Returning to Work on My Novel

I had been thinking about finishing my short story Bear Wolf today, but I'm feeling really interested in Lost Lamb.  I think that I may have come to a revision of chapter seven that I like more than the previous direction.  I guess I'll never know how an audience would have felt about that scene I chose not to write, but I also have to consider my own tastes--what gets me excited and interested in something.  Maybe I was thinking that I could be subtle here, like my favorite detective novels, but I'm also writing fantasy.  Let's face it, fantasy is not that subtle.

Is it a big mystery who the bad guys are in Lord of the Rings?  How about Star Wars?  Short of having huge neon signs over their heads that say "Bad Guys" the lines between good and evil couldn't be any more distinct.  I'm sure this archetype comes from mythology, the old stories of knights slaying dragons in the middle ages, the story of Beowulf and Grendel, the story of Gilgamesh.  These are examples of a very typical hero myth, and ultimately, I want my writing in this genre to have that quality of Good versus Evil.  I try to mix it up by making Jaden conflicted about himself, and try to throw in some other elements of the detective genre--just the right ones I hope.  But at its core, I think this story is the hero myth.  Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, I'm not sure.

Bad For Business is Free

I've decided to write free ebooks.  The whole reason I got into epublishing was to let people read my work.  But it's not happening.  For a reason why, check the last post.  I was very upset yesterday.  I almost let this whole thing get me derailed.  That old thinking came back, "Why should I even do this?  I should give it up and take on some other hobby.  Surely there is some other, less destructive, thing I could do in my free time."

But I'm a writer.  I can't help it.  Back before publishing flashed me her goods from across the internet bar, I wrote tons of stuff that I knew would never get read.  The only difference is that now, maybe a couple bold independent thinkers will read it and like it.  I've made about four dollars on this venture in the last month or so and I've easily spent ten times that just in printing manuscripts for the Writer's Group.  The point is, I'm not making any money at this.  My publishers won't even send me the royalties I've earned until the balance is at least ten dollars.  I'm out of people I know to buy the book, and I would have made more money if I'd just asked them all for a dollar and skipped the middle man.  Would've been a lot less work too.

Regardless, someone out there must be bored enough to read this book.  As of today, fifty-one people have downloaded the sample from Smashwords.  There's a couple different ways I could interpret that: fifty-one chose not to spend ninety-nine cents and by it.  Or, the version I prefer, fifty-one people were interested enough to try it.  At the very least, I can reward those people who showed some passing interest in my work by making it free.

The following is the Smashwords link, most people prefer Kindle but they will not let me set the price to free.  However, they will do price matching.  If the book is listed at another retailer for free, they may match the price.  Here's hoping right?

Smashwords - Bad For Business

Social Proof and Why I Hate It

I'm officially pissed off at the internet.  If self-publishing ebooks was a person, I would punch them in the nose until it broke.  You may be wondering, what brought on this outburst of violence?  My answer: sitting on my ass for a month and a half while my ebook is a total failure.  I hate people.  I hate Amazon.  I hate everything right now.

I present for you a paradox of stupidity and ridiculosity.  A soul-shaking forehead-slapping kick in the cosmic testicles.  How does ebook publishing work?  You stick a book online and people pay you for it, then they read it and have a good time while you count you're net profit of thirty-five cents.  Unfortunately, there is a key piece missing in this model.  A little something that I learned today is called Social Proof.  It's a concept from psychology, look it up on Wikipedia if you care.  To summarize it, no one does anything unless they think other people are doing it.  You may have noticed the conundrum.  If this is an inflexible rule, how does anything get done in the first place?

What this means for book publishing is this, no one will look at your book if it doesn't have enough reviews.  You can't even give it away without reviews.  The reason why is that there is no Social Proof.  None of the monkeys have seen their fellows eat the red berries, so they won't do it.  It's ninety-nine fucking cents to check out a short novella that takes two to three hours to read.  Then you turn around and tell the other monkeys about it.  "Hey, look at me.  I'm so cool, I just read this book and you should too.  Is it good?  That doesn't matter.  What matters is that I'm doing it and you should too."

As a side note, my cd drive in my computer is acting up.  Opening and closing on its own.  Even though I could be writing today, I'm going to deal with this instead.

Summer Writing and Other Paradoxes

It's occurs to me that writing regularly during the summer months is challenging.  None of the fiction writing books told me this.  All my friends wanting to go to the river and have barbecues--the hot weather more suited to a midday nap rather than mental labor.  If I was writing a book about fiction writing, I would definitely write a chapter about it.  Of course, I'll have to find out what strategy works best for me the hard way--trial and error, just great.

Everyone says that consistency is key.  Write everyday.  Hopefully one-thousand words but at least write something.  I have found that the rhythm of it helps, makes it easier to sort my thoughts.  This journal helps too--gets the crazies out.  The unfortunate thing about writing everyday is that I just get derailed.  Something just happens.  Not everyday mind you, I couldn't get anything done if that were the case.  But some weekends, or now during summer, it's like my social life wants to keep from doing this.  My girlfriend has been really supportive though, she always makes sure that I have that little bit of encouragement to keep me going when I get rundown.  It's nice.

Chapter seven has been moving at about the speed of a polar icecap--at this rate I'll have a foot of writing next year.  I poke fun, but really, it's aggravating.  I'm hoping that I can find something of my schedule to cling to this summer.  As for now, it's my cup of tea.  I always brew a cup to drink when I sit down to write.  My special tea.  It's oolong.  So, I have my tea--journal entry is a check.  Getting to it.

Lucky Number 7

I'm feeling a little rundown today, still getting over this flu I guess.  Now it's just muscle soreness and shortness of breath.  Sounds like the side effects listed on the commercial for Medicine X--guaranteed to cure you of that disease you didn't know you had.  You know, there's probably a short story somewhere in there.  Something about crime and industry and whatnot.

Chapter six went over nicely at group last night, so that was cool.  Reading it to someone is really what's keeping me writing it.  It's a nice week-to-week encouragement.  I'm still kind of shaky about chapter seven, I'm not entirely sure if I want to explore this angle--I feel like I'm running the risk that it's tedious.  But I think my objectives going into the scene are what will either sell it or not.  Casting suspicion on a character we know is a dangerous thing in fiction--that is, if we know them well.  Hmmm, maybe I have that working in my favor.  We've only met this character in a short exchange about five chapters ago, maybe he's a fair target.  I'll explore it and see what happens.

My friend Loki has finished his first novella, and it sounds cool.  He said he finished it in a single night, so I'm assuming it's a little rough around the edges, but I could be wrong.  He said that he felt like he couldn't stop writing it--that's always a good thing.  That strong connection to your characters can across really nicely in the narrative, but such a long creative burst runs the risk of gaps in logic.  Of course, that can all be fixed will revision.  Anyway, I'm optimistic.

Over the Hump and the Flu

This week I've been sick with some sort of evil monster flu that I contracted while I was in Grants Pass.  We have decided that an apt name might be: the Pants Shitter Flu.  The reason for this is that everyone we know who has had the flu has shit their pants.  It was quite traumatic.  Painful too, a lot of puking.  I seems to be over now, so that's all well and good.

Speaking of things that are over, I think I've finally climbed (or clambered?) over this mental block that was keeping me from writing on my novel.  Today I'll sit down and finish chapter six.  I've decided that I can't take it so seriously, which is honestly very hard for me.  I feel like, no matter how hard I try, I have all my hopes and dreams pinned to this project.  It is special to me, of course it is, but I can't let it take over and become this huge monster rampaging through my confidence and self-esteem.  The other thing that I need to remember is that writing is something I want to do.  Even if I don't win any awards or make a whole lot of money, it's just something that I want to do.  The best way to do it is to just do it.  I was thinking of the following quote before I sat down, so I looked it up.

“The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.” — Mary Heaton Vorse (1881-1966), American writer

Too Low-Energy to be Witty

I feel like my brain is running through thick molasses.  I'm trying to work on chapter six big it's not really going anywhere.  I know how this chapter goes well enough, I'm sure that I can finish this book, it's just hard.  Not even sure why.  I really wanted the chance to play my video game today, so that's what I did when I got home (probably a mistake on my part).  I worked overtime today, again.  So I had even less time after work, just thought I'd spend it on myself.

I feel like writing is a really demanding and thankless career.  It's honestly getting really tricky to stick with.  I do love to create and tell stories--it's really what keeps me going--but I feel like people don't really appreciate them.  I keep telling myself that the problem is that I haven't found my fans yet, which is a journey in itself.  I think I may go ahead and sign up for my free days of KDP select, get my novella promoted a bit.  Then hopefully I can find some more websites to promote at too.  I guess the fear is that I'll go to all this trouble and still, no one buys it.  It's really wearing me down to be honest.  I know I've raged about it before, but this isn't rage.  Or maybe a different kind of it.

Either way, the words aren't coming for chapter six right now.  I may throw in the proverbial towel today.  We'll see.

Confidence, confidence, bloody confidence.

I made the mistake of reading some of my oldest writing before working on my sixth chapter of Lost Lamb.  I consider this a mistake because the failed fantasy novel was truly bad.  Very discouraging to look that over.  Not sure what I was thinking.  I have been sort of evaluating my older writing at this point, looking over some things that I used to think sucked ass and going, "Hey, that's not so bad." This was not that experience.

Something I've always struggled with in my writing is feeling like I create these alien abstract concepts, images even, and then try to connect them with thin strands of logic.  Ultimately what usually breaks a piece that I'm working on is my head, I roll the idea over and over until those thin strands break and I realize it's another smoldering pile of hard-to-follow nonsense.  Which was why I'd stopped writing this medieval fantasy novel.  On some level, I just couldn't make it make sense.  It was actually embarrassing to look over this piece that, at one time, I thought was quite good.  I found so many pretentious little screw ups.  Filtering was everywhere.  The narrative was telly (trying to tell you exactly what they were thinking or feeling).  The dialogue was so wooden I could have used it to start a campfire.  I didn't use a single contraction in the space of like, five pages.  What the hell was I thinking?  Yes, I wrote the piece in 2009.  Yes, maybe I've learned something since then.  Maybe not.

I feel like I need a Yoda.  Some more experienced writing sensei who would show me the proverbial ropes and steer me clear of the pitfalls.  But I don't have a Yoda.  That's fine.  I can fix this myself.

Okay, here I go.  To fix my brain from seeing this shitty-ass dreck that I once called fiction, I need to accept that it was mine and that I made it.  Yes, I made that steaming pile of crap and no one has to see it.  It can remain in it's hidden pocket of cyberspace forever.  Did I learn something from it?  Sure, why not?  I learned some basic concepts about fiction, and yes, the more I wrote it, the better it got.  By the end, it still wasn't very good, but maybe it was better than before.  That's what counts.  The more I write, the better I'll get at writing.

I've been such a damn perfectionist.  If I can't do something perfect, I won't do it.  I will try over and over on the same video game until I get it perfect.  I have to accept that writing is something that grows and changes and can be revised. My novella was a good example of that.  It got a lot better after I revised it.  That's what'll help me here too.  The more I put it down, the better it gets.  Back to work.