September 11, 2015

My inspiration comes from my weirdness

"Curiosity kills the cat... Seriously... Foremost your postings here and on Ello are a true inspiration for me! I am a writer as well although I have not published anything yet. Just waiting what's the right moment for me... So what I am curious about? About inspiration. Where do you get it from? Books and your own life experiences I presume?"

My inspiration comes from my weirdness.

And my weirdness comes from a dark place, from a place where I think I'm not good enough and where I think I'm mediocre and where I think I wish I wrote better, I wish I was spectacular, I wish I could master English like it was my native language. I wish, I wish, I wish. And it's this wish and this frustration with myself and this incessant drive to get better is what's pushing me forward.

This is my inspiration, this and the odd peculiar weirdness that is so odd and so peculiar that I think it doesn't deserve to be told because it's so different from everything that's out there.

August 29, 2015

Does your early work stain your portfolio of books?

by Ksenia Anske

Mars Dorian asked:

"Hey Ksenia, your advice and blog has always helped me in the best way possible, all things book related. I've worked four months on a novel and finished it two months ago. Proofreaders/editors went over it, so it's ready to get (self) published if it wasn't for my high standard that isn't a 100% satisfied with it anymore. It's still a good novel, but it's not my best. Question. Would you personally publish a piece of work you put a lot of effort in, even if it's not your best work, or do you think it would 'stain' your portfolio of books? But then again, every book makes you a better writer, so maybe I'm paranoid. I'm still wrestling with this decision..."

If you plan to grow as a writer, you shouldn't be afraid to let your earlier work out into the world. Years will go by, and you might cringe at it. But then more years will go by, and you will cringe at what you thought was your best work. And so it will continue. And what is your best work, anyway? What does ""best mean? It's a relative term. You have to compare something to something to see what's better or worse, but you yourself will change over the years, and your opinion will change, there is no help for it.

August 10, 2015

Where I answer questions from your postcard, Penny

by Ksenia Anske

Thank you for beautiful questions, Penny. Here are my answers.

1. Have you ever gotten lost thinking how it all could just be make-believe?

Yes, all the time, since I was very small, in fact. I often thought that life as I saw it wasn't real and made up my own theories about it. When I was 5 or so, I was eating purplish berries from the juneberry tree bush at our dacha, standing on the rickety bench, and I came up with an idea that when I will grow old, I'll turn around and grow young again, then grow old, and so all those stories about death are nonsense. Another time I was fascinated how I could never look at myself the way other people look at me. I could never get out of my head, so I set upon staring at the mirror and trying to get out of my head. And yet another time when I looked under the bed where my grandmother laid out persimmons on the newspapers to ripen, I thought I saw a sea of them, not just some thirty persimmons, but a whole sea, and I was convinced that my reality was realer than what I saw. I still do it, when I write. I sometimes catch myself thinking that maybe all of it is make-believe, only we each have our own, and I live in mine and show others what it's like through my stories.

July 28, 2015

Let's continue our conversation about book pricing

by Ksenia Anske

I have written quite a few posts recently on pricing your indie books, all of which are stepping stones on the path of me learning it while watching the turbulent changes in the publishing industry and going through bankruptcy and running out of my ghostwriting money and being a novice to indie publishing. The only experience I can rely on is running my startup for 5 years, and the basics that I learned from reading books and articles on how to stay profitable and how to acquire customers and how to do basic accounting and more of the same.

Ryan, this post is for you because in the comment on my last pricing post you asked me to expand on this. I'll dump here what I remember as some basic principles (and which I still use as guidelines) and you tell me if it was helpful, okay?

July 8, 2015

Write for yourself: you're the only audience you need

by Ksenia Anske

"I love reading your tweets and blog posts, they aid my indie publishing journey! I want to write a compelling, hip sci-fi thriller in a futuristic European Union, which I know very well (I'm from Germany), but I don't know if Americans, my main target audience, would even read about that 'exotic' place, since most English works play in the US. Old gossip says Americans generally don't read about stories in other places than their home. I'm curious, since you're originally from Russia. Do you place the majority of your books in the US now, or do you still have stories told in Russia, and if yes, do you think it deters readers?"

Thank you, Mars Dorian. I'm so happy my rantings are helping you, and I'm honored that you would ask me these questions as though I know the answers. I don't. I have feelings about these things, but I've only been self-publishing for 3 years, and there is much for me to learn. However, guided by what I feel and believe in, let me dispel your convictions one by one and show you that you don't need to worry about anything of the above because 1) the only audience you need is you, and 2) gossip and preconceptions don't mean shit.

Let's start in order of your questions.