Kimberly A. Cook

Military Romance Author

amwriting

How Many Words Make A Book?

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by Kimberly A. Cook               (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

In my quest to purge paper files in my office, I’ve resorted to drastic measures – I’m moving my craft supplies and tools into the same room. This madness is so I can make my “writing office” feel more like an “art studio” and to corral my ever-expanding craft hoarding.

Banker boxes from hell.
Banker boxes from hell.

This mission is not without peril. When I made the big move of the jewelry/sewing table and the wire rack into the office, something had to go; the banker boxes of paper files which need to be sorted. After tripping over them in the hallway for two weeks, luckily Spec Ops Cat can squeeze by to get to his litter box, I finally started sorting this past weekend.

A piece of paper I could not locate a few months ago for a blog post charged into view. Must be time to use it!

The Romance Writers of America newsletter page from the Heart of Oregon chapter in May 1992 remains in my files for good reason. The short article from the Colorado RWA via the Florida RWA newsletter still has great information.

For those of us who proof on paper hard copy, if we use the standard manuscript format still used to submit to traditional publishers – 1 ¼ inch left margin and one-inch right margin – a double-spaced page will average 24 to 26 lines of text. Don’t count the header and use a 12 point font.

With that format in mind, you can use the following “pages-to-words” guide.

# words                      Pages

50,000                        200

55,000                        220

60,000                        240

65,000                        260

70,000                        280

75,000                        300

80,000                        320

85,000                        340

100,000                      400

115,000                      460

This is one way to get a quick idea of page length without trying to figure out your word/page count all mucked together. These guidelines are critical for romance writers who are writing to a specific category book word length. For instance, for those who love the Avon historical romances, most of them are 100,000 words so it means a 400-page double-spaced manuscript. They truly are big books!

This is also how traditional publishers figure out how large or small a book manuscript will be in a flash. Now with ebooks no such rules apply, unless you print out the hard copy like I do to edit.

Another reason to double-space your writing and print it out on hard copy? It’s so much easier to edit with the extra white space. Happy word counting!

Coffee, Cookies And Hot Books At The Drugstore?

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by Kimberly A. Cook                  (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

Surfing online last week I came across a story about a Seattle Drugstore chain installing an Espresso Book Machine in one of their stores, in conjunction with Kodak Alaris, to make publishing our own books as easy as a trip for chips. Boggles the mind. Imagine what self-published Benjamin Franklin would think if he could see our new printing presses now.

What's on the menu? Cocoa, cookie and freshly baked book?
What’s on the menu? Cocoa, cookie and freshly baked book?

It can never be a bad thing to have cookies, coffee, tea or hot cocoa together with ordering freshly printed books; almost at our tables! I love the smell of toner ink in the morning.

Digital media has changed the publishing game so much in a short amount of time. This is a moment when production process improvements directly impact the ability of everyone to publish books. Whether creating games, videos, pod casts, ebooks, comic books, picture books, interactive web sites or old-fashioned paper, communication and content are King and Queen.

Like we know from Spiderman, “With great power, comes great responsibility,” is even more true in today’s publishing world. I gave up a long time ago trying to be first at anything in this business, I just want to write what I love. It doesn’t happen overnight and that is okay with me.

Whether learning to drive, cook or breakdown an M-16 rifle, certain tasks take time, patience, skill and persistence. Writing is one of those creative arts which benefits from effort and hard work.

To paraphrase Yoda, when the printing process is ready, the author will appear. While we work on our craft and spend time developing our characters and stories, it’s a good idea to keep an eye on the developments in the digital book business. Who knows, our next publisher might be the drive-thru window at Starbucks. (It could happen!)

Read the article here:  http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2013/seattle-based-drugstore-pilots-espresso-book-machine-on-demand-printing-center/

Tighten Your Seatbelt, Here Come The Holidays!

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by Kimberly A. Cook                         (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

Chatting with a friend recently whose decided to concentrate on her quilting during the holidays. Such a great idea. Focus is a challenge for us creatives on any given day, but the holidays add a special spice of chaos to the normal distractions. Squirrel! Santa! Cookies! Icky weather! Gifts! You get my drift – pun intended.

Field trips can happen in your backyard. Dashing to work I saw this and snapped two photos. First October frost.
Field trips can happen in your backyard. Dashing to work I saw this and snapped two photos. First October frost.

At lunch with the family in August I asked us to map out the holidays – folks were a little taken aback, but I said it will be here before we know it and voila! When the Halloween, Christmas and Valentine’s Day decorations are all crashing together in the stores right now, overwhelmed is a normal reaction for us.

I cope by surrendering in early August. Like a runaway stagecoach, holidays happen. I make my plans, try to keep things simple and pick ways to celebrate to make it fun and focus on using my off time from the day job for creative activities. Everything from baking cookies to sorting beads and egad, reading, make the list. Keeps my muse well fed and out of the Grinch cranky zone.

Add in the recent time change this past weekend and all I want to do is curl up with a book, blankie, bottle of chocolate milk and hibernate. So planning fun things to do to feed my muse and taking some time for myself is job one during the holiday season.

“Try to do one thing a day for yourself,” my sister told me recently. Actually she said two, but it’s the holidays. Simplify! These are not big things, but small tokens of time which reinvigorate our creative soul and keep us from losing balance. Lunch out with a friend, taking leaf pictures, buying a new writer magazine, actually sitting down on a weekend afternoon and reading, plus watching football or Hallmark movies all work for me.

Keep your muse in mind this holiday season and take it out for a few field trips. See how doing less means more for your creative health. Slow down and smell the leaves, cider or holiday cookies. Be a kid again. Unleash the crayons!

Are All Pumpkins And Writing The Same?

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by Kimberly A. Cook              (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

Got together with my writer support group this past weekend. We always have interesting conversations. One topic included how writers trained in one type of writing can run into roadblocks and challenges switching to another style of writing.

Pumpkin pallooza! Took a couple of these fun baby pumpkins home with me from The Barn in Northeast Portland - each has their own personality.
Pumpkin pallooza! Took a couple of these fun baby pumpkins home with me from The Barn in Northeast Portland – each has their own personality.

Isn’t all writing the same? Nope. On the newspaper it seemed pretty clear; news, editorial, feature and sports writing were all different animals. News would be like a police report with more details, editorial an opinion supported by evidence, features were true short stories and sports a combination of feature and news with more storytelling.

When a  journalist tries to write memoir, they can fall down Alice’s rabbit hole. Trained to be objective and keep personal thoughts and feelings out of reporting, a memoir requires running naked for all the world to see including thoughts, feelings and (gasp) our personal emotions. It takes time and practice to master the switch.

The same goes for fiction, poetry, short stories, screenwriting, non-fiction and blogs. Each writing type requires different care and feeding. No two writers are alike. Or pumpkins. Imagine if everyone only liked one type of writing? Boring. If there was only one way to carve or decorate a pumpkin or if all pumpkins had to be the same size and shape? Really boring.

Writing genres and pumpkins have a lot in common. No two are really the same and every reader gets to choose their favorite. Pumpkin or book. Or comic. Or YouTube video. Are writers allowed to change pumpkins, er genres? Yes. Will it require homework and study? Yup. Should that stop us? No.

All writing improves the craft, even if we find out we don’t want to write fiction or non-fiction or ad copy. That is part of the process. So when you are picking out your favorite pumpkin and admiring the creations displayed this week remember; in writing and pumpkins – variety is the spice in writing – or something like that. Happy Halloween!

Why Are Many Creatives Monetarily Challenged?

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by Kimberly A. Cook         (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

It never ceases to amaze me how people can make money. That is, people except moi. When it comes to being an artist trying not to starve, other folks seem to figure out how to make it happen. Article on CNN.com yesterday talked about how some folks are making money off of YouTube – for themselves. Really.

Now, one entrepreneur said YouTube is more than cat videos. Well, I was thinking of going with cat videos, given Spec Ops Cat’s upkeep. SOC has two videos up on his YouTube channel from several years ago, but he has staff issues. But these new money making YouTube creative types get others to subscribe to their channels, then go viral and then make money. Wowsa.

Amazing how like writing this all sounds – creative arts are creative arts. The article also outlines how much work it is but they love it and they like being their own bosses. Sounds like my fantasy for retirement; write, eat snickerdoodle cookies and get paid on a regular basis.

When you write the ebook, market the ebook, then write more ebooks, it all takes time and dedication. While we try to build our author platforms doing what the experts “say,” sometimes we lose why we started writing in the first place.

Listening to a recent interview with Elizabeth Gilbert on YouTube about how she handled the huge success of “Eat, Pray, Love,” she said, “I stayed off of the Internet for a few years.” What? I about fell out of my chair. You can do that???

In the quest for a farthing, peso or a buck for our writing efforts, we need to remember we are still in charge and can write for many different reasons. Sometimes turning a passion into a job takes all the joy out of it. Only we can figure out why we write and adjust our goals, lives and expectations accordingly.

In the meantime, we can still watch cat videos. Like Maru from Japan above, one very famous cat with a box addiction. Seriously, more than 11 million hits on this one video!

Read CNN.com article here: http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/21/showbiz/youtube-famous-american-journey-irpt/index.html?hpt=hp_c3

What Is Your Writer Uniform?

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by Kimberly A. Cook          (Twitter@ WarriorTales)

Wandering around my favorite antique mall last Friday I came upon this gem of an outfit. It got me to thinking about Halloween costumes. Then I thought about what costume do I wear as a writer? We all have our private and public fashion style, but our writer costume, what would that look like?

So much going on here and red too! Loving this creative outfit.
So much going on here and red too! Loving this creative outfit.

There are my comfy writing clothes which will never be seen outside my home and then the official author outfits to wear for book signings and speeches. Every outfit is armor for a writer, depending on our current mood, audience, what’s clean and quirkiness.

While we clothe our fiction characters for their roles and a book’s cover is a very important marketing costume, like the runways in Paris our writer costume changes over time. It’s true, you only get one chance to make a first impression, either in person or with the cover of your book.

It’s also a given you need to know what you are writing and the mood or costume you want your series of books or the genre to reflect as a writer. One of my favorite exercises is to take the covers of my favorite author’s books and figure out where my book covers would fit. Spreading them out on the floor really shows a theme or “costume” for their books/brand.

This exercise is also a time and money saver, since it is much cheaper than hiring one of those New York book cover design artists. It gives me an idea of how I want my covers to look and I can then take high-caliber examples to the local graphic designer to design my covers. Both cover do’s and don’ts help the designer know what “look” you are trying to create.

We figure out our own character costume each morning by getting dressed to go out into the world in our “worker,” “Mom,” “author” or “pirate” uniforms, so remember to wear your writer costume too. Mere mortals may not be able to see our writer uniform, but we wear it all the time. What is your favorite writer outfit?