New Year, New Ventures

I can’t believe it’s a new year already. It seems like they go faster and faster.

Last year was a pretty good year, and I hope that trend continues. I’m trying some new things for the new year, and I hope you’ll join me for the fun.

Mostly for this year, I want to focus on finishing things I left unfinished. Partial manuscripts will get evaluated, and if I still feel they’re worth the effort, I’ll finish them up and look into distributing or submitting them.

I’ve also set up a Patreon page to help get some of these orphan stories to readers who’ll hopefully enjoy them. If you’re not familiar with Patreon, it’s a little like Kickstarter, except it’s for ongoing projects rather than one big project. There are rewards at different levels, and lots of fun stuff I’m planning to integrate into the project as it progresses. Check it out at patreon.com/katrienaknights.

If you’re not on my newsletter mailing list, please consider joining for updates and news. I’m also getting ready to add a special gift for anyone who joins—a .pdf file of a couple of short stories and some excerpts from other, longer works. If you join before I get the gift ready, you'll get it as soon as I get it all sorted, so don't worry about missing out. You can join using the form below.  I promise not to spam you—I’m hoping this year to get something out in the newsletter about once a month.

I hope you had a fantastic 2015, and I hope 2016 brings you even more great things.

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Friday Links for Friday--The Business of Writing

Today's batch of links is focused on the overall business of writing. Goalsetting, how to ensure quality, seeing yourself as an entrepreneur, etc. This is the hard stuff we have to do instead of sitting around scribbling in notebooks all day. (In a perfect world, I'd be scribbling in notebooks ALL THE TIME. While drinking coffee and watching hockey or ogling band boys. Alas, this is not a perfect world.)

Jane Friedman--guest post by John Warner--How “Literary” and “Entrepreneur” Are Becoming Intertwined

Chiseled in Rock (Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers)--post by Tamelah Buhrke--Is Micro-publishing the Game Changer?

Jody Hedlund--Walls on the Way to Publication: A Necessity or a Nuisance.  A little of both? I think her approach to setting up your own walls to determine your readiness for publication are not a bad idea. It's easy to rush stuff out. It's harder to be sure it's really good.

Passive Voice Blog--It's the Rare Writer Who Actually has Ambitions. This post has excerpts from and links to a full post by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Long but worth a read.

The Creative Penn--Writing for Life: 5 Practical Goals for Writers. Guest post by C. S. Lakin. Great advice.

Deanna Knippling--How Much Is Your Writing Worth? Wow, that was depressing. Also--warning--white on black. I suggest using Readability. (Via The Passive Voice.)

Mystery Writing is Murder--Promoting a Pen Name. I have... way too many. *collapses in exhausted heap*

Michael R. Hicks--Adjusting to Being a Full-Time Author. Part 1 and Part 2. Really good, meaty, sensible advice I wish I had known, oh, sometime mid 2011. (Oh, and there's about 5 parts now. Go read them all. They're linked at the bottom.) Again, black on white. Don't have Readability yet? Go fetch it.

David Farland--Marketing Before You Write. Writing for a specific audience. Interesting thoughts. Pretty sure this approach would work best if you make sure you're still writing what you love.

And that's it for today. Hope you found something useful, and have a great weekend!

Friday Linkage--KK Gets Herself in Gear (Hopefully) Edition

So, now that the taxes are turned in and all I'm stressed over is nine million deadlines, back to Friday linkage!

Roni Loren: Fiction Groupie--Authors Interacting with Readers Online. Possible drawbacks to interacting with your readers online. Probably not what you think...

Jane Friedman--Where to Find Free Market Listings.

Barnes and Noble Book Review--Kind Reader--Despair and William James. Reasons to NOT despair if you're not wildly famous yet.

Patricia C. Wrede--Weaving Plot Threads. Structure and craft.

Passive Income Author--The Uncommon Truth About Marketing Your Books. Marketing vs. you know, yutzing around.

Dean Wesley Smith--Shifting Goals in This New World. Goalsetting in the Brave Freaky New World of Publishing.

More Intelligent Life--Writing is the Greatest Invention. Well, duh.

Sunset. Anne Lamott on Finding Time. Read it. 'Cause it's Anne Lamott, ferpetesake.

The Creative Penn--Technical Aspects of Creating a Non-traditional Ebook. Yeah, this made me want to go out and do all kinds of crazy stuff. *eyes to-do list* STOP IT, BRAIN!

The Business Rusch--Writers: Will Work for Cheap. Kind of appalling, really...

So... there's another Friday of Linky Linkage. Hope you found something useful!

Friday Links

Gigaom: Kindle Lending: Book Publishers Still Not Getting It. And a lot of writers, too, it seems, based on my Twitter feed and other sources.

Jane Friedman: 10 Phrases to Purge from Your Speech and Writing. I mildly disagree to a couple of these, but others are high on my list of pet peeves. And seriously, how could anybody not care about ice hockey? I mean really.

Write2Publish: What's Wrong With Traditional Publishing and How to Save It. Discussion of changing business models and the disadvantages of venture capital approaches.

Glimmer Train: Territory. Discussion of thinking about the "territory" of your work--common themes you keep coming back to. I tend to keep writing about bitter divorcees. What is that about?

Findability: Twitter Automation Tools. Honestly, I debated including this link because it looks to me like THIS is the person who doesn't "get" Twitter. I mean, why the heck can't I tweet about what I had for dinner? (Last night it was Sonic. Again.) And OMG, don't use automatic DMs when people follow you. That's just annoying. But there are some tidbits here that I think I'm going to poke around with and see what falls out, so I'm passing the link along. Your mileage may vary.

Puck Daddy: Cool First-Person Hockey Practice, Now With Stick-Cam! This is just cool. You're welcome.

Jeff Goins: Why You Should Tell the Ugly Parts of Your Story.

Novel Publicity & Co: Look at Your Writing Through Somebody Else's Eyes. Thoughts on distancing yourself from the work during the editing process. And part II of this post is also a good read.

TN Tobias: 10 Ways to Create a Plot Twist. Has some spoilers for some films, so avoid if you're spoiler-phobic.

Friday Linky McLinkerson

photo from sxc.hu by hugoslv

The Guardian: Don't Fear the Reader: How Technology can Benefit Children's Books. Needs more cowbell

Baekdal: Busted: The 99 Cents Book Failed Miserably.  The title is misleading, imo. Read the whole article for the important part down at the end.

Lindsey Donner: 4 Clear Facts About the Future of Digital Content. Aimed more at businesses, but still an interesting read.

iamnoveling: NaNoWriMo: Breaking Through Writer's Block.

CIA Tracks Revolt by Tweet, Facebook. Fascinating read. Makes me wonder if you could write an entire international espionage novel that was nothing but Tweets and Facebook posts...

Writer Unboxed: On Rejection. Guest post about one writer's struggle after her first publication.

Drunk Writer Talk: Building a Platform. Should you? Shouldn't you? When should you? Why should you? Why am I not drunk right now?

Bubblecow: Editing Your Own Book: Top Ten Tips.

Steven Pressfield: The 10,000 Hour Rule. What it really means.

The Fall of Print: Why Future Self-Publishers May Tend to Earn More by Writing Less. Interesting breakdown of the evolving self-publishing model.

Friday Linky Lingage

A cool mix of links this week, imo. Enjoy!

Patricia C. Wrede: To Sell Out... Thoughts on writers who think they have to "sell out" to land a best-seller or a contract. (To the commenter--no, that shouldn't be a comma. If it were, it'd be a comma splice, and comma splices are the work of Satan.)

Blue Rose Girls: How I Edit. An interesting breakdown of a professional editor's process. Mine's a little different, often because my deadlines are tighter than a bass player's leather pants.

Gigaom: On the Death of Book Publishers and Other Middlemen. Interesting discussion of self-publishing as well as the new models represented by Amazon and Kobo's direct contracts with authors.

Justine Musk: One Reason you Should Give Yourself Permission to Work on Your Badass Creative Project. Sing it, sister. Starting to realize I really, really like this blog.

paidContent.org: Kindle Free Book Lending Holy Sh*t! I'm seeing a lot of mixed feelings about this development. Me? I think it's awesome. Still some kinks to work out, of course, but yeah. Awesome.

Write for Your Life: Open Your Writing Mind with the Morning Papers. A discussion of the benefits of writing morning pages, a la Julia Cameron and The Artist's Way. I've tried these before with mixed results. Any insight from those who've had success with this practice?

Justine Musk: Are Fiction Writers Screwed, Part 2. This is about building platform, except it's not. Excellent post.

Jane Friedman: Self-Published Authors Have Great Power, But Are They Taking Responsibility? Didja really think we were going to make it through the week without a Jane Friedman link? If you did, you were sadly mistaken.

Have a great weekend!

OMG SO MANY LINKS!!!

It's Friday, Friday, postin' links on Friday... OMG my children are evil for earworming me with that damn song every week...and so I pass their evil on to you.

Anyway... on to the meaty linky bits.

Breaking In Before Breaking Down: Promotional Tips for Self-Published Authors
Will Boast: Cutting Out the Bad Bits. Via Jane Friedman, "Write More Raw Material Than You Need"
Rachelle Gardner: 10 Tips About Author Platform
Fuel Your Writing: Crowdsource Your Book With Pubslush. I'm fascinated by this new publishing model.

An Internet High Five. 'Cause we all need one.

Digital Book World: Social Media--The Art of the Nudge
Tribal Writer: 6 So-Called Rules for the Badass Creative Woman
Livia Blackburne: Revision Adventures: Building Strong Characters and Emotional Depth. Some great tidbits here that I plan to use.
AdAge MediaWorks: As Devices and Distribution Compete, Content Enjoys Renaissance I wonder if we need a new royalty/artist compensation structure to keep from driving the content distributors/aggregators out of business.
Jane Friedman (Guest Blogger Biba Pearce): 3 Tips for Professional Ebook Covers
Publish Your Own Ebooks: The Importance of Building an Author Platform. Yes, I'm a little obsessed with this topic right now...

The League of Reluctant Adults: Responding to Negative Reviews. This is FANTASTIC. Especially the art work. :-D

Wow, Barnes and Noble? REALLY? Maybe I'm not so excited about trying to keep you in business after all.

Have a great weekend!! And I think everybody should go to B&N and demand copies of Watchmen and Sandman. Just to see what happens.

New Business Models--and Good Music, Too!

I've been following Christine Kane's music for a few years now, ever since I ran across her CDs in the library (I was looking for Christian Kane, but that's an entirely different story). She's a singer-songwriter with a folkey bent--I'd compare her to Patty Griffin in style and vocal quality. And she's really good.

She's also an independent artist trying out a new business model with her upcoming CD. On Be My Record Label, she's asking for pre-orders from fans to finance the release (packages include everything from just the CD itself to a package that includes a private concert and a song written just for you). In return, she's offering a fascinating look into her creative process, discussing all the steps of how a song comes together, and even vetting early draft versions of the songs to be included in the album, so those who have pre-ordered and are financing the album can comment on them as they come together.

I've been dropping by her site for a while (and yes, I have pre-ordered my album), and I'm finding it fascinating, both from the perspective of her creative process and her business model. At the same time, I've been thinking about how this might apply to publishing. The Internet has completely changed all the ways we can get our work out there, and the ways we can interact with readers. More and more creative folks are taking advantage of this to find a path outside the traditional big publisher/author relationship (or big record label/musician relationship--I find it interesting that more musicians than writers seem to be experimenting with all these exciting possibilities).

So drop by Christine's blog and her Record Label site. She's got free music for download so you can check out her stuff. If you like what you hear, buy a CD or two, and think about pre-ordering the new CD. Because I, for one, want to hear it--and many, many more in the future.