Almost everything I’ve read over the years says to avoid spaces in file names, so a while back I started naming folders and files like this:

c:\Writing\MySeries\MyBookTitle\MyBookTitle.docx

I did that not just because of having read a lot of advice saying to avoid spaces. I also had an instance where a file on my computer wouldn’t delete. I had to use the command prompt to get rid of it, and oh boy, was that a headache. So I don’t use spaces in file names in most instances anymore.

Some folders are like this though:

c:\Writing\MySeries\MyBookTitle\cover

In fact, all the subfolders inside my book folders are lowercase and use _ for spaces like_this, but all the folders outside those book folders are LikeThis or Like This.

I hate it.

It’s not very readable, and it’s definitely not consistent, although it is more readable than my first iteration:

c:\writing\myseries\mybooktitle\mybooktitle.docx

It was a nightmare with filenames like:

myseriesbookcovertemplate5x8.xcf

So I continually find myself looking for a better way, and yet internet searches never turn up anything I find particularly useful.

At some point, I read something that said to avoid hyphens because of cross OS compatibility. Underscores were the winner, but I can’t remember why, and so I started using _ whenever I needed a space.

I still don’t like spaces in file names because of the internet issue. And they’re ugly. Seeing %20 mixed into a long file name makes that filename look ridiculous and difficult to read.

So mostly I tried to stick with PascalCase.

PascalCase was a new term to me when I came across it. I thought I was using camel case, but apparently thisIsCamelCase, because it uses a lowercase first character.

Today I came across loads of people recommending ‐ instead of _ as a space replacement. So I’m back to wondering why hyphens aren’t a good idea in file names, because I still don’t remember why underscores were the winner, only I didn’t run across anyone talking about that issue this time around so I still don’t know!

And really, I think they’re mostly talking about filenames and folder names for the web, and that doesn’t matter much to me except in a very few specific instances (like book cover file names).

One reason I don’t like the dash as much as the underscore is because the dash isn’t as easy for me parse out as a space in a column of file names. But an underscore, if used in a hyperlink with an underline, is unreadable. You won’t even know it’s there sometimes.

:o

Really, this whole this is just one big annoying mess.

However, I have finally settled on a file naming convention this time, one that I’m pretty happy with, despite everything (and after two days of letting this obsession occupy brain space). Although to be honest it doesn’t solve the readability problem of PascalCase.

Maybe you don’t have trouble reading it, but I sure do!

Anyway, here’s what I came up with:

Stop using [ ] and other special characters in file names

Use hyphen instead of space when needed

MyFile-2016-01-09.txt

Dates like 20160109 are impossible for me to read, so I don’t use them.

Stick to title case for most things with no spaces

MyBookTitleNotes.docx
MySeries
MyBookTitlePbCover.xcf

When using 1–9, use 01–09

01-MyBookTitle

MyBookTitle root directory

MyBookTitle.docx
MyBookTitleMeta.docx
MyBookTitleNotes.txt

Folders (when needed)

backups
cover
ebooks
paperback
research

Folders are lowercase because they’re less distracting that way.

I know this is inconsistent with my other folders, but I actually do find them less distracting when they’re lowercase and they’re all one word names, and these particular folders are inside folders where I have to differentiate between a lot of similarly named files. I just won’t use two word file names here. If it ever does become necessary, I’ll just use a hyphen.

Files inside these folders

\cover\

MyBookTitleCover.xcf
MyBookTitlePbCover.xcf
my-book-title-1000.jpg

For jpg, png, gif, tif, use all lowercase, no space, no underscore, since these files are more likely to be used online.

\ebooks\

MyBookTitle.jutoh
MyBookTitle.epub

\paperback\

MyBookTitlePb.docx
MyBookTitlePb.pdf
MyBookTitlePbCover.pdf

Add a version number to the old file when replacing it so that it doesn’t overwrite old file in \backups\ folder if it is moved there later

MyBookTitlePb.docx (current)
MyBookTitlePb1.docx (oldest)
MyBookTitlePb2.docx (second oldest)

And that’s it. I did some cleanup to rename the files and my directories now look a lot better and everything is much more consistent. Now I’m satisfied, at least for a while. :D

Oh, and if you’re wondering how I changed all these names quickly and easily, I used a bulk renaming utility for the majority of the work. They’re very handy to have around!

Let me say that although I feel very satisfied with the changes I’ve made, I’m completely aware of the fact that spending two days on this was two days too many.

It’s procrastination, plain and simple, most likely to deal with the writer’s block I’ve got going on, and the only way to solve that is to get this obsession out of my system. Honestly, I almost believe these episodes are a way for my subconscious to keep my conscious thoughts occupied so it can work out whatever issues are going on with my writing. :)

Here’s hoping I’m correct about that and that when I finally put this obsession to bed, I’ll be ready to get past the current part in my book that has me completely stumped.

Never stop learning: A Successful Release Strategy for Authors video series

Lynn

JA Huss is releasing a video series (A Successful Release Strategy for Authors) on her blog in the Marketing Tips Monday category.

I’m not much for doing active marketing and promotions but that doesn’t mean I don’t read/watch/listen to people talk about that stuff. I love to learn new things, even if I don’t always put those things into practice.

The series has just started, and you can follow this link to watch the introduction. I really enjoyed the intro video and I’m looking forward to the rest.

My sales graph looks nothing like hers. Lots more spikiness to mine and nowhere near the sales. Like, seriously. I’m making a living, but my living is in the southern U.S. and you know how cheap it is down here.

But someday.

Then again, probably not. The size of the market/niche my books are in isn’t that big (a subgenre of a subgenre of a genre) and I don’t want to branch out into a bigger one.

There’s also the fact that I’m just not the kind of writer who can write books people consistently fall in love with. I mean, I write some books that people love, and that keeps me fed, but there are massive differences in how much love each of my series  and books get.

Anyway, I thought I’d share the link. Go out and learn something! :)

Changing a book cover on a paperback: New edition or not?

Lynn

This post has been updated with an addendum. Turns out I was wrong.

I understand that technically I do not have to create a new edition of a paperback at CreateSpace just for a book cover change. But I’ve been mulling over my options and I’ve decided I should.

Here’s why: Resales.

If the book cover is different on more recently purchased copies of the book, anyone trying to list the old book for sale used is going to be listing a different product, because the book cover is an important part of the paperback.

When I buy a book, I expect it to come with the cover shown on the product detail page. If it were to arrive looking like a different book, I’d be pissed, because that’s not the book I thought I was buying. Covers matter to me and I’m sure they matter to a lot of people—especially people who collect paperbacks.

Therefore, I feel obligated to issue a new edition since I’m replacing the cover on the book in question. It only makes sense really.

The next question becomes do I leave the old edition for sale until the new edition makes it to Amazon and the other stores, or do I take it off the market as soon as I upload or approve my files?

I think I’m going to wait. No point in having the book off the market longer than necessary, right? Maybe I’ll even leave it up for a short while in case anyone wants to pick up the copy with the old cover before it disappears. (Okay, that’s probably not going to happen, but it’s fun pretending.)

Now, off to actually finish the new edition of that paperback. I’ve already corrected one lone typo and added some info to the front matter, but I still need to finish the actual new paperback cover design.

Addendum: As soon as I hit the Edition field in CreateSpace’s setup process for a new project, I started to have second thoughts.

That led me to a little more research, where I found this:

How do I tell one edition from another?

A new cover does not indicate a new edition as long as the publisher has not changed. What usually indicates a change in edition (providing the publisher has not changed,) is the change in the content of the book. This most often occurs with non-fiction books, especially textbooks.

So, now I’m thinking a new cover does not make a new edition, despite the issue with resales.

Then I continued, and found what Bowker had to say (Bowker issues ISBNs in the United States):

If changing the cover of a book, does a new ISBN have to be assigned?

US practice is if the book is just out or the idea is to give a marketing boost to the product, then no, a new ISBN should not be assigned. However, if the change in cover substantially changes the product (ie., would lead to customer complaints), then a new ISBN should be used.

I would complain if the cover was different, but I guess buying used copies, it’s just a chance you take.

Finally, I found some information in the Amazon KDP Support forums that makes a lot of sense after having read the previous two items. I can’t find a permanent link to the actual reply so here’s a link to the full thread and here are the relevant quotes:

I’m wanting to do a second edition of my novel…. There are minimal changes to the text (literally, MAYBE two words were corrected); the real reason for the second edition is that I have a completely new cover I’m wanting to use that will better fit my series…. [W]hat do I do in order to have my listing reflect the new cover and new edition without losing my reviews? Or is it unnecessary to make such a big deal out of a “second edition” when the cover is the only thing being updated?

The reply:

I would call that (as trad publishers do) a “reprint” and not a second edition. A second edition means significant content changes. Some of the publishers I work for have it down to a percentage requirement–such as, 40% of this book must change in the second edition. That’s the highest percentage I’ve seen; lowest was 20%. Changing the cover image does not, in my mind, warrant calling it a second edition. Second printing, if you’re printing–not that that really makes any sense in POD, of course. But with trad publishers who print up batches of something at one time, if they catch a few errors that they do wish to correct, but aren’t ready for a second edition, the email we get says “Let’s save this in a file for reprints” or “We’ll catch it in reprints.”

On that note, because there really are only very minor text changes to the book (one typo corrected and a few lines of updated front matter), I’m going to update the first edition with the new file and cover image and not create a second.

As for some other books I’ll be updating soon, they’ll have to be new editions, because the trim size will change and CreateSpace won’t let you do that as an update.

Revisiting the cumulative title sales spreadsheet

Lynn

I had a thought that maybe there was a way to make updating my cumulative title sales spreadsheet easy enough that it would be worth keeping it up to date so I revisited the spreadsheet today for about an hour or so.

As you can see in the image above, I have several sheets in the workbook. The thing is, I know just enough Excel to know how much I don’t know.

But I had a thought and I followed up on it and that thought led to another and suddenly I’d found a way to make the currency conversions for the KDP sheet easily and quickly—and in a way that would work for future additions to the KDP sheet without requiring any additional effort on my part.

You see, if you’ve seen the KDP reports from Amazon, you’ve probably noticed they don’t include the currency conversion for the payments the way the reports from everywhere else does. It’s an inconvenience, but it is what it is.

My challenge was to find a way to prorate each month’s payment to each month’s sales. The way I chose to do it a few days ago was inelegant and not wholly accurate for each book. That bugged me, but it was a time versus accuracy dilemma, and my need to save time and effort won out.

But now I’ve figured out how to do it with zero additional upkeep.

#1

I created a column for a conversion factor in my book sales report where I track royalties earned and royalties paid by month for each vendor.
Sample row data (extraneous columns deleted):

Oct 2016 Amazon.de EUR 36.87 38.43 1.0423108

The conversion factor is simply the payment amount, which I have a column for ÷ earnings in the original currency, which I also already have a column for.

#2

I multiplied the foreign currency royalties in the KDP sheet by the conversion factor and got the USD royalties for each item (which I’d consolidated from the monthly KDP reports). I did this for all the rows in the KDP sheet.

If I’d had to do it manually, it would have taken forever.

The trick with the formula was to use the SUMIFS function because my royalty payments spreadsheet has only one row for every date and marketplace combination. That means the sum is always going to return only the conversion factor that matches the date and marketplace that the formula needs to calculate the USD royalty. It was just good luck that since KDP reports don’t show transaction dates, I had set up all my rows in the KDP sheet to contain only the period end date, which is also how I’d set up my royalty payments sheet (Oct 2016 is actually 10/31/2016 but set to the MMMYYYY format).

#3

I created a table so I could use the VLOOKUP function to solve the problem of having different names for the marketplaces in the two sheets (Amazon Kindle US Store vs. Amazon.com) but that was actually the easy part. :)

Anyway, what this means is that my brain spent a lot of time working on this while I wasn’t actively working on it—even after I’d decided it was too much trouble to keep up. But that happens sometimes.

I’m happy to say the sheet works well with the new formulas, even if my formulas are a bit of a hack. Updating the cumulative title sales will be a simple process that shouldn’t take more than half an hour every few months, and it’ll have the actual payment amounts from KDP applied to the correct months’ foreign sales.

I’m glad I was able to come up with a solution, and I swear, it feels like it’s taken me longer to write this post than it took me to fix the spreadsheet.

I had considered the idea of one massive spreadsheet that I could put into a PivotTable, but I didn’t consider that a good long term solution. The data between reports just isn’t standardized enough and I sure didn’t want to spend a bunch of time standardizing it each time I decided to update the cumulative title sales report. And I’m pretty happy with the solution I’ve come up with, because it means I can just copy and paste the new data into the appropriate sheets and I’ll be good to go.

Smashwords might be tricky, but my current plan is to just delete and re-add all the data from the updated reports, instead of append it. This is necessary because Smashwords throws in new transactions for some very old periods sometimes and trying to pick those transactions out of the whole would be a waste of time.

I don’t figure I’ll update this spreadsheet more than once a quarter anyway, but I’m tickled that it’ll be maintainable without a lot of effort. :D

Now, off to do some other stuff before I call it a night. It’s 12:03 a.m. and I swore I wasn’t going to bed late again! :o

Another day to add to my streaks!

Lynn

The streaks continue. :)

148 – 12/30
172 – 12/31
203 – 1/1
209 – 1/2
246 – 1/3

  1. >100 words a day, and
  2. increasing words per day

I’m up to almost a page a day now. :)

I’ve been writing so few words because (1) kids are still home for the holiday/winter break and (2) I spent the last two days working on a massive spreadsheet project I’d been putting off for a couple of years now.

I thought having all my title sales in one Excel workbook would benefit me, but after getting it done, I’m just not sure I didn’t waste a lot of time on this. As someone who will write a book I want to write regardless of the possible payoff, I don’t have any need to see my sales broken down by title or series (which is what I did).

Not only that, but there weren’t any surprises there either. I’ve apparently been doing just fine consolidating in my head the information I gather from the individual sales reports from each vendor. I’d created a very realistic picture of where my money was coming from and the books were all doing just about what I thought they were as far as revenues go.

I don’t think I’ll update the spreadsheet going forward. I won’t delete it outright, but I see no need to keep it current.

I just don’t care how much each specific book brings in, and I don’t even really care how much each series is bringing in. I write these books because I really want to and I’m willing to take my chances with them.

Now, time to go write some words for today. I have to get to bed earlier tonight. I’ve stayed up two nights in a row until 2 a.m. working on that stupid spreadsheet. I need a better night’s sleep tonight so I’ll feel liking writing lots of words tomorrow if I decide that’s what I want to do. :D