We're Switching to TSU

We started off on Blogger many months ago, and we've been using other social media platforms to drive in traffic. Our goal was to generate income from Google AdSense. So far, we've only been using tsu to post links to our blogs. But tsu has generate far more revenue in a short time than AdSense has generated in a much longer time. Therefore, we are going to start moving all of our content over to tsu, posting all new content on tsu, and directing all other social media traffic to tsu. As of this moment, tsu is officially our new blogging platform. Please join us at www.tsu.co/realbloggerx.

Stagnation

Progress has come to a complete halt.

So, why are we bothering to still blog about it?

Well, that's the value of this blog. If we weren't blogging about our book, the whole project would probably be buried under other priorities right now. In time, we might even forget about it entirely. However, because this book blog is right in front of us whenever we blog about anything, we are regularly reminded that we need to make time for this project. We are still committed to completing this book and bringing it to market.

Also, perhaps someone reading this blog also has a stalled project or two. Maybe this blog post can help us inspire others to revitalize stalled projects. If that's the case, good luck!

Focus!

Many years passed between when we first thought about writing a book and when we actually thought of a plausible topic for that book. Now that we are well into development, suddenly inspiration is plentiful. And because each new idea is exciting, there is a temptation to start new projects while each idea is fresh in our minds.

However, we are resisting those temptations to start any new projects before this first one is complete. While it occurs to us that multitasking may help somewhat with creativity, we are even more cognizant of the fact that multiple, unfinished projects generate zero revenue. Therefore, the prospect of generating revenue more quickly trumps any other literary desires.

That said, we are jotting down notes as ideas materialize. There are no pages, paragraphs, or even sentences, just bullet points so that we don't forget these ideas later.

If you are an author, especially of multiple works, we are curious how you handle multiple, simultaneous inspirations. Please leave a comment!

Size Matters?

As we've been editing our book, mostly adding descriptive text to help readers visualize the story, we began to wonder approximately how long an ebook should be.

After searching the Internet, we have determined that the ideal size is inconclusive. Some argue that travelers on the go want relatively small books, perhaps something they can finish en route. A full-sized novel may, therefore, be impractical for your average reader. Conversely, others argue that longer ebooks sell better.

As a result, we are going to ignore the word count entirely, and allow the book to achieve its natural length. If we are forced to modify that later by a publisher, then we will cross that bridge at that time. In the meantime, we will focus on telling our story.

Networking

Although our book is still in development, it is never too early to start networking. Using social media, we have quickly and easily identified others who can help us promote our book at the appropriate time. In addition to that, we have been able to observe how already-published authors do some of their promoting.

One of our challenges which does not apply to most others, however, is anonymity. You do not see our faces and you do not know our names. We have not been sharing this project with our personal contacts and, therefore, not asking them to "like," "follow," "share," and so forth.

As a result, we have been able to compare social media platforms in regards to their ability to attract a following. Keeping in mind that we have only been blogging for a relatively short time, Twitter easily had the quickest growth from zero to non-zero. Because we usually blog with photos, Pinterest is a distant second, Tumblr is an even more distant third, and Facebook activity remains virtually zero. Other social media platforms have not met our particular needs in regards to the content that we share.

Writing Methodology

The first draft is now complete.

We began with a very rough outline of the story. In fact, even though they have since changed, we began with the chapter titles. That seemed like the easiest way to organize the major plot points.

Although relatively unimportant at this stage, we then proceeded to add some basic formatting. This will likely change also, but it was somehow emotionally important.

We then started to add sentence fragments to each chapter. Most of the fragments later evolved into paragraphs, however a few were later merged with others.

Around this time, again more for emotional importance, we began thinking about cover art. The idea was to design something that might help readers visualize one of the most important moments in the story.

We then went through and ensured that every chapter had at least a few basic paragraphs. This resulted in additional detail.

We then went through, yet again, filling in timeline gaps with additional paragraphs. That brings us to the point we are at now, with a complete first draft.

However, the first draft only tells the basic story. It reads as if someone tells you his or her life story matter-of-factly, devoid of emotion. Therefore, the next iteration will focus on adding descriptive text. As previously stated, we want our readers to experience all of the sights, sounds, and feelings that we hope to convey.

After that, we will share the new draft with our inner circle. We will not yet be concerned with proofreading, but rather with the readers' experience. We see no point in having a grammatically correct bad story, but a good story can be checked before submission for publication.

We leave all that for another blog post.

TGIF

Out of curiosity, do any other part-time writers limit their writing to weekends? We find that at the end of any given work day our creative juices are just about dried up. Is it more common to try to push through a little bit each day or to just set aside larger blocks of time on days off?

Joe Latte, Assistant Writer

Meet our new assistant writer, affectionately named Joe Latte. He came highly recommended.

That was a bad idea.

Our current challenge, which probably befalls most part-time writers, is finding the time to actually write. Yes, our entire story is already outlined. However, converting surreal imagery into sufficiently descriptive text is rather challenging. We need you, the reader, to be able to visualize what happened. And we need you to not just visualize, for that matter, because the inspirational nightmare for our book also drew upon the senses of sound and touch. We need you to see what was seen, hear what was heard, and feel what was felt.

That said, we set a goal of writing a little bit each evening before going to bed. If you have never tried it before, we can tell you that writing a horror story before going to sleep is a bad idea.

Cover Art

The book is developing nicely, so we spent a little time thinking about a design for the front cover. And since there is one part of the story that is clearly the most startling, we chose to visualize that as closely as we can. So between the front cover and the book's title, we hope to establish a true horror theme even before you read the first page.

Rated PG-13

At first, we were simply going to write a horror story based on the nightmare that inspired it. In movie terms, this would have deserved an R rating. Although the dream was not explicit in sexuality, violence, or profanity, there were two moments that are definitely too mature, suggestively, for younger audiences.

However, there has been an expression of interest in this project by teenagers and pre-teens. Therefore, we have determined that we can tone down those two elements without weakening the integrity of the base story. As we considered writing two versions of the book, one edited and one not, we determined that re-adding those two elements really wouldn't contribute appreciably to the story anyway.   

The Tell-Tale Heart

After receiving our initial inspiration from a nightmare, we will draw further inspiration from a recently re-read classic, The Tell-Tale Heart by legendary author Edgar Allen Poe. The story itself is predetermined from the dream, but we really like the use of the first person point-of-view and the present tense. Plus, spoiler alert, they are both horror stories. Furthermore, we find that once we start reading the classic we can't stop, and that is definitely an effect that we would also like to achieve.

Inspiration

For many years now, our primary blogger has wanted to write a book. We know he has the writing skills and the creativity, he simply lacked the inspiration for a subject. Last night, though, he had a bad dream. Normally he would just try to go back to sleep. This time, however, he did something very different: he got up out of bed and wrote down some notes. So now we are going to write a short horror story, and we are going to chronicle the process in this new blog. For aspiring writers out there, we hope to take this blog all the way from inspiration through publishing and selling.