Getting Good at Something

I found this interesting tidbit of motivation (anti-motivation?) at the zenhabits blog. It's called, "The Only Way to Become Amazingly Great at Something."

We are a society that is fixated on the idea of being on the move. We never have time for anything. We rush through our day with one task after another with little thought to what could or should be done, just what we must get done.

This same society that values rushing so very much has devalued the art of learning. We want quick fixes; we recoil at the thought of having to actually spend time enhancing our skills. Bookshelves, as pointed out in the article, have a healthy population of books promising to master programming languages and skills in a month's time.

But to truly master something it takes more time. Far more. People who take the shortcuts show their shortcomings the moment they run into someone who has already learned this lesson.

The post outlines what it may take to be great at something. Seeing the estimated journey outlined in stark black and white is daunting to say the least, and more than  a little scary.

But then I remember what Randy Pausch said (as quoted on this website, from his Last Lecture):

Brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want something badly enough. They are there to keep out the other people.
- Randy Pausch ( 1960-2008 )

Writing...becoming an author...maybe my fear in failing to achieve that goal is my brick wall. I have every reason to give up. The hardest part is keeping the reason to keep going in view.

First Novel Update: November 8th

Ironically it seems that my weekend sees a drop in word count. We took my daughter out college touring yesterday so we spent most of our time on the road; combined yesterday and today, I added 925 words to the first draft of the manuscript.

That brought the total up to 73,102 words as of tonight.


I'm tired and at the moment want to start unwinding before facing the next workday. I need to get to bed and I keep coughing like something is stuck in my throat. Annoying!

I have read more and more material about what it's like to try to transition into a career in writing. It's not a pleasant picture; I'll probably blog more thoughts and discovery as time goes on, and a progress update on the state of the novel isn't the right place to put such things, right?

Anyway...weekend = lower word count, but I still made headway. That's what's important. Butt in seat. Fingers on keyboard. Words on...screen...

Author Yearly Income, and First Author Advances

With my other worries involved in trying to write a first novel I sometimes try to picture what would happen if I actually did sell a manuscript. What kind of windfall could I expect? Will I be able to make the bills and mortgage payment, so I could quit my day job? Or will I be able to afford that helicopter pad in the backyard? Or will I instead be lucky to afford a kiddie pool for the backyard?

It's terribly difficult to get solid numbers due to the factors that affect the amount a first time author can receive. Agents tend to get higher advances for authors (but they take a cut). Publishers sometimes only take agented queries, so you may need to acquire an agent before making it into the "big time". Genre selection affects income as well as what topics are "hot" (Probably too late to start writing that novel about a vampire fighting a werewolf for the love of Mary Sue...by the time it gets into the queue to be published, mummy romance will be the next big thing, unless you're writing about a vampire wizard fighting a werewolf wizard who-shall-not-be-named...)

Being an author today is very much a business of branding yourself. From what I can find a new author is expected to bootstrap him or herself, drumming up their own popularity and online following, touring bookstores on their own dime...following a career path in writing is very much a labor of love that unless you are a fortunate lucky stars-smile-upon-you soul who hits the mega big time is going to take a lot of hard knocks along the way.

The averages I found? A 2005 survey done online by Tobias Buckell said $5,000. I found some statistics saying that yearly income is in the $10,000 to $12,000 range.

Ouch.

This means that most likely I'm not going to hit a jackpot. It means that if I want to be successful at this "writing thing" I will need to keep trying. It means that I need to remind myself of Mur Lafferty's rules of writing and that it's okay to suck. I may even need to face the possibility that this side project won't ever amount to much and I'm pouring an hour a day or more into a project that will cost me...well, a portion of my life I won't get back.

On the other hand the same could be said of much of the TV I've absorbed in my life.

Maybe this will be a long exercise in keeping perspective.

Consumer vs. Producer...Thoughts on Legacy

What do you want out of life?

I've thought about this since I've undergone surgery to give myself the final kick-in-the-arse to lose my excess weight. If I'm going to live longer, shouldn't I have a good reason for it?

I did it in part because I have a young son and realized that as the comorbidities...diabetes, apnea, etc...mounted on my list of ailments then the odds of me living long enough to embarrass him in front of a potential wife were growing shorter. He's not yet in kindergarten and my list of issues from the doctor's visits were getting as long as he is tall.

But living just to hopefully see something eighteen years down the road isn't much of a good reason to live in itself, I think. Stress from work makes those 18 years...if I stay with that job...a very good reason to just allow my body to degenerate into a pile of convulsing bubbles of angst.

I decided that I wanted to leave a mark on the world. As an individual chances are I won't make a huge change. The vast majority of people don't. They live, they sweat, they toil, they die, and if they have children, they pass on genes to another generation and hopefully they'll be remembered for the next two or three generations in some way by their family.

I decided I wanted more than that. I had a child. He might remember me as an important influence on his life. Hopefully. The stepdaughter...she's a teenager. I don't know if she'd acknowledge my existence unless it suits something she needs. I'm told it's a teenager thing.

So how could I make some kind of footprint out there?

I started this blog initially as a record of the surgery. It's become kind of a sanitized (read: cleaned up...I constantly question my sanity) version of some of my views and issues in life. I figured my little dude, my wife, and perhaps even the teenager could have something to look back on and think about as being an extension of me.

Aside-I'll admit that part of me is saddened that a teenager that can sit and read an entire Twilight novel in the span of five hours would rather play an online video game for several hours than take three minutes a day to read my own little ramblings on the web...but again...guess that's a teenager thing. I hope.

I also started journaling at the behest of my insurance-mandated-for-surgery psychologist. I'm still surprised at the stack of papers pouring from the printer when I am prepping for another visit. My next printer will need to handle double-sided printing, and at a minimum I'm going to need more binders to hold them all soon.

I decided that I wanted to try my hand at one of two things (since I didn't think I'd be good at trying both at once): writing a novel, or writing software.

The software would be a challenge because I haven't programmed, really, since college. I'm in my early thirties now. I would dream of working in an environment like Fog Creek Software (if you haven't looked up how Spolsky treats his programmers...OH...MY...GOD...HIS company is a model of respect towards employees. It is a true dream job.) A true dream come true would be to START a company with a good software product. Work from home, distribute over the web...hmm...warm dreams.

The novel is a challenge because...well, face the reality. I don't have an English degree. You toil and toil for months writing the draft, then editing, and editing again, and perhaps again, then shopping for an agent, then finding a publisher (if you ever find an agent), then a year or two later you might be a published author and all you have to show for it is a piddly advance and if you have poor sales you may not see that publisher again. Ouch. And at any stage that career path can be derailed. Most authors don't quit their day jobs. Not to mention that America is largely illiterate; people don't read for leisure anymore (on average). The publishing industry isn't handing out sweet deals to unknowns anymore; the bubble there burst. If you see a "big thing" on the shelves like vampire stories have been (thanks a lot, Twilight) then decide to write the next big vampire novel, guess what? Unless you're an established author with a fast track into the publishing line, when your novel comes out everything will be mummies. You can't get a novel churned out quickly enough to hit the current wave of popularity.

Most novel writers never make it big. They're lucky to make a living.

I turned this over in my head. I decided that I really had the least to lose in trying to write a novel. I am inspired by the likes of Scott Sigler (who worked for 15 freakin' years before throwing in the towel and deciding to podcast his novels for free...leading to an actual publishing contract. Finally!) and Mur Lafferty (who also got a publishing contract after working her butt off on projects like I Should Be Writing and her own novels being released in podcast form) and Paula B. with her podcast The Writing Show, giving insights on the publishing and writing industries.

I didn't mention the worst part of taking this path. I fully realize that I'm working about an hour or more a day on a story that may never sell and will get rejected. When you work on something that could be about 100,000 words (mine's currently at 40,000 as a first draft, and this post is appearing several weeks after I'm prepping this posting) along with the work it takes to edit and polish the manuscript, those rejection slips from agents and publishers is going to hurt.

Having a story in your head and thinking that you have what it takes to write a great novel is one thing. In your head you can do anything. But to actually try...and fail...that's tough. I am essentially making the conscious choice to invest months of my time into something that may do little more than confirm that I'm going to fail.

Ouch!

But I'm producing something. (Bet you were wondering when I'd get to the point, eh?)

I'm working on a legacy. I see teenagers who spend most of their time texting, playing games, and watching TV. The big thing in schools now is creating a portfolio of work; very rarely do I see anything that they produce willingly on their own. Their portfolio is filled with assignments, things that curriculum dictates they work on so they'll have something to show later on. Nothing with their heart or passion defining some part of themselves in the process.

I am producing something that I wished I had growing up. I know very little about my parents as they grew up. Their memories now are selective. I have things in my journal that hopefully will only be read when I'm too far senile to care what others close to me hold as an opinion. But it's there.

I want to have things for my kids to refer to later on and know this is what Dad was like. Really. Well, not the incident involving jello wrestling during the fraternity/sorority mixer. But what is in that journal and is in this blog is me put into a more lasting form for posterity.

If I do through some miracle happen to get published as a novelist, or (dare I say it?) become successful enough to become a full-time writer, I'll be listed in the Library of Congress and available in bookstores for my children to be able to point and say, "That's your grandfather, son!"

It makes me sad sometimes. I look around and wonder if other people ever think about leaving a legacy behind. I see them more concerned about fashion or reality TV shows than thinking about trying to make a little movie for fun, or blogging their thoughts for the world, or creating artwork that even if it only makes it onto the walls of the bedroom is still something that can be a reminder that "I was here. I mattered. I made that."

"But what about sites like YouTube? Or Facebook?"

I suppose that at the most base level those are examples of producing material. But I don't see it necessarily as that.

The barriers to entry for things like podcasting, video production and blogging have never been lower. Never. You can get a cheap camera for $200 bucks that fits in your pocket. You can get a computer for $500 on which to edit the videos, and an account on YouTube to upload your resulting masterpiece for free.

The difference in my view is that there's a difference between some tweener capturing ten seconds of their friend falling on her giggly ass or adding the three hundredth lipsync of the latest music abomination on the radio to YouTube and finding something that took time and care to produce like this trailer for Scott Sigler's novel Contagious.

Basically I see a producer as someone creating something of pride; it is a work that they have put a part of themselves into as a way of putting the best representation of their skills forward.

This blog isn't exactly the top-notch in grammar or structure. Much of it is just rambling from a guy trying not to be fat. But it is honest. It is a facet of insight into a part of me. The same goes for the journal. The novel is a story that I wanted to tell. Keeping up with the journal, the blog, the novel, and my job right now fills most of my time, so I don't have as much to try my hand at making videos, or doing theater work, or polishing my programming skills or working on a podcast.

But I am producing.

Perhaps I'm just fixated on the wrong goals in life. I get depressed watching others doing things that in a day or two will likely mean nothing, leaving behind nothing as a legacy. Maybe that suits them so it isn't anything to grieve for. Maybe they're happy filling their expected roles as consumers.

What do you think? Do you have an opinion on this? Do you want to leave behind some kind of legacy and if so how?

What's My Audience?

As I write my story I sometimes stop and wonder if the story I'm telling will have appeal, or at least appeal to the audience I intended it to appeal to.

My primary goal is to sit down and get the words to the page, a little each day. Whether it's 500 words or 2,000, I need to get a little further into the story and keep the momentum up. I figure I can smooth the rough spots in rewrite/editing.

Since my primary goal is to get the story advanced a little each day I find I'm more focused on telling my story than fitting it into a specific criteria. The story is more or less, in my evaluation, a modern-day science fiction story. So...sci fi, right?

Maybe. The thing is that I worry my story is too simplistic. Too straightforward, maybe. That leads me to wonder if it isn't Young Adult sci-fi.

Which would be bad. It's pushing 70,000 words now (69,937 at the moment, give or take) and YA novels are in the 50 to 80 thousand word range. Mine will most likely be pushing 100 thousand, give or take.

So what to do? Is it even worth worrying about at this stage?

If I keep second guessing myself I think I'll stutter and lose my momentum or at a minimum lose the story that I'm trying to tell. So I figure the best thing to do is continue with the story and see if the turd at the end is something that can be polished, then worry about how to summarize and pitch and query it.

Unless someone else knows of a better way...that's my course of action. Finish story and worry later. Yeah.

(Does anyone know a good "litmus test" for a story to tell what genre and subgenre it would fit into, like whether this story will be best a sci-fi or YA sci-fi story?)

Writing My First Novel

This is more appropriately titled "Writing My First Novel's Manuscript". The odds are stacked way way against being published, so while I think my story is okay, it's still a first effort and I have no illusions that it will be the next Harry Potter.

It would be nice, but I really doubt it would happen.

I figured that seeing as this was supposed to be hints and tips and information about writing, I should probably post some updates once in awhile to what I'm working on. My first manuscript is currently listing in OpenOffice as having 68,918 words and no it's not finished.

The story is a current day science fiction story. My goal is to have at least 500 words a day added to the first draft; my typical word count average has been over 1,000 words a day, so I've been happy with that progress. Some days are worse; I've had times where I was so tired I added a couple hundred words and fell asleep. Other days were fantastic. Today, for example, I added 2,599 words so far, and am contemplating hiding in the bedroom with the laptop to see if I could pound out a few more words and get a little further on the story arc.

It will still need heavy editing, of course. And parts will probably benefit from a rewrite. The way I figure it, the hardest part is actually getting the story down so I'd have something to edit.

Hopefully the finished product will be good enough to polish. The only way to tell is to finish it and start editing, right?

I Should Be Writing and NaNoWriMo

Episode 135 of Mur Lafferty's I Should Be Writing podcast is all about the NaNoWriMo. She interviews a big name author that actually supports doing NaNoWriMo, David Niall Wilson, the big guy that started NaNoWriMo, Chris Baty, and a writer that is extremely prolific and has accepted a challenge to write 50,000 words in 21 days (he's aiming for 100,000 words for November) and with his prior track record will probably make his goal, Nathan Lowell.

This is a special podcast dedicated to all things NaNoWriMo. If you're participating I'd strongly suggest checking it out!

Word Count for Novels

As I try to draft my first novel's manuscript I try to pay close attention to information whatever information I can get on the "right" way to do things in the publishing world.

I found a recent post by Jessica on the BookEnds LLC blog regarding approximate word counts for novels. Basically, when in doubt, aim for 80,000 words.

She broke it down further in the post, by thousands of words;
Mystery: 70-90
Romance: 80 to 100
Fantasy/Scifi: 80 to 125
Young Adult: 50 to 75
Women's Fiction, literary fiction, etc.: 80 to 100 (literary fiction can be 125)

This pretty much fit in with the numbers I'd found previously. My aim (the manuscript I'm drafting now is a present-day science fiction story) is around 100,000 words. I'm currently at 64,000 words and working towards the climax.

The thing is that these are rules of thumb. From what I can tell if you have a good story, one that is compelling and pulls the reader in, you have a chance of getting it sold to an agent and/or publisher, unless you go WAY outside of the limits. If the numbers are off your agent/editor will have you alter the story to fit their needs for publication.

If I remember right this was a problem for J.C. Hutchin's 7th Son trilogy. He wrote a 300,000 word monster and then couldn't sell it to publication houses he pitched to...because it was too long. Way too long. He eventually broke it into a trilogy and podcast it for the masses rather than admit defeat and trash the manuscript, which in the end was a good thing because after a long road he got a publishing contract for book one.

Hope the information here was useful to you!

Publishing Is Changing: Giving Away Your Content?

Mur Lafferty posted a blog entry to Storytellers Unplugged about her view on the changing winds in the publishing industry. She is a podcast author that has given away much of her content in an effort to grow an audience, and as a result has become a published author for her Playing for Keeps novel. I became a fan of hers after hearing the first of her Heaven novel series.

She discusses how publishers could be taking some lessons from those who are on the forefront of this change in the industry; struggling new authors like her are focusing on growing an audience through free content. Larger audience means more people have heard of you, more people hearing of you means more sales. It's worked pretty well for names like Scott Sigler, Cory Doctorow, J.C. Hutchins, and of course Mur Lafferty.

There could be a flip side to this too. These are people who aren't just authors. They're promoters and marketers. They are learning how to brand themselves. For example, Scott Sigler isn't just a podcast author. He's a brand that promotes himself as the FDO, the Future Dark Overlord. His fans are self-branded Junkies that need their Sigler 'fix. He tirelessly puts out content into his feed, including the Bloodcast, short stories that are leading to other stories and novels, and he has written most of his released work in a way that they tie together like a more overt version of the Stephen King works that make subtle nods to one another across novels (for the FDO there are hints that aliens in the Rookie have made multiple appearances in novels like Infected and Contagious, for example, and there's a shared character name in the Rookie that is a descendant of a certain hornball in Nocturnal...) Sigler has also recently concluded his tour around parts of the country while holding Junkie contests to determine where he goes next in order to draw crowds.

Most people who want to be authors want to write. What Mur seems to be pointing to is a future where that may not be really possible except for the really fortunate authors; publishers expect authors to brand themselves and promote themselves rather than investing in the author. This picture is saying that a career as a writer is as dead as becoming a teacher.

I have relatives that are teachers. They can't be just teachers as they thought teaching would be when they went to college. Instead teachers become mentors, surrogate parents, guidance counselors, psychologists, babysitters, hall monitors, politicians, and students having to complete "continuing education" credits. The idea that you go to school to learn about a topic and then go out to mold young minds is complete bull. It seems that actually teaching fills about thirty percent of their day. The rest is unrelated politics and crud that people outside the field have no clue about and people inside the field know burns out most new teachers within the first few years.

Indeed in the future painted by that blog post authors will need to focus on building an audience, interacting with their audience, updating websites and twitter accounts and facebook pages and podcasts and cross promoting with others in the podcast community. The new wave of authors will need to be savvy in using tools like the Internet to track their Google ranking and set up notifications when their names appear online so they can move to other blogs where people mention their names and interact with potential audience members on other blogs.

And this may work for many. The problem is that I see this through a myopic lens; I am a podcast freak who likes listening to audio on the iPod and have discovered some of these authors like Mur and Sigler. As a result I get a lot of my information from this insular community for whom this approach to gaining sales works. They are author/marketers.

I can't help but think there are others who want to just be authors that won't be able to do this. In the comments for that blog, a commenter with the name Joe Cottonwood posted that he podcast 3 books on podiobooks for free but already has 9 books in print with major houses. He said that he has increased his audience by a huge number and has had great fan mail and he really enjoyed going back to storytelling roots by doing the podcast. But he hasn't seen much in the way of sales being generated; his podcast of Clear Heart had about 10,000 listeners and the book sold about 200 copies, according to his comments. "One problem, of course, is that I suck at marketing. Apparently I’m a pretty good writer and a popular podcaster, but I’m a terrible publicist. I can live with that."

I appreciate Mur and Sigler's advice to new authors. To paraphrase, "Write your book. Just plant your butt in the seat and write. Clean it up. Try everything you can to get an agent and get it published the traditional route. Podcasting your content for free isn't for the faint of heart and should be a last resort." They aren't giving up entirely on the old way of publishing but rather are acting as pioneers on a new approach to doing things at a time when the traditional houses are starting to see a storm on the horizon and in the process authors will end up having to roll with the punches or change careers.

Will the podcaster-free-content-author-turned-marketer become the norm? Only time will tell. In the meantime it looks like the curse of living in "interesting times" is coming and everyone in the industry will be waiting to see just how interesting things get.

Authors Are Expected to be Marketers

I'm not published. Hopefully it's more accurate to say that I'm not published yet. But I do spend some time trying to get a feel for what it takes to move from unknown wanna-be author to published (and income-generating) author.

One theme that is being visited and revisited is that an author's publisher is not going to spend money on publicizing new books. They do the bare minimum and that's it.

Unless, of course, you're a sure bet.

What does this mean? It means a few things. One, publishing houses will spend tons of money on authors that are guaranteed to bring in money. The flip side is that the authors that really need support in getting word out about their book and don't have the financial means to do so will get zilch help.

Second, authors are expected to market themselves. I've been finding more and more online articles like this one and it's rather disconcerting. Authors aren't expected to just be authors; they have to market themselves, brand themselves, grow a following, nurture their fans...oh, yeah, and write a book.

Stephen King, Stephanie Meyers, JK Rowling...the big name authors have no problem getting someone else to foot the bill if they wanted to go on a tour or appear in public to drum up publicity. Ironically they have a following that is already gossiping about release schedules and probably have no problem selling their latest works even if they did nothing to promote the release at all.

New authors today need to create a web site, interact on forums, appear in bookstores on tours often sponsored by themselves, and grow the thick skin to accept those times where they spend an entire day sitting alone in a Barnes and Noble making maybe two sales of their book because the people coming in have no idea who they are.

The fact is that publishers often aren't making back the advance they pay authors for their books. They would rather bet on the known rather than the unknown. So when they accept a new author, they're essentially paying for the gamble that your book will somehow, miraculously, create the next JK Rowling.

New authors, beware. If you want to be an author you need to explore a path that may include writing the manuscript, editing it, fixing it up, finding an agent, shopping it around to publishers, creating a website, interacting on forums, actively engaging your audience, touring bookstores (on your dime), appearing in podcasts for interviews,  creating promotional blurbs for podcasts, interviewing in newspapers, and creating trailers on YouTube for viewing as well as storm through other social media outlets your audience may be lurking in like Facebook and Twitter.

Oh, yeah, and you need to try working on the next novel in there somewhere as well...

Not a pleasant thought, but if you really want to become an author, it's time to steel up and get prepared!