Unborn Authors

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Once I had a few books out, I realized how easy it is to publish (well, self-publish). I began speaking about it, advising, and helping out in writer’s groups. So many people want to write and I wanted to help!

Then I realized that many people say they want to publish books (or say they do), but the books rarely materialize. It’s frustrating to watch talent and enthusiasm never pay off, even when there are moments people do get their book out. Somehow the successes don’t reduce the pain of seeing the failures.

My fellow authors and I commiserate about this. There’s a pain that comes with seeing people like us not realize what we have. There’s an unpleasant mix of empathy, disbelief, and frustration that tugs at us.

We share stories about it, trying to understand how we might help. The person who sees writing as a path to wealth but doesn’t understand how writing usually pays the bills. The author who can’t push the button. The writer who can’t start, and the other who can’t finish.

We talk about them but rarely do we find solutions. The pain stays with us because these authors are us, and there are things to tell. You can sense that book waiting to be born in someone.

I’ve realized it’s not the book being born that’s the problem. The problem is the person hasn’t yet been born as an author.

Writing is not just wordsmithing or plotting or self-publishing. It’s a lifestyle and the commitment and desire to get your work out. You don’t become an author by publishing; you become an author by becoming the kind of person who can get a book out.


This may mean writing better, learning software, taking classes, or going to therapy for issues. It means honing your art and moving forward. In many cases, it means getting the book out even if it’s bad so you can write the next one. Author is a verb way more than it is a noun.

So many unrealized authors haven’t gone all the way being authors. Stuck daydreaming or stuck afraid to push the button and publish, many are still stuck. They’re not born yet.

Maybe this is what we need far more than another grammar guide or plotting guide – advice on being an author as a person. I hope this helps my fellow published authors help others. It will certainly guide my future advice.

Who do you need to be in order to become an author?

Steven Savage

Numbers Are For More Than Pages

(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr.  Find out more at my newsletter.)

Being a writer, on the side or professionally, requires a lot of skills. A self-publisher wears many hats, but even authors with agents and support have to take on tasks other than writing. Of those many skills, one stands out as very important and easy to miss – Math.

People have widely differing reactions to hearing “we’re going to talk about math.” Trust me, it’s worth it whatever your response is – because math is used everywhere in an author’s work.

A writer’s growth requires math to be measured – and improved. Comparing word counts lets you determine if your typing speed is improving. Time taken to edit a document helps you determine if your grammar is improving. Becoming a better writer may mean being better at math.

But once you’re writing, math comes in again as you plot a schedule. How long will it take you to write this chapter for your pre-readers? How long until you need to get a cover from your artist? Scheduling is all math – often made more challenging with timezones, calculating dates, and the like.

As a book progresses, math once again comes to the fore. How fast are you working? What’s the percentage of a book done? Do you have to change your schedule or speed up your pace? Scheduling is math – but so is seeing how you’re doing.

When a book is done, there comes more math. How many pages is a book, and how does that affect cover size? What’s the ideal formatting with font sizes and margins? If you do self-publishing and don’t outsource formatting and the like, get out your calculator.

Finally, a book launches. It’s out and . . . here comes more math. You have to calculate if your ad spends are paying off. Evaluating book sales requires math, often with complex date-time calculations. Your newsletter opens and clicks need to be compared to past events – which means math.

It’s exhausting, isn’t it? When I first realized I had to write this column, I was overwhelmed with the realization of just how much math my own publishing involved. I was so used to it I didn’t see it – until I wrote this.

If you like math like me, or don’t, this should be a helpful realization. Math is a skill you need to use in writing, and if your math skills are lacking you have a new motivation to improve them. Math makes a better author.

Steven Savage

Steve’s Creative Resources 1/30/2020

I realized I hadn’t published one of these roundups in ages, so here you go – creative resources I’ve found, heard of, and often use!

Art Sources

  • Free
    • Pixabay – A source for art that is free as well as royalty-free. There’s a lot here, and much of it is professional.
    • Unsplash – A source for photos that are free as well as royalty-free. The quality is very high.
  • Royalty Free
    • Canstockphoto – A great source for royalty-free art, photos, and more. Has a subscription system and a pay-more-get-more credit system.
    • Shutterstock – The classic source for royalty-free art, photos, and more. Has both monthly and specific purchases available.
    • The Noun Project – A fee or membership-based site for downloading a huge selection of royalty free icons! Once you pay for it or download it, it’s royalty-free! Useful for all sorts of projects

Book Covers

  • Premade
    • Go On Write – Premade covers for books – pick one that looks right and the artist will change the title and author appropriately. A great bargain, and even has series of covers at discount! Will do custom work to.
  • Services
    • Paper and Sage – A reliable source of both premade and custom book covers.
  • Tools
    • 3D Book Cover Design – Makes 3D Mockups of book covers.
    • Canva – Book cover creator, though you will want to provide your own art if you don’t want to pay for rights to their stock photo. Also has other services.

Book Reviewers

  • Review Sources
    • Midwest book review – Will review books for free, but it’s a matter of choice.
    • Self Publishing Review – A classic paid review service (where a pool of reviewers is available) for books. Not always a guarantee of the best reviews of course, so you take your risks . .
    • The Indie Review – A large, constantly-updated list of indie book reviewers.

Color Tools

  • Collections
    • Color Tools – Plenty of useful online color tools.
    • HTML Color Codes – Useful color tools, with a focus on web-focused colors.
    • Material Palette – Useful tools for desginging palettes, finding icons, and locating specific colors
  • Color Schemes
    • Color At Adobe – A color theme creator that lets you create schemes, or even get one from a picture, and has a powerful interface.
    • Color Calculator – A color scheme creator that also has useful advice and guides.
    • Colormind – A color theme creator that creates schemes with simple clicking, or get one from a photo.
    • Colors at Halfpixel – A simple palette creator (with a mobile option) with intuitive controls.
    • Coolors – A useful and powerful color palette creator that’s easy to use and powerful.
    • Huesnap – A palette repository and creation tool

Contact Management

  • Mailing Lists
    • Mailchimp – Mailchimp may have some restrictions, but it’s the go-to for easy mailing list management, which is perfect for authors and artists. It also integrates well with other tools.
  • Professional
    • LinkedIn – The classic business networking site, and pretty unavoidable for most professionals.

Game Creation

  • General
    • Game Maker Studio – A powerful game creation tool, with free and paid options
    • Unity – A popular, well-supported game creation tool, not only popular, but one with many tutorials available.
  • Interactive Fiction – Graphics
    • Ren’py – A powerful game creation tool with an inclination to visual novels and life-sim, and capable of powerful customization.
  • Interactive Fiction – Text
    • Choicescript – A choice-based game system, both for fun and used commercially.
    • Twine – A web-based Interactive Fiction development tool with multiple options.
  • RPGs
    • RPG Maker – Game creation tools – the original was RPG focused, but the company has also expanded into Visual Novels.

Generators

  • Generator Sites
    • Chaotic Shiniy – A diverse source of generators in a variety of styles.
    • Darkest of Nights – Fantasy-oriented generators.
    • Donjon – Generators for a variety of genres and game systems, some of which provide graphics as well!
    • Dropping-the-form – Generators for various settings.
    • DunGen – A powerful dungeon generation tool!
    • Eposic – Generators – among other imaginative efforts.
    • Fantasy Name Generators – And there are a LOT of them here. About anything you could want, and a few you didn’t know you needed.
    • Feath – Generators of various types, conveniently categorized.
    • Generator Blog – Links out to many other generators.
    • Generatorland – Lots of generators and generator tools.
    • Mithril and mages – Generators for a variety of genres.
    • Name Pistol – Band name generators.
    • RanGen – Random generators, from fantasy to helpful writing tools.
    • Serendipity – A generator site with some setting and name generators.
    • Seventh Sanctum – A gigantic collection of generators founded in 1999, with a focus on writing and RPGs.
    • Springhole.net – A site of generators and other creative tools.
    • Squid.org – Home of a complex name generator with many, many options.
    • The Force – A powerful name generator with multiple options.

Graphics

  • Graphic Tools
    • Art Rage – A painting-oriented digital art program supporting many operating systems, tools, and formats.
    • Clip Studio – A comics, painting, and illustration tool with many options and features
    • Mediabang – A comic and painting application that’s free and multiplatform!
    • Paintstorm – A low-cost digital painting program with many advanced features.
  • Graphic Tools – Free
    • Gimp – Aka The GNU Image Manipulation Program. A free, open source graphic tool that will take care of almost all of your graphic needs (barring a few limits like CYMK conversion and the like).
    • Krita – A free graphic tool focused on professional workflows.
    • Made With Mischief – A quick, free sketching and brainstorming tool.
    • Sketchbook – A free sketching program.
  • Graphic Tools – Painting
    • BlackInk – A painting program, focusing on stylistic work as opposed to realistic
  • Mac
    • Pixemlator – A low-cost alternative to Photoshop for Mac, with lots of compatibility options

Helpful Tools

  • Relaxing Backgrounds
    • 4 Ever Transit Authority – Ride the bus through randomly generated art deco cities. A great program to run in the background or on your TV or monitor to relax you while you create.
    • Anomolies – A relaxing background display/artgame that creates surreal spacescapes, often with strange nebulas and sites that resembe anything from devices to lights to disturbing lifeforms.
    • Becalm – A relaxing journey via sailboat through surreal worlds with a relaxing soundtrack and audio. Can be run for a few minutes or in a loop and you can switch between multiple settings.
    • Panoramical – Available on Itch.io And Steam. Panoramical is an audio/visual remixer where you can tweak settings in multiple environments, turning them into audio/visual displays. Find your favorite setting, leave it on, and relax.
    • Station To Station – A simulated train ride through imaginary environments. Run it in the background or through your television while you create to help relax you

Portfolios

  • Services
    • Adobe Portfolio – The popular porftolio site – that comes with many Adobe subscriptions.
    • Artstation – Multimedia-focused portfolio and blog platform
    • Format – A portfolio site with store services as well.

RPG Resources

  • Random Charts
    • Chartopia – A site with a huge and expanding amount of charts for RPGs, easily sortable and classified.

Self-Publishing

  • Audiobooks
    • ACX – Amazon’s self-publishing audio platform
    • Audible – Another amazon audiobook publishing platform
    • Findaway – A wide-ranging audiobook distribution service.
  • Cards
    • Drive Thru Cards – Self-publishing for card games, both physical and downloads.
  • eBook
    • Itch.io – Itch.io doesn’t just do games – it also allows for people to publish books, and is very open-minded.
    • Kobo Writing Life – Distribute your eBook via Kobo
    • Nook Press – Distribute your eBook via Nook
  • eBook-Multiple
    • Draft2Digital – A service that distributes to multiple eBook platforms.
    • Smashwords – A wide-ranging ebook distribution service.
  • Physical And Ebook
    • Ingram Spark – Ingram’s eBook and physical book publishing platform. Wide reach, but may require some setup fees and has some limitations.
    • KDP – Amazon’s full-service print and Kindle publishing service. Warning, the eBook distribution is only through Amazon.
    • Lulu.com – A print and eBook creation and distribution service.
  • RPGs
    • Drive Thru RPG – Self-publishing for RPGs, both downloadable and in print. Also supports related merch like calendars.
  • Video Games
    • Itch.io – Itch.io is a supportive, indie-oriented game store site. It also has a lot of self-published resources for game development, as well as supporting books of all kind.

Website Creation

  • Services
    • Squarespace – The popular website creator with many options.
    • Weebly – Easy and simple to use website, blogs, and stores.
    • Wix – A simple And effective website source, though paid options are reccomended.
    • WordPress.com – The classic site, with free and paid options. Obviously blog-focused.

Writing Research

  • Maps
    • Old Maps Online – A way to find and view old maps of the world. Great for research and imagining.

Writing Tools

  • Ebook Creation
    • Calibre – A free ebook creation tool.
    • Jutoh – Not only converts your book to various ebook formats, it’s a powerful enough tool that you could even write books in it.
  • Word Processing
    • LibreOffice – A full, free, open source office suite. Beyond the free price, it’s fantastic ad using ODT format and creating PDFs.
  • Word Tools
    • Describing Words – Ideas for how to describe a given word.
    • Dictionary.com – The classic online dictionary.
    • Related Words – Helps find words similar to or related to one you’re using.
    • Rhyme Zone – A tool to help you find rhyming words.
    • Thesaurus.Com – The classic online thesaurus, with plenty of useful options and displays
    • Wordsworth – A tool to see if words you’re using fit the time period you’re writing
  • Writing
    • Scriviner – A writing tool that combines note taking, tracking, and writing into one application.
  • Writing Checking
    • Grammarly – A pricey but powerful service and software for checking grammar, spelling, and even plagarism if you need. There are free, limited options.
    • Hemmingway – A grammar checking tool with both web and desktop versions.
    • Pro Writing Aid – A subscription-based writing checker service/tool.