"Brigitte" Has Dropped!

Use this link to purchase your own copy of “Brigitte,” Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor:

https://www.amazon.com/Brigitte-Tales-Vlaydor-Devin-Davis-ebook/dp/B09JBLF6XD/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=devin+davis+brigitte&qid=1634970266&sr=8-1

Become a patron today and get a copy of each of these short stories as they are released. Go to patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse today.

Also, Krissy Barton offers free consultations and sample edits. www.littlesyllables.com

The following is a transcript of this episode. The full transcript can be found on the show’s website.

[00:00:00] Are you in the market for some light reading, then you need to read "Brigitte," Tales from Vlaydor Installment One. Today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello! Hello! Hello. This is Devin Davis and you are Writing in the Tiny House. I am the guy in a tiny house in Northern Utah, who is here to show you the different ways to write the things, to write the fiction that you have in your brain, that you are convinced you are too busy to do.

[00:00:51] It's interesting sometimes recording podcasts, just because we record on a different day than we release things. And so today is not October 27th in my world, but this podcast is going to be released to the public on October 27th. If you are a patron, you're going to get this a few days before that.

[00:01:12] But all of this means that today in this magical world, October 27th, we are one day after the release of "Brigitte," Tales from Vlaydor, Installment One. And that is good news, my friends. This is the episode where I get to gush all about my writing and about this fun, little journey of this novelette and what it has taught me and what I have learned and grown from and where, and most importantly, I guess, where you can buy it.

[00:01:48] So let's actually deal with that first. "Brigitte" Tales from Vlaydor, Installment One is available on amazon.com as an ebook download. It costs $2 and 99 cents. So go there, follow the link in the show notes and go to there and get it today. There were a lot of people who reserved their thing. I did a pre-release for this book and I'm so glad that I did.

[00:02:12] I can delve into reasons why in another episode, I don't want to talk about the things that went wrong. So instead follow the link in the show notes and go to amazon.com and you can search for Devin Davis. And you can search for Brigitte which is the French spelling spelled B R I G I T T E, Tales from Vlaydor, Installment One.

[00:02:38] Anyway, it is available. It is affordable and it is really good. It's a good short story, guys. I have had really good feedback from this from very trusted sources, and I am proud as proud to release this to you and to have it available for people to go to and find it and buy it. And so yeah, this is an example of, I guess, following your own advice. The things with with this podcast that I share, I do those things, and I had the goals starting in September to get this short story underway. And I gave myself an extra week, but I wanted a short story or a novelette cranked out in eight weeks. And because this was the first one in a long time and I needed to re-establish all of my systems for it and reach out to friends and family and people who would be interested in helping me out.

[00:03:38] Just because so many works of fiction, especially if you are writing to market, if you are writing to sell your stuff, you need to involve other people. You need to consistently get other people's points of view, just because they will see things that you might miss. And if you are hoping to make money on your writing, you need to get additional points of view and other opinions.

[00:04:04] So I knew from the beginning with this first installment of Tales from Vlaydor with Brigitte that I would need some extra grace time to get all of those systems in place again, just because it has been a minute since I have written something that would go along the different steps of editing so rapidly.

[00:04:25] And so, yeah, reaching out and contacting and phone calls and emails. All the social media contacts, all the things. So I gave myself some wiggle room and I was able to do it in eight weeks. I was actually able to do it sooner than that. And that's cool. That means that I can do this again.

[00:04:47] And so starting November 1st with NaNoWriMo, I will be working on installment two of Tales from Vlaydor entitled Otto. So it's a different story in a different city of the land, and it's going to be another fun ride, friends, another fun novelette or short story. I haven't started drafting it yet, so I don't know exactly how long it will be, but I think it'll be comparable to Brigitte, which tows the line between short story and novelette and falls in novelette. That is the next project. And I am stoked for it. I'm stoked for NaNoWriMo. I'm stoked and scared to have another thing to write, another thing to draft, but a good friend and I have already been brainstorming what the story of Otto can actually look like.

[00:05:43] And so it's something that I already have an amount of clarity on. And so getting started isn't going to be hard. It's not going to, I mean, it will definitely be work, but it's not going to be impossible to do. And it's something that I'm eager to do. So during this whole process there were people that I asked to read Bridgette, there were people who gave good feedback.

[00:06:07] There were people who showed me that they are willing to support my work, which is cool. All the people, when I announced on this podcast and on my social media, that Brigitte was available for pre-order, there were a lot of people who immediately pre-ordered and I am just going to publicly say, thank you.

[00:06:27] That is really a cool thing for me. And that is really reassuring to me. I absolutely love that. And so thank you for all of the pre-orders. However, I am not living under a rock. I'm living in a tiny house and I know that most people do not pre-order. And so thanks in advance to everybody who orders a digital copy of Brigitte and I'm excited to see what happens with this, guys.

[00:06:55] I'm really excited about this. I'm excited to do another thing that should be released around Christmas, and it's just going to be good times. So things that I have learned. I have found that I can crank out a pretty good story in one week. That's how long it took me to draft Brigitte.

[00:07:15] It took me about nine or 10 hours of drafting And I think about nine. And I have found that I have wonderful people in my circle who are more than willing to bounce ideas back and forth off of me. And they are excited to see what comes of it all. There are so many people who love fiction, who simply don't write it.

[00:07:37] And so to have them involved with this and to allow them the chance to give feedback and give ideas and do the back and forth, was a really cool thing. I could tell that they were edified by that as much as I was. To have that exchange and to have that back and forth was so good. That's a good thing.

[00:07:59] I think I said earlier in this episode that I actually completed Brigitte sooner than in the eight weeks that I was expecting. I actually completed it in about six maybe even five. There were some things that did not take nearly as long as I was expecting them to do. And the main thing was my editor, Krissy Barton from Little Syllables Editing is fast.

[00:08:27] She is always in contact with the people that she is working with. And she did a great job with the line and copy editing and the proofread of this book, of this novelette. And so. Little syllables editing. She is, I mean, that business is kind of the editor on board with this entire Tales from Vlaydor project.

[00:08:49] And so of course, I'm going to give her a shout out because she did a great job. So that was the thing that I was able to save some time on. There were a couple other steps too that simply didn't take as long as I was expecting, I had. Eight weeks in a spreadsheet. And I had planned out in two-hour blocks, what I would be doing just because I usually have about two hours to work on stuff. 

[00:09:16] With this next installment with Otto, it's entirely possible that I will be thrown to the wolves with this next installment with Otto. And that here I am spouting all of these wonderful things about how efficient the process was. And maybe with Otto it's going to be kind of a car wreck or a garbage fire.

[00:09:37] One thing that I was able to try. And that I was able to do and that we are still deliberating back and forth on is I sat down and I have always had the desire to narrate my own books. And so I took my audio equipment and I managed to make the tiny house as quiet as I could make it just because there are certain technical requirements for audio books.

[00:10:04] If you wish to publish them to audible, which I do. And I sat down and I recorded Bridgette twice. And the thing is, guys, the audio for it. This is the first, you know, audio narration that I have ever done, but it was so fun to record all of this. I am still in the middle of editing. I think that once we nail this down and we decide that it's a good thing to do, I'll be able to release this to audible at about the same, I mean, closely after the ebook is released on Amazon. I was able to sit down. I was able to narrate, I was able to just do all of that, which is what I've wanted to do for such a long time. I have found out though, why audio books often take a while after the printed book is released. It is more expensive to produce an audio book. So with this, there were parts in the audio that had to be recorded several times. There were parts in the book that it was not just about making the text pretty, just because there is no text in the audio.

[00:11:22] It was about sound. It was about pronunciation. It was about tripping over my tongue. It was, it was about reading. It was about staying close enough or far enough away from the microphone. It was about all of those things. Also, it has been a really rainy October in Utah. And so I wasn't able to record on some of the days just because of rain and I didn't want to have to deal with rain in the background. And so turning the tiny house into a recording studio is not necessarily the most ideal thing, but I think it worked. I'm goingto see though, I'm going to have to see if it's okay.

[00:12:05] Like I said, there are technical requirements to audio files if you hope to publish to audible. And I think that I will be squeaking in pretty easily. If not, I can send it to an audio engineer to kind of clean up the noise floor of the files a little bit, a very little bit. I was surprised at how well the things turned out recording in the tiny house.

[00:12:30] So yay for all of that. Brigitte released October 26th. It is now available to purchase because today is October 27th. And look for the audio version of Tales from Vlaydor Installment One, Brigitte in audible coming up soon, I will keep you abreast with this podcast as far as how that is going.

[00:12:58] But guys, here is one of the big take homes that I want to include with this podcast. Now is a great time to become a patron of this show. I'm grateful for the patrons that I already have for their donations, just because they wanted to support the podcast.

[00:13:17] And they believed that the podcast is such a good resource and something that was worth supporting financially. And I have been so grateful for, I mean, I treat them, I see them as gifts. Those monthly installments are gifts to me, but now if you have been on the fence of becoming a patron to Writing in the Tiny House, now is a good time to join. If you go to patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse and sign up, you will see that, with these installments that I'm writing, I am going to be providing electronic versions of these short stories to my patrons as they are published. And so if you want to be one of the first people to get a copy, or perhaps even a few days in advance, a copy of these installments of Tales from Vlaydor as they are released, I will likely also release the audio to my patrons.

[00:14:20] If you're interested in an audio book, I'll see how all of that works. Audio books are kind of are kind of ratty. I mean, it's a lot of different files that a program ties together. And so we'll see how that goes. I think I can make it work though. But absolutely yes, the eBooks of these small installments of Tales from Vlaydor I release those to my patrons.

[00:14:45] And then they are available to purchase on amazon.com. So if you sign up as a patron today, you will be receiving as a thank you, a copy of Brigitte. And in December, when I publish the next installment, Otto, you will receive an ebook of that too. So go onto patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse and become a patron today.

[00:15:14] So that's it for today. Follow the link in the show notes and navigate to amazon.com today and purchase your copy of "Brigitte," Installment One of Tales from Vlaydor. And be sure to follow me on my social media. My Instagram handle is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is @authordevind.

[00:15:37] And that is it for today. Thank you for joining me and have fun writing.

Check out this episode!

Judging a Book by its Cover

Tales from Vlaydor, Installment One: “Brigitte” is available to pre-order on Amazon.com. Just follow this link and purchase your copy today!

https://www.amazon.com/Brigitte-Tales-Vlaydor-Devin-Davis-ebook/dp/B09JBLF6XD/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=devin+davis+brigitte&qid=1634360829&sr=8-1

If you wish to become a patron and receive an electronic copy of these shorter works when they are released, go to patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse today to sign up.

Also, visit www.littlesyllables.com to get ahold of Krissy Barton to get your current work in progress edited!

The following is a transcript of this episode. A complete transcript can be found on the podcast’s website.

[00:00:00] Today, it's all about DIY books. And just like cooking, dIY can be the very best way to go, but sometimes you really need to know how to do it right, today on Writing in the Tiny House. Hello. Hello. Hello, and welcome to Writing in the Tiny house. Welcome back to the show. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy living in a tiny house, giving you all the tips and tricks as to how it is to write a book and to show you that whatever you have bubbling around in your brain, that work of fiction, is completely possible to do no matter how busy you believe that you are. So today we are going to break down a little bit about DIY books, sometimes referred to as self-published just as a way to pay attention to some very technical things that will get your book judged unfairly right out of the gate.

[00:01:24] So just some quick announcements, you know, that my collection of short stories Tales from Vlaydor, the first installment has been completed. The first installment is called Brigitte, and it is currently available for pre-order. So, if you follow the link in the show notes, it will take you to the Amazon page where you can pre-order your own digital copy of Brigitte, which is installment one of Tales from Vlaydor.

[00:01:56] And that is super exciting because it has been a while since I released anything. And I know that you guys are interested in seeing how I write. With this podcast, it is easy for me to share all of the advice and give all of the tips and tricks, like I said, but sometimes it is really valuable to see a person practice what they preach.

[00:02:21] And so it's important to me to share this. So that is what we're doing. That is what Brigitte and this Tales from Vlaydor collection of short stories and novelettes is all about. It is about me showing you the things that I can do so that you can see that these steps and these different things that I suggest actually work.

[00:02:44] And that matters. So as you remember, this entire Tales from Vlaydor project is a big undertaking. It's something that I'm going to be releasing every two months, a new installment every two months. And I've actually been brainstorming with one of my dear friends to get the next installment underway already.

[00:03:06] And it's so fun. However, I cannot do any of this without an editor. The editor for my Tales from Vlaydor collection is Krissy Barton from Little Syllables editing and she's wonderful, friends. She is fast. She is always in communication with the authors of the things that she is editing.

[00:03:25] And she's great. She did the line edits and the copy edits, and then the final proofread of Brigitte, and she was so fast to get it back to me. So if you have a work in progress and you need to find your own editor, go ahead and reach out to Krissy Barton at Little Syllables editing. And I have her websites in the show notes as well.

[00:03:54] She does free consultations. She does a free sample edit. And then you can see if you guys will make a good fit. So let's dive right in to picking apart a DIY book. Just some technical things to pay attention to that are easy to see, easy to fix, some things that are easy to monitor if you choose to go the self-published route. It is 100% possible nowadays to crank out self published content that is as good as if not better than some traditionally published stuff.

[00:04:34] However, The thing about the traditionally published works is they have a publishing house backing them up. And a publishing house has been doing this for a very long time. It is how they have been making money. It's how they've been providing jobs. And so they know how to do it. They know how to do the marketing, they know how to follow trends and they know what is currently selling.

[00:04:58] That is why traditional publishing is still a big thing. And that's why it is going to stick around for such a long time. However, for those of us who want to self-publish, there are still some things that we can do so that we can have quality that is equivalent to that. Equivalent, if not better. All of the resources are available to us.

[00:05:23] We just need to know what they are and how to employ them. So with a self published book. And if you are hoping to write to make money, which means if you are writing things, hoping to sell those things in exchange for money. There are some guidelines and there are some expectations that you need to be aware of before you even get started.

[00:05:51] If you are a hobbyist writer writing just for yourself and you never expect anybody else to read what you're writing, or at least maybe not more than a group of friends or your close family, and you're not expecting to sell bunches and bunches of copies of some of the things that you're doing. Then what I'm about to say, doesn't really apply.

[00:06:14] However, if you are hoping to sell your stuff, you are writing to market, which means you always get to be towing the line between being creative and new. And fitting in with what is already working, and that is in every single aspect of your book. You need to find a way to be creative and new while at the same time, be understood for what you are.

[00:06:46] The first example that I have to illustrate this is your book cover. If your book cover. Looks really homemade. Let's say that you did a fantasy novel and the book cover is just a fun gradient with white text on it. That kind of looks like a technical book. That kind of looks like a manual for a computer. That kind of looks like those different types of books.

[00:07:15] And so if someone were to see your book, your fantasy book with this white text against a solid color background, they will not fit it in with what they perceive fantasy books to be. I ran into this problem. I already had a consultation with one of the books that I've been writing with The Paper Witch. I had a consultation with a designer already, and I had some really fun ideas.

[00:07:47] So the whole thing takes place in a Victorian era equivalent. I mean, it's a different world, but, it's that feeling. So it's bustled dresses. It's three-piece suits. It's those different things that we tie into what the Victorian era is. And I was thinking that maybe the cover could be one of those prints that you see in an old magazine, like one color, maybe one or two colors, one of those prints that would have been stamped or etched onto the paper during printing. Just because that would fit in perfectly with the time period. And my designer had a very good point that regardless of what we're doing, a potential reader needs to be able to see the cover and first be interested by the cover, but then associate it with the genre it belongs in. And so the ideas that I had didn't really work for that. They were fun, ideas, fun, original ideas.

[00:08:57] They're probably just going to be my ideas and they're not going to be what we're going to do for those books. And we're going to go a different direction once I have those books finished. That is the whole thing about all of this. If you are writing to sell, it means that you are going to be exchanging your work to someone for money.

[00:09:22] And that means that you get to be aware that they have certain ideas and expectations of what your work is, so that they will be satisfied with that exchange. With the content of your book. So we're not going to touch on content in this episode of Writing in the Tiny House, content will be another day.

[00:09:44] I've I have talked about content a lot already. We're just going to talk about technical things. So with the cover of your book, it needs to catch their attention. At the same time it needs to identify with the genre that it belongs in. All of that is subjective. And if you need additional opinions on if your book cover works, be sure to gather those opinions. Be sure to pay the money, to have a consultation with a designer so that they can give you good professional feedback on what is working and what is not working.

[00:10:25] Another thing is it needs to be readable. So if it's a thing where it's a part of a larger series and there's going to be a lot of text on that book cover, the text needs to make sense. And so if you have titles and subtitles and the title of the series that it belongs to and whatever else and your name and perhaps your character's names.

[00:10:52] And I don't know. I saw the cover of a self published book that had about four or five different titles on it. Or at least five different lines of texts that represented different things on the cover. And so it was the author's name. It was the author like who the author, I guess is, it was the title of the book.

[00:11:20] It was the title of the series. And then it was the grouping of the series or something. It was way too much text. Make sure that what you have there is readable. With my first book, As Magic Shifts, the artist who did the art, also wanted to do the book cover, and he did at first the entire title of the book As Magic Shifts in this super unique original art work. He changed the text into like magical smoke and it was beautiful to see, it was bright in colors. It was a fun idea. It had really good energy, but it was hard to read As Magic Shifts wasn't really readable as a title. And so while I was consulting with my book producer with that, we had him instead just keep the word magic as this stylized artwork.

[00:12:29] And then with a more traditional font did as and shifts. So it read a lot better. So pay attention to that with your book cover. Moving onto the body of your text. I will say it every single episode. You need to have an editor, but here's the thing. When we're writing a story, we start with really big ideas and refining those ideas is called the developmental edits. And then getting down to the more fine tooth comb stuff, we get down to line edits, which is the flow of the sentence. We get down to copy edits, which is word usage and such. And then when we are done with everything and the book is laid out, we do the final proofread, which is misspellings, commas, formatting errors, different stuff like that. So as an author, we start really big picture and we get down to the really small technical stuff at the end. With reading a book like this, oftentimes it starts with the really small, simple things that get in the way of the bigger things.

[00:13:41] It's like the smaller technical things unfold to reveal the bigger picture. And if the smaller technical things are not in place to begin with that unfolding doesn't happen as well. So that means, when we're reading. If we see a misspelled word, we can often forgive that. If we see a couple of misspelled words, we can probably get past it.

[00:14:06] If we see, you know, comma mistakes, or if there is a paragraph of a quotation and the quotation marks at the end are missing. Or some little things like that. And they only happen once. Most of the time we can get by. If there are repeated words, just the, just the little things or they forgot to italicize the title of a book.

[00:14:31] Or whatever. Your reader can forgive some of those things, if they happen only once that does not mean that you get to be lazy and think that, you know, oh, I saw the one misspelling. So this is okay. If you saw one misspelling odds are, there's like five more. With the little things, if there are so many mistakes, the reader cannot appreciate the words that you use. The reader cannot appreciate the flow of your sentences. Odds are the flow of your sentences will be hindered by those mistakes. And if the reader cannot appreciate the flow of your sentences, they can't appreciate the flow of the structure of the book itself.

[00:15:15] And then they can't come to appreciate the larger idea. And so the content will be missed if these smaller things don't happen. So as far as misspelled words go, there are plenty of resources in this world to deal with misspelled words. One of them that I used and I used with Brigitte and I will use again with the next installment of Tales from Vlaydor is Pro Writing Aid.

[00:15:42] It's a tool that does word correction. It does misspellings. It also does some grammar and some style stuff. It does not replace an editor. And at the end of it all, you need to have an editor. I have read some self published books that went through pro writing aid and nothing else. And it shows. 

[00:16:02] Also you need a professional layout, which means that your book gets to resemble the quality of a professional book. You get to have indented paragraphs, you are not writing a blog. You get to have the chapter headings and the chapters and the different things be laid out to make sense if they aren't, your reader will pick up on it and they'll be bugged by it, even if they don't fully understand what makes them bugged. 

[00:16:35] And with the self-published things sometimes to websites like amazon.com, it's possible to upload a book that is not an EPUB book. Sometimes you can upload a PDF. And the reason why I bring this up is because many of us read on e-readers now or on programs on our phones or on our computers that allow us to access EPUB books.

[00:17:05] And if you upload a PDF version of your book, these programs will be able to display your book. But they won't be as easy to read. The thing is an EPUB book fits better into an E reader into an E reader program than a PDF does. It allows you to adjust the text size and the font. If you upload a PDF, you can't do that.

[00:17:38] And so your e-reader or your e-reader program, won't be fun to use, and it might be a bother to read the manuscript. So just pay attention to those things. As far as a formatting program goes, it is possible to get a good ePUB format thing from various different programs, probably even from word. I recommend something that you know, how to do, and I always recommend flipping through what you just compiled into an EPUB to make sure that it all makes sense and to make sure that it worked just because sometimes the formatting isn't very intuitive and the program isn't very friendly.

[00:18:24] And it's possible to just make mistakes. And so it's best to go through and flip through what you've done. If you are laying out a novel, I recommend something more like Vellum, Which is better at laying out the larger projects. If you are writing short stories in Scrivener, and you want to use Scrivener to compile them into an E pub, then Scrivener can certainly handle it and can do a very good job. I wouldn't however, compile an entire novel of a hundred thousand words from Scrivener.

[00:19:05] I would import it into Velum first, or I would hire someone to do it for me. Just because readers see the mistakes. And if there are enough mistakes, even if the reader doesn't fully understand what they are getting hung up on, they're not going to purchase from you again. If what you have provided for them in exchange for money is hard to read,

[00:19:31] they won't understand the point of your writing. They won't fall in love with, with your imagination and with the vision that you have behind your fiction. And they likely won't read your future works again. However, if all of these tiles are in place, then the stuff you publish now will sell the stuff you publish tomorrow.

[00:20:00] That means that if somebody reads your stuff now and has a great experience, they will very likely read your next work and have a good experience there too. It also means that a reader down the road, for instance, if a reader stumbles upon my name next year, and I have six of these short stories released to amazon.com and they stumble upon the final installment of the short stories and they read it and they love it,

[00:20:31] it means that the new stuff will also sell the old stuff so long as you have all of those tiles in place technically. We're going to talk about content later. You don't just get to publish garbage. 

[00:20:45] So that's it for today. Thank you so much for joining me. Just a brief reminder, the first installment of my Tales from Vlaydor collection, which is entitled Brigitte is now available for pre-order. Please follow the link in the show notes because it can be hard to find on Amazon if you don't follow the link that I will provide in the show notes. A big thank you to my patrons, without your generous donations this show may not be possible. And if you wish to become a patron, go to patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse and at no additional cost to your generous donations, you will receive a free electronic copy of the short stories that I am providing in these upcoming months, including Installment one, Brigitte.

[00:21:38] So thank you so much for all of this. Be sure to tune in to my social media accounts, my instagram handle is@authordevindavis. And my Twitter handle is @authordevind. Thank you so much for your time, guys. Be sure to tune in next week and have fun writing.

Check out this episode!

Preptober Has Begun!

Become a patron today! Visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse

Also, for all of your editing needs, to go www.littlesyllables.com

Krissy Barton offers free sample critiques, and she is a wonderful professional to be involved with for all of your line editing, copy editing, and proofreading needs.

The following is a transcript of this episode. For a complete transcript, please visit the show’s website.

[00:00:00] In all of your time writing the works that you're doing, did you ever think to try to crank out 50,000 words in a single month then perhaps you are gearing up for the national novel writing month that happens every year in November, also known as NaNoWriMo. And we are talking about preparing for that today on Writing in the Tiny House.

[00:00:34] Hello. Hello. Hello. And welcome back to the show. Welcome to Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and I give you the tips and tricks to writing that work of fiction that you have in your brain that you think you are too busy to write, but I'm here to show you that it's completely possible.

[00:01:14] And here I am in Northern Utah living in my tiny house. We had a hiatus and we went to Hawaii not too long ago. And I have said in a few episodes that we are going to be hitting NaNoWriMo pretty strongly this year. I missed out on NaNoWriMo last year. I missed November and NaNoWriMo is a great time of the year. It is where we celebrate making progress in that work of fiction that you're doing or whatever it is you're writing. 

[00:01:46] Today in order to make sure that NaNoWriMo is successful, we have what is called Preptober where we go through, we organize our notes. We figure out our schedule and we do all of the things as a way to make sure that NaNoWriMo is going to be successful. That is what we are going to be covering today. But first I need to say a couple things about my current work in progress. Many of you know that I have been working on a novelette the, it is Tales from Vlaydor, Installment One: Brigitte. And it has gone to the editor and the editor has kicked back the edits.

[00:02:30] And so I am doing the final cleanup before laying it out, sending it back to my editor for a final proofread and then releasing it on Amazon. Some of my writing is going to be available for all of you to read and destroy. If you want to, it can be really nerve wracking, releasing something like this.

[00:02:54] But I just need to give a shout out to Krissy Barton, my resident editor for this project with Tales from Vlaydor. She runs a business called Little Syllables editing, and she is great. She is fast. She is in constant communication with the author of whatever she. Editing and she has incredible customer service. She does line edits and copy edits, and then the final proofread.

[00:03:28] So if you want prices, she is affordable. Go ahead and go to little syllables.com and I will have the website in the show notes of this episode. Krissy Barton is amazing. Please send her all of your business. 

[00:03:44] Let's talk about Preptober. Let's talk about making NaNoWriMo count. So the whole goal of NaNoWriMo is to do a 50,000 word manuscript in one month. It is to make 50,000 words of progress in whatever work you are doing in the month of November. And I have interviewed people on this podcast or at least one person specifically AJ Mac who did that.

[00:04:10] And he cranked out his first novel because of NaNoWriMo. He had the idea already, but he didn't have the push to get it finished. And so he did his Preptober correctly so that he could do his NaNoWriMo most effectively. So NaNoWriMo is technically a competition, but it is a self paced competition.

[00:04:33] Meaning you are not actually racing against anybody unless you join a Facebook group that is racing against something. And it is all about just accomplishing things. And so if you manage to write 50,000 words and NaNoWriMo, nobody is going to question your work, but they give you a thing to print out, to display like a certificate, and it can be a super fun way to bring like-minded people together who enjoy the craft of writing and storytelling.

[00:05:03] So let's talk about what Preptober gets to be in order to understand what NaNoWriMo can be, which will be in a future episode. First of all, to write 50,000 words in a month means that you need to crank out about, let me hurry and figure this out. Let's see, 50,000 words divided by 30. That means you need to crank out an average of 1,667 words every day. Now I'm going to be upfront with you. I'm going to be very serious about NaNoWriMo, but I don't think that I am going to make a 50,000 word progress on anything just because I am on this release schedule with these short stories and novelettes for Tales from Vlaydor.

[00:05:53] Which means there are automatically going to be some days that need to be dedicated in my case, that needs to be dedicated toward revision and toward editing. And so that is already built into the month. I don't have a way to really change that. And it's important to me to stay on this schedule because I want to release at least two of these short stories by the end of the year. if you have not written 1,667 words in a day before, but you want to do NaNoWriMo, I highly recommend that you find some time in Preptober to try it. Set some time aside, have some notes ready, have an outline ready for whatever it is t hat you're going to be writing. I recommend doing it in 25 minute bursts, and then you recover for five minutes and then you do 25 minute bursts again. Those are called writing sprints. It's something that a lot of people do in order to make good progress and to stay on task and to not be overwhelmed by your writing. But you need to measure that baseline for how fast you write and how much of it at a time you can tolerate. So for me, I personally prefer setting aside at least one hour, if not, two hours to write.

[00:07:14] And I know that in two hours time, I can crank out 2,500 words. If I set myself to a clock and do these writing sprints, and I don't get caught up in editing too much. If you have never written things before, or if you have not written things in a long while, or if the things that you have written have not been on a computer and they have been long hand in a journal, or in some other medium like that, you may want to set some time aside to see what your rate is and how much of it you can tolerate.

[00:07:51] So once you have that figured out, you can then look at your month of November and see what your schedule is for the entire month of November. Just because if 1,667 words is all that you can handle, which is perfectly fine. I know plenty of published authors who write half of that every day or in the times that they choose to write and they do just fine with what they're doing.

[00:08:23] They usually don't do a big push for NaNoWriMo also, but if 1,667 words is the limit, then that means that you need to do it every single day. If you're hoping to reach 50,000 words in November. And so that means that you get to look at your schedule and you get to set that time aside.

[00:08:42] If you live alone and you are completely reclusive and you don't have any obligations outside of your bubble, then it should be easier to set time aside to do this. If you want to. However, if you are like me and you are juggling a family and you are juggling a full-time job and other things, I still have this podcast to do during November and realistically, I don't think that I'm going to be recording four episodes ahead of time.

[00:09:11] So that I don't have to record anything in November. I just don't foresee that happening. Then it means that you need to set aside a time to do that. And. You can do more than 1,667 words every day. Then you can figure out when you need to take your days off, or if there are other obligations that come up that need to be considered so that you can reach that 50,000 word mark.

[00:09:38] By the end of the month, I told you with my podcast and with writing these short stories and being on the release schedule that I'm on, I'm not going to be able to honor a 50,000 word. By the end of November. However, I think that I can get close to half of that and considering all of these other things that I'm doing during that month, I think that's pretty.

[00:10:02] Okay. So we'll see, I will fill you in as it goes and it's going to be an awesome thing, guys. I'm excited to do NaNoWriMo. Excited to have you guys I'll do it with me. So know your schedule, know your limits, sit down and plan out what you're going to be doing with your schedule and your limits. And then guys, November is a time to bust out words.

[00:10:29] If busting out words aggressively. At a very reckless, rough pace that is going to require hella revisions at the end of November is not your style. Then don't participate in NaNoWriMo. However, if you want to go all out and make a ton of progress in your novels. The thing is I find most of my magic in revising what I've written anyway.

[00:10:58] And so it's okay if my first drafts are really rough, I like to crank out larger volumes at a time. And so this totally works for me, but in order to be prepared for that, I know that I need to have at least something outlined. I'm not much of an outliner. I don't like to have an outline. Like the outline that I prepared for my novels was like three pages long.

[00:11:23] And this was back when the two novels that I'm writing were in one manuscript. And so this was going to be at that time, a 200,000 word document, and I had like a three page outline. I prefer to revise, revise, revise. It all just depends on what you prefer. And there is no right or wrong answer. I love revising, but I also know that unless I understand what I am about to sit down and write, I will struggle with the writing sprints.

[00:11:59] So it is really, really valuable to me. To at least have some notes to have at least a skeleton outline of what I'm going to be doing so that I don't encounter writer's block or I don't encounter writer's block as much. There is always a chance that in the middle of all of this frantic fever, Writing a pounding on your keyboard and staring at your word processor.

[00:12:28] There is always a chance that you're going to need to take a second to step back and outline a little more. I do it regularly with my books. My outlines tend to be pretty dynamic and. It is important to understand that the more you have outlined the less you are going to encounter the possibility of writer's block.

[00:12:49] And that means that you can push through every single day until you reach that 50,000 word count at the end of NaNoWriMo. So with that, I intend to finish the rough draft of at least one short story and have well. I intend to finish the first and second drafts of at least one short story and have the rough draft of a second short story finished.

[00:13:18] I'm also going to be staying up to date with this podcast. I'm not going to be skipping episodes in November, and if I choose to get my crap together, I might, pre-record a few things so that in November, I have more time to focus. Writing and less on talking about writing. So we'll see what I managed to actually do. I am envisioning and I am purposefully creating time in November to revisit the novels that I was writing earlier this winter, this previous winter and spring, just because it has been a minute. And I feel that I am ready to make some more progress with that. And I'm excited to revisit some of that and to add some parts that have been bubbling around in my brain and.

[00:14:07] I'm eager to make more progress with that. So it's going to be a first and second draft of one of these short stories, a rough draft of another, and some more headway in the novels that I have not finished. And like I said, I will touch base with you every single Wednesday. If you are a patron, it will be on Saturdays.

[00:14:31] Just to share with you the progress. This episode is going to be released to the public October 15th. And so that gives us two solid weeks to fit in a good prep Tober so that we can be prepared. And have all of our notes together so that we don't encounter writer's block during NaNoWriMo. And that means that even if we are furiously writing and composing and drafting and all the other words that mean writing in November, it means that what we write will be more focused and it will be more clean and it will have a better plot.

[00:15:12] It will have a better structure, without doing all of that work beforehand, you risk having a plot that doesn't make sense. You risk having some very fundamental problems. So do your prep. Tobar guys. Thank you so much for tuning in today. I love every single one of you, people who subscribe to this show, even if I don't entirely know who you are, if you wish to become a Patron and support this show. It is because of the generous donations of my patrons that this show is possible. Please go to patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse and sign up to become a patron today. Also follow me on my social media. My Instagram handle is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is @authordevind. Again, thank you so much for tuning in today and have fun writing.

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The following is a transcript of this episode. I complete transcript can be found on the show’s webpage.

[00:00:00] That's right guys. We are back in the tiny house with tiny house acoustics and you are listening to the podcast Writing in the Tiny House. Hello. Hello. Hello. And welcome back to the show. Welcome back to Writing in the Tiny House. I am your host Devin Davis, and I am the guy who lives in a tiny house who is here to show you did that work of fiction that you have bubbling around in your brain is completely possible to write, no matter how busy you feel that you are with your nine to five. I am safely back in Utah. Thank goodness. The journey home was pretty long. I traveling is so weird now. To fly back from Hawaii, it seems that the only way to do it is through a red eye flight.

[00:01:13] And I couldn't sleep on the red eye at all. And when I arrived in Phoenix, because flights, I had a 10 hour layover in Phoenix, it ended up being a 10 and a half hour layover in Phoenix because the red eye flight got in early. So anyway, I have spent more than enough time for the next long while in airports and airplanes and face masks, and all that stuff. During the 20 hours that I was either on a plane or in an airport, I was also in a face mask and I was tired of wearing one when I got home. So anyway, we are back, we are here. I have some fun things to share with you guys in later episodes likely for November that I got to do in Hawaii.

[00:02:07] And we're going to be sharing some of that during the episodes that we released for NaNoWriMo. So be sure to like, and subscribe, I don't know about liking, be sure to give us a five-star rating and subscribe to this podcast. So you don't miss out on the NaNoWriMo push that we do in November.

[00:02:28] Before we get into the topic of today's episode, let me go ahead and give a shout out to Krissy Barton with Little Syllables editing, she is a wonderful editor. She is fast. She is comprehensive and she keeps in good communication with the author of the work that she is editing, which is rare. And so anyway, she is the resident editor for the Tales from Vlaydor collection of short stories and novelettes that I am putting together and working on now. And if you have anything that you wish to have a professional look over get ahold of her. I will include her website in the show notes of this episode. And she's great. It is worth it every single time to get an editor on board to whatever your work in progress is.

[00:03:18] So guys, Little Syllables editing with Krissy Barton is definitely the way to go. So today we know that I have been working on novelettes and short stories. It has been the main theme of the past few episodes. And today I have another thing to share in regards to that, in regards to the tips and tricks to get your novelette or short story off the ground, this is a way for developmental editing.

[00:03:47] And when I read it, I thought, nah, I don't think I would ever do this, but here's what the deal is. Here's what the tip is. The recommendation, the advice comes from the book, a swim in a pond in the rain. I have referenced this book before on previous episodes when I shared the thing about the cat. The metaphorical cat is what I called it. Describing one thing in a room so that your reader can accept the room without you having to go into too many detail about it, because in a short story or a novelette or frankly, a novel, there is not enough room.

[00:04:34] Every single paragraph, every single page, everything has to be. On point and there is no room for fluffer in these shorter works. And so, unless it is super important to describe the entire room, which I don't see many instances in which that would apply a trick is to describe one thing in the room.

[00:04:58] And then we can accept the rest of the room. The rest of the room can be filled in with our brains and we can carry on with whatever the story is. This trick that I'm about to share is it's more of an exercise, but it's very important when we do these shorter works, there is less content there. That does not mean that there is less meaning there.

[00:05:22] And it doesn't mean that it's less important. It just simply means there's not as much room. There's not as much text. And so delving into things like story arcs and subplots and whatever else, likely in a short story, there is not going to be a subplot. And if there is, there will only be one, if there's a subplot at all.

[00:05:46] And so. Sometimes with developmental editing, there is kind of less of a story to see and less of doing the sluthing to pick out what the plots and the subplots are in order to make sure that they all make sense. So this is another process that you can do. You can either do it with your short story.

[00:06:08] You can do it with your shorter works in progress, or you can do this with every chapter of your book. So every now and again, we have a thing and we print it. I personally don't own a printer, but it is possible to print a thing. And then. Mix up the pages so that when you read it, you can consider each page on its own.

[00:06:35] Go through and read each page completely out of context, read it and see if there are points in it. That makes sense. If there are important things that stand out. And if the idea by itself as a page is something that you want to continue on with. So we say that the reasons why people will continue to read any work of progress is due to suspense or it's due to fun imagery or it's due to humor.

[00:07:09] All of that can be true, but what it boils down to is people continue reading simply because they want to read the next line. However you have chosen to build that. So if we take each page out of context and we see what is there, unrelated to the page that comes before it and the page after it. And we're able to write in the margins or in a notebook or somewhere, what good points are in that page.

[00:07:43] It can be an easy way and a very good way to first find the pages that are awesome to find the pages that rock, to find the good points and the really exciting moments and the funny parts and whatever, and absolutely nail that down and know where it is. But, and equally as important, we can nail down the fluffer parts.

[00:08:13] Sometimes when we read a section or a page or even a short story, there are moments where the story drags by. And sometimes because we are so close to the story and we're so close to the flow of things, it can be hard for us to pin down where it started dragging and where it stopped dragging. Sometimes that can be hard to pay attention to, and just find. If we read pages out of context, we can think to ourselves, oh my goodness, this entire page is so boring.

[00:08:52] Or we can see that the first half has good stuff, but the second half sucks. Or whatever, or we can see that this one paragraph at the top is fluffer, but the rest of it's pretty good. It's an easy way for us to break down the story itself. And find the things that work and the things that don't work. So for something like the novelette Brigitte, it's 50 pages, this process would take a while to do, but you can understand the importance of it.

[00:09:28] So you take your random page. I mean, if you choose to keep it in your word processor, if you choose to print it out and do what I suggested, you know, a second ago, that's up to you and. You read the page, just what's on the page. Even if it doesn't start with a complete sentence, read it anyway, and then summarize the points that are there.

[00:09:54] It's a way to see if not only if it's good or bad stuff, but sometimes in a short story. It can be hard to actually put together a story. And so picking out the important parts and summarizing up to the very end, what is there can also be a way for you to pin down where the story is. There can be parts in the story.

[00:10:20] Not only that are fluffer, but that don't relate to the story at all that are simply there because it was fun to write them. And perhaps as the development of the story happened, you needed to write them in order to get the next parts out of your brain. But that doesn't mean that you should keep them. And so sometimes when we're so close to a story, we can't see the nonsense and we can't see. Some of this stuff that we've worked so hard and spent so much time on. Sometimes doesn't need to be there while I was in Mililani Hawaii. I cut out eight pages. Of my 50 page. Novelette I mean, that's like 20% of the words I wrote.

[00:11:05] No, I think it was seven pages and it was good. It felt great because I realized that those things didn't belong there in that way anymore. And the way that I was choosing to approach the conflict and choosing to reveal some of these fun secrets along the way, I was able to get a better understanding and a better vision of what this thing needed to be.

[00:11:29] It is absolutely okay to slash out big parts of your text so long as you know that you are doing it responsibly. And so long as you know, that it is part of the refining process for you to get to the end. If you are simply slashing your book apart because you are bored with it, or because you have fallen off.

[00:11:53] Hard self-esteem times and you don't feel good or confident about yourself or about this project. I encourage you to stop slashing your book, but if you have new found clarity and you understand. A better way for your characters to get along the storyline and to get there in a more meaningful way then?

[00:12:17] Yes. If there is fat to be trimmed out of your novel, then trim it. So sitting down and reading each page out of context. And summarizing the good or bad or whatever points of each page is a perfect way to see, first of all, what the story is. And secondly, what the story is not, and the story is not the filler.

[00:12:46] The story is not always a subplot. The story is not a fun little moment that isn't related to the rising action of your story. And this is an easy way to identify that on your own. Another good way is to find a friend. So that's it for today.

[00:13:05] Big shout out to my patrons without your contributions. This podcast could not be possible. If you wish to become a patron and donate to the writing and the tiny house podcast, please visit patreon.com/writinginthetinyhouse and sign up today. And every little bits and every contribution is definitely appreciated.

[00:13:29] Go ahead and find me on social media and follow me there. My Instagram handle is @authordevindavis and my Twitter handle is@authordevind. Otherwise, thank you so much for joining me today and have fun writing. We will see you next time guys. Bye.

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