Category: Uncategorized

Short Blitz #6: A Hill On Which To Die

Title: A Hill On Which To Die
Genre: Epic Fantasy
Word Count: Word Count: 15,000
Writing Time: About a month

IT IS FINISHED.

Ugh, this story took forever. What started as a short story soon turned into a novelette, and then that novelette got longer and longer … and then life got crazy busy, and I suddenly had a lot less time to write. And then all these weird writerly anxieties started taking over, and I found myself procrastinating during what little writing time I had …

In any case, it is finished now. IT IS FINISHED! And even though it needs a revision, and a couple of scenes need to be changed or rewritten entirely, I can take care of all that tomorrow.

Anyways, this story is about a band of orcs that leaves their clan to start a new one. The main character is an old veteran war chief who has lived beyond his prime and fully expects to die. There’s blood, carnage, rape, and all sorts of violence. There’s also courage, loyalty, hope, sacrifice, and devotion to a higher cause. It’s a bit like Watership Down, except with orcs instead of rabbits.

In spite of all the trouble this story gave me, I had a lot of fun with it. I’d like to self-publish it, but first I suppose I should send it off to the relevant markets. According to my spreadsheet, there are only five pro-markets that take stories over 15,000 words:

  • Writers of the Future
  • Asimov’s
  • Fantasy & Science Fiction
  • Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show
  • Tor.com

Leading Edge is a semi-pro market that takes stories up to 15,000 words, but I know for a fact that the content in this one is not BYU appropriate. It’s a lot darker than I usually write, with some sexual violence that almost certainly needs a trigger warning if/when I self-publish.

But even though it depicts a lot of violence, I don’t think it crosses the line into glorifying it. Certainly not the sexual violence, which even the main character admits is wrong. And it’s not like the women are in there just to get raped, either–there’s actually a band of female orc warriors who beat the male orcs at their own game.

In any case, with only five markets that I know of that accept stories of this kind, I figure it won’t be too long before this story returns to me and I can self-publish it for you all to read. If any of you know of any other markets to send this place, let me know!

Why I couldn’t finish Gone with the Wind

For the past month or so, I’ve been on a Civil War kick. I watched the movie Gettysburg to celebrate July 4th, read Gods and Generals, wrote a short story about a time traveler at Gettysburg, and have been listening to a lot of Civil War music as I write. One of the books I decided to give a shot was Gone With the Wind, that classic American novel that’s tied so closely with the Civil War.

It’s definitely a good book. There were parts of it that I really enjoyed, such as the perspective of the people of Atlanta as Sherman’s troops got steadily closer. The poverty of the plantation owners after Sherman’s march to the sea provided a stark contrast to the pompous gaiety of society before the war. You definitely get a sense of what it means to be Southern while reading the book–it’s surprising how similar some things are to the way they were. And just in general, the sheer sense of immersion that the novel gives you is just incredible. It’s rare that I’m sucked into a world as thoroughly as I was sucked into the quiet charm of the antebellum South and the frenzied optimism of Confederate Georgia.

The real shock to me was that I could enjoy the book even as I hated the main characters. Scarlett is a bitchy, stuck-up brat–an entitled rich white girl who cannot comprehend that the world does not revolve around her. Rhett Butler isn’t nearly as stuck-up as she is, but he is an arrogant jerk who sneers at other people, profits from their misfortune, and hides his cowardice with his biting cynicism.

The fact that I enjoyed reading about them even though I disliked them so much is a testament to the fact that not every character needs to be likable. Even thought Scarlett really peeved me off, I still found her fascinating because I felt like I really understood her. Margaret Mitchell does an excellent job of getting you into her characters’ heads and showing where they come from. In some ways, I felt that I understood Scarlett better than she understood herself.

But I have to be honest–from page one, I was only interested in Scarlett for the schadenfreude. I already knew how the story ends, with those classic lines “frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn,” and “tomorrow is another day.” If I’d been waiting instead for Scarlett to experience a growth arc (and she really does start in an excellent place for one), I probably would have thrown the book across the room much sooner.

The part that made me stop reading–and yes, this will spoil the book–was the part where Scarlett steals Frank Kennedy, her sister’s fiance, in order to get the money to save Tara. She’s so singly focused on saving the plantation (Tara) that she’s willing to backstab her own family, who ought to matter a lot more to her than a house and a spot of land. Yes, I understand that it was entirely in her character to do that, but when she actually betrayed her sister like that, I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I skipped to the last chapter, had my juicy moment of schadenfreude, and returned the book to the library.

I had a lot more sympathy for everyone who locked horns with Scarlett (except for Rhett) than I ever did for Scarlett herself. The O’Hara overseer who gets fired in the first or second chapter for making the poor Slattery girl pregnant–I didn’t think it was noble for him to try and steal Tara through his postwar connections, but I could see why he’d do it. He probably didn’t feel like he could marry the Slattery girl because the O’Hara’s weren’t paying him enough. Even if they were, the fact that he married her showed that at least he was trying to set things right. And though I didn’t admire the way he went about trying to get his revenge, a part of me wanted him to succeed.

My favorite character was probably Melanie. As soon as she showed up on the page, I liked her, and as the story progressed, I came to actively admire her. Ashley, too, was a very interesting character to me–his thoughts on the war and on the passing of the old way of life were fascinating. But I could never really respect him, because it was always so easy for Scarlett to manipulate him.

And even though Rhett wasn’t so prone to Scarlett’s machinations, I still couldn’t respect him because he was always such an ass to everyone. It’s not that he wasn’t a gentleman–there were plenty of gentlemen in the book who were jerks, and plenty of men who weren’t gentlemen who were still good people. The thing was, Rhett was just never a good person to anyone except Melanie, and throughout the book, that never changed.

I guess the takeaway here is that it’s almost impossible to have any sympathy for a character who treats their friends and family like garbage. For me, at least, if a character constantly betrays the people who are closest to them, I really want nothing to do with them. But I guess that’s just me–judging from the success of Gone With the Wind, I guess I can’t generalize that at all.

I don’t know. What do you guys think?

Why I quit Facebook

quit-facebookLast month, I made the decision to quit Facebook. Permanently. As in, the Facebook account that I created eight years ago as a college freshman no longer exists, unless Facebook continues to store and monetize data from its ex-users long after they’ve quit the service. Which wouldn’t surprise me at all, since Facebook is in the data business, which makes its users its product, not its consumer. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’ve thought about quitting Facebook for some time. Some of the reasons that have moved me in that direction have been that it’s a waste of time, that it’s the high fructose corn syrup of the internet, that it violates my privacy in creepy ways, that it cheapens my interactions with my friends … the list goes on. However, these reasons alone were never enough to convince me to quit. They got me to scale back my usage and cull my friends list, but never delete my profile outright.

Last month, though, Facebook revealed a new ad program where it downloads its users’ browser histories. With this program, Facebook now collects data straight from your browser–data from your internet activity outside of Facebook’s service–and sells that along with the personal data that you share on their site.

Facebook has always had major privacy issues, with the FTC stepping in in 2010 to force them to change their policies. However, until now, the argument was always that if you didn’t want your personal information to be shared, you shouldn’t put it on Facebook. Now, however, Facebook is collecting information that you don’t share with Facebook–information that they gather straight from your computer–without any reliable way to opt-out.

Facebook claims that this program is mainly for advertisers, but what’s to stop them from sharing this data with the NSA? With the Snowden revelations, we already know that there are entities within the US government that are working to create a surveillance state. Facebook is already practically in bed with these people, who have gathered personal information about Facebook users in the past. And since Facebook already has a dismal history of abusing privacy rights, changing its TOS without notice, and undermining its user privacy settings with unannounced updates, I fully expect them to gather that information and share it whether I want them to or not.

This may not be a huge change from the way Facebook used to do business, but it was a huge wake-up call for me. Since I’m not a huge fan of Facebook to begin with, this was the final straw that pushed me away.

I joined Facebook in 2006 when I was 21. I was just getting ready to head out to college, and at that point only college kids were on the site. It was a cool new thing and seemed like a great way to make and keep in touch with friends. Since I was moving away from home and starting a new phase of life, that was important to me.

My first year, I searched out and friended all of the people in my freshman ward at BYU and posted tons of pictures and other updates. It made me feel like I was very close to them! But the next year, I moved and made a new group of friends, and stayed in touch with only one of them. All those other friends just gradually drifted off into other things.

I posted a few more pictures, but mostly just profile pictures because anything else didn’t seem like it was worth the work. Facebook added groups, and I joined a bunch of silly ones just for laughs, but not any serious ones. Friends kept inviting me out to events, and my default answer was “maybe” because it didn’t make me look like as much of a jerk when I just didn’t want to go.

Then I got into a huge political debate with an old friend from high school, and it got insanely ugly. It was weird, because we always seemed to get along so well in person, but online we were just slugging it out at each other. It was very strange. I tried to get him to agree to disagree, but by this point his friends were posting to his wall and goading him on, so he refused. Then he attacked my religion, and the only way I could end the debate was to block him. I haven’t seen or talked with him since.

Facebook changed a lot over the next few years. The biggest change was probably the newsfeed, which replaced the wall. At first, I thought it was a great idea, because I could get all the updates on my friends in one place. Then the feed got swamped with updates from all the friends I’d added over the years. Most of them were people I’d drifted away from–people I’d seen a lot for a semester or two, but hadn’t bothered to keep the friendship up after we’d moved on.

Facebook became a fire-hose, and it started to eat up a disturbing amount of my time. I stayed away from all the obvious distractions, like Farmville and those other games, but it wasn’t enough. The information was just too dense, and though it gave me the illusion that I was staying close to my friends, in reality my interactions weren’t that meaningful.

Facebook developed algorithms to filter the newsfeed, but all that really did was make me use the site more. It didn’t help me to keep in touch with the people who mattered the most to me, since those weren’t the people who were posting the most. Instead, it resurrected a bunch of friendships that had long since faded in the real world and turned them into these weird zombified online relationships where we shared stupid memes, argued politics, and discussed random articles–all without ever seeing each other in person.

By the time I went overseas to teach English, Facebook had become a huge timesuck, and I wanted to break free of it. The first semester, I lived in a large town where I had constant internet access. The center of social life for us expats was a Facebook group called “Georgian Wanderers.” It felt good in some ways to be part of a community where people actually spoke English, but there was a lot of drama and ugliness in that group too. In my second semester, I lived in a tiny village where internet access was spotty, and I didn’t miss much while I was out there.

In fact, living without regular internet access was exactly what I needed. It gave me the chance to step back from my life and see how it had become cluttered. Before going back to the States, I decided to clean things up so as to keep myself from falling into the same rut. A major part of that online decluttering was to go through my 700+ friends list and delete all the people I didn’t want to stay in face-to-face contact with.

I cannot tell you how refreshing that was. At first, it felt like cutting off an arm or something, since I’d been “friends” with these people for so long and how was I going to keep in touch with them? But then, I realized that I didn’t really want to keep in touch with most of them, and besides, dropping them from my friends list wasn’t like disowning them in real life. We could still get in touch with each other in real life and strike up those friendships again.

My newsfeed was decluttered and those zombie friendships had (mostly) been neutralized, but even after all that, it didn’t seem like enough. I just wasn’t getting what I wanted out of Facebook. Every once and a while, I’d have a genuine exchange with someone, but most of the time it was just memes and random articles. I found myself slipping back into useless distractions and frustrating political debates, punctuated only occasionally by major life events from people I cared about.

Over the next year (2013), I found myself using Facebook less and less. Then the Snowden revelations came out, and Facebook seemed creepier and creepier. I’d learned from Douglas Rushkoff that Facebook’s business depended on milking its users for data, and the fact that the government was so intent on the mass collection of data profoundly disturbed me. From then, I suppose it was only a matter of time before Facebook crossed a line where I wasn’t willing to go.

Here’s the thing about Facebook: when you’re using it, it doesn’t feel like a network or a service. It feels like it’s an integral component of your closest friendships. Phrases like “Facebook official” and “pics or it didn’t happen” evince this. We become so entrenched in Facebook that permanently quitting it feels like betraying our friends.

But Facebook’s business doesn’t depend on strengthening our friendships, it depends on monetizing them–on collecting and extracting data to sell to the highest bidder. And since there’s nothing that most of us wouldn’t do for our friends, we grin and bear whatever terms Facebook feels like offering us. We tolerate the most egregious violations of our privacy because we want to keep our friendships, even as the quality of our interactions gets worse and worse.

Not only does this give Facebook incredible license to take liberty with our personal data, it gives them the power to shape and mold our interactions with each other. Just after I deleted my Facebook account, news came out that sociologists had engaged in a massive experiment to see if they could manipulate the mood of its users. The experiment confirmed that yes, Facebook most certainly can manipulate the emotional state of its users. Does this also mean that they can manipulate friendships? That over time, they can make you draw closer to some people and further from others? I’d be willing to bet that they can.

Instead of merely reflecting our relationships, giving an online dimension to friendships that exist in real life, Facebook is increasingly manipulating and constructing them. This in turn makes us more dependent on Facebook as a medium of social exchange. And the tighter we latch on to the network, the more they milk us for everything they can get.

The fundamental problem with Facebook is a misalignment of incentives. In order to make money, Facebook either has to get really creepy about the data it collects and what it does about it, or it has to control what we see on the site in order to create an artificial scarcity. Because it’s a publicly traded company now, it has to do both, because Wall Street is pressuring them to make more money.

When I was a user of Facebook, I felt like I was constantly being used. But now that I’ve quit, it feels much better. I haven’t noticed any sort of deterioration in my friendships, and I’m keeping in touch with my more distant friends just fine. Because that’s the thing about a truly close friendship: it doesn’t matter how much time goes by or how much distance comes between you–when you finally meet up again, it’s like you were never apart at all.

I don’t need Facebook to help me maintain my friendships, and I certainly don’t need it to help me make new ones. It’s one way to keep in touch, sure, but at this point, the benefits just aren’t worth the costs. And so, after eight years of being on Facebook, I deleted my profile and left for good. I doubt I’ll regret it.

Short Blitz #5: The Gettysburg Paradox

Title: The Gettysburg Paradox
Genre: Science Fiction
Word Count: 3,650
Writing Time: about 1 week

Ever since I read The Killer Angels, I’ve been something of a Civil War geek. For July 4th this year, I rewatched Gettysburg and read Gods and Generals. I’m also reading Gone with the Wind right now, and plan to read The Last Full Measure after that. Needless to say, the Civil War has been on my mind.

The basic premise of this story is that a time tourist at the Battle of Gettysburg discovers that most of the combatants are time travelers–that the battle is actually a clash of competing timelines and futures. Appalled, he runs out onto the field in the midst of Pickett’s Charge shouting “We’re all time travelers!” but no one pays him any heed. They don’t find it disturbing at all that the battle–indeed, the entire war–may be a fabrication from time travelers desperate to change their future.

This was a fun one. The idea came to me a few months ago, though I didn’t associate it with Gettysburg until just a few weeks ago. Originally, I thought I’d have someone from the far future come back to a battle in the near future, since that would be easier to write. But I’m glad I decided to go with a real historical battle, because that makes it a lot more interesting.

Here’s a passage that I’m particularly proud of:

It was madness–sheer madness. Soldiers from the future fighting a battle in the past. And did Gettysburg even belong to the nineteenth century anymore? Had it ever? States’ rights and the Union, secession and the constitution, slavery and equality, freedom and independence, the clash of American civilizations and the baptism by fire of democracy and the modern world. Never before and perhaps never since would so much of the future hang on so brief a moment in history. And so, here they were, men of the twenty-second and twenty-third centuries disguised as natives of the nineteenth to give their lives for the future they had never had. How much of it was even real anymore? How much of it was meddling from so many broken timelines? And what if the war itself was merely a fabrication to bring about this great and terrible day?

I wrote this story in three days over the course of about a week. At first, it seemed daunting, considering all the historical details that I wanted to get right. Fortunate, Gettysburg is right up my alley, and I had a lot less trouble with it than I’d thought I would. The rough draft came in at about 4,000 words, so I gave it a quick revision and cut 10% to make it closer to 3,600.

It feels good to write a short story for a change. I’m particularly satisfied with this one and would love to see it in a magazine. The plan for now is to keep it on submission until it finds a home. Then, when it does, I’ll self-publish.

On to the next one!

A Letter to Mr. Bezos

Mr. Bezos,

I know you’re a busy man, so if it’s true that you read all the emails directed to this account, I’ll keep it brief.

I recently read an open letter written by Douglas Preston that encourages readers and writers to email you to let you know what they think about the hardball negotiating tactics in the contract dispute between Amazon and Hachette Book Group. I am an author who has published more than 20 books via Kindle Direct Publishing and is now making a living thanks to the ability that your company has given me to put my books in front of readers.

I think that you, Mr. Bezos, have done more to “defend literature” and advance books and reading than all of the Big 5 publishers combined. The big publishers are middlemen whose existence depends on inserting themselves between readers and writers and extracting as much value from them as they can. They are parasites who would rather treat authors like indentured servants and hold them as collateral than treat them as valued business partners.

For all of our sakes, I hope that you squeeze the bastards at Hachette until they beg you for mercy. The fact that Hachette is using their authors as hostages should not stop you from sticking to your guns. You are taking power from the monopolistic big publishers and putting it back into the hands of readers and writers everywhere, and we–the little guys–can see that clearly.

Stick to your guns, Mr. Bezos! Make the bastards squeal!

Joe

On Amazon, Hachette, and the future of books

I sincerely believe that this is the best time in the history of this planet to be a reader. There are so many great books coming out now–so many new authors who are writing stuff that is new and different and exciting. Because of the internet, it’s so much easier to find the book that you’re looking for. All the old barriers to distribution are coming down, so that authors from Australia or India or Japan are just as easy to find as authors from the US or the UK. Prices are coming down, too, and ebooks allow you to carry an entire library’s worth of books in a single device. Blogs and social media make it super easy to join book clubs, form fan communities, and connect with authors. It’s awesome.

I also believe that it’s the best time in the history of this planet to be a writer. The self-publishing revolution has thrown open the gates and made publishing as easy as clicking a button. Where before it was almost impossible to make a living, thousands if not tens of thousands of writers are quitting their day jobs and building lifelong careers, myself among them. We can write what we want, publish however we want, have as much creative control as we want–in other words, be in charge of our own business. And the terms of that business have never been better.

Before, our only hope of getting published was to sign away our rights, often for the life of copyright. Now, we can publish on every continent in the world and still retain all of our copyrights. Before, we were paid a pittance for our work, with payments and royalty statements that came late if they came at all. Now, we earn the lion’s share of the profit and get our payments every month like clockwork. No longer do we have to put up with publishers that infantalize us as tender, fragile “creative types” that need to be “nurtured.” We can build lucrative careers for ourselves with business partners who actually treat us with respect.

In fact, things have changed so much for the better that it makes you wonder how we put up with all that crap before. How many great books were never published because a slushpile reader never gave it a decent chance? How many writers gave up on themselves because of the crushing grindstone of rejection letters, or the nagging doubt that perhaps their writing was just unmarketable? How many unique and wonderful voices were whitewashed by revisions demanded from lazy agents or incompetent editors? How many promising careers were cut short because of the stupid mistakes of a publisher? How many authors resorted to suicide when the stress became too much to handle?

Make no mistake: the traditional big publishers are not doing anything to make things better for readers or for writers. In fact, to the extent that anything in the book world has changed, it’s in spite of the traditional big publishers. They have been dragged into this world kicking and screaming, conspiring illegally with Apple to raise book prices, collaborating with scammers like Author’s Solutions, clamping down on their authors with increasingly draconian contract terms and accusing Amazon–the company behind almost all of the innovation in the book world–with everything from destroying literature to taking over the world.

amazonhachetteIt’s in this context that one of the largest and most traditional publishers, Hachette Book Group, is now engaged in a nasty and increasingly public contract dispute with Amazon. The sturm und drang in the book world has been rising steadily, and with no resolution in sight, I expect that this tempest in a teacup will get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

From where I’m standing as a self-published author, it looks a lot more like an epic clash of daikaiju than a tempest in a teacup. The outcome will probably have an effect on my career, but there’s nothing I can do to affect it. Taking sides either way is more like joining a cheering section than doing anything constructive, so up to this point I’ve been content to follow it passively, without offering much in the way of commentary. However, that doesn’t mean that my position is neutral.

I’ve got to be honest–I hope that Amazon wins. Not because I self-publish through them, or because I’m in any way illusioned about them “being my friend.” I hope they win because I want to see Hachette get the bloody hell beat out of them.

In a world where disruptive technology has turned the publishing industry on its head, big traditional publishers like Hachette justify their existence by arguing that they serve as “curators” or “gatekeepers.” In other words, they claim to produce value by limiting reader choice, not expanding it, and preventing books from getting published, not from actually publishing them. They “defend literature” by obstructing it!

In fiction, the reader and the writer are the two most important players. Everyone else, from publishers to booksellers to agents to editors to distributors, is just a facilitator between the reader and the writer. Literature happens when a writer touches readers in a profound and enduring way. Anything that gets in the way between writers and readers is therefore a threat to literature. By putting up obstacles between the reader and the writer, Hachette is a far greater threat to literature than Amazon ever was.

Do I feel sorry for the Hachette authors that have been caught in the middle of this contract dispute? Yes–I feel sorry for them in the same way I feel sorry for a victim of domestic abuse. “He does so much for me,” “I’d be nothing without him,” and “he hurts me because he cares about me” are all variations of things that I’ve heard. Is it Amazon’s fault that Hachette’s authors are suffering, or does Hachette bear some of the blame? Remember, these authors have signed away almost all of their rights to their publisher, under terms and payment that pale before Amazon’s self-publishing platform.

So yeah, I hope that Amazon wins this fight. Or, more accurately, I hope that Hachette loses. I hope they get the living snot beat out of them. It may cause some pain for the authors that are married to Hachette, but Hachette is doing far more to hurt both readers and writers than Amazon ever has.

Towards a new measure of writing productivity

When I decided back in college that I wanted to write professionally, I made a point of tracking my daily word counts. I even made graphs with the data, showing both my daily count and a seven-day rolling total (some of you may remember how I used to post those graphs on this blog). Tracking my daily word count like that was very helpful when I first started out. It helped me to develop the discipline to write daily, and gave me the encouragement I needed to push ahead even when I didn’t feel like writing. It also gave me a lot of satisfaction to see how much I had written over time.

But then I started to notice some problems with that system. For one thing, it didn’t track revisions very well. I eventually decided to count progress on a revision the same as counting new words, but that meant that whenever I revised something, my word count shot up dramatically. Consequently, I focused more on revising old stuff than on writing new words, since that was the fastest way to boost my word count. Also, because I didn’t feel as much pressure to push forward, I sometimes spent months at a time on revisions that should have taken just a couple of weeks.

Then I went overseas, and everything about the old system threw me into a funk. Adjusting to a new culture can be difficult and exhausting, not to mention that it takes up a lot of mental headspace. These made writing extremely difficult, but because of the daily word count tracking, I didn’t feel like I could take a break. But when I tried to write, it didn’t come out well because of all the stress I was going through. Of course, the more I failed to meet my word count expectations, the worse I felt for it. The thing that had been such a great motivator at the start of my career now threatened to drag me down.

So I did what all good creative people do and abandoned the routine that wasn’t working. And it helped–it really did. Without all the useless pressures and misplaced incentives, I wrote a novella in little less than a month.

But then I started to feel lost. Without those word counts, I had no way of measuring my productivity. The pressures were gone, sure, but so was any sense of orientation. I had no idea whether I was writing as much as I could reasonably expect to, or whether I was falling behind. My daily rhythms would fall out of whack at the slightest interruption. The self-imposed deadlines that I thought would keep me in line instead gave me one more thing to procrastinate about–and I am a master of procrastination.

So I looked for other metrics that I could use to gauge my productivity. For a while, I tried using a timer, with the idea that measuring time spent writing would be better than measuring raw word count. That experiment ended in disaster. It added even more pressure than the word counts did, and drove me so hard to busywork that my creativity was almost stifled. For some people, the clock might be a good source of motivation, but for me it was absolutely horrible.

I looked around for something better than word count, and never really found it. Eventually, I learned how to do my work without a direct way to measure it. When writing is your calling, you can’t not write, so I learned how to listen to my own creative rhythms and nurture them. That worked pretty well when I was excited about a project, but when I ran into a block, everything took a hit. And even when everything was going well, I still felt kind of lost without a concrete way to measure my productivity.

Last month, I ran into a pretty big block with Strangers in Flight (Sons of the Starfarers: Book III). I had expected to finish that book by the end of May, but instead I ran into some problems and had to go back and rewrite a few chapters. That should have taken two or three days, but instead it took two or three weeks. And during those weeks, I figured that I needed to change things up a bit.

I decided to base my new system on word count, since that seems to be the most reliable and objective measure of writing productivity. Instead of measuring it quantitatively, though, I decided to set a daily minimum word count, and mark on a calendar the days where I reach it. For new words, that minimum is 2,000, and for revised words, it’s 4,000. That seems to work with my natural rhythms–just enough so that I have to push myself, but not so much that I put it off and procrastinate instead.

So far, the new system seems to be working. As soon as I implemented it, progress on Strangers in Flight took off, to the point where it should be finished in just a couple of days. This past week, my daily routine was thrown off a bit from getting Comrades in Hope ready for publication, but even while I was busy with formatting and uploading, I managed to get 2k words written (on the author’s note and a short story). That surprised me, and makes me wonder if maybe the next time I publish a book, I can still manage to keep my writing routine intact.

The really nice thing about having a concrete way to measure your daily productivity is that it helps you to separate your work life from your personal life. When you’re self-employed, the two tend to blend into each other a lot, so that you’re always wondering if you should be spending your time doing something work related. But by keeping a daily minimum word count, I can say to myself “all right, today’s work is done–time to go play” and not feel guilty about it.

The danger, of course, is that the daily minimum will become a ceiling instead of a floor, holding me back from being as productive as I could be instead of pushing me to do that last little bit. However, I think I have a way around that. On the calendar that I’m using to keep track of all this, I’ll mark down not only the days where I hit my minimum word count, but the days where I double (or even triple) it. That way, if I hit the 2k mark a little early, I’ll still have incentive to push farther. Besides, that 2k minimum isn’t set in stone. I plan to review it each month, and change it accordingly.

In any case, that’s my new system. If you guys want an update in a month or two on how it’s working, let me know–I’d be happy to share any insights I might have. But blog posts don’t count toward my daily word count, and since the rest of my afternoon is wide open, I’d better get cracking at it!

The need to read

So for the past couple of weeks, I haven’t been as productive at writing as I’d like. I could list off a lot of reasons, some of which would be legitimate, others of which would sound like (and probably be) excuses, but that would get tedious rather quickly, so I’ll spare us both the trouble. Instead, there’s one in particular that I’d like to focus on, and that’s the connection between reading and writing.

They say that if you want to be a writer, you have to write a lot and read a lot. Writing is important for obvious reasons, but reading is also quite important, though we tend to forget that. Reading is how we replenish the story well–it’s how we feed our imaginations, revisit familiar tropes and archetypes, find and spark new story ideas, and generally immerse ourselves in the world of story. For those of us who write fiction for a living, that’s vitally important.

At the beginning of the year, I made a resolution to read at least one book every week. That worked out well until about mid-February, when most resolutions die a horrible, miserable death. This one was no exception. For the past couple of months, I’ve hardly read anything, and I can feel it.

Here’s the thing: if I stop reading for a little while, I can still keep writing just fine. There’s no immediate effect. And if I don’t read anything for a long time, I can still push myself and get stuff done–it just takes more effort, and feels a lot more like work. Because of that delay, it’s hard to tell if there’s really a causal link between how much I read and how easy it is to write.

I definitely believe in that connection, though. I can feel it. And after going for so long without reading, I’ve found that my writing doesn’t come as easily as it used to. It feels more like a chore than something that I look forward to each day. I find myself getting distracted more easily, or procrastinating longer, or just flat out avoiding the work altogether. What’s more, when I do write, it doesn’t feel as satisfying. It feels like I’m doing just enough to get by, rather than putting out my best work.

And that’s the danger–that not only the quantity, but the quality of your work will suffer for not reading. It’s a trap that I don’t want to fall into, so I’ve decided to reverse it by picking up my to-read list and working my way through it. I started with a couple of David Gemmell novels, and they were both so good I finished them in just a matter of days. Boy, was it great to rediscover just how awesome a good book can be! It’s reading stuff like that that made me want to be a writer in the first place.

I don’t know if it’s limited just to reading books and novels. I know that I’ve found all sorts of excellent story material in movies, TV shows, animes, and other forms of storytelling media. Those probably have a positive effect as well. If you’re a creator, though, it’s probably more important to immerse yourself in the medium in which you do your creating. For writers, that means reading. Movies and TV shows can be great, but I doubt that they work as substitutes.

What do you guys think? Have you noticed a connection between what you read and how you write? I’m still trying to tease out the exact nature of the connection, so I’m definitely interested in hearing some other perspectives on the subject.

And just for fun, here’s a sampling of my current to-read list, in no particular order:

  • Gods and Generals by Jeff Shaara
  • Caszandra by Andrea K. Host
  • A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge
  • A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Existence by David Brin
  • Cyteen by C.J. Cherryh
  • Sackett’s Land by Louis L’Amour
  • Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
  • The Sekhmet Bed by L.M. Ironside
  • Bloodstone by David Gemmell

Time to start reading!

“It was too short.”

This, by far, is the number one criticism I seem to get in my negative book reviews. I never quite know what to think of it. On the one hand, a reader wouldn’t say something like that unless they thought it was good, since if they hated the book completely they would say something like “it was blessedly short” (and yes, I have gotten reviews like that). On the other hand, some of them really get worked up about it, to the point where I doubt they’ll ever read anything I write ever again.

Just to be clear, I’m not opposed to negative reviews, and I’m not responding to any of my reviews in particular. As a matter of principle, I believe that reviews are for readers and not for writers. I don’t generally respond to reader reviews except in very rare cases, and never to tell the reviewer that they’re wrong.

With that out of the way, what does “too short” actually mean? I can’t speak for all readers, but for me, when a book is too short it usually means that something in the story itself felt unsatisfying. In other words, something felt undeveloped, or rushed, or cut short without ever coming to a conclusion (or, in the case of cliffhangers, at least to a natural stopping point). In other words, “too short” isn’t a function of words or of pages, but of the story itself.

I’ve read short books that felt like they fit their length perfectly. A Short Stay in Hell comes immediately to mind. That book is a thin novella, barely more than a hundred pages in print, and yet it comes together so masterfully that I honestly don’t know what else could be added to make it longer. I would love to have more time to explore that particular world, but as it is, the story comes together perfectly within its own length.

That said, there are other books that I felt were too short even though they did fit their own length. That Leviathan Whom Thou Hast Made is an example of an award-winning book–clearly well written, clearly well constructed–that left me unsatisfied because it felt too short. Here, though, it was less a problem with the story itself and more just that I wanted more time to explore the alien culture of the swales. I would love to read a full-length novel set in the same universe, if for nothing else than for the fascinating world-building.

This makes me wonder: are there certain forms of fiction that tend to get more ire from readers just because of the constraints of the form? Do some readers hate novelettes just because they’re novelettes, or serials just because they’re serials? Judging from my own reviews, that seems to be the case. Even if I wrote the best novelette in the world, they would hate it because it’s not a novel.

So what am I supposed to do when readers tell me that my books are too short? Should I set a minimum word count and not publish anything unless it goes over that word count? I really don’t think so, because that sounds a lot like padding. Instead, the only solution that I can see is to focus on telling the best story and to not even worry about the length until it’s finished (and even then, only to know whether to label it a novel or a novella).

In the case of series, sometimes it can be difficult to tell whether to bring a certain thread to a conclusion or to leave it unresolved as part of the overall series arc. Certainly, each individual story needs to have an arc of its own, even if it ends on a cliffhanger. I’m still learning as I go, especially when it comes to writing series. But it’s certainly a lot of fun for me, and I hope it’s fun for you too as a reader.

In short, there’s not much I can do other than keep telling stories as best as I know how, and learn what I can from each story in order to tell better ones in the future. If “too short” means that something was unsatisfying, I’ll do my best to learn from it. But I’m not going to pad my novellas into novels just to hit a certain page count. The story itself should determine its own length.

Z is for Slaying the Zombie Memes of Publishing

Being an indie writer is awesome. Without a doubt, self-publishing is one of the best decisions I have ever made, and has enabled me to build exactly the kind of writing career I have always wanted.

So it frustrates me to no end when people in the publishing industry try to discourage new writers from self-publishing the way that I did. What’s worse, they often justify their advice with information that has been debunked or opinions that have been shown to be unfounded. These “zombie memes” keep coming back as if the act of repeating them is enough to make them true.

Some examples of these zombie memes include:

  • Self-publishing is a bubble.
  • Ebook growth is stalling and will soon decline.
  • Getting visibility as a self-published author is impossible.
  • Amazon is evil because _______.
  • Amazon is destroying literature.
  • Self-publishing is destroying literature.
  • ______ is destroying literature.
  • Publishers nurture writers.
  • Publishers are the guardians of literature.
  • Traditional publishers only publish high-quality books.
  • Self-published books are flooding the market with crap.
  • Only a handful of indie writers are making a living.
  • Self-publishers should not be called authors.
  • Ebooks shouldn’t be cheaper than print.
  • Publishing a book is harder than writing one.
  • Readers are reading the wrong books.
  • Publishers help authors navigate the digital world.
  • Agents help authors navigate the digital world.
  • There is nothing unethical about agents who act like publishers.
  • There is nothing unethical about standard publishing contracts.

Bullshit, all of it. Pure, unfiltered bullshit.

No matter how many times you kill these memes, they just refuse to die. Some people get a thrill at rehashing all the old arguments, but not me. I’d much rather leave the good fight to others, and quietly keep building my career while the naysayers all please themselves with the sound of their own voices.

Then again, perhaps that’s the key to slaying the zombie memes right there–successfully building your own career in spite of all the critics and naysayers. It’s a lot harder to believe all this crap when you see enough people succeeding in spite of it. The critical mass of indie writers is growing, and becoming a lot harder for the establishment to ignore.

This month, I sold over 700 books. I’m making enough on my books now that I don’t need a full-time or even a part-time job–writing is what I do full-time now. It’s still touch-and-go from month to month, but I’m living the dream, and because of the opportunities made possible by self-publishing, I have every confidence that I will continue to live that dream until the day I die.

The best way to slay a zombie meme is to create a competing meme that speaks even louder. That’s exactly what we in the indie movement are doing. And one day, when the zombie memes are finally dead for good, ours will be alive and thriving. It’s a new world of publishing, and never a better time to be a writer.