November 3rd

Posted on by Palo Stickland

1770 words today.

I spent some time this morning in sending money to a family in India. The mother is my house cleaner. The father migrated from Uttar Pradesh to the wealthier Punjab to work as a farm labourer. He lived in our field hut and spent his days helping my brother-in-law. He married a girl from his home village and brought her to live in the cabin. When his family grew, my brother-in-law gave him his tractor shed to live in. Thirty years later he is still there with three sons, two daughters-in-law and five grandchildren under-aged eight. The elder daughter-in-law has a skin disorder which looks to me like shingles gone awry. It’s scaly now, and I think it’s on the mend, but she has had it for three months, and it’s all over her even on her hands. The medics in Chandigarh say she’ll need a series of injections and treatment at the cost of over £600 which this family don’t have. They’ve sold all they could for the (not so helpful) treatment so far. And, with Covid-19 work is scarce and no furlough system. We are not the same religion, but they are like family. Of course, I sent them more than medical fees.

November 2

Posted on by Palo Stickland

I realise that I will have lots of research to cover when I look over this month’s writing. With that in mind, I drove over to my 94-year-old mother’s house. She is living by herself and very aware of the Covid-19 restrictions we are living under. My excuse for breaking the ‘do not visit indoors’ rule is that she is a vulnerable person, and I am one of her carers.

I found her watching a snooker ‘champion of champions’ tournament. She likes snooker, which made me feel as if I was an intruder. I told her I wanted to talk about some of the past. Firstly, I said I had a vague memory that she had witnessed a public hanging in her home village in India. I kept using the Punjabi word ‘phansi’ but when I changed to ‘hang’ she said ‘Oh, I remember Manuel. there was such a fuss because afterwards, they said he might have been innocent then they stopped the hangings, and they used the electric chair.’ Now, I am wholly diverted from my research, and it seems I have misremembered, and there was no public hanging.

Okay. I asked about making money from spinning cotton thread and how much could you earn? That was better. Then I wondered about the Sufi dervishes, and she said she had witnessed them in the village. And, who was at my birth? She said it was her mother and her cousin, the same as at my brother’s birth. And then her wedding and I was wrong again. It was a one-day wedding because her father was blind and didn’t earn money. I had explained the whole three-day wedding rituals in my writing. Research does not always go your way.

Writing in November 2020

Posted on by Palo Stickland

November 1st and I’ve written 1800 words. I’m being guided by the idea of Nanowrimo but haven’t posted on their site. I did a few years ago and made a total shambles of it. I learned that the secret is to prepare, prepare, prepare.
I’m writing a sort of memoir, or everything I know about my family, which I have been preparing in my mind for years. Recently, someone said that no-one would be interested, so why would you spend time and money on photos, old movies and notes. I think people take an interest in their past when they are older, so I am going to continue.

Thoughts on Feedback and Marketing

Posted on by Palo Stickland

This post started when I researched the costs of receiving feedback.

Curtis Brown = £35.00 for feedback of 200 words on 500words of writing! (7p per word)

Strathclyde University mentoring = £79 initial submission + £273 for 20k; £515 for 40k; £630 for 60k; £924 for 80k (approx 1p per word,although my calculation may be wrong). A group of us paid £168 for Strathclyde Blaze Inferno in which we wrote 8300 words and gained feedback from five writers = 10p per word plus all the inspirational ideas and notes from the course.

A course with Write Here costs £99 but there is not as much feedback.

It seems that giving feedback makes writers money. Then, I searched for ‘how to make money from writing’ and up came this:

www.inc.com/danny-iny/how-to-really-make-money-as-a-book-author-even-if-you-dont-sell-a-single-copy.html#:~:text=A%20typical%20book%20author%20barely,even%20on%20a%20%245%2C000%20advance.

It’s a great article. My attention was drawn to the websites that writers could use.

CafePress, Zazzle and Etsy will sell your T-shirts, coffee mugs and other promotional items linked to your book. I have bought something from a seller on Etsy. Zazzle looks like an amazing site.

You could offer travelling tours (especially non-fiction writers) and take your readers through the places that inspired your book. Vayable might help.

You could set up a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo to raise money for expenses.

To earn advertising income you could sell ads based on your book on Wattpad Futures or Amazon Affiliates.

You could develop a writing workshop. Use Udemy or Skillshare.

How about creating a video trailer for your book? Adobe Spark, Animoto, Magisto.

Or a virtual book tour: podcasts, tweet chats and Facebook live sessions.

And while you are on Facebook, create a Group or Fan page.

Why not build a website for your book and give away free content such as a couple of chapters? Or create a series of downloadable tools for your audience. (I don’t understand that).

You should believe that you are in the money-making business. (Oh?)

Gosh, and I thought my friends who used Pinterest to post photos of their characters were doing so well!

Guest Blogger: Neet Neilson

Posted on by Palo Stickland

This month the Bearsden Writers task was to write a short blog of between 300- 500 words on anything that is of interest and can include an image or photo.

Neet Neilson will start it off with a poem about something she is passionate about… Tiramisu

Like my mamma used to make…

A quest, for the best, like my mamma used to make,

was my challenge for the family recipe tiramisu cake.

Turning vegan, the dairy ridden delicacy was now forbidden,

so finding replacements and still get it to taste the same was a given.

Well, with no eggs in the sponge, and none in the cream cheese,

left me with disasters, and did nothing to appease

my sense of failure at a task I was desperate to achieve.

The marscapone alternatives, some would make you skeeve,

but to get that creamy lightness and that subtle taste

was proving impossible, and causing so much waste.

The sponge took many tries to get light, fluffy layers

instead of something more useful to bricklayers.

If it wasn’t dense enough to cause a black hole,

it was more suited as rubber you could use for a sole.

Mixtures of apple cider vinegar and soy milk to curdle

worked on texture, but left a taste to make you hurl to.

With more experimentation required than a PhD,

it took three years to produce something that filled me with glee.

With a careful balance of ingredients, and swearing aloud,

I’d come up with a sponge that would make my mamma proud.

So, now how to get a cheese that wasn’t dairy, but would cream

to a whip and taste eggy, light, and hold form like a dream?

Most used the coconut milk to get the light fluffy texture,

but the taste of coconut made resemblance just conjecture.

I went nuts with nuts in all their creamy forms and concoctions,

and with every failing was running out of options.

I still couldn’t get a cream to hold its shape and form

like the original; absolutely no attempts would conform.

Then one day, came the long-awaited manufactured cream

that whips like dairy, tastes like dairy, but is made from a bean!

With the right secret additions, to replicate to perfection,

I now had all the components to recreate this confection.

I fed it to the non-vegans and they hadn’t a clue

that this was anything but an original tiramisu.

At last, I’d succeeded where many had miserably failed

with variations and commiserations that seriously paled

into insignificance alongside the original and unique.

Now, I can shout it from the highest peak –

I did it! I made it! I’ve replicated the tiramisu cake

with a cruelty-free version much better than my mamma did make!

© Neet Neilson, 2020