My Stump is Blue. Beat That.

There are a lot of elements to a book cover, but I took this picture of a stump behind my house and decided this would be among them when it comes to mine. I screwed around in GIMP, got this, and saved it before I played around enough to mess it up. I have no idea, but this image makes me think of my story. Maybe it's the rainbow trees?

Yeah. No clue.

Right now I can give one solid tip to all of you indies out there who are biting your nails and pouring yourself over that manuscript while surrounded by a screaming family (you know who you are): Try not to think about the fact that this is your first novel, meaning that you have absolutely no money to sink into an editor for the aforementioned manuscript.

I totally just made some of you worry about something you weren't even thinking about until now, didn't I?

This is all that I can think of, and it's making me as nervous as humanly possible. Even if I were the best editor in the world, there are bound to be things I would miss if I read the thing over a million times. I'm working from the ground up (meaning I'm broke and the only money I've gotten from writing so far has been fifty dollars from winning the first paying contest I was old enough to enter a few weeks ago).

Let's just say I spent it all on candy. Ah, screw the ambiguity....I spent it all on candy, Nestle's Crunch Bars mostly.

I could always find a few older, wiser, published writer friends who have the time to edit it for me. That's pretty much what everyone is telling me, but I don't exactly have a gang of authors following me around. What, do writers like, hang out in packs or something? Geez, no wonder most of us have a superiority complex. Talk to some READERS for once. You'll be surprised at what you'll learn.

But enough about how much the "writer personality" tends to tick me off. Finding someone to edit a manuscript  for little or free is hard because manuscripts are pretty dang long, and most people have lives. This is the main reason a lot of seasoned writers are against going indie, but I just can't stand the thought of knocking on a publisher's door. Most people are competent enough to know what good reads are. They don't need you deciding what books they can even get the chance of seeing.

I would much rather have people who do a lot of reading check out the manuscript first, so I'm actually looking through my e-mail contacts and abandoned Facebook pages for literature buff friends. I recommend this to anyone out there who can't afford professional editing services yet because writers tend to have that good 'ol superiority complex, and the readers are the ones who are actually going to be buying your book. If they see something they wouldn't pay for, they'll tell you if they're honest enough.

It would also be a good idea to agree to trade manuscripts with one of your writer friends once you both finish.

And now I need to go dig up some of my old writer friends. I haven't talked to most of the people I knew last year in just about that amount of time because people my age tend to annoy me. I'm more fond of either the younger or older than me variety of person.