July 16, 2017

5 marketing sins I committed and learned from

Let's get naked here, shall we? I will bare my soul (and my bum) and tell you about the horrible marketing sins I committed, and you will gloat and snicker and hopefully learn on my mistakes ("Don't eat that apple, Ksenia!" you'll scream. And I'll say, "TOO LATE," eat half and force the other half down your throat.)

So. Marketing. Marketing is like breathing when you self-publish. Without marketing you won't sell, and without selling you won't thrive. And without thriving...well, you'll be tempted to quit. Too many self-published authors do. I almost quit the whole affair myself, and not once, three times (from the times I remember). Whatever ignorance or arrogance or both compelled me to think that now that I was writing books (and not running my start-up), I didn't have to market? I thought my books would market themselves. I thought my stories would be so good, they'd compel my readers to market them for me. And I was right and wrong at the same time. Right in that, YES, my readers marketed for me. Wrong in that, NO, they didn't do it on their own, so once I stopped asking and keeping in touch, they stopped doing it and forgot about me and my books.

March 27, 2017

Things I read every day before writing

by Ksenia Anske

Photo from Scene and Structure by Jack M. Bickham

I have compiled a sort of a little help-guide for myself which I read every day before diving into writing. Then I thought, this would be cool to share with you, in case you were looking for a list like that. Or maybe you have a list of your own and could share it with me. I have pulled this from a ton of books I had read, so ask me questions if some of the terms sound unfamiliar. Depending on where you are in your writing career, you will either laugh at this (been there, done that) or feel like your brain is starting to smoke (I tried explaining this today to two non-writers who finally begged me to stop—it was like math, like programming, too complicated).

November 26, 2016

How to plan your book: from idea to manuscript (Part 1)

by Ksenia Anske

I'm prepping my Scrivener template to start rewriting the summary for Janna, and the structure part of it (I'll explain later) looks so clean and clear, I thought I'd share it with you, to save you the headache of figuring it out on your own. I had to figure it out alone, and it took me forever (plus reading a ton of books on plotting, character development, style, and everything in between). When I started using Scrivener, I was searching for a template like that and couldn't find it. Some of you asked me to share it when it's complete. I shared the previous version in this post, but I'll share it again after it's done (email me if you want it), as this version will be even better and more universal in terms of its main elements. It no longer relies only on the Hero's Journey concept but rather encompasses everything that I've read, simplifying it down to the classic Act 1, Act 2, Act 3 idea (Act 2 is often broken in two in most contemporary novels, with the crisis being the breaking point, so it's Act 2a + Act 2b, or some people use the 4-Act structure, but it's all the same thing).

March 26, 2016

The process of cutting your draft in half

by Ksenia Anske

So you asked how I did it, cut TUBE Draft 2 from 153K words down to 74K words in Draft 3. I didn't do it on purpose. It just happened, so I'll describe to you what I did and then maybe together we will glimpse some magic (I'm sure there is some, there always is).

1. I typed the new draft in a new file.

I suppose this is how revising looked like in the times of the typewriters. You set the manuscript on the desk and looked at it and typed it up on the clean piece of paper with whatever changes came to mind. And the advantage of this is, as I learned, is getting carried away by the story and typing it without even looking. That's what happened to me. I'd remember what happened next and type it up and then look and see that I have said it in fewer words. At first I freaked and tried preserving the previous draft. However, the new clean concise writing was so much better that I soon abandoned the effort. And thank God I did.

February 4, 2016

When writing isn't enough

by Ksenia Anske

Sometimes I gaze into the mirror, at the top of my head, and think, "It's all in there. What's stopping me from getting to it?" My mind is very clever, apparently, as is the mind of every child who went through trauma. It gets forgotten, repressed, skewed, blurred, dismissed, diminished, swept under the rug and kept there until the time comes when you can pull it out, old and dirty and ugly, and look it in the face. That time might come, it might not. And you might need help.

I've felt like seeking help often, only I couldn't quite understand why nor did I remember. It started ringing loudly in my head when I was a 15 or so, and as I was too scared and too embarrassed and too unsure of what it was I really needed, I turned to writing poetry, and then a diary. I felt like something happened to me, something dark was sitting inside me, but I didn't know for sure. Then in my 30s the need for help came again. This time I could afford therapy, and now I knew that something did happen, and I finally knew who did it and why I forgot, but the actual memories apart from some blurry images were still out of my grasp. I turned to writing. Writing helped.