#264 – Crafting "Melted Cold": A Short Story Collection’s Creative Process (Re-Release)
Welcome to Episode 264 of the Spun Today Podcast! I'm your host, Tony Ortiz, and I'm thrilled to have you join me as we dive deep into the art and soul of writing. In today's episode, we'll be taking a comprehensive journey through my writing process, from the inception of ideas to the final touches of publication.
We'll explore the techniques and tools that have shaped my debut short story collection, "Melted Cold," and I'll share invaluable tips on writing, editing, and marketing your own works. Whether you're battling imposter syndrome or struggling to find time amidst life's chaos, I've got some personal insights and practical advice to help you on your creative path.
We'll also discuss the importance of free writing, the meticulous process of selecting the right editor, and how to effectively use tools like Scrivener, ProWritingAid, and even Chat GPT. Plus, I'll delve into the world of cover design with 99 Designs and share my marketing strategies involving Facebook ads, Amazon ads, and spike promotions.
If you're passionate about creativity and looking for inspiration to fuel your writing journey, this episode is packed with motivational content and actionable tips. So grab a cup of coffee, settle in, and let's get into it. Welcome to Spun Today, your go-to podcast for all things writing and creativity!
The Spun Today Podcast is a Podcast that is anchored in Writing, but unlimited in scope. Give it a whirl.
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*Original Release Date September 28th, 2023”
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Check out my Books: Make Way for You – Tips for getting out of your own way
& FRACTAL – A Time Travel Tale
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Episode transcript
Tony [00:00:18]:
What up, folks? What's going on? Welcome to the Spun Today podcast, the only podcast that is anchored in writing but unlimited in scope. I'm your host, Tony Ortiz, and I appreciate you listening. This is episode 244 of the Spawn Today podcast, and in this episode, I speak all about my journey in writing. Melted cold, my first short story collection. Listen to hear about how I came up with the ideas for each of the eight stories within this short story collection. What tips and tools I use for writing I'm going to tell you guys literally how I physically write, what I use when I write, how I write, tips and tools that you can implement related to editing, publishing, what I personally did for cover design. I'm going to tell you guys about my rollout strategy and marketing strategy so that we can done it down the line, figure out what worked, what didn't work, what needs to be tweaked, so on and so forth. So if you're interested in any of that type of stuff, if you're a writer yourself and want to learn more about something that you may not know about yet, or maybe just reinforce some things that you do know but know about already, or if you just want to see a bit of a behind the scenes of how the sausage was made for melted cold, a short story collection, then definitely stick around.
Tony [00:01:49]:
But first, I want to tell you guys about a way that you can help support this podcast. If you so choose, your support means a ton. Not only does it motivate me, but it helps to free up my time to do more of what I love, which is writing stories and putting together these podcast episodes for you. So whether it's something as simple as rating and reviewing this podcast, wherever it is that you're listening to it, or whether it's taking part in the intro drop that I'm about to play for you, your support is very much so appreciated. So listen to this way that you can help support the podcast, and then we'll jump right into the episode. If you're a fellow creative, a cool way that you can help support the Spun today podcast and actually be part of the podcast is by filling out my five question questionnaire located@spuntaday.com questionnaire. Here you'll find the five open questions related to your craft, your art, what inspires you to create, what type of unrelated hobbies you're into, and what motivates you to get your work done. You can choose to remain anonymous or plug your website and your work.
Tony [00:02:55]:
And once you submit your questionnaire, I read your responses on a future episode of the Spun Today podcast. It's completely free, at no cost to you. And what I like to say about it is that if your responses could potentially spark inspiration in someone else, why not share that sponsodate.com questionnaire? First up is the actual writing, the physical act of writing, where it all starts. Most, if not all, of the stories in this short story collection started out with free writing. If you guys have listened to the podcast in the in the past, then I'm a huge proponent of it. My first book, actually make way for you, is a collection of free writing that just happens to have a bunch of different pieces, that 70 something pieces that have that motivational kick in the ass through line that I realized in retrospect was me talking to myself, trying to motivate myself to do something that I wanted to do, which is put together a book and freewriting itself. It's a. A tool that psychologists use for their patients to help work through trauma and thoughts and just things that they're stuck on.
Tony [00:04:14]:
For me, it's beneficial in that way, in helping formulate thoughts and ideas. It's definitely therapeutic, and just from a creative perspective, it's freeing. It gives you the license to just write, the permission, if you will, to just write. There's a lot of us, myself definitely included, suffer from imposter syndrome. Sorry. Let me try to say that without mumbling. Impostor syndrome. And you often think, who the fuck am I to write? Who wants to read anything that I write? And the short answer to that is, one, you're writing mainly for you, for your benefit, so do it for nothing else for that.
Tony [00:04:56]:
And two, that's all the permission you need. You write because you want to write, and you have a fucking story to tell. And going back to the creative specifically, I'll sit down with it could be a plot that I have in mind, the type of story I want to write, or literally two words of dialogue that I think of, and I'm damn, that sounds dope. I want to write a story around, literally that two sentence piece of dialogue. Then you just start free writing some PC line, who is he talking to? Okay, then this girl says, xyz back to him. And then where are they? And you just literally start writing. Write whatever comes to mind. Anything and everything that comes to mind.
Tony [00:05:42]:
You literally physically put pen to paper, which is what I do in these little notebooks, and start writing and writing and writing. And as you write, it's kind of that. I think it was in Malcolm Gladwell's book blink although I could be conflating multiple memories. But there's this concept of Michelangelo, I think, said, as quoted by Malcolm Gladwell, if I do have that recollection, correct, that it wasn't that he was chiseling statues out of stone, it was that the statues already existed and he was chiseling the stone away from the statues. Similarly, in writing, I feel the story exists, and with your pen, you're polishing it, getting rid of all the weeds and all the crap around it. And the free writing allows you to sort through all that, all the noise, and get to where the story is. And the more you write, you go in different directions. The characters wind up speaking to each other.
Tony [00:06:47]:
You might think you have an idea to go in a specific direction where your characters quite literally have minds of their own and might have a different idea for the story itself. And you just follow it through. You. You're just a vessel for the story to be told through, if it makes any sense, get in that mindset and just let the writing flow. So that's where I start. That's where I start on mostly all of my stories. Then and again, I do a physical pen and paper, right? Then once I have the framework and I'm okay, I know what the story is, I see it now. I found my voice, if you will, or what I am trying to say with this story, if it even has that layer of I want to get a message across.
Tony [00:07:37]:
Cause sometimes I write shit that it's just. I just think this is a cool, entertaining story, and I'm not necessarily making a point with the story itself. Maybe little sub points or getting my personal points of view across, or points of view that I know exists in the zeitgeist, trying to let them live in certain spaces within a story. But sometimes the stories are just that, just entertainment. And sometimes they are entertainment, but it always has, or not always, but some are entertainment, but also have morals, or, again, points that I'm trying to get across. So once I have that, and it doesn't necessarily mean that I write the story from beginning to end in free writing mode. It could be after a page or two, I'm, oh, okay, I got it. I got it.
Tony [00:08:26]:
I know what I want to do. And sometimes it might be longer, might be a lot more. Sometimes I have the almost the entire story fleshed out in free writing. But whenever I have that aha. Moment which inevitably comes, I switch gears to a more practical approach, which is using writing tool on the computer. The tool that I personally use is scribner. Which I've sung, it praises many, many times and highly, highly recommend. Think of it as Microsoft Word on steroids.
Tony [00:09:00]:
If you've never seen it and has some really cool, intuitive features where you can put it in cork board mode, for example. And you have these little index cards on the screen that you write on, and you can rearrange with your mouse drag and drop and move them around, and then you can switch it back to word doc mode and your story will be in the order in the word doc as you organize them within those index cards, for example. And that's a cool tool if you, I know, for me, tell stories out of sequence. Sometimes you're like, oh, I just thought of a dope scene, but I'm nowhere near that. That's something that's gonna happen at the end. You can write that and just have that in an index card within Scrivener and then continue writing your story. And then whenever you get to where, where that scene feels right, then you move that scene in. Something else that I love about Scrivener is that I, it's an application on the computer, but it also, I have the application on my phone.
Tony [00:10:06]:
And literally, I can be working on a story at night. And the next day, if I go into work, going to the office on the train, I pick up on that story within the app on my phone. And everything that I worked on the night before is exactly and seamlessly there. And then when I come back home and get back on the computer, whatever I wrote on the train, after I literally click one button to sync everything up, it'll be on the computer app as well. So that's another dope feature of Scrivener, which leads me to another point within the this writing bucket. When do you write? How do you find time to write? I'm married, so I have that relationship to maintain. I have two small children, one of which is in kindergarten. School related things and homework and projects and everything that comes along with, obviously, having children.
Tony [00:11:09]:
I have a family. I have two elderly parents. I have a full time job because writing and podcasting does not pay the bills. Maybe one day, right? And a lot of those mandatory things that I know a lot of folks listening have as well. So when do you physically find the time to write? And the truth of the matter is that if you love it, or even if you. Even if you want to love it, you're gonna have to carve out the time for it. And don't be afraid to switch things up. I mean, I've gone from waking up at 530 in the morning every day for long stretches of time.
Tony [00:11:48]:
So I can write for an hour before my official quote unquote day actually begins. I've done the flip of that and just write at. Begin writing at midnight, 11:00 p.m. until like two in the morning, wake up the next day, go to work. I've done a lot of writing on the subway, actually, especially around my first novel, Fractal, which is a time travel tale. The bulk of that writing was done on Scrivener, on the subway, and you just find time, an hour here and a half hour there, 50 minutes, two days later, and it builds up over time. So I would definitely add patience to that because I'm definitely not a as prolific a writer as I wish I could be. For example, the eight stories within this book, the newest one, which is a night out, the first story in the series, I completed, I would say, six months ago, six months to a year, definitely less than a year ago.
Tony [00:12:54]:
And the oldest story, which I believe is bully, the oldest story in the series. Bully, which was one of the first short stories that I actually wrote. Once I started taking writing more seriously, I wrote back in 2014, I want to say 20 1416 2015 years ago, and all the other stories written somewhere between those two gold goal posts. So patience is definitely part of the equation, especially when you're, you're juggling a lot of other life things. So then what do I do next? So I start with free writing, move over to Scrivener, get my writing done on there. What's next? I wanted to start adding more structure, more of the science to this story making thing. I think of stories, especially now, as I've learned more about writing and story making. The heart of it is the art, the passion, the free writing, the intent that I love, but just as interesting and fascinating in a different way, is the science of it.
Tony [00:14:04]:
What do I mean by the science of it? I mean the structure of an actual story, the tropes, the formula, if you will, that your story or that a captivating story should follow. And again, I am no expert. Do not think I am. Know that I am not writing. To me, any other type of art or passion is something that is going to be an ever evolving thing, probably till the day I die. I'll never feel, oh, I figured this out. I know how to do this. There's always gonna be something new to learn, something new to tweak and implement and change and.
Tony [00:14:38]:
And evolve. But I do want to share from a practical perspective what it is that I did, how I got this book from a to b, from a to Z rather, although a to b is probably more fitting, right? Probably have a long way to go, but I definitely stand on the shoulders of much more knowledgeable folks that I cherry picked a lot of these ideas from and then made them my own. So special. Shout out to Joanna Penn of the creative pen podcast that I have learned and continue to learn so much from. Kmyland is another great resource. I feature her extensively within my episode writing tips when I do the free writing session episodes of this podcast. Steven Pressfield, of course, he's my I'm trying to think of a writing analogy that means ambassador of Quan. Shout out to you what movie that's from Sean Coyne and the story Grid podcast, which definitely gets you in the editing mindset, which is a whole different world that I got to explore more, more deeply with this book.
Tony [00:15:44]:
But again, these are folks that I was exposed to because I put myself in this position of wanting to write, wanting to learn about writing, seeking out podcasts and books and blogs about this stuff, and in doing so, in wanting to get more structure around my stories. Again, I told you a lot of these stories were just free, written from beginning to end, instinctual, not knowing what beginning hook is versus an inciting incident, not knowing that each story should have midpoints and a climax and so on and so forth, but just writing a story off street instinct. But as I learn more about, again, the science of it, and that these structural beats exist and how they are present in all stories and movies in different cool and creative ways, I wanted to make sure that my stories are not falling short in relation to these things. Now, there are many different if you Google story structure or story structure spreadsheet, there are many different versions of the same type of thing, some very minimal, some very, very, very detailed. I read a bunch and ultimately cherry picked the parts of these different structures that I felt I could make my own, that I could implement. That made sense to me, and I'm sure as I continue to evolving and learning, I'll be able to implement even more into them. But this is what I started with. So I literally created my own Excel spreadsheet, which I'll probably put out on my website for folks to download if they're interested.
Tony [00:17:40]:
I actually have something else on my website related to this topic, which is how to publish a book. It's a one page PDF. If anybody's interested. It's absolutely free. You can look at it on the website. You don't even have to put in your email address or anything like that. You can download it. It's just a one page document, which I'm sure I'll update over time as well.
Tony [00:17:59]:
But it's a one page PDF document that tells you, okay, I wrote something. How do I put it for sale somewhere? How do I get, how do I do that? So if folks want to check that out, go to sponsored.com, forward slash others. So, yeah, I'll probably wind up putting a blank version of this spreadsheet that I'm going to tell you about on the website there as well, in case you're interested. But, and again, these are definitely not things that I came up with. These are things that I learned along the way from a lot, if not all of the folks that I mentioned earlier, as well as some other contributors. A post from the New York Book editors website short stories series on YouTube with a guest instructor named Mary Kowal, et cetera, et cetera. So for the purposes of this, I'm not gonna get too in the weeds on the spreadsheet. I'm just gonna tell you how it's laid out.
Tony [00:18:57]:
And if you google each or any of the terms, you can get much more detail on it. Or feel free to hit me up through my website if you have any questions, or on social mediapuntodayeverywhere. I'll be happy to dive deeper if interested. But the way I laid it out was I put the title of each of the stories that I wanted to put in this book. Then I have a column called mice quotient m I c e, which is an acronym that stands for milieu inquiry, character, and event. Then the next column I have foolscap. Yes or no? Foolscap is a Sean Coyne and Steven Pressfield idea I wanted to write down. Did I create a fullscap for this specific story? Yes.
Tony [00:19:44]:
No. Then I have a pov column. What is the point of view povdhe of this story? Is it a first person, is it a first person? Ammunition? Is it a third person? Etcetera? Then I have a column called the beginning hook, where I write down what the beginning hook is. I have the inciting incident. That's the next column. Then I have the midpoint or second plot point column, a climax column. And again, each of these terms, climax, midpoint, sighting, incident, et cetera. Google them.
Tony [00:20:21]:
There are many, many details on it, YouTube videos, etcetera. Then I have an ending resolution column where again, I write down a one sentence. What is the ending resolution? A one sentence, what is the climax? What is the midpoint, etcetera? And what this did for me, there's a couple more columns, but just to pause there for a second, what this did for me is I went back through all of these eight stories, which again, some of them I wrote back in 2014, 2016, whatever, when I have no idea of what the hell the structure is. And I can see clearly here on the spreadsheet of oh shit, I don't have a second plot point in my bully story. So now that I'm going to put this out as a polished work that I want people to know, I want these stories to be legit stories that resonate with folks. I have to fix that. I have to correct that. I have to go back into my story and add a couple scenes or rewrite a few scenes to make sure that I highlight a second plot point within it.
Tony [00:21:24]:
And that was super helpful, super valuable, and easy for me to see where the holes were in my, in my story or stories. Then a couple more columns. I have a column stating, does my inciting incident tie out with, with my climax? Meaning in stories, once you start looking at them through this lens, whether it's a movie, a book, a tv show episode, etcetera, there's an inciting incident, something, some sort of call to action, something in the first third of the story, the first act of the story, something that happens to your main character, that tells you, okay, that's what this story or movie or whatever it's going to be about. A common example is someone's child gets kidnapped. Then the rest of the story is going to be trying to track down who kidnapped the person's child and getting the child back. So the climax is going to be the resolution of the child being kidnapped. That story has to tie out. So that's the inciting incident.
Tony [00:22:34]:
The child gets kidnapped. The climax has to tie out with the inciting incident, meaning you have to find the child some way, shape, or form within the story. You have to satisfy that. So I asked myself, did my inciting incident that I wrote down on my spreadsheet, does it tie out with my climax that I wrote out on my spreadsheet? If the answer was no, then I again had to do some rewriting. I had to make sure those two things happen so that I have a satisfying story, satisfying to the reader. So that definitely helped. And my last three columns were, did I complete prowritingaid? Which is the next thing that I'm going to tell you guys about. Then I have a column called edited.
Tony [00:23:21]:
Yes, or no? And published yes or no. But before I switch gears to the next part of more of the editing phase of putting a book together, let me tie out the writing with telling you guys what each of the stories within melted cold is about and how they came to be. Now, I've done individual podcasts in the past. For each of these stories. I've put out audiobook versions of these stories, of the original versions of these stories, which can be found on my website, spuntray.com short stories, these short stories, and others. But again, for the purposes of this book, I rewrote a lot of it. Many parts of these, of each of these stories. They were professionally edited, so on and so forth as we'll get into.
Tony [00:24:05]:
But. Or since rather, I have taken deep dives on each of these stories, I'm just gonna give you a high level what they are about. The first story is a night out. The story idea for this one came from my brother David. Shout out to David Spunto de Alumena, who gave me a call one day and was like, yo, I had a crazy ass dream. You should write a story about it. My first knee jerk reaction is, all right. If I had a dollar for every time I heard that one, I probably wouldn't need a day job.
Tony [00:24:38]:
But he started telling me about his dream, and I was like, oh, shit, it actually does sound interesting. And I jotted down eight or ten bullet points, literally. And that eventually I started working on that story in the ways that I mentioned earlier. Start free writing. Then once I figure out what the story is and how I wanted to go and get into it, move to Scrivener, so on and so forth, everything that I detailed up until now. And because of that, actually, this short story is dedicated to David, which he's probably finding out about now, unless he already ordered the book, which if you haven't, David, order it. But the story is essentially about a group of friends. They go out for a celebratory night, and the mysterious owner of this establishment offers them some free cocktails in a private section of the place and coerces them into murdering someone.
Tony [00:25:38]:
Spoiler alert. And then the rest of the story is an oceans eleven esque revenge story on them, trying to find out one who the fuck this dude is, who's this on the underbelly of the city mafioso type character, and them trying to get vengeance on him for putting them through what he put them through. And that's essentially the plot of the first story. A night out of the next story. Pencil case. Is based on a true story of me as a kid going to work with my dad. And I try to share some life lessons that I picked up on from my father and folks that he worked with just from being around them and learning by example. The third story, Nostrand Ave, is not based on a true story, but it was inspired by a couple different events.
Tony [00:26:34]:
One I did witness in real life. This, I caught the very tail end of it, but this very raucous situation with some young teenage kids. I remember as a teenage girl in particular at a train station one day, I was coming home from work. I'm getting off. There's mad cop cars. There's more than a dozen cops in the train station itself. So I don't know what the fuck was going on before I got there. But they're taking this one girl away, and she's flipping the fuck out.
Tony [00:27:04]:
She's get the fuck off me. Screaming, crying. Just a very holy shit. What the fuck happened? The situation and me, the writer in me, the gears just started turning. And it's sadly not uncommon to also hear about stories of police brutality, which I don't think was the case here, at least none that I saw, but to hear stories about police brutality and things like that, especially with stories that get tons of attention, whether online or on the media. So that was definitely an influence or stories that for this specific story. And I try to explore it from both angles, from the side of a police officer, highlighting the fact that he's an inexperienced police officer and a hot headed hormonal teen on the other side. Then the story bully, which, again, was the first short story that I ever wrote after being an adult and saying to myself that I wanted to be a writer.
Tony [00:28:05]:
This is also based on the true story from elementary school and getting bullied, basically ball and chain. This one was one of the funnest stories for me to write, that I wrote after reading Stephen King's own writing memoir. At the end of it, he has this call to action where he asked writers or folks reading the. The book that wanted to be writers as a writing exercise, to write a story that is typically told in a certain way with certain characters, with certain. Where there's a usually a clear male character and female character, for example, domestic violence, for example, it's usually the male committing domestic violence on the female. I think that was an example in the call to action. I could be misremembering them, but the idea of the exercise was to flip the genders and try to tell a story, a compelling story, that way. And that's what I wound up writing with Ball and chain, which is essentially a serial killer type story that I always think about revisiting.
Tony [00:29:23]:
I know I have at least one more story in me for within that ball on chain world that I created, maybe for the second collection of short stories that I write, but I really like that story enough to could be its own standalone novel one. But we'll see. Then you have Chopper City, which is a story that came about literally from a dream that I, that I had the beginnings of it, at least I had a dream, which is another write it writing tip. If you want to take this one, which is to have a dream journal, have a book next to your bed. I personally don't practice this as much as I want to, but I have in the past where you have what's called the Dream Journal, literally a book in a pen next to your bed. As soon as you wake up, just start writing, whether you remember your dream or not. And as you start writing, you'll start remembering shit. I feel like I never dream, or at least I never remember my dreams.
Tony [00:30:20]:
So I haven't really tried the just start writing to see if you remember your dream as you write. But the times that I have remembered dreams that I think could be stories, I have written those down, and Chopper City was one of them. Lecture hall. This was an idea that I felt, and sometimes still feel that it's a story that I want to write a full novel on around the real estate crisis and crash of zero eight. And this story was born from that seed of an idea. And I felt like it wrapped up nicely within a short story. So it never became more than that. Not that it needs to, but just highlighted.
Tony [00:31:02]:
That was my initial intent with that story. And it's essentially a philosophical debate between a professor and student on what happened during the financial crisis of zero eight and who was responsible and why. And lastly, I wrap it up with the short story Elevator, which was also based on true story, at least the beginnings of it again. But someone that I bumped into on my way to work one day, taking the elevator one day, someone I had never seen, never saw again that I did not have a conversation with, but did have a little elevator small talk or whatever. But after meeting that person, or if you can call it meeting or encountering or whatever that person, I did have the idea for this story immediately after, and before even going into my cubicle or whatever at work, where I used to work at, I, right there in the elevator vestibule, started jotting down on my phone. The ideas for this story that eventually became elevator and those are the eight stories within my brand new short story collection, melted cold. Available now. Links in the episode description below.
Tony [00:32:20]:
Now let's circle back to the last three columns in this story structure. Spreadsheet of mine pro writing aid yes or no? So after I had my spreadsheet filled out, the next thing that I did was run all of my stories through a program called Prowritingaid. Now this is a writing tool and others could exist. Another popular one is called Grammarly. I used prowritingaid where you can upload your writing into it and it doesn't even have to be creative writing. You can do it for emails, for work. That's one way that they pitch this. But what it does essentially is go through your writing and run a few different types of checks on your writing.
Tony [00:33:14]:
Spelling errors, grammar corrections, where you have commas where you shouldn't and vice versa. Places where you need to add commas where a colon is appropriate, where quotes are appropriate. It highlights where you if you repeat, if you're too repetitive, that's another thing that it does. And you can pick and choose what you want it to do for your piece of writing. And it was really, really helpful in that way. It helps you polish up your writing to move on to the next phase, whether it's to use a professional editor or even if you want to just stop there. It's a fairly inexpensive service that I highly recommend and that I'm going to continue using with my writing. The way I look at it, it's one, it teaches me like, oh, you're supposed to put a comma before first person reference and someone's name or something like that.
Tony [00:34:10]:
You start picking up on those patterns and it starts cleaning up your writing from the first go moving forward. But you'll also in this case, I got my book professionally edited, which I'm going to get to next. I didn't want to hand my editor a bunch of words on a page filled with crap. I wanted to polish it and clean it up and make it as pristine as I possibly could so that one, editing wouldn't be as expensive. And two, I see it as this is a reflection of me. I want to be the best writer that I can be, and this is a step towards that. If anyone listening is interested in checking out prowritingaid, I do have an affiliate link on my support page on my website spun today.com support, and it's also linked to in the episode notes if you're interested. Definitely check it out.
Tony [00:35:05]:
I highly recommend it. Now let's switch gears to the next phase. So after I did that, so I have all my stories written. I have my structure points and beats that I want to make sure that I hone in on filled out on my spreadsheet so I know my stories have what I feel I need them to have. I ran them all through prowritingaid so the majority of my spelling errors and grammar errors and repetitive phrases, etc. Are all taken care of. Then I moved on to the scary world of editing, which definitely turned out not to be scary at all, but to again, a novice writer who has never had anything professionally edited before. It was a scary leap in some ways.
Tony [00:35:54]:
It's a much larger financial investment. It's something that usually doesn't make a return on the investment. It's cliche to say, but if you get into writing, you definitely don't do it for the money, as they say. And it's again uncharted territory all over again. You have to figure out this editing world. Now. Again, I do research. I listen to podcasts with editors, interviews of editors.
Tony [00:36:24]:
I listening to a podcast, the story Grid podcast, which is literally a podcast, all about editing. Every single episode is all about editing and writing. So I picked up tips and tricks there and implemented it into my own writing along the way. But I had never done it. So I started off with trying to find an editor. What do you do? Go on Google search for editors. I went through my social media, my Instagram today, Twitter spun today, and I have a few editors that follow me or that I follow. I checked out their websites.
Tony [00:37:08]:
Most editors will have books that they've worked on. They'll walk you through their engagement process, meaning what they want you to send them, which is usually something, an excerpt of your story, 2500 words, or some of them might be 5000 words or some might be 500 words or whatever it is that they want to see a sample of your writing. They like what their cost is, which is usually a per word cost. Some of them have flat fees. You read reviews, you can search books that you'll see who edited those books, then check out those editors websites. I did some of that. And a great resource is again, Joanna Penn and her website. She has a editor section of her website with editors that she's worked with or that she's vetted in the past.
Tony [00:38:02]:
I went through those and I picked out, I want to say maybe five or six that I reached out to, I sent samples to. And then you get the sobering realization that this isn't just, oh, I'm paying them. So whoever I send this to, they're, of course they're gonna want to edit my work. Some of them definitely don't and are pretty much the same for me. Some of them were folks that I just didn't really vibe with. I sent an email and got a response, a two or three sentence response ten minutes later with a cause and saying, yeah, I'll do it here. We just kind of felt, what? That's it. The vibe was kind of off there.
Tony [00:38:43]:
The, I don't know, the care or interest or lack thereof kind of shown through. And it's someone that you're gonna have a relationship with, at least for the body of work that you're reaching out to them on. So you want a good vibe, a good working relationship to be there. It's like a coworker. So I weeded a few folks out that way, and then there were two editors that I whittled it down to that I was, I can work with either one of these. They were very close, just in terms of cost, which is another thing, by the way, of course, to factor in, make sure they're within your budget. And then I moved forward with both of them in terms of getting a sample edit. So the 2500 words or whatever it is that they asked for, for you to send a.
Tony [00:39:33]:
They edit those as a complete edit of this is what I can do for you for your entire book of work. Which one you learn from as a writer, just from that. Just from those example edits, let's say right there, you choose to. I don't want to use either one of you. You can take what you learned from there, which, again, cost you nothing at this point, and try yourself to implement them, or those tips or editing updates that were made of, and implement them to the writing yourself. But these two editors that were neck and neck, essentially, the attention to detail and how elaborate the. Or not elaborate, that's the wrong word. But how deep the feedback was that I got from one of the editors versus the other, that's what put them over at the end.
Tony [00:40:24]:
And I'm glad to say that I chose a company called the Pro book editor, and I work with the managing editor, Deborah Hartman, and had a fantastic experience. I'm 100% going to work with the pro book editor and Debra in the future. Everything was so professional, so seamless and easy. The feedback that you get is not preachy at all. It's not. I know, as a writer, where we. Another element, at least for me, and I know from many other writers, it's, I don't want anybody touching my shit. I don't want.
Tony [00:41:05]:
This is my writing. I came up with this idea. This is mine. I wrote it this way. It's this way for a reason. There's a control freak element to being a writer or a creative in general, I feel. So there's some tension there with letting someone into your world. But editors, a good editor, as I learned it through this process, knows where that line is.
Tony [00:41:30]:
And their goal is to enhance what you've already written and give you suggestions and ideas and highlight things that they know work. And their goal is definitely not to change anything that you've written. And, of course, they apply the technical expertise of line editing and grammar and proofreading, so on and so forth. You definitely come out of the experience. I know I did as a better, stronger writer. And hopefully, when you folks do order my book, melted Cold, a collection of short stories, that extra level of care and polish will shine through. So shout out once again to the pro book editor and Deborah Hartmande. Oh, let me circle back to that.
Tony [00:42:18]:
The title of the book. The title is melted gold, and it's something that my son Aiden literally said one day when I was changing him. He said, yada, yada, yada, something, something. It's melted cold. And when he said it just stood out so much, I was, that's such a dope name. And I wrote it down on my phone. I don't know for what, but when I hear things that I write them down, whether it's a line of dialogue or something, someone says. And ultimately, I decided to make it the title of this short story collection.
Tony [00:42:57]:
And it's fitting. I kind of back engineered it. Fitting, but it's fitting title name in that these are two words that don't really go together but kind of work melted cold. It's kind of oxymoronic. But the each of the stories within this short story collection are all different kind of genres, and one story has nothing to do with the other. They're told in different ways. So each of these stories don't go together, but are together within the short story collection. So it's kind of fitting in that way.
Tony [00:43:30]:
Oh, and as a tip from my editor, I worked in the title of the book into one of the stories, which, again, it was super tough, because just from a creative perspective, was super tough to figure out how to do because it's already two words that don't go together. So imagine trying to fit them into a story that already exists, and you're trying to think of clever, you know, ways to write them. Write these two words next to each other within the story and make it a coherent sentence, basically. So I think I did an okay job with it. Let me know what you guys think once you find which story the title is actually within. So now what? You wrote a story, you went through making sure your structure's on point, you polished it up yourself as best as you could with editing tools. Prowritingaid, you got it professionally edited. What's next? The COVID design.
Tony [00:44:30]:
Now, I've spoken about COVID design in the past. I used professional cover design for my novel fractal. I did not use professional cover design for my first book, make wait for you. And after using the service that I used, I loved it and will likely continue to use it until and if I ever have a bad experience with it. But I used a service called 99 Designs, which I learned from Tim Ferriss, who used it on his first, I don't think it was his first book, but it was his first New York Times bestseller, I believe, which is the four hour workweek. The original cover designed for the four hour workweek was created with 99 designs. And the way it works essentially is that you pick a tier of service that you want, and each tier offers different things, more designers or a higher caliber of designer with more experience, for example, so on and so forth. And the way it works is that you create a profile within their website, 99 designs.
Tony [00:45:45]:
And super easy, super intuitive, very straightforward, you create a profile, you tell them the title of your book, the genre that it's in, the ideas that you have that you can upload other book covers that you, that you want your book cover to look similar to, tell them what colors to use and get as detailed as you want. And what happens is that all these graphic designers that are part of the 99 designs ecosystem, they duke it out for the opportunity to design your book cover. And based on your proposal, all the things that you jotted down that you wanted for your book cover, they start sending you ideas. You start seeing your scattered thoughts when it comes to cover design come to life, which is really cool. And you really get to it from, again, from a creative perspective. Super interesting to me because you get to see other people's interpretations of what you told them that you wanted. And some of them are way different in a way. That's, what the fuck? How did you get that from this? And some of them are way different enough.
Tony [00:47:00]:
Oh, shit, that's what I should do kind of way. And this is my, again, my second go around, actually my third go around using 99 designs because I actually use 99 designs as well to redo the spun today logo. So I used it for fractal, used it for the spun today logo, and now for melted cold. And you have a lot of time to work with. You get dozens and dozens of different designs. You get the designs, you have ten days to each of the designs, go back to the designer, say, yo, I this, I like that color scheme we did with this picture, but I don't like that. Can you try changing the font up a little bit? X, Y and Z, give whatever feedback you want and you straight up reject other ones that you don't. And after the ten day period, you select five, your top five, five or six or seven, something like that, that you really, and then you get another five or ten days to work with those and continue fine tuning and tweaking.
Tony [00:48:00]:
And then you pick a top three and then you pick a finalist. And when you pick the finalist, that's the, essentially the COVID you wind up with. But you again have another five or ten days with the finalists to change things up, see different color schemes and help mold their idea of what your cover will be. Then at the end you essentially let them know the all the dimensions that you need, the size of the book that you're going to put out. If it's a paperback, if it's a digital, obviously it's a straightforward one size fits all. But you can do. For example, I did a paperback, which is available now. And it's five inches by eight inches, I believe.
Tony [00:48:44]:
And I also did a hardcover. It's my first hardcover. That's five and a half inches by eight and a half inches. So you got to give the designer those dimensions so they give you back the correct files. And you always have an open line of communication afterwards. I actually, after I got the files and the copyright and all that good stuff because you own the, the design at the end, the files that he sent me. And actually let me give him a shout out. The COVID was designed by Noel Selen.
Tony [00:49:18]:
S e l l o n. Noel selon. The files that he gave me were off by one of the sides by 0.055 cm or whatever the fuck. So I reached out to him. This was like a month or two after through again, 99 design website and let him know. He adjusted it, sent it back. Literally, I was expecting not to hear back from him anytime soon and I would have to chase him. But he literally within 20 minutes, hit me back up and said, oh yeah, I'll definitely take care of that and resend the correct size.
Tony [00:49:55]:
And you could also ask for extra shit, which I did a square version of the design, version of the design without the words on it for the back cover in case I decide to update the verbiage down the line for the back blurb, which I'm gonna go to next unless I came up with that YouTube banner, so on and so forth. You can ask them for all these different cuts and designs and stuff of the design that you're paying for, and you just sends over all the files at the end. It's a really dope service. 99 designs, definitely check it out. I highly recommend it. Now something you have to do too for, especially for physical copies of books that have back cover up with back blurb. A enticing summary, if you will, of what your book is about, so that when folks pick it up, read the back of it, say, oh yeah, this does sound interesting, let me read it. What I did for to come up with that was I took a page out of a tip that I heard humble the poet say on a brilliant idiots podcast.
Tony [00:51:00]:
And he writes and he said that one thing that he started doing with his writing in terms of promoting it, was use chat GPT and AI to come up with sales copy, short summaries that he can take. And I run it through chat GPT and use the outputs of to put on Instagram, Twitter, social media to help sell his book. And the way you do that is you interact with chat GPT AI. Go to chatgpt.com. i think it's OpenAI or something like that.com. but just google chat GPT, it's free to use the one specific tier of it. You could pay for additional functionality, but I didn't. And I've used chat GPT in the past just out of intrigue.
Tony [00:51:50]:
And what is this AI thing that everybody keeps talking about? And it's pretty dope, but I definitely took that tip from humble the poet to help with my back blurb. And what I did, essentially was I wrote a paragraph or not a paragraph, probably three. Yeah, I guess paragraph three or four, two to four sentences for each of the eight stories of what it's about. And then I type to chat GPT and I say, I forget the exact terminology, but something to the effect of you are, and by you telling Jatbt the mindset that I wanted to be in. And I say, you are a book publisher and have a task to come up with a 500 word or less sales pitch for purchasing a book that has a story about this. And then I'll paste in the three or four sentences that I wrote about my own short story saying a night out is about a group of friends that go out to blah blah blah blah. And then I feed that into chat GPT and then it comes back with 500 words or less on on whatever. Then I tell it okay, take out the references to x, y, and z and give me a hundred word version of that.
Tony [00:53:21]:
And then you play with it back and forth like that. You cherry, you start picking out okay, the way it phrased this, the way it phrased that. And then I did that for each of my eight stories and came up with the back blurb that you can see now in the back of melted cold. And it's also the same verbiage that I used within the sales description for on Amazon, for example, and on my website. And the dope thing is, again, it's something that you can always look back on. Update over time changes you see Fitzhe, but it's definitely a helpful tool to incorporate for this purpose. Let me read you the back blurb. Melted cold dive into melted cold, where each story becomes a mirror reflecting our deepest desires, fears, and dreams.
Tony [00:54:15]:
Witness characters confronting hard shoes and grappling with their inner demons in the seedy underbelly of the city. Vengeance takes center stage in a night out. Pencil Case offers an insightful exploration of work ethic and values through a young protagonist's eyes. On the streets of Nostrand Ave. A hot headed teen's fate collides with an inexperienced cops bully unearths scars from a troubling past, while ball and chain chills with a sinister force that leaves a trail of fear and bloodshed in its wake. Amidst the bustling metropolis of Chopper City, a cataclysmic terror attack reshapes lives in the riveting debate of lecture hall. Ideologies clash as finance and personal ethics collide. In the serendipitous encounter of elevator, two souls have a brief connection that offers profound insights into the significance of the smallest moments.
Tony [00:55:24]:
This multifaceted collection weaves resilience, redemption, and human connection in an unforgettable journey that lingers long after the final page. Thank you, chat GPT but yeah, definitely don't take that as a quick copy and paste type of thing that you can do with chat GPT and come up with that blurb. Took a lot of back and forth, a lot of me writing and telling it to reword things and how I want things to sound and then using the eventual output as a framework and then rewriting a lot of it. But again, it gives you a great starting point and is a strong tool that again, your strength, which is definitely not my strength, your strength may not be sales, may not be selling. And that's where something is, at least for me, definitely comes in handy. And I'm also going to plan on, or I plan on using it in exactly the same way as home of the poet mentioned, where he'll take a chapter or a section from one of his books, put it into chat GPT, and say, reword this in a or give me a summary of this passage in 30 words or less that will make people want to read it. Read the entire passage or the entire book, for example, or want to buy my book X, Y and Z, and then use that for promotional posts on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etcetera. So I'm definitely gonna use it in that way as well, which kind of segues me into the final aspect of writing a book or final phase, final in air quotes, which is the marketing of it.
Tony [00:57:19]:
So I definitely plan to be more, more thoughtful and structured with all the free stuff. More consistent, rather with all the free stuff. Again, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, consistency is definitely key with gaining traction there. I'm definitely going to do some spike ads, which worked for me in the past with both of my books. Previous books and spike ads, for those of you who don't know, are services that you use, that you purchase, that have large platforms, large network of readership or subscribers, for example, and you pay them to promote your book. One service that I've used in the past and again have had success with is written word media and specifically their free booksie deals and bargain booksy deals. Bargain booksie was not as much engagement as the free booksie, but free booksie is essentially, you drop your price down to zero, which you can through Amazon, for example, for a promotional period of two days, three days, five days, whatever you choose, up to five days. And during that time you pay for one of these spike ads and they blast their readership of, depending on the genre, they have different counts, but the guaranteed readership of 100,000 people and 65,000 people, so on and so forth, and they blast your book out to them on given days.
Tony [00:59:00]:
And you can literally track on your end because you can see the folks that, the number of folks that download your book or purchase your book, and you can see the downloads or sales or whatever spike during those days, hence the term spike ads. So I'm definitely gonna do those again, which I've done in the past, but with this one, again, I want to be more structured, more consistent writers. Joanna Pen, for example, they'll do, do these either on a monthly basis or quarterly basis and just keep it going. Not just a one and done type of situation, which is what I essentially did with my older books. I think it tried each version once, but again, consistency. And I'm also going to try this go around. They have a stacked option, which is the free booksie or the bargain booksie. Bargain booksie is, by the way, if you drop, instead of dropping your book down to zero, you drop it down to $0.99 or something like that.
Tony [00:59:58]:
So you guess you get less engagement, but you still get. It's easier for folks to download a free book versus downloading a 99 cent book, but you definitely get a lot more hits and you see, you see a spike for those as well. And the idea is that you get from these folks that download the book either for free or at a discount, you wind up getting reviews. The more reviews, the better reviews, the more momentum you build, and the more books you can potentially sell. But they have this stacked option, which is not just the free booksie or the bargain booksie, but also stacked with another service called the Fussy Librarian, which has its own outlet and its own separate readership of an additional, you know, 30, 40, 50,000 people. I'm definitely gonna try that stacked bundle version. This go around Facebook ads I'm gonna implement as well. I dabbled in them in the past.
Tony [01:01:02]:
They did okay for me. Amazon ads I had never done. But within the writing world, I've heard have been successful for folks. So I'm probably gonna give that a shot as well. And yeah, I'll see what else I come up with or I learned about and definitely keep you guys posted on what works, what worked, what didn't. Feel free to reach out to me, let me know what has worked for you or what hasn't worked for you. But another part of promotion would be this podcast, this episode, for example. The purpose of it isn't solely promotion, obviously.
Tony [01:01:39]:
It's to share with you guys. My listeners continue to lay out this writing journey that I've been on over the past decade or so that I've been sharing with you fine folks spun today. The podcast actually is going to be nine years old this Friday, September 29, the day after tomorrow. As of this recording, time fucking flies. But yeah, one of the reasons of starting this podcast is and was, was, and is for me to document this writing journey and be able to have something to look back on, see what I've learned, how I've learned, how I've grown and in sharing it in this type of forum, allow folks listening in to skip steps where they want to or look out for pitfalls and mistakes that I've made and maybe learn something that you can take away and implement for yourselves. So that's one of the main purposes of the pod, but it also doubles up serendipitously in being able to be, in and of itself a promotion for this book that I wrote, melted cold. Hopefully some of you folks listening will purchase it. You can find all the links to do so at spun today.com forward slash books.
Tony [01:03:06]:
I will link to it directly in the episode notes and I'm definitely looking forward to finding out what you all thought of it. So definitely hit me up on social media, on everything. And yeah, that is the story of how melted cold came to be. Thank you all very much for listening. Please stick around for a few more minutes. You can listen to a few ways you can help support this podcast if you so choose, your support means a ton the best and primary way I want you to help support this specific episode in particular is by purchasing Melted Cold, a collection of short stories which is available now. Links can be found in the episode notes as well as@spuntoday.com forward Slash books I'd really appreciate a five star review. If you are able to purchase it, then you can hit me up privately and let me know what you really thought about it.
Tony [01:04:01]:
Digital ebook available paperbacks available hardcovers available and audiobook is coming soon. Melted Cold, a collection of short stories peace. What's up folks?
Tony [01:04:14]:
Tony here. I hope you're enjoying the Spun Today podcast as much as I enjoy producing it for you. Here are a few ways you can.
Tony [01:04:21]:
Help support the show.
Tony [01:04:23]:
You can support the Spun Today podcast financially by going to spuntoday.com support. There you will find a couple different ways that you can do just that, some of which will actually not even cost you a dime, such as using my Amazon affiliate link. When you go to sponsorday.com support, you'll see my affiliate link to Amazon, click on it and it will take you to Amazon's website where you can do your shopping like normal. This will not cost you anything extra, but Amazon will pay me for driving.
Tony [01:04:53]:
Traffic to their website. If you'd like to support the podcast.
Tony [01:04:57]:
More directly, you can do so by becoming a patron@spuntoday.com. support you'll also find my Patreon link. This is where creators such as myself can be paid directly by patrons like you. You can either make a one time donation or schedule recurring donations if you so choose. There are also different tiers of support and depending on which you decide to go with, you'll also receive some perks in return, such as early access to content, free digital copies of my books, free bookmarks, etcetera. That is again, by supporting via my Patreon link available@sponsoday.com support similar to Patreon, at that same location you'll also find my Ko fi link as well as my buy me a Ko fi link. They work very similar to Patreon and are different ways that you can help support the show financially. And last but certainly not least, you have the good old fashioned PayPal donation button.
Tony [01:05:49]:
Any which way that you choose to.
Tony [01:05:51]:
Support is greatly appreciated.
Tony [01:05:53]:
It all helps me do more of what I love, which is writing and podcasting. Again, go to spuntoday.com support. You can also support the Spun Today podcast by rating and reviewing the show. Wherever it is that you're listening to.
Tony [01:06:07]:
This episode, I'd really appreciate it because it really does help.
Tony [01:06:11]:
Also, follow me on all socials spun today on X, formally known as Twitter, on Instagram and today on YouTube, where you'll not only find full length episodes.
Tony [01:06:24]:
Of the podcast, but also chopped up.
Tony [01:06:27]:
Clips and additional content. And of course, you can follow the Facebook page@facebook.com. spun today another way you can help support the Spun Today podcast and also.
Tony [01:06:38]:
Upgrade that stale wardrobe of yours is.
Tony [01:06:41]:
By going to spun today.com support and clicking on the banner for Stitch Fix. Once you do, you'll enjoy a $25 discount to your first purchase. And the way Stitch fix works is pretty cool. I use it and I've never been disappointed. You'll set up a profile. You'll put in all the sizes for your clothes, as well as all the different brands and types of clothes that.
Tony [01:07:03]:
You like to wear.
Tony [01:07:04]:
It's really simple and intuitive to set up. They'll show you pictures and pretty much give you a thumbs up or thumbs down option on if you would wear something or not. And you get to select all the brands that you already are used to wearing. With this information, there are thousands of passionate, trend setting stylists will curate a.
Tony [01:07:23]:
Stitch fix box for you.
Tony [01:07:24]:
They'll send you five items that you get to preview before they mail it to you, and you'll get to select based on the image if you like it or not. If not, they'll replace it with something else, and if so, they'll mail it.
Tony [01:07:34]:
To you absolutely for free.
Tony [01:07:35]:
You can try everything on and you have a few days to send everything back or keep the stuff that you want to keep. Then you can use that $25 credit that I mentioned towards your purchase of those items again. To freshen up your wardrobe and also support the sponsor Day podcast. Go to sponsorday.com forward slash support and.
Tony [01:07:54]:
Click on my affiliate link banner for.
Tony [01:07:56]:
Stitch fix and enjoy your dollar 25 credit.
Tony [01:07:59]:
Do you want to start your own podcast? Have a great show idea that you want to get out into the masses but don't know quite how to get it from your head out into the world? Well, here's how. Use the podcast host Libsyn, that's who I use to bring the Spun today podcast to you. And now you can use them the same way. Using the promo code Spun spun, you can open up your Lipsyn account today and get two months of free podcast hosting. Here's how it works. Once you record your show, you upload it to your Lipsyn account where you can fill in your episode notes, upload your podcast art, and schedule when you want your episodes to release. Once you do that, Lipson will take care of the rest. They'll distribute your show to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and all the other podcasters that you choose instantaneously and seamlessly.
Tony [01:08:54]:
Again, go to libsyn.com and use the promo code spun spun to get two two months free. Or use the affiliate link that's in the episode notes. Again, that's libsyn.com promo code spun. Take that great podcast idea from out of your head and put it out into the world. And as always, folks, substitute the mysticism with hard work and start taking steps in the general direction of your dreams. Thanks for listening. I love you Aiden. I love you daddy.
Tony [01:09:39]:
I love you Grayson. I love you daddy.