Jesse S. Smith

Author, Multimedia Producer, Dad

Writing projects update for November 2020

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I have been working on several projects all at the same time. I may have overcommitted myself, possibly not for the first time…

My “main” WIP right now is still my retelling of the Bible. I am really excited about this project, it has a lot of potential. Writing characters like Jesus, Lucifer, and the rest, is so inherently problematic that the book is already funny before I have even written it. I am nominally participating in this November’s NaNoWriMo, but I am not pushing for a crazy word count this time because: I have several other projects, I’m currently the “learning coach” for my kids who can’t return to school due to Covid-19, and I perhaps foolishly decided to write this whole book in verse form, which does tend to take more time per word.

As I mentioned in a blog post the other day, I recently finalized a new self-publishing project. If you have never self-published, you may not appreciate all that’s entailed once you finalize the text: including editing, layout and book design, file formatting, cover design, a different version for the e-book, ISBNs, barcodes, metadata; and all that’s before you even get into actually marketing the thing! The official publication date is coming soon and I will be posting about this but it has been a really fun and very time-consuming project.

My other two main writing projects right now are both retrospective collections: one of poetry, and one of short stories. I would like to finish both before the end of the year. This is creating something of a time crunch, because the short story project is rather long (ba dum psh) and editing it is competing with writing my main WIP for time and attention.

I am also diligently writing a poem a day, every day, for my poem-a-day project. I’ve been working on that for more than six months now, and what a six months they have been! I have written poems on topics including coronavirus, Black Lives Matter, the Oregon wildfires, the Presidential election, and one of my all-time favorite subjects, time itself; also, biographies of historical persons, retellings of famous fairy tales, and more!

Aaand I recently wrote & published some blog posts, and drafted a series of blog posts that hasn’t been published yet.

Thanks for checking in! I hope you are well and feeling creative. Comment below or ping me on Twitter to let me know what you’re working on these days. Have a great day!

 

Photo credit: Jonas Leupe via Unsplash

How to Self-Publish Your Book

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printing press

I find that although I’m not widely seen as a font of wisdom, when people do ask me for advice it’s usually about how to self-publish their book; because they know I self-published mine, and they think they might like to do something similar.

And I hope they will!

So for everyone who has ever wondered: this is what I know about self-publishing, and what I think I know about self-publishing, probably mixed in with some completely unsubstantiated opinions and outright biases. If you have a factual correction or a personal experience you wish to share, please leave it in the comments!

Self-Publishing Options

The very simplest self-publishing option is through Amazon KDP. It’s free or nearly free, and they supply the ISBN number (unless you want to be your own publisher).

That said, I recently decided to pursue a self-publishing project through Ingram Spark. That was a little more involved, because you have to supply your own ISBN, and their technical requirements for the graphic design files were more stringent as well; but dealing with them feels a lot more professional.

Ultimately, my own decision was informed by this very helpful comparison between Ingram Spark and KDP, which is a far more comprehensive analysis than I will get into here. I also benefited from the professional advice of T.A. Hernandez over on Twitter, thanks!

You Will Need

So, you want to self-publish? There are just a few things you will need.

Final Text

If you are planning to self-publish a book, the most important thing is a finished, completed, fully edited, final draft of your book.

So when you say, “Final…”

You don’t want to still be making changes after the book goes live, that creates all kinds of confusion (and may incur change fees). You want to be confident when you click the “Publish” button that you are sending the best version of your book out into the world.

What this entails depends a lot on the type of book you are writing. There is a huge push these days for low-quality, fast-production content that serves the algorithm (rather than the reader, or the author’s personal drive for creative expression). This post is not geared toward that type of work, although I’m told it’s very profitable and if that sort of thing appeals to you, I wish you well.

Getting Feedback

Whether you get an editor or not, writing always benefits from feedback.

Professional editors. On the far other end of the spectrum, some very serious writers get professional editors to first help with conceptual and structural issues, and only then fine-tune with line edits. This type of professional editing service may cost thousands of dollars, depending on a number of factors.

Beta readers. If you are a member of a writers group, consider asking a few colleagues to review a portion of your manuscript. If some of those are willing, and provide you with useful feedback, you can ask them to briefly review the whole thing. Beta readers (and sensitivity readers) can often provide a fresh perspective that you’ll never be able to see for yourself, because you are too close to the work. This is what your work looks like to other people — crucial information if you want people to buy your book!

However, a caveat: Useful feedback does not attack your self-esteem or your identity as a writer; so if you get feedback like that, discard it immediately and be careful not to ask that person for advice again.

Useful feedback should focus on providing constructive advice for improving character arcs, resolving plot holes, and streamlining the narrative to engage reader interest. It may not always be exactly what you want to hear, but properly useful feedback will help you grow and improve as a writer. Even if you ultimately decide you disagree or you want to take your writing in a different direction, useful feedback provides an important perspective and a framework that you can use to build your story.

Formatting the File of your Self-Published Text

e-book. It’s possible to only sell your book as an e-book; and the e-book market has exploded so much, that being an e-book-only author is almost certainly a possible path to success in today’s market. But I’m a member of the last generation to come of age before the Internet did: and to people like me, a book isn’t really published unless you can hold a physical printed copy in your hand.

All that said, you will probably want to make your book available in both physical and digital formats. Note: it’s possible to simply upload a .docx file to KDP, but Ingram Spark will require you to supply a valid .epub file. Either way, for greatest creative control, you’ll probably want to export your own ebook as an .epub file. The proprietary software program, “Scrivener” is a popular tool for this task (and others!) among self-published authors (the ebook option is under the “Compile” menu). If you are using Google Docs for storage or editing, you can easily export your document in ebook format from the File menu.  Alternatively, Amazon has a software program called “Kindle Create” which you can download for free.

Physical printed book. The most standard size is 6×9. Many other options are available, but some distributors prefer the standard size.

The typical paperback binding (where the pages are glued to the cover) is called a “perfect bind.”

Unless you are publishing an illustrated children’s book, a book of photography, or a coloring book, then your text has no bleeds.

Under your document’s “Page” menu, set the page size, and include generous margins.  Be sure to set “mirror margins,” for your printed document, and add a little extra margin in the “gutter” where the pages will be glued together. Set the Header of your document to display the page numbers and the title of your book and/or your name: the book printer does not add this information for you!

Requirements vary by publisher. Amazon KDP wants to make it easy for you: you could just upload a word processing document; and a .pdf file exported from Word using the default settings is likely to print without trouble.

If you use a high-end print-on-demand printing company like Ingram Spark, their file requirements may be more stringent. I had to go into my .pdf compiler and mess with the settings menu to tell it to use the pdf/x-1a:2001 standard when compiling text documents, because the system’s automated review process gave me an error message that otherwise my text might turn out grey instead of black. The wonders of modern technology, right?

Book Cover

Many self-published authors use a simple app like Canva to create their book cover designs, often featuring free stock photos from sites like Unsplash, Pexels, or Pixabay.  If you have some graphic design experience you can always create your own book cover. On the other hand, the old admonition, “Never judge a book by its cover” is not, in fact, a predictor of human behavior. We do, all of us, judge books based on their presentation, all the time; so hiring a professional cover designer may be a good idea.

Be sure the spine for the book cover is the correct size, which will depend on the number of pages your text contains.  Ingram Spark has a handy template generator interactive feature, which will calculate the book cover size for you, and set up a blank file with bleeds and margins clearly established.

Be sure you extend your cover art and design layout for 1/8″ beyond the edge of your cover’s final size. This extra 0.125″ is called “bleeds,” and it’s required by the printers (so a micro-fractional imprecision in the cutting tool won’t result in a white border at the edge of the cover).  For best results, also leave a 1/8″ margin (without any important text or design elements) around the edge of the cover design layout.

Any raster art (photos) must be embedded at 350dpi. Your final file should be flattened (should not contain layers) and submitted as a .pdf file.

ISBN

Like “ATM machine,” saying “ISBN number” is redundant, because the “N” in ISBN stands for the word, “Number.” But don’t worry, most of us still do it anyway!

If you are publishing through Amazon KDP and you don’t have an ISBN, they will supply one for you. However, the identifying number they supply is only valid to sell your book through Amazon. If you’re not worried about distribution beyond Amazon, you’re in good company; they are the behemoth in the room!

On the other hand, if you want to distribute your book more widely, you will need to purchase an ISBN. In fact, you will require multiple ISBNs, because (outside Amazon) you will need a different ISBN for the ebook version of your book than the one you used for the print version; and if you are publishing in both paperback and hardcover, each of those will require a separate ISBN as well. You can obtain a block of ISBNs directly from Bowker: this is the most cost-effective option, especially if you intend to publish multiple titles. You can also purchase one ISBN at a time through Ingram Spark; but keep in mind that if you end up buying three numbers, it would end up costing you less to buy 10 of them directly from Bowker.

I even found this handy free online barcode generator tool that will use your ISBN to create a barcode as a vector .svg which you can just drop right into your design.

Conclusion

There are many paths to publication, and in the modern marketplace self-publishing is a more commercially viable option than ever before. There are simple routes and more complicated routes; there are costly routes and inexpensive routes: and each route has its own benefits and drawbacks. Whatever route you choose, I wish you the best of success when you self-publish your book!

William Blake: Never Give Up

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"Oberon, Titania, and Puck with Fairies Dancing" by William Blake
Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing circa 1786 by William Blake

 

William Blake was a quarrelsome troublemaker: a self-published author who was not well-liked in his own time.

William Blake is now a world-famous poet, best remembered for “The Tyger” (“Tyger! Tyger! burning bright / In the forests of the night”) and other colorful children’s poems from his illustrated collection, “Songs of Innocence and of Experience.” We remember Blake as one of the leading voices of the Romantic Period. We recall that in his early years he associated with democratic idealists who admired the revolutionaries of America and France (prior to that ultimate “cancel culture,” the Reign of Terror with its bloody guillotine, which seems to have put Blake off his revolutionary aspirations.) We think of Blake as a man who was commissioned to illustrate a work by Mary Wollstonecraft, and thus as an idealist who was, arguably, actively involved in promoting early feminist thought.

We selectively forget that Blake’s strident views, eccentric temperament, and at times erratic behavior made him actively disliked by his contemporaries. He was bullied by the other students in his teens; he quarreled with his co-workers during his apprenticeship; he bickered with his wife; he grew angry with the wealthy patron who tried to help him reinvent himself; and to top it all off, he stood trial for sedition after a physical altercation with a soldier. (The soldier, it seems, was trespassing and exceedingly rude about it. After Blake pushed him down the street, the soldier took revenge by making false accusations that carried the death penalty: a behavior such as the evil-minded continue to do on social media to this day.)

William Blake was an engraver by trade. After completing his apprenticeship and his University studies, he ran his own printing press. Blake did not trouble himself with movable type: instead he etched his work on metal plates with acid. His work often focused more on illustration than on text: illustrations which he and his wife would color by hand after the line art came off the press. In addition to selling his own self-published books, Blake accepted commissions, illustrating and printing on behalf of the notables of his day. Unfortunately this occupation was not a path to riches, and Blake’s correspondence from his later years complains of ill health and apologetically rehearses the necessity of charging rather more than what would have been typical in those days for a printed volume.

Blake was self-righteous in his unconventional religious views. Although such poems as “Little Lamb” and “The Tyger” stress a traditional view of Jesus as savior and God the creator, Blake’s other work stridently challenged orthodoxy and, especially, organized religion of all stripes. He claimed to have experienced visions; his writings boldly questioned whether the Biblical prophets had actually spoken to God; he had little patience for the Church; and in his groundbreaking treatise, “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” he argued (rather convincingly) that humanity has completely mixed up which side is “good” and which “evil.” Such arguments form a curiosity from our perspective, but one can imagine that they brought down upon him the wrath of his more conservative and moralistic neighbors.

In fact, William Blake was so widely disliked in his own time that when he approached an art dealer with a concept for illustrating Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” the dealer totally screwed him over by using Blake’s concept but giving the commission to one of Blake’s friends instead, on the rationale that Blake himself was, as Wikipedia puts it, “too eccentric to produce a popular work.” Furious at the betrayal, Blake cut off his relationship with the friend in question.

There has been a good deal of speculation regarding Blake’s personal sexual morality, given his unorthodox views comparing monogamy to oppression, and his apparent interest in women other than his wife, as alluded to in his allegorical poem, “My Pretty Rose-Tree.” Although there is no indication that Blake ever actually had relations outside his marriage, just thinking about it seems to have probably fueled some of the couple’s famous marital spats.

In summary, William Blake was the very embodiment of the visionary thinker with an artistic temperament. He was brilliant, but perhaps difficult to be around at times.

Blake’s life story teaches us this one important lesson:

The work you create and the ideas you espouse are ultimately more important than your personal reputation; and this is as it should be. A quarrelsome eccentric may be immortalized for creating works of beauty and genius.

So don’t give up. Never give up.

 

 

Sources

Wikipedia. (retrieved 10-30-2020). “William Blake – Wikipedia.” Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake

William Blake, author; David V. Erdman, editor; Harold Bloom, commentary. (1988). The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake. New York, NY: Anchor Books (Random House, Inc.)

Photo: “Oberon, Titania, and Puck with Fairies Dancing” by William Blake, courtesy of Wikipedia.

Emily Dickinson: Never Give Up

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Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson was unpublished and virtually unknown in her own lifetime.*

Like many modern introverts, Dickinson was most comfortable communicating through the medium of the written word. The famous recluse was a frequent correspondent, and sent many letters to her friends, often including poems with her communications.

Most of Dickinson’s best-known poems are from her earlier work. These pieces were carefully copied in her best handwriting onto tidy sheets of folded stationery, and hand-bound with string. The booklets she made in this manner are described as “fascicles” by Dickinson scholars. Of the nearly 1,800 surviving Dickinson poems, more than 1,000 were copied and hand-bound into fascicles. Of these poems, the vast majority appear to have been composed or transcribed between about 1858 and 1865, when the poet was in her late twenties and early thirties.

After 1865, Dickinson abruptly ceased her previously prodigious output, and stopped copying her work into bound fascicles. The reason is not immediately clear. We do know that her beloved dog died, and a household servant departed and was not replaced. Perhaps she fell into an episode of depression, and felt overwhelmed, as often happens to creative types. Perhaps she despaired of getting her work formally published: possibly because it was too personal, or possibly due to the sexism of the nineteenth-century printing industry, or possibly for other complex family or personal dynamics. This gets into the realm of speculation. Regardless, after having written more than 900 poems in the four years leading up to 1865, she wrote only 65 poems in the following six years, and bound none of them into fascicles. She resumed writing poems at a much slower pace after about 1871, but was much less concerned with getting these later pieces into a finished final state, and left most of them in loose-leaf form, without making final decisions regarding alternate wording. To the outside observer, looking back in time, it appears as though Emily Dickinson despaired that her poetry would ever be important to anyone other than herself or perhaps a small circle of close friends.  Her own family seems to have been unaware of her fascicles containing hundreds of brilliant poems, until they were discovered among her belongings after her death.

And yet, Emily Dickinson is now well-beloved for such memorable poems as “I’m Nobody! Who Are You?” and “Because I Could Not Stop for Death.”  She is now widely regarded as one of the most important poets of the nineteenth century, and one of the greatest American poets of all time.

Don’t give up. Never give up.

 

Notes

*Although ten of Dickinson’s poems were printed in various newspapers during her lifetime, those were published anonymously, with no attribution, and without her permission.

 

Sources

Emily Dickinson, author; Cristanne Miller, editor, introduction and notes. (2016). Emily Dickinson’s Poems: As She Preserved Them. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press (Harvard University Press).

Emily Dickinson Museum. (retrieved 10-27-2020). The Publication Question. Retrieved from https://www.emilydickinsonmuseum.org/emily-dickinson/poetry/the-poet-at-work/the-publication-question/

Wikipedia. (retrieved 10-27-2020). Emily Dickinson. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emily_Dickinson.

Photo: Wikipedia

 

Sir Thomas Malory: Never Give Up

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Don’t give up!

Imprisoned for life, Sir Thomas Malory reframed an existing story.  In the process, he created a timeless classic.  After his death, Malory’s retelling of the tales of King Arthur was among the first books ever printed, when Caxton got a printing press.   Malory’s works have come down through the ages and are now  widely considered the standard canonical text of the King Arthur legends.

Sir Thomas Malory was a soldier.  After the war, he seems to have failed to adapt to civilian life.  One might speculate that his behavior (and his writing style) may have been consistent with PTSD with underlying bipolar disorder. The details are obscure, but in one way or another this eventually led to his being imprisoned for many years.

Self-righteous judgmental modern haters (such as the pathetic weak-faced coward who I saw interviewed in a recent TV documentary) love to exaggerate the salacious nature of the alleged crimes of which Malory was accused. That’s because losers try to make themselves feel better about their useless lives by lobbing false accusations at the great.

But the learned and highly esteemed Professor Helen Cooper of Cambridge University (editor of the Winchester Manuscript) has suggested that Malory’s alleged crimes may have been completely misrepresented in the legal record.

According to Cooper, Malory’s actual crime was probably that he had an affair with another man’s wife. In those days, women were treated as property, and her husband did not give consent. Therefore, Malory was imprisoned on what we would now consider false charges.

When he got out of prison after many years, Malory apparently took revenge by breaking into a parsonage, among other things.  One might speculate (based on nothing but pure imagination) that he went on a drunken crime spree. This poor choice resulted in his being sent back to prison for the rest of his life.

While in prison, Sir Thomas Malory created one of the pivotal works of English culture: Le Morte d’Arthur. This inspired, romantic, adventurous, magical book has become the source of all the familiar tales of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.

Malory compiled, translated, paraphrased, condensed, and expanded his comprehensive handwritten version of the King Arthur stories from a variety of extant texts, most of them written either in French or in an already-antiquated dialect of English. It was a very scholarly endeavor requiring considerable thought, enthusiasm, inspiration, and boundless love for his subject matter. Malory’s frenetic prose style reveals a manic, unstoppable personality that shines through in his endless run-on sentences and limitless creativity. One pictures him, shivering and coughing in his prison cell, frantically scribbling on stacks of parchment paper, trying to get the entire Bible-sized tome completed before his life runs out.

One feels Malory’s personal connection to his subject matter in his (for the times) risque description of Lancelot’s love affair with Queen Guinevere.  One senses Malory’s tormented soul as Lancelot confesses his sins and receives forgiveness from the hermit Nacien. Time and again, Malory’s narrative (especially later in the book) returns to themes of forgiveness, grace, and the pure love of the Creator spirit.

No matter what mistakes this man may have made in his life, his work has something to teach us all in our lives.

So don’t give up! Never give up.  No matter what mistakes you may have made in your life, you still have something of value to share with the world.

Never Give Up – The Series

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broken sign reads, "Your mistakes do not define you."

Don’t give up. Never give up. When life gets you down and things aren’t going your way, just remember that there is always hope. You can achieve something important and make a meaningful impact on other people’s lives.

Even if you have made mistakes and poor choices in your life; even if you are not well-known or well-liked in your own time; even if you have been ostracized and vilified by your community: these distinctions place you in the company of the greats, people like Ovid, Dante, Sir Thomas Malory, and Emily Dickinson.

This series will discuss some of history’s greatest writers, poets, and playwrights who suffered disfavor or obscurity in their own lifetimes. Their life stories demonstrate the point that “meritocracy” is a myth (or at best, unreliable). Traditional “success” is not a measure of greatness. Creative genius and “success” are not the same thing. You might be one of the most brilliant creators of your era and yet die in obscurity, having never made a living from the work that you will be remembered for, as happened to Herman Melville and so many others.

I hope this series will provide inspiration to aspiring artists, authors, poets, and playwrights. No matter what happens, there is still hope. Keep going, keep trying, keep creating, keep doing!

As Aragorn said just before the vast army of orcs stormed Helm’s Deep: “There is always hope.”