Killing your darlings

Since retiring from teaching full-time, I've been an adjunct instructor at our local community college. I love teaching there - especially at the satellite campuses where the students are (usually) non-traditional in their ages. What's especially exciting is that the college is instituting the Freshman Year Seminar - a class students take either their first or second semester that will help them transition to the more rigorous requirements of higher education. I am honored that I was asked to design and teach one of those seminars.

Each seminar has a different focus. The science seminars, for example, might be based on some of the more controversial aspects of science research or centered on science in today's media. I'm in the Humanities, so our topics/issues can be quite broad. I've chosen "The Memoir as Self-discovery" as the title to mine.

What does that mean? It means I've been reading a lot of memoirs lately! While the students will spend a great deal of time writing their own (topics such as "How I learn best" and "How I got that scar"), they will also read others' memoirs so we can discuss style, form, and content.

To that end, I finally read Stephen King's On Writing. I know, I know - it's taken me long enough. I've only read a few of his books because I don't do well with horror or suspense. Gives me oggeta (I have no idea how to spell that Italian word and neither does the spellchecker). I've enjoyed the few pieces I have read (The Green Mile, Eyes of the Dragon) and now I can add On Writing to the list. He's blunt, concise, and pretty much right on track.

I particularly enjoyed the section on killing your darlings.

In fact, that's twice in two weeks that phrase has popped up - once in class discussion of literature and then again in King's book. In class, I spoke of how hard it can be - and how necessary. It isn't easy, they are, after all, your darlings. You created that character, that scene, that sentence. It is a part of you. It may be the most beautiful piece of writing you've ever created. If it doesn't serve the story, however, it must die.

In class I spoke of a description I'd included in the first few pages of a VERY long fantasy novel (that will probably never leave my computer. This was an early novel that holds just about every mistake a beginning novelist can make). At a workshop, I had the opportunity to read the first three pages to a group where a well-known author of fantasy would give a quick critique of our work. When I finished reading, she really honed in on the description of the flower, praising the imagery and phrasing. She then said, "I know that this flower will be very important later in the story because you spent so much time creating that beautiful image."

I thanked her for her critique, all the while cringing inside because I knew what she did not: that flower? Was just a flower. Nothing more. It never came back. It wasn't important. The protagonist bent down to smell it just because I needed to give him an action to do. Period.

But it had led at least one reader down an erroneous path. And if it could lead one...

I cut it.

Hard as it was to kill something praised as "beautiful imagery" with "excellent phrasing" - I cut it.

And I just did it again.

A different fantasy - the One of My Heart that is the Work of My Life - and I just cut an entire scene that I loved. Why? Because it didn't work. Oh, it was well-written and moved the plot forward, but I can move it forward more quickly and with better character development if I go a different route. The path has moved, in other words, and that scene is on a different branch. Sigh.

I do have to offer a disclaimer, though. Killing my darlings is never easy for me. To counteract the pain, I have a file I label "Extras" for each and every one of my stories. Not kidding. Every novel I have published? Has a file on my computer that contains writing that didn't make it into the final edit.

Why? Because every time I kill a darling, I think, "Well, I might go back and need it" or "I'll just use this later."

Want to know how many times I've put something back in after it's in the "Extras" file?

Zero.

Zilch.

Nada, not happening, never.

And yet, I keep doing it. Did it today when I put that entire chapter into the file in case I change my mind.

I wonder if Stephen King keeps all his dead darlings?

Oooh...I think there might be a story there - about a writer haunted by his dead darlings...

Play safe!
Diana

(edited to fix some typos)

New design for the website

It has been a long time since this site has seen an upgrade in design. Been bored with it for a while but apparently I needed a kick in the arse and who better to give it to me but Raelene Gorlinsky. She posted a piece on her blog about the nine must-haves for every author website. Yes, I have them all, but some of them were pretty sloppy. And the last one? Time for a re-design, for sure!

You'll notice the text space is wider, as is the sidebar. Didn't know I could change those and found the menu that let me do that this time. I use a two-monitor system with my computer (really helps when comparing drafts!) and one is smaller than the other. I made sure the widths fit on both. If you find things getting cut off on your screen, let me know!

If you've been trying to access the site today, you may have noticed the header picture changing several times. My husband thought it might look nice with my signature rose up there with my name over it. Of course, that meant creating the .jpg first. Couldn't make it look good, so several configurations and .jpgs later, I decided to go back to the original. You know, the original .jpg that apparently no longer exists on my computer. Created it anew, then had to go through several MORE configurations to make it fit right. Still a little pixelated with the text, but best one so far.

Other updates:
The Purchasing Info page was missing New York Moment - added that in. Also re-arranged some but the different sizes of the covers is a pain in the patootie. Will be resizing and fixing all those today as well to clean up the layout.

Added a Google+ badge. Now those with Google accounts can more easily follow me. And widening the sidebar made the link button for Facebook easier to see as well.

I added the About Me page a while back, but widening the text box and going with a different background allowed the tabs at the top to show up better.

Let me know what you think in the comments below. Am up for suggestions!

Play safe,
Diana

10,000 hits

Climbing numbers

There has been an explosion in hits on this website. It started when I took out a Google Adwords campaign in June, 2011. I’d been averaging between four and five hundred hits a month; that June I hit 744 and was thrilled.

They’ve gone up each month since and I’ve watched the graph from Blogger go higher and higher. A year later, I’d reached 1000 visitors in a month’s time. In December I doubled my daily cost at Adwords – and the numbers went nuts: 2679 in January, 2703 in March, 3273 in April, 3674 in May, 6005 in June.

Now I did nothing special in June to create that increase. Cynthia Sax guest blogged and accounted for an uptick in hits that week, but nothing to account for a near doubling in hits. But July got busy and I just left things on autopilot while I went on vacation and then hid myself at our cabin to write my next book (which has a good start...I’m hoping to get more time there next week to write another chunk).

So you can imagine my surprise when the numbers started climbing all on their own. This month I crossed the 10,000-hit mark. Shelley Munro’s blog post brought in a significant number of visitors (over 300!), but again, nothing to account for the spike.

Where are the visitors from?

Until this month, the top two countries of my visitors have been the United States (number one every month) and Canada (number two every month). The UK and Germany trade places in third and fourth (every month).

THIS month, however, the US is NOT #1 – Pakistan is. The US is #2. Myanmar is #3, followed by Azerbaijan, Mongolia, Turkey, Sri Lanka, Mexico and Columbia. You’ll note my usual top countries didn’t even make the list.

Now, I would love to know I have readers in those countries. Because Amazon separates out royalties by country, I know I have had sales in Germany, Italy and the UK this month. So I have an international audience. I just don’t think there are 10,000 of them.

I also use StatCounter because it gives me some information Blogger doesn’t. Because I use the free version, it only holds two days worth of data. StatCounter confirms Blogger’s ranking.

I suspect a rat. A robotic one.

Visitor length

The stat that StatCounter gives me that I find most important, however, is the one called “Visitor Length.” This tells me how long people stay on the site.

According to this counter, 79% of those who come to my site stay less than five seconds. Another 5% stay less than thirty seconds. In short, 84% of the hits were from bots. These are sites that ping the site to see if there’s a way in to hack or leave a spam message. Thankfully Blogger is good at blocking them from doing their damage.

What that means is that only 16% of those who come to the site do so because they intended to. Because they want information or to participate in the latest workshop.

At first, that number depressed me. Sixteen percent? That sounds terribly low.

But then I did the math and realized that 16% of 10,000 is still 1600 people. Sixteen hundred people! That’s HUGE! That’s four times the number of people from two years ago. And if the same percentages were to hold true then as they do now...this site is doing quite well!

Reasons for rejoicing

• The number of real people who visit the site because they want to has quadrupled in the past two years.
• The Google Adwords campaign has brought people to the site. Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing how many of those who are real are here because of that campaign and how many are bots.
• Guest bloggers are also good for business. Shelley and Cynthia hold the top-ranked posts of all time.
• My sales are up – my self-published book sales are double what they were last year. 
• Blogger is a good site for keeping the bots at bay.

What’s next?

I might suspend the Adwords campaign for a couple of months just to see what happens to the stats. My suspicion is that they will go down. Will my sales sink as well? Only one way to find out.

Thank you!

I am truly grateful for all those who visit because they want to. You are a quite bunch. Only a few leave comments and to those few, a special thank you. The numbers mean I’m not alone in the world, but your conversation helps me feel less isolated.

If you’re new to the site, be sure to sign up for my newsletter (sign-up box is in the top right corner). Check out the tabs at the top – you’ll find more information about me, about the books, about writing, up there.

Let’s see how long it takes to get to 20,000!

Play safe,

Diana

Business nuts and bolts

There are several excellent blogs devoted to the business side of writing (you can read three of the best here, here and here) but few talk about the nuts and bolts of keeping track of your sales. Everyone seems to assume you just know how to do that.

Well, I didn't.

Not when I first started, anyway. My first book was published in September 2003 (ten-year anniversary's coming up - I think we should have a party!). I used a pen name because my husband was concerned about dragging his family name through the erotic romance mud. When I sold 173 books in two weeks and made a royalty check of $430, he changed his mind. There's money to be had in sex! Who knew?

(I did, but that was beside the point {g}).

But I was too new at the whole thing to really understand that being a writer means being self-employed. I happily wrote books, sent them off to my publisher and deposited the royalty checks with the bliss that belongs to the ignorant.

Then I went to my first Romantic Times conference and my eyes were opened. Promo alley? What was that? Who supplied all those goodies the readers eagerly gobbled up? The writers did? Where did they get the money to buy all that stuff? Did it work? Advertise my book? I was supposed to do that?

I'm a fast learner. Went home and got myself a DBA (Doing Business As), went to my credit union and started an account that would be solely dedicated to my Diana Hunter earnings - and went into business. Designed and bought some promotional items from a friend who runs The Copy Shop and started to keep track of money in and money out.

I like Excel. It's a good program and I'd used it in my day job for a number of years, so it was the database program I turned to. I still use it (the 2003 version - hate that Microsoft "improved" something that wasn't broken. But that's a blog post for a different time). You can use the program of your choice, but if you haven't started keeping track of your writing, it's time.

I've spoken of file management before; that was more about how to keep track of your stories on your computer. What I'm talking about now is how to keep track of what you've written and whether or not it's making you money.

First things first

If you don't yet have a DBA and a financial account dedicated to ONLY your writing career, go make it so. Your accounting will be so much easier on all fronts when you can do business, not from your family account, not from the same account with which you pay all other bills, but from an account specifically dedicated to your royalty checks and your expenditures as a writer.

Please note: That doesn't mean you can't use that account to pay for other things. I paid my kid's tuitions, I currently pay the VISA bill out of my Diana Hunter account. I have a line-item called "salary" for when I absolutely have to have that new blouse at JC Penney's. It just makes everything easier when it comes to tax time.

Second things second -- setting up your database (if you haven't already done so)

I set mine up (using Excel) with the entire year on one workbook page. I like to see the entire year in a single scroll (see below). The little red triangles in the cells means there's a comment there (I opened one so you could see it). The one in "expenditures" simply reads "all expenditures come out of the checking account". I leave notes like this so whoever takes over after I'm dead will have a clue (Kristine Katherine Rusch has a great series of posts about dealing with your writing after death. Read them later. Get your financial records in order first).

If you don't know how to use Excel, take a class at your local high school or a workshop at the local library. It's really a very, very valuable tool that you won't stop using. Being able to use a good database program is as important to your writing career as being able to use a good word processor. I can't emphasize that enough. I can show you a good set-up, one that works for me. I can't teach you how to enter the formulas or do the math.

I can, however, give you an example. Take it, tweak it to your needs and then - be faithful to it. At the end of the year, it makes pulling together the information you need to itemize for your taxes a breeze! I created a template (the above screenshot shows only a small piece -- all twelve months are on the same page) and then each year I simply change the year in Row 1 and fill in the balance forward cells and the sheet now will make all the calculations for me.

(sorry the picture bleeds off the side of the page. It doesn't in my editor. When I make it smaller, however, you can't read it)

Activity

If you haven't done so already, this week's activity revolves around the business side of writing and consists of three things to do:

1) File for your DBA if you haven't already done so (see your local county clerk for the forms). You are a self-employed business person now and need the paperwork to prove it.

2) Set up a financial account for your money. When I started, I put $400 of "seed money" into my account out of the family savings since I hadn't been keeping track of those early royalty checks. They'd been simply deposited into the regular checking account and I had no record of what happened to that money. Put in what you can afford -- it will grow as you get royalties from your work.

3) Set up a database that will allow you to see where your money is going. For some of you, this will mean taking a class in Excel first (Microsoft actually has several excellent modules if you want to self-teach yourself the program). If you already know how to do use a database (Excel or any other), then set it up in a fashion that works for you.

That's enough for this week! I'm planning a series of these Nuts and Bolts and will use that tag along with the writing workshop tag to help you find them. :)

Play safe, and drop a tip in the jar on the way out!
Diana