It’s taken me a while, but I’ve finally figured out MailChimp! Er. Maybe? Well, anyway, I’ve managed to set up an email sign-up form for those who would like to receive an email every time I’m about to publish a book.
Okay, form an orderly line, and no shoving . . .
Well, I’ve been gathering together all the paperwork for my ITIN application. For those who don’t know what an ITIN is, the acronym stands for Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, and it will mean that I only have to pay 5% tax in the US instead of 30%. A moot point, you may say, since I have not in fact sold any books yet. I counter by declaring that I haven’t published any books yet, so yah boo. (As a matter of fact, I have a short story on Kindle at the moment, but I don’t count that because I like to set it as free, and I can’t really claim ‘sales’ for that.)
I’m choosing to Indie-Publish my first book with Kindle, Kobo, the iBookstore, and perhaps in time CreateSpace, with a publication date of October 1st. Naturally, I wanted to make sure that I had the ITIN before then. Because, yanno- more money. I’m beginning to doubt it’ll be done quite by then (though I think it’ll be close) since I hadn’t really considered how long it takes to research the how to, get a passport notorized, find and download the appropriate forms, fill them in correctly . . .
You get the idea. Admittedly, half the time has been due to sheer laziness and the idea that ‘Oh, I’ve filled out the form. That’s enough for today. I’ll rest until next week.’
Now, at length, I have my apostille’d passport. I have my W-7 form, filled out in blue ink. I have my letter from Amazon. I even know where to send it all, and I know better than to send it express post with signature required. I think I’m about ready to go. Wish me luck!
Oh, and if you want to read a really good blog post on how to obtain an ITIN in Australia, read MummyK‘s account. There are others, but this one was really helpful to me.
Look, Ma! I’m makin’ a movie!
Well, I’m writing a screenplay, anyway. Close enough?
For those who don’t know what a screenplay is (one of the guys at my writer’s group asked me this morning); a screenplay is the bones of a movie or tv series, or sometimes even a game. It’s a script plus a few extra bits, like scene settings or actor instructions, or camera shots/angles. It’s the beginning of a movie.
I wrote a short story a while ago that I just couldn’t get out of my head. There were things I knew about the setting and characters that didn’t make it into the short story for the very simple reason that if I’d included them, it wouldn’t have stayed a ‘short’ story. It was an unusually visual story for me, and it didn’t cease to prod at the corners of my mind when I finished it, unlike every other story/book I’ve written. I always still love my characters when the story is done, and I’m always fully immersed in the re-writes and editing, but this particular story just seemed to keep growing with scenes and dialog that were increasingly visual. Then someone from my writer’s group read the story and said: “This should be a movie.”
At first it was just ridiculous thoughts of: “Oooh, this is a great song for the soundtrack!” and “This actor is perfect for George. Oh, and this one is going to play Ruth.” Then I started wondering about the form of screenplays: how they’re structured, what they contain, etc. It didn’t really occur to me that I could write a screenplay, of course; because I’m a writer and don’t you have to be a playwright/screenwriter to do that? Am I allowed to write a movie?
Well, apparantly I am. I did my research (ahem. Well, a full day of furious typing on the google and madly following links, and reading the screenplay for True Grit); found out the correct format (oh boy, are they a pain!); and started writing.
And I can do it. It’s a different form with different rules, and entirely refreshing. It’s almost easy, because I know where it’s going and what I have to show to make it work. It’s just a matter of plugging away until it all done, and then making it as beautiful as I can. I don’t know that I’ll try and send it out to anyone when it’s done. Heck, I don’t even really know if I’m doing it properly. But now that I’ve started, other books have begun with the same siren song . . .
Well, the world really does need a four-hour miniseries of The Count of Monte Cristo, after all.
Until about half a year ago, I’d have told you that I don’t write short stories. My stories tend to grow exponentially as I write them, and the meagre 2, 000 to 10, 000 word limit on short stories has never seemed enough to do them justice. Added to that was the fact that, well, I just wasn’t interested in short stories. So I kept on writing my novels.
It was only when I recieved feedback from an editor remarking upon the need for improvement in pacing that the idea of short stories came up again. At around the same time I began to attend a writer’s group in my local library, where we were quite often given a list of words and asked to write a poem, short story, etc., using all the words.
The setting was the Second World War. The place was a rooftop. The words were ‘ladder’, ‘shopgirl’, and something else I can’t remember now. And for the first time, I had an idea for a short story. I gave myself ten pages. Ten pages to experiment with pacing. Ten pages to see if I could actually do it. Ten pages to play out the entire idea, and a week in which to write it. You can see how it turned out here. I had so much fun with A Time-Traveller’s Best Friend. More importantly, it gave me real life practise in trying a different type of pacing.
You see, you can’t waste words in a short story. You’ve got a limited amount of them, and you have to make sure each word counts. If you’re a writer like me, that means figuring out how to slip from scene to scene neatly and coherently, in as few words as possible. I’ve always been overly verbose, and wrangling words into their simplest terms was refreshing. It was challenging. And when you have to read your short story aloud to a room full of impatient elderly writers who each want you to Shut Up So I Can Get On With MY Story, you’re going to be confined to an even smaller word count.
A Time-Traveller’s Best Friend was preceded by Ruth and the Ghost, which I found even more enjoyable, if possible. After the two short stories came flash fiction, and then the Drabble. I still love my novels. I still even prefer them to short stories. But now I know a little more about pacing, and I’ve had practise in stream-lining my fiction. I’m stretching myself as a writer. I’m learning. And when you’re still in the slush pile, that’s about all you can hope for.
Keep writing, fellow slush-ites. Stretch yourselves. Try something new. One day that’ll be us in the Best-Seller list.
