Becoming a Novelist: Value vs. Worth (how my car started me thinking)

Becoming a Novelist: Value vs. Worth (how my car started me thinking): I'm going to go off topic here and talk about what things are worth to me. This whole topic was prompted by my automobile.  My car is ...

Value vs. Worth (how my car started me thinking)

I'm going to go off topic here and talk about what things are worth to me.

This whole topic was prompted by my automobile.  My car is nine years old now and it runs well enough but it's started to have problems and they are adding up.  I'll start with an annoying little problem this model is prone to, an engine check light because some doo dad is out of spec.  I had the specialists pull the engine codes and they explained what it was.  It had to do with some moving parts in the accelerator that rotate and control my current speed when I press or release the gas.  It want's to be replaced for about $700.00.  The engine runs fine, the gas mileage is above par for the make and I have better things to do with my money.  So I live with a constantly burning engine check light.  Last year during a sever freeze, my driver window broke. More precisely, the arms that make it go up and down bent.  Replacing them would have been $600.00.  My mechanics kindly locked the window in the up position and I don't do drive thru windows when I can avoid them.  Somewhere along the line, the air dam broke and fell off.  The car runs fine.  The plastic cover over one of the fog lights broke.  The lamp still works, but it's unprotected.  One of my wheels cracked while I was out of town (900 miles out of town).  Replacing all four wheels, $550.00.  I replaced one, but now the tire people don't want to rotate my tires because the wheels don't match.  A couple weeks ago, the blowers in my AC went out.  I can still feel the AC kick on and there is cold air at the vents.  It just can't blow it out.

So, to get my car back into optimum condition will cost me at least $2,000.00 and I'm not including the new set of tires that are due real soon.

According to Kelley Blue Book (www.kbb.com) my trade in value is only about $2,000 to $3,000 ($4,000 if I sell it myself.)  So I wonder if it is worth fixing or better to replace?

I'd love to get a new car, but this car runs well and it's probably worth more than $4,000 to me.  It's paid for and any new car would be at least $300 per month.  Maybe if the government gives us back interest deductions on cars, the value of a new car will look better to me.

So I must consider how much a new car will cost, at least $21,000 I think (plus interest), vs. $3,000 to fix this one up (and another grand for what comes next.)  Will any new car give me $15,000 additional value in terms of use?  Probably not.  Unless they offer us a hybrid with long lasting magical batteries, or a combustion engine that runs on water, I don't see the extra value.

Thanks for hearing me out, have a nice day.

Reviews.  We all want them.  We crave those scintillating 5 star reviews so we can jump up and down and post in our groups what wonderful authors we are and here is the validation to prove it.  But what is 5 stars?  Do all 5 star reviews deserve 5 stars?  What does it mean when someone gets one star?  (Thankfully, it wasn't me.)

I started out checking my stats on Amazon, then I moved over to the "top 100" books on Amazon.  Curiously, I saw a book there with only 8 reviews, then I saw another with only 6 reviews.  I thought Amazon adjusted their ratings to only count paid sales, but I am left to assume that these books must have been given away for free to earn their rank.

Out of curiosity, I decided to read the reviews on one of them.  Only 6 reviews, sounds easy.  But what I found was unexpected.  The book had a few 5 star reviews plus a four star and a ONE star.  The reviewer ripped the author for poor grammar and juvenile writing style.  Personally, I suspect that there are scads of independent books released under these same conditions.  My first reaction was BRAVO!  Someone tells it like it is.  But then, I clicked the link to read the reviewers other reviews.  I was curious to see if he trashed all books equally.  It was his only review.

I'm not naming names, chiefly because I don't want him to go post one star trash on my books.  I thought Amazon was rooting this crap out of their review system.  I don't know about you, but I think that only one review of one star is a mighty big red flag.  Maybe they need someone to post a complaint first.

Of course, it is possible that his assessment was spot on.

I love my job

There can be a lot of work involved when writing.  Perhaps not for all writers, and maybe it shows in their work, but for me, I can sometimes spend days trying to figure out how I will work my hero out of a predicament, or how I will work them into that situation in the first place.

One of the great joys for me, as an author, is to write something that gives myself shivers.  Over the past couple years, I have completed the revisions on two novels.  I went over them relentlessly catching grammar and spelling errors and reworking the phrasing to get the images just right.  I knew I was doing the right thing when I didn't tire of going over it again, and when the ending still brought shivers and sometimes even tears to my eyes.

Now, I am back to creating again, and I just had the same experience as I found a wonderful way to bring the heroines driving motivation and the great obstacle she will face, forward into the early pages of the book.  It's a great feeling that I know I will relive when I do my revisions, and when I get everything just right, I know the readers will feel the same thing.

Sometimes, I really I love my job.

How do you write?

How do you write?  Do you plot out your work or sit down and type from the seat of your pants?  How is it working for you?

I've done both, and here is what I think I am learning.

My first two novels started with a basic plot, but not a heavily mapped out plan.  I knew approximately where the story would go and just started writing.  During the process, I discovered many new things about my characters.  This is vastly different from plotting out the story and knowing every detail of your characters and locations up front.  It can be challenging to keep the continuity when writing this way, but I kept notes as I went along.

My next novel started as a NanoWrimo project.  So I proved I could write 50,000 words in a single month. I plotted this one out and started filling scenes with words.  It wasn't my best work.  I wasn't sure at this point if the failing was from trying to cram 50,000 words in my spare time, while working a 50-60 hour a week job, or if it was from the scene plotting.  Perhaps I'm too critical, but it just lacked the depth and richness I feel I brought to the other two books.

My next project was picking up the pieces of something that had started as a short story.  I developed an obnoxious but naive character that I grew to like, so I plotted out a bunch of scenes.  I thought it might make a nice novella.  As I started filling in the scenes, I again came to feel they lacked the richness of my first two novels, or even the richness of the first half chapter where the character really shines.

I am not ready to throw in the towel yet, it could be a Muse issue or it could be something more basic like trying to cross the realms of the right brain with the left brain.

I put that work on the back burner, and started up the sequel to The Lost Art of Magic.  I started writing.  I had an idea what kind of peril my heroine would face, and I plan a cliff hanger for the ending, but I did not plot out the story.  The richness was back.  I'm still making notes of some of the milestones I want in the book, but I'm writing it like I watch a movie.  I try to guess the ending and see how it turns out.  (By the way, if you're like me, you can probably write a better ending to half the movies you watch.)

I thing the whole left/right brain thing may be what's at work here.  So I am trying to vaguely plot out my story without diagramming every event.  Time will tell if it works for me.

100 word challenge #73: The Arbitration of the Strings

I just came across a neat idea, the 100 word challenge.  It resides on this blog: Julias Place.  The idea is to take a starting phrase and write 100 words around it.

This is week #73,  the phrase is …the notes from the piano…

How have I missed this for so long?

The Arbitration of the Strings

The notes from the piano buzzed off the old worn strings, rattling decades of dust off the soundboard. The discordant fusion of quarreling strings leapt mercilessly out of the piano and beat indiscriminately upon the arbitrator’s eardrums, but he was prepared for this. He turned the screws one by one, pitting one string’s cries against another’s.  They screamed only for themselves. He turned the screws again, forcing them to cry out with their neighbor.  Good or bad, their voices were music to his ears.  He continued turning the screws until their howls melded together and sang out harmoniously as one. The piano was tuned.

I've completed editing of my third book, The Beat of a Different Drummer.  Now I am returning to The Diva of Mud Flats, a book which I have already started a couple chapters.  I breezed through the partial chapters, still in edit mode but also catching up with where I left off, then hit a chapter with instructions, "add something about the phone call here."

I came to a screeching halt.  I need to change hats from my editors hat to my more creative writers hat, and found I wasn't quite prepared.  Maybe some caffeine will help.