The Unread Writer

Maybe two people read my work that I know of for sure. When I give it away free, I might get six new downloads but no reviews. It's the sort of response that probably doesn't encourage new writers to go for it, but I don't think it's pathetic to admit it.

When you choose to go against the grain, the chance of even amazing work being noticed is really slim. The chances of your friends and family gushing about it is even less. I'm not going to tell you that I'm bitter or defeated because doing it was never dependent on how or when it is received. I'm not immune to it, but it doesn't have enough pull to keep me down either.

I don't have a newsletter, mainly because I know author newsletters usually end up sent straight to spam. I read for other people but never ask them to read my work. I mostly just lose track of time in the excitement of creative pursuits, rarely talking about it but always thinking about it. I don't put any money into it, just time. I don't want to outsource when it's important for me to depend on myself to learn what I know I'm capable of. I add writers to my social media but sometimes I hide them for a while. When I feel the bite of envy, I don't dare shit on their happiness so I walk away and work on myself. I don't get ads or push them aggressively or compare them to Twilight or Lord of the Rings or try to convince people they're the next big thing.

You won't really get a good sense of my voice from my blog that will lead you to know my work in fiction. Unlike most authors, my first books are often not full of my best ideas since I love the slow build, the Easter eggs, the inner dialogue... I'm a lot more focused as a novelist too, where my blogs are often just dumping grounds for thought before I tackle my discipline. I do want people to read my work but I'm not up to lying if they ask if they'll like it. I might say 'maybe' or 'I don't know' because I have no clue who my audience is. I've seen my books pirated and listed as erotic romance as I feared they would. It's a risk anytime a woman writes a sex scene, even non-consensual. There's still the stigma that men can't possibly care to read any intimate thoughts that women might have. Eh, maybe they don't-- it's still juvenile to suggest that they need a trigger warning in the form of mis-categorizing an author into a genre they don't stand a chance in because it's a women's category they won't accidentally read.

I read a lot of articles on the craft of writing and it doesn't really shed any light on what I do. Really, only the 'fantasy' part is central to my work. I intertwine mystery, horror, suspense, humor, eroticism, etc. on a whim and just slap Adult on it to be safe. All the while, I focus on how I can drive people to look at the plot. Or look at it all. As pathetic as it sounds, I've prepared myself to be invisible for the next ten years or more. Because that is still optimistic in a field where most people never make it. Then again, most people give up.

Will passion someday not be enough? It's possible. However, if you read my blog, you know that I annihilated everything that meant anything to me for years. I quit writing, I quit drawing, I quit listening to music... I didn't get it back on a whim. There was school, then I took up crochet again. I started drawing ideas that I wanted to crochet and writing back stories for dolls I wanted to make. It wasn't a decision to do what I loved or to make anything of it-- it was organic and a sign that it was important to me on a deeper level than how I could monetize it. Yet I learned a lesson about placing value on your work. No one will value it if you don't give it a value. (And this still stands if they aren't buying it either!)

It's possible that I'm even afraid of focusing on that aspect and losing the magic once more.  I refuse to work for passion alone. People who give away their work are often smug about it, but they have a stable job that pays the bills or are being provided for by someone who does. It never comes off as passionate or charitable, especially to other creatives, who struggle to convince people that their art does have value and people can't expect it to be free. I've been through these points before, but there's a balance that is important to find here-- somewhere between market value and passion, I truly just want to stay in a place where the desire to create never fades. Yes, money is one of the carrots on the end of the stick. Validation is wonderful too. As long as the ideas keep coming, I want to respect them and feed them and never pretend that any of it isn't important.

The 50K part of NaNo doesn't matter to me. I've done 80-100K in a month, more if you factor in blogs, shorts and jotting down ideas. I want to see the enthusiasm of people chasing their ideas, the trepidation, the sense of purpose. Chasing numbers can cause detrimental anxiety. Been there done that with numbers on the scale. I'm physically in better shape than most people my age, aside from the chronic pain and digestive issues. I'm at peace with being overweight because I know it's the way my body maintains itself. I treat my mental needs the same way. If I need to write, I write. If I need to draw, I draw. What needs to be done will get done when I am ready. 

And probably in a way that few are doing it. One of the reasons I give advice is because it is important that writers have options. When we cycle through all of what is supposed to lead to success and nothing takes, we need to know that the good and bad is that nothing has changed and, damn it, just keep going!

I know that for some, there's a window on the dream. In fact, I fear it too. Life has a way of changing where you are and sometimes other priorities shut you down. Even so, you can't act on urgency or you create unnecessary stress and your work suffers for it. Try to make your time focus on quality. You don't have to be a fast writer. I know how badly we all want to get the work done, how all of the stages can only create more wistfulness to see it to completion. Even so, stop looking at other people's word counts. The high ones often denote a good day and they might disappear into a funk and not be able to or have time to write at all. You might only be able to pump out a thousand words a day, but you're in pace with the person who pounds out 8K one day then doesn't write for a week. Your consistent pace probably also saves you time because you probably don't need to reread from being away too long. You probably also researched more or considered ideas or spent more time with family or went on walks. You might be exactly where you are most effective, so don't kill that with comparisons.

As for being an 'unread writer', I hope I can look back on it and laugh shakily someday. That someday the passion and work will earn a matching response. However, in order to stand a chance of enjoying it, the work must continue. I need to test my ideas and improve myself. That never ends for a creative. There will never be a point where I feel there is nothing left to do or learn. Any attempt at 'relaxing' away from it was hell.

I'm at peace with my path. I'll continue to forge ahead.

I'm Telling You-- Nothing Like Flying High!

I joked with a friend last night that if I was really dedicated, I could still make it to 50K by the middle of the month. I really didn't intend to actually sit down for the 10+ hours it would take to do it, but my cold-addled brain was the overworked cheerleader I suspected it might be.

50,309 words down by 11:16 PM. You're damn right I did it.

I'm absolutely chuffed about it, clicking my gods-damned heels and fist-pumping carefully because the sloped ceiling is really not room enough to do it without breaking some knuckles.

Still, I'm thinking about my other writer friends, the ones way ahead of me (yup, there are plenty of those) and the ones way behind. Again with the word count... When I said you can ignore it, it doesn't mean to remove it as a motivational tool. It could convince you to stop, it could convince you to keep going, but it could still be strangling the benefits of developing good habits too.

People burn out. Sometimes this kind of thing might have people so paralyzed that they don't even touch a keyboard until the next NaNo sneaks up and sends them into a state of cold panic. Okay, that may or may not be accurate, but writers come in all kinds.

I'm sticking by the assertion that passion needs discipline. With the good days come the bad. They don't balance out and sometimes there's so many of one that the other seems to have abandoned you completely.

I think my momentum does largely come from the setback. Not so much because I wanted to catch that midway ambition as much as I just COULDN'T write for days and I wanted it so, so badly. It wasn't a mental hurdle. I could even stab the right keys when I was poking for them while lying down with a tablet. Voice dictation probably wouldn't even register my voice as human if I tried. All throughout it, I daydreamed (because sleep was not happening much). I passed out and didn't dream and my mind craved the loss by giving me technicolor thoughts.

Yet I wasn't terrified they'd slip through my fingers. I don't regret the things that slip by. What ends up in my stories is what is meant to be there. If it's meant to come back, it will sprout up elsewhere. I'm so full of these damn things and I don't squander any time lamenting what I haven't done, won't be able to do or am not doing. 

I'm doing. Are you doing? Then get to it. Again or for the first time. Float ya boat.

Writing High... Do Eeeeet...

I don't mean 'under the influence', although I'm not against the cannabis lovers of the world (I myself don't enjoy smoking it, but I'm wildly curious about CBD as an option for pain and anxiety).

No, I mean writing on the ass-end of a cold type of high. I might have even mentioned this before since it's simply the bee's knees.

Well, when you put it this way, 'the bee's knees' are actually pretty gross. Which also describes my cold.

I KNOW I've had to mention balloony-head, that little window where you don't actually remember much, but what you do tends to be fantastic. Like you think blacking out drunk will be based on the people who lie about their adventures while doing it. Only legitimately and completely fun. Not embarrassing, waking up in vomit and urine kind of... fun?

Either way, somehow I went from about 35.5K on my NaNo goal to breaking 40K. I not only have no idea what I actually wrote, but I'm absolutely going to pick it up from there tomorrow. It is usually miraculously comprehensible but more sarcastic, I guess. It's definitely something else.

10K more to go. I wouldn't be surprised if somehow, I make that goal tomorrow. Why? Because I'll have no sense of time and it'll just happen if it does. I've done maybe 6-8K in a day on occasion and it's not impossible that between blogging and short stories that I've topped 10K in a day, but hell, why not unintentionally set a new record?

Don't worry-- I'm still babying this cold. I can ill afford for it to get worse, but as long as I'm not dizzy or feeling wretched, writing is much preferred to binge-watching whatever crap Hulu thinks I should watch. Anyone else yell at the Still There? (Or the 'are you still watching name-of-show-because-you-might-be-unaware of' of Netflix) for doubting your abilities to want it to keep going even if you're not watching or there? We all know I'm not all there!

More on whatever comes next in a later post...

Idea Factory

There are times where I wish I could just pound out lists and lists of my ideas, that I could just be content to know I'm an influencer and let them roam free. Yet, alas, I cannot trust it and I hoard it like filthy, dirty treasure.

MY treasure

Influencers often monetize their ability to collect followers (and thereby justifying the ridiculous amount of time they spend on social media). Nothing wrong with that, but it is more like aggressive and often insincere consumerism. I wouldn't say that influencers are below integrity either-- I'm sure many will only influence something they believe in, yet with all rises in success, the temptation would also exist to lower their standards to collect on things they don't really care about. The creator in me just can't be satisfied with this passivity towards the production either way.

It's important to me that my ideas do go through some creative control. Maybe it's the obsession with being first. I don't want to be the sharing type only to decide I want to do it, yet they beat me to it. Then suddenly I look like the copycat, the fanfic hack, and the idea slams my heart into my feet. Perhaps it's possible to be an influencer and an author, but no matter how I think about it, it seems like a cycle too open to paranoia, wondering which idea I should have kept or released to the sharks.

MY tail

Having already touched on the writers that seem to want their book written for them and people who pretend to have an idea but are really farming, I won't do that again, but ideas are still, at least in the sense of the creative process, somewhat precious. (No. No Gollum picture here!) While some people get excited by an idea they can borrow or steal to carry their scene, more often than not, I find it too influential, too tragic a miss in working out the problem in a unique way (if not unique, at least organic to my own critical thought process).

In a previous post, I brought up impostor syndrome. If you're not hip to this, it's a condition that gives you the sense that your accomplishments are fraudulent, even when they are valid. Because I run into this feeling more than I'd like to admit, I try to avoid any practice that might give the negative loop grounds for feeling like a thief, a hack, a fraud. I do have an ample history with fantasy as is and often I can pinpoint some of my plots as being derivative, but I keep those influences as far from vivid as possible. I know those sorts of people who almost exclusively copy-paste or take credit for other people's work and have no shame for it. To me, it's disgusting. You won't often see a heavy bias from me, but this is one I'm unbending on.

It's not lost on me, the irony being these people almost never get a taste of impostor syndrome.

Maybe there will be a lot of my ideas lost when my life comes to a close. It's a shame, but I've never asked much from this life and ideas are one place where I tread carefully. I love to share methods, techniques, slices of life, mood management practices, fitness updates, patterns, but the times when I hoard ideas or put a price on them-- please believe that this is where artists need to assert the value of their contribution. We do give a lot away for free. I've shared crochet patterns I've made from scratch, short stories, pictures-- many of them even of quality I should be charging for. It doesn't always make perfect sense what I choose to make free and what I insist contributes to my wallet. Because so many artists do make stunning works available free, there's almost an expectation, an entitlement that something comparably better is free so yours should be too.

Ideas are a dime a dozen. Look at all the free books!

Also, MY books.

The idea that only the best should be allowed to have value is a falsehood. A free market doesn't mean nothing has value. It gives the consumer the ability to discern what to consume and the producer to decide what its worth. They often do put things out there, simply out of the need to share, their own measure of what might give them exposure and sell more of their work, but it doesn't exist to give consumers permission to undercut the value of all art. You are perfectly within your right to decide it's not worth your hard-earned money, but you are not within your right to decide its value. And yes, piracy will murder some dreams, and it will always be a problem. Your ideas exist in some form already. Your sense of humor is even dependent on someone else's ability to enjoy it (and you can just as well be the only one to enjoy it-- go, you!).

Everything is trash, everything is treasure, and you don't have to be right about which way that leans for you.

FYI: Treasure. You don't have to agree. You don't have to understand why I spent months bingeing on Homestar Runner games and toons. Strongbad, King of Town... Still my spiritual BFFs. Also, where I learned the word 'chiaroscuro'.

You've probably noticed, but I find popular authors game for examples, both positive and negative. The main reason for this is that is that their success no longer hinges on anything short of massive boycotting. Which never happens. You can hate Seeetepheeniee Meyeeer and E.L. Fudge all you want, but lack of taste will sustain them forever. Authors like Anne Rice, Stephen King, JK Rowling-- they're safely out of reach. It's much trickier either being positive or negative about the rest of us peons because I neither want to seem suspiciously undercritical nor do I have a desire to be the weed in their garden (or the wildfire-- some analogy for killing their career). When I do find time to read their work, sometimes I don't want to immediately be the critic. Sometimes I do enjoy being the consumer.

And sure, writers are SUPPOSED to look at everything with a writer's eye. We're supposed to do a lot of things, but I find most of them to be pretentious and counterproductive if you take them as gospel. Yes, take a little advice concerning the growth and cultivation of ideas, but you're doing yourself a favor sometimes just by not taking every aspect of it and turning it into work. Look, you're in a creative career. It's still about conveying emotion and passion. It's not all or nothing and your work benefits most from the balance-- be a passionate emotional person with a sharp rational brain.

I know creatives get a bad rap for being flighty and irrational. I can't tell you how relieved I am that this is totally wannabe bullshit. I ran into so many try-hard hipsters that talked a big game and produced jackshit. The productive artists, digital artists especially, are people who work with computers, technology, numbers and logic too. Some of us are ridiculously literal, critical, intolerant, stubborn. There's no political barrier either-- a mix of liberal, moderate and conservatives in many degrees. Because of this, creatives also don't have a 'type'. It's sort of just human nature to notice the loudest try-hards of any stereotype.

Kicking my ass back onto the main track though...

He's going to kick my butt.

No matter how you feel about ideas, I can always recommend plastering your existence with them. I have several apps on my tablets and computers, emails to myself, notebooks, post-its, scribbled and typed remnants of the big and small processes of ideas. Get them out. You may have a project in mind, or just want to put out the pieces that may lead to one. It doesn't really matter. Catharsis comes from release. Even when you're blocked, sometimes you're still feeding some beast that probably needs attention. Some people fear that they'll just end up starting and not finishing too much so they do nothing if not the big project. This is why I designate specific programs, ones I give myself permission to treat as generic. Sometimes, it does lead to ideas for the main project(s), but the point of an idea phase is to free it into being. Not to completion, but to some visual or tangible medium.

Which is why many idea-makers are still traditional. Pen and paper is still a good way to cheat yourself into a sense of making something, a boost in the right direction. It turns a secret into a promise, a promise into a project.

I've said this before too, but word count is trivial. While I've had spells where word count was the goal, it was only something I allowed myself if I was certain that the story was planned well enough or simple enough to be pantsed. Produce ideas first, worry about categorizing them when the need presents. Preparation is a good thing, but sometimes you do need to throw a few logs on the fire to shed some light on what comes next.

I'm going to wander off a bit since I've finished covering the branches of this topic for now. I do want to say that, despite the amount of time I spend blogging, I also spend gobs of time writing and planning and editing. I try to put update posts up so you can see accurate progression towards my projects. There are some slower spells where... well, ideas. Outlines. Planning. The word count is a nice little package, but it hardly delves into the process of accumulating it. It's not a mark of confidence. People do attach bragging rights to it and it IS exciting, but it's not the greatest measure of your effort. Connecting your ideas will be the silent victor and one that you work to share eventually.

Happy manufacturing, my word engineers!