The Art of Writing and Publication (1)

For those of you that are trying to get yourself published, may I recommend the self-pub route? This is not to say you won't need a team to support you (a cover artist and editor are rather important for a refined and original story). All in all, I'd say that going self-pub is going to cost you more out of the gate, and give you more satisfaction with the control you maintain after the dust settles. The hard part isn't the publication process -- it's getting the readers to read!

Full transparency: I have been incredibly lucky in my marketing. By happy accident, I've found a way to hit certain podcasts and newsletters during optimal times, but it has been, and will likely continue to be a driving force of luck and belief that my hard work will pay off.

Continuing in the realm of transparency, I've done a lot of work to understand what a podcaster wants from their guests (I'm a serial researcher), as well as interviewed them after recording sessions to see what they liked and did not like about my performance. Hands down: they are all simply grateful that I'm willing to talk in full sentences and wax romantic about my own work and the work of others. If you're nervous about appearing on a podcast, tell your host in advance and ask to meet with them immediately before the podcast to get your nerves out in conversation, as well as get an idea as to what you want to say. We're writers! It's okay to format/script what you want to say!

Writing blocks: if you are forcing yourself to write something and it is not flowing easily, I highly recommend putting the project down for a bit and writing about something that is truly exciting to you. This is the best way to keep a block from forming, even if you feel pressured to finish the work you're stymied on. Another great way to work out of a block is to move from creation to integration. By this, I mean "read other people's work", and take note of their pitfalls while focusing on how, even if it isn't what you would write, IT IS STILL GOOD. This really helps to take the pressure off of your own work when you realize that this is art and is not meant to follow a pre-scripted formula -- leave that work to AI and embrace your own voice, style, and tone.

Character development: I cannot explain how helpful journaling from the perspective of my characters has been. My work has a lot of named characters, and every one of them has their own background and motivations. It can be far harder to keep characters true to their structure through a long series if you don't know them as people. For example: I have journal entries by Nightingale saved up that detail her favorite cafe's and foibles in romantic relationships in her youth. I journaled from Merrick's perspective about the hum-drum of working in SAB coupled with crippling anxiety as SAB performance reviews loom. These types of things seem mundane to readers, but for an author allow us to draw out what a natural reaction might look like for this person, but might be a surprise to your readers.

Taken from Assassins Creed Wiki

Finally, I have made several mistakes in my own work due to gaps in my research and simple forgetfulness. Instead of withdrawing all of my books and rewriting them, I've determined to have the characters correct the mistakes for their own reasons, and am even integrating several as 'easter eggs' that call out how the mistakes occurred. For example: a few of my characters use shéng biāo (rope spears/rope weapons), but I wasn't sure what word I wanted to use from the outset (there are several to choose from). So, I used the term pinyin to remind me to choose the appropriate Chinese wording at a later time. Guess who forgot to go back and insert the corrected terminology? So, now, it will be described in the 5th supplementary book (character and terminology encyclopedia w/ short stories and digital art) as an item that was incorrectly catalogued by SAB during the Shining Wars...the exact same way I missed the mark. Work with your happy little accidents and consider them sprinkles -- mistakes are often gateways to something fun.