How We Write

At the beginning of last week through the beginning of this week, I ran into a dilemma. More specifically, I created one with my own clumsiness. Yes, I broke my iPad Mini.

Believe me, it was the end of the world. I am a perfectionist, and the sight of a cracked screen, no matter how usable it is, brings chills to my spine. I needed this to be fixed! Needless to say, I couldn't do it myself, and ended up damaging my device beyond repair.

I was shocked to find that I wasn't mainly upset because my gaming and entertainment device was now rendered useless - I was upset because my main ability to type on the go had been taken away.

Most of my novel Macyntire & Hough was typed on my iPad Mini using one of the many typing programs. At first I was skeptical about being able to use the screen's keyboard, but after a few days of using it, I became very fast and loved being able to see the word count and only the blank page as I worked. Moving on from my last novel, I began the next and started setting goals for myself (which I've already failed on some of them, but still trying to get back up there!). I wanted to type 1,600 words per day. So far I've had three days with that amount, two days of typing notes and outlining, and one day off to recharge my brain from a busy day at work looking at a screen.

I did end up getting a new iPad, and it now has a fancy case to protect it and makes it easier to hold, but I have to think that if this accident didn't happen, I might not have really considered the way that I've been writing. How easy is it to just pull out the iPad when I'm waiting in line somewhere and type out a few paragraphs? Or when I'm waiting to close down the movie theater in the evening, waiting for folks to finish their movies? It's so convenient, and has been a good use of otherwise wasted time. I used to do this with an old-fashioned notebook, but now I am enjoying being able to skip the retype business and just export my text and format it from there.

How do you type? Has your process changed with the advent of new digital technology? What do you think about the changing times for writers?

Aleister Character Portrait

As a special treat today I have a character portrait of one of the villains from Macyntire & Hough, Aleister.

Aleister is a lower form of demon, a minion if you like. He is the hired hand who goes out and threatens the lingering ghosts of people with fear and, sometimes if his boss allows, he gets to bring them in and watch then become part of Haures Grantley's library of souls.

Macabre? Of course! It's October after all! Hope you enjoy, and if you haven't, pick up a copy of Macyntire & Hough in paperback, or save a few dollars and get it in eBook on Amazon!

Kindle Word-To-Page Count Thoughts

It's a great mystery as to how Kindle and the Amazon storefront estimates page count when you upload your Kindle book to KDP.

Page count is relative. In the era of digital eReaders where the audience can adjust the text size, spacing, margins and fonts, the actual type-set pages that we would normally judge a book on for length are becoming obsolete unless you have a physical edition that you are converting to Kindle. For myself, I end up going the opposite - taking my Kindle version and converting it for print using Scrivener with the correct layout and dimensions for CreateSpace. I was very pleased with how my first book came out and I'm sure that I will definitely use CreateSpace again in the near future. Check out the image below of how my physical book came out.

Back to the initial post topic - I've got some estimates based on my own work that might help with your own dilemmas of figuring out how "long" your book is once you upload it to KDP.

For my shorter work, about 8,000 or so words, KDP estimated my book was roughly 41 pages. This includes an internal cover and title page with table of contents. Not bad for a short book. I also recently finished up a short prequel story to my Macyntire & Hough novel that was just shy of 7,000 words, and KDP estimated this as being 32 pages long, again, including cover, title page, and table of contents.

While it's not exact, that equals roughly 218 words per page. Pretty close to my estimate of 250 words for my own calculations.

If you're really concerned with readers being unaware of how long your book is, you can always put in the description how many words (approximately) the book is. The tech-savvy readers will pick up on that and hopefully be more tempted to give you work a chance.