Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 2 Comments

I miss reading

Admittedly, the one I thing I’ve missed the most during the past few months when I started at my new job is being able to read as much as I used to. Between commuting to work (which luckily enough in my case is under an hour), spending eight hours there, attending to issues at home, spending time with the family, taking a little bit of time for myself (it doesn’t include reading or writing), and of course editing/writing, there’s hardly any time left to read during weekdays. To be honest, there’s hardly enough time to write. I have an app on my phone, a simple counter, where I’ve added the number of books I’ve read per year. I’m not a fast reader, but the average was 20-22 books. Now? It’s October and I just reached double digits. Yeap, it’s shameful.

What makes it worse is that what I’m reading is actually very interesting (rejoice sci-fi fans – it’s The Expanse series).

A few weeks ago, I mentioned my betas gave me their feedback on my latest cyberpunk novel (still not in shape for your eyes, I’m afraid). In their notes, one point stood out more than others: some scenes were repetitive.

*GASP*

I wasn’t prepared for this. But they were right, as always.

Last week, I started revising based on my betas’ feedback. Start with the big issues, I said to myself, move on to the smaller ones (like my innumerable typos, which caused my spell checker to crush – don’t laugh, because that’s what happens when you write sci-fi and you invent words, names, and terms). Bigger issues meant tackling those pesky repetitive scenes. By creating new ones.

So there I was, back on my ancient PC (thank you autumn for remembering to visit Greece and for allowing me to turn my PC on once more), trying to come up with a couple new scenes. And…

*crickets*

Seriously, nothing. If you want to know the truth it scared the $h!t out of me. Why couldn’t I write? My intention was to change the chase and escape scenes, since most of the betas comments about repetitive scenes was about them. It shouldn’t have been too hard, since the betas didn’t have a problem with the plot per se, which meant the beginning and the ending of those scenes were set. All I had to do was change the setting and I’d have a basic draft to work with. On the other hand, escape and chase scenes don’t offer much in terms of variety. Something bad happens, the hero has to run for his/her life, and either makes it or not. The only thing that can limit a writer is the world the writer has created for the hero. In other words, you can’t have a dragon saving the hero if you’ve created a hard sci-fi cyberpunk story and you haven’t included dragons in the first place. It took me two days to come up with an inkling of an idea. Which, of course,  in the end created a plot hole.


Luckily, the first idea created another, and another, and another, until the problem was solved, but I mean, come on. Two days?! For one idea? A bad one at that?!

Did I exhaust my storytelling skill after two books? Did the pool of ideas writers supposedly have dry out after two novels, a dozen short stories and poems, and a few hundred thousand written words?

No. well, I don’t think so, anyway.

What was the reason? I believe it was because I hadn’t been reading enough. I hadn’t had enough mental stimulation these past few months, even though I managed to save a couple of hours during the weekends for reading. It just wasn’t enough. Add to all this that I haven’t read a good cyberpunk novel for a long time to get inspired, you can see why there was a problem in my inspiration and idea reservoir.

Not to mention the creativity leech.

So, dear readers, fellow writers and other creative people, the answer to such problems is immerse yourself in the work of others. Learn from them, make them part of you, take them apart, study the way others created their stories, their songs, their painting, and recreate something unique, something that could have only been done by you. Allow the creator to transport you to new and wonderful places. Let the ideas of others inspire you. If you want to write, then you have to read a lot. I imagine the same principle applies to all other forms of art.

For the record, after I managed to tap into my inspiration pool, I wrote 2000 in three days. It’s not a lot, if you consider that I used to write 2000 words a day when I had the whole day to myself and nothing else but writing and reading to do, but it feels good nonetheless.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos · 2 Comments

Readjusting a writing routine

For the past few weeks, certain life events (all of them unforeseen, as life tends to make them, but not all of them bad), have made me unable to write. No, I’m not going through a writer’s block. I want to write and edit and revise my work, and I have material to work on, but, alas, someone decided that each day should only have 24 hours. I don’t know who it was, but I don’t like that person. I used to like them, but not at the moment. And, to make things harder, I also got a job. For the record, I’m not a lazy bugger, but as it’s the case with most jobs, it takes up a great part of my day. One third of it, to be exact. However, it’s a nice place and, get this, there’s another writer there. Another one from the tribe!

And yet, it adds to a problem that has been going on for the past few weeks, one that leaves me with either not enough time to spare to write or not enough energy for it. Everything that has been going on for the past month or so has messed up my writing routine (which I took great care to protect, but when family health issues arise, what can you do?). So I’m trying to come up with a new routine, at least until my placement is over (which will be around February 2018 – unless they fire me before that *shudder*).

I’m sure most of you have faced similar life changing events, so how did you cope? Did it take you long? Was the transition to a new writing routine easy? Did you have a routine in the first place? What steps did you take to be productive (writing-wise) again?

I have a few ideas, and once I put them into practice I may write a post about them, but until then feel free to share your take on this. I’d really like to see how other people deal with this issue.

I’m hopeful this changes in my life will not affect this blog. But it may happen, since I usually draft these posts a few days in advance and go over them as much as I can each day, before I publish them. If it does happen, know it’ll only be temporary, that you can reach me through social media, or through the contact form (at the top).

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Discoverability is directly related to readers

New and seasoned writers alike read all the time about the importance of promotion and marketing. The necessity for discoverability. Of how to tap the readers’ shoulder and politely (hopefully) let them know of their presence.

Since I decided I wanted to publicise my work and earn money from my words, I’ve bookmarked and read tens of articles and advice on the process, what is needed, what should not be done, about the hurdles a writer has to overcome. And still, until recently, I couldn’t picture me actually doing it. I couldn’t put my mind around what it would be like. I expected it would happen at some point, regardless of the path I’d choose – self published or traditional. I wanted it to happen, to have people read my work, but when it came to picturing it, it eluded me.

Discoverability is directly related to readers. Vague concepts. Readers. Plural. Impossible to see their faces, impossible to reach them, yet, they’re there. I guess it’s one of those things that no matter how much you expose yourself to the theory behind it, you can never fully grasp it until you get your hands dirty with it.

It’s been a couple of weeks since I self-published my first short story on Amazon and let me be honest with you; since I did it, most of the time I feel like a Lilliputian creature, hopping up and down, waving my arms like a drowning man begging for help, squeaking in my barely audible tiny voice, for the readers’ attention. Tap on their shoulder? I can’t even reach their toes to get their attention. And you know what’s worse? The more I read and try to implement the theory to practice, the theory, the less sense it all
makes, and the less everything seems to work. For me, at least, since others are doing fine.

Then again, it could be the reason behind my seeming ineptitude in making marketing work for me, is because I expect things to happen instantly, even though I keep reminding myself that the publishing process is a marathon (if not a super marathon), not a sprint. I recently added myself to two author promotion communities; iAuthor and Allauthor. My flawed mindset told me I should witness results of some sort within the first couple of days. My rational side said, “nah. Not the way it’s going to happen.”

Guess which one won?

I’m not sure if it’s my educational background to blame. Hard sciences (Geology is part of them, or so I was told) deal with experiments, observations, and results (yes, even though geologists can’t exactly experiment – when was the last time you moved a continent to see how it collided with another? – we do come up with observable results). You do the math, you apply the theory, et voilà! You get the answer, the result, the number within the little square of an Excel sheet, or a blown up lab (hello, chemistry folks!). To a certain extent, even Management and Economics (my postgrad education) made it sound as though all I had to do was to apply the theory to practice, and the results would be measurable immediately. Especially in the case of Economics (cut down salaries and pensions, see how fast people starve – it made sense).

Perhaps part of the blame lies with how our demands are met nowadays; we sit behind our screens, click a button, clickety clack, and boom! We just bought a book, just downloaded a movie, just bridged the gap between
Europe and America and talked to our friends. Click, click, click. Results, results, results. All before our eyes before we blink them.

Somewhere at the back of my mind, the tiny squeaky voice, this small part of me that flails his arms to draw my attention, reminds me that it’s a marathon (a super, duper, freaking long marathon), not a sprint. But the voice is faint and the clicks happen one after the other. So fast.

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Finally, it happened. Again.

2017-03-03-16-29-37

Through Stranger Eyes is finally printed, and the red pen is anxious to have a go at it. Isn’t there something magical when you transfer the thing of your labours into a physical medium? I mean, when you type it and store it in the cloud or wherever, you know it’s there, it’s accessible, and if anyone ever doubts you wrote a book all you have to do is go online, access your files, and voilà! You can easily say, “Ha! In your face, nameless person who doubted me.”

But you have to admit there’s something so much better when the object of your desire, the reason you locked yourself away for weeks, months, or years and allowed people to think you’ve turned into a deranged hermit, is tangible and in your hands. I mean, it’s been three days since I printed it, and I’m still giddy and excited. Hell, I feel as if I can take on any one and any thing, maybe even tackle another one…

Just kidding. I will not start another story until I’m through with this one.

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So this should keep me occupied for a few days (weeks or months, more likely). As I mentioned in an earlier post, once I fill this bad boy with as much red ink as I can fit on the margins of its pages, I’ll transfer all the changes into the digital copy, then turn on the macro function and sweep away all the nasty adverbs, filter words, etc that I have missed on all previous editing rounds .

My only concern at the moment is that the story came out at 140k words (!!!), which is 20-25k more than what I wanted it to be, and I doubt if I cut every adjective and adverb from the manuscript it would reach my intended word count. The funny thing is that the first draft was 128k words, but I needed to replace some of the scenes with new ones and ultimately had to add one or two extra, and that’s how I ended up with so many words.

Regardless, this ought to be fun!

Posted on by Chris Sarantopoulos

Self-doubt Armageddon

Don’t you just hate those days when self-doubt creeps in (or even worse, takes control) and ruins the fun of what you’ve written so far? I don’t mean during the revision and rewriting stages, where we take apart everything (plot, characters, POV etc) but long after that, when you’re supposed to be doing minor edits to the prose, or working with sentence lengths, or punctuation. It’s so annoying when you start questioning yourself on matters you’ve already covered and made sure you perfected, like, “Did it really take them that long to do this thing in that scene?” (Dah, yes! You were revising that scene for over two months, hello? You rewrote it three times already).

From Back to the Future
From Back to the Future

Then something else you corrected and improved two months earlier suddenly feels off, then a third thing, and a fourth after that. Things you knew for a fact up to a second prior to Self-Doubt Armageddon came knocking, that these things must not change and that’s how they have to be. Next thing you know you question your skill, your bright idea that you should write, which leads to “who’s going to read that pile of $*1t you’ve put on the screen,” and “my, God, this sucks,” and oh this and oh that… Annoying, isn’t it? I almost deleted everything I was working on yesterday. Almost.

Bruce Campbell from Evil Dead 2
Bruce Campbell from Evil Dead 2