Clean palate

Two things have happened recently.

My writing discipline (the part that makes me sit down and start typing) is starting to kick in a little. I’m not doing the writing on the thing that I want to be writing, but seeing as I've been so inconsistent recently and coupled with my new ‘write fast’ philosophy that I’m trying to try out, meant I’m trying to write more period. It may not be the thing I should be working on, but at least it means I’m doing something.

I've found a couple of places that provide writing prompts. They’re for short stories, which is a good thing, because it forces me to figure out a beginning, middle and end, and it absolutely means I have to write tight. I’m not great at that.

So this is good practise. It’s a way for me to get fingers on the keyboard and to start typing. The great news is that although I’m not looking for feedback in these things, one of the places I’m getting these prompts is reddit. I've not been a redditor (is that the write right word?) before so this is all new to me. The specific sub is reddit.com/r/writingprompts. If at any point you feel like you need a good cleansing of the palate, then I sincerely recommend popping in there, finding a good writing prompt and letting loose. There’s no reason why you have to post it up on Reddit if you don’t feel like it. but it’s nice to have it up there in any case.

I’m using this opportunity for quick spontaneous writing for another reason. I’ll be trying new things; for instance to write a scene with only dialogue, or to write from first person, or from third person limited, or with short choppy sentences, or to use long, descriptive styles. Anything other than what, or rather how I normally write. If I read a story that has captured me, but I can’t work out why, I’ll take a theme and try that. I’ll make up a story in a genre that I don’t normally write in, or even read, and see how it turns out. It’s all practise, but it’s also practise in forcing myself to make something, even if I’m not in the mood. Especially when I’m not in the mood.

I can’t recall where I saw these two sayings, but they go a little like “the difference between an amateur and a professional writer is that an amateur writes when they’re ready to do so, and a professional writes even when it’s the last thing they want to do”. The other saying is “If you want to be a professional writer, then look at it as a job.” When was the last time you didn’t go to work because you weren’t in the mood? You get up, you go to work, and you do your job.

Sometimes, most of the time, there are probably more fun and more interesting things you can think of to fill your time. But a job is a job. If I want to do this thing which is probably the funnest thing you can do with your clothes on (but if you need to get a little freer with the clothing situation then knock yourself out), then I need to keep doing it. That’s the only rule. I lose some of the ‘feel-like-it’ and gain some of the ‘this-is-what-I-do’.

Write more, write better, write faster.

Whilst I have no idea whether I am indeed accomplishing number two, and I have a plan for number three, I can definitely work on number one.

I am not a professional writer. I'm trying to act a little more like a professional, so one day I can look up and realise that there isn’t any difference. I am in no way trying to fake it until I make it, rather, keep doing it until I am it. I've heard for years that almost all writers have a second job. In that case, it means that these writers treat their hobby, their fun, their passion as a first job.

Granted, posting thoughts onto a blog, or onto an internet forum is not going to put food on the table, but in terms of learning how to be coherent, its a damned good place to start.

And it’s kind of refreshing too.

Just when

This is not the place or forum to talk about personal things, therefore I won't. What I will say is that no matter how much you intend for your personal life not to impede upon your professional one (and in this case I'm going to include this blog as professional. The biggest reason for that is that if I'm going to act like I'm a writer, then this has to be my job. I haven't done a great job about it, but I'm working on getting better a little bit at a time), there are times when things happen that are so darned big that they seem to drown out other things.

My day job has been like that. My personal life has been like that. I'm guessing that most anyone that has read more than one post can relate to it as well. The only thing I can say in times like this is that fair has nothing to do with what happens. Fair is what you tell your children and sometimes try to write about... and sometimes not.

Life, real life has never had much to do with fair. Real life is. That's what it does. It doesn't matter about points of view, or how much one has tried, or anything other than what is, and what people believe. When it comes to writing something, what is, is what you have put down on paper, packaged well, and let loose on the world. The question you have to ask yourself is "have I written something to the best of my ability, have I tried to package it to the best ability I have at the moment, and have I let it loose in the world?"

If you only have a limited time to do something, have you put in the passion and the care and the words that really mean something into it? What happens if you look back and realise you only had the one shot? What happens if you see this a day, or a post, or a publication later and you realise that you didn't actually take the risk and say what you felt, not just what you thought?

You are a writer. You are a writer because you want to be a writer. If you want to be a writer then practise. All the time. Send an email and say it in the best way to get not only the point, but also the feeling across. Do you care about what you're doing, what you're saying? Have you paused to think about what the person on the other side of the book, of the page, of that email will pick up? What is it you want from them?

Care. Mean it. Say something that matters, or in the very least, write something that you believe. If it's just a fact, then state it so it is non-refutable. If it is a feeling, then give of yourself to let them know. If it's a scene then believe in it, and therefore let them believe in it too. Share. If words have power, then they have the power of a surgeon and the power of a teacher and the power of an artist. They don't have to be perfect words, but if there isn't any substance to it, then at least let them have a point.

Fail fast

I’m going to try something new. More precisely, I’m going to try something that’s new to me, in the hopes it’ll prove worthwhile; it’s my version of Failing Fast.

I’m not a fast typer, I usually find myself reaching for the right word, or retyping a bit of sentence more than once because it’s not quite right. I read a bit, and then get to fiddling because I missed some things out, instead of marking it and moving on. I should have learned all these lessons some time before, as I’ve done NanoWriMo and the only way I could win was to keep pushing forward, and never look back.

Of course, I can also remember being in a coffee-guzzling, sleep-deprived, storyline-obsessed haze for most of the time as well. I remember coming out of it thinking that working at that pace and that regularity wasn’t sustainable. I also remember thinking “Oh my.” Fifty thousand words in 30 days. It was possible, I did it, and I still have no real idea how it happened.

So I’m going to try attacking stories with the same amount of devil-may-care attitude again. I’m going to try to get it down as quickly as possible and fix the problems after the fact. I’m going to try learning how to do significant rewrites, and I’m going to end up learning how to literally tear chunks out of a story. I’ve been writing short pieces of fiction recently to get myself into a habit, and then going back and chopping it down to an arbitrary amount. Hopefully that’ll stand me in good stead.

Part of the reason for doing the shorter stories it to see if I can concentrate on different things for a while. They say that practise makes – well, in my case, less sucky and prone to make idiot mistakes. We shall see. Let me see if I can get my ‘Concentrate and Commit’ rate up bit by bit. At least I’ll be typing something. Otherwise I’m going to admit defeat, leave the story I thought I’d be working on alone, and move on to the other one for a while. If I know me, just as I’m really getting into a groove, I’ll be inspired to go back.

Hey, as long as its typing and moving toward another finished something, I don’t much care right now.

I still don’t have a cover for the finished story. I got so far into having one done and then – life. It happens. And as long as I keep breathing, It’ll probably happen again.

The Wall

There’s a story I began a long time ago. I really liked this story. It details the beginning of a now pretty much dead genre called Cyberpunk. I wanted to know where the whole thing came from? How did the world end up as messed up and dystopian as your typical world? And more importantly, I wanted to tell the tale of people, because at the bottom, middle and top of every story, it’s usually about people. It’s what we’re interested in. Of course, the where, how and when is important. It frames the conversation, but if there’s no real who, then the whole thing is an exercise in world building a world without a population. That’s… not as fun to read as you may think. When’s the last time you read of a dead world without someone to witness it, or someone who will be affected in some way?

So I made it about some people. These people, these characters? They didn’t care about the birth of Cyberpunk. They wanted to stay alive, they wanted to make it. The bad guy was just doing something so logical, it wasn’t even bad to him. It was necessary. Appropriate. It had to be right in his (gender neutral usage) context.

So I have three main characters, all heroes in their own right. They’re interesting, and fun, and they all have their own hangups. The thing is, I don’t seem to be able to move the story on. I've been looking at this thing for the last two weeks wondering how to progress from here. I've been getting around it by getting the other projects up-to-date, finishing my short stories that I put up, and generally not stopping the whole writing thing, whether it be editing or something else. but I’m not writing. I’m not creating. I’m not doing the thing on the big story, the one that should be holding me tight. So again, I’m reaching out and trying to figure out how to do it.

Eventually I’m going to end up writing what’ll probably end up as pure crap for a bit, just to get into the swing of things. I don’t want to do that. Or maybe I’ll have to accept that this is the cost of starting a story and then leaving it for so long. Maybe there just isn’t any good way of getting into it, and the only way to go back to the story is not think about cutting it up, moving it around, peeking around plot points or fixing the characters or understanding motivation, or whatever I think may help in the end, but to put my fingers on the keys, type out whatever awful phrases or concepts are rattling around in my mind and just get it down.

I can’t go back to the phase I was in when I lost myself in the words and knew exactly what the next chapter or sentence was going to be like.

I guess that’s why the whole process of drafting and then redrafting exists. But I’m mightily tired of going to the same place and not knowing how to move it forward. You can’t fix something that hasn’t been written yet.

Which kind of brings me to my current dilemma: instead of doing what I’m telling myself to do, why am I still writing about doing the writing instead of actually doing the writing? Beats me. But if I knew all the answers, this blog would never have been born. I think it’s time to give this particular wall the death of a thousand keyboard cuts.

Annus horribills

It’s been a year. I’d love to say it’s been a great year, or a fantastic one, or even mention that it’s been an eventful one... in the sort of tone which means unexpected and yet wonderful things have happened. For me, it’s just been a year.

It wasn’t a good year. This blog will be a year and a day old. Go figure. Time keeps happening, whether we want it to or not. I've been doing a lot of looking in at myself and how long its taken me to get here. I've done a lot of soul searching in that time and found the place a little emptier and arid than I’d have expected. Or maybe not.

I finally got into the habit of writing, and then got out of it, and mostly just floundered around for a long time. Nowadays I accept that I’m kind of there, but more so than a year ago.

I wrote about people who were emotional, and over the top, and who were raw and real. I’m a writer, I made that stuff up all the time. When I finally take a quick look back over the year, I need to remember that somewhere in those last three hundred-sixty something days, I learned something. I need to remember that it wasn’t all loss. That there were also good times. There are always good times.

There were wins. If someone does come across this blog and gets to reading, then I’d like to make one request of you.

Whatever it is - the thing that you want to do, but have never tried to do it seriously - give it a shot. Just try. And then try again. And keep on trying. You’ll get better at it, and you’ll have found your happy.

Happy can be its own reward. Go find you some happy. If it’s something creative, even better, but that’s not important. Go for a walk. Watch a plane fly across the sky; heck, make imaginary shapes up in the clouds if that’s what does it for you, but do something. Actively get out there and get you some happy. It might not be perfect, but enjoy it for the intent at least as much as the thing itself.

Get your happy on. Do life.

Too Long

I suck at Tumblr.

I also suck at quite a few other things, but I've recently started using Tumblr to post up the book in chapters, and I just don’t get how to interact with the world of Tumblr. I also joined a writing community and am posting there for feedback about story, character, plot - actually I think I ticked every available box for someone to take a look at my story to let me know where the holes are. Unsurprisingly I haven’t had a huge amount of feedback. It’s probably like the exact amount of feedback I’ll be getting from agents (have I mentioned I’m putting together a database/list/spreadsheet of agents that I’m querying to?) and publishers and from people at large if I do end up putting the book on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or wherever fine ebooks are sold.

In short, although I haven’t updated this recently, I've been not lazy. I’m still trying. I’m still not writing every day, but I am trying to do something most days. The reason I mention is is because I’m feeling a little bit defensive. I wanted to put a new post up every month, just to show myself, if no one else that I can actually do stuff, and that I have been doing stuff.

I’m not the only person in the world who says “I can write a book.” I’m just one of the people who decided to get up and start. And then grind through it. And then keep going. And that’s all it takes really. I didn’t need to be amazing, or gifted, or have the most fantastic, unique and spell-binding story to tell (but of course I hope so. Everybody should hope their story is the dog’s whiskers in their heart of hearts), I just needed to be the one to do it. And keep going.

Its now almost a year since I started to get really serious and explore new avenues to prove it could be done. To prove to myself and anyone else that it isn’t impossible. In that time, I’ve learned so much, found a person at work who is an insanely competent line editor and been endlessly surprised by a close friend of mine who’s been with me every step of the way from down to up and all the way around.

I took a look at some of the short stories that I've either written or mostly written (story of my life, but you get the idea), and I've polished them a bit. I've put two up online in a kind of serialised format to see what other people think, and you know the most important thing I've learned from all of it?

Mostly, it’s that people don’t care. That’s a liberating realisation. It means that I can learn, and make mistakes, and keep trying. It means that I can keep getting better, and failing, all the way up until I don’t fail. I can connect to people and they’ll actually be interested in what I’m doing because they’re a self-selecting audience. I may not be earning money from this, but I will be learning a whole heap of stuff which will stand me in good stead. I’m doing the equivalent of paying my dues. I’m putting out a tester for people to see. I’m practising. And nobody cares. People tend to not focus on failures, but they sure as heck like to see successes. I don’t need to advertise my name - but I do need to start advertising my content. So I’m working on creating more.

The second part to this is understanding how to present myself and my work. It’s about finding that balance between being alone long enough to knock a few words out and finding, establishing or joining in a community that does care. That’s what Tumblr is for so many people. In an effort to describe it to people, I've called it Facebook for pictures, but it isn’t. It’s so much more than that. There is a large part of the site which revolves around pictures though, and about sharing, but whilst this is an inspirational and uplifting thing at times, the flip side of it is that when you’re someone like me who has the visually artistic ability and acumen of a dying amoeba in one of the lower parts of the Atlantic Ocean, it becomes a bit of a challenge. I can’t talk in pictures or gifs if the sale of a story depended on it.

Added to the fact that the UI is simple and easy to use, and we have a problem. Granted the UI is simple and easy to use, but I cannot wrap my head around it. Every time I think I've got it nailed, I learn something else. I think I understand queueing, haven’t quite worked out drafting (come on, how hard can that be? What’s wrong with me?) or scheduling… Am I over-complicating things? Why can’t I repost a picture from someone else’s site when I did the exact thing not five minutes ago? Have I completely lost the ability to learn new tech?

Right now, at the point I’m writing this, I suck at Tumblr. I’ll have to get better because I can see in it a community that cares, and somewhere where I’ll get honest feedback. It may not be pleasant to hear, but I get the feeling that it’ll be constructive for the most part. It has been purely positive so far, and that’s phenomenal. At the point in writing this, I've been terrible at keeping this blog updated. Right now, I think I should have been much further along in getting my last story out of the door, and I most definitely should have been working a whole heap more on my second story.

Picture time

The fourth and final draft is done. It feels so dang good to have this story put to bed for the time being. I met someone at work who has a friend who wrote a book and gave me some advice on submitting to an agent.

Some of it I'd read up on. She helped me understand what I'd need to put inside my submission letter/profile, and that most editors will ask for the first 3 chapters. This is a concern. I don't think the story starts off too slowly... but what if it does? I have a prologue, which isn't a traditional chapter long. Does this count as one of the chapters? Do I have to 'beef up' my story to be more punchy? I don't know. I think I've done ok, but it would be really nice to get some feedback at some point. A lot of what I've been doing is pretty much making it up as I go along, and listening to the internets for advice. I'm sure it'll be fine. It helps me fix my tech problems, so why not? Who wouldn't believe everything they read on the internet?

There was other advice. Mostly around getting an editor. There are freelance editors around, and I know the book needs editing, but for a high level look at the work, the one I was recommended came in at about £500. That's... That's a lot in my world. a Hell of a lot.

I know the story would be better off being under an editors 'tender' graces. I know the book is too long. I also know that since I'm unable to see it for myself, the smart move is to leave it as it is, start thinking about the other bits, and once that's done - move on. Next book. I'm hoping guessing I'll probably learn way more from writing another story than going round in circles.

So next steps: Focus on getting a cover, understanding how ISBN's work. There's a site called Nielson which gave me the pricing for ISBN's. Although I could buy more, the lowest two pricing packs are £132 for 10 ISBN's (£13.20 for one) and £318 for 100 (which works out to be £3.18 for one). Someone, somewhere would probably understand the economics a lot better than I do why the pricing discrepancy is so large. I mean come on - 1000 for £846? So big publishers are paying eighty-four freaking pence for the same thing I have to buy at £13.20? I understand economies of scale, but that's off the hook! Still, to get in the writers club, I think that's just the cost of doing business.

Why am I worrying about all this stuff about covers and ISBN's if I'm going to look for an agent? Because like everyone else, agents are rather busy, because they're all probably looking for something with that certain je ne sais pas. I don't think my first book necessarily has the x-factor, to borrow a tv trope. I don't know that it hasn't, but I don't have any feedback. I think I've covered this already. No, tell a lie, there has been one person who's been wonderful enough to challenge me to think about my story and keep challenging me in order to make it better. It worked. Does 'better' mean 'good'? We shall see. So, I'll do the research into agents and offer it out and keep track and wait all those months and offer it to just one agent at a time in the format that they've asked for (hard copy? Really? Do people still want that IRL?) and anything else that's required - oh yeah, more on that later. That'll take a while. Maybe it'll take years. 

In the meantime, I think I'll just go ahead after a while and self publish.

Who says my story will actually do well on Amazon rather than Barnes & Noble? Who says it'll do well at all? No one. Not a soul. That doesn't mean its not worth a shot. I mean, I've already done all the hard work, right? What would I have to lose?

Also, I still have to pay someone who can draw/paint/do arty things.

Oh, before I forget - my other blog colleague, the one who was also supposed to be posting stuff up on here? They mentioned they read the blog for the first time. No mention on whether they liked what I'd put up, or if they have cold feet and just can't be bothered. Not a peep on whether they have any impetus on doing something now they see if I can do it, anyone can do this. Nada. Zip. I'm not surprised. I'm not disappointed. I'm holding out hope.
In other news, I've gotten rid of the picture I was using as a background. It just didn't work and looked like a 5 year old created the blog. That's harsh, I know. Most 5 year olds have at least some artistic sensibilities.