Randall Floyd

Official Author Website

On Writing

How to protect your book without filing for a copyright

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A few years ago, an independently published author received a strange letter – from someone she’d never met before. It was strange for a couple of reasons, both of them obvious as soon as she read the letter.

Strange thing number 1: Someone she’d never met sent her the letter.

We all get letters in the mail from people and entities we’ve never met. That’s the nature of the world we live in. However, this letter was different. It was a very personal letter that went over things not very many people could have known.

Things about the books she’d published.

The existence of the letter was creepy enough. But the tone was even worse. Whoever had sent the letter went above-and-beyond to make sure this author felt like trash – felt like she was worth absolutely nothing.

And that is strange thing number 2.

Strange thing number 2: The letter said that this author was in violation of copyright law and that she needed to immediately pull her books from the market, or face legal ramifications.

The author of the letter made some pretty serious claims, but the big takeaway for this unfortunate author was this: somebody was claiming ownership of her stories.

The only issue was, this author was undisputedly the sole-owner of the book series and the sole owner of the idea. She’d penned the idea many years before. So, the idea that somebody else could come in and claim that the books were copied was completely ludicrous. Something had to be done, and fortunately, this author had the pockets to take care of the problem.

How copyright law works … generally

It might help if I break down the word itself – “copy” and “right.” Copy is generally thought of as the written word. Right is someone’s ownership. Keep in mind these are generalizations. We could go on for hours about what the words mean.

Putting them together, copyright literally means ownership of the written word.

More specifically, your written words.

This country was founded on the idea that people are entitled to the fruits of their labor. So, when it comes to copyright, at least in America, it has always been known that whoever writes something owns that thing.

There are obvious exceptions, like when a writer sells her rights to a written work or signs a contract giving rights to someone else.

But, generally, you own the rights to what you’ve written as soon as you write it.

It’s that simple. 

In order to get the rights afforded to you by American copyright law, all you need to do is write something down and it’s yours – by law.

So why would you register your book with the US Copyright Office?

Here’s the deal, and you’d be surprised how often this happens. Your work is only protected from the date you wrote it. So, if someone else can prove that they wrote the same thing you did, only they did it before you, then you’re out of luck.

And this is exactly what the woman at the beginning of this post ran into.

The big claim is that the other person was claiming that this author wrote her stuff later (though like I said, she ended up keeping the rights to her work).

It can be a real big pain in your side.

So, in order to keep everything straight, and you want an extra layer of protection, register your book. What registration does is put your ownership of the book in question out there for EVERYONE to see.

It also acts like a timestamp. Here’s an example.

Let’s say I wrote a book in 1986 and published it myself (not the best way to do things back then, I know). Then, in 1994, I registered the book with the US Copyright Office.

Much to my surprise, I received a cease and desist letter in 1998 from a mysterious author, claiming to have written the same story, only with a slightly different title, way back in 1985. However, he never registered the book with the US Copyright Office.

Since I registered my book in 1994, four years before the nasty letter came in the mail, if this goes to Court, I would win the case.

Phew!

So, while it’s easy to get your work copyright protection, since it happens as soon as you begin writing – it’s even better, and safer, to register it with the copyright office.

If you liked this post, let me know what you liked the most!

Also, if you’re interested in learning about all the legal stuff you need to know when self-publishing your books, sign up for this free email course. It will show you what things you need to know, and even give you instructions on how to do some of them yourself.

This one thing will help you finish your story

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I was lost. Completely and utterly. It was dark and late, and I desperately needed some rest. But I couldn't rest. I blinked the sleep away as I stared at my computer screen. I had been staring at the same line of text for the past 45 minutes. But I was still lost.

Sure, I was in my home office, I had a warm fire, and I was not uncomfortable in any way, other than the needing-sleep feeling that was nagging at me.I wanted to yell in frustration. I wanted to pound my fist into something ... but the only option I had was my really expensive laptop.

At length, I decided I wasn't going to make any more progress - since I'd already been making so much progress before. So, I admitted defeat. I didn't know what else to do. It was 2:30 in the morning, and I had a meeting with a client a meager 6 hours in the future.

If only I had one thing figured out - something that would have saved me hours of staring and allowed me to move on with my life ... I mean my story.

What was that one thing?

It was a sentence. Something, that I should have done when I started my story but neglected to do because I was too excited to start. I couldn't be bothered with things like planning.

What a waste of time.

But I learned my lesson. Now all of my stories have this sentence written before I start. All of my kiddos' stories have this sentence written too. It's a sentence that can have as much or as little detail as you'd like.

You want to know what it is?

The Ending.

That's it. You need to write a sentence that tells you how your story is going to end.

Simple.

Now, how is your story going to end?

2 reasons why setting ridiculous goals might hurt your ability to get stuff done

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The other day I set out to type at 55 words a minute, finish 4 chapters, and get 6600 words on the page … all in two hours.

I failed.

Now, before I get into all of my wonderful excuses for why I didn’t type, let me impart some knowledge that I picked up after my failure at typing faster than I have my entire life.

It matters what time you go to bed.

I wanted to spend some fun time with my wife at the movies last Tuesday night, so we went to Regal cinemas and saw a movie. It started at 7:20, so I thought I would be just fine on time.

I checked my watch after I walked into the front door and realized that it was after 10:00, my designated bedtime. It was definitely worth getting home a little after 10. It was a great movie (we saw Wonder) and I had an awesome time with my lovely wife.

When I finally got into my covers, however, the clock read 11:45 …

Nonplussed, I decided to keep my schedule and try to get up at 4:25 a.m. the next morning.

When I woke up at 7:45 I knew I’d been a little too ambitious for my own good.

At lunchtime for work that day I didn’t even want to start typing though and try to at least make up some of the time. It was too daunting. So, here is the first thing that threw me off my rather lofty goal.

#1 – Falling behind early can kill your chances of getting started

You’ve probably read this somewhere, and if that’s the case, you probably should have sent me an email that my goal was too big.

You didn’t, and I blame you for all of my problems.

Especially the ones that don’t have anything to do with getting six books finished up … but I digress.

What killed me this morning was the fact that I had to type for 2 hours, which meant I had to do some serious planning for my chapters, which meant I probably needed like 3 hours of time to do my typing.

Waking up at 4:25 gives me roughly 2 and a half hours. I get the third hour in during my lunchtime at work.

By the time my lunch time came around, I’d already given up the ghost for the day on trying to get some typing done. My brain, body, heart, and desire all told me, in roughly the same way, that typing for the day was a lost cause.

So, guess what I did … I listened to them. (There is a silver lining to this that I’ll bring up at the end.)

All told, since my goals looked impossible, I didn’t even want to start once I’d gotten off to a late beginning.

#2 Your ability to function at a high level could get impacted … and not in a positive way

The second day, this morning, I tried the same goals, but this time I actually got to start typing before the sun was even thinking about coming up.

I put on my headphones, turned on the tunes, got my timer out, pulled up the old word-processor, and took a deep breath. I was ready to go, or so I thought.

I briefly thought about my goal of 55 words per minute, and as I did so, I felt my heart rate pick up. Then I felt a tingling in my fingers, and a small voice in the back of my head started saying things to me.

It took me a moment, but I realized that I was completely stressed out.

I hit the start button on my timer and took off typing. But, just before my typing sprint, I decided to change my tactics. Actually, I decided to stop doing the writing sprints completely.

Instead, I decided to type until my chapter was completed.

The result was a really quick start and a really slow finish. I wasn’t able to keep my momentum up, and I could actually feel myself dragging about halfway through the chapter.

I wouldn’t be surprised if I had actually been typing 55 words per minute at some point, but my stress had caused me to change my tactics (because of a serious amount of self-doubt) and caused me to burn out.

So, does that mean you should never set out unachievable goals?

Probably not.

If I hadn’t set out to type those words so fast, I wouldn’t be anywhere near where I am in my story right now. It’s probable I wouldn’t have even started writing yet.

If you’re going to shoot for the moon, then I say go for it.

Just understand that getting discouraged stressed, and feeling some anxiety are going to happen. But guess what?

It’s normal. So acknowledge those facts, and then move on with shooting for the moon!

3 reasons why outlining actually helps you be more creative in your writing

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For eons, there have been two sides of a debate. This debate centers on how someone should take on a creative endeavor. The sides of this debate have gone by various names throughout the years, and I’m not going to go into the names. For this article, I’ll just call the two sides of this debate the plotters and the pansters.

It has been said that plotters will meticulously plot out every intricate detail of their creative endeavor, sometimes having every single word plotted out before they even begin … if that’s even possible. The thought of writing, drawing, or even speaking makes plotters short of breath, gives them clammy hands, and makes doing even the most benign and routine tasks nearly impossible.

Pantsers, on the other hand, loathe the idea of plotting out their creative endeavor. In fact, the very mention of the word “plotter” causes a series of involuntary reactions that range from small convulsive fits to hot flashes, loss of breath, and frequent blackouts.

Both conditions are serious.

Fortunately, there might be a way to overcome the need to declare oneself a pantser or a plotter, and thus suffer the resulting symptoms.

But more on that in a minute.

I made a discovery this morning that just bolstered my belief that doing one simple thing when taking on any creative endeavor, in my case, it was writing a non-action scene that involved two of the main characters speaking on the phone.

This process has probably been hashed out millions of times before I discovered it, and there are probably a million different ways to get what I wanted to do done. However, my method works best for me, since I took what I’d learned from those who went before me and applied it to my life and my circumstances.

My solution is simple: Outline your endeavor.

Outlining is not plotting, at least not in the literal sense …

Well, okay, maybe it is plotting. But that’s okay. Honestly, for you pantsers out there, while I respect your creative journey, I also am of the opinion that you are also on the grief spectrum.

You might have heard of these stages before:

  1. Denial
  2. Anger
  3. Bargaining
  4. Depression
  5. Acceptance

I’d wager that every one of you is somewhere along this spectrum when it comes to your views on plotting your work. I won’t go into details … you know who you are.

However, what I call outlining, is probably going to sound insufficient to many of you plotters out there. In fact, what I am about to describe will probably put you in one of the same camps as those mean, nasty panters out there.

Fortunately, there is a way for every one of you to come to terms with your condition and to finally get to the fifth stage of grief.

The power of the number 7

There is a reason the number 7 is ubiquitously awesome. There are seven days in the week, seven deadly sins, seven virtues, seven ancient wonders, seven colors in the spectrum … the list goes on. For more useless “seven” facts, read this article.

In my attempts to try and outline my novels, lessons, speeches, nonfiction works, and lectures to my kids (yes … I outline those as well … but hey, during the day I’m an attorney …) I’ve tried tons of different methods. But every single one of them ends up using some iteration of the number seven.

So, to simplify things for myself, my outlines only ever contain seven bullet points. And my bullet points are never more than 7 words. (I understand you may think I’m taking this to the extreme, and who am I to deny it. However, I more or less only use three or four words to describe my bullet points and rarely get up to the mythical number seven … for reasons I’ll go over later.)

So when I outline my novel, I have seven bullets. When I outline my three acts, I have seven bullets. When I outline my sequences I have seven bullets. This seven goes all the way down to my chapters, scenes, and sometimes even the beats within my scenes.

Additionally, I always use my bullets in a specific order. Every. Single. Time.

The bullets look something like this:

  • Inciting Incident
  • Snag 1
  • Snag 2
  • Snag 3
  • Crisis
  • Climax
  • Resolution

Count it if you like. There are seven bullets. No more. No less. And that is perfection.

When in doubt make a quick outline

Using this outline at every single juncture of my writing, but only as much as I need to. My outline serves three purposes.

First, it provides me with a roadmap. For my writing, it shows me the major cities I’m going to need to go through before I get to the end.

Second, it makes me feel good about myself. When I bust out an outline in less than a minute, I feel like I accomplished a whole lot, even though I only filled in seven lines.

Finally, it helps me get rid of writer’s block. Immediately. From my experience, writer’s block happens in two instances: (1) when I get lost and forget where I’m heading in my story and (2) when I need to write a scene in my story but I don’t know what to put into the scene.

To get over the first part, all I do is go back to my initial outline and figure out where I need to get to. Then I go back to the scene I’m struggling with and figure out if it helps me get there or not.

To get over the second part, I just make seven quick bullet points on the side of the page and fill them in real quick. Then I get back to writing. It’s beautiful. If anything, having my outline makes the creative process even more creative it.

Putting it together

If this outline formula is going to work for you, you’re going to need to know what those different parts of the outline mean. You’re going to need to know what the inciting incident, the climax, the crisis, the snags, and the resolutions are.

But once you nail them, outlining becomes easy. You know what you need, you just have to put your characters in a position to go through them.

So, the next time you think you’re lost, or you can’t figure out what to write, try bulleting the seven things you need to cover in your scene. Your work will look better, and you’ll be more productive …

I promise.

Essential story element #3 – The Crisis

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Have you ever found yourself with a difficult decision to make? Now, think about how stressed out you were when you made that choice.

Why were you so stressed?

What kinds of pressures were you facing?

What made your decision so difficult?

Did you put off making a decision until the last possible moment?Remember how you felt at that moment, right before you made your decision. This point in your life, in the language of storytelling, is called the crisis.

We all have crisis points in our life, and they vary in degrees of severity. But usually, we can remember them with great clarity. It turns out that in your stories, fiction or non-fiction, the biggest parts, the most memorable scenes, revolve around these crisis points.

I’ve read a bunch of books on writing. In most of them, online and elsewhere, for whatever reason, the authors fail to drive home the importance of having crisis points.

This is a travesty.

If every writer knew what the crisis was, and how every single person, EVER, can relate to a well-crafted crisis, and how to craft one in each scene of their book, his or her writing would be 100x better. Add to that the huge uptick in reader interest, and you have a very important tool in your belt.

Everything hinges on the crisis.

In theory, the crisis is a very simple thing: a question.

How your character responds to that question tells the reader a whole lot about the character.

However, not every question is a crisis. Let me lay it out for you.

The crisis is going to be one of two things. It’s either (1) a best-bad-choice scenario, or (2) an irreconcilable good situation.

In the best bad choice scenario, the main character is forced to choose between two bad situations. Neither situation will be good for the main character. She is forced to choose between two outcomes that are going to seriously hurt.

Taking a real-life example, think about a couple that’s been married for years. For whatever reason, I’m sure you could come up with one, things in their relationship aren’t going well.

They’ve tried counseling, job changes, more date nights, less time together, couple’s massage, but things aren’t getting better. Then they have an argument. It’s over something small, but it blew up in both their faces.

The husband goes to the bar, and the wife calls up her sister. After the dust settles, neither one of them can look at the other.

Let’s just add one more complication – they have 2 preschool-age children.

This is a crisis point. The couple has two choices – split up or stay together. How they split up, or how they stay together don’t really matter at this point. However, the stakes are clear. There is no good choice in this one.

If they stay together, each one of them is going to drown in discontent. Other things are going to happen that will drive the two of them even further apart.

If they separate, both of them will be able to go their own ways, but now they have to think about how they are going to split up time with the kids. They’re going to now have two separate households, and their expenses are going to increase … probably double.

No matter what the couple chooses, it’s a bad choice.

Now, this particular crisis point may not be all that compelling, but it really drives home the point that the couple is at a complete cross-roads. They have to make a choice … and not making a choice happens to be making a choice.

Show me the [irreconcilable] goods.

The other kind of crisis your characters will face involves two good outcomes. Each outcome is, shocker, good for someone. The kicker here is that these good things are at odds with each other.

The good things can’t both happen – it’s physically impossible.

One of those things is good for the hero, and bad for everyone else, while the other choice is bad for the hero, but good for everyone else.

In another real-life example, let’s look at a soldier in the middle of a firefight. His squad is surrounded, and their heads are down. The only thing keeping them from dying is a large rock giving them cover.

The team is quickly running out of ammunition, and things are looking dire. The squadron leader, looking for an escape route, can’t find anything that would help. He radios air support, and a bomber drops a small payload on the enemy, opening up a small gap in the attack.

If he goes, he’ll probably make it out alive, but there’s not enough time for the rest of the squad to get out. He thinks about his wife and kids at home. Suddenly, leaving his men to see his family again gets really tempting.

Then he looks back at his men. He’s hit with a realization – he might be able to save his men. The result, however, is that he’s going to die. The only way to get his men out of there is to distract the enemy with something big.

What’s the squad leader going to do?

It doesn’t really matter – not when it comes to the crisis. The point is that he has to make a choice.

The leader’s choice is between two good things. He can save his life, or he can save the lives of his men.

Now it’s your turn.

Let’s go to “The Son of Neptune,” and see how the crisis of the first scene plays out.

Cornered, Percy Jackson (a demi-god) has to choose between fighting two gorgons (Medusa’s sisters) in his weakened state or jumping down a mountainside.

<What kind of crisis is this?

If you chose irreconcilable goods, then you’re wrong.

This is a best-bad-choice scenario. Neither choice is good for Percy. Both of them could end up in death to the hero – one is death by monster, the other is death by falling a really long way and landing without a cushion.

As you can see, the crisis isn’t that long. But the length doesn’t matter. It’s the magnitude of your crisis that hooks your readers in.

Whatever your crisis is, all it takes is some time to give your reader clarity about what the two choices are. Once the crisis is all worked out, you can move on to the highest point of action in your scene – the climax.

This article is number three in a five-part series on writing great scenes. Here is part one, and here is part two.

The Art of Getting Distracted

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A few years back, I found a podcast. It was a well-done show, and the guy doing most of the speaking goes by the name of James. I found what he was talking about very interesting.

I began taking notes.

I took so many notes I filled seven pages in my legal-sized notebook — front to back.

That was for the first 15 minutes.

I heard lots of things that probably should have changed my life. I made plans, plotted out dates to accomplish those plans, and made a decision, right then and there, to “choose myself.”

All told, I probably spent an hour and a half going through this stuff.

It was bliss, and I was ready to change the world, and, probably, more importantly, my life.

Then an alarm went off on my phone. The timer I’d set had just run out. It was time to hit the sack and get a good night’s sleep.

I couldn’t have timed the completion of my little excursion into the recesses of my mind any better.

There was just one problem.

That timer wasn’t supposed to tell me when to go to sleep. Nope, it was supposed to tell me when my practice test was supposed to end.

I was studying for the bar exam, and the biggest exam of my life was the very next week.

Somehow, I’d managed to get distracted again.

I’ve heard lots of stories about people who seem to have a natural ability to do something. I’ve seen natural piano players, athletes, readers, bakers, and eaters.

Apparently, I’m a natural at getting distracted.

I don’t even have to practice. Usually, it happens like this.

I start doing something important since I put it off until the last moment. I get into it, and really dig in. Something about having imminent deadlines really galvanizes my mind, body, and spirit.

But, inevitably, I start getting that itch, usually behind my left ear.

It always happens right about the time the thing I’d been dreading doing, and the reason I put off taking care of my “deadline-pending-the-next-day” task in the first place, is staring at me in the face.

Suddenly, the thing I know I should be doing becomes much less fun. That galvanized feeling usually dissipates, and I start looking around for other things that catch my fancy.

It’s quite the cycle, and without fail, it happens every. single. time.

It comes off super sinister, like the big bad wolf and red riding hood. Like something inside of me doesn’t want me to hit my deadlines, to succeed, to do anything good with my life.

Check that … It almost seems like this cycle doesn’t want me to do anything. period.

Eventually, when I finally took time to notice this was a pattern of mine, I started asking questions.

“What gives?” is usually the one I started with.

I dug in, trying to figure out what exactly gives, and the answer hit me in the face.

It hurt.

This consistent distraction circle actually has a source and a meaning. The source is my inner Jiminy Cricket. Only, it feels much less like a conscience, and much more like somebody much bigger and stronger than me, like Bill Gates, is pulling me away from the stuff I needed to do.

The meaning goes much deeper.

It turns out that this need to “distract” myself, has a much less sinister purpose than what I’d initially thought.

I’ll illustrate with a story (mostly fictional):

A while back, I was having dinner with my great-aunt Bettie. We were in the middle of Montana, in the middle of summer.

It was hot.

We were having a grand old time eating brisket in an old log cabin, in 110-degree weather, without air conditioning.

Did I mention it was hot?

Well, she gets up and walks to the kitchen to get the lemonade out of the fridge, when all of the sudden she falls over.

Granted the woman was old and rickety, and she was prone to falling over occasionally, I still feared the worst. At that point in my life, I’d never seen an actual dead person.

Being the gentleman I was, I cautiously approached the old woman. Cautiously, I called her by name.

That did it. She immediately got up and started rubbing both her knees. “Darn this arthritis!” she shouted, to go along with a couple of old-fashioned country cuss words.

The next day, we were hit with one of the biggest rainstorms in the history of Montana.

It took me a few years to figure out the significance of this event — even though it was mostly fictional. Apparently, the storm and my great-aunt’s arthritis were connected.

There happens to be a direct connection between flares up in arthritic joint pain and temperature drops of more than 10 degrees, drops in barometric pressure, and even rain.

My great-aunt’s knees were the harbinger of that massive storm that may or may not have happened.

I guess that’s why my great-aunt, as soon as she recovered (which was just took a few minutes) went outside and “battened all the hatches” on the farm and the house.

Looking back at this experience, it makes complete sense. Auntie had learned that her pain actually told her that the weather was going to change.

Distractions work in much the same way.

They are, in effect, the harbingers of greatness. You just need to recognize them for what they are.

Looking back at those times I’ve suffered from acute episodes of distractedness, I tried to find a pattern, some kind of similarity between the events.

It turns out, all I had to do was take a step back and squint my eyes a bit. Then, oddly enough, things started falling into place.

The first thing I noticed was that the distraction itself wasn’t all that important. Really, the substance of the distractions didn’t matter one bit. To the contrary, the more I looked at those distractions, the more difficult analyzing them became.

I had to look beyond those distractions, and really look at what I was doing when that distraction reared its ugly head.

This is where the magic started happening.

Every single time I was getting distracted, it was because I was on the brink of breaking through on something.

Going back to my bar exam struggles, I was right in the middle of trying to figure out secured transactions law. If you don’t know what secured transactions are, that fine, even attorneys that practice secured transactions law have difficult.

Imagine trying to shove your head into a hole the size of your fist. Now, imagine you actually did manage to get your head through the hole without traumatic brain injury. Here comes the hard part: you need to now get your head out of the hole.

That’s essentially how I felt when I was trying to learn secured transactions. It was brutal. I kept banging my head, trying to figure it out. Eventually, I got distracted. Little did I know, that the next time I sat down and actually tried to learn secured transactions, it clicked.

Time and time again I’ve noticed that those times when doing something else, instead of doing that thing you’re dreading, signals you’re about to break through.

But, in many cases, it’s not only signaling a breakthrough but something even better. I’m talking about serious personal growth here.

Distractions are necessary. We need to have them. Sometimes they help us decompress. Sometimes they get our mind of really painful stuff.

But deep down, we were given these distractions for the same reason my great-aunt was given arthritis.

We need them to succeed.