Poking with a Stick

So it's been over a month since I posted to this blog, a month and 1/2 since I edited any of my work and two months since writing anything new. As of a week ago I was completely convinced that this new re-launch of a supposed writing career was dead, but here I am this morning trying to reboot, negotiating with myself some way to get back into the game.

I'm starving for legitimacy. I think this is much if not all of my problem. It's not the business, since traditional publishing is no longer a barrier to 7 figure success. Just ask Amanda Hocking. Jesus, I only need $500 a month to live comfortably!

It is the marketing aspect of the book business that I can't stomach, though. Peddling my wares like a snake oil charlatan. I'm letting it get in the way of my writing. Here I am, sitting on two novels and a novella and I am so close (but oh so far) from the finish line.

But it's back to that legitimacy song and dance again. The deal I've verbalized (in my head) this time goes like this: I just need to edit the books I have written and put them on Kindle. If they take off or even mildly sell (I would be happy with selling just one book!) then that may be the motivation I need to write another book. My research won't stop. I don't research just for my books. I research because I love to learn and explore, just not in an overly academic fashion. Well, I use a pretty studious methodology, I just don't like the limits placed on me by academia (can't use Wikipedia? How stupid is that? Stop trying to protect your book sales).
 But maybe this burden in me to write, to create, will finally be quenched if I get several books out there available to the public and they don't sell. I could say I tried it, that I put out the effort - crap, I've already written three - and then go on my merry way just researching and learning for my own sake and piecing together a coherent theory of Everything. But, what if my books take off? What if I start moving units like Hocking. I've read her book. I don't see any difference between her writing and mine. There are plenty of errors throughout it, both grammatical and editorial. I'm never going to please everyone. It's not possible. I doubt there is a single person on planet earth that I'm pleasing now - without writing. I think you and I both know there is no possible option a serving my God in a modern church setting. Can't be a preacher. Can't be a missionary. No thanks on the bible teacher. What else is there? Of course. Writing. It is the perfect fit. Not only does it allow me to be creative, to venture down a path (several paths) on a journey that I started as a kid, but it allows me to wear any hat I want to. I can be a doctor. I can be an assassin. I can be a mill worker. I saw that job posting for a psychologist. I think I'll apply for that job. ;-)  So far I've been several men God uses to start the last revival on earth. I've been an angel sent to earth on a covert mission. I've been a young woman who falls in love, sees ghosts and loses nearly everything and everyone around her. I've been a truck driver in Alaska and someone who inadvertently plays with time and loses. I could be a priest charged with guarding fallen angels for judgment. I could be a young girl who must fight to keep her soul from being swallowed up into a gnostic abyss. I can be God, creating whole worlds, inhabiting them with people of my own choosing. Vessels of good and bad and maybe in between. Caricatures etched in the sand.

Feeble it may be, I think I need to resign myself to the reality that, with all its ebbs and flows, writing - being a writer - it is my life. It is my vocation.

Stalled...Maybe She's a Dead Stick

I haven't been writing for several days. I haven't been editing for just as long. But my mind has been whirling around in my stories, unable to escape. Yesterday I was certain I would never write again and I was kicking myself for buying a domain name. Day before that I was certain I would start writing the next day. Today, who knows what's going to happen. I try not to beat myself up for it; it is what it is. Maybe I will write more sporadically than I thought. Maybe instead of 10 novels a year it will be one or two. Maybe none. Maybe twenty-five. I think what I will do is slate the future books I know I want to write and make sure they get on Amazon. Then I can see what the response is like from the public. I have two novels and one novella completed that I need to do edits on and get listed. I know I want to write Our Daughter, Oblivion, Seeing Through and Writing Tucker. After that - I don't know. I'm really excited to write Seeing Through. Writing Tucker will close the book on an old high school buddy of mine that I can't seem to find anywhere online. Oblivion is still kind of hazy on the details, but it's definitely there. Our Daughter will be the next one I write, I think.

Maybe I won't write any of them and will just spend the rest of my life reading books and exploring different subjects of interest. I think living in the woods in a camper as a fire/equipment watch, writing novels is a better use of my time, though. I guess we'll both have to just wait and see, huh?

Still Reading, Reading, Reading...

I spent most of the day today reading, or listening to audio books while playing mind numbing video games like Atomica or Pipes or B-Jeweled or Tetris (though I don't think I ever actually played Tetris today). Topic of said books: fiction and writing fiction.

I polished off Amanda Hockings MY BLOOD APPROVES today. I think I finished the last five chapters in one setting. I love copying text over to Katie (my text to speech reader). If I tried to read that many pages with my eyes I would go batty (slow reader). Using Txt2Speech, I can burn through chapters without any trouble at all. I also finished IN STYLE, a punctuation manual - and learned very little. I also started 38 MOST COMMON FICTION WRITING MISTAKES. I would like to say I'm learning a lot, but I'm not. The closest I've come is from Stephen King's ON WRITING and I think it's more hilarious (and a nice break) than anything else. It does provide a pit of perspective, though; like I'm not trapped in a bubble all by myself with this thing called a writing career.

I have a dozen or so books I would really like to read, but I'm getting antsy because I'm neither writing nor am I editing. I have decided that when I do actually start my edits again, I definitely need to set a measurable daily goal - preferably a certain number of words edited. This is really the only way I can keep myself honest and can project with at least some level of accuracy where I'll be in said about of time on each project.

I would really like to edit 1000 words a day. I would REALLY like to get up to writing 4000 words a day, but I don't know if it's in the cards. I have several story ideas that are taking shape. But I do have some breathing time, since only one so far has been put to paper in any kind of legitimate outline form. I haven't done more because I don't yet have a dependable or effective schedule. It seems as if something always gives. If I write I dn't edit. If I write and edit, I don't work on story development. If I work on story development, then I forget to read up on marketing. It's not like I don't have the time here. I've got nothing but time. So, I know my boat is leaking, I just have to find the hole and put a freaking plug in it. 

Despite my uncomfortableness, I'm trying to give myself enough down time to get my head on straight when it comes to editing, since it is my Achilles Heel. I want to do as little work as possible for the greatest ROI, which means I have to be organized, strategic and systematic in my editing process. I can't wait until the body of work I've churned out recently is more than what I produced a year ago in my first two manuscripts. I also can't wait to have them put to bed once and for all. So far all I have to show for my new found efforts is a 100 page novella. it originally was supposed to be a 300 page novel. Yikes!

I need to get cracking. Thus explains my concern about taking time off. But, I want to do it right the first time so I don't have to go back and reinvent the wheel a third time. I'm already playing catchup to myself.

Boning Up on Writing Manuals

I spent today - my second day off from actively writing in between projects - pouring through fiction writing manuals, specifically, grammar, punctuation and self-editing books. I remember when I had finished writing IN THE MEADOW and was working on the edits for my first novel, I felt like I was drowning in sand. I felt completely overwhelmed with the editing and revising process. None of my work seemed up-to-par, I felt horribly self-conscious, and I never thought in a million years I would every get even a single positive response from agents, let alone a book deal. 

I feel better now. I may not be up yet on my board, but I don't feel like I'm going to fall off either when I get ready to stand. There's more confidence in what I'm writing - but more importantly - there's more confidence in what I'm learning. Hacking away slowly at the bad habits, at the awkwardness, no longer feeling that cold, clammy hand of self-doubt pushing my head under the sand quite as hard as it used to. It feels like all my jobs in the past have felt when I first started working. Those first few days are miserable. By the second week you're feeling better, but God you just want to figure everything out and stop making stupid mistakes. After the first month, you're pretty confident, but it doesn't mean you've seen everything and you could do your job in your sleep. No. That kind of intimate knowledge and confidence doesn't develop for a long time. Maybe a year. Maybe more. But it does eventually come - when you have mastered your job, when you have reached a superior level of proficiency. This is what I'm shooting for.

I see the physical writing process, the actual words on the page, as a kind of mechanism, a communications apparatus that I can use to expel my stories. Maybe once they are all gone, in print, I won't need to write anymore. Maybe there will never be an end. At this point I have another 13 books in mind, not counting sequels or multiple books in series - and most if not all of my books I can see having multiples.

Needless to say, it will be very interesting to see how this all shapes up. I don't really see myself developing a career, as if I'm making the conscious decision to do it. As the author said in the latest book I'm reading, "Writers write. Everyone else just makes excuses." That's what I'm finally doing; I'm writing. It doesn't matter if I make any money. It doesn't matter if I'm famous and get booked for the Letterman show. It doesn't matter if even my harshest critics (my family) finally see that I am successful. All that matters is that I write. To me, my stories are alive. I breathe them every day, whether I put them down on paper or not. At least, when I write them down, get them out of me, they don't haunt me in those sleepy-eyed moments before I go to sleep at night. Sometimes I think writing is a lot like breathing. Other times it's just pure hell.

Whatever it is - at least I'm no longer fighting it.   

1130+ Words - Good Pizza - Truck Shopping

I was able to jump back into it this morning and knocked out 1100 + words on SEEKING LIGHT AURORA. Also did some editing on THE PREPARATION, but that was where my regular schedule pretty much ended. I got three or four tasks finished on my tasks list - just random stuff. Created a MySpace page and got it started. Need to read the article now to find out how to tweak it for authors. Also found out that I can never get back my youtube account with the stevenveach domain on it. It is permanently locked into the old email account [changed the password one day and now can't remember it]. No biggy.

Had pizza for dinner from Papa Murphy's. That place has the best pizza! And so greasy. Yum! Also talked with family today about a truck. I'm shopping for a truck that I will buy in 9.2 years - one that has the extended cab, but one that is wide enough that I can lay down in the back seat comfortably. This would serve as my home unless or until I decided to move up into a cabover camper. I wouldn't do this unless the seat turned out to not be big enough or I decided to firewatch. Several years ago I had a pickup truck and put a canopy shell on the back of it, then outfitted it to live in. Loved that truck.

Not much else to talk about - oh, I thought of a name for the new story that popped into my head the other day while I was working - I think I will call it OBLIVION ENCHAINED.