Writerly Wisdom from O. Henry
April 2019
What 50 Words a Day Did for Me
I started writing about five years ago (has it really been that long?). I had always told myself stories, especially as I was trying to sleep, but I never wrote anything down. I don’t know why. I just didn’t. I certainly rewrote in my head the novels that I didn’t like, the movies that went the wrong way, and created new lives for characters I wanted to know more about.
But I never wrote anything down. I was married to a writer; I wasn’t. So I didn’t write on paper a single word of the novels I dictated to myself or anything about the worlds I created. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.
[He, by the way, never once told me I wasn’t a writer. He didn’t know I told myself stories.]
It’s irritating now to look back on all those years of not writing anything down. If I had, I could imagine writing this from my luxurious, warm beach house in Kauai, instead of my little desk in the coldest corner of my living room in my 64-degree house. Fingerless gloves help, as do my secondhand Jack Skellington wristies, but not enough. I’ve lived in Hawai’i and no matter how carefully I decorated my house in central Pennsylvania to resemble a tropical paradise, it’s not Hawai’i.
But there’s no point in regretting the past. We can only start where we are.
Where I started was when my sister sent me a secondhand laptop. Since the kids were mostly grown, and I had time during the day when my husband was writing, I gradually started writing. I wrote blogposts for my husband’s website that became my first nonfiction book: Suburban Stockade. He needed content and we were living the lifestyle so I wrote them. I wrote blogposts that described my discovery and development of a new kind of quilt (NotQuilts). Those posts will also be turned into a book. I’ve since written plenty of other stuff as well. Nonfiction is easy.
While I was doing this, I also started writing fiction. I wrote in fits and starts, as the muse dictated, as I had the time and the inclination. I didn’t finish anything but I sure wrote a lot of words. Over the last few years, I must have written a million or more words; developing a few worlds, stories set in those worlds, vignettes and scenes and snippets and bits and pieces.
There was only one problem: I didn’t finish anything.
I was extremely inconsistent in how I wrote. I would write a paragraph or two, or I’d write a few thousand words or something in between. I’d take days off, that turned into weeks while I waited for inspiration to appear.
Let me tell you, the muse didn’t arrive promptly at my house every day at 10 a.m. I wrote like a terrier in a field full of mice and rabbits and tall grass. I was constantly distracted, constantly going off on a tangent, and constantly starting something new! exciting! distracting! unconnected to anything else!
I have to look upon all those words as practice. All those practice fictional words also taught me that nonfiction was much, much easier for me to write. I can churn out a few thousand words on keeping water out of your basement in a flash.
I got into the very bad writing habit of being inconsistent. I took a few online writing courses which did help. They would have helped more if I hadn’t used them as an excuse to avoid the tedious work of writing my own fiction. Did you know you can teach yourself the habit of never finishing what you started? It’s true. You can.
Joining CPRW
Then I joined the Central Pennsylvania Romance Writers. Soon after I joined, the group ran its “fifty words a day for fifty days” competition. Fifty words a day? I can do fifty words. I did not join the contest, but I decided to act as if I had. Gradually, very gradually, I started writing a bit every day, except on Sunday. Fifty words a day became my goal to shoot for. If I made my goal, I tried to keep writing.
I started to write more.
More than that, I started writing consistently. This was a huge step for me. I started trying to finish what I had already started instead of going down yet another rabbit hole.
Here’s another thing I learned: The belief pushed by some self-helpers that you can learn a new habit in 21 days? I can’t. I need weeks and weeks of steady, regular practice before a habit can set itself. Even then, I still have to remind myself to do it.
On the other hand, bad habits like eating all the ice cream or playing solitaire for hours on end are easy habits to learn because they’re fun and involve zero self-discipline. I can learn a bad habit in about an hour.
But after awhile, I began to accept that those 50 days were a good, solid start to writing every day, whether I felt like it or not.
Stacking Goals
Once I was fairly consistent at fifty words, I set a secondary goal of writing 385 words per day. Hitting this mark for 26 days (every day of the month except Sunday) equals 10,000 words. Ten thousand words a month equals 120,000 words in a year. That’s a large novel, two shorter novels or a whole lot of short stories.
I chose to only count “new” words, no editing or rewriting of any kind. My fifty words have to be new, a continuation of what I am already working on. Otherwise, I can endlessly rewrite a passage and never make any forward progress. Refusing to count “edited” words forces me to add new ones and get closer to “the end.”
For the same reason, I chose to not count any nonfiction or blogpost words. I can write plenty on soil management or constructing Roman shades, but that doesn’t get the novel finished. I’m not counting this post towards my word count for the day. If I did, I wouldn’t add more words to The White Elephant of Panschin. I would count my day as done and it’s not.
I do not count exactly. I always round down. If I write 59 words, I count it as 50. As with budgeting, I overestimate my costs and underestimate my income to arrive at a happy ending. With writing, I underestimate how much I write and overestimate how much I need. Then, at the end, I’ve got plenty of words to work with. It’s easier for me to tighten than it is to add.
Eventually, another “fifty words a day for fifty days” challenge appeared on the CPRW calendar. Again, I did not officially participate. But I wrote my words as if I did. I rarely wrote less than 385 words a day, other than on Sunday.
I’m now working towards a new goal: 1,000 words a day. 1,000 words a day for a year (skipping Sundays) is 313,000 words. That’s three novels! I rarely make this goal but I do usually get 500, 600, even 800 words so I’m getting closer. The key, as always, is consistency.
It’s all very well to write 1,000 words here and there and nothing in between. But those random words don’t necessarily add up to a finished piece of writing. Fifty words a day, every single day, will add up to a finished piece of writing. Fifty words a day is such a small amount, yet if you are consistent, you’ll end up with more words than if you wrote only as the muse appeared.
The muse still doesn’t show up at my house at 10am sharp. Sometimes she shows up, but more often, she doesn’t. Interestingly, when I go back and reread what I wrote, I can’t tell which days she appeared. My words all blend together, equally smooth and inspired.
As a direct result of “fifty words,” I finished and self-published my first novel. I’m plowing ahead steadily on my second novel. After it is finished, I have notes on the third one in the series. “Fifty words” is helping me to go back to my million or so words of glurge and world building and convert them into finished writing.
I’ve been a member of CPRW for about a year now. The “fifty words a day for fifty days” challenge is coming up again. This year, I will participate officially and submit my word count. If you don’t participate in “fifty words” officially, you may still want to participate on your own. “Fifty words” helped me to be more consistent and productive. It can help you too.
Basic Interior Book Design
If you’re an indie author, you’ve got a lot of control over how your books look. That means, when it comes to interior book design, you can do anything you want!
If you are being published by a traditional press, you won’t have as much control. Look over your contract carefully and see what you can ask for. If you don’t ask, you don’t get.
How your books look is important. A well-designed book is more visually appealing. It’s easier to read. It provides all the information a reader could want, including who you, the author, are along with ways to reach you and lists of your books.
But also, the interior book design reflects your book. It reinforces the message you want the reader to get.
You should always have print versions of your books available along with digital versions. You can’t sell cat romances at the cat show if you don’t have books in hand. Your ebooks should duplicate your trade paperbacks as much as possible, for the sake of continuity and a uniform look.
Below, we discuss various ways your book can be designed. We focus on the interior, but we also give some thought to the front and back covers, too. You won’t need to do everything that’s listed. Only you will know best. In the end, more decorative trade paperbacks look better and give more value for the money, encouraging the reader to shell out $15 for a book. More attractive ebooks that flow smoothly do the same. Your book advertises you and all your other books.
In short, make your book the best book it can be.
Let’s get started!
EXTERIOR
COORDINATING COVER DESIGN FOR A SERIES, including the spine and the back cover. Use similar colors throughout a series, plus matching, genre-appropriate fonts. If your indie company has a colophon, always place it on the spine. If you don’t have a colophon, create one. Your company colophon adds a coordinating look to the spines of your different series and may be the only design element the covers of your wildly different series will have.
Each series should also have a distinctive logo that goes on the cover of each book in the series.
BACK COVERS should include the synopsis, blurbs from authors higher up on the food chain, and the website address. If you have space, add cover pictures of other titles in the series. Don’t list the price, in case you have to change it later. Leave room for your ISBN if you use one. If you’re using a template from KDP or Ingram Spark, it will show you where the bar code will be printed. Make sure your design doesn’t cover it.
A SERIES-APPROPRIATE Title. Each title should be unique, descriptive, and if possible, not repeating ten thousand other titles. One-word titles don’t tell the reader much. Yes, big-name authors can get away with calling their titles “Desperation,” “Lust,” and “Mystery” (although I think they’re losing the chance to attract new readers to them with a distinctive title). Plus, good titles ping search engines.
ENDPAPERS, are the artwork that goes on the inside front and back covers, plus their opposite pages. It can be a design that reflects the book’s contents, a family tree, or a map. Some printers won’t let you do this (like KDP), but if your printer does, think about it. if they are available from your printer.
FORWARD MATTER
A BOOK PLATE in the front of each book, tied to the series. This is a lovely extra. Look for copyright-free artwork (Dover Publications specializes in that) or draw your own image. A book plate can be elaborate or just a simple frame with ‘This book belongs to’ inside of it. Fonts and designs should be genre-appropriate.
A LIST OF THE AUTHOR’S OTHER BOOKS. Provide a list of titles and the series they belong to at the front of the book. In years to come, this can be updated. The list doesn’t contain the book that is being published (I mean, this book, the book you’re working on.)
A COPYRIGHT Page. Each publisher has its own style of copyright. It is governed by law and tradition.
According to the law (the Copyright Act of 1989), no copyright notice needs to appear. If a book is published, it is considered copyrighted. So why do publishers do it? Paranoia, for one. Force of habit, for another. Also, it prevents anyone infringing on your copyright to claim later that they didn’t know it was copyrighted.
We recommend declaring that the work is copyrighted. It can be as simple as:
(c)2000 by [Author Name]. All rights reserved.
If you want to be more formal, look to a book such as the Chicago Manual of Style. This volume is a stylebook published by the University of Chicago Press, a major university publisher. Many publishing houses have adopted the CMS as their own stylebook, maybe with some modifications. It’s formal and rigid, and provides a lot of answers to legal and copyediting questions, so if you really want guidance, this is about as authoritative as you can find. You can’t go wrong following its dictates. (In fact, the copyright line above is taken from it, see section 1.17.)
The copyright page should have credit for the cover artwork.
A DEDICATION Page.
MAPS as appropriate.
A LIST OF CHARACTERS, each with a one or two sentence description at the beginning of the book, prior to the text. Agatha Christie has a character list like this in many of her mysteries.
A TABLE OF CONTENTS. Give your chapters titles rather than chapter one, chapter ten, etc. You’re providing the reader with an idea of the story to come, luring them in. This is especially valuable for ebooks. Readers can’t riffle through the pages as easily, but if they open the table of contents page and see a list of chapter titles, they’ll be able to find their way into the story. For non-fiction, consider using detailed, Victorian-style subtitles that describe in a few works what that chapter covers. For example, in Chapter 12 of the “Illustrated Life and Crimes of William Palmer,” published by Peschel Press, you’ll see the following:
“Some Suspected Cases of Poisoning — An Illegitimate Child — Mrs. Thornton (Palmer’s Mother-in-Law) — Bladon, the Sporting Bagman — Beau Bentley — The Chickens and the Pills — The Young Man Named Bly.”
This gives you a pretty good idea of what to expect, right?
A LIST OF PHOTOS, ARTWORK, ILLUSTRATIONS, CHARTS, FAMILY TREES, AND TABLES. If you’ve got lots of these, a list is needed.
A CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS, if you’ve got a century-spanning epic series. This can help the reader remember where the book in their hand fits into your timeline.
A SETTING OPENING, at the beginning of the book, much shorter than a prologue, set aside in fancy type if you think your series would benefit from scene setting.
INTERESTING or AMUSING QUOTES THAT ENHANCE THE NOVEL, but whose meaning may not be clear to the reader until after they’ve read the book. These can be on the dedication page or can be placed at the beginning of a chapter, after the chapter title.
A DEDICATION to your supportive spouse and family without whom you couldn’t have written this book. Or without whom, you would have written the book a lot faster.
OTHER THINGS THAT MIGHT BE NEEDED: Epigraph, foreword, preface, acknowledgements, introduction, and prologue. These tend to be seen more often in scholarly nonfiction works. Your red-hot romance won’t need them.
BOOK INTERIORS
The text should be in a legible TYPE FONT, and it should be SIZE 11 or larger. This only applies to trade paperbacks. Tiny type discourages readers who have eyesight problems. However, large-print is larger than you need. In an ebook, readers can easily change the type size.
INTERIOR ILLUSTRATIONS, if you want to pay for them and they seem needed.
A BORDER DESIGN AT THE TOP OF EACH PAGE is a nice flourish in the print version. Use a design that is series-appropriate and use it for each book in the series. An ebook won’t let you do this.
A DROP CAP at the beginning of each chapter, in a font suitable for the type of book. Your font can be romantic, space-age, noir, Victorian, etc. There are thousands to choose from. After the drop cap, consider putting the first half of the line in a Small Caps font style. It adds a nice decorative touch. Ebooks aren’t nearly as flexible as print books, so you might have to omit that step.
PAGE NUMBERS, BOOK TITLE or CHAPTER TITLE, and AUTHOR’S NAME in some kind of regular design, identical for each book in a series. This can be at the top of the page or the bottom as needed, to balance the design elements. Non-fiction might get the chapter title or section name. Again, ebooks won’t be as flexible.
DINGBATS OR FLEURONS TO SEPARATE SECTIONS OF TEXT within a chapter OR a design line such as a row of grass tops. Use a series-appropriate one. They should be different for each series. Ebooks won’t let you do as much a print book.
OPTIONAL MATTER
Below are several suggestions for ways to make your book stand out.
LOCATION INDICATORS AT THE START OF EACH CHAPTER. If your novel ranges all over the galaxy, you could assign a symbol to the start of each chapter indicating where the action takes place. Remember to define your symbols on an art page at the front of the book. The reader can refer back to this subtle design element to figure out where the action is taking place.
OR
LOCATION CAN BE SPELLED OUT: i.e., A coffee shop in the third-worst slum in Azmoff. This works better in ebooks than a symbol would.
In addition, you can use A TIME INDICATOR, i.e., the year, The Fall Equinox, or a weekday morning at ten a.m., if this seems appropriate.
If the book has GROUPINGS OF CHAPTERS, DEMARCATE THEM WITH AN ART PAGE, something as basic as a fancy box with a title in it like “Second Shift” to lead off the next set of chapters. Use the same fancy box for each group of chapters; only the title within the fancy box will change.
A SPEAKER’S INDICATOR SYMBOL if the voice of the narrator changes. If you’ve got multiple narrators, identifying them somehow would be helpful. Don’t make your reader guess who’s talking. Let them know.
BACK MATTER
A GLOSSARY OF UNUSUAL WORDS OR CONCEPTS at the back of the book. This is especially useful in fantasy novels.
AN EXCERPT FROM THE NEXT BOOK IN THE SERIES. Remember that the end of the book is supposed to sell the next book. One way to do that is provide the first chapter of the next book in the series, whetting the reader’s appetite to buy more of your books.
AN AUTHOR NOTE: This is the chance for you, the author, to say something personal about the book. Most people won’t read it, but for those who do, it is a chance to personally communicate something to the reader, thus giving the illusion of intimacy.
Every book needs a HOW TO REACH ME section. List your website address, any other social media sites, how to sign up for the newsletter, and the P.O. box address for those who write letters, and where your books are available.
A LEAVE A REVIEW REQUEST. Ask “If you liked the book, to leave a review at Amazon.com.” Thank the reader for helping other readers discover the book, via a positive review. Positive reviews encourage sales.
ACKNOWLEDGE BOOK DESIGNERS, COVER ARTISTS, EDITORS, KINDLEIZERS, BETA READERS, and anyone else who might be important. People do apparently read these.
AN AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY, with as much or little detail as seems appropriate. This is separate from the Author’s note. An AUTHOR PHOTO goes in this section.
A BOOK CATALOG listing all your other books with their cover images. In an ebook, the cover images can be live links. If you’ve got multiple, clashing series under different pen-names, put them here rather than confuse the reader by listing all your disparate titles under your different pen-names in the title list that goes at the front of your book.
Other pieces of back matter include: epilogue, afterward, conclusion, appendixes, notes, bibliography, works cited, and an INDEX. These items normally only show up in scholarly nonfiction, but if that’s what you write, you’ll need to include them.