November 11, 2015

Draft 2 of TUBE is done! 10 things it taught me.

"The train was watching Olesya undress. She thought it shuddered under the carpet, thick purple carpet, felt the shudder through the soles of her shoes, new flats acquired for the tour in a boutique on Tverskaya, a red lacquer pair that cost half of her principal dancer salary, but it was worth it, dammit, it was worth it to spend—"

THIS IS THE NEW OPENING AND I ALREADY WANT TO FIX IT BUT I'LL WAIT.

I finished Draft 2 of TUBE yesterday! You can read the whole damn thing here! And send me messages like "It sucked!" or "I love it!" But you already know this as I'd shouted about it from every rooftop, albeit being half-dead whilst at it. Consider this an in-depth shout with a story of how this draft came to life over 4 months, the longest time I've ever spent on a draft to date in the 3 years I've been writing, and the things it has taught me.

May 18, 2015

20 things I learned from writing full-time for 3 years

by Ksenia Anske

3 years ago on May 14th I opened a new Word file, called it Ailen's Song (the first title for Siren Suicides) and started typing. "Have you ever met a siren? No, not the kind you read in books about. Not the one with fish tails, sweet voice and green hair sitting on a rock somewhere in the ocean, luring in fishermen. No, a real siren. The one with white hair and skin. I think it’s called “albino”, you know, with red eyes and stuff. Have you seen one like that? Of course not. Cause if you did, you’d be dead. I know that for sure. My name is Ailen Bright, I’m sixteen years old, and I’m a siren." I typed another paragraph after this one and stopped. I have picked up typing the next day, May 15th, and that is the day I mark as the start of my writing full-time.

I have started and stopped working on this story 3 times, first in 2008 (5K words), then in 2009 (13K words), and finally in 2010 (20K words). On May 14th I happened to run into a friend who asked me when I would finish it. I came home and decided to give it one final try. This was try number 4. I didn't think I'd last more than a month.

I lasted 3 years.

August 6, 2014

10 things I learned from being self-published for 1 year

by Ksenia Anske

On August 5th it was 1 year since I've self-published SIREN SUICIDES, my first novel, well, first trilogy that was really one novel but then it grew too long and I had to cut it into three books and one day I will edit it down and republish it as one. Anyway. I can't believe it's been a whole year already. One moment I feel like I've published it only yesterday, another I feel like it's been a decade. It seems I'm so far away now from where I started and I have learned so much and have yet so much to learn that the only way to do this is to SELF-PUBLISH MORE BOOKS, DAMMIT. And I need to write more books to self-publish more, and I will, I will. 8 more novels already planned. Maybe I should do a blog post about them all. In the meantime, there are a few very curious things that I have learned that can perhaps make your self-publishing road smoother (organized in no particular order, or, I should say, organized in the order they popped in my head):

1. Grammatical and other mistakes never end.

There is something to be said for the prowess of traditional publishing houses, and that is years and years of experience and many many eyes poring over manuscripts and weeding out everything that seems unreadable and making it readable, which we forget about when reading books because we're so used to clean stories. I go through my final draft myself many times, and my editor goes through them many times, and my formatter, and then I do it again, and still readers keep sending me mistakes they have found, overlooked. Little silly things, like "craw" instead of a "crow", things that three people have somehow overlooked. What I have learned from this is that it's my responsibility to make my books clean first and foremost. As a self-published author I can't be sloppy, and so I stocked up on grammar books and am paying more attention to writing cleanly.