“Thank You for Ten”: Some Pre-Launch Thoughts
Well, tomorrow is it. I will launch “Thank You for Ten: Short Fiction About a Little Theater” and make it available for purchase. All technical aspects have to the best of my understanding been taken care of. I’ve talked it up quite a bit over the last eight weeks or so, and I’ve processed the experience of self-publishing as best as I can. All that remains now, barring something I have forgotten, is to say “go buy it!” starting tomorrow. (I’ll be a bit more civilized than that when the time comes, I assure you.)
A lot of things to think about and to say, which is why I am writing this rare Friday blog post. I wanted to say some things on the day right before I launched. It just seems like a natural progression to me that way.
As for the actual process of self-publishing a book of this nature, much of what I’m feeling today can be summed up by saying that it wasn’t as bad as I feared it might be.
Yes, there’s been much about the technical aspects that I found frustrating at times, yet it wasn’t as frustrating or as worrisome as I initially feared. Typing with the proper formatting for ebooks takes some getting used to, and I know I haven’t memorized all of that nuance of it. I’ll need to refer to the guide again the next time I self-publish. But at least I won’t be doing it cold. I’ll have some acquired knowledge with which to work, and I need only remind myself of the how-to. It’s contrary to much much of how I’ve typed over my life, but a certain logic emerges from the new rules as you practice them.
The snafu with the cover is probably the chapter in this mini-saga that put me off of the process the most. I think that’s because I thought I had that totally covered without the need for help. I’m grateful of course for the quick help I got with that issue, but there was just something about messing that up that rubbed me the wrong way at the time, (and I admit it still does slightly, even today.) But even that didn’t sink the ship. With the aforementioned help I got out of that virtually unscathed and still on schedule. Covers will probably remain the trickiest part of this for me, but I don’t have to worry about that again for a while.
I foresee a minimalist approach to most of my future writings, when it comes to technical aspects. Not only because its easier to handle, but because I don’t believe in a lot of extra bells and whistles for my fiction anyway. I can’t say I won’t ever try to insert a graphic into a book I’m publishing, or experiment with less common fonts. But I didn’t this time, and don’t intend to in the foreseeable future. To me a clean, professional presentation within my ebooks is the best service I can render to my readers and to the stories I write.
And it is, in the end, about the stories. Writing a solid, enjoyable story that can speak for itself so long as it’s well formatted and edited and clean to read in most devices. However far this collection goes with readers, however many copies I sell, I can rest at the end of the publishing process knowing that I’ve taken great care to be professional and presentable, (even if minimalist in my approach.) I can relax knowing that everything I’ve done is in service to the stories.
This of course brings up the topic of marketing and selling the stories. I do have a sales goal, but I won’t share that out loud right now. I’d like to keep that private, and see how that feels for a while. I may share that goal with all of you later, if I feel I am near meeting it, or it be sharing it I can serve fellow writers thinking about self-publishing. But for now I want that particular metric to be between me and myself. I can say though, to all who may be worried about such things, that I have modest expectations, but am prepared for lofty results that exceed them, should they come my way.
I don’t plan to read many reviews I get on the work, at least not for a long while. I do write stories to be enjoyed, but at the same time, once they are out there for sale, I won’t be changing them based on what other people say about them. Anyone who writes a negative review on this collection is certainly entitled to their opinion, but I don’t think it benefits anyone involved for me to read every single thought someone has on it. People are going to like what I’ve created or they’re not.
That doesn’t mean I’m not at all nervous about making my stories available tomorrow. I am. It’s not crippling, but I can’t help but feel that I’m crossing a different kind of threshold tomorrow. Like opening night feels just before curtain; I know I’ve worked hard and believe in what I’ve accomplished, but in the end I can’t control what people think of my performance. No artist can, and though they mustn’t let themselves be devastated by a lack of response, any artist would be lying if they claimed they didn’t care at all about the reception of their work. They do. I do. Falling short of my goals for this collection, as with any other project, would be sad to me, and I won’t pretend that I can move heaven and earth in order to assure otherwise.
What I can do is remind myself that this experience, both the creative and the technical aspects, are the best they can possibly be given the resources and skills that I have at this time. There’s always room for improvement, but for the first time out I’m secure in the knowledge that I’ve made available a professional product that I’m proud to put my name to.
Come back tomorrow for all of the information you will need to purchase your own copy of Thank You for Ten: Short Fiction About a Little Theater .
Last Call for Novel 2
Hard as it may be to believe based on my blog and Twitter over the last eight weeks, I actually do have other writing projects that require my consideration besides Thank You for Ten: Short Fiction About a Little Theater. (Launching this Saturday, hard as that is the believe!) Chief among them, my second novel, which I have for the last two years or so been calling Novel 2.
Use the search function on this blog to search for “Novel 2” and you’ll become acquainted with its troubled history. Years ago a short story, then an idea for a novel. Then a meticulous outline for half the novel, which I then used as a template for Nanowrimo 2012. The resultant first-half sat for a while before I realized I’d created an over-plotted confused mess with a still-promising premise. Cue a reboot of the first half, with severe edits and streamlining, paving the way for me to at last outline and draft the second half. Doing so, producing at last a complete first draft of Novel 2 was one of my stated goals for 2014.
I’ve yet to do anything with it this year, and the year is nearly half over. But even scarier than that? I think, once again, I need to start over with the damn thing.
Though I’ve done no work on it this year, I’ve done plenty of thinking about it as I complete other projects and read other novels and consume advice and observations about writing from various sources. I’ve realized that perhaps the whole thing needs to start about five chapters in from the current draft. I’ve even rehearsed in my head how that might go about, and though I haven’t done it yet, I can see how I might do so, and it already makes sense. If such a drastic change in narrative already sounds like it will save that many pages, chances are I never should have started the story where I did in the first place.
Taking this approach will require me to reconsider what I want the plot to do, of course. That’s not horrible, as last summer I brainstormed various alternate paths for this story to take. So this isn’t coming out of nowhere. But along with the simpler arc, I feel a major tone shift is required. I think the pacing and the atmosphere need to be different than they have been this far. In fact, it may now trend more toward literary than genre suspense, if you can believe that. Sounds like a hell of a jump and it probably is. I’ll find out soon, as I start to draft it from the beginning again, (though using large chunks of already written material.) Not long after the launch of Thank You for Ten, I’ll return to working on Novel 2 in earnest. And I will have to work fast and furious if I am to meet my goal of finishing it by the end of the year.
I will say though that this will in all likelihood by me last attempt at it. If this new approach stalls, after a few months, I won’t be carrying the project into 2015. I will, with regret, shelf it- at least for several years while I pursue another second novel. I’ve given this idea, (which still won’t go away) enough time to come together. This altering of the tone, and probably the very genre of the piece is the last, best effort to see if what I’ve been thinking of has a novel in it somewhere. Little tweaks didn’t work, and entire reboots have so far not worked. If a major tone shift isn’t the answer, (born of the project incubating for about eight months during this recent hiatus) then I’m not meant to have the answer for the foreseeable future. Other work awaits my time and energy.
It may work, though. This final change in strategy may at last open the door on Novel 2. I hope it does, as I have been dancing with these ideas and characters for a while now. But at some point the dance ends, and the relationship begins or ends. By the end of this month, I will begin the process of finding out just where this relationship is going. Even after all this work, if it’s over, it’s over.
But it’s not over yet…
What’s the biggest writing project you ever shelved? Did you ever go back to it? Would you ever?
Publishing Update: Kindle Preview
Last night, I uploaded Thank You for Ten: Short Fiction About a Little Theater to the Kindle preview thing they have over at Amazon. I’m happy to report that if the preview is any indication, (and it is of course supposed to be), the Kindle version will look quite tidy and professional.
There are a few minor issues that I may need to address with the manuscript. None of them, left undone, would result in a sloppy e-book, from what I could tell. But tending to them may just give it the extra aesthetic…something. I conceded that for one of the things I may be the only one to notice, but I do notice. So I’ll be pondering that and consulting with some other self-publishers I know in the coming days.
On the whole, though, it looks how I want it to look. Not one for cute fonts and fancy typesetting gimmicks, I just wanted the links to work properly, and there not to be any gaping spaces in the text where they didn’t belong. I also wanted the differentiation between the stories to be clear. All of the above are true, if the preview is to be trusted, and I’m more than a bit excited about that.
Truth be told, I wasn’t aware one could preview how a file would look on Kindle devices until someone mentioned it to me a few days ago. As I had yet to fully open author account over at Amazon, I went and did everything in one sitting in regards to that.
On the subject of opening the account, it began to feel real at that point. Once you start giving your tax information and such to a distributor, it hits you that you’re about to sell something you created to essentially the whole Western World. That is, it will be available to the whole Western World, at any rate. Even if you don’t become rich or famous from your fiction, the act of getting the financial machinery in order for what may happen brings it all home in a way that buying covers, promoting, and even writing the first drafts doesn’t quite match. This experience will only apply to this very first self-published adventure, I’m sure, as by the next time I’ll already have established accounts and tax IDs and the like. But for today, it’s a focusing agent if ever there was one. This is all fun and exciting, and I imagine one day will be rewarding, but it is not a game.
So what remains for me to do, nine days before the official launch? There’s the aforementioned minor issues with the Kindle file to look into. Then I need to do another pass or two over the non-Kindle file I’ll be uploading elsewhere. (No, I’m not going with Amazon exclusively. I don’t want to limit myself.) Which means I’ll have similar business oriented tasks to perform elsewhere soon. I also want to see which places, if any, need me to have an author account so to speak, in case people want to learn more about me and such, when they download from that distributor.
I’ve got keywords and categories to fine tune for classification purposes. Some technical machinery to familiarize myself with. And there are a few more soft-sell places to mention the book’s upcoming launch I’ll probably look into.
As much as any of that, though, is the mental component, which I’ve mentioned before. I mustn’t forget to take some time during each of the busy days remaining to clear my head of anxiety about this project, and to be feel confident in the aspects of it I can control, and prepared for the aspects which I cannot control. And I need to prepare for the sensation of having it out there for that previously mentioned Western Civilization to see.
Quiet reflection on the undertaking each day would not be out of order at this point.
Yet not too much quiet reflection for now; I have a book to launch, on June 21st! I hope all of my readers who’ve tracked my progress on this blog so far will purchase a copy of Thank You for Ten when the time comes. I’m asking all of you to do so. Your readership of this blog is appreciated, and I’d like you to enjoy reading my fiction as well.
Yet that’s still nine days off. For now, I am going to examine the Kindle file, and see what I can improve.
The Story That Insisted.
Last night I finished writing a particular short story.
Big deal, right? I call myself an author, that’s what I’m supposed to do. But this story is different. This is a story I would have rather not written, and under normal circumstances, I would have dismissed it and moved on long before last night. I’ve done it before, many times. A story just doesn’t take off once you write it, or you never wrestle it onto paper in an effective way. The life of an author requires a means by which to judge what story is and is not still worth your time and energy. By all objective accounts and measures, the story I finished last night should not have still been on my plate after so long. I don’t enjoy per se, I don’t love it’s concept, and I don’t feel changed as a person by it. Yet for some reason that I cannot figure out yet, I feel responsible for it. That’s not usually how I operate, and it has me thinking.
I’d been kicking the concept of this story around in my head for over a year, but I only started the actual writing of the rough draft about a month ago, after some reluctance. I didn’t feel, and still don’t feel, I’m in the proper place mentally to deal with it. And to be frank, I’m not sure I achieved the tone it calls for anyway. It might, after a few revisions take a few revisions, if I can muster up the will to do so. Normally that process wouldn’t bother me, as revising and editing has usually gone faster and easier for me than composing the rough draft; I often look forward to revisions, as that is when the best work emerges. Yet given the history of this piece, I have to wonder how easy the next stages will be.
I was relieved somewhat last night to get the highly imperfect first draft out there at last. I’d llike to enjoy that feeling a little longer, so in an ideal world I won’t be revising it right away. I often give myself some emotional ad well as editorial distance before I begin revising short stories. Not as long as I give novels, but enough to see the piece fresh, if possible. But will it be possible with this piece? Or will I be compelled to revise it, polish it, and by officially done with it as soon as possible?
That sounds dramatic, I know. I’m not prone to stereotypical author histrionics, and when I do fall prey to then now and then it isn’t because of a piece like this making its presence known in my mind over and over again.
I’ve not been able to simply dismiss this one after it proved difficult to produce. I’m not opposed to hard work, of course, no writer can be that. But we all only have so much time, and there are many ideas to get to. I may not ever get to all of mine, and at times that means things have to get shelved or scrapped. Not every story seed grows into something, and if something seems to be stalling for an extended period of time, or if I can’t seem to get on with it, I usually decide that it means the story isn’t for me, and I move on, for the sake of other projects if nothing else.
Yet I haven’t with this story. Though it doesn’t feel like any kind of masterpiece, (in tone, concept, impact or prose), it has remained persistent in my thoughts even as i write other things. Patient to an extent, but always asking when I will get on with it.
Again, this is not the normal relationship I have with my fiction.
How to explain this resistance? All authors have it to some degree at some time of course, myself included. But I don’t think it’s the run of the mill resistance.
Some days it was probably laziness. We all get lazy from time to time, more so when we’re not ecstatic about the activity.
Then part of it may be a fear that I wouldn’t capture the tone I envisioned in my head once I actually started it. That the potential tone was more interesting than the actual vehicle. Potential can’t fail, but once I started to actually write it, the possibility of not getting it right became palpable. To an extent, as I said, those fears were realized as the current tone is not quite what I thought it would be, or should be all of this time.
Also the story contains some brief graphic images. It had to in order to make a certain point I was making. I’m not usually graphic in my writing, and the image in question would probably not be considered graphic by today’s standards, but it is by mine. That perhaps contributed to the stop and go nature of getting this one out there.
I know for a fact that one obstacle is that the story contains one of my anxiety “triggers”. I don’t have panic attacks, but the story involves a scenario that I’ve worried about more than once. Not easy to write a story about something you spend the rest of your time trying not to think too much about. Obviously.
Maybe all of the time, thought and energy that I’ve put into the launch of Thank You for Ten is a partial culprit. I think about that a lot lately, of course. A few other projects have gone a bit slower in wake of that.
Then I might feel somewhere that I can in fact achieve the ideal tone, but don’t want to invest the time or emotion into doing so.
Truth be told, a combination of all of these things, and others, is probably to blame for my hesitation to complete it. Yet my main concern is not so much the fits and starts nature of writing this story, as many of my stories come into being like that. What is really getting to me today is, why have I been unable to dismiss this story, after so much fuss and bother? Why did I write it in the first place, if it’s been such a pain in the ass? Why does this one persist?
I don’t even know what I’m doing with it once it’s all edited. Maybe Wattpad. Maybe to a contest, I don’t know. I don’t get to my writing group very often anymore, but maybe I should save it for them at some point, see if they have anything to say. Like so many other aspects of writing this story, I just don’t know. I do know I both want people to read it once its ready, and I don’t want anybody to read it. Not that it’s particularly painful to me personally, or so unusual, but because I’m afraid that after talking it up all this time in so many ways it can’t possibly live up to the unintentional hype I’m building around it.
But I had to mention it to you, readers of this blog and anybody else who happens to come across this. I had to at least tell the story of this story, to see if I could either find out why it has this weird persistence, or if I could cut it down to size and make it seem like just another one of my stories that isn’t unfolding with ease. So far, I’ve accomplished neither of those goals.
In the end, I think I went through with writing it because of the unusual persistence of it in my thoughts. Those thoughts have eased since I finished the rough draft, and like I said, I’ll be taking a break from it, (hopefully.) Perhaps it’s just something that had to be written and left alone. Or perhaps the persistence will continue into the revising process, pushing me forward, despite a partial lack of desire on my part to present it to the world. I’m not a firm believer in “getting outside your comfort zone” just for the hell of it, and I’m not even sure that’s what the deal is with this story. I only know that I was tired of having not written this particular piece, and was motivated in large part to see if it’s presence would ease up if I went ahead and just wrote it.
I suppose, I will find out soon enough.
Have you ever had a story like this?
Introverted Fiction?
This might be getting too metaphysical, but I’ve wondered lately if my introversion actually has some connection to the type of fiction I most enjoy both reading and writing.
I’ll start off by saying that any fiction that’s well written with good characters can touch me. Any tense, just about any genre, structure, length. I have my preferences, naturally. Anybody does. But I’m willing to try all kinds of things.
Yet what of those preferences? Could the fact that I’m an introvert in life influence my tastes in fiction? Can fiction itself by introverted?
Take present tense. More stories and novels are written “in the now” these days, as opposed to past tense. Leaving point of view out of the conversation for a moment, present tense is often described as being more assertive. More in your face. More intimate. There’s less distance than the standard past tense.
“Assertive.” “In your face.” “Intimate.” These are all qualities that in real life I’m not comfortable with much of the time, at least at first. At a party, I’m turned off by people who are always moving around in a clanging whirlwind of arm-touching, manic schmoozing and staccato small talk. I’d rather engage in slower, more meaningful conversations with fewer people at a time over a longer period. I tire quickly when these conditions are not met.
These preferences sort of translate into my tense preference for fiction.
How?
Consider; I don’t usually like it when an author intrudes on my personal pacing for consuming their story. I often find present tense exhausting to read because of it’s very lack of distance. I like to hear a story from a step back. I can hear you just fine if you stand a few feet away, drunk stranger, thank you so much. I assure you that I’ll get up and dance when and if I’m ever ready. But until then I want to absorb the atmosphere, not have it injected into my blood stream without my consent. Standard past tense gives me the space I need to process what’s happening, while still allowing me to become immersed into the world of the book as time goes on.
That’s especially true of first person. First person narration is in quite a literal sense someone telling their story to me directly. If they are going to do that, I need it to be an easy, smooth ride. I’ll tense up at the party PDQ if I’m cornered by someone shouting, “So I walk up to her, she starts laughing and I say…” That kind of narrative just feels too intrusive to me for some reason, both in person and on the page. If you want to tell me your story, I find it more disarming to begin with, “When I arrived, I walked up to her. She began to laugh, but I said…”
Even more intrusive though, by a long shot, is the increasingly popular second-person point of view. (Which is almost always in present tense, as far as I can determine.) Talk about a violation of personal space here! If first or third person present tense is the one at the party that stands to close and regales me with stories of people I’ve never met and not letting me ask a question, then second-person point of view is the drunk guy who has already introduced himself once and thinks that means it’s okay to put his arm around my shoulder and guide me over to another group in order to “bring me out of my shell.”
Second person would be, “You walk into the room, and smell the chicken cooking in the oven. Looking around and seeing no sign of the cook, you sneak over to the oven, open the door, and check on dinner.”
Do I now? Is that what I do? And here I thought I was just going to sit here and read your book for a while.
Talk about a forced intimacy. Though truth be told I have experimented with second-person fiction. I’ve written exactly one story with that point of view. (“Living Ghosts”, featured in my upcoming, Thank You for Ten: Short Fiction About a Little Theater.) I honestly think that story works, but it’s probably the only time I’ll ever do second-person. I don’t like telling a reader, “you, you, you” for any length of time any more than I would like ordering a bunch of people about at that party. It just isn’t me. Usually, anyway. I can’t off hand think of an example of someone else’s second-person point of view that I liked, but I’m sure I’ll run into one at some point.
I think even my desire to get to know one person better at a time plays into all this. At a social gathering, I can’t get to know a dozen or so new people all at once. I prefer to spend more quality time with a single person for a while, and form an opinion. It’s probably no coincidence then that I both enjoy reading and writing third-person limited the most. I don’t like to keep track of all the head hopping that third-person omniscient often entails. But I’m not so superficial as to never care what other people are thinking and feeling, so I also limit my time spent with third-person objective. (Describing characters actions but not knowing what they are thinking.)
Back to our party with this:
“This is John, he’s an accountant. That’s his wife Linda, she’s a stay at home mom. Over there are the Burtons, they’re retired now, but he used to be a policeman and she was a teacher at the elementary school my daughter went to when she was in second grade. And I think Debbie’s floating around here somewhere, she’s an interior designer. I think you’ll like her because she likes to attend theater as well. I think she brought her son Mark, Mark’s the one who fixed my car that I was telling you about. He’s around here somewhere, I think. Come into the kitchen with me, I’ll introduce you to Ted…”
All right, already! Can I take my coat off first? Can’t I just meet Ted when I happen across him, and we can converse like civilized people? The above is how I feel about jumping from one character to another within a chapter.
On that same subject, I prefer smaller gatherings of say 15 people or less. Beyond that, and it’s just humanity to me. Novels with 20 or more named characters, all of which get to hold the podium at some point tend to lose my interest in no time.
Finally, most of the time I don’t enjoy conversing with people who fly off into tangents, and jump around their subjects so much they are always saying, “now where was I?” It’s common for introverts such as myself to prefer a linear approach to solving a problem, conducting a meeting, or having a conversation. This may play into my dislike for non-linear narratives in most fiction. This one I can forgive more often than others, so long as the time frames are clearly indicated. But given the choice, my knee-jerk reaction is to prefer stories that happen “in order” by and large.
So perhaps it’s all just coincidence. Perhaps, like many introverts, I read too much into myself. Yet over the years, I’ve not been able to ignore these parallels between how I most enjoy socializing, and the types of fiction I have enjoyed the most.
What do you think? Can fiction be more suited to introverts or extroverts? Tell me.
Ty Unglebower 