A writing fragment that grew, and the work of self-publishing

The writing ideas that come to me lately are fragments, bits that don’t seem to go anywhere. Most of them get written down somewhere, so maybe one day some of them will come to life and grow. A fragment that grew into something, I think, is at the end of this blog entry. It’s called Sentences, and might well end up in the collection I am making, that might be called, Stones Gathered Together.

With the help of my friend Jill, I have devised something that might do as a cover for the ebook version of my finished novel, Where the HeArt is.

I’m still gathering permissions for using the quotes in that book. And the copyholders of A A Milne’s material said, “No.” I can’t use three lines from his poem “Disobedience” because, as they say in their letter, “The Trustees for the Estate of Milne feel strongly that quotes for the poems should be restricted to matters directly relating to children or in children’s literature.” This is the first time I have been turned down. Other copyright holders (most notably for Emily Dickinson) wanted to be paid rather a lot for quoting two lines, in an earlier book, so I changed the quote. In Where the HeArt Is I refer to ED’s poems, but don’t quote any directly.

Because there are a number of references to works of visual art in Where the HeArt Is, and because I don’t have the resources to either get permission to reproduce them or print them, I have put a list of where each one can be found on the internet at the back of the book. In the ebook version, this is hyperlinked to the text.

I am about halfway through the formatting needed to upload the book to Smashwords, which is a vehicle to get books distributed to all the major ebook retailers except Amazon. There is a way to get onto Amazon’s Kindle listing, but I haven’t sorted that out yet. And then there is the business of accepting that one third of anything I earn from online sales will go to the US tax department, or going through a daunting process to get an exemption, as someone who does not live in the US. There’s a great deal of work in self-publishing! Then there are blurbs to write, and online "marketing" to figure.... I have dome some work on how to let people know my book is there online. More of that in a later post.

There is also a whole lot of reading going on in my life. I’ll put some of that in a separate post. Soon.

Here's the fragment that grew:

Sentences
This is a sentence. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.
Full stop. (Fool, stop!) The noun, the name, is the anchor, the key. The article tells us it’s one. Solitary. A verb is existence or action.
(‘Is’ is bang in the middle of prison.)
‘This’ is a word. Not naming but definite. This, not that. This only. This ‘this’ only. Contains ‘is’. Existence contains ‘is,’ appropriately. ‘Lives’ contains ‘is,’ only with some rearrangement. Gone, dead, death, no ‘is’ in there. Gone has ‘no’, or strictly speaking ‘on’. ‘No’ is ‘on’ backwards but can you go backwards from gone? But finished has ‘is.’ You can take any idea too far.
‘I am’, said Descartes and McCahon and no doubt many others. Well, me too. I write this, therefore I am. If I don’t write this it doesn’t prove anything.
Gertrude Stein wrote ‘Rose is a rose is a rose’ in a poem. In this line, the first ‘Rose’ is purported to be a person. Later, she wrote, ‘A rose is a rose is a rose,’ which, according to Wikipedia, ‘is often interpreted as meaning “things are what they are,” a statement of the law of identity.’ Later again, in Four In America, she said, ‘Now listen! I’m no fool. I know that in daily life we don’t go around saying “is a … is a … is a …” Yes, I’m no fool; but I think in that line the rose is red for the first time in English poetry for a hundred years.’
With Gertrude it’s hard to tell exactly what she meant, you have to ride along with her sentences, waiting for the occasional sense of something to float into your mind. She wrote: ‘I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences,’ (And had a passion for the full-stop.) Gertrude wrote about paragraphs as well as sentences, which is getting way too complicated.
‘To be or not to be [a mother] that is the question.’ And a sentence. Either way, in the end, you have to live with it. And, either way, it’s a life sentence.

Writing Dilemmas & Reading Pleasures

At the beginning of a year I tend to go back and read the notes I made the previous year on what I had read. One of my reasons for doing this is a very bad memory for names. Another is that I like to record quotes from the book that struck me when I was reading it. These are not necessarily  what I would note if I was doing a critique of the book, more things that remind me of something, or relate to an idea I’m thinking about, or even something I am writing.

This was brought home to me as I re-read Barbara Kingsolver’s The Lacuna, which I first read a year ago and which is our reading group choice for January. The things I noted a year ago, and the things that struck me second time round are distinctly different from each other. The Lacuna stood up well to re-reading and I recommend it.

I have completed another revision of the-novel-known-as-Ann and made a list of all the poems, writing and art works that are quoted from or referred to in it. Now I will give it to a new reader, someone who hasn’t read any of the earlier versions and who has a perspective on an aspect of the story that I am keen to get input on. And nervous about.

So, deciding how to go about getting it out there, so to speak, is looming. I’ve been published by regular publishers, and self-published, so I know my way around. I’ve also kept reasonably up-to-date with what is happening in the epublishing world. So I know about the options. All have their pluses and minuses. I don't expect to sell a lot of books/ make money; I write about the lives of people to whom big, dramatic events don’t happen, although personal trials and tragedies do, and my protagonists are lesbian.

The biggest downside of any form of self-publishing, for me, is marketing and publicising, because I hate it and so don’t do it. It’s not that I can’t do it, more that I am overcome with resistance and fatigue whenever I set out to.

Watch this space as I figure out what I will do.

I don’t have another novel idea in mind, but I do have a lot of short pieces, some short stories, others shorter than that, which I will do some work on and gather together and see if they make something. If an idea for a short story or poem or novel comes along, I’ll go with that, too.

Whatever else. I’ll keep reading. Here are some of my favourite books from last year’s reading:

Burnt Shadows  by Kamila Shamsi. (She was at Writers & Readers)

Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

Re-born Early diaries of Susan Sontag, edited by her son David Rieff

The Graveyard Book & American Gods by Neil Gaiman (he came to Writers & Readers too)

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

The Collected Short Stories of Lydia Davis

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

Room by Emma Donohue

Evidence of Things Unseen by Marianne Wiggins

How To Live: A Life of Montaigne By Sarah Bakewell.

The Montaigne book is a real treat, and I strongly recommend it — one of those biographies that looks at the man and his work as a whole. I gather it will be out in paperback this month (I read a library copy). Two fairly random quotes from it:

“Montaigne … Saw himself as a thoroughly ordinary man in every respect, except for his habit of writing things down.”

Montaigne thought “that the solution to a world out of joint was for each person to get themselves back in joint: to learn ‘how to live,’ beginning with the art of keeping your feet on the ground.”

the beginning

I have a manuscript of around 86,000 words, which is a medium-sized novel. I have had two other novels published by a publisher. That publisher is not doing new titles and I have decided to embark on doing it myself - with the help of some friends - and recording what I do here so I can refer other people who want to publish their book to it. And 'talk' to others.

What I am starting with:
The manuscript, which has been read and commented on (twice) by my partner and sundry friends, all of whom are intelligent readers and have given good feedback, most of which I have taken notice of.
A friend - and this is important to my doing this - who has worked in book production, who can do page layout and a whole lot of that technical stuff. She is keen to be involved.
Support in the undertaking from my partner.
Information I have gleaned from websites, workshops, library books and the New Zealand Society of Authors, of which I am a member. Most countries have something similar and most apparently, like the one here, produce helpful pamphlets etc.

What I have done:
Sent an email letter to three (fairly) local printers to get some indicative information about costs. One of the things that makes this venture possible is the development in printing that means it is possible to get small runs printed without affecting unit price. More on this when I have some prices.
Found an image I'd like for the cover. It's by a local artist so I have to find out if I can use it.