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The Pioneers, by James Fenimore Cooper is one such book. While Mark Twain didn’t think much of Cooper’s writing abilities, even going so far as to call him dull, I remember the opening scene of Pioneers, which introduces us to Natty Bumppo, the judge, and the judge’s daughter Bess, perhaps above all others I’ve read. As for Twain, I never cared for his writing, but that’s not the point of this article.

In a perfect world I read in bed two hours before switching off the lamp and going to sleep. My world is rarely perfect. Crafting my own scenes often cuts into the time I spend reading those of others. In a perfect world the hours are limitless, but, again, there’s that perfection thing. Sometimes I go days without reading. My library (and now my Kindle) is cluttered with novels I’ve never finished. Some were just bad purchases, well-meant gifts, or good starters that petered out somewhere around the fourth chapter. Looking at this from a writer’s perspective, I’ve tried to nail down what, exactly, causes me to pick a novel back up after it has gathered dust for days. That something, I keep telling myself, is what I want to learn to do with my own work.

For years it has eluded me.

A couple weeks ago I began reading The Road to Grafenwohr, By Edward C. Patterson. Besides being a very good novel, it gave me that ah-ha! moment I’ve been so needing. These past few weeks have been very busy for me, what with pulling overtime at my day job, trying to get my own WIP polished and ready for e-pub, and multiple birthday parties within the family. I’ve had to read Grafenwohr in snatches. Fifteen minutes here, an hour there. It’s been a slow go, but it has finally revealed to me what it is about a novel that holds my interest during those long idle reading gaps.

The scenes pop.

I find myself thinking about the exploits of PFC Quincy Summerson (Grafenwohr’s lead character) spontaneously throughout the day, the way I think of actual events. The way I sometimes (still) think about the judge and Bess up on that mountainside road where I first met Natty Bumppo. Part of the riddle was revealed — something held my interest during the idle times.

I’ve read some great novels that I simply couldn’t put down. Novels that interferred with my writing and television watching simply because I had to know what happened next. I couldn’t wait. Yet I rarely remember those characters and scenes afterwards. Two weeks and it’s as if I never read them. Why? The plots were great, the writing powerful, and the pace lively.

The scenes didn’t pop.

The Road To Grafenwohr stands out in my mind scene-by-scene. Each scene is almost self-contained, meaning they could be rearranged and sorted and still be powerful enough to move the story forward. When I think of The Pioneers, I think scenes.

For over a decade my day job has been writing computer programs. I’ve learned to break programs into modules. Each module has a specific task to accomplish. I need to train myself to think that way when I write fiction. I need to learn to create scenes that have a specific task. That task will ultimately be to move the plot forward. Breaking a novel into scenes will allow me to plan scenes, write scenes, and tweak scenes without breaking the plot. If a scene isn’t doing it’s job, cut it and replace it with one which does. I think it will work and I wonder if this is how other writers, the good ones, do it?

A few years ago I wrote a novel called The Night Train about two young boys who flee abusive homes by hopping a freight train. They meet up with a controlling hobo who offeres them security in return for obedience. They find themselves caught in a trap not unlike the one they were running away from. I shopped the novel around a little then set it aside and started a new project. I dismissed The Night Train as just another step in my path toward learning the craft. My new WIP went through several drafts (eight, I think) and was going to be the one I really pushed. Or so I thought. Something about it failed to hold my interest. I had invested so much time and effort into it that I decided to push forward anyway — make myself polish it into something marketable. One afternoon, needing a break, I opened The Night Train and started reading. Immediately I remembered my main characters and what they did. It was as if I knew them in a way I had never known any characters I had ever created.

The Night Train is now my focus and I am having a wonderful time with it. I’ve given myself a fall deadline and a very specific task. Make the scenes pop.

In my day job — that programming gig — I am constantly learning new things. Each new thing makes my programs better. Each time I kick myself for not realizing it sooner, thinking every programmer in the world must’ve known that secret except me. Writing is that way, too. Long gone are the days when I thought I had talent and that was that. Writing good fiction, like anything else, takes something more than talent. It takes experience. It takes writing a lot of bad, horrible, drivel before writing something that is ready for readers. The talent, the art, is knowing the difference. I don’t claim to possess that talent yet, not when it comes to judging my own writing, but I am definitely getting better with every sentence. When, if, it pops, I hope I’m smart enough to realize it.

There is so much information out there and it is so easy to find. Twitter, Facebook, blogrolls — just type your favorite term into Google and hit the enter key. Bam! More information than you can shake a stick at. Much of it is just a rehash of something that has been blogged and tweeted a thousand times over. How do you sort through it and find the meat?

My wife often asks me, “how do you know what to believe on the internet?” Typically, this question is in response to a search I’ve done on some non-writing related thing … like medical symptoms (I’m a chronic self-diagnoser and doctor-avoider). I tell her you just have to toss out the stuff that defies common sense, then see what else is being repeated in different, disconnected, corners of the web. You also have to consider the source. What are the potential conflicts of interest?

You wouldn’t ask a traditional publishing house for advice on e-publishing, would you? You wouldn’t search WebMD for advice on herbal healing, would you?

If you came here looking for some magical answer to the problem of information overload you came to the wrong place. I don’t have one. We are in the same boat. All I know is that every now and then you simply have to pull your head back inside the car and take a breath. In other words, close the web browser and write. Just write.

I never really considered any route other than traditional because it was the only way to be validated as a writer. Technology, in the form of the Kindle and Nook, changed all that.

About a month ago I pulled a short story from that secret folder on my laptop and published it on Smashwords. The process was incredibly easy (though I’m still not very good at covers) because I took the time to read the Smashwords Style Guide before attempting it. Smashwords formats your e-book for the Kindle and Nook for you (as well as other formats) and distributes it to a host of e-book retailers. I was thrilled the first time I saw my short stories on Barnes and Noble. Vanity? Perhaps, but people are actually downloading my writing.

So what tipped the balance for me? Here are my top five reasons (in no particular order) for choosing the ePub route:

1) No Query Letters.  The process of submitting to agents and traditional publishing houses is a daunting task. I might spend a week shaping a query letter, send it out, then wait weeks for a response that, often as not, never comes. The worst responses were those which came within hours of an email submission and was clearly a form rejection. It seemed almost like entering a sweepstakes.

2) No more writing to the market. There is nothing wrong with vampire books, fantasy novels, or science fiction, but that’s not what I write. Finding an agent or a publisher interested in anything other than genre fiction was about as hard as going to my local Barnes and Noble and finding something I wanted to read on the New Releases shelf. Ultimately, I always seemed to end up on in the classics or biography sections. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but nothing new is being added to the classics section. It seemed that if I wanted to succeed on the traditional path I would have to learn to write for the market and that was too much like work. I have a day job already.

3) Artistic control. Yes, I know, that statement screams amateur. Only established authors with King-like followings are able to demand artistic control over their writing. Still, the idea of pouring my heart and soul into a novel then sending it to an editor to change it as he or she sees fit is not my idea of creating something. I have dreamed of being a writer since I was about four years old, and every instance of that dream centered around creating something that didn’t exist prior. It has never been about financial success. Over and over we are told we must have editors to polish our work. In the back of my head I’ve always wondered why none of those editors are famous for things they’ve written. My idea is a simple one: I want to succeed or fail based on what I write. I am prepared to accept either outcome.

4) Instant feedback. Almost. The more I read about traditional publishing the more I realized it moves at a turtle’s pace. I am an impatient person. Smashwords allows me to upload my writing to the world. Feedback is something close to instant. Sometimes that feedback is in the form of no downloads, but that is feedback. If people are downloading my samples but not buying it tells me I need to do a better job of writing. If no one downloads my samples it tells me I need to do a better job of marketing, or improve my cover designs.

5) I just want a chance.  Ask my wife: I’m the kind of person who hates handling details. Just knowing I have to stop by the store on the way home to pick up eggs or toliet paper, stresses me. Advance knowledge of an upcoming birthday party or some other event I have to attend fills me with dread. I’ve tried to self-analyze and figure out why such simple everyday things are so dreadful to me but there’s no use. I admit to being an odd duck. Having a few short stories on Smashwords, where there is the potential of finding readers, is enough for me right now. It’s like a weight lifted off my shoulders. It leaves me free to write. Free to concentrate on finishing my novel without having to stress over steps 1 thru 3.

We are all different. Yes, even the genre books top the e-book charts, but I believe there must be people like me out there starved for something else to read. Worst case my grandkids will stumble across my Kindle years from now and discover a side to papaw they never knew. Oh, and about that validation thing … that’s best when it comes from within.

It’s not that I got bored with the plot. I still think I can make that work. Have you ever watched a movie so many times you began to wonder what you ever saw in it in the first place? Yeah, that’s kind of where I was with that eighth draft. Did I mention that it’s ninety thousand words?

The first novel I ever finished has been sitting in a dark corner of my hard drive for about two years now. I submitted it to a few agents but never really put my back into it. Writing query letters and outlines and a synopsis is an emotional drain. So much of a drain that I told myself the novel would never sell and started anew with a fresh idea and the energy that comes with creating something fresh. To be honest, I think I felt refreshed mostly because I knew it would be a long time before I had to worry about writing another query letter than anything else.

This little voice inside me has always told me my biggest obstacle would be convincing myself I was good enough. That little voice has deep roots, but I won’t open that childhood wound here.

To distract myself, I opened that old file and started reading. My thinking was that I would immediately see how much better my writing was now than it was two years ago and get motivated to throw myself back into it. What I discovered was that the old manuscript was much more polished that I remembered. As I dug deeper I started feeling that excitement again. The story came to life in my head again and I could visualize my characters much clearer than those in my novel-in-progress. I started remembering another reason I set it aside: because I didn’t know how to sell it. During that time, you see, I was taking a lot of advice from an online writers’ group and they didn’t much care for my samples. To be honest, I didn’t much care for theirs either, but I never told them that. They convinced me that the only way to get published these days was to write to a strict genre. The bottom line is that I was in the wrong group. I didn’t belong.

For now I’ve set aside my novel-in-progress and am doing another draft of my first novel. So far I’ve made very few changes, found very few typos, and haven’t gotten bored. Even better, I no longer live in dread of finishing it because I don’t plan to write a query or an outline or a synopsis. I will upload it to my Smashwords author page and see where it goes from there. That might not be the best path to getting rich but I’ve never cared much for getting rich. I just want to write MY way. Anything else, even if it sells a million copies, won’t really be mine.

My mother had a friend (a sweet older lady) who lived a county or two over.  They wrote letters. I can still remember how exciting it was to go to the mailbox and find a letter from her. Mom would usually read it to us and she always answered back. Writing letters is how you kept up with folks.

When I was a kid about the only thing more exciting than being the first one to the mailbox was being the first to spot the peddler on Thursday afternoons. The peddler, you see, drove a store on wheels. It was a big truck with a canvas-covered back. He’d pull up every Thursday and show you what he had for sale. Sometimes us kids would get a sugardaddy or nutty-buddy or maybe a pack of nabs. If you don’t know what those things are you probably needn’t bother googling them.

My childhood was not a happy time. Far from it. But I miss when people wrote letters and I wonder how much history will be lost because of it. Will email and tweets and Facebook  posts survive long enough to give our great-great grandkids a glimpse at how we lived? So much of what we know about the Civil War comes from letters written by men to their sweethearts, or by sweethearts to their men. Will historians find our hard drives someday and suck the data from them to learn about us?

I’ve tried to make myself keep a journal so my kids will have something to pull out and bore the grandkids with long after I’m gone. I even put it on my headboard with a pen, beside the lamp, on top of my Kindle and the hardback I’m reading, but it’s no use. My handwriting is so bad I can’t read it myself after a few days. Even if it stayed readable I doubt I’d keep scribbling in it. What would I write? Got up this morning, went to work, came home, watched TV and went to bed? Try writing that every night for a month. Try reading it. I even tried jotting down my thoughts on current events but I’d get so mad I couldn’t sleep. My journal was a flop.

For all of you who are old enough to remember when cell phones came in bags the size of your mother’s purse, think back and see if you can remember the last letter you received through the mail. I can’t.

We are all different. Advice that is good for one person, or ninety percent of fledgling writers, might not be good for you. The hard part is learning how to tell the difference.

The internet is full of places for writers to gather. You can post a sample of your work in writing communities and get reviews from scores of people who, I believe, are honestly trying to help. The problem is that we are all different. We have different strengths and weaknesses and, yes, goals. We also have different likes and dislikes when it comes to reading. What I like to read is probably not what you like to read. It’s good to get reviews on your work but don’t let someone steer you away from your inner voice.

We all have an inner voice. It’s that nagging something inside us that tells us what we are doing is right or wrong. In most cases the reviews I’ve gotten on my writing fit what my inner voice had been trying to tell me all along. Did I mention that we often ignore our inner voice? I know I tend to at times. Sometimes it takes someone else agreeing with that voice to make us sit up and take notice. Sometimes, though, you will get advice that you just kind of know is wrong for you.

For a long time I listened to people telling me to steer clear of indie publishing because it was almost impossible for an unknown writer to reach an audience. When I thought of going the traditional route (which I was resigned to do) I would almost become sick to my stomach. Querying agents and publishers was something I put off to the point that I began to fear I would never make a serious stab at getting my writing off my PC and onto the market. A couple of weeks ago I decided to take the indie plunge.

It may not go anywere. I may fail. But I’ve gotta tell you, since I uploaded my first short story to Smashwords it feels like the world has been lifted off my shoulders. I suddenly feel free to write now. Write what I want, come what may.

Listen to advice, pay attention to it, be thankful for it, but define your own path. We are not all the same.

I’ve spent the morning cleansing my website of my short stories. I’m not so sure anyone will notice, though. Did you notice? No,  I didn’t think so. Next move? Smashwords.

Smashwords is a place people like me can go to electronically publish (ePub) their short stories and novels. It’s a place where anyone can go and download short stories and novels (you can download almost any kind of writing there but I don’t want you straying) for your Kindle or Nook, or whatever ebook reader you have. No ebook reader? No problem. You can also read online through your web browser (HTML) or download a PDF version to read on your computer. But this is not a commercial for Smashwords. Not yet. Not until I get my stuff formatted, uploaded, and for sale.

You’re eagerly awaiting. Good. Anticipation. Excellent. Be patient, I’ll get there. Nag me to hurry up. Really, I won’t mind. Just don’t ignore me. I’m writing, not releasing silent farts into a crowded room.

It takes a lot of work to format this stuff into ebook format, and then there’s the cover page. Writing is the easy part.

They had this unheard of notion that the average everyday man and woman had a God-given right to be free. It must’ve sounded silly back then. It had never been tried. It went against the grain.

In the past 235 years our resolve has been tested many times. Each and every time the best among us rose to the occasion and defended our way of life. Right at this very moment there are thousands of brave men and women putting their lives on the line around the world for you and me. Tens of thousands. Each and every one of them volunteered to protect freedom. They are the best among us.

Today, the greatest threat to our freedom comes from inside our own borders. The liberal movement has infiltrated our government, even at the local and state levels, with the notion that our Founding Fathers were fools. This movement aims to oppress us one liberty at a time. The vote is our only weapon against this powerful enemy.

Freedom is the notion that each and every one of us has the right to decide for ourselves. Laws are supposed to protect us from those who would oppress us … not from those who think differently. Freedom OF religion does not mean freedom FROM religion. I have no more right to force you to worship God than you do to say I can’t … or to say where I can. The phrase “God Bless You” is not hate speech. “Merry Christmas” is not a verbal assault.

My right to protect my life and property outweighs another’s right to take either. We each have the right to think for ourselves. Some people are smarter than others. Some will decide to exercise, eat healthy, and forego risk. They have the right to do that. Some will decide to risk a shorter life for what makes them happy. Neither group has the right to impose their decisions on the other. That’s freedom. Freedom means we each have the right to succeed or fail according to our abilities and our desires. It’s not the government’s place to guarantee either.

Enemies of freedom tell us the Constitution is outdated and should be ignored. They must, for the Constitution, unless ignored, protects us from them. They work feverishly to purge God from public view because the teachings of God denounce them. They absolutely must take our guns because an armed population will not remain oppressed. Even if they succeed in marginalizing the Constitution and Christians, and they take our guns, they will still face an almost insurmountable enemy — common sense. Everything they stand for flies in the face of common sense.

Almost anything can be legislated if we “listen to reason” and “want to save lives”. Why are Americans suddenly so willing to trade freedom for government protection? I liken it to the shop owner who pays protection money to the mob. He may be safer, but he damned sure isn’t free.

Good things NEVER come with a government mandate. They don’t have to.

America is the greatest experiment in the history of the world, but we are not to big to fail. Our greatness comes from freedom. Without it we are just another huddle of oppressed people.

Snookering isn’t just something the no-names do. I learned that a couple of months ago.

A couple of months ago I finished my novel (not my first but the first I would admit to if someone stumbled across my cache) and hit the internet for advice on how to get published. Advice was everywhere. Blog after blog told me exactly how to get my foot in the door and my book on the shelves. It seems free advice is plentiful … and contradictory. Do this, no don’t, yes do.  There are rules that must never be broken but some of the most famous writers break them all the time. But I digress.

I jumped into Twitter because every writer must tweet (I read that somewhere). Right away I noticed that a very well-respected writing magazine had started its own self-publishing arm. They held a contest for wannabes. To enter you had to follow them and write a short paragraph telling about your book and why you wanted to publish it. The prize was one of their self-publishing packages. Perfect, I thought, and just in time.

My logical side noticed right away that the fledgling publisher had only a handful of followers. What a great way to build a following, my logical side said. My logical side also mentioned the fact that the contest was being based on NOT seeing a sample of my writing. I had little patience for my logical side at that point.

Imagine how thrilled I was when, a few days later, I got a call from a very nice young man representing the publisher. He knew in a few short minutes that I was the real deal and he wanted to help me. He asked for my first chapter. No one had ever asked for my first chapter before. Shut up, logical naysayer!

As you’ve probably guessed, he absolutely loved my sample chapter. Yes, I was for real. All I had to do was buy one of their packages (no, sadly, I wasn’t one of the lucky winners). He downplayed the contest. After all, it wasn’t based on writing. It was random luck. But he had read my first chapter and he knew talent when he saw it. All I had to do was buy a package. I told him I had to think about it.

By this point my logical self was chiding my starry-eyed dreamer side for being such a sap. Yes, I knew he hadn’t read my sample chapter. I knew he didn’t care if I was the next Stephen King or the next nobody. He offered me a discount on a package — any package.

This salesman called me several times over the next few weeks. I sent him to voice mail. He still emails me from time to time. The well-respected magazine? I won’t be renewing my subscription. Not because I didn’t win their contest (I’ve not won a bunch of those), but because they tried to snooker me.

One thing good came of this: I looked at this once-in-a-lifetime dream-come-true deal and saw it for what it was. I’d rather be a wannabe than a sucker.