I admit it - I hate outlines

I'll be the first to admit - back in high school and college, when we'd have to sit down and write the outlines for our papers, I'd roll my eyes and fight it. HARD. I mean, I wanted to WRITE. What the hell does outlining have to do with writing?

These days I've kind of matured - in part thanks to a screenwriting class I took through UCLA. In that class we wrote what they called a step outline of the script - two sentences, scene by scene, outlining the story. At first I hated it. But I do have to admit - it's got some advantages.

Writing this way (I'll usually write a sentence or two for each chapter) forces you to think through the story. There's fun in flying seat-of-your-pants style, but I think that's better left for shorter pieces. When you're dealing with a longer piece, there are a lot of things you need to keep straight.


I'll also somewhat sheepishly admit that when I wrote THE TRIP, I didn't have a full formal outline. I would outline a few chapters ahead of where I was, so I had an idea where I was going with the story. I got a little of the fun of exploring the story without feeling locked into anything as I was writing. (Seeing as I was doing this for fun at the time, no harm, no foul)

Slow but sure

It's been about six weeks since the first batch of review requests went out, and they're starting to come back.

I'm getting good reviews. The Trip on Amazon.com has seven positive reviews - mostly from people that don't know me. Including one blogger out in Germany who's going to be posting the review to his blog.

I'll take a positive review when I can get them. I have to admit finding people to review the book is proving to be easy; getting them to read and post is tough. A lot (I'd say all) these people are probably doing this in their spare time. They've got lives and day jobs.

I appreciate everyone who's offered to review or written one. I just wish I could do more to get people to buy the book, but this is the reality of being an author. I'll be lucky if I sell 100 books (I'd be ecstatic to sell 101 to tell you the truth).

Like a character in a novel, that little bit of hope that the story will catch fire and become a hit keeps me going. My Survivorman - Zombie Apocalypse video on YouTube caught on. It didn't happen overnight - it was over a period of about six months, but when it hit, its hit count climbed very quickly. It's since tapered off, but it proves that I *can* do this...I've done it before, and that was before social networking existed.

Here's to hoping as the reviews come in, more people will be interested in reading the book and convert to sales.