Writing and the Olympics
The Rio Games are underway. I wonder which sport is most like writing?
There are word sprints, of course, which many people find quite useful to their process. I’ve never been much good at them, but their popularity cannot be denied. So for those people at those times, writing could be said to be like track’s sprinting events.
Unless of course you are one of those who say, (and say and say and say, because it’s a well-used expression), “writing is a marathon, not a sprint.” And truth be told it is, more often than not, at least when working on a novel. Whether you self publish or go for an agent, there is nothing fast about writing, editing, revising over and over, and bringing it into existence as a marketable product. I have to remind myself of this sometimes, and it’s taken me years to get a bit more comfortable with the idea of a marathon. (Writing kind, I’d likely collapse and die if I attempted an actual marathon. No, I won’t train for one with you, sorry.)
Equestrian events come to mind. Those who think the can sit down and make a novel, or a short story, or any amount of their writing obey their bidding without any effort are almost as foolish as those who think they can mount a horse and insist it do anything and everything it is told, like a machine. I’ve known enough “horse people” in my time to know that the personality and tendency of the horse must be accounted for, or at best the rider will do poorly in the event. At worse, the rider will be thrown off into the dust.
There is a reason they are called “riders.” It takes two independent life forces working together for the ideal result. “Rider” even sounds a bit like “writer,” one who also must tame the muse, ride the powerful animal that is creative moment, trying not to fall off or get kicked by it-showing patience and coaxing a performance out of it when things are a little tougher along the way.
Writers spend most of their time just treading the proverbial water, and it can be exhausting. All the while they must be ready to wing a shot towards a goal, when the opportunity presents itself. Staying still results in sinking below the surface, and we know what happens after that. Therefore, is water polo an apt metaphor for the writing life?
If you’ve written more than two things in life about which you cared, I don’t even need to elaborate on how wrestling is a damn near perfect reflection of writer problems.
Then again, so is platform diving, wherein a human being stands high above a pool and takes sometimes a flying leap out into the air, with mere seconds to get under control before slamming into the depths.
Archery requires concentration, relaxation and calmness, confidence and guts. Dead-center perfect shots are always the goal, but only occasionally the result, even from the top players on the planet. Rifle and pistol events have similar skill and temperament requirements. Are these the ideal writing metaphors?
If you’re always chasing a concept or idea in your writing, perhaps trap shooting, with its flying clay disks streaking across your perception for only a moment is more apropos.
Or, like a shot put, do you find ideas heavy, laying up against you as you store energy to put them out into the world, having to do a bit of a shuffle, letting out a bit of a grunt or scream as you at last shove your creative burden out away from you some distance before it is measured by others?
Then there’s modern pentathlon. Never heard of it? That’s not surprising. The founder of the modern Olympic Games himself came up with it, and almost from the very beginning it has been unpopular with both audiences and the Olympic authorities. Points are accumulated by each athlete as the compete in brief competitions of fencing, equestrian, swimming, pistol shooting and running.
Modern pentathletes toil in obscurity, even among other Olympians. Their exploits and triumphs rarely make the news in this country. The glory of the sport is usually contained to personal triumphs.
Even the medal winners in this odd sport remain anonymous to the world in most cases.
Those medal winners usually excel in two or three of the five events, get by in another two, and are, frankly, deplorable in one of them. Their strengths must make up for their weaknesses. Those who are excellent in all five disciplines are rare individuals indeed.
So let’s review this event for a moment. A struggle often ignored by the public for being not sexy enough-it requires competitors to be at least adequate in multiple skills-form partnership with a powerful entity, be quick and skilled at striking with weapons while avoiding strikes from others, keep afloat despite fatigue, stay on target and call up reserves of endurance in a final run to the finish.
Oh, and even if you succeed, most people will never have heard of you, ever.
If this concept does yet sound familiar to you writers out there, you are either very lucky, or very new to the craft.
So then, is modern pentathlon the perfect Olympic metaphor for writers?
No. It’s close, but as I’ve shown you, all kinds of sports in the summer games have parallels with the writers life. In fact, all of them probably do in some way or another. Can you think of more?
But the best metaphor in this case is probably the Olympics themselves. Writers train, practice, want to give up. The usually don’t win medals and only even have a chance for glory every once in a while. Yet just being in the arena, with all the others, most of whom will never reach the podium is something they value. Something they must learn to value, or quit.
Most of us haven’t quit yet.
How Do You Solve a Project Like Novella?
I’ve only mentioned it once here on that blog, and that was back in October. But I have what I’ve been calling a novella ready for its next draft. I did some red-inking on it earlier this summer, and I need to type out those changes, so I’m not sure what the word count of the current version is, exactly. But I estimate it at above 50,000, which any Nanowrimo participant will tell you is the roughly accepted lower end of novel length manuscripts. My current murder mystery. Murder. Theatre. Solitaire clocks in at only 52K, and I have called that a novel all along.
All by way of saying, maybe the project I’ve been calling a novella is closer to being a novel than I thought, judging by both my own, and some popular length standards in “the business.”
I’ll continue calling it a novella if it ends up at less than 50K, even though I know it’s not an exact science. But in its current form, it is close in length to my mystery novel. I wonder why I’ve called this project a novella by default all this time?
Part of the reason, I speculate, is that Project Beta (a working/computer file name for it, not the actual title) was never planned. If you read that one other entry about it, linked above, you’ll see the story of its creation. Novels just seem like something I need to have planned to start, work through finish, take a break from, edit, revise, self publish and talk about over and over, all from starting from a certain date in many cases. Because from the beginning of Project Beta I had no exact plan as to where it would fall in my novelist timeline, I referred to it as more of a novella. Maybe. I suppose part of me was/is more willing to believe that a novella came out of the proverbial “nowhere” last fall, than a novel doing so.
Who cares, you ask? Writers. Writers care about this sort of thing. More so when they’re looking for agents or pitching to small presses, (novellas are far, far less likely to be accepted by either) but such designations matter even to those of us not pursuing the traditional path. And I don’t see myself pursuing the traditional path to publishing with Project Beta, whether it is truly a novel or a novella. For better or worse, I often prefer to be more precise with myself.
Have you ever gone to your fridge for the last Coke, (or whatever) only to find there was none? All this time you assumed you’d be undertaking the experience of that final item, and then suddenly, you won’t be. You could run down to the store and buy another Coke is you really crave one, but admit it; it’s not the same. Dumb as it is, a Coke you have to drive five minutes to the store and pay for will not be as satisfying as the Coke you thought was in your fridge already. Exact same product, but your mindset heading into it makes all the difference in terms of satisfaction.
That’s in the same sphere as what I’m talking about. Novel, novella. Word-Assembly-Story-Thing. I know I can call it whatever I want to, and it will still be the same manuscript. But I’ve thought of it as a novella for so long, I wonder if calling it a novel now, when I didn’t prophecy (plan) a novel at this point in the process would be like going to the store to make up for the missing Coke.
There were certain things I thought of doing with it to make it public, if it were a novella, that don’t feel wise for a novel. I don’t know.
Eventually, like everything I write that is to be read, I’ll revise, edit, check and double check it, format it, and in some form make it available for the world. I want to share Project Beta with people. Its origin story in my mind is somewhat different from that of other projects I’ve been inspired to undertake. I’m glad it’s there. I just…wonder if there’s Coke in the fridge right now or not.
One Month After Launch…Non-update.
So, I launched Murder. Theatre. Solitaire one month ago today. And I have a surprise for you all; I’m uncertain how many copies have sold, because I haven’t checked on the numbers.
That must shock some of you into a coma. I don’t blame you if that’s the case, as at first blush I’ve as much as admitted to going against the very nature of independent publishing-keeping up with the business side of things.
Perhaps it will put your mind at ease to know that I have not been avoiding promotion. I can’t afford as much deep promotion as a lot of indie-authors use, but I have been talking it up on Twitter, and mentioning it in person when applicable. I have friends who are reading it now, and that makes me happy.
I have another idea or two for promoting that won’t cost any money, which I hope to start soon.
But, I’ve not been checking numbers. Why not?
To begin with, that seems like a quick way to take the air out of my sales. The numbers for Flowers of Dionysus were not, to be frank, ever good. They fell short even of my own modest expectations. While most people would see that and read yet another pile of articles about promotion in an attempt to improve, I saw that and felt somewhat gutted. Call me a bad author for feeling that way if you must, but that just wasn’t as easy to get over and move beyond as was the lack of sales for Thank You For Ten. (That wasn’t exactly easy either.)
We’re not talking about a lack of fame and fortune here, folks. We’re talking about being very close to nothing happening. After all of the work and excitement leading into releasing that novel, (which I promoted more heavily than I am my current one), seeing that not even most of my friends and colleagues picked up the book was not easy for me to get beyond. In some ways, I’m still bummed about it.
So this time around, I’m not checking. I’ll talk it up, promote it in the best way I am capable with my personality and resources, and thank those who express their enjoyment to me. But the way I see it now, if this novel should become a hit, or even become a hit by my own modest standards, I’ll become aware of that soon enough one way or the other. To me, remaining at least someone optimistic and excited about the idea of writing, editing and publishing a novel to sell by myself is more significant that allowing depressing numbers to push me into studying targeted audience research, paying thousands of dollars to have someone do it for me, or any number of other things which would only in the end drag the bait that is my book across the eyes of more fish who may or may not even bite.
Whatever success I’m going to have will likely be because people meet and converse with me online or in person, or otherwise by word of mouth. In the future I may save money for in depth data analysis and all of the other things I still desperately do not understand and cannot afford. But for now, I’m happy to say the book has been out for a month, and I’m still happy to let people know that I’ve written a murder mystery, if they are in to such things.
I will probably also make this one available eventually in a paper version, which could change things a bit. But that’s for another post.
For now, give Murder.Theatre.Solitaire a try. You can’t go wrong on a quick-paced mystery for only two dollars, can you?
Launch! “Murder. Theatre. Solitaire.” is Live!
Well, here I am again, announcing the launch of another novel. I will admit, it’s not as scary or roller-coaster like as the first time, but nonetheless I’m happy to make my first ever murder mystery available to all of you.
For you Kindle types, you’ll find it here. Other formats are available right over here.
If you are at all a mystery lover, I ask you to give this one a try, at $1.99, and be sure to rate it and write a review if you liked it, if you please.
Off we go.
Why I’m Reading a Book About Opera
It’s actually not a book about opera, but rather about operas. One hundred of them in fact.
Appropriately titled 100 Great Operas and Their Stories, it’s a book I picked up at good will for about a dollar earlier this year. Originally published in the 1950’s, this volume by Henry W. Simon is a famous collection of plot summaries for what at least the author considered great operas. Also included are brief histories and facts pertaining to the composition and performance debuts of each piece.
Like many people, I’m familiar with a few opera tunes that have over the years entered into the popular consciousness, even outside of the opera world. (I temporary hurt my throat while cleaning the house a few weeks ago trying to sing, far too loudly, Largo al Factotum. Drawing a blank? That’s the “Figaro! Figaro! Figaro!” song. (You know it now, don’t you?) I only know its actual title from this book. I never thought to look it up before then.
Truth be told, I don’t think about opera much. “Figaro!” and a handful of other songs and instrumentals represent most of my knowledge of the art form before I picked up this book. Though I’ve looked up the songs mentioned in this book to get a sense of the sound sometimes, I’ve never listened to an entire opera, let alone attended one. (I did have to man the college radio station on Saturdays when a live feed of the Metropolitan Opera in New York was piped in, but I’d usually turn the sound down low and do homework in the booth.) That was the closest I’d come to opera knowledge until now.
And it’s mostly knowledge I’m seeking by reading this book. Concise knowledge. Familiarity with what the basics are of some of the top operas in the world. I imagine at some point in my life I will attend at least a short comic opera, but there are plenty of things I want to do before that. This isn’t a prelude to becoming an opera buff. I doubt I will ever be so. But as a performer myself, I thought at least a bare working knowledge of opera would be prudent, given that it would only cost me a dollar or so. I was unlikely to look up every individual opera online that I happen to hear something about, but with a book on my shelf, the knowledge is right there.
Believe it or not, though the summaries are short, I have, at around the halfway point of the book, detected some of the patterns and tendencies of opera plots. (At least those seemingly timeless ones from the 19th and 20th centuries.) Already I can say with the tiniest bit of authority that “it sounds like an opera twist.”
Plus, as a writer, I want to be open to story lines, characters and settings from all sources. Many operas are interpretations or re-imaginings of older stories, myths, plays, novels, even other operas. I’m never going to write the libretto of an opera, (and double-never will I compose the music for one.) But unlike studying one specific opera in great detail, this accessible volume of synopses introduces the reader to a wealth of story telling material. The arc of an opera is generally different than that of a novel, but exposure to at least the summaries of plots from enduring operas has already sparked the tiniest seed of an idea in my mind here and there for future work.
Operas borrow from novels, and there is no reason the reverse shouldn’t be true either. (In fact, I’m certain it already is, somewhere.) Be careful of copyright issues if you decide to mine this book, or opera in general, though most in this volume would be long in the public domain.
So for a buck or so I have a source not only for a basic non-opera guy’s crash education in opera, but a writer’s potential inspiration, 100 times.
Not a bad use of a little pocket change. If you ever see it in a used bookstore, pick up your own copy.
Ty Unglebower 