Descriptions: Writing “Through the Catcher’s Mitt”
I have no talent for sports. Yet here and there I pick up pieces of advice for beginners in sports: advice that applies to other areas of life. Even writing.
I’ve been told that in baseball, school-aged pitchers, (and sometimes even adult players) are reminded to throw the ball “through the catcher’s mitt.” This as opposed to throwing the ball to the catcher. It seems that attempting to pitch in this manner improves form and strength of the pitch. By setting a goal beyond what is necessary, the novice pitcher attains his actual goal more often. He can’t of course actually throw the ball through the catcher’s mitt. Nobody can. But in so attempting, the true goal of a complete pitch is often obtained. On the other side of the coin, only trying to throw the bare minimum, that is to get the ball to the catcher, will at times result in undeveloped pitches that fall short or fly out of control.
Or something along those lines. My apologies to coaches everywhere. The point in the end is to perfect execution by going beyond what is needed.
I apply this principle to writing descriptions in my fiction.
I don’t usually compose lavish descriptions in my fiction. The way I see it, the attention of a reader is a limited commodity, and I’d rather not use up that resource with meticulous physical descriptions. If it’s an odd setting, or if the nature of the setting effects the character in a particular way, (it scares, inspires, confuses, disgusts them, etc.) I will take more time with describing a setting. Or a character’s looks or clothing. Yet even in my more literary pieces, I tend to just mention that the character is in a “posh, upper class hotel lobby” and let the reader determine in their imagination what that might entail. That’s how I prefer to read myself, so that’s usually how I prefer to write as well.
Few things can make my mind wander while reading otherwise good fiction than a page or two, (or five) revealing every minute detail of where the character(s) finds himself. A lot of literary voice seems coupled with artful description of surroundings. I understand the temptation and usefulness of this approach to a degree; description of visuals and other sensory experiences offer prime chances for fancy sentence building. But generally if words are to be fed upon for the sake of their flavor, I’d rather they be directed toward a character, his mood, or the events unfolding. When too much is dedicated to setting or clothing description, a writer runs the risk of purple prose. (See, The Night Circus.)
Still, a balance is possible, and even I, with my more minimalist tendencies can stand to keep my descriptive writing muscles warm. One never knows when a more meticulous description may be appropriate to the work at hand. So once in a while I practice descriptions that go beyond, “run down gas station.” I do this by “throwing through the catcher’s mitt.” (See? I got back to it eventually.)
I’ll choose an image. Doesn’t have to be a detailed image per se, but it should have the potential to be described in detail. (Consider the difference.) Then I’ll write a wordy, meticulous description of it. Far more wordy in fact than anything I would actually put into my fiction. I don’t worry about who is there, why they are there, or even the nature of the scene/setting. I don’t make anything happen in this description, unless it pertains to some natural phenomena within the setting. Nor do I rely merely on cold, clinical description. I’ll be as literary as my creative side will allow. I’ll use metaphor. I’ll explore eight shades of green more than most of my writing has ever required. If there is any presence at all, it will consist of such sentences as, “one gets the impression upon standing on this bridge that…”. I’ll try not to stop until I feel I’ve exhausted every discernible detail from the image, or at least every discernible detail from a given point of view. If it sounds like “pretty writing”, albeit outside of a narrative, I consider the exercise a success.
Once again, rarely would such writing make its way into my fiction. But just as the pitcher improves his form by attempting to throw the ball “through” the catcher’s mitt, I hope to keep my practical descriptive writing in tact by going beyond what I would ever actually need to accomplish my writing goals.
This is a good time for me to become familiar with terms I don’t use often. I read a short story once that spent a page describing an “escarpment”. Afterward, characters, birds, the wind, the clouds and more always seemed to move relative to this geological feature; the word “escarpment” appeared in every other paragraph. It actually got a bit tedious. I would have probably written “rock face” or “isolated cliffs” or something to that effect. But in throwing through the catcher’s mitt, I may find myself using the term “escarpment”, depending of course on the image. I don’t believe in fiction that sounds like a dictionary has exploded, but keeping one handy during the exercise may lead to expanding vocabulary which can in turn be used sparingly in actual work.
(As a side note, I think I need to start doing this exercise more often with clothing. It is highly unusual for me to go into much detail about a character’s clothing. Half the time I look something up while reading, it seems, I’m trying to define an article of ladies clothing.)
I realize a lot of published fiction, lauded for its use of language contains prose that I would reserve for this exercise. Some have not only managed to throw through the mitt, but into the backstop. (I hesitate to contemplate what the intentionally over wrought descriptions of such author’s would look like.) And in some cases even I enjoy the meandering descriptions in a novel of a forest that is never mentioned again afterwards, if it is especially well written. But by and large I feel both the reader and the writer is best served with a more restrained approach to descriptions. Tighter writing, more evocative with less words, and mixing well with the imagination of the reader without omitting crucial information. If you can obtain that by way of this exercise, it’s worth throwing through the catcher’s mitt from time to time. Because when you throw that strike down the middle, readers will be “caught looking”. Only unlike in baseball, that’s exactly what they want to happen. So do you.
An Open Letter to a Failed “Leader”
For the purposes of this open letter, the subject shall be addressed as “Debra.” –Ty
Dear Debra,
I hereby withdraw my apology. I don’t do that often, and in fact this may be the first time I’ve ever done so. But I’ve had years to think about this, and I’ve decided that apologizing to you was a mistake. You didn’t earn it or deserve it. Nor did I (or do I) feel, in the end, that I actually did anything I shouldn’t have. I certainly never felt better for doing so, because I think I apologized in part to get to the bottom of things, and hopes of restoring an equilibrium to our so-called working relationship. But since it is you, and some of your associates that disrupted the equilibrium in the first place by intentionally humiliating me, it is you who should have apologized. You didn’t of course, and that’s one reason why today you’re finally getting this letter.
It’s not your fault that I had few friends in college at the time. Nor is it your fault that I am not the most charming or charismatic person out there. I don’t schmooze or small talk, or laugh at things that aren’t funny simply because everyone else has done so. I’m not impressed by people easily. Yet I didn’t think I’d have to be all of those things in order to be in the College Progressives Club. Other clubs I assumed would require more of that, but the CPC was one of the first and only clubs I ever joined because I thought, (foolishly) that its description was accurate-that you were a group of people with similar social and political ideas to my own, seeking to take an active part in promoting such principles in the community and around the state. But I suppose I also had to be personally appealing, or exciting, or gregarious in order to count as a legitimate person to any of you.
At least that’s the lasting impression you left me with when after a few meetings, (wherein we frankly did very little), you informed the group of a chance to attend a rally by the party’s presidential candidate that year. As in the American Presidential nominee. I’d never been to such an event, and I thought it might be my only chance. So of course I signed up for the carpool that would be taking the club there. The last thing you said to the group in the last meeting before the rally was something like, “Be at the hardware store on K Street at 7:00AM tomorrow morning to get a ride.”
I was there, of course. Nobody else was. Nobody was there at 7:05. Or 7:10. I walked up and down the empty block in the chilly autumn air that Saturday wondering where you and everyone else were. My question was quickly answered, however, when I saw the only car on the street that morning whiz past me, driven by you and filled with the rest of the CPC…each of you looking at me as your drove by on your way to the rally.
I have no idea if you expected to see me there at that moment as an added bonus, or if you had assumed I’d no longer be there by the time you drove by. That much isn’t obvious. But here are a few things that were obvious then, and remain obvious all this time later.
It was obvious you had all met up in an entirely different location than the one I had been given. It was obvious you had all withheld this information from me between the last meeting and the planned rendezvous. It was beyond obvious that you all saw me from your car as I was walking down the street waiting for you all to show up.
And the most obvious thing in this entire matter; none of you ever wanted me to go with you in the first place. Despite the fact that I was a member of the club in good standing, and it was a club event, you and those under you did not want me to come. The fact that you didn’t stop and pick me up as you flew by and looked at me was a pretty good indication that this was so, even if changing of the rendezvous point and keeping it from me had not already given that fact away.
Did all of you assume that because I’m not especially outgoing I must also be stupid? That I wouldn’t notice or care that I’d been ditched by an entire club? I’ll answer my own question, actually. The answer is no. None of you thought any of those things. What you did think, and hope, was that I’d quit the club as a result of this snubbing.
In short it was as bitchy as it was cowardly. The only bitchier thing to do was respond to my email complaining about it the next day by saying that there was “no room left in the car.”
“No room left in the car,” that the entire rest of the CPC had managed to squeeze into. The car that had met blocks away from where I had been sent. The car that had no brakes, I suppose, because it didn’t even stop long enough for any of you to feed me the “no room” lie in person. As shitty as that would have been, it would have been something closer to respectable than an email sans apology.
You and the rest of the club gave people with my social and political convictions a bad name by proving what sniveling cowards you are. Big talk about changing the country, without the slightest regard for the feelings or intelligence of one of your own members. You and everyone else in the club of which you were the much-praised president had not the decency to just say what was clearly on all of your minds; “We’d prefer you to leave the club. You’re not interesting enough to help us work for political causes.”
I of course quit the club as soon as I got your email. As I said, that was your intent from the beginning when you gave me the slip, don’t even pretend otherwise.
So I sent another, less diplomatic email that in addition to my resignation from the CPC mentioned what a lousy leader you are, among other choice words.
We had a class together that semester which made the entire thing more awkward and off putting. I hated even seeing you. But as Christmas time rolled around, I decided to apologize for my alleged part in the affair: the curt resignation email that I still nevertheless felt you deserved. Good will toward men and all.
I should have known that someone as shallow, superficial and hypocritical as yourself would not respond to the gesture. After all if you had any respectability you’d not have ditched me on the street that morning. So though I was offended in class, I wasn’t at all surprised when I asked you if you’d gotten my voicemail, and you replied with, “Yeah thanks” before turning away. I suppose I had hurt your feelings, or made you feel small with the things I’d said after the rally. How horrible. If only I could have known what it was like to be made to feel that way, right, Deb? So you were once again curt and rude.
It’s the sort of thing a bitch does, and quite frankly, Debra, Progressive or not, you’re a bitch. To this day I don’t see what anybody in the political-science department saw in you, or really in one another. It was one of the most self-centered, judgmental and superficial departments of human beings I think I’ve ever encountered anywhere, and you were their poster child. Had I been just a tad wiser, I could have used your very presence in this world let alone on campus as a sign to change majors. I didn’t though, and I shall forever wear the embarrassing badge of having the same degree in the same field of study from the same college as the likes of a duplicitous fake such as yourself.
To this day, your unfortunate (but thankfully brief) appearance in my life has served as a warning to not apologize to anybody too quickly, and to make sure I truly feel at least some remorse before I do. I realize now that I never felt any true remorse for being rude to you. Not then, and not now. You had it all coming. So the apology was foolish and is henceforth rescinded. I only wish my memories of you and the other CPC members could be so easily dismissed from my less social but far conscientious, honest and intelligent mind.
-Ty Unglebower
This post is part of the Open Letter Continuum.
Words of Warning About Obsession
I suffered a number or irritations this weekend, which of course is never fun. But if it must happen, it becomes somewhat easier to bare when there is a lesson in it. Or at least a lesson parked nearby.
My two biggest irritations may not seem connected at first. They didn’t even to me, until I got to thinking about it. Then I realized that both incidents may have something to do with my aversion to obsession, and the ease with which people can pursue it in this internet age.
The first source or irritation has been an annual source of irritation for me over the last few years. Yesterday was the fourth of May, and if you were on the internet at all, you know that that day has been made into a beacon of obsessive juvenile behavior, by way of an infantile pun. I won’t stain this post by mentioning it, though I will refer you to a previous post I have made on the subject. I can’t articulate my feelings today any better than I did back then on the subject anyway.
The second source of irritation, (and to some degree concern for my possible well being) also happened yesterday.
I had, until then, frequented a baseball fan forum. I had for about a year used it as a place to vent some frustrations about a frustrating team, in hopes of finding like minded fans. I also hoped somebody involved in same would be able to assuage said frustrations with some degree of facts. Really, the exact opposite happened, and this is where we get into the obsession part.
So obsessed with “good news” were the fans on the forum, that the slightest negative comments about the team usually elicited accusations of being a “troll” or not being a real “fan” or not understanding baseball. Now, whether it be a baseball team, a movie franchise or a collection of books, an unwillingness to accept criticisms about the subject of a fandom is to me the first sign of obsession. I don’t want to make this a baseball post, but let’s just say I find it silly to look only on bright sides when a team is doing terribly. I’m not their coach, after all. I mean I’m all for trying to find the positive in general but that can be over done. I find the large number of strike outs in a game far more pertinent to a discussion of a team’s chances than the fact that each player exhibited a gorgeous swing when the did so much striking out. Doesn’t make me less of a fan, as I want the team to do well, but in the end, being a fan is to me getting pissed at the team when they play like buffoons, and celebrating when they do well.
The forum didn’t see it this way, and I was always barraged with insults because of it. Yes I could and probably should have left the forum. I guess I was stubborn in thinking somebody would view things in the same sort of frank manner I did, eventually. Or at least have something intelligent to say to counter it, or talk me down from climbing the walls about a floundering team.
In fact I’d already started to drift from the place, the smell of obsession and its subsequent lack of reality already growing old. But when the team really bombed, I said so still.
Keep in mind, I followed all rules on this silly forum. I didn’t threaten anybody, no commercial links or whatever. No profanity. But I committed the grave sin of expressing I was getting annoyed with the ineptitude of my own team. And for this, yesterday, I was finally given a warning; be more “constructive” in my posts, or leave. I opted to use one final post to tell the whole group to bite me.
And I literally told them to bite me. If I was going to be banned for being frank, might as well go out being really frank. So I did. Mature? No. But satisfying after dealing with yet another group of immature forum dwellers and power hungry moderators? Yeah, a bit.
But that wasn’t enough for them, and this is where the story goes from annoying to somewhat worrisome.
I tweeted that I’d been thrown out of a “third rate sports forum” or something like that. Didn’t name the forum, or anybody in it. But the forum owner shows up on Twitter and harasses me. After warning and blocking him, a minion of his showed up and started harassing me as well. (Having set up a new account to do so.) They were also warned and blocked. I then tweeted that I would take any and all appropriate action if the harassment continued, because I was not going to be bullied by a group of people whom had already gotten rid of me from their little community anyway. So far, no further harassment or threats from them, but who knows if it is truly over. Part of me is concerned that their harassment has only just begun.
I say this because at first I was amused that the owner of the third rate forum actually outed himself by contacting me on Twitter. (I hadn’t followed them on Twitter.) Meaning they sought me out just to harass me about my typos. (Yes, my typos.) They could have been anonymous and forgotten on my feed, but they let the world know who they are, and proved just how ridiculous they are be taking the time to look me up to send nasty tweets. But then when the harassment continued, I was, and still am, somewhat concerned for my safety. It may take a while to see just how far these people are willing to go to get back at me for telling them to “bite me”, or for my expressed irritation and anger at a major league ball team that they seem to be obsessed with.
The point I’m coming to is, I sign my name to such things. My tweets, this post, and all of my posts on the forum. Even the “bite me” kiss off post before being banned had my name on it. The tweet I received from the owner of said forum? An avatar of a guy in a mask, with no name in the tweet. Which is why I am both annoyed and concerned.
It’s all a bit pathetic and a bit scary. The internet did not invent obsession, and it did not invent anonymity. The pack mentality was in place long before internet forums came along. I realize that. But an age where it can be dangerous to tell a few sports fans to “bite me” after they banned me from their silly forum because they didn’t like my frank sarcasm about the performance of some millionaires who will never know anything I have said? That’s a whole other thing. A whole other thing that I suppose we all need to be aware of not just when we post political or religious thoughts on line, but when we post anything that somebody with a computer doesn’t like. When we post anything under our own name, I suppose we subject ourselves to the possibility of rubbing certain obsessive, (and possibly dangerous) people the wrong way.
Gone are the days when we can basically tell other sports fans they are full of it, without wondering if they will track us down and harass us. I’ve learned that the hard way, and I will think twice about joining any other sports forums, even those supporting the teams I like.
Yet even after all of this, I don’t regret having my name assigned to my comments. Call them unnecessary, rude, or immature, (though I wouldn’t totally agree with that), but at least I have my name on what is mine in this matter. Have I paid a price for that? Will I suffer some kind of unpleasant consequences, online or offline because my name appeared on what I wrote? Frankly I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe it’s all just over. Who can say? But I can say that whether it be a movie franchise, a ball team or a Twitter feed, we must in this digital age be ever cognizant of the human propensity to obsess. To dominate. To draw our guns quickly and take names later. To not be satisfied with banning a person, but going after them later and I suppose seeing if they even mention anything in passing we don’t like.
I’m a writer and I am going to need an online presence. I need my name to be attached to what I do, and that won’t change. Yet I must proceed with more, not less caution as time goes on, it seems. It may be that in the end, I have to do less online, so long as I do it with my own name.
Obsession thrives online. We have to stay vigilant to make sure it remains just an obsession.
Still Too XYZ
The other day I was going way back in this blog’s history, and even back into the Too XYZ days. The initial intent was to go back and remove comments and in some cases guest posts from former friends of mine who have either stopped talking to me, or in a few cases straight up betrayed my trust. I know that some of you may view that as heresy, but I do not, in most cases. What I blog is not journalism, first of all. If the foot prints of small-minded people have been left all over my personal area of cyberspace and I want to remove them to clean up the place a bit, I’m going to. I might make an exception if any given one of my posts had somehow sparked a large, wide-spread debate that gained notoriety all over the internet, but believe it or not that hasn’t happened. So I feel no compunction to hold on to a single comment or an entire post by people whom I no longer respect. (Though some are too deeply embedded in a thread to extricate at this point.)
That being said, I rarely delete an entire post, though I would delete one before I would edit it for content. I do consider changing the nature of a post to be unethical beyond a certain point, even if certain circumstances have changed since I authored said post. I’ll still correct a spelling error, even years later, if I happen across it while reviewing older material, but not the actual material. So after my former-friend purge, I started reading a few of my oldest posts. More specifically, the Too XYZ stuff.
For those who may have come to this blog having never read Too XYZ, I’ll mention that Too XYZ was the first version of a general Ty presence on the internet. Before this site, before Twitter, there was Too XYZ. It was so called because I did, and do, often feel that I am handicapped or delayed by certain traits and truths about myself that in many cases lack a specific name. The grand amalgamation of life experience, strengths, weaknesses, perceptions and circumstances that lead us all to our position in life has often been, in my case, problematic. But I can’t point to a specific reason for this in most cases, so I referred to myself as being “too…something”. That concept eventually was “too xyz”, and my blog and “brand” were born. I transferred some, but not all of my original Too XYZ posts to this blog, as you can tell from one of the categories of posts you see on this site. Sometimes I will still tag a post here with “Too XYZ” if I think it sort of fits that gestalt. It’s a gift I gave myself to make up for the disappointment of closing down Too XYZ in March of 2012 for having not achieved it’s stated goals.
Early on in the life of Too XYZ, I got sort of sucked into the self-help, success/career advice crowd, and many of my posts from the first year or so of Too XYZ reflect that. I felt compelled to publish a perspective of someone who just couldn’t make the standard advice work. It wasn’t my intention, but I stumbled across, and became a leading member of a community called Brazen Careerist in its early days, (before it became the total cookie cutter snooze-fest it basically is today.) So before long I posted many views on success in general, as well as my personal success, (or lack thereof.)
I noticed a few things looking back on those old posts. One thing is that most of my fellow success bloggers or career go-getter types with whom I conversed (argued) back then are no longer in the spot light. The links to their projects and platforms included in their comments are dead in most cases. This isn’t to say, of course, that none of those people continued to succeed. I imagine many of them did, even though I couldn’t locate all of them online. But it does say to me that in a few short years many if not most of them for whatever reason abandoned their established brands and platforms that they had appeared to construct so meticulously. I wonder who did so for what reasons. Who just moved on, who got burned out, who changed their mind and who did come to at last realize my warning to them; that the further they would get from college, the more difficult it would be to believe in the, “failure is impossible…I make my all of my own luck…hard work always pays off” mentality so common within their ranks? I almost contacted a few that I was able to find and ask them, but I opted not to.
Another thing I noticed is that several of the people I still talk to today were less gung-ho about some of these issues than those who are now missing in action. I’ve often wondered if part of the reason I do still enjoy talking to them, and that they are still out and about online is directly related to the fact that they were usually the less gung-ho types. Is their very willingness over the years to move a bit with a tide one reason why I still like them, and they me? I can’t know for certain, but nor can I believe it has nothing to do with it, either. I look back over some of the arguments and exchanges I had with people I knew only casually, (I didn’t delete them) and marvel at how long I put up with some of it.
You see, in the end, I was of course Too XYZ to fit in with the advice-dispensing self-starting Millenials that made up most of that crowd. I think a lot of people who visited Brazen, as well as a few other places I frequented were drawn to my blunt, passionate posts at first, but expected me to build some kind of movement, or lecture, or series of e-books, or a start-up, or all of the above around my thoughts. After all, why else could anyone possibly write about their thoughts, if they weren’t building a brand out of them?
That was never my intention with those posts though. I think once a lot of those other folks realized that I truly was blogging about not being a good fit in this world and that I was hoping to inspire others who also eschewed the system, they gave up on me. When they realized I wasn’t using my writing to build “Too XYZ, Inc”, (or worse yet, “Ty Unglebower, Inc.”) their interest in and tolerance of me waned.
Not only that, their indignation began to rise. It’s as though they resented the very notion that I could possibly write, blog, have a college degree and yet still not be somehow pulling high five figures. It had to be because I was lazy, or a trouble maker. I must not have given enough extra attention to my college professors (??) or cold-called enough people, or opted to move to nearby Washington, D.C. It couldn’t actually be that I was Too XYZ for much of the work force. So off they went to launch their five start-ups, four blogs and a podcast, never to be heard from again.
Yet the main thing I took away from peering into the Too XYZ vaults is that in many cases, my views are unchanged. I know that sounds immature and shallow in a way, since we’re all suppose to be open to change. And I didn’t say I have not changed as a person over the years. Nor did I say that no opinion of mine has changed in that time frame. Only that most of what I wrote in regards to personal success and the rat race is the same as it always was.
I still think hiring practices in most cases are grossly unfair and rather absurd. I still think that most hiring managers are incompetent. College, in my mind, still borders on a corporate swindle and I maintain to this day that a string of poor luck, totally outside of my control has held me back at time. Do I still think the system is often rigged towards the superficial and extroverted? I do. Am I just as convinced now as I was before and during the Too XYZ era that monetary production is given vastly too much weight in assessing the worth of a human being, especially one such as myself? I am. Do I continue to eschew the unbridled Protestant Work Ethic. Yes. Do I get just as angry today as I did back then when advice for success centers around picking up tabs for your boss, investing in 300 dollar haircuts, sending handwritten ‘thank you’ notes to interviewers, using platforms I don’t need, working the cocktail party scene and equating fashion sense with business acumen? You’re damn right I do.
And I’m not ashamed of it. Actually I’m rather proud of the fact. It says to me that my views have never been merely knee-jerk reactions to circumstances, social trends or other people’s writings. It says to me that though I may be somewhat calmer, more deliberate and embrace a broader swath of topics on my blog today, I was nonetheless perceptive and insightful enough back then to get to the true heart of some of these matters. Far from being merely obstinate, I’ve found that my assessments about some of these topics were solid enough to withstand the test of time. (Though it be in some cases no more than five years ago.) I’d say that’s pretty good, even if you don’t personally think any given assessment I make is right.
I guess I could spend the next few posts trying to convince you that I’m right. I could lay out an entire argument, with charts and graphs and the like. But I won’t. In the end, I’m still Too XYZ for all of that.
Announcing the Launch Date for “Thank You For Ten”
I mentioned last week I would have an announcement about when my short story collection would be made available for purchase. I’m here to keep my word on that front.
I’m happy (and more than a tad nervous) to announce here today that Thank You For Ten: Short Fiction About a Little Theater will launch on June 21, 2014.
Yes, that is the Summer Solstice for those of you who keep track of such things. Such a day of renewal as well as the day with the most daylight seemed like a nice symbolic time to launch the book. Plus it falls in nicely with the plan I’ve had all along to launch the collection in early summer anyway. So it all worked out nicely, didn’t it?
I’ve put a lot of work into this collection, as those who read my blog already know. And there is still much work to be done before the launch day. But I will get it done. I do quite well with self-imposed deadlines, and one could argue that this one may be in the top five most important in my career so far in some ways. My first venture into self-publishing.
I also said last week I’d like to make an announcement about pricing. As it stands now, I’m looking at charging one dollar, US. I’ve nothing against providing free fiction to people, and I myself do so through my Wattpad account. But I’m charging a nominal price for this self-published collection for several reasons.
The first, obviously, is to help defray some of the costs of producing the collection. Modest sales even at one dollar would allow me to do that.
Then there is the mental aspects of it for readers. Studies and anecdotal evidence have suggested that people value something like this more when they have to make at least a nominal investment to obtain it, as opposed to being given it for free. A dollar is almost free, I realize, but I like that more people will at least pause for a moment and decide if I am worth it before laying down a George-note for my work. No, it won’t assure me that more people will read it, per se. But it will give at least some indication that folks are willing to exchange some modest commodity for my product, and that can go a long way to me.
Finally, another reason I’m charging one dollar is to get the full experience of the business end of self publishing. I’ve done the writing and editing end of it. Lord knows I have done and continue to work the technical side. I want the experience of people making payments, seeing reports, reading those, etc. Granted the reports will probably not be complicated at this price, but it will still be an act of commerce, and the sooner I dip my toes into that the better I’ll feel.
So a dollar it is. And the first day of summer it is. And equal parts exciting and nerve wracking it is. But it is coming, no more speculation.
So mark it down, tell your friends, and be ready for even more of my blogging about this collection each week. Because Thank You For Ten: Short Fiction About a Little Theater by Ty Unglebower is coming.
June 21, 2014.
Ty Unglebower 