Yesterday I wrote about rule four, but the only one of those rules that I have consistently stuck to is rule 1: You must write.
In recent years, I have found finishing what I start to be a challenge. My computer is littered with incomplete manuscripts.
When I put index card on my desk, I made the commitment to follow those rules. I didn’t think that it could make much difference, but I am glad that it has. My current story went through a challenging period, and I was beginning to convince myself that I needed to start it again, or give up on it completely.
Having the rules as a constant reminder helped me push through those doubts and once again the story is flying. I wrote over 3,000 words on it today.
I have a lot more thoughts on these rules, and how I intend to apply them, but right now my focus is on sticking to rule 2 and finishing everything I start.
Heinlein’s 4th rule states that “you must put it on the market” and that is something that I haven’t always done. I have been writing for publication for more than ten years now and have only published about 50% of what I started writing.
Some of those projects are lost forever, started in some random notebook when I thought writing longhand would solve all my problems. I can’t do anything about those. Others were written on a computer but abandoned halfway through a first draft, they will be tricky, but not impossible, to get back into.
I can do something about the rest though and I spent a pleasant half hour this morning trawling through Dropbox and downloading stories that I never got around to publishing.
They range from short stories to trilogies across multiple genres. One series I got as far as having covers made, but never quite got around to publishing. That one didn’t get published because I came up with a new plan for the series and they weren’t compatible. I nevere got around to writing that series, so now I can publish what I originally wrote.
I am trying to get better about finishing what I start. In the middle of the process, when the excitement of starting something new has worn out, it is easy to convince myself that a project isn’t going anywhere, or that it’s no good. The thing is that I know that is the worst time to actually judge a story. And even when it’s done, I don’t think writers can really judge the quality of their own work.
There are some new projects on my list that I’m really excited about. Maybe I will even get around to continuing the series that almost, but never quite, made it to publication. Either way, I am excited for people to finally read them.
After writing yesterdays blog post I was listening to episode 501 of the Sell More Books Show where they were discussing a recently announced KDP plan to allow authors to create A.I. audiobooks. If yesterdays post was interesting then you might want to give it a listen.
I hadn’t heard about Amazon’s plans to release AI narrator tools, but I assume it will work in a similar way to the Draft2Digital / Apple Books system. With the added benefit that the books will be available on Audible as well, which is by far the biggest market for audiobooks.
It does lead me to wonder whether I will need to pick one store or the other. A brief look at the terms and conditions for the audiobook program suggests that for the term of the contract, you can’t create additional versions. That is likely how it works with traditionally narrated books as well, so I’m not too surprised about it. Fortunately, the contract is only for 6 months, so if the KDP program is fully up and running by May / June next year, I should be able to move things over.
It has always been my intention to start releasing my stories in audiobook format but I didn’t think I would get around to it as soon as I have done. Originally, I was thinking it would be when I started releasing the new books that I am working from, and that the older titles would not be converted over.
As you might know I am currently doing re-releases of all my back catalog titles. I publish direct to Kindle, but use Draft2Digital to get my titles on the other stores. I like D2D because I can upload everything once and they handle all the distribution and that makes it a lot easier. They are also really good at trialling new services.
When I was loading up the new version of Unhallowed Ground I got a pop-up suggesting I start an audiobook version. As well as the Findaway Voices option, there was a new option to create an audiobook on Apple Books using A.I. voice generation.
The process couldn’t have been more straightforward and I set everything up. But I did feel conflicted about it.
As a writer, I am keeping an eye on the A.I. business, because one of the things it does is write. There have been whole books created using ChatGPT. So I was worried that I was contributing to the problem by using A.I. rather than a human narrator.
A few months ago, I remember reading about a guy who used A.I. to create the images for a children’s book and there was a lot of backlash about that because he was taking work away from an actual artist. Which I can sympathise with. I didn’t want to go down that route, not only because I didn’t want to deal with the hate, but because I respect the art of audiobook narration.
I was close to pulling the title from audio, but then I had a conversation with Tamzin and she helped me realise that I’m not taking work away from a human narrator by doing this. First of all, I had no intention of creating audiobooks for these stories. So this wasn’t a case of choosing an A.I. narrator over a human one, it was choosing an A.I. narrator over no narrator at all.
Secondly, and this is something that rarely gets spoken about, there is a whole group of people who enjoy reading, but because of vision problems, can’t. When you think about it like that, creating audiobooks is creating an accessibility tool.
Thinking about it that way helped and I have created a couple more audiobooks the same way.
Once I start releasing new stories, I fully intend to use human narrators. However, having done a couple of audiobooks this way now, I’ve got to say, I’m really impressed by the quality of them. There are some rough edges that you wouldn’t get with a person, but for what they are, they’re really good. Certainly something you could comfortably listen to.
If you’re interested in checking them out you can find my current releases here:
