www.Lulu.com

Self publishing? It's a great way to get a book into print, although one has to be responsible for ALL of the book, not just the words, which means getting to grips with formatting: page numbers, headers, chapter titles being on the right side, etc. God bless the Internet for helping me find the info I needed, but it was an arduous learning curve and one which required of me much patience. Writing the book is a task in itself. Having to do the structure to hold the words was also a task in itself.

So Lulu is my route for self publishing, only because it was suggested to me ages ago when I was oblivious to there being such a thing as self publishing. 

And here is what I had to do:

1) Write the book. I did it in Word.

2) Set up an account with Lulu, which is free. So far, having got one book completed as far as it can go for the moment, all I have had to pay out for is for the three copies I bought during the process of re-edits and the ISBN number which you have to have if you are going to sell publically through such sites as Amazon. 

3) Upload the book. Lulu then obligingly converts it almost immediately to something called Pdf format. With a click of a button Lulu then downloads the book the Pdf formatted book via email, again almost immediately. (You have to have Pdf facilities on your PC). Then you save it into your files.

4) Now the task of re-reading. I open the Pdf file of the book and the Word file. I read the Pdf file, checking for writing and formatting errors. When I find an error, I open the Word file and make the alteration immediately. 

5) Once I have altered the Word file copy of the book, I go back into Lulu and into my account. I delete the first upload, and upload the newly edited Word file of the book. Then 3 and 4 go round again. And again. But the errors become smaller as I go along, and actually are harder to pick up, and by this time I am finding the whole process tedious. So: time to let the book rest for a few weeks so it can eventually be tackled with a fresh mind again.

6) By the way, I put two files in the Lulu account: one carrying the front pages, which is the title, index, and other info pages. The second is the actual book itself. You could upload separate chapters as you go, but I think this is unwieldy, especially if you have loads of chapters. 

7) So I get to the stage when I can go no further with the edits. So onto the book cover. I do this myself, and Lulu have a good book cover formatting section so you can do this. I think that having someone else to do the cover would be a good thing, but cost is an issue at the moment so I have to do the cover myself.

8) Then onto the next stage of costings, synopsis, etc. 

9) All done! Now I have to purchase the book to have a look at it in its printed form. If you were fast tracking you could get your book, once written, actually into book form and held in your hands within two weeks depending on the speed of the post. But I think that is too fast. Taking time with each stage, and I took nearly a whole year because I was sidetracked away for several months during the re-reading stages plus I was a novice at self publishing, means that the book is likely to be of a better standard.

10) And that, briefly, is all that you have to do! 

So: My Psychic Toolbox: Uploaded the two files yesterday, download has come back, which I have saved, and now onto the re-reading. 

And: Psychic Virgin: My last copy for re-editing has just arrived, but I know that the book is done. So onto Lulu to verify that I was happy with the book, clicked a button, and off into the world it now goes. 6-8 weeks apparently to get onto Amazon, but it is useless to get impatient with the process. Best to get on with other projects meanwhile. Will have to look at how to get it noticed on Amazon, so God bless the Internet again for that info. Also going into ebook format, which is the way to go for books I think, mostly because it reduces the cost for people. So another project is looking at the ebook world of formatting. 

Today I blessed my first offspring, and I thought of it trundling its way through the electronic networks, and it felt like it was leaving home. Like any parent with a grown child, I let it go. I had given birth to it, nurtured it, looked after it, watched it grow and take shape into its young adult form. Now it is time to let it take its place in the world to do whatever it is meant to do. And the odd thing is that if feels like it is its own self, as if it has its own life!

Wow! 

The synopsis saga

So the synopsis still isn't happening. I seem to be able to write other things, like the blogs, like responding to other people's blogs, but everytime I make an attempt to get the synopsis done I seem to freeze. Kapput! Mental shutdown in action. 

And I am finding this SSSSsooooo frustrating. I am getting so cross at myself. So: up early again. 'Do Synopsis' time. 

Nope. Not happening. Fiddling about doing other stuff instead.  

But a crack of daylight suddenly appeared when I was browsing through old Psychic Virgin files. Poking about in the rejected synopsis pile for that book, of which there are loads, I chanced to come one which could be borrowed by My Psychic Toolbox. A bit of reworking here and there, and it could work. 

With lashings of enthusiasm I copied and pasted the synopsis into my PT workfolder.

And then like the rain running off our brand new roof and gaily running into our brand new guttering and from thence into our brand new drainpipes, so my mental energies flowed away as well. Why is that? Why can't I do this flippin synopsis! 

So I thought I would have a moan into your ear, which always makes me feel better. But: I have managed to get the graphics for the front cover of PT started. They need to show some similarity to PV because they are part of a series of four, possibly five, books.

Blank page up. Into Autoshapes (can't do any posh graphic packages yet) a bit of a play around, and I think it's done, the central graphic that is. I like the way the flowers don't look quite right, sort of a little bit askew. Sort of like me really. And I didn't want to do the usual type of graphics which books of this genre normally have: either a photo of the author, with makeup intact if female, plastered across the front of it, or some etherial theme which would be totally out of place with me. 

The beauty of self publishing is that one can do what one likes with one's book. The less beautiful aspect is the accompanying frustration when one's mental faculties won't co-operate.

Ok. So moan over. 

Things I have learnt: ? 

Things I have NOT learnt: How to find those words which are at the moment being elusive. 

Things I HOPE to learn: everything!

Cheerio for now, and wishing you much joy and happiness, and oodles of creativity in whatever it is you are creating.

Trying to find the synopsis words

From out of Psychic Virgin came My Psychic Toolbox. Having unexpectedly arrived at 130,000 words when I thought I would only write 5, I had to shave off some of the content of Psychic Virgin. Hence Book Two. Not so hard to write, most of it was done last winter (2009). Then it was left. Not a bad thing to do because it allows the book to 'cook'. Not as difficult to write either because the book is about how I work, what happens to me psychically, rather than how I arrived at being me.

So, book more or less done. Another read through, checking for typos which is like going fishing: you stand on the bank dangling your rod hoping for a 'catch', so I sit at the PC grazing through the words hoping to catch some typoes. Like fishing, it can be tedious at times if you don't 'catch' anything! Anyway, done this. Almost ready to upload to Lulu.com. The site will automatically convert it to Pdf format and download it back to me within minutes. Then I have to check that all is as it should be on the page: page numbering running seamlessly through, headers left and right where they should be and saying what they are supposed to be saying, same gap between headers and top lines, does the page itself look reasonably balanced, and so on. Loads of things to watch out for. Still, there will be plenty of things which slip through, so I put a note on one of the front pages that this is a 'cottage industry type book which means that I have done all the work on it myself. Therefore please forgive any typos that have escaped the net and any layout errors that have done the same'. That is all I can do for the reader: just explain that this is a homemade book.

Now onto the front section of the book. Easy this time. All I did was copy over Psychic Virgin's entry pages, then change the words relevant to My Psychic Toolbox. And a word here: I really would like to get on to other books, and would love to have a bash at a novel. All this writing about me can be tedious, especially because I don't want the books to be about how clever I am: they are supposed to help and inspire others to develop psychically if they want to. But these books need to be got out of the way before I get on to more interesting things. They need to be done!

BUT: I'm stuck. The b********y synopsis again! PV's synopsis took loads of re-writes and re-writes and re-writes before I let it go. Even now I don't really regard it as finished, but the book is done so no more fiddling about with it. The main question was: how serious do I make the synopsis, or should I make it funny, or spout off about what a clever and talented person I am in which case I would bin the book anyway. So I chose the route of funny. But then that is what you need to do with life: remember the funny bits and forget the rest, not take life too seriously.

AND: up against a wall I am now jammed. Synopsis time again. How to encapsulate a book of 70,000 words into 250 and 500. One for the back cover and Lulu's sale's pages, the second for the Introduction in the first section. Into avoidance mode I have gone. I get onto PC with good intent. An hour or so later time to go do something else away from the PC, having checked and responded to emails, looked at blog to do any responses to people who have left comments my thinking being that if someone can take the time to leave some words then I must make the time to respond back, onto Internet to have a browse at the newspapers, maybe YouTube for a bit of a fish around if I am really into avoidance mode.

THE OUTCOME: No synopsis! I am now getting cross at myself. Nothing coming out of my head. No 'lead in' words. No inspiration. But a thought has popped in: skim read MPT, lifting out certain phrases which leap out of the page at me. Make a note of them. Then use them as the scaffolding of the synopsis. Will let you know how I get on!

Meanwhile, my head is devoid of words and to sleep my creative faculties have gone. Maybe because it is cold here in our patch of the world, and hibernation time is upon us. Hope your head is being more obligingly active for you, and leaving you with the thought that writing has got to be a passion if one is going to put the hours of work in that is required to get those words out of one's head. Of course, one has got to find those words in one's head, often they will play hide-and-seek and refuse to be found, hence my early start today to see if I can find them. Singing 'I CAN write that synopsis, I can WRITE that ******* synsopsis, I can, I can I CAN', I am off to have a go.

The long and long hours

Sometimes writing is sheer hard work for me. Most times really. Because I am someone who can't plan what I am going to write, but instead have to wait for a line or two of thought to pop in which then gives me a start point.

Even then I don't have a clue as to what is going to happen when I switch on my PC ready to uptake the journey from that start point. The words arrive in my head or they don't, depending on whether I can stop myself from concentrating too hard on what I think I ought to write. All that happens if I do is that the words on the page are stilted, uncrafted, ordinary.

For me to write I have to have an empty head. Because the words come from a part of my mind which is a separate self, a self I didn't know I had until recently, although I did have a glimmer of that secret self when I was in my early forties, but I closed the door to it because it felt too big and I was intimidated by the hugeness of that self.

I had to travel nearly twenty years on before I could cope with this self. Just before sixty I thought I would let that door open again, and coming forth from the secret self was the scaffolding for my first book, Psychic Virgin.

For hours and hours I struggled between what I thought I ought to write which was when I was under the influence of my conscious self, as opposed to what was right to write which was when the secret self was speaking to me, from my subconscious.

Writing for me is difficult because I have to have an empty head. To try and fill a page with words when the empty head is not empty enough and so blocks the word flow is a waste of time. All I do is sit and look at the blank page for a while then go fiddle about on Youtube or browse the web. Of late I go browsing over my fellow blogger's recent posts, which is the best of activities to do when my secret self is trying to get it's voice heard, because of the inspiration to keep going that it gives me. I love being globally networked with people in other countries, all sharing their worlds.

The long and long hours of endeavour it takes to create the pages of a book when the head has to be devoid of any thought so the words can properly come from that other place in one's head is the most awesome task imaginable. But what it does is create a book that when read in its published form reads like one has not actually written it all. And that is a curious effect of writing from an empty head: that when one re-reads what one has written it reads like someone else has written it! Amazing!

So if you want to craft words on a page, no matter if it is 200, 500, 10,000 or 100,000 words, try seeing if you can stop organising the words, and then let you own secret self speak for you.

The long and long hours of writing endeavour are not easy for me, because of needing to keep my mind empty so that other self will speak. With practice you can do the same.

Good luck with your writing.

Off we go!

New blog, first post. Where shall I start! Perhaps to say that I never had the slightest intention of being a writer but that it is something which has sort of happened along the way. Now I am hooked and must write. If I don't, then I get miserable!

I had my first outpouring of writing at 40. Went on a long distance foot path walk in the UK when it was not the done thing for women to do such things. Got back home. "What to do now?" was my thinking. Message came into my head from Upstairs Crew: write about the walk. Crikey that was hard. Took a year. Off to publishers. Rejected. Filed book away. Never was going to write again.

A while later, and I sort of 'sicked up' the start of a novel. A spooky one of all things. Did a few pages. Put that away as felt intimidated about the project. A few pages of another book popped into my mind. This was a funny one. Made me laugh as I wrote it. Put that away as well, mostly because of my chaotic personal life and my hectic psychic development pathway.

Onto a Writers Workshop. Loads of writing experience got here. Had to learn how to write 200 word, 500 word or even 50 word stories. Great door opener for me. Stopped though after a while because of what my life was getting up to.

And so it came to be my early fifties. Coming out of a 'reading' (I channel help and guidance from the Upstairs Crew to people whose lives are in a jumble) the words "Your first book will be about yourself" was spoken into my head. Quite a surprise that was. And "Not likely" was my response back. Not for one minute was I ever going to write about myself. I didn't consider myself interesting enough, neither was I particularly fussed about going back into my past history, and anyway, who was going to be bothered to read it, what benefit would they get from it. So I binned the message. I was not going to write out myself.

However, the thought would bubble to the surface now and again. It would not be let go. So I pondered upon a possible title. "Perhaps 'The Reluctant Medium' would be the best one", I thought, because I never expected to become a psychic craftswoman in the first place, so IF I was ever going to write about myself then that is what the title of the book would be.

So I came to my 59th birthday. Out walking my dog in the local woods, and it came to me that I really needed to get the thing written and out of the way. I had loads of other book titles now in the pipeline, all given to me at odd moments from the Upstairs Crew, and I was longing to get onto writing them. This first book was blocking my way to those other books.

SInce I was going to be 60 the following year, it seemed a good time to do this task.

And so I started. But where to start! All of my past was a tangled pile of memories. Where to pick up the threads of those memories, that was my first task. So I made a huge chart, writing down the years from when I was first born to now. Then I started filling in those years. Not easy, as I realised the book was going to be double stranded: how I got to become a psychic after never expecting to be one, and how I finally got to meet and be successful with my soul partner after thinking I never would.

Having to sift out those memories was painful sometimes. Revisiting times which I thought had been dumped on the 'out pile' was hard. And often wondering how the hell I managed to cope with all that was happening.

The book started to read like a 'I did this, and then that, and this happened'. No-one was ever going to find this interesting. Still, I had had that message to write about my life so that is what I kept to.

Came to one evening, having finally managed 30, 000 words, and I thought I would look on Amazon to see if the title had already been taken. It had. Which gave me permission to promptly terminate the project. Obviously the Upstairs Crew had been playing games with me. And with relief I grabbed at the chance to bin the project.

Next morning: Onto my PC to do a trawl over the Internet to find a knitting wool provider, and bang! Crashing into my head came the words: Psychic Virgin. Oh crikey, crikey, crikey! With absolute certainty I knew that this was the book title. That the book was still ongoing. Oh crikey, crikey, crikey! And now all of those 30,000 words had to be dumped because they didn't fit the title and I had to start again. Weeks of work. All dumped.

And that new title, which I was shy about saying out loud even to myself let alone other people, gave me an Everest of a challenge. Two years it took me, during which I learnt how to write a book. How sit through those long hours when there was nothing in my head. How to enjoy the creative flow when the words were outpouring. How to be patient with hidden memories were being revisited. How to create an interesting narrative: not to be too miserable when writing about the difficult times, but to find something funny to break the mood of the writing up. How to make the page look interesting without cramming the page with too much text. Breaking rules of grammar when necessary, but keeping to them most of the time. Not repeating myself to often. FInding different ways of saying the same thing to make the stop 'reading boredom' creeping in. Keeping the theme of the book going, meanwhile intertwining the two separate elements of personal and psychic. How to be patient as the words built up and up and up, finally to 120,000 words.

And then the long process of re-writes, ruthlessly cutting out that which was irrelevant. Chunks were cut, some of which have gone in to other books in what has now become a series of five books. I got the final tally of words down to 100,000 words.

A publisher said they would take it if I cut it down to 60,000 words. This was not do-able because then the book wouldn't make sense. I would have to have taken out one half of the two themes of the book, and that would have lost the reason why it was written in the first place. So I left the book alone for a while. Moved to France.

And then it was time to get it back out again, and self publishing became the option I took. And another Everest sized challenge as I grappled with learning how to format a book, to make the pages look reasonably professional. Then how to design a book cover. Then getting the book back from Lulu (the self publishing company I used) and seeing it in the flesh.

So I put it away again. For a while. When I felt brave enough I started to read Psychic Virgin and the curious thing was that it didn't feel like I had written it at all but that someone else had! However I was still the one who had to go through it thoroughly to do some more tidying up and re-edits. Three times I have had to go through this process. Now it is done.

I am sure that a professional publisher would find loads of errors, but I have done my best. This is a 'cottage industry' book and as such will have parts in it which aren't quite right.

But most of all, writing it has truly opened the writing pathway. I have learnt how to write and how to self publish, and I am quite proud of myself for uptaking these challenges.

And I started this blog off to hopefully inspire others to have a go themselves. Not to boast about having written a book. Not to hope that people will buy the book. Not to flaunt myself as being better than anyone else. No, the reason why this book was written and why I have started this blog is to act as inspiration to others who might be thinking of doing the same.