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This blog keeps me in touch with WDC. Jamesdillingham.com keeps me in touch elsewhere. |
| I like to stay in touch with WDC, even when I'm not contributing on a daily basis. My main blog is at jamesdillingham.blogspot.com |
🌕 HuntersMoon   and I challenged each other to a duel in the Daily Flash Fiction Challenge. I am in Europe so I was able to get my entry in quickly. Ken, took my entry and then retold the story from a different perspective. I thought that was a brilliant idea. Even as I was writing my story, I was wondering what was going on to the people in the habitat. Ken's story answered that question.Arakun called is a draw. Thanks to Ken for the fun. jim |
| I am on my way to Budapest in a few minutes, or at least to the airport. Writing: I wrote a Flash Fiction piece yesterday called Welcoming Night. The interesting thing about this was that I was blocked. When that happens, I usually make up a wild first sentence and the rest of the story comes right out. Yesterday, when the story came out, it was all scrambled. It was as if I had tapped into several stories at once, all the while knowing that there was only one in there that would fit. So, I wrote about 400 words and then looked and the jumbled mess. It wasn't a story but there was one in there. It felt like those pictures we used to see when we were little and had to find certain things hidden within. Anyway, after a few reads, I tentatively started again and this time the story flowed right out. In the new story, were large parts of the original but put in a different order to make the story that was meant to be. I don't know if this makes sense but it was weird and yet, somehow not surprising. Marketing: I am trying all types of marketing things. I am marketing my ebooks with no real intent to make money. I am just practicing so that when I have a novel to sell, I know how to do it. Yesterday, I placed an ad with facebook. I pay $.47 per click through. I set it up so they click to my site www.jamesdillingham.com and the page where my books are. From there, they need to click on the book cover to go to the book seller. I set my daily budget at $5.60 per day. It took several hours before the ad was reviewed and approved. After that, it took 20 minutes for the budget to be used up. this means people were clicking through at the rate of 36 clicks per hour. In the meantime, during that 20 minutes, my ad was showed up on facebook pages more than 81,000 times! That is not a typo. Off to the airport. |
| I am talking to my wife on the phone this morning. I am getting ready to go see her tomorrow (Monday) in Hungary. Anyway, she mentions that Lufthansa is on strike. I check and sure enough, I am booked on Lufthansa all the way there. I call United, who booked the flight for me and schedule a United flight that gets there about the same time. The cost was zero. Here is the rub, if I had not called, I would have gone to the airport tomorrow and found no plane. So, Lufthansa loses 33 million a day due to the strike and I find it hard to care. So, writing-wise. I wrote a flash fiction story. I also place an ad on facebook for my short stories. I am not trying to sell my short story collection so much as I am trying to get a well rounded, self publishing education. I try to do something each day to advance my cause. When my book is done, I am leaning towards self publishing and I want to be ready. I will be in Hungary for a week and then my wife comes back to spend a week with me. J www.jamesdillingham.com |
| I have redone my webpage. www.jamesdillingham.com. The reason for this is that I need to get my stories out there. In today's publishing world, agents, editors and publishers want you to provide a completely edited, ready for print manuscript. They want you to sell you books by going from bookstore to bookstore. They want you to do and pay for it all. As the book sells, they will give you about 7% of the sales. So, if you were to get a $10,000 bonus. That means my book would have to generate $142,857 in sales just to clear the bonus. Now, if I self-publish, I still have to do everything for myself but, I get to keep all of the profits so $142, 857 probably give me $120,000 in profits. So, I am just getting my name out there. I have three ebooks on my website and enough material to compile another 2 or 3. Anyway, if you get a chance, stop by my webpage and drop me a line. Don't click through to buy anything since all of my stories are here anyway. Jim |
| So, it seems the Writers Conference has lit a fire under me. This week I have: 1) Send a book to Orson Scott Card's website for consideration. He is one of my favorite authors and published an e-zine. 2) Published two collections of short stories (ebooks) through the website smashwords.com. I hope to publish the third by tonight. If you want to see what they look like, go to smashwords.com and type in my name, James Dilligham. 3) I wrote a story for the Daily Flash Fiction Challenge yesterday and intend to do so again tonight. 4) I am half way through my entry for The Writers Cramp. 5) I am making daily progress on my novel. I feel very motivated so I might as well make hay while the sun shines. Jim |
| The conference is now in the books. Here is a list of the seminars I attended (and my rating): Pitchcraft: How to excite agents and editors in 25-50 words. (excellent!) Branding Yourself: (waste of time) Why There Has Never Been a Better Time for Writers Seeking Publication: (entertaining) How to Get an Agent: (excellent) Power Editing: (WOW! <-my highest rating) this was done by Robert Dugoni an author that writes thrillers Meet the Fiction Agents: (useful) Ask a pro: This was a series of round table pitches and discussions with editors (excellent) Beating the odds: (so-so) This was put on by an editor that seemed to be saying 'hire me" Plot and Pacing: (Outstanding) done by author Steve Berry How to break the rules of writing: (good) There are taboos like - no prologue and such that I never knew about Getting help between the lines: How to hire an independent editor (excellent) this is a cost many of us erroneously thought a publisher would pick up. Opportunities in Publishing: (excellent) a talk about ebooks, self publishing etc. Date an agent (WOW!) is was a speed dating session where there was a room full of agents and you met with those you liked for 3 minutes to pitch your book. They would say yes or no. Overall, I give this conference 5 stars out of 5. I came away with mixed feelings. First of all, I feel a little bit of a let down now that it is behind me. The excitement of anticipation and the event itself were really over the top. Now that it is all behind me, all that I have ahead is work. There was a bit of a mixed message here. Message #1: Traditional publishing is dead. Everyone is losing their job and there is no more money for big advances. Your chances of making it are almost zero. Message #2: Let's pretend message #1 is wrong and push forward with getting an agent and an editor and make a pant-load of money. Message #3: Message #1 is right, however, self-publishing and e-books are the way to go. They are cheap and get you in front of readers fast. And - if you show that you have a following, maybe an agent will listen to you, get interested, sell your book to a publisher and you will make a pant-load. There is a website called Smashwords.com. They will take your book and, for free, convert it to every digital format needed. They will then offer it for sale, much like Amazon is currently selling my digital collection of short stories. I am going to make a new collection of short stories today and post it through Smashwords to see what happens. I had 4 agents ask to see my book. I am going to send them all thank you letters along with, "I will send it by summer." When I made my pitch to them, I neglected to tell them it is not yet complete and has not been professionally edited. When they get a manuscript, they expect it to be as good as you can make it. They are not going to say "This is great. Now let me hire a editor for you." That needs to be done ahead of time. So, it was exciting and, at the same time, a little bit of a downer. No one is going to buy my book or represent me until I (1) finish it and (2) spend $2,000 to $7,000 to have it edited. Then, if a publisher agrees, maybe I will get a $10,000 advance and then maybe I will make 7% of the total sales. I had one editor that said, "Skip all of this agent stuff and self publish. If you are successful, then publishers and agents will come knocking at your door." Finally, writers are a great bunch of people. Just like on WDC, they were open and friendly. The hardest part about the end of the conference was the realization that I would probably never see any of these attendees again. J |
| First of all, I didn't win the writing conference. In spite of all the great help I got from WDC, there was at least one person there that wrote a better story than me. I was one of the finalists and we all got to stand up and be introduced so there was that. There are hundreds of people at the conference and I have met dozens of them. Surprisingly, they are nearly all like me - beginners looking for direction on what to do next. We all have books and now we are looking for agents, editors and advice on how to make out work better. I have learned how to pitch my book which is what I will actually do to several agents during a session tomorrow morning. I have attended seminars on how to edit, how to work with an agent, how to write outside of traditional boundaries. There have been several great speakers, book signings and such. It is a 3-day conference for about $650 and worth every penny. It is nice that I only live 30 minutes away. I had lunch next to a writer that came all the way from Australia. Tonight, there were about 30 editors and people gathered around them at different tables to practice their pitch. It was surreal. You had 1 minute to pitch and the editor would tell you what the chances were for your book. I am sitting there with twenty people leaning in trying to catch every word. Then we would swap. I heard all kinds of stories. Tomorrow when I pitch to agents, the goal if for them to say "send me your book, I like your idea and would consider being your agent. I have been a great ambassador for WDC. I am surprised that I have yet to find a person that has heard of us. I like to think I have changed that a bit. Time for bed. |
| This Friday is the San Francisco Writers Conference. I am getting excited/nervous. What should I wear? How should I do my hair? Wait! I'm a guy - that takes care of most of the hard stuff. Things to take - hmmm...pencil? paper or maybe a briefcase jammed full of stuff just in case. They will announce the winners of the writing contest on Saturday. I would love to win but being a finalist accomplishes my main mission - being able to tell the agents there that I was a finalist and that they should read my book. Now, a note from the sane underground. At least I think I am sane. Either that, or I am not and everyone else is just humoring me. I am an ex-republican simply because I am no longer a complete idiot. Watching the Glen Becks of the world makes me wish I had my own show where I could stand up and say "You have got to be kidding me!" The GOP is not only in disarray ( a fact I couldn't care less about) but they are actively seeking to block progress in Congress on anything simply because it is the only tool they have to make the Dems look bad. Anyway, there is a guy and a soapbox that I think paints a very clear picture. The following is a link to a Time Magazine article I think everyone should read and then pass around. It states very clearly what is going on. http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1958996,00.html |
| I have been rethinking the title of my book AWARE. Now that it is nearly done, it seems to be less about complete awareness and more about a special man and the artifact he was found with. I am thinking of changing the title to ARTIFACT MAN. |
| The SF Writers Conference is a week from this Friday. I am busy, between bouts of real life, preparing. I am thinking of renaming my book. I started with the title AWARE and have kept it all along but now that the story is nearly told, maybe a different title is better. I am picking out which sessions I will attend. There are often several choices but it comes down to a session on Writing or a session on Getting Published. I am also working on my 2-minute book pitch for Speed Dating with Agents. I pitch for 2 minutes and they feedback for one. I will see about 20 agents in an hour. How should I dress? Should I try to look like a writer? This means I will have to buy a turtleneck and take up pipe smoking. Maybe I will just be me - that is always the easiest to maintain. My plane awaits...off to Boston for a couple of days. Jim |
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