Up for Air

I have a blog? Oh that's right, I do! And here I am posting to it. Let me tell you, it's a sign of how much I love you that I'm spending my precious few minutes of free time to say hello.

Hello!

All my December titles have already turned over. What's that? It's April? Yes, yes it is. Welcome to publishing.

I've been cranking it out lately. Ten-hour days plus four-hour commutes. Not the worst I've had in my career. I've done 15+ before, but still, 14 hours out of a 24-hour day doesn't leave a lot of leisure time.

Thankfully, this sort of thing will only last a few more weeks and then things settle back down. What distresses me most is not the amount of time spent working, but the drain it puts on me. Yesterday, trudging my way to the train station, I had to make a choice, write on the way home or watch Stargate SG-1 on my phone. Stargate won out. And it's been winning out a lot lately. Today is the first day I can remember in the last week where I had the energy to write both in the morning and the evening train ride home.

I'm not losing the rhythm of the story, which is great, but the word count is going up sooo slowly. I chopped out 20,000 words (a kick to the nuts but much needed). Then I rewrote the 20,000 words. I've only managed another 8,000 since then. Not bad, certainly, but normally I hit that number in four days.

I have no plans on being a full-time writer (in that full-time denotes having no other job). My benefits at my company are top notch, and I wouldn't want to give those up to be on my own. But there are times, times like this when I'm burning the candle on all ends, that I wish I had more time to devote to writing and less time to publish something in four weeks that would otherwise have eight.

Po Tay TOOOOOOO!

Before we begin, watch this. You can thank me in the comments.

Alright, now that you've watched that two or three (or twenty) times, let's continue, shall we?

I have a draft post that I've been working on for weeks. This isn't it. It's a picture of my bookshelf. When I envisioned that post last year, I had no idea it would take me so long to finish. That's how much I love you. I'm working hard on a picture post.

BUT, so that you don't forget I'm here, let's talk! Not about work. Work is busy. Stuff that was supposed to be turned over in December is turning over now, so I have to do a whole lot of stuff in a few weeks. Mmmm, publishing. Gotta love it.

But publishing isn't the only industry going through digital upheaval right now. Sure, CD vs MP3, DVD vs streaming, but those battles are actually old battles (just like ebooks are an old battle--the public just wasn't involved in the first part of it). The big deal now is mobile connectivity. And actually, this has been a big deal for years as well, but again, industry fights its own battles internally and then format adoption moves that fight out into the open.

Smart phone adoption is so prevalent now that I actually forgot not everyone has one. I use my phone more than I use my laptop (including for watching streaming movies). The only thing my laptop is really for any more is writing, because I write a billion times faster on a real, full-sized keyboard than I do on a touch screen. And, now we're getting 4G technology (a rant in and of itself because the G just stands for generation, which means companies hold onto technology until they've milked us for all we're worth and then they move on to the next generation to start all over).

Awesome phones, cloud-based services, and high-speed mobile connectivity. You know what that means? Science fiction is becoming science fact! Or it would, if we weren't limited to 2GB of data a month. For all the people fighting over self-publishing vs traditional publishing, I think the larger impact on us as a society is the control of bandwidth. The "all information should be free" justification for thievery is bunk, but there are some serious implications of a non-neutral, ratcheted internet. So many services are moving to a mobile interface. More over, those services are also going to a cloud system rather than a delivery system (to simplify it, if they don't give you an end product, everyone has to go to them and they make more money--same is true for ebooks which is why the "publishers don't want ebooks" argument is so stupid).

What happens is they take information and services and put it over there. Then they say you can get it over here on your phone. Pay for the service to get it from there to here. Oh, but now we're going to limit you because it is more profitable for us to restrict your access to the materials we've taken away from you than it is to increase our network to handle increased volume.

I left Sprint because of horrible customer service and a poor selection of phones. They're improving on both, I hear, especially the latter. Their bandwidth speeds aren't top of the line, but they still offer true unlimited. Verizon and AT&T charge over 2GB and with music and video going to cloud-based services, you'd be amazed at how quickly you can pass that mark.

How much, do you ask? I average 15GB of usage a month. That's how much. I'm considered a top-tier user in that regard and I'm doing it on purpose. I'm part of the grandfathered Unlimited Data customers from Verizon. If I were with AT&T, they'd ratchet my service so that anything over 2GB would be so slow that I wouldn't want to use it even though I could. Verizon will probably end up doing the same, and frankly, it's the wrong direction.

At some point, the majority of the digital goods we consume will be done through a mobile platform, and as long as our access to that material is constrained, it will only foster piracy and theft rather than inhibit it. More over, it will stifle growth and innovation. This is where the entire industry is moving and has been moving for years. The attempt to constrain that result now is like trying to turn the titanic. There will be a big ass crash when more people discover they're willing to use mobile solutions for high-bandwidth services.

There's a fight a brewing, and it's much more relevant than self-publishing versus traditional publishing.

The Other Side

I don't only read fantasy and science fiction. I think that's a good thing, to read outside of one's preferred genre. Keeps things fresh. Keeps things interesting. You get a view of how things are done elsewhere (setting doesn't matter as much in some genres as it does in sff where many call it another character in the novel). And you get a view of how things are changing there, maybe something you can use in your own work as well.

For me, when I'm not reading sff, I usually turn to a biography. Jerry Lewis' DEAN AND ME, Steve Martin's BORN STANDING UP, Craig Ferguson's AMERICAN BY CHOICE (a much more solid offering than his fiction BETWEEN THE BRIDGE AND THE WATER¹), and more. Some are awesome (see Ferguson). Some are completely self-serving (see Lewis). Some are a train wreck of good intentions (see Meghan McCain's DIRTY SEXY POLITICS). Currently, Russel Brand's first autobiography, MY BOOKY WOOKY. I tend to lean toward performers rather than historical, political, or military figures, who so often make up the bulk of the biography section. I like to see how they were drawn to their art, how they suffered, and how they overcame (if they did). Artists often tend to leave off a lot of the polish. Even with Jerry Lewis writing about how he and Dean Martin loved each other to the very end, he speaks on infidelity and ties to the mob.

With Russell Brand, his fiction follows a consciousness delivery much like his stand-up. Tangents come and go and you have to hold on for the ride. I love the book already because he makes a statement that perfectly sums up my childhood as well. "I was awake as a child." It's such a profound statement that people have trouble understanding unless they lived it. I made the local news when I was in kindergarten. My school did a balloon release², and I was one of a handful of students whose balloons were found first. They interviewed the larger kids first, so I heard the kind of questions they were going to ask. I was prepared with a cogent, intelligent response, but when they asked me my question, I stuck my finger in my mouth and twisted in place, looking horribly cute. Of course, the entire time, I'm screaming in my mind "WHAT ARE YOU DOING" like some guy at the helm of a spaceship, the controls not responding, the circuit boards sparking, and the ship setting course for the closest star.

I was awake as a child.

I don't think I would have ever heard, I don't think I would have ever articulated that experience if I had not read Russell Brand's MY BOOKY WOOKY. Thanks for that Russell. It's a good read.

A Body at Rest Tends to Stay at Rest

So yesterday I started writing again. Vacation + sickness means no writing, but taking that kind of break can make it hard to get started again. I compare it to a cold engine. It's hard to get the thing to turn over once it's been sitting still for awhile. Writing is definitely like this. I have some friends who are beginning their first efforts into writing and others who are renewing their efforts after a long hiatus. The same thing seems to happen. They begin with their first chapter, maybe the second, maybe even the third, and then they invariably stop. Something somewhere in what few words they've written isn't "right." They stop and like so many before them, they no longer continue forward.

I know some professionals edit as they go along, but for new authors, I always think this is a bad idea. Newtonian physics apply to writing as much as they do to bodies in motion, I think. Unless acted upon by an outside force, forward motion begets forward motion. Keep writing and you will write more and more until you have a finished novel.

Yesterday I think I managed only a few hundred words--and by few I mean 500 at best out of two hours on a train. I was tired and completely out of the habit of writing. Today, I wrote on the morning train (1300) words and again at lunch (1200) words. It feels great. It feels like my engine is finally warmed up. And it feels like I am in motion. As long as I keep writing, I will remain in motion.

Boy, Interrupted

I set ambitious writing goals for this year.

Goal 1: Finish the first draft of BENEATH A SUNDERED SKY (150,000 words)

Goal 2: Finish the first draft of WHAT'S BEHIND THE CROOKED DOOR? (15,000 words)

Goal 3: Finish the third (first final) draft of PRINCE OF CATS (50,000 words)

Goal 4: Rewrite BLACK MAGIC AND BARBECUE SAUCE (150,000 words)

All in all, I set goals to deal with the largest word count I've ever attempted in a single year. (Granted, some of it had been touched before so maybe that should have a .75 modifier to the word count in terms of difficulty. I can't say for sure.) I didn't set these goals with a "let's see how much of this I can do" mindset. I set goals I expect to achieve. Thus I expected to achieve all four goals.

So why am I obviously leading up to the fact that I'm not going to achieve all four goals? Because it's March and I'm already sick FOR THE THIRD TIME THIS YEAR! I'm not one of those people that get sick every decade. I have a crappy immune system. January and I are not friends. I get sick in January almost every year. Then again at the end of autumn or around there when the weather is turning and my allergies are kicking my ass and everyone has forgotten how to cover their mouths for some reason.

The fact that I've already been sick three times this year is not a good sign. It certainly hasn't made writing easier. It took a bit to get back up to speed after the first time I got sick. Then, after the second time I got sick, I realized everything I had written between those illnesses was absolute shit and needed to be deleted. I not only wasted a month of writing time, I wasted the paltry 20,000 words I wrote in that month (which is half of what I usually write in a month, in case you're wondering).

Beginning the year with SUNDERED SKY and seeing how easily the setting fell onto the page, I didn't think it unrealistic at all to finish it in three months. Add a couple weeks to switch gears and finish CROOKED DOOR and I had thought to have points one and two scratched off by April. I thought maybe to add goals 1.1 and 2.1, revising a second draft over the summer for each of those stories.

It's March 8th and I'm at 50,000 words of goal one. At this pace, I'll finish the book by September! Horror! What a wasted year that would be. I don't expect that to be the issue, obviously. Once I'm well, the word count pace will increase, but damn it's hard to feel that way when I'm on illness number three and I can only manage enough mental capacity to realize I'm sucking it hard this year.

How's your progress coming? Hopefully better than mine.

That question is for everyone, but especially Nate. Everyone stare at Nate and remind him he should not be reading this journal entry. He should be writing his novel. Now. Go. Shoo. Be creative.

Insight. Powerful Powerful Insight

Some people like "How To" books. They buy "How to be a better ____" books over and over again when to me they so often repeat the same information or contradict one another. Sometimes they read like the person read the other book and decided to do his best "this isn't really plagiarism" impersonation. Needless to say, I had a few bad experiences with such books early on and have for the most part given up on them. (I follow Donald Maass on Twitter, where he posts insightful tweets to make a person a better author, which I find to be an adequate middle ground.)

Then there are magicians. I never wanted to be a magician, but who doesn't love a good magic trick? I grew up during Penn and Teller's rise to fame, which means I hit the tail end of quality magic. More popular magicians who got on TV for not eating were stupid and ruined the profession for people with genuine talent. Give me Ricky Jay any day of the week rather than some asshole in tight pants dancing around a stage hyping up something that doesn't offer a beginning much less an ending.

So, with my curmudgeonly devotion to older magic, I've never heard of Brian Brushwood. I only know of him now because someone linked me to his blog on Google+. On his blog, he's posted a letter exchange with Teller (yes, the one that doesn't talk; that doesn't mean he can't write).

I offer you the entire post because the context makes Teller's words all the more powerful. His closing paragraphs are what got me. His talk about being something other than a magician. Over the years I've often met people who were truly gifted at something other than writing who so badly wanted to be a writer. It reminded me of how much I wanted to be a soldier when I'm very clearly not built for soldiering. Sometimes, when I'm down and worried that I won't ever cut it at being a writer (even though I've been writing longer than I've done anything else), I think, maybe I'm better at something else. Maybe I'm not supposed to be a writer. I'm supposed to be a ______, and I'm wasting all these years writing novels when I should be _____ing.

But Teller should have been something other than a magician, and it's that something that makes him so great at what he does. For the first time ever, that lingering insecurity feels like a blazing torch, I'm carrying to my own professional olympics. Holy shit, I should have been a _______ which is why I'm going to be such a great writer!!!

Thank you, Teller, for your wisdom. And thank you, Brian, for sharing.

More Music!

For my old job I used to travel to Europe. Sitting in a bar in Amsterdam, I often heard a style of electronica that really spoke to me. It was a popular house music there that everyone seemed to know, but no one would explain to a silly American. It was unlike anything I heard back in the states. Well, years later with the rise to popularity of such performers as Skrillex, I finally know A) what it's called; and B) how to find it.

So what I was hearing way back when was Dubstep. Now that it's popular, people love to make fun of it because that's what people on the internet do. Let this be a lesson for when you put anything you create out there. Some jackass will make fun of you because that's what jackasses do. Regardless, now that I've found the name of the genre, YouTube has granted me plenty of opportunities to listen.

I bring this up because I don't listen to music while I write. BUT some music gets me so pumped up that I want to write. Such a song is Nefarioiusa by Skream. Check it out:



I've listened to that one three times in a row now. Work? Who wants to work. That can wait until tomorrow. Now it is time I create!!!

Slingshots

As weapons go, I did not have many growing up. I wasn't allowed toy guns or squirt guns because my mom was certain I was going to go around squirting my neighbors or pretending to shoot my neighbors. All that meant was I borrowed my neighbors squirt guns and squirted my neighbors that way. It's okay, my neighbors were squirting me back.

A weapon I was allowed to have (because some strange association to Huckleberry Finn, I guess) was a slingshot and let me tell you, I have always excelled with slingshots. Probably because I always had an affinity at math, and slingshots are all about physics. The problem is that a slingshot isn't really something that strikes fear in the hearts of villains, so giving it to your hero as a weapon isn't that cool. Unless he has explosive ammunition or something and then it becomes more about the ammunition than it does the slingshot.

OR SO I THOUGHT!

I am going to show this to you, but I'm calling dibs right now. None of you are allowed to use this. It's just too cool for me to keep secret. Check out the slingshot this guy created to fight zombies. I never thought about the importance of counter-balance. The things you could do with a stone at a high enough velocity. Holy crap.



And what's even more awesome? This isn't an isolated video. That guy has a whole channel of slingshot videos. Woo hoo!

Middle Grade vs. Young Adult

A combination of bad advice and bad writing as a result of that advice has kind of got me stuck on PRINCE OF CATS. I have two other projects I'm working on right now, but in a few months, I'll be back to it, and I'll have to fix it, which is a daunting prospect.

An agent who is always full of good advice is Kristen Nelson, and she touched on the subject in her new Friday video blog series. Check it out:

Biography

Joe was born in 1977 in Columbia, MO, his parents' fifth and last child. He wrote his first short story in 1983 (which was promptly stolen by Hollywood ). In 1999 he graduated from Truman State University in Kirksville, MO, with a BA degree in English - Creative Writing and Theatre - Playwriting. In his last semester, he wrote the ten-minute play Jigsaw that was accepted as a regional finalist in the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival. It was performed January 2000 in Sioux Falls, SD, in front of an audience of 500-700 people.

After college Joe began writing for the role playing industry, co-authoring Dangerous Denizens: The Monsters of Tellene for Kenzer & Co. He followed that with the online PDF "Living Kingdoms of Kalamar Campaign Sourcebook," which he wrote and typeset. Following that he wrote 33 adventures for the RPGA Network, first for Kenzer's Living Kingdoms of Kalamar campaign and then Wizards of the Coast's Living Greyhawk campaign. He is particularly proud of the "Year 5" plot arc conclusion that spanned the entire year's adventures and convention interactive events.

Joe now lives in Nashua, NH, with his wife. You have a good chance of finding him at the counter of Jackie's Diner downtown, typing on his computer. If not there, then on the commuter rail to Boston. He does most of his writing in public places. If you're at Jackie's, you will never find more Perfect Bacon or Perfect Sausage, and he recommends paying a little extra to get real maple syrup. If you've never had it before, you'll wonder where it's been all your life. Feel free to say hello, but please keep in mind that he does his best writing in public places so the more you talk to him, the longer you'll have to wait for his next story. Misanthropy with sausage!

In addition to writing, Joe enjoys the same things most people enjoy, theatre, movies, music, reading. What did you expect him to like, goose juggling? He works in higher education publishing in Boston. He has overseen the development of 20 books and hundreds of electronic ancillaries, including websites, CDs, and DVDs.

Q: What else have you done?

A: The question should be, what haven't I done?

• Hawker at a football stadium
• Burger King (twice!)
• McDonald's
• Delivered phone books
• Sold plasma
• Office assistant at a research lab
• Waiter at a pizza joint
• Army cadet at Fort Knox
• Night auditor at a hotel
• Student Regional Coordinator for the NEMO Special Olympics
• Milkman for Royal Crest Dairy
• Pizza Delivery for Blackjack Pizza
• Grass cutter (aka lawnjockey)
• RadioShack (for which I'm going to hell)
• Blockbuster
• Wedding Reception DJ
• Bartender
• and my current job in higher ed publishing (9+ years in the industry)

Getting One's Head in the Right Spot

Some people are reserved. Some people are not. Some people are in between. Me, I like being the center of attention. I often say I am a misanthrope because if I'm injected into a social situation where I am not the center of attention, I tend to remove myself. But if eyes are on me, boy do I love to be at the center. Mmm, mmm, mmm. :)

Along those lines, I am thus not one who keeps things reserved. Bottling up never lasts long and I just need to get things out so I can keep moving. Being ill for a couple weeks sucks. Being ill while one's wife is on a business trip sucks more. I think I subsisted on corn Chex, chicken strips, and cough drops. It also left me a lot of time to dwell in my own thoughts. When my brain is too taxed fighting germs that I cannot even muster the energy to write, mustering the strength to persevere is equally impossible. It's easy to get in a self-defeatist frame of mind when one is sick.

But hey, I'm not sick any more! Well, my cough hasn't gone away, but otherwise I'm better. I'm writing again, and writing things that don't suck. And I'm hopeful for the future again. I still have all the same insecurities I had a few days ago, but I have the wherewithal to look past those to my next manuscript.

Keep that in mind. It's okay to have fears. It's even okay to talk about your fears (but don't do it too often). In the end, if you're going to make it, you move past all that. Otherwise you're defeated before you even begin.

Cheers to you, friends. Thanks for letting me vent.

Which Airbender Character are You?

Here's today's exercise:

If you have not yet watched Avatar: The Last Airbender, go to Netflix and watch it right now. We'll wait. Actually, if you have watched it, take this time to watch it again. It's definitely worth a repeat viewing.

Okay, now we're all refreshed on the awesomeness that is Aang and the Gang. And thus I pose to you these three questions:

Which character from the series (it does not have to be a bender) do you think most closely resembles you?

Which character do you wish you were like? (It can be the same as the above or it can be different.)

Which character do you think other people would associate with you?

Originally this was two questions, but I broke apart my first question into the first two above, which means I don't even have answers to all three questions yet. I will have to ponder this.

For question 2, my answer is Iroh, no question. The man isn't perfect, he makes mistakes, but he's incredibly noble and has learned from his mistakes.

Question 3 I know is Zuko, at least for those people I consider friends who have already seen the show and made it a point to tell me that they think I'm Zuko. Given how his character arc ends, I can live with that.

Exploring the Subgenre

An agent asked me at the end of last year, "Do you have any sword and sorcery?" I love sword and sorcery. Okay, I love Conan. I have extolled the greatness that is He-Man and Thundarr the Barbarian here before and they're both just rip-offs of Conan. If you say sword and sorcery, I think Robert E. Howard. I'm sure other people have written sword and sorcery. Other people than Tolkien have written epic fantasy, but unlike him, I can't tell you a single sword and sorcery author that didn't make his mark by writing pastiche Conan stories first.

And that's a problem, isn't it? Do you have any sword and sorcery? No, because I don't read sword and sorcery. I read Conan. I don't think I could write one without just telling a similar story, I said.

That's what I said, and I meant it. But dammit that agent asking for it seemed like the excuse I needed to tell the story I had been wanting to tell for so long. Fuck it. I'm going to write sword and sorcery and readers will see the influences and that's okay. Hell, John Scalzi went so far as to mention STARSHIP TROOPERS at the end of OLD MAN'S WAR (of which the ties become very obvious a third of the way into the story). I can do the same. It'll be okay.

So here we go, miss agent. I'm writing you a Conan story.

...

Wait, why is my protagonist a 20-year-old woman? How did that happen? Where's Conan? This is a Conan story. What are you doing here, lady? Oh, you want to be the main character? Okay, I guess that's fine. I don't usually write females as main characters. It's not a matter of gender, just a matter of the stories I choose to tell. Klara was supposed to be my first female main character, but that's the second book of a trilogy that isn't being published. She's like Hilary Clinton and you're like Elizabeth Warren. I've been assuming Klara was going to be first for so long that I didn't notice Amelia just walking up and saying, "This is my story."

But hey, my Conan story has turned into an Amelia story, and that's pretty cool. I think it'll be better for it. I still have a Conan-esque character (and an Ookla-esque character for that matter, if the reference makes sense to you), but they're there to further Amelia's story. Oh, and sorcery and lasers and radiation and a post-cataclysm world. Let's rock this thing.

I don't usually love a story this much this early in the draft. I hope that's a good sign.