Sarah’s Writing Blog

I did it again!

That’s the first 50,000 words of a sci fi story done, and in 30 days. I’m shattered but it’s so worth it!

My first book, The Portal Between, is self published through Lulu.

This is how it works.

You, the writer/creator/author create your work. You put all the graft in, you commit your words to the screen and save it carefully in several different places. You work on it, rewrite and edit it. You nurture this glorious creation of yours and a friend tells you that it really should be published. So you get your wonderful manuscript ready and start approaching conventional publishers.

They all turn you down, not because your work is rubbish or won’t sell. That may be the case but all too often it’s because a large publishing house won’t take the risk on a new and unproven writer, many agents won’t either. Smaller companies may simply not have the budget available.

You may only want a few copies for friends and family, maybe someone has written down memories or tales from childhood that want to be preserved. A nice properly bound copy would be lovely.

Lulu is wonderful. You do all the work. You get your manuscript ready, edit it yourself and sort out the layout, choose font, spacing, number of pages. Easy right? No. Hard work actually and it’ll take several attempts to get it how you want it. Lulu doesn’t help at all with this, if there’s loads of typo’s you have to spot them, grammar errors, continuity issues - all your problem. Worth doing? Oh yes. So, you have your document all ready on the computer and you’re ready.

First create an account on Lulu. It’s easy and it’s free, just go to “First time visitor” and follow the instructions. You can have your own little shop on there if you want too - mine is Here, feel free to wander in. Once you have an account you can start to publish your work.

A few choices need to be made first though. Do you want hard cover or paperback? Perfect bound or coil? Dust jacket or casewrap? And a cover too! Do you have some artwork or a picture you want on the front of your book?

While you’re thinking on those I’ll go work on my Nano for this year. Check back in a day or so for the next bit on Lulu and self publishing ….

I’m doing an OU course - Start Writing Fiction. I signed up because I thought my writing could use a bit of polish and maybe there were some techniques and tips that would work for me and help me improve. I’m always up for looking at new ways of doing things.

So, the course started and the writing exercises are forced, stilted. I can do them and I’m getting good feedback for each piece. There’s a three part assignment due at the end of the month and I’ve done the first part already. Might have a crack at the second part later today.

Anyway, what the course is showing me is that I write in a very fluid and organic way. I don’t plan, I have a rough idea and a couple of main characters and let it write itself. Often it doesn’t work and I get to 20 or 30 thousand words and give up. But sometimes it is the most wonderful thing and the story evolves by itself and the characters are real and say and do things completely unexpected - then I have to work out where it’s going because it’s way off the original idea.

Take The Portal Between for example. I started that with the scene where Kate wakes up in bed to find Hayley has snuck in and fallen asleep. I was listening to Isobel by Dido and had the line about a car being found by a tree running round my head. So I had the original idea that someone had gone missing for a while, couple of years probably and then comes back. But how do they come back? Why? When? Where have they been? What happened to the family and friends left behind? So I started working along those lines and it flowed, it just sort of grew all by itself like watching a film and making notes. Then I needed someone to watch Kate’s kids and I made up Lily.

Lily took over the whole story and changed its direction completely, opening up new possibilities and new ideas. I love Lily!

More about how, when and why I write later…..

A proper published writer!
Just making and adding buttons so you can buy my book from here.

Will play with layout and stuff later - This is a public one for MY BOOKS!!!