Sunday, January 7, 2018

Being a Career Writer: What to Focus On

I dug out this photo from last summer - at Epcot Center after the RWA conference and me all shiny from winning the RITA® Award. Sometimes that still feels as fantastical as my troll friend here.

Our topic this week at the SFF Seven is one writing/publishing-related skill we want to learn/improve on this year. The writing/publishing conjunction struck me because - while I totally get that being a career writer involves both - those two aspects of being an author seem far more distant from each other than a slim slash mark would convey.

Okay, I started to write about something I saw an author tweet about the trials of self-publishing. Though I was paraphrasing, I ended up deleting because it felt unfair to call them out. But what I'm seeing is a LOT of discussion of the business of writing. That right-hand side of the slash mark. Marketing. How to get reviews. Amazon stripping reviews, stripping rank. Piracy. Best-selling rank. Marketing. Covers. How to reach readers. Marketing. Box sets. Series. Ideal release timing and spacing. Marketing.

You get my point.

So, I get that it's easier to focus on marketing. (Did I mention marketing?) There's a LOT of information out there on that stuff. In fact, many writers have gotten into the business in order to have something to market. (I've met these people. "I wanted to take advantage of Internet marketing and so I decided because romance novels sell, I'd write one and use that as my test product.) Also, the business side of the slash mark can feel much more controllable than the writing side.

This is what bothers me, however. For all the discussions I see about improving all the business end, I see maybe a tenth - if that - on improving the left hand side of the slash mark: the WRITING.

In point of fact, some self-publishing authors I know have said they don't care about improving their craft. The reasons vary, but some seem to feel it's beyond their control or irrelevant.

It's also the most difficult aspect of being a writer. Improving craft can be both humbling and infuriating. A writer has to set aside ego and take a good hard look at their work. They have to compare it to work by better writers and see where it falls short. And they have to be willing to listen to criticism without losing confidence. THEN they have to set to the frustrating and often daunting task of attempting to improve.

I get that it's hard. It's hard for me, too.

But I'm going to venture that, if you're losing readers instead of building an audience then the problem may not be with the marketing. We're in the weeding-out phase of the self-publishing boom now. Readers no longer have patience with giving books a whirl just because they're cheap or free. Or, rather, they'll give the author a chance, and if the quality isn't good, they won't try them again. I'm hearing this from many, many readers. This phase has been inevitable. The first week of the cruise is done and people have stuffed themselves with all the free food at the buffet. Now they're pickier, looking for the good stuff.

I should caveat that I'm picking on self-publishing here, because traditional publishing tends to force you to up your game to pass the various levels of tests involved in selling a work to them. However, with many editors in traditional publishing failing to give content edits, making our work the best it can be there, too, is critical.

So, what AM I wanting to improve this year? Craft! Each book is a master class in craft, meaning I learn something new with each one I write. Over the last couple of years, I've been working on my endings. I've been trying to give them as much heft and time as the beginnings - which isn't easy. I've improved, but I'm still not there. I also find I'm rarely satisfied with endings other authors write. I think this is partially why the cliff-hanger ending is so appealing. JUST DON'T EVEN TRY.

But I'm curious - who writes really good, perfectly satisfying endings? I'd love suggestions!


Saturday, January 6, 2018

Prioritize the Stress Factors

Good and timely topic as I’m currently dealing with the chaos of moving during a major holiday season. Sigh. Just this morning I was heading down the serious anxiety attack path but a good friend is coming over later to organize and help unpack. I’ve been unpacking a few boxes a day but I swear the pile was regenerating itself overnight. Add to that a cat who was extremely upset and spent THREE DAYS (and nghts) roaming the new place yowling at the top of his lungs, and yup, I was pretty well fried.

The cat is happier now that I’ve got some major things unpacked and arranged. I found one of his favorite cat toys and we spent a lot of time with him sitting on my lap, being petted and admired.

I’m trying to write and release on a much more rapid pace in 2018, plus there’s the ongoing political situation, and so yes, I’d say this is a time frame where I do need to deploy any and all proven techniques for managing my stress and staying productive.

First of all, being a morning person, I eat a good breakfast. Being hungry makes me off balance and less capable.

Then I have my To Do List. I keep a big running, list, where I jot down things as they occur to me, lest they be forgotten, but then I have my prioritized shortlist for the day, which contains only the top 3-5 things that MUST be done today or all Chaos will break loose. Truly. Often I find when I actually sit down to put together the list, the formless black cloud of impending doom and anxiety I’ve been under shrinks to a tiny dustball. It usually turns out that I’ve been wildly overthinking what actually has to be done on any given day. I also break large tasks down into smaller ones, to make the effort manageable. Maybe I make the first phone call about an interview today, then tomorrow I do the followup, then the day after I write the post and so forth. There’s a lot of second tier-organization happening behind the way I work.

I devour magazines and serious news commentary. I love the back to back shows of Chris Hayes and Rachel Maddow in the evening…but you know, sometimes it’s all just too much. There’s just a tidal wave of events going on in the world that frustrate me and upset me and scare me (nuclear war anyone?) and I’ve come to realize that on occasion I have to not be the most informed person on all of the breaking news and analysis. I voted, I’ll vote again, I contact my representatives when something really concerns me, I make my donations to candidates and causes I support…so it’s ok if I skip the news cycle some days and go binge watch “Making the Team”. Most of the things that happen in Washington DC, or as a result of events in DC, don’t affect me personally (although some do, of course) and neither can I wave a magic wand and do anything about them, so it’s no use for me to get all spun up.

Social media is the same – I LOVE to be on twitter and also spend a lot of time on Facebook throughout the day. But there are days I have to walk away from it, whether there’s an author kerfluffle going on, or more of the political stuff. If I don’t see the tweets and posts, they won’t create anxiety for me.

I also know when I’m done for the day and it’s time to stop pushing to get tasks crossed off the list. I sit with the cat and read, or watch TV or a movie, and relax. I know I’ll be full of energy again in the morning and ready to tackle the next day’s To Do List.


Best wishes to you for a very happy New Year!
Jake hangs out in the china cabinet during the move

Friday, January 5, 2018

Seeking Sanity from the Insane

Marcella looks at the topic for the week and giggles for fifteen minutes straight. Amused by the notion that she has any sanity to preserve in the first place. But hey! Let's assume for a moment that my sanity = yes. How to keep it in three easy-ish steps?

1. Know what you want - Sounds self-evident, right? Not to mention that it's easy to say 'of course I know what I want'. But 'winning the powerball' isn't really what you want, is it? You want whatever it is you believe that amount of money would bring you. Security. Safety. Freedom from worry. The ability to help your struggling parents/sibling/loved one/charity of your choice. There's an ideal at the core of the things we think we want. What's interesting is that you can chase a thing all you like. You might even get it, but unless you're clear on what ideal you're trying to fill/accomplish, you're likely to find the thing doesn't make you feel accomplished. By having a firm grasp of your core need, you'll find that it becomes very clear what you ought to be doing day by day to move you toward that goal. Funny thing. While working toward your core need, you often find you're fulfilling it just by pursuing it.

2. Focus on the small stuff. Once you know what, you gotta know why. Why is it important to keep
pressing the word count? Why is it vital to challenge the assumption that you're a pantser and learn to outline? Everyone will have their own why. Family. Charitable work. Proving the meanies in junior high wrong. Whatever it is. Remember to take the time to look at, really look at, and enjoy your why. The single most grounding thing in our lives are those things we love and enjoy. For me it's my family - the dh, the cats, the parents, friends, and getting to explore. The photo is from an expedition my folks and I took to one of Tampa's power plants. The manatees gather in the warm water outflow. The plant built a viewing center. Silly, maybe, but getting out of the house, shutting off all social media and news to just be in the world is eminently grounding. Coming back with silly photos is just a bonus.

3. Define success - What does success look like to you? Not long term. For today. For this week. What three things, if you got them done, would make you feel like you succeeded for the week? Write 'em down. Make a plan to get them done. Schedule them into your days. Example: my goals for this week were to get a WIP written right up to the point of the final battle. Try one new recipe. And start learning to outline. You can see I'm not aiming for the stars this week. But week after week, I'll be building on the previous week's goals. One goal (the recipe) has an element of fun to it. Maybe yours would be knitting something. Or binge watching Dr. Who. No judgement. Just make the goals reasonable so you can build on success. And if there are mistakes, assess and learn from them. Bonus grounding/sanity preservation technique: Give up feeling like a failure. Seriously. Just give it up. You're trying things. Learning stuff. If you come at this with beginner's mind, you can grin at something not working out. You can examine it and figure out something else to try. And something else.

Above all else master the mundane. Sleep. Eat. Hydrate. Exercise. Meditate - whatever that looks like for you. Sanity comes more easily when you take care of all of you.

Thursday, January 4, 2018

Keeping Grounded for 2018

So now the new year is underway, and it's time to buckle down and get to work, and keep my head on straight.  Part of the problem with that is January is such a challenging time for me to do that, for two key reasons.

Reason the first: I love living in Austin, it's a wonderful city, but in January, the city wants to kill me.  Namely, it releases SPORES OF CEDAR DOOM into the air and it takes high levels of allergy medications to stay functional.  For real.  Five years ago my reaction was so bad it gave me vertigo for two weeks.  I literally couldn't walk, and worse, couldn't write.  It was awful.  Right now, even highly medicated, I've got light congestion and watery eyes.  And I've been indoors most of the day.

Reason the second: For those who don't know, the "day job"-- which i put in the quotes because it isn't just in the day, nor does it have regular hours either-- is running our business Live the Language, where my wife teaches Spanish to children and adults.  Now, if you run any business which provides Service X, where people will say to themselves, "I really should DO X this year", January is when you get ALL THE INQUIRIES.  It's great, it's the very lifeblood of our business, but it does mean my workload right now cranks up.

So, given that's just the normal Things of January, and add in the whole "2017 was a Trashfire Year, what is 2018 going to bring" aspect, how do I keep my head on straight and get work done?
  1. Put some people on your social media who JUST BRING JOY.  I'm talking make sure your feed has someone who just puts gifs of otters playing, or daily affirmations.  Me, I've got a guy, who just plain loves Star Trek.  And I mean, deep cut stuff.  Like he'll post about Ben Sisko's outfits.  But that's what he does, he just LOVES STAR TREK, and man, just seeing that on a regular basis was a great counterbalance to the usual doom-and-gloom of the social media feed.  And so therefore...
  2.  Just stay the heck out of the Social Media.  I mean, yeah: World is a Trashfire.  But I've made peace with the fact that 98% of the Trashfire is stuff that doesn't really mean much to me other than give me something to stress about.  And, I mean, I am stressed, but frankly I don't need to know the minutiae of the Trashfire.  It doesn't help anything.
  3. Watching Superheroes.  I've made no secret that I'm a total superhero junkie.  And in the coming months the universe is giving me not only my beloved CW/DC shows, but adding one more with Black Lightning.  And Black Panther comes out in a few weeks, and Avengers: Infinity War is a few months down the road.  All this stuff is just tank-fueling joy for me.  Sometimes when I get stuck on a scene I'll rev up the Captain America Elevator Fight or Everyone Fighting Nazis and a bit of that just clears my head and gets me back on track.  (And, come on, how can you not love Supergirl saying to her Nazi Doppelganger, "General, would you care to step outside?")
So, that said, time to get back to work.  I got plenty to do, and I'm not going to let this year hold me back.

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

Release Day: Fallen Gods by James A. Moore

What a great way to welcome the new year by celebrating our Monday blogger James's latest release in his Tides of War epic fantasy series!  Congrats, James!


FALLEN GODS
Tides of War

The gods are angry and only one man can fend off their apocalypse in the brutal sequel to The Last Sacrifice.

Brogan McTyre and his compatriots are wanted, dead or alive. Preferably alive, so they can be sacrificed to the raging gods. All they can do is hire more mercenaries and turn them into a fearsome army. But warriors aren't enough when the gods bring Armageddon to the world, unleashing storms and madness, and ceaseless attacks on Brogan's men by increasingly demonic foes.

Deep in the heart of the Broken Blades Mountains lies a sword containing the heart of a god slain in immortal combat, the one thing that might give Brogan an edge against the gods, but finding it isn't going to be easy...

BUY IT NOW:  Amazon   |   B&N   |   Indiebound

Sunday, December 31, 2017

Three Tips for Staying Grounded in a Crazy World

Happy New Year, everyone, and welcome to 2018!

I feel confident in putting this as a fait accompli, even though I'm writing this midday on 12/31/17 because I imagine most of you will be reading this in 2018, or as near to it as functionally doesn't matter. I'm also confident that 2018 will arrive, which hasn't always been the case.

It's funny looking back at the turn of the millennium and thinking the whole banking/computer change from a two-digit year to a four-digit year was the worst thing that could happen... I look forward to the day when we can look back, shake our heads at the 2016 election, and trade our "where were you when you found out Trump was actually elected?" stories.

Until then, we do what we can to resist an increasingly authoritarian regime while still keeping our sanity. Thus, my take on this week's topic: Keeping Your Sanity: 3 Things You Do To Stay Balanced/Grounded/In Control.

While resistance is critical, so is keeping our sanity. In fact, it's important to keep grounded, in balance, and at peace with ourselves, in order to resist from a foundation of strength. There's a reason sleep-deprivation is a tried-and-true brainwashing technique: because exhaustion lowers our defenses. Being healthy and at peace is key to everything else we wish to accomplish.

I've counseled more than one friend in the following. One was having nightmares about being in a nuclear war with North Korea. Another had become depressed and anxious with all the political changes and programs being cut and destroyed entirely. So, here are three ways I keep myself balanced and grounded.

Stay Away from the News

Seriously. This is the first thing I told my friends above. I truly believe part of the reason things seem so awful is the sensationalistic news media and the echo chamber of social media. I know a lot of people regard it as their responsibility to "stay informed." There are three problems here:

  1. There are major forces wanting to control what we're informed of
  2. News shows on TV are about entertainment. They skew to shocking and exciting content
  3. This has been exacerbated by click-bait headlines and the availability of news on our phones, etc. 
The news on TV and on social media is, by its very nature, sensationalized. Choose a reliable newspaper to read. If you want news from Twitter, carefully choose who you follow for it. Look for reliable sources. I also give you permission - *waves permission wand* - not to look at all. (See Make Your Life a Paradise.) At the very least, stop reading articles on your phone to kill time. That's setting yourself up for the most sensationalized, most upsetting news without deep understanding or context. Remember when we used to see waiting rooms as an opportunity to read books? See next.

Deep Read*

That's my mom in the pic above. We spent some time over Christmas just sitting in the sun and reading. She has a lovely patio for it. But now that I'm home, I'm spending time in my favorite armchair, reading by the fire. The benefits of deep reading have been well documented. (I'm using it here to mean reading a narrative, as opposed to reading Facebook posts, Tweets, etc. I really don't think reading on a paper book vs. an ereader makes a difference, so long as I'm reading without interruption.) It's more than me being an author and being a fan of reading in general. (Buy my book!) Reading is relaxing, restorative, hones the intellect, and gives us time away from all the voices. It's also a skill that's easy to lose in our current culture of So Many Things shrieking for a piece of our attention.

I've been reading Robin Hobbs' SHIP OF MAGIC, which is *long* - 880 pages in paperback, though I'm reading in digital. At first I felt impatient with the slow, elaborate pace. As I've settled in, I'm remembering how much I loved fat books in my youth. The more pages, the better, because I could enjoy them longer. I don't have data to back it up, but I'm pretty confident in saying that my reading declined immensely with my increasing involvement with social media. Time I once spent buried in a book, I began to spend scrolling Facebook and Twitter.

Recently I've made several changes. I've removed Facebook and Twitter notifications from my phone. I've taken them both off my array of tabs to display when I open my web browser.

(I realize this is a total reversal because I used to tell people who said "I always forget to check Facebook," to make it one of their home pages. Don't. Run away. Look at it if you like, because it's still the best way to keepup with some people, but choose when.)

I've also gone back to an ereader (a paperwhite, which I'm loving) that has no functions for people to message, text or otherwise interrupt me while I'm reading. I can feel the difference in myself as my attention span relaxes.

*One note on deep reading: I've noticed, and a number of other people I've talked to have noticed, that at first it's difficult to get back into deep reading. It's as if we've lost the "muscle" for it. Start back slowly and give it time. We've all found that the more we practice, the better it feels.

Make Your Life a Paradise

Alert readers might notice I left out "in control." That's because I think control is elusive and must be judiciously sought. As far as national politics are concerned, we have very little control. We can vote and campaign for our candidates. We can donate to campaigns. We can participate in our communities. Fretting about North Korea? Not really in our control.

So, this is my best advice: take action, then walk away and work on your own life.

For example, because it's become clear to me that senators elected in other states will influence my life in profound ways - like whether or not I can afford health insurance - I donated to Doug Jones' campaign in Alabama. I felt good about that action. Immediately, however, the campaign began sending me emails - every couple of hours - with hysterical doomsday headlines. They wanted me to contribute more. But I had already taken my action. And I could feel just the subject lines upsetting me. So I labeled them spam and didn't look at another email from them. I'm delighted to report that Jones won! One small step. I took my action and got the result I wanted.

The walking away and working on my own life? That's key.

I mentioned above about turning off notifications. I'm selective about who can grab my attention. Bigger than this, however, is the idea that if each of us made ourselves and our lives a paradise, then by extension, the world would be, too.

I make a lot of choices for personal happiness. To the extent I can, I focus on doing what brings joy and beauty to both my life and the world. This includes friends, family, the organizations I volunteer for, and in the books I write. I find that if I enjoy my daily life to the utmost, I worry much less about the larger world. Which I can't control anyway.

This last is the foundation of being grounded and at peace for me. It really works.

And, at the risk of being accused of having lured you here for marketing purposes... if you do want to read, Smashword’s is having a site-wide promotion! https://www.smashwords.com
This is only good through January 1, 2018, so I felt I should tell you now, just in case!


Friday, December 29, 2017

Star Wars Last Jedi Rant With Spoilers.

Tis the season wherein no one knows who they are, much less what day of the week it is. No one reads the blog this last week of the year. Therefore. I CAN RUN AMOK. Haha. I will bring it back around to writing/story craft, though. I promise.

If you haven't yet seen the latest Star Wars installment, The Last Jedi, TURN BACK NOW. I have seen the movie and I HAZ OPINIONS. There will be swearing. There will be spoilers. You have been warned.

Here. Have a winter sunrise to shield your tender eyes from what is to come whilst you attempt to flee this spoiler-laden rant.


All righty. Let's get straight to the geek talk. For that silent ten seconds of the most glorious and gorgeous bit of film I've seen outside of the Wonder Woman movie, I adore this film. However. I am sorry to say that the writer(s) broke faith with their story consumers. Herein lies my rant.

Can we all agree that at heart, the Star Wars franchise is Joseph Campbell's work made space opera manifest? It's a HERO'S JOURNEY. Well. When it's done correctly. And in this case, there's an entire story thread where our intrepid writers got hopelessly lost. Hopelessly. 

I'm talking about the Finn and Rose story line. I wish I could call it an arc, but that's the problem. There isn't one. An arc implies characters in need of change - they begin their story with a flaw, a flaw which prevents them from achieving a goal. You see this done very plainly with Poe, right? Leia demotes the dude because his hubris got people killed. His goal is plain, too: He wants to lead. But he can't until he learns that not every problem can be solved with a gun. What's Finn's flaw? Rose's?

Anyone? I'll wait. That's right. Neither of them HAS a flaw. How about goals? You know. Past playing fetch in order to save everyone? Nopers. Nothing there, either. No clue what either of them wants. 

So you have these two people, sent off on a wild damned goose chase that fails - not because they cannot face and conquer their failings - but because of shitty luck. Not once. Not twice. THREE TIMES they fail to do anything remotely meaningful to contribute to the theme of the story and there's no WHY to the failures.

In a hero's journey, the hero reaches for a goal and fails because internal change has not yet taken place - it's that failure that spurs change - the character must make a choice - own the flaw and mend it or don't. If they cannot mend themselves or learn their lessons, they cannot reach their goals and that character becomes the star either of a tragedy, a literary novel, or a cautionary tale. So when I talk about failures needing a why, for story to work in the Western psyche, we need that flaw/goal/antagonist cycle. These were clear for Rey and for Poe. They were totally absent for Finn and Rose. 

Note this is not the fault of the actors! This debacle rests firmly at the feet of whoever wrote that story thread. In every single case, they fail their short term goals (find the code breaker! Oh no! Arrested for parking violation! But they find a different code breaker, but they get caught because luck! So code breaker betrays everyone. Need I go on? I swear. If it weren't for bad luck, Finn and Rose would have no luck at all.)

There was no character development of these two people because neither of them changed. Neither of them were called to change. They merely went galloping off into danger because - I dunno - they'd just mainlined every last episode of the original Scooby Doo and kids cruising into danger sounded like fun? Sure, sure, we find out some backstory on Rose, but frankly, without knowing what her goal is, I have no reason to care. And those segments that followed the pair of them dragged. The scenes were hollow and wooden. They didn't resonate. Not the way scene of Poe turning away from a fight to yell at everyone to listen - and then, having learned his lesson, leading them to escape.

So anyway. I'd like to slap some sense into the Last Jedi writer(s). Years and years ago, L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Crook de Camp put together a how to book for writing speculative fiction as they preferred to call it. They spent a chapter convincing the reader that luck and twists of cruel fate were lazy writing. If you spend pages and pages getting your character off that planet filled with man-eating iguana people, tuck the heroes safe into their get away ship only to have them hit and destroyed by an asteroid, you aren't clever. You're just a jerk. Though maybe the how to guided didn't actually use that wording. Whoever wrote the Finn and Rose story thread never read this how to guide, apparently, and subsequently robbed the characters and the viewers of the hero's journey we'd signed up for. 

Thursday, December 28, 2017

Books for a Happy 2018

So, the new year is coming, and the question is inevitably asked, "What are you looking forward to in the new year?"

And the answer for me is always: books.  But let's not talk about my books, which I certainly talk about plenty.  Instead, which books am I looking forward to reading in 2018?  Here's an incomplete list of the things on my radar, and they're all things I think you should be wanting to pick up in the coming year.  (In addition to the two I have coming out, but you've already got those wired in, yes?  Yes.)


Still So Strange by Amanda Downum
I've made no secret that Amanda is one of my favorite writers working in fantasy today, and one of my favorite people in the industry as well.  Her collection of short stories and poetry is coming out this year, and you should totally get your hands on it.


The Armored Saint by Myke Cole

Myke has been doing excellent things blending military fiction with urban, modern fantasy, and everything I've been hearing about his first dive into traditional epic fantasy has been incredible.  So I'm very excited to get my hands on this one.




Head On by John Scalzi
I've enjoyed just about everything John's written, including and especially Locked Inwhich this is the sequel to.  It's a very fascinating setting (in which a disease has rendered some people completely unable to use their bodies, but the use of robot avatars called "threeps" lets them interact with the world), and in the first book John did an excellent job of exploring the implications of the core ideas.  So I'm very intrigued to see where it goes.



Stone Mad by Elizabeth Bear
In another example of "Yes, more of that, please," I really enjoyed 2015's Karen Memoryso I'm looking forward to more western-steampunk adventures with Karen and her people.  I don't know if we'll get another steam-powered-sewing-machine-mecha fight, but a boy can dream.





From Unseen Fire by Cass Morris
This is the debut novel from the newest DAW Author, and it's been on my radar for a while now, so I'm quite excited to see it's going to come out this April.  It's set in an Ancient Rome With Magic, and everything I've seen from Cass Morris shows that she's really done the work in her research and worldbuilding, so I'm fascinated to see the results.  Plus, of course: she's DAW, so she's family.


Temper by Nicky Drayden
Nicky already has a follow-up to Prey of the Gods, but not a sequel.  Nicky is another one of my favorite-writers/favorite-people out there.  I swear, she once wrote a short story that was so funny it nearly killed me I was laughing so hard.  So, yeah, she writes so well, you could die.  This is definitely a book to get for next year.  It's a new book by Nicky Drayden, how could it not be?





The Monster Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

The Traitor Baru Cormorant was a fascinating work of worldbuilding and structure and defying expectations, and exactly the sort of book I want to see more of.  So of course I want to read the sequel.  I need to know what happens next, as Baru is possibly one of the most fascinating characters in fantasy in recent years.  We've already seen how far she'll go to achieve her goals.  I'm very curious what more there can be to get the title "monster".

So, what's on your radar for 2018?