On Writing Far Too Much

Boy, I hate it when I discover something I should have known-or at least suspected. 

I’ve had to put a stop-well, sort of-to a lot of my writing, and instead have had to do a boatload of editing. (Dr. Frey, you were right. There is no such thing as good writing, but only good editing.) I’ve been writing the Cosantóirí Chronicles now for the last few years, and I’ve been writing them to average-before editing-roughly 300 pages of single-spaced, 12 point Helvetica font prose. Then I adjust the pitch and font-Georgia, 13 point, space and a half-and each completed book ended up over 400 pages plus. Add to that the glossary in the back, and I thought that was pretty reasonable for a self-published e-book. I mean, I can read about 300 pages in roughly an evening’s time.

Now, in talking with a fellow singer-who’s also writing-he mentioned that his editor wanted him to keep his book to about 100,000 words. So I did some research...and found the same approximate word count for the kind of books I write. On more than one website for writers, prospective writers, and those of us who write for fun. 100,000 words? Really? That didn’t seem like enough to me, but I decided to see what that looked like. 

Fionnachtain-my first book-ran 208,000-plus words. Ón Am Atá Thart-the second in the series-ran some 190,000-plus words. An Cailín Órga-the third book-ran 180,000-plus words. As George Takei would say...."Ohhh, Myyyyy.” 

I've been writing two books at a clip and didn’t even know it! That means, if these numbers hold up, that I don’t have seven books and an eighth almost completed. It means I have closer to fifteen books written, at that seemingly arbitrary word count, and a sixteenth nearly in the can. And the framework for the seventeenth and eighteenth started.

What writing I’m doing now is filling in some blank spots as I figure out how to split the existing works roughly in half. I’m still telling the story I’ve been given as a gift-it’s just that, now it’s going to be a lot more books than I first envisioned. 

The good news is that what is now the first four are once again available. Fionnachtain, Aibíocht, Scéalta Saol, and Ón Am Atá Thart are available. Aibíocht and Scéalta Saol are the volumes that came from what was the excess of the first two volumes. I’ll start editing An Cailín Órga this week in my free time.

Thanks for your patience and understanding!  

UPDATE: The first eight volumes are now available. In addition to the ones listed above, An Cailín Órga, Breithe Clan, Oíche Dáta Deasghnátha agus Cosantóirí Saol, and Scéalta na Breithlá Déag are now available. The Cosantóiri Chronicles website is currently being revised to reflect the changes. 

If you were on the Cosantóiri Chronicles website, you can return by clicking here.

On A Lesson in Self-Publishing

Happy New Year, culture lovers!

For a number of you, you may not know this: I’ve been writing in my spare time. What started off as a short story to get a dream out of my head has blown up into what is now a six book series called The Cosantóirí Chronicles. There are plans and outlines for at least one-and as many as three more-books in the series, guaranteeing I’ll be writing more for at least the next year. The “average” book when I get done is in excess of four hundred pages each, including a glossary; in nearly two years I’ve written six of these. That’s three a year, average.

So you know: These books are not Christian Fiction. These are more Sci-Fi/ Fantasy, where there are moral people. They tend to be the kind of books I like to read-but I’ve said before these aren’t for children or immature teens. I choose to be a Christian that writes-not a Christian Writer-because I truly feel that the storyline I’ve been given is a gift. 

Late last month, I quit writing (after completing book six in the series) and did some editing. My supervisor at Master’s-Dr. Dennis Frey-has told me for years on end that “There is no such thing as good writing. There’s only good editing” and he’s right. Boy, is he right. (He’s right a lot by the way, and I don’t say that just because he’s the president of the school I work for.) Part of that editing was to take the time to create both Kindle and iBook editions, instead of just ePub editions, so I could enter both the Kindle Publishing Direct and iBookstore markets. 

But after creating three iBooks I’ve chosen to not create any more for now, and to focus instead on Kindle versions. There are several reasons for this, which I’ll explain below. But you need to understand that up front, it wasn’t an easy decision to make. I like the fact that iBooks Author now has a prose-only template. The program itself is easy to use; I can take a completed document and turn it into am iBook in roughly two to three hours. That’s the only upside, however. The negatives are many, at least to me:

1. The interactive nature of an iBook is fantastic. You can click a link and it will take you to a glossary description of that term. That means I have to create and populate the glossary. It’s also what takes better than half the time to create an iBook from a finished document. That takes time away from editing and writing other books in the series. By going with Kindle, it creates a .mobi file in a matter of seconds-and the only downside to it is that the reader will have to turn to the glossary in the back, just like I do when I’m writing and editing.

2. iBooks Author requires you to use an iPad to check the formatting for your book. In addition, it seems that any book you create using the program is only readable on an iPad. That’s great for sales of Apple product...but lousy business for a self-publishing author who does not own an iPad. (Yet.) iBooks is Apple-specific, and while I don’t have an issue with that, there is a marketing issue. There are Kindle programs for iPhone, Mac, and Windows that allow you to read the books you download, which allows for a broader acceptance of the work to be read. 

3. The iBookstore requires that each iBook has its own International Standard Book Number-or ISBN-number. That’s not inexpensive; $250 for ten. As I see six completed books-and maybe one to three more-that’s $250 for a bulk assignment. Right now, that’s money I simply don’t have. Kindle Publishing Direct simply assigns an ASIN number (Amazon Standard Identification Number) and is done with it. Of course, if I just want to sell ePub editions on my own, I don’t need either one.

4. Finally, I have to look at what is an easier sale. Not everyone has an iPad, and so just doing a version for that as a self-publishing job is more time and effort than it’s worth. It’s not a matter of being lazy. If I had to start all over again, I’d probably write each volume as an iBook and then export it as an ePub as well. It does become an issue in that it takes away from the rest of my life and the rest of the work I do. 

If all I did was write for a living, I’d be all over iBooks Author. I like it; it’s an easy enough program to use. But for me the downside outweighs the positives right now. I may change my mind later on, though, and finish the set out in iBooks. (But only after I get an iPad to check the product out on.) 

A final note: another good e-book program is Calibre. It’s available for Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, and as a portable system. They recommend a donation; I do as well. It’s a little clunky-but powerful, and will open all e-books except for iBooks.

Enough for now.

2012 Has Come and Gone....

Nollaig Shona Dhaoibh! (Happy Christmas to you all!)

It’s that time of year again. This is likely my last blog for the year, so I might as well make it part Nollag litir (Christmas letter). We’ve loaded the CD player with Christmas CD’s-some 51 of of them. (We decided it was better than letting some commercial station play off the wall Christmas stuff all the time.) Our tree is up, and the Christmas cards are all sent. A candle is in the window, and I have decided to take a few minutes to reflect on the last year. That reflection starts off with a question: Where the heck has 2012 gone?!? I mean, come on! I know I’ve been busy. I didn’t think I was that busy...until I sat down to write this. 

I’ve been writing, working, and singing. A lot of free time has been spent writing books in the Cosantóirí Chronicles series; the first five books are done and in epub format. Book six should be done by the end of the month, if all goes well; then I am editing all six books for iBook format. (There is part of an outline for a potential book seven, but that outline won’t even get finished until the others are edited and in iBook format.) You can check out what they’re about here: http://cosantoiri.wordpress.com. I’m also transcribing some old travels to the digital age; I have a few Hawai’i trips, some visits to Canada, a trip to Ireland, and if I can find them, a missions trip to Mexico. Then I’ll add some band and choir tours, and maybe a little Drum Corps and Barbershop stuff. It’s a long term project.

I also finished all the work for my third doctorate. All I have to do is pay the final bill (which isn't cheap) and they’ll send me the diploma. It’s a Ph.D in interdisciplinary studies; I’m done taking classes for right now. I’m busy both teaching and grading courses for Master’s International School of Divinity, and when I’m not writing on the fiction side I’m busy developing a course on a Celtic View of the Spiritual Disciplines. I am also developing a course on the writings of C.S. Lewis. Both of these should be done early next year if all goes well. C.S. Lewis will be done first; I’m still reading books for the other class-and enjoying them immensely. As a result of the fiction writing and the one course, I’ve been teaching myself Gaeilge (Irish Gaelic). It’s an interesting language-and easier than Japanese, Greek or Hebrew was. For fun and to clear my head I've also picked up the feadóg stáin, or tin whistle. I can play three songs on the thing already, and I've only had it a month or so.

Deena and I have traveled quite a bit this year. She competed with the Pride of Portland Sweet Adeline Chorus in Denver the first week of November; they took eighth in the world. Not too shabby! I taught Music and Performance VP for the Evergreen District’s Western Regional Leadership in Langley, BC a few weeks later. There have been a few trips to see Mom, and we all spent a week with 6,000 of our closest friends at the Barbershop Harmony Society’s International Convention held in Portland over the 4th of July week. We did a little camping, and I even managed to get in my first baseball game at AT&T park. (There’s more travels, but I’m not gonna go there right now.) Then there was this two week period at the beginning of August where it felt like everything stopped for the Summer Olympic games. Don’t tell me some of you weren’t up until midnight-or at least 11:00-watching some of that....

Speaking of activities, I’m still the assistant director for Eugene-Springfield’s “Cascade Chorus,” but resigned as the Music and Performance VP this fall due to health reasons...most of which are stress related.  After the Division IV competition in Medford the quartet I sang in-“It’s About Time”-stopped singing together. It wasn’t due to anyone or anything...we just decided enough was enough. We’re all still good friends and laugh about stuff at chapter meetings. And I’m continuing my work as Director of Education for the Evergreen District of the BHS-for now, at least. I’ve kept busy with our local church, Ebbert Memorial UMC; I’m involved on the Congregational Leadership Team. I also update their website every so often, as time allows. I dropped off the Worship Planning team and the Wednesday night dinner crew for the same reason: stress. I have had to learn I can’t cram eighty hours of work, volunteering, writing, and so forth into a forty hour week and not have it impact my health. Being epileptic does place limits on the output of energy I have, and frankly I don’t have the same energy at nearly 48 as I did at 33. As a result I don’t handle stress as well any more, and so have needed to reduce my stress levels. 

And oh, yes...we’re cleaning up around the place, sorting through stuff, and getting rid of things. That is both of us; I’ve been going through all kinds of stuff a little bit every day-old files in the filing cabinet, stuff in the storage bin, stuff in storage at Deena’s folks. It’s time; I have stuff I want to put up and haven’t been able to. For example, I don’t really need my class notes from TEDS and Moody any more. (I haven’t looked at them in years.) The notes from TEDS got sorted today, for example. I pulled the syllabi and tossed the rest. Yesterday, another piece from my collection of Royal Tara china went up: A china cat. (It sits next to the Waterford crystal panda Deena got for me years ago.)

Like I said-I’ve been a little busy, maybe too busy. So why am I telling you all this?

Because I haven’t been blogging much of late. And I felt you all deserved a reasonable explanation as to why. Unlike certain other bloggers, I have a little something called a life. And life gets in the way of blogging sometimes. My goal for next year on the blog is roughly fifteen articles; at the very least I’m aiming for one a month. (Heck, even if I only put up ten, that’s twice as many as this year.) Another part of the reason for not blogging: It’s too easy to get into matters political-and I didn’t want to go there. Not this year. Not ever, if I can avoid it.

And so I want to leave you all with this thought. 2012 is over, effectively. Instead of complaining about what is, work to change what you can-and try to make peace with what you can’t. Better yet, to paraphrase Adam Savage: Reject the current reality and substitute your own. No, you can’t become deity, or replace the President. But you should do what you can to make your little corner of the world a better place. That’s part of having a whole new year to play with, after all. And it is also the Christmas message: hope. Hope for a better eternity, hope of new life, in Jesus-who we celebrate the birth of this time of year.

Nollaig Shona agus Athbhliain faoi Mhaise Daoibh! (Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year to you all!) 

Hey, I haven't forgotten about this blog thing!

Wow...been a little bit since I've written anything...here.

That doesn't mean I haven't been writing much, though. Quite the opposite; I've been writing quite a bit. Since I last wrote something here, I took a week's vacation to Portland for the Barbershop Harmony Society's annual International Convention with Deena, Mom and my brother-in-law Dan (and 6000 of my closest friends), led an interfaith service the Sunday of the convention, saw a Giants game at AT&T Park (and then watched Matt Cain's no-hitter on TV), successfully defended my thesis for my third doctorate, led worship (and gave the sermon) in my local church, attended Harmony College NW, performed with the Cascade Chorus in Florence, stayed up way too late for two weeks watching the Olympics, taught a few classes (and graded a boatload more) for Master's International School of Divinity, attended a Yanni concert with Deena...and fed the cats.

There are now four volumes of the Cosantóirí Chronicles in ePub format, and a fifth volume is being written right now. (There may be a sixth volume yet.) I admit to having given up on iBooks; I wanted a broader audience than iPad owners. Each of the completed volumes will be available shortly. These trace the story of the modern-day children of Nuala of Innisfaire-called Cosantóirí, Irish for Those Who Protect-starting with a young man who has some mental abilities...and no idea of the background of any of them.

These are not Christian fiction. They were never intended to be, and they are not geared for tweenagers, young teenagers, or immature adults. There are no werewolves, vampires, or other undead people in them. (There are zombies, but those are cheese-filled yeast buns.) These are written about a world similar to ours today, but not quite so dark: the good guy gets the girl, people still have morals (by and large), communities pull together, friends help friends. 

These are stories of a nature that I like to read. 

Outside of that, I have a few other things that I'm doing, but more on that later. I have a meeting tonight, and have to feed both the cats and myself beforehand-and prep for teaching a class tomorrow and Saturday.

My doctor says I should slow down a little bit. Something about being too busy, and too much stress. I'm writing to relax. Does writing four 400+ page books sound like I need to relax a little more? :)

Enough for now.