Becoming a Writer Part 3: A Different Approach--All in My Head

All right, I know the "freedom" I feel is all in my head.  It's been there all along, there are likely even agents and editors that might like what I'm doing.  But I certainly feel more stressed when I think I need to impress others.  I'm just not good at it.  I can be friendly, and I have even enjoyed customer service jobs for the interaction with people. I know I often leave a pretty decent impression, but I've put so much more of myself into my writing.

Is it rejection that I'm afraid of?

Not exactly.  I am afraid of the same thing that has choked up so many drafts over the years, not producing a end result deserving of the idea, the character, the world and all the time I've poured into it.  Self-doubt. Perfectionism.

I have found that deadlines can combat these flaws for the rough draft level.  I am working on using process to fight off the rest of it.

Considering self-publishing means that I have to approach my writing with greater emphasis on deadlines, on the business of it, but with the underlining goal of being honest to the art of it, the idea of it. I am a paradox, finding certain limitations actually inspiring.  That's why I work well with Nano.

What am I doing differently?

I am exploring an organization to the chapters in my Rextian novels that are in line with the society that I've created, but not an order I'd ever have thought would go well for a "first novel." This is mostly because it isn't exactly something I've seen before, but it makes sense for the piece that I am creating.  

It also frees me to identify certain stories as possible serials.  Suddenly, I  can do all my ideas.  Beginning to end. I can build them my way, and use the very structure of the novel to build not only the plot, but also the context of the world. The outline is posted week by week on Story Snippets. I will follow up at the end of the week with my progress that week on the Nanowrimo project.

I'm very confident about my ability to generate a rough draft... but that's before the real work: the second draft.

 

Becoming a Writer Part 2: Rough Drafts

The challenge of Nanowrimo has helped me immensely.  The deadline helped me to finally and effectively manage my time in July, for Camp Nano.  I finished a rough draft and then read through it and then... let it sit.

The next challenge will be to revise what I have, but before then, I am launching into Nanowrimo. I have a new/old project.  That is, since I've been progressively re-approaching my main world, its history, the stories and characters that I've been building and playing with for years... why not?

I am approaching Nano differently this time.  I made an outline--suitably vague, and with a massive note to self  "achieve the main plot goals--but hey, change is okay."  But I know anything on Don-Yin will be epic.  In the real sense.  I can't expect to write the whole book in a month, but Rule of Magic--my July success-- was not a full manuscript.

The story was written beginning to end, but it is a stripped down version. I can expect to approach November's project with that same result.  That means my outline can be flexible, adjusted, as long as I have the characters and plot mapped out well enough to hang the novel on.

I think I have those things down.  I have, off and on, over the years spent enough time with the characters and plot that I am confident of my love for both, my drive to complete them, and now my newfound-direction that I know I can do this.

I will post my outline, in pieces, on Story Snippets, so if you're interested in following my progress, I'll track it there.

Writing with the idea of self-publication as the goal has changed the approach to the novel, from the beginning. I feel better able to embrace the artistry, and less pressure to compete.  That isn't to say this is not a competitive industry--I see just how competitive every level of the book business is when I go to work. Focussing on the need to compete, to produce a story that would both be familiar enough for the marketability to be easily demonstrated and original enough to seize the enthusiasm of an editor, made me worried.  So very worried.

But now, thinking that I can take control of my project, I can pursue all knowledge I need to produce a professional end product.  The interim, the beginning steps, are less stressful now, with more freedom for me to explore my own ideas of the story and the nature of  "good writing."

Much of this, I know, is me.  
   
 

Becoming a Writer in the 21st Century: Part 1

Over the years of bumbling through this or that rough draft, participating in writing communities, and puzzling through the process and business of writing my focus has skittered about.  At the center of this is was the idea: “Where to start?”

Originally, the idea was with a rough draft.  But after the first few were shelved, or overhauled, I worried what the next step would be when I was pleased with a rough draft.  I got caught up in the idea of “the next step” and it made me resistant to finishing things.  

This had happened due to a few things.  One: the writers’ group i had been a  part of that I very nearly turned into a non-profit before succumbing to my own self-doubt and hanging there, useless, submitting resumes via  monster, watching the bank account dwindle and in such a  haze I couldn't finish reading a book--much less writing one. But before that settled upon me, I had drive and ambition, and a willingness to change and respond to the environment around me.  

We self published an anthology of short stories and I learned the entire process of the thing.   The process taught me that marketing was central to making a book successful.  Generating community, and rising to communicate internally to a particular niche.

Quality is essential to attracting the eyes of the uncertain.  A good cover is not just money, it is a demonstration of the seriousness of the writer.  There are a lot more steps to the process of producing the cover than CreateSpace and other formula-generating self-publishing options generally lead an author to believe.  Not that good covers can’t be produced through CreateSpace.  

Working where I do, I also know that a good cover is not guaranteed when going with a traditional publisher. In fact, it seems that the better covers are reserved for titles that expected to make more money, which means that the author has likely already demonstrated their marketability by reaching out inside a community, in some fashion.  They have been marked by the publisher as an individual with the connections to bring in enough money to make the whole system stay afloat.  

But quality has to be carried through the whole of the book to make certain the sale builds the sort of customer and brand loyalty that can generate a lengthy writing career.   As someone interested in being a full time writer--that’s what I’m after.  

Working in a bookstore, and knowing the limitations and shopping patterns of the book-buying populace I see why marketing is key.  Our store is relatively small--when compared to a box store--and insanely large when compared to most independents.  But there is no way that we can stock the sheer thousands of books published each year.

So whether you’re on a major book tour with your publicist plotting your stays, making arrangements with the stores, or if you are on your own, hauling self-published books out your trunk, it is about marketing.  

Realizing this has actually freed me.  You see, I was so stressed out over “perfecting”: my novel and wondering about timing and how to get an agent and a publisher while also understanding that the system… well, it isn't the same as it used to be.

If it is all about marketing, it isn't about writing to your audience, it’s about identifying who is already prone to like what you want to write.  If it’s about niches--the direction that successful marketing is going-- then it’s about being you.  Because when you market successfully it isn’t just the book--the author becomes a greater presence on the scene.   

And if that is the direction I need to go with my career, than the real thing to do… is write.  not copying the methods that work well for other authors, not harping on what has proven successful before and making it my own-- but generally writing my own thing.  

I am free to explore the form and craft the way that I, hidden under all the uncertainty and insecurity, have always wanted.  I have enough sense, after that, to work it all out.  I have learned enough about the business and about marketing, about the book industry itself, to have a few ideas of just how to go about making a business of it--but first, I’m off to complete a novel.

Complete a novel, my way.

 

The Educating of Myself Part 2: The Working World

Then I got a job--after three years in pursuit of a paycheck--at a bookstore.  Love my job.  But it has given me much greater insight to the changed nature, not only of selling books, but also consumer behavior in buying books.  On top of that, there is a major gap between customer expectation of a bookstore and what a bookstore *actually* has the resources to provide.  Which, has demonstrated to me, yet again, that an author must run his/her own publicity machine--or pay for someone else to do so, whether they are published by the big guys, or by him/her -self.   

What a career as an author looks like now is not the same as the one I expected to attain when I was a teenager reading: “How to get Happily Published,” or piling through Writer’s Digest’s “Writer's’ Market” in ‘98 through ‘05.

Scheduling events with authors and publicists and publishers, I get a further insight into the discrepancy between what people expect from a signing event versus what actually transpires.   Then, there is the impact of changing formats and what e-book popularity is going to make people expect from print.

We (humans) work off of relationships and identity, and reading, art, education have particular resonance and purpose internal to specific American communities.  The physical objects we take into our lives are indicative of our identity construction, even if we are unaware why, how, or what it communicates to ourself and our community.

Books, however,  are a different matter. I think that booklovers reading this know *exactly* what they mean to us and in our lives.  Especially that gorgeous, signed 1st edition by a favorite author…

But the motivation to buy, and what to buy, will change.  It is changing.  It is changing what is published.  It is altering the composition of the bookstore.  But the expectation of the  buying populace, even if they are modelling changed behavior over all, are not aware of this shift.  So what they, and what authors think, a bookstore does is different from what a bookstore is actually doing, or even capable of doing.  

The result is that we are entering an awkward in-between phase where we expect bookstores to be what they were ten to twenty years ago, without realizing that how we use them now is no where near the same way we used them ten to twenty years ago.

This changes how I will approach my own career.

The Educating of Myself: Part 1: My Academic Journey

I chose to major in anthropology because I wanted to soak up knowledge of cultures and history for the construction of my fantasy worlds. Life, as always, has different plans.

What I learned from spending eight years to obtain a four-year-degree can (somewhat) be boiled down to these vague ideas:

1) Culture defines us and our individual identity on such an innate level that we cannot witness or identify the vast majority of its affects on our life, mindset, and actions.

2) Culture is changeable.  The unconscious can become conscious, and history and values can be altered over time.  Technology can change behavior, and as behavior changes, values shift and identity construction adopts new forms.

3) Each people has their own history.  A People’s history formulates the shape of changes internal to one’s own culture, the available avenues to take when your behavior changes in response to an altered environment, and how to interact with others outside your cultural group.

4) Humans relate to the world in terms of relationships between and among things.  This is how all societies develop categories, stereotypes and groups of “like.” But each of these societies arranges the same things differently and their categories may be shaped or changed due to relationships with other groups.

5) The political map is an outgrowth of relationships between and among various societies, forged by the definition of dominant cultures, ethnic minorities, and culturally constructed borders reinforced by economic systems and who is included in that system, and in what manner they are included.  Individuals’ identities and value systems  can be formed and changed by shifts in these relationships and these changes can, in turn, result in individuals taking action as identity and values collide in a manner that can incite action (rebellion, war, law-breaking, etc).

What does this mean?  

For my writing I have fodder for the construction of a very sophisticated political map, based on groups responding to other groups based on deep histories.

For my career--and this is where I’ve been most shocked about my application of my education-- the tools that I developed to be “successful” as a writer are dated.  I saw this when i graduated college and plunged into reading blogs and listening to all the talk of “midlist genre authors being dropped,” but I scoffed at the idea that it would change that completely so quickly.  

I mean, it might be *harder* to get in, but it was still possible. Indeed, it was still *necessary* for success as a writer.  Right???  

The Growing-Up of Drea

I started out just writing--like we all do.  Then I started researching the business, and at that point in time it was all about traditional publishing because you absolutely had to have your books in bookstores to sell, and you have to sell (of course) to make it as a writer.  So it was about queries and synopsis and having the first three chapters of your novel so polished that they shone, flawless on the page.  

The same critique group that honed this awareness introduced the idea that publishers were looking for marketability.  

I was an impressionable 21, with the only certainty in my young life the conviction that, in the amorphous future, I wanted to be a full-time writer and nothing else.  I soaked up the ideas of how to attract an agent, a publisher, and promote oneself as a writer.

Young as I was, I also chafed against this focus.  Shouldn't it be about my writing?  This is, after all, what I want to do?  

Besides, the group’s ideas of what made a story “promote-able” were an exact opposite, oftentimes, to what I considered good writing.  I wanted storytelling that didn't treat the reader as an imbecile with ADD.  

Over time, I went off the deepend, eventually being completely obsessed with marketability.  This happened partially in response to the changing industry and my determination to be traditionally published.  

But the more my academic experience changed how I viewed the industry and the trajectory we were all headed into, the more I questioned the viability of starting out pursuing traditional publication.  I gathered my own ideas of marketing, of writing, of developing myself and my career, and then fell down a recession-forged fiscal hole that finished the destruction of my carefully held beliefs of the adult world.  

Now, perhaps, I am ready for the enacting of my ideas.  It’s a long time coming.

IWSG: Being an Aspiring Writer and a Bookstore Employee

Hello all!  Here's another IWSG post--where we talk about our achievements and insecurities on the first Wed of every month!  I want to thank Alex J. Cavanaugh and her co-hosts for managing this most amazing (and inspiring group)-- you all kept me writing at least a post a month when writing and living was hard--so, I am amazingly thankful for this group and all of the hard work that is poured into it.  That said, the group is about to get even more awesome-- check out the news here, and all the wonderful participants here.

Being an Aspiring Writer--

I, like anyone hoping to publish at some vague point in time, pile through the blogs and books on writing and publishing.  I sort through all the information and make up my own mind about just what I should do in order to start my career on the right foot.

I'm obsessed with the "right foot." But the proper tactic seems so be mired in an over abundance of information and choice.  Wheedling through the options can be exhausting, and yet with the goal of eventual publication in mind...I can't stay away from reading news about the industry or the options available, down the road.

Working  at a Bookstore--

Then there's the whole aspect to publishing you learn selling books to readers.  That is enough to intimidate even the most  determined self-marketer.

Readers by what they hear about on radio, tv, or from a friend, or what is assigned by their book group. That is sort of where traditional publishing comes in.  But the authors who sell already have a presence (more often than not). Cheryl Strayed's "Wild" was a good example of this.

Her travel narrative was supposed to have been a "debut" but when it was wildly successful suddenly a novel and a self-help book she had previously published were reissued and the self-help hadn't previously had her name on it, as it derived from her "Dear Sugar" column in a paper.  So a debut wasn't really a debut after all...

So what does that mean?

Then there's the fact that new authors are increasingly having a particular statement plastered on their mass market paperbacks (in the SFF section): "First time in print!" Which seems to indicate that there is a rising list of successful books selling only as e-book and that, perhaps, an author needs to sell successfully as an e-book before a publisher considers a print run?  Could that be the case?  And if so, what does that mean for the royalties?

It starts to make me wonder, looking at my bank account, if, for a writer starting out now traditional publishing is a (fiscally) viable first step, or if it is more important to prove oneself through self-publishing and a successful promotional effort?

Successful promotional effort--

Most self-published authors who do readings/meet & greets at my work have tiny audiences.  They may or may not have FB pages, or author pages, or websites.  They may or may not have had a professional artist or designer assist with the cover design.  They may or may not attend events regularly, have community connections, or get their event listed in local papers.

I have been doing all I can to gain interest for the events, but internet-based marketing is (unfortunately) only one aspect to my job, rather than the whole of it.  So I'm limited, and the authors' promotional efforts need to be top notch.

So it seems to me that I can piece together from these experiences what I *think* could amount to a successful promotional effort, but seeing the authors in the store--some of whom are blatantly brilliant--but also make a subtle splash in the only remaining bookstore selling exclusively new books in the vicinity of the downtown area of our city, makes that seem daunting.

I hover here, writing, revising, and watching.  And doubting that even as I learn more about the book industry that my knowledge will lead me to make any greater a splash in an Amazon-dominated industry.