Hey! Are you an aspiring writer / artist / creative whatever?

21. May 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , ,

If you are, you really really really need to check out this webcomic about the three jaguars.

It’s about the three main voices in every professional artist’s head, and how they bicker and play off of each other.  As someone whose been in the writing business for a few years, I can say that it’s absolutely spot on (and not just because they’re anthropomorphized jaguars).  Seriously, this webcomic needs to be like a primer for all creative types or something.

The thing I’ve learned the most by following this webcomic has to do with the marketing voice.  I’ve always had it in the back of my mind that marketing is evil.  And if you do it wrong, it really is.  But if you do it right, it’s actually pretty amazing:

…your goal in marketing is to create sustainable relationships with people who want you to succeed; in short, to seek patrons, rather than one-time customers. To do that, you can’t be focused on the money or the one-time sale. You want to inspire customer loyalty. You want people to be invested in your success. You want them to feel special … because they are.

A lot of the stuff I do, like keeping this blog, or putting Author’s Notes at the end of all my books, comes back to this idea of making meaningful connections with people.  I just never saw it as marketing.  But if marketing yourself is really about focusing on people rather than obsessing about sales, that’s totally something that I can do–something that I’m excited to do!

The character I can relate to the most is probably Business Manager.  It’s the entrepreneurial spirit I can trace back to my grandpa, who started his own oil company in West Texas and was successful enough to put all us grandkids through private school.  But Artist is definitely in there as well–it’s why I’m always jumping from project to project, driving my inner business manager crazy.

So yeah, if you’re a creative type, you’ll definitely want to check out this webcomic.  It’s written by the self-published author whose books briefly got pulled from Amazon during the Space Marine controversy (fortunately for all of us, she held out and won).  Lots of good stuff there–she really knows what she’s talking about.

In the meantime, let me leave you with this incredible piece of orchestral trance music.  It’s quite possibly the most epic thing I discovered last week.  The video is pretty good too.

Take care!

Thoughts on serials and ebook pricing

18. May 2013 · 1 comment · Categories: Novellas & Novelettes, SW I-IV: The Jeremiah Chronicles, SW-V: Dreamweaver, SW-V: Reproach, SW-VI: Benefactor · Tags: , , , , , , ,

I’m going to do something potentially dangerous and discuss pricing strategies in a rather candid way.  I may risk turning off some of my potential readers, especially the ones who don’t like shorter works, but I want to be as open and transparent as I can, since I figure it’s only fair, especially to someone who’s just getting started with my books.

First of all, let me just say that if I could, I would make all my books free and write for love instead of money.  The trouble, though, is that I have to eat, and at some point in the (hopefully) not too distant future I’m going to have to feed a wife and children as well.  If I made all my books free right now, I would have to spend all my time and energy doing something other than writing, and as a result there would be far fewer books for you to read.

In the last year, I’ve discovered that the best way to make money self-publishing is to write in series, preferably at a short enough length that you can release a new installment every other month.  A lot of other writers are discovering this, which is why there is such an explosion of series and serials.

I know a lot of readers don’t like this.  And when a writer takes a perfectly good novel and splits it arbitrarily into parts, each one without a solid arc or story structure to hold it together, I get a little bit ticked as well.  But the reality is that if you can tell a story in a series of short, self-contained novellas rather than a single novel, it will probably meet with better commercial success.

The price points for novellas are kind of tricky, though.  For anything priced below $2.99, Amazon takes 65%, whereas from $2.99 to $9.99, the self-publisher takes 70%.  To give that some perspective, you would have to sell 10x the number of copies at $.99 to earn as much on one sale of a book at $4.99, and 6x for a book at $2.99.

The trouble, of course, is that for a series where each installment is priced at $2.99, the readers may end up paying a lot more, depending on the lengths of the story arcs and the size of each installment.  Novellas are kind of in a gray area, where $.99 seems kind of cheap for that much story, but three or four installments at $2.99 really add up–especially with so many other ebooks priced at $5 or below.

Now, I’d like to believe that most readers judge the value of a story by its quality and not by its word count, or by how much they have to pay per word.  There are books like City of the Saints that I don’t mind buying in $2.99 increments at all.  At the same time, though, I think there’s something to be said about keeping prices fair.

This is all on my mind right now because I’m getting ready to release the first Star Wanderers omnibus and expand that series considerably over the next year.  It’s the series that sells best out of any of my books, and the one with the most potential to make it so that I can go full time.  Plus, I really love writing in this universe, and have a lot more stories in it to tell.

Right now, this is the pricing structure I’m following:

  1. Outworlder — free (15,000 words)
  2. Fidelity — $.99 (17,000 words)
  3. Sacrifice — $2.99 (19,000 words)
  4. Homeworld — $2.99 (20,000 words)
  5. Dreamweaver — $2.99 (19,000 words)

Parts I through IV make a complete story arc, though of course each individual novella is a self-contained story on its own.  With Part I at free and Part II at $.99, I figure readers have a good way to figure out if these are the kinds of stories that they’ll want to read.  But if I keep pricing the stories at $2.99, at some point this series is going to get really expensive.

So here’s what I plan to do to alleviate that:

1) Make new releases free to newsletter subscribers.

For every Star Wanderers story up to this point, I’ve made it free for the first two weeks on Smashwords and given that code out through my email newsletter.  I did that originally as an incentive to get people to sign up for my newsletter, but I think it’s a good series strategy as well.  This way, if someone discovers Star Wanderers now, they can buy all the previous installments at the higher $2.99 price point and look forward to receiving any future installments for free.

Some may question the business sense of giving away free books to readers who are willing to buy them, but the way I see it, the fans are the ones who are selling these books, not me.  I’m willing to put a free book in the hands of someone who already loves the series, and is more likely to write a glowing review or to share it with a friend.  And since sales of this series continue to grow, that strategy would seem to be paying off (or at the very least, it’s not biting me in the ass).

2) Try to put more story into each individual installment.

If $2.99 seems a lot for a short novella, then maybe I need to expand on them, with things like extra subplots and viewpoint characters.  Of course I don’t want the stories to feel like they’re padded, but if I can enrich the story in a way that really adds to it, then that’s certainly something that I should do.

For all of the Star Wanderers series so far, each novella is told from the point of view of just one character.  This sort of focus can be good, because it really gets me into the head of that character.  However, sometimes it’s also good to play things off of another character’s story, both to act as a foil and to provide contrast.

That’s what I’m doing with Reproach (Part VII) right now.  It’s not just from Mariya’s point of view, but Noemi’s as well, and that adds a lot to the tension as you see their competing motives and the way their views of the world really clash.  It’s delicious.  Benefactor (Part VI) is just from Jakob’s viewpoint, just because I wanted the story to really focus on his character, but most of the other stories kicking around in my head have room for at least another viewpoint character without taking away from the spirit of the series itself.

3) Price the omnibus editions less than the sum of their parts.

For someone who is just getting started with Star Wanderers, $2.99 might seem like a lot to pay to get caught up.  That’s only going to get more daunting as the series gets longer.  For that reason, I’m inclined to price the omnibus editions much lower–at least $4.95, which is the price of one of my novels.  At 70,000 words or so for Parts I-IV, that seems only fair.

I am a bit worried that sales of the individual novellas will drop off once I release the omnibus, but I figure if I’m constantly releasing new ones, those should cover the slack.  Since Dreamweaver (Part V) is already out, and Benefactor (Part VI) will be out in another month or so, new readers who come in through the omnibus will have more than enough to keep them coming back.

The other benefit of doing it this way is that it reduces the chance that readers will drop out midway through the story arc.  It seems that a few of them are doing that, or at least taking a while to get from Part II to Part III to Part IV, etc.  By having them all in one omnibus and encouraging readers to buy that instead of the individual parts, hopefully they’ll have more of a chance to get hooked, making it all the more likely that they’ll keep coming back.

So that’s my plan, at least for now.  When The Jeremiah Chronicles comes out next week, I’ll price it on parity with my other novels, even though that’s somewhat less than all the individual parts.  I’ll make all new Star Wanderers novellas free for my newsletter subscribers, and do what I can to enrich them with extra viewpoints and subplots (without just padding them, of course).  This way, I hope my readers won’t feel like I’m ripping them off, and I’ll still have a good shot of making a decent living at this.

With the way things have been going, I’m actually really excited.  The slow build approach is working, and if it keeps up then I think I may be making enough to go full-time by this time next year.  I’ll be sure to keep you posted as things come along.

In the meantime, if you have any thoughts or comments, please don’t hesitate to share.  I’m still thinking this issue through, and there’s a lot I have left to learn.  In fact, I feel like I’m only just starting to figure it out, so any other perspectives on this topic would be much appreciated!

Thoughts on making a living as a writer

05. May 2013 · 3 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , ,

As many of you know, my biggest life goal (besides obtaining a signed first-edition copy of David Gemmell’s Legend) is to make a living telling stories that I love.  Accomplishing that goal is no small task.  For the last five years, I’ve been focused on that goal like a hellfire missile, and as of right now it continues to elude me.

I’m getting closer, though.  I’ve got 14 ebooks out, hopefully 18 by the end of the summer, and they’re actually selling.  I won’t go too much into specifics, but my gross income is about 30% to 40% of what I’d need to cover all my expenses without another job.

Granted, I’m a young single guy with good health and no dependents, living on a shoestring budget in the cheapest housing in one of the cheapest states in the US, but that’s not an insignificant accomplishment.

Right now, I’m reinvesting all of that into the business, in order to boost sales and to avoid self-employment tax.  But if I have a difficult month and need something to fall back on, my books are generating a fair amount of passive income, and that income is growing.  If I keep doing what I’m doing, and things stay on more or less the same trajectory, I expect that I’ll be making enough to support myself in one or two years.

That’s actually a little better than the timetable I set a year ago, where I determined to go full-time by 2016.  Then again, I also set a goal to be married by then, and I have no idea how that will change things.  I suppose my spouse’s income would be able to supplement my own, but then there’s insurance and taxes and all sorts of other expenses that I can expect to go way up.

(At the same time, I have this wild dream of running off with my wife to some remote part of the world and spending a couple of years on some crazy-insane adventure, like trekking across Mongolia, or joining a Bedouin tribe, or couchsurfing across Europe.  The world is a very different place outside of the US, and the cost of living in much of the world is significantly lower.  Especially in the developing world, people know how to make do and be happy with much, much less.)

Even if I suffer a major setback, like an irreversible drop in sales or a technological shift that made my current business model obsolete, making a living is no longer a pie-in-the-sky sort of dream.  It’s within reach, and I think I have a pretty good idea how I’ll get there.

First of all, it’s probably not going to be a sudden, earth-shaking event.  It’s much more likely that I’ll ease into it gradually, first as a fallback for months when work is slow, and then as a way to pay off my bills while I keep a part-time job for spending money.  One day, I’ll wake up and realize that it’s been five or six weeks since I’ve done anything but write, and then I’ll open up my budget and realize that I’ve arrived.

As I get married and start a family, my expenses will no doubt rise, and I or my wife may have to take another job for a while to make ends meet.  Then again, if book sales continue to snowball with each new release, then we might be able to time it so that the kids start arriving just as the writing income really starts to take off.  Even then, book sales fluctuate so much from month to month that until we have a significant amount of money in savings, we’re always going to feel like we’re a couple of weeks away from having to find another job.

And then, with the writing bringing in a comfortable six-figure income, we might finally be able to afford a house.  It’s almost impossible to get a mortgage as a self-employed freelancer, so I fully expect to pay for most of the house up front.  Good thing I don’t want to live in a city.

Of course, it’s also possible that the writing will never bring in a six-figure income.  Science fiction is a relatively small genre, and the only stories I really care to tell are the ones that take place on other worlds.  But that’s okay–as long as I’m able to support myself and my family, I’ll be happy.  Anything above that, and it’s not about the money.  In fact, it’s really not about the money right now.

The point of all this is that I don’t expect there to be a moment where I’ve suddenly “arrived.” If anything, it’s just going to be a continuation of what I’m doing right now, scaled up to meet life’s changing demands.

And you know what?  I’m okay with that.

My resume might look a bit checkered, and job interviewers may raise their eyebrows when they see that I’m a college graduate, but these odd jobs give me a lot more flexibility than a stable “day job” with insurance and all that.  I like being able to take a week or two off to do nothing but write, even if the off-time is unintentional on my part.  I know how to be flexible, and I’m quite comfortable living a lifestyle where I don’t know where I’ll be getting my next paycheck.

And to friends and family who are concerned because I’m almost thirty and don’t have a full-time job … don’t be.  I’m following my dream, and my dream is within reach.  Everything else is just a stepping stone.  I have a career, I’ve taken full responsibility for it, and I’ve turned it into something profitable.  If making a living as a writer is a bit like making grizzly bear soup, I’ve already killed the bear.

In related news, I learned this week that I’ve been pirated in Japan.  I’m not sure whether to be flattered or alarmed, but since my books are 1) available from multiple retailers 2) relatively inexpensive, and 3) DRM-free (on all the sites that allow it, anyway), I’m not too concerned about it cutting into my income.  I am worried about people downloading my books from an unsafe site that might give them a virus or something, but people will be people and there’s not much I can do about that.

If anything, it’s just another sign that I’ve arrived–or rather, that I’m exactly where I’ve wanted to be all along, and it’s just a matter of making things work.

1000 posts and counting

24. March 2013 · 4 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , ,
1000dollars

Not quite the same, but we’ll run with it anyway.

According to my WordPress dashboard, this is the 1,000th post on this blog.  I was going to hold off and do something big and momentous for the occasion, but then I figured it would be better to do a quick footnote and get on with the regular program.

Nine hundred ninety nine blog posts ago, I was a college student at BYU who had just decided to write my first novel instead of a massive Final Fantasy VI fanfic.  The year was 2007, I had a bunch of unfinished novels and stories left over from high school, but I’d never actually finished anything.  I started this blog so that my writing friends could keep me honest.

If I could have seen myself now, I probably would have thought that I’m crazy (I think I got those verb tenses right…).  Back in 2007, writing was still a hobby.  I had dreams of turning it into something a little bit more, but I never intended to try and make it my full time career–though if you’d asked me what I wanted to do for a career, I couldn’t have given you an answer.

A thousand blog posts from now, where will I be?  Married, probably, with a couple of kids (or at least one on the way).  Hopefully by then, I’ll have turned this writing dream into a full time career–heck, I’m not all that far from making it happen right now.

The 2013 me hopes that I’ll be living somewhere exotic, having an extended overseas adventure with my lovely wife.  But the truth is that I’ll probably be settled down somewhere, trying to pay off a house and raise a family the responsible way.  If that’s the case, I’ll probably look back on my 2013 self and think he’s crazy.

But hey, who knows what the future will bring?

One thing that’s almost certainly true is that I’ll still be blogging.  I don’t just blog to promote my books, or to build my “platform” (oh how I hate that word), or anything slimy like that.  I’ve been blogging since before I decided to turn this writing thing into a career, and I keep on doing it because I love doing it.  Because really, how in the heck can you get to a thousand of anything without loving it?

On that note, I should add that I’ve signed up for the Blogging from A to Z Challenge for the month of April.  Every day (except Sundays), I’ll do a post that starts with a different letter of the alphabet, starting at A and going down to Z.  My theme is going to be things I love about science fiction and fantasy, and it’s going to include a number of common tropes.  It’s going to be fun!

So yeah, here’s to the first thousand posts on this blog.  It certainly won’t be the last! :)

If you’re thinking of self publishing, read this. All of it.

16. July 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I just read a fascinating Q&A on Reddit with Hugh Howey, author of the self-published phenomenon Wool.  After six trancelike hours reading through all the comments, all I can say is “wow.”

Okay, I guess I can say a little more.  Yesterday, I listened to Brandon Sanderson’s lecture on self-publishing from his English 318 class this year.  While I agree with much of what he says, a lot of it is already out of date.  Probably the biggest thing is whether it’s still advantageous for indies to go with a traditional publisher after making a name for themselves.  In 2011, Amanda Hocking had some good reasons for going traditional.  In 2012, Hugh Howey has some very good reasons not to.

The other big thing, though, is this idea of author platform–that to be a successful indie, you have to find some way to drive large numbers of people to your books.  Well, not necessarily.  Hugh Howey was a nobody for three years, and the title that finally pushed him over the tipping point was the one he promoted the least.  To me, that shows:

  1. current sales are not a predictor of future sales, and
  2. a great book will grow into its audience independent of its author.

Granted, there may be a threshold that needs to be crossed before word-of-mouth really starts to kick in, but if a nobody with passable cover art and no author platform can cross it, that threshold isn’t very high–and that’s good news for all of us.

The way I see it, there are three big myths that writers struggle with in making the shift from traditional to indie publishing:

1) The flood of crap books will keep you from getting noticed

This grows out of the paradigm of limited shelf space–that the best way to get noticed is to have your book occupy more space relative to all the other books on the shelf.  This might be true in the brick and mortar world, but the rules are much different in the digital realm.

Think about it: how many new blogs are launched every single day?  Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands.  And yet people still find the good content amid the sea of crap.  On Youtube, an average of one hour of video content is uploaded every single second.  And yet there are still entertainers making a lot of money through their Youtube channels.

The rules in the digital realm are completely different from everything in the physical world.  Figuring that out requires a huge paradigm shift, one that even indie writers struggle with.

2) Publishing a book is an event that must be promoted

This grows out of the paradigm of velocity, or as Kris Rusch puts it, the “produce model” of publishing:

Every month publishing comes out with brand new product. Shelf space is limited in every single brick-and-mortar bookstore.  Big Publishing makes the bulk of its money during the first few months of a book’s existence.  So if a book sits on a bookstore’s shelf until the book sells and that sale takes six months to a  year, the bookstore and the publisher lose money.

Better to dump the old inventory on a monthly basis—for full credit for unsold items—than it is to have the inventory sit on the shelves and grow “stale.”

Of course, the flaw in this logic is that digital shelf space is unlimited, therefore books do not “spoil.” No matter how much time passes, an ebook can still be found in the same place.

Therefore, does it really make sense to make a big deal over an indie book release?  Maybe to jump start some word-of-mouth, but it’s not like your career is going to be harmed if you do nothing.  In fact, it might be better to hold off until you have a few more titles up, so that when you give the first one that push, readers will have something else to read once they’ve finished it.

3) To succeed you need to find a way to “break in”

This grows out of the gatekeeper paradigm, where the system is closed and the few entry points are guarded by a select group of taste makers whose job is to bestow legitimacy on those who meet the qualifications to get in.  It’s the concept of patronage, where success comes from being chosen by a wealthy benefactor, and it’s connected with the idea that you haven’t truly “arrived” until <fill in the blank>.

The flaw with this paradigm, of course, is that publishing is no longer a closed system.  The gates haven’t just been flung open, the walls themselves have been torn down.  The job of the taste makers is no longer to protect readers from the dross, but to lead them to the gems–which is honestly much closer to what it should have been in the first place.

So what does this mean for creators?  It means that there’s no longer a system to break into.  You don’t need to write better than everyone else, you just need to find (and keep) your 1,000 true fans.  Success isn’t bestowed upon you by some higher authority, it’s something that you discover on your own as you hone your craft and build your business.

Honestly, this is one that I still have a lot of trouble with.  When I left to teach English in Georgia, in the back of my mind I had this vague notion that I was going into a self-imposed exile, and wouldn’t come back or settle down until I’d “broken in.” Of course, this made me quite discouraged, because it felt like things were out of my control–or worse, that I’d somehow failed.

But listening to Brandon’s lecture and reading Howey’s Q&A session helped me to remember that it’s all still in my control.  I don’t need a benefactor, I just need a good plan, if that makes any sense.  So right now, I’m thinking things through and making the necessary revisions to that plan.  There probably won’t be any big ones–I still think I’m more or less on the right track–but it will be good to update my paradigm.

By the way, the title of this post applies to the Q&A with Hugh Howey, not to the post itself.  Though if you are thinking of self publishing, I hope it’s helped out in some way.

Also, I just finished part I of Wool, and it deserves every bit of praise that it’s got.  Expect to see a review of the omnibus shortly.

No more word counts and other paradigm shifts

11. July 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Novels, Stars of Blood and Glory · Tags: , , , , , , , ,

This August, it will be five years since I decided to start writing on a professional level.  A lot of things have changed since then, and in some ways they’re changing even faster now.

For example, in May 2009 I started a spreadsheet to keep track of my daily word counts.  I’ve been keeping it diligently ever since then, with graphs and everything.  But just recently, I’ve decided to stop doing that.  Word count is a very shallow indicator of progress: it only measures quantity, and often leads to unnecessary angst or diverts attention from more important things.

Instead, I’m going to focus more on deadlines and work to develop some other, better indicators.  Number of books published per year is probably a key one, as well as number of manuscripts finished.  But deadlines are probably going to be the most important drivers from here on out: publishing deadlines as well as writing deadlines.

Another thing that’s shifting is my revision process.  I know that a lot of beginning writers hate Heinlein’s rules, but almost all the long-term professionals swear by them–especially the ones with careers that I would like to emulate.  This makes me think that I need to scale back on the revisions and develop more trust in my creative voice.

Just as a point of reference, Heinlein’s rules are:

  1. You must write.
  2. You must finish what you write.
  3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
  4. You must put the work on the market.
  5. You must keep the work on the market until it has sold.

I’m currently on the second draft of Stars of Blood and Glory, and what I’ve found so far is that the overall story is actually pretty good.  Some of the scenes are a little out of order, and some of the plot-lines are missing elements that need to be added in, but aside from a few chapters where I got lost for a couple of pages, not a lot needs to be changed.

Of course, I could spend a draft or two tweaking every other sentence, tossing out most of what I wrote in the heat of my creative passion–but would that really make the story any better?  I recently had Kindal’s writing group critique my first chapter–the one that I revised pretty heavily in April–and they found all sorts of problems that weren’t in the original draft, as I wrote it back in December.

Don’t get me wrong–I do think there is an important place for revision.  But I think it’s best epitomized by Tracy Hickman in this episode of Writing Excuses:

We write from the heat of our passion, but we edit to see the fire through the smoke.

And even Tracy only does three drafts.

The other thing that’s changing is how I look at alpha reading.  I used to have different tiers of alpha and beta readers–most of whom were writers in other genres, and not really fans of  science fiction.  I asked them to give me as much feedback as they could, and bugged them for weeks or months at a time asking if they’d read my story.  I then compiled all their line-by-line comments into one giant master-file, which I kept open on the left side of my screen as I made the changes to my manuscript on the right.

Well, I’ve started to realize that there’s a huge difference between reading for criticism and reading for enjoyment.  Because of that, a lot of the things my alpha and beta readers pointed out were things that most regular readers probably wouldn’t have noticed.  Towards the end, I started to get wise on this, and only followed about a third of the criticism that I received.

Don’t get me wrong–I do appreciate the feedback.  A lot of it helped me to see and fix problems that I’d otherwise missed.  But a lot of it came out in casual conversations with my readers after they’d finished the story–not in the line-by-line comments on the original draft.

For those reasons, I think I’m going to change the way I ask for feedback.  Instead of alpha and beta readers, I’m going to go with a handful of “test readers”–readers who enjoy the kind of science fiction I like to write, but who may or may not be writers themselves.  Instead of asking for a detailed, line-by-line critique, I’m going to ask them three things:

  1. Did you enjoy the story?
  2. If you stopped reading it, where did you stop?
  3. Did you enjoy it enough to pay for it?

I’ll ask them to give it three chances, and if they still can’t finish, that’s okay–just let me know where the hangups were.  And if they do finish it, I might have some questions for them–but then again, I might not.  It all depends on the story.

Compared to where I was when I started out–or even where I was three months ago–those are some pretty huge paradigm shifts.  I have no idea how it’s going to turn out.  I’ve grown a lot as a writer recently, and I hope that this is moving me in the right direction, but I won’t really know until I’ve tried it out for a while.

In any case, this post is long enough.  I’d better get back to writing.

What’s your backup?

16. April 2012 · Write a comment · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , , ,

...have you?

So I just got back from Easter vacation in Turkey, at Trabzon and Lake Uzungöl.  It was pretty awesome–I’ll definitely be blogging about it in the next couple of days!  First, though, I wanted to share something interesting that happened on the way back.

While I was hanging out in Batumi with some other TLG volunteers eating Adjarian khatchapuri (an experience in itself), we got to talking about what we’re going to do with our lives after we get back to the States.  Most of them didn’t really want to think about it, which surprised me, so I asked why.

They told me they didn’t want to have to figure out the rest of their lives–that coming out to Georgia to teach English was a way of putting off those major life decisions.  Fair enough.  They then asked me if I’ve figured it out.   I said yes: that I want to be a full-time writer, and that I’m out here to see the world and get some cultural experience as I try to make that dream a reality.

One of the girls then asked what my backup was if that didn’t work out.  To be honest, I had no idea what to say.  My plan at this point is to just keep teaching and traveling until the dream becomes a reality.  Am I confident that it will?  Eventually, yeah–as long as I keep writing, which I certainly will.

I thought about it a bit on the way back, and realized that my mindset has shifted tremendously in the past few years.  When I was back in college, and to some extent for the first year after I graduated, I used to worry a lot about my “backup plan.” It was a way of addressing the fear of failure, of creating an illusion of safety by having a “fallback.”

I’m sure there are careers where that’s a good idea.  Generally, those are careers with definite paths, where if you don’t pass a certain number of checkpoints, you’re basically screwed.  With writing, though, there is no set path that everybody follows–especially now with ebooks and epublishing.  Because of this, it’s impossible to really fail–either you keep on trying until you make it, or for one reason or another you give up.

Ever since I graduated in 2010, I’ve been structuring my life in such a way that I can continue to pursue my writing.  Every job I’ve taken has just been a stepping stone, a bridge to allow me to keep pursuing this dream.  Have I made it yet?  No, but I haven’t given up yet either, so I haven’t had to fall back on my backup–whatever that would mean at this point.

From the outside, it probably looks like I’m being hopelessly responsible–that, or willfully oblivious to a hundred things I should be worried sick about.  However, I’m actually quite confident that I’m on the right path and things will work out–and that surprises me.  It’s like that moment when you realize you’re actually swimming, not just kicking and thrashing about the pool.

Worst case scenario, I fall head over heels in love with an awesome, wonderful girl, and after a few heady months filled with blissful romance, I wake up one morning and realize that I’m married.  If that happens, I might have to put my writing on hold for a while until I get things sorted out so that I can support both myself and my wife–but then again, with her help, I might be able to do twice as much, or even more.  Perhaps that will help my writing career even more than trying to go it alone.

So really, there is no back up plan or worst case scenario–just the future.  And as Georgians are so fond of saying, “no one can know what will happen in future.”

What a relief.

Staying in Georgia

31. March 2012 · 3 comments · Categories: Uncategorized · Tags: , , , , , , , ,

So I’ve decided to stay here in Georgia for another semester.  Things are working out really well, I enjoy teaching English, and for the full experience I think it will be better to stay for a full year.

I’m not sure if I’ll stay in Kutaisi yet, though.  It’s a convenient place to live, but I have upwards of 30 kids in my classes, which can be a real challenge.  I’d kind of like to spend the next semester in a village or small town, where I can know all the kids by name.  Then again, I really like it here in Kutaisi, and I’m doing so much where I am that I’d kind of like to stay, just to see how things turn out.

Currently, I’m teaching grades 1-6, 9-10, and 12.  It sounds like a lot, but I’ve got great co-teachers who help out a ton.  I teach 18 class periods per week, which is enough to keep me busy but not so much that I feel overwhelmed.  My favorite grade to teach is probably 4th or 5th, where the kids know enough to surprise you but don’t have all the issues that come with teenagers.  There are different things I enjoy about each grade, though, so it’s good to have a mix.

The second semester doesn’t start until September, so that’ll give me a few months off to do whatever I like.  My current plan is to come home and work on getting print editions of my books out.  TLG will pay for my flight out and back, and my parents will let me stay at their place over the summer, so I think things will work out quite well.

As for what to do in December once this tour is finished–that’s an entirely different question.  I could probably leverage my experience here in Georgia to get a much higher paying job in Asia or the Persian Gulf, but all I’m really looking for is a job situation to tide me over until my writing career takes off.  That, and an awesome cultural experience.

What I’d REALLY like to do is find some remote desert village in the Middle East, where the locals will pay for room and board, my book royalties will pay the rest, the cultural experience will give me a chance to practice my Arabic, and my teaching skills will make a real difference in the local community.

Towards that end, I found this site called Workaway.  A friend of mine used it to get a short-term job in a Bedouin camp in Wadi Rum, and there are TONS of other opportunities listed just like it.  I freaked out a little when I saw it, because it looks AWESOME.  When I was in Jordan, I used to fantasize about spending some time in the desert with the Bedouin, so getting the chance to actually do that would be amazing!

TLG will pay for my flight home at the end of the second semester, but I can opt to go anywhere else, so long as the ticket price isn’t any more than Tbilisi to JFK.  Since this is the year my sister’s get together with their in-laws for Christmas, it might be better to go straight from Georgia to my next job at the end of December.

I was thinking about it as I walked around my neighborhood earlier today, and it made me wonder: why did I wait so long?  There are so many awesome opportunities overseas–if you don’t have any debt or anyone you need to support, you could spend years hopping from one random adventure to the next.  I could spend years doing that.  And with epublishing, all I really need is my netbook and periodic internet access to put up new books as I write them–everything else more or less takes care of itself.  It’s fantastic.

In any case, that’s the plan for now.  I’m taking the night train to Tbilisi tonight, so I’d better go get ready for that.  See you around!

« Older articles