The Paupers Pen

Day One

2010-10-31T16:59:00.000-07:00

I gave up smoking a couple of months ago.
When I first made the decision, I thought it was a great idea. I remember running out of papers for my rolling tobacco at midnight and seriously thinking about walking 2 miles to the petrol station for papers. Whilst tying the laces of the second boot, I made the decision. That is enough. No more will I be a slave to dried leaves. I will emancipate myself with the help of a government programme which supplies free patches. I made the appointment the next day for a weeks time and felt great.
Even on the day of the appointment I was in good spirits and believed it was a good decision. On Day One of giving up, I was not one hour into the fight before I realised I had made the stupidest decision of my life. And I have made some. I used to feel bad about the magnitude of stupidity I manage to harness in decision making, until David Cameron was elected Prime Minister of our country. Now I know that not only am I not alone, but it is a quality which seems to be required of premiership these days. Maybe I could be Prime Minister too!
Anyway, I persevered and have spent my days taking deep breaths with each craving and reminding myself every two minutes that it really is worth it and I am better for it. Some days it is hard to believe this, so I quickly consume a bottle of wine as a treat and an incapacitant for the task of walking to the shop for a cigarette.
As something to look forward to and bring some meaning to life without tobacco, I signed up for NaNoWriMo. What a wonderful idea. Write a novel in a month. I have two novels I have researched to death, but not written a word of. So this is it. This is going to get one of them out of the way.
And I have got very excited about this. I have told everyone I meet. I have twittered the death out of it. I am even reading Chris Baty's book (very good read by the way, but best started a little sooner than October 27). I have been surfin' da net all day for anything to do with it. (Take a look at this song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi2u2rMB__k&sns=tw)
1 Hour 50 Minutes and 8 Seconds until I can write a jot of the novel and I am like most twitterers I have looked at, beginning to think this is probably yet one more of those stupid decisions.
I intend to write something at midnight to get a few words on my count, but ... tomorrow morning, one hour into the day ....
... will I spend my days taking deep breaths and reminding myself every two minutes that it really is worth it and I am better for it? When I have nothing more to write, will I quickly consume a bottle of wine as a treat and an incapacitant for the task of walking to the shop for a cigarette? Will this reward be the very thing that brings me back to cigarettes?
Crazy isn't it?
This right here is getting on for 600 words and I only have to do 1,667 a day to make the grade. And this blog was part conceive just before my wife came back from work and during the walk to and from the Coop to get some wine to stop her talking so I could think a bit more about the blog, the novel and my life!
So I will do it. It can be done.
She is calling now so I have to stop.
That is that over and there are now 40minutes and 10 seconds left. Maybe I should thank her for the diversion. Maybe that would help divert the next 40 minutes.
Anyway, the other thing is I want to get a photo of the very first few seconds. I have not put a picture on a blog before so I guess it would be a crowd puller. Maybe I need to check my broadband capacity on this blog. Well first I need to find out what that is. Broadband capacity!
This is nuts. I have to finish and post before midnight. I muct do the sensible thing. To wait until then to take the photo and then post and then write is stupid isn't it.
24 minutes left.
I am going to make a sandwich and take a photo at midnight. Yeh!
I will post this a couple of minutes into Day One and post my regrets anon or not.

Here we go!!!!!

Steve (please buy all my books you need them) Townsend

Word Count = 793

Excited!!!!

2010-10-29T12:17:00.000-07:00

Man, am I excited!

On Monday I start my new novel. Well, start writing it at any rate. I cannot think of anything that has capture my imagination and heart more than this. I will be using this blog and twitter to record my progress or not throughout November.

To put things in perspective if you were just thinking, "I would do this if I had more time" you need to know that on the November 17, I will be attending court to defend my ability to stay in my home (Northern Rock want it) and I may be leaving that house anyway in order to begin divorce proceedings. It will not be the easiest month, but then these days, none of them are.

NaNoWriMo !#@^!???

2010-09-23T07:21:00.000-07:00

No it is not a throw back to Mork and Mindy, it is one of the best ideas I have come across in ages. Write a novel in a month!
Brilliant! Anyone can join up and the challenge is to write a 50,000 word novel between 1 - 30 November. To verify the count they have a word counting widget on their site which counts the words on your uploaded document and then deletes the document. So no fear of your novel being copied. The prize for success is a certificate, which would certainly make me chuffed.
What is it about men and certificates? I recently joined a stop smoking scheme and was telling my wife about it. I could tell she was impressed, when she said, "Why? Do they give you a badge?" Silly woman, of course they didn't give me a badge. Mind you, I did get a star chart.
Anyway, the best prize, to my mind, is that by December I would have written a novel. I have been mulling over 2 ideas for months now and you know what it is like? There is always a little more to research first. The name of a character is not quite right, so I have to find the best baby name book on the market, find a used copy, purchase it, read it, and 3 weeks later end up using on of my son's friend's name anyway.
Research is necessary, but writing is more important. Now I have a month to research and a month to write.
Anyway, check it out yourself and tell me if you join up.
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/hownanoworks

Internet Marketing – Is it really possible?

2010-07-21T05:24:00.000-07:00

Writing a book is one thing, but getting people other than friends and family to buy it is another.
I read today that the number of people using the internet doubles every 100 days. I find that very hard to believe, but I do know that the internet is increasing in importance. Early on I had decided to self publish and self market my books (some of my reasons I have outlined on my website http://jijukapress.com/selfpublishing.html).
Now that I am writing my forth Crazy Boy book and another one for teenagers, I felt it was time to tell the millions of internet users about my books. After all if only 0.1% of one million visitors of my website bought a book, that would be 1,000 books. Wow!
Well, over the past two weeks I have concentrated on increasing hits to my website in order that orders would come flooding in before my kids are off school and demanding 98% of my time. This is what I did and I will conclude with the results so far.
Website - Made sure my website had some flashing gifs and was rock solid. I went through every link to make sure they worked. I was shocked that some did not! Oops!
Twitter - Pursued followers for my Twitter account. To do this I initially searched for authors and started following their followers. The problem was I could not find many authors of children’s books using Twitter. So then I searched for anyone interested in children’s books, Africa, parenting, writing and so on.
I saw a video on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tO4ngxBDrw) that was interesting. This guy attracted 500 followers within 24 hours. To do this he used a similar process, only did more of it He followed over 1,800 people and claimed to do that within one hour.
One of the disadvantages of using Microsoft Windows ME (as I do), is that any web page with more than two paragraphs and a grainy picture on it, freezes for an hour while it works out whether to report unresponsive script or not. So it is not any easy task to click the follow button on a followers list.
Anyway, the point is you have to follow a lot of people to get a lot of followers. I found the same. Maybe, 25-40% of people you follow, will follow you back within a few days.
The advantage of ten year old Operating System is that after a couple of hours you get fed up of the internet and start writing something.
So although my computer has frustrated my efforts, it has actually helped me not to loose whole days clicking follow buttons.
All that said, I did increase my followers from 3 to 420 within 12 days. This resulted in 5-20 hits per day of my website. Not a lot, but more than before.
I should mention that it is not enough to seek followers. They want to follow something, so I did make a commitment to tweet at least once every two days. I also retweeted a few of the tweets I found interesting. Some messages sent asked questions and I tried to answer them honestly and quickly. After all, you do not receive much in life without giving much.
TrafficAdBar – There are so many of these sites promising to increase the traffic to your website. This one is nice, because it is free and simple. You submit a very short advert for your site and they send it to some of their members to look at. In return you have to view other people’s websites (3 a day for each website you want to advertise). For each website you view, they will send someone to your website. I have viewed at least 25 websites a day and true to their word I have noticed hits to my website increase by that amount.

These two marketing efforts have accounted for 350 hits of my website within a 14 day period. Fantastic. At last I am starting to reach the millions who use the internet everyday. Or am I?
A million is 7 digits, whereas 350 has only 3. Hmmm.
And the resulting sales of the two possible books on offer is … 0. Hmmm.
Still, I have not spent any money on marketing yet and I more people know about me than two weeks ago. That’s a long enough blog for today. I will revisit the figures in another fortnight (two week for US readers).

First blog is the hardest

2010-07-20T11:39:00.000-07:00

I turned 45 last Friday. It was a nice day. Lunch with parents and brother. Tea with wife and kids. Evening barbecue with the men from church.
Unlike most days, I was with somebody for most of the time, which usually means I can't indulge in deep thought and ponder new life plans. But that day deeper thoughts were active in the back of my mind and surfaced briefly during toilet and cigarette breaks.
"I'm 45 now," I kept thinking. "Hadn't I better do something with my life?"
This was not a mid-life crisis question. True enough I am in mid-life (one hopes) and I am experiencing both financial and marital crisis'. But up until a few years ago, I had been doing something with my life. Quite a lot, as lives go.
I had done so much that I had burnt out. Although on the mend now I can't quite see myself pushing life's boundaries like I used to. Breakdown and drawn out debt will do that to you.
I have called this blog Pauper's Pen, partly because my pen is probably the one thing that bailiffs are unlikely to want to take from me and partly because I am hoping it will be the one thing the see me out of poverty.
My wife works 10-12 hour shifts and goes out for similar periods of the day even if she is not working. Having two children places more restrictions on time and earning power. I am basically a single parent.
The good thing is there are periods of some days when I am alone and I can write or market books. The bad thing is I am alone and therefore have to discipline myself to get this writing done. I have not been very successful in this. For sure I have written and illustrated 3 books, but I know I could have done more.
I looked up advice from authors and there is a lot of it. But the one piece of advice mentioned repeatedly, was to write something everyday. Writing for one hour a day should complete a 200 page novel within a month, so I should have 10 novels on the market.
Anyway, that is all going to change. Today I begin a blog, charting thoughts and progress in the production of the books I have completed and have in the pipeline. If anyone follows, I hope I can interest, but even if no one follows I will have something to start me writing each day.
Maybe after a few more novels I will feel I am doing something with my life again.