Thursday, February 10

The Importance of Letting Go

One of the hardest problems I have faced as an author is the concept of letting go. For some reason I have had the hardest time saying good-bye to Spiral X and letting it stand, or fall, on its own. I have done my best to build it up, I've given it a couple of facelifts, and even given it one last go around the editing pool in order to clear up some lingering blemishes. You'd think I'd be done, right? Wrong. See, now I'm wondering if $3.99 is the right price point. I've maintained for a while now that it's worth at least half of what you would pay for a paperback in a book store. I still maintain that thought. However, I also realize that Spiral X just happens to be priced about $1 more than the accepted norm of $2.99. I still have some musing to do on this, but I do see the price lowering in the future. In a business sense, it probably makes the most sense. I've done most of my changing with that in mind, and this would be no different.

I also bring up letting go because there's a controversy swirling around the blogosphere over an author who ripped into a reviewer based upon a negative review she received. I won't dignify the whole issue by naming names, but I will say that the author should have let it go. Hey, I have issues with a couple of the reviews I've received, but I'm certainly not going to tell you about them. Why? Because it doesn't matter. It's been said, it's been written, it's been posted. Nothing I say will change their opinion. That's the gist of the matter here. The reviewer posted her opinion of the book. She didn't rip into the author, she simply posted why she didn't like the book in question. To go after the reviewer like that was not cool. Some people aren't going to love your writing, and sometimes they'll even let the world around them know. It's okay though. Life goes on and there's more books to be written. So let the book go, and write damn you!

Book Two of the Eternal War is currently on chapter eighteen of the index card outline. I'm hoping to have it completely done by the end of the weekend so I can get started on expanding things out. The overriding emotion  for Cheryl so far has been frustration, and she's crossing different personal boundaries than in Spiral X. I have a pretty good idea of how I want everything to keep going, but it'll be interesting to see what eventually makes it into the book. I'm not throwing ideas against the wall or anything, but there's a couple of things in here that touch on Cheryl herself but don't necessarily impact the overall plot. So we'll see.

Talk to you guys on Sunday.

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