wheePub

I have always wanted to publish things. When we were in the Arctic I created books with an unbreakable but ungovernable Gestetner duplicator, the kind for which you cut a stencil with what looks like a dentist's tool, affix the stencil on a drum, apply far too much ink, and feed the paper, sheet by sheet with one hand while you revolve the drum to print through the stencil with the other.

Later, I was the editor of not one, but two monthly newspapers. Layout involved printing out the columns of text to appear in the paper, and placeholder spaces for the images, and then crawling around (and on) the layout sheets spread out on the floor with a glue-stick or other affixer and trying to get the right columns in the right places, and all parallel with each other. Then I would trundle the layout sheets off to the printer, where the staff would try not to sigh to loudly while correcting my sillier misteaks mistakes.

Boy, is it easier now.

I just published the first of a half dozen or so collections of my plays as an eBook. I wanted to see what was involved in creating such a book, and was not averse to sharing some of my plays with the reading public. I read a couple of online guides about eBook publishing and then tried my hand at it. The result is available on Kindle, Kobo, the Barnes & Noble store, and lotsa other places.

For those playing along at home, I created the cover using Canva. I generally write scripts using Celtx, but the standard script format is designed for an 8.5 x 11 page. I therefore had to blow away all the formatting Celtx provided in its export-to-PDF option by dropping the text of each play into a text editor (EditPad Pro), copying out of the text editor into Libre Office (or Open Office or Word), and providing some basic formatting that would read clearly on any mobile device.

Then I uploaded the document to create the eBook in Smashwords, which not only has lovely book-creation tools but also delivers the result to most eBook markets except Kindle.

After that I took the epub version of the book that Smashwords had created and uploaded it to Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing to create a Kindle version. The link for the image above goes to the Canadian Kindle store, but you can find the book easily in Amazon Kindle for many nations.

No one step is too onerous. I spent the most time (aside from writing the plays in the first place, d'oh) reformatting the scripts to make them readable on screens of many sizes.

I have three more collections ready to go, and a fourth on the horizon. I won't belabor you with the construction details every time I publish a book, you'll be happy to know. But I will tell you as each book becomes available.

World-building

I am at the same time writing two plays, a couple of choose-your-own-adventure games, and another thing that may turn into a book...or nothing at all. I tend to launch into projects as early as I can in order to let the characters inform me about what happens in the story, rather than me telling them. I often have a hope about how the story will turn out--and often the characters educate me on the way, and the story ends differently, and much better, than the way I had at first hoped it would.

This morning a question came up on a games forum I follow about creating the "world" for a game. The writer was daunted by the amount of work that seemed to be required before you could start the first sentence of the first page of the actual thing you wanted to write. Here's my response (I'm posting it here so I can find it again when I need to remind myself):

You can write a first draft of a game without knowing much about your main character's physical world, world-view, opportunities or threats. But to go beyond first-draft level you need to discover and articulate the world. 

Knowing the world of the story keeps you honest as a writer: it leads you to write about things the main character would be concerned with, not what is on your authorial agenda, and it helps you keep things believable. If there's a pirate attack--how come? What forces them to become pirates? If the main character finds treasure, whose was it and who else is trying to find it? If there's a love interest, do the social rules of the world make it easier or harder for the main character to pursue that person?

If creating a world seems daunting, then go ahead and write the first draft of the game against a blank backdrop. If it seems like fun and you want to make it a richer game that's fun to play, you will then be motivated to explore and define the world.

I was writing about making games, as you can see. But I think the observation is true for any sort of creative writing.