OnyxTowers: My Author Journey So Far

Documents, documents and more documents!

Tedious!

Had to briefly take a break Friday night, when my father accidentally put too many minutes on the microwave and the food began smoking...*sigh

Wish I'd taken a picture of all the smoke, but in an emergency...you run post-haste!

Yes, I spent all weekend airing out the kitchen and it was exhausting; opening all windows in freezing weather, dragging all 6 fans upstairs, supplying each with extension cords, opening windows and cleaning the microwave not once, but twice. Still can't get most of the stank out. Had to throw all our clothes in the wash, with a ton of baking soda. Spent nearly an hour scrubbing that burnt smell out of my hair. Frowny face.

But before that mishap, I was VERY productive in between...

Making Instruction Manuals

For a few months now, I've been putting together some key research materials in the form of steps, steps that will serve as a step-by-step guide to publishing and writing. Yes, I will make it available to all once I've refined the product.

I'm doing this because every time I google How To Write A Book, much of the information is filler stuff. Clickbait. It's a scam. They get you to click a link that takes you to their website, and for every click, they get paid. They don't even have to offer you any information.

See, many people talk about doing it, about publishing, but don't tell you exactly how. HOW. They point links to websites and 'highly recommend' them, without trying it or evaluating. They also tell you how awesome it would be if you did become a published author! YAY! Yet many of these sites tell you NOTHING of the actual process.

It is god damn maddening, to say the least.

Now I'm the kind of person who gets so lost in their head, that sometimes I just need to read the damn instructions.

So!

I am writing all materials as a step-by-step instructable. I'm not gonna coddle you, or hold your hand and stroke your ego. I'm just gonna tell you in a very sterile voice how to actually do it. Which is why I will write out the materials like an appliance manual. Emotion has no place in business, and we are in the business of $elling books. $elling units.

If you want to talk about getting creative juices flowing, I will discuss that in another post. This is what I have so far:

Instruction Manuals I am working on at the moment

Yeah, one of those documents is over 10pgs long.

I will make announcements on my site once it is near completion.

More changes I've made to my site

Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions - Seems Google Adsense rejects you for some infractions, including not having these policies included on your blog/website. I added them just in case!

Contact Form - I added this in an attempt to discourage spammers. Any questions you may have, feel free to ask there. Will be kept confidential.
Twitter widget real time feed - I added this last time, but it stretched down the screen for miles! I found a way to adjust it to only show 3 tweets instead

Productivity app called Remember the Milk- I use it in lieu of all my handwritten To Do lists. I can type it on the computer screen, or into my tablet. It syncs and it allows edits. I am loving it, no joke!

Remember The Milk has the moo-cow icon

How it appears on my tablet. Still filling in those spaces
- Homemade BBQ chicken! My own recipe. I cook everything from scratch, btw:
  
  Onyx Tower's original BBQ chicken is DAYUM!
- My 4 books on writing (all outlined):
Onyx Tower's 4 books on writing, as outlined by hand

I wrote those 4 on that clipboard while I was watching music festival footage on YouTube last night. It's amazing the ideas that pop into your head when you're mellow and not thinking a damn thing.

I plan on selling these bad boys through my own site. I will keep everyone posted. Stay tuned as always.