A Time For Everything

For most of my writing career...we'll call it that despite lack of publication...I've always written from a third person point of view in the past tense. Fanfic from a couple of the fandoms I started reading this year are written almost exclusively third person POV, present tense.

What's the difference?

3rd/past: Justin thought he heard a knock and went to investigate.

3rd/present: Justin thinks he hears a knock and goes to investigate.

A lot of readers have a preference, a lot don't. First person definitely isn't my thing unless it's especially well done, but first person is more prevalent in genres I don't read so I don't come across it much.

Because of all the 3rd/present I've been reading and enjoying, I decided to give writing it try. Once I get in the right zone, it's not hard to stay on track. I struggled a bit when I worked on two projects using different tenses, but since writing exclusively on this book, it's been fine.

Remember the critique I got from the editor a couple of weeks ago? The page I submitted was 3rd/present. She thought it an interesting choice, but felt it was hard on both writers and readers for long books. Well, everything is subjective, isn't it? And when she said that, I couldn't help but disagree.

I didn't find it any more challenging to write than 3rd/past (but it's only 24K at this point) and as a reader I don't find it difficult to read 30K, 40K, 50K fics written this way. Maybe some people do--if you're a die hard and have a definite preference. For others, a well-written story is a well-written story and not much is going to mar their enjoyment of it.

So now I have this one book written in 3rd/present and everything else is 3rd/past. Except everything else is in various stages of completion and wouldn't take much more work to convert to present tense if I choose to finish them and drop them into this series.

The dilemma is do I just write and publish in whatever tense appeals to me at the time of writing OR do I change this one book to a 3rd/past so as to stay consistent OR do I change everything else to 3rd/present?

The obvious decision is to change the single 3rd/present book to 3rd/past. It's the least amount of work to maintain a consistent voice across this body of work.

3rd/present isn't a choice I've seen in romance that I can recall. Then again, I read almost 100% fan fiction, so my knowledge of what's going on from that aspect of the publishing world is zip, zilch, nada. But I'm almost certain 3rd/past is still the most prevalent choice.

My perverse preference at this point is to publish what's in past tense as is and write in present tense from here on out. Why? Because it's different. It's outside the norm. Outside the box. And that can be really hard to find in romance.

While I'm not necessarily in this for the money, I don't want to shoot myself in the foot. I think a mix of tenses could be detrimental, and if I'm going to spend money on content/copy editors and professional looking covers, then I need to not make other decisions that potentially wastes those expenses.

Hm...got some thinking to do. Please feel free to share your thoughts!

How about something not related to writing??

DH and I finished our re-watch of The West Wing and decided on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. as the next TV show we watch together. He's seen it before. I have not.


Here's the blurb from Wikipedia: The series revolves around the character of Phil Coulson, with Clark Gregg reprising his role from the film series, and his team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, who must deal with various unusual cases and enemies, including Hydra and the Inhumans.

And the premise, also from Wiki:

The first season sees S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Phil Coulson putting together a small team of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to handle strange new cases. They investigate Project Centipede and its leader, "The Clairvoyant", eventually uncovering that the organization is backed by Hydra, which has infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. In the second season, following the destruction of S.H.I.E.L.D., now-Director Coulson and his team look to restore trust from the government and public while dealing with Hydra, a faction of anti-superhuman S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, and the newly revealed Inhumans (who possess special abilities).

During the third season, Coulson begins a secret mission to assemble the Secret Warriors, a team of Inhumans, as Hydra restores its ancient Inhuman leader Hive to power.[8] After the defeat of Hive and with Hydra destroyed, S.H.I.E.L.D. is made a legitimate organization once again for the fourth season, with the signing of the Sokovia Accords. Coulson returns to being a field agent, due to the world believing he is dead, and is tasked with tracking down more enhanced people–including Robbie Reyes / Ghost Rider–while Agent Leo Fitz and Dr. Holden Radcliffe complete their work on Life Model Decoys.

I haven't been overly impressed so far, although, maybe because it's based on Marvel comics, I need to adjust my expectations. I do like Clark Gregg and Ming-na Wen, and the hunky dude is definitely nice to look at. DH says it gets better. But it's part of the time DH spend together, so it doesn't matter much what we watch.

So any Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. watchers out there? Do you like it? Hate it?

Thousands of books are published on Amazon on a monthly basis. That's a lot of books to compete against, but the more specific your genre or niche is, the better your chances of being found by your target audience.

I'm not worried about my genre, it's one of the hottest on the romance market right now. So pfft.

As I've mentioned multiples times in the last few weeks, Book one is done and with an independent copy/content editor. (I should get it back today or this weekend. WHOOP!) Book two is 5K to 7K form being done and I'm working faithfully every day to get words on the page. Based on my words-per-day goal, the book should be finished in two weeks. (HA. We'll see.) Book three is in percolating/planning/plotting stages.

BUT

I have two other books--one almost complete and one actually complete--that I could tweak for inclusion in the continuity/series that the first three belong to. That's five books done and published within the next year. That's the goal anyway.

BUT (yes another one)

Book one will not be ready to go live until October at the soonest (because: cover). Book two's publication day target is January or February (it takes place over Valentine's day). Book three's target is late spring.

Of the two extra books, the ending of one also takes place at Valentine's Day and the other was written to take place in the fall, but could be easily tweaked to take place in spring.

SO

The question becomes publish them as they're ready and in conjunction with the time of year they happen OR save them all up and publish them at once or within a very short time frame (like a week)...?

Why publish them all at once? Well, because it used to be that the more books you had in Amazon's system, the better the algorithms would work for you. You know those "you might also enjoy" titles that pop up? Well, if you have more than one book, your other books will probably be listed first. If people liked your work, they're hopefully going to want to buy whatever else you've written. There are other factors too, that's just an example.

I have a friend who published that way and was earning four to six figures a month in pretty short order. She writes in another popular genre. My goal has never been money, but I'm certainly not going to say no. :)

I just don't know if that system works anymore though. Amazon tweaks their algorithms on a regular basis. But thinking logically and bearing in mind the above scenario. Pubbing them all at once seems like a smarter plan from that example alone, right?

Well, it's not something I have to decide until I have a cover in hand in October. I decided to hire out. I want good looking covers. Ones that definitely don't look like they could even remotely be homemade.

Any opinions on which way to publish?

The parts are in motion for getting my publishing journey off the ground, and so far, so good, really. I have covers for book one and book three. The cover for book two is giving me fits because I have no idea what I want it to look like, what aspects of the book I want represented.

So I've spent a lot of time searching stock photo sites for ideas, using various search terms. Ugh. It's tedious and it makes me sleepy, which is not a good thing in the middle of the day.

I have basic graphic skills. Covers one and three were super simple. I found images that worked as they were and conveyed the tone of the book pretty well. All that was really needed was title and author and series name. Text isn't difficult. Basic effects aren't hard.

I printed the covers and showed a couple of my chapter mates at my meeting. The one thing they all said was to make my name larger. Size is easy.

One friend, who admits she is super picky and a cover whore, thought it looked too homemade. Another friend who actually makes all her own covers didn't necessarily agree. Not that she strongly disagreed either, but she wasn't as horrified by the prospect. We pulled up Amazon and looked at books in the same genre to see what they looked like. Some looked like they could have been homemade, but it's super hard to tell, because a third friend published three books with a specific e-publisher, and her covers for those three books are awful. So...yeah.

The whole conversation begs the question: How much do I care?

Looking objectively as I can at cover one, it is rather simplistic. Is it too simplistic?

When looking on Amazon, there were a few other covers that were also on the basic side, so okay. But now I'm thinking it needs a little something more. And I have a couple of ideas as to what that 'more' could be. Back to the drawing board.

Book three's cover is simple as well, but the cute factor and the title font/effects counterbalances it. I think so anyway, and I love it so much I can hardly wait to write the book.

Now that I've pondered things for a couple of more days, I've realized most books are gonna require multiple images, cropped and layered and other things...things I don't want to mess with or just don't know how to do. So...

Adding cover artist research to the list of things to do.

How much of a factor is the cover for you? Does a good title make a difference if the cover is less than optimal?

This past Saturday was writers group meeting day, and one of my favorite days of the month. I get to hang out with some of my most favorite people in the world and sometimes I get to hear a really good speaker and learn some stuff. The speaker (a Harlequin editor for 25 years) was worthwhile for many, but her topic, "What Editors Want" was of little interest to me because I'm not following the traditional path of submitting to an editor of a Big Six (Five???) publisher. I'm self-pubbing, which means I can write and publish what I want. I don't have to get past an editorial gatekeeper.

BUT

As part of her programming for the weekend, she accepted (in advance) one page of writing from a certain sub-group of our chapter (to which I belong) and critiqued it. I couldn't pass up a chance to have my work in front of a professional's eyes.

Her comments were minor and a couple of them shouldn't have/wouldn't have even been an issue if I hadn't cheated and sent, not the very first page of book two, but the scene where my two protagonists meet, a page two farther into the book.

What I'd forgotten--because *I* of course know what happens--is that a couple of off hand internal comments made by one of the characters only made sense if you'd read the pages prior to the page I sent. Duh.

What that means though, is that because I know those things make sense within the whole text, they're a non-issue. Her other comment was valid, and I'll tweak the verbiage to address the issue. Everything else she said was positive, such as thinking one of my protags sounded interesting and she wanted to know more about him. Score!

A lot of writers I know feel, at some point during any given book, is that their writing is crap. For me to receive minimal constructive criticism meant a lot and really bolstered my confidence.

I'm starting the week with an increased enthusiasm for getting words on the page and completing book two.

Woot woot!!