Stop me if you've heard this one before.
It's a joke about a poor sap who thinks he has what it takes to maintain a weekly (or even monthly) live-feed of his thoughts via the blog medium. He first sets out, eager to make his writing known by means of his writing about things other than his writing. It goes well for the first couple of weeks, but then he runs out of ideas, knocks his wife up (again!), gets a job in the movies, gets sidetracked by miniatures games and ultimately buries his nose in the follow-up book. Bazinga!
Hilarious, I know. And not at all cliche.
Most people who have written an eBook (and who also have a life) probably experience the same thing I have: The initial euphoria of finally finishing a novel, the massive influx of rejection letters from agents and publishers, the one ray of hope to be seen in the electronic self-pub world, the initial excitement generated by massive sales (to friends and relatives, ha) and the eventual return to reality. They probably have started blogs, gotten a twitter account despite swearing to the cosmos that they would never invest themselves in something so banal as telling people everything they were doing all the time, even set up holdings elsewhere on the internet--Good Reads, Reddit, et al.
At first, the campaign is aggressive and thorough. But then, it starts to plateau. When the monthly sales stabilize then dwindle to single digits, and the conundrum of what to do next ramps up, everything sort of stops. You start taking pictures of your baby again. You start going out with friends. It's in this purgatory between excitement and the sense of utter failure that the proverbial "men" are separated from the "boys". Who on earth has time for it all? What if I simply hate how the internet makes my head hurt? eMarketing is solid gold for some folks, but for the rest of us?
What now?
The Gift of the Traveler Guard is coming along alright. In fact, I'll soon post a preview chapter for those of you interested in the series. Writing is easy. It is, as the saying goes, 99% rewriting, anyway. Getting people to actually notice, let alone read your writing, that's the real challenge. It's no wonder that Hollywood depictions of writers make them out to be either absurd or insane. You practically have to be to make a decent go of it. That's all for now. The internet is making my head hurt already.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Friday, June 3, 2011
WIP Update
Hello friends! This is just a quick update to the project outlay.
I have decided to delay the release of "The Last Voyage of the Brigadier Schwepp" until further notice, and instead focus my energy on "The Gift of the Traveler Guard," volume 2 of "The Three Kinsmen". This is due to an assortment of impetuses--chiefly the better-than-expected response to "The Wizard of Roaming Hall," a number of life-complicating events, and the inexplicable desire to continue on with my 14-year epic rather than taking a break and writing something else.
I am still aiming to release "The Gift of the Traveler Guard" in February of next year, though I realize that that is probably more ambitious of a date than I can realistically keep, as I do all of the work myself--line edits, content editing, proofreading, formatting and so forth. Man, the self-pub life is taxing! I shouldn't complain, though. The response to TWORH so far has been very encouraging and uplifting. Thanks to all who have helped make the book a success!
If you haven't yet explored the book, I invite you to read the sample chapter here on the blog, or head over to Amazon or B&N and download a free sample portion (something like 2-1/2 to 3 chapters) for your Kindle or Nook.
Happy reading!
I have decided to delay the release of "The Last Voyage of the Brigadier Schwepp" until further notice, and instead focus my energy on "The Gift of the Traveler Guard," volume 2 of "The Three Kinsmen". This is due to an assortment of impetuses--chiefly the better-than-expected response to "The Wizard of Roaming Hall," a number of life-complicating events, and the inexplicable desire to continue on with my 14-year epic rather than taking a break and writing something else.
I am still aiming to release "The Gift of the Traveler Guard" in February of next year, though I realize that that is probably more ambitious of a date than I can realistically keep, as I do all of the work myself--line edits, content editing, proofreading, formatting and so forth. Man, the self-pub life is taxing! I shouldn't complain, though. The response to TWORH so far has been very encouraging and uplifting. Thanks to all who have helped make the book a success!
If you haven't yet explored the book, I invite you to read the sample chapter here on the blog, or head over to Amazon or B&N and download a free sample portion (something like 2-1/2 to 3 chapters) for your Kindle or Nook.
Happy reading!
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
And I Thought Writing A Book Was Hard. . .
Here we are, nearly... (checks phone)... okay, more than 3 months post-publication, and I haven't given my blog the time of day in weeks. Don't get me wrong--I have all kinds of wacky, wonderful and oftentimes horrifying thoughts rolling around in this slightly over-sized noggin of mine, which are simply begging to be shared with the world, but actually formulating them into coherent ideas is... well, really hard.
For starters, life seems to get more and more complicated by the minute. For instance, as I sit and write this, I've just put a screaming baby to bed with her bottle, and I'm counting down the minutes until she drops the thing and resumes her general fussiness, and my one shot at concentrating for the next three-hour period will be shot. And in the time it took me to write that sentence, its prophetic words have already come true.
Sigh...
Add to that all the concerns which linger in the cockles of my mind--war, money problems, thieves (someone stole my trashcan. My trashcan, for Pete's sake!), zombies, turkey-hunting season being almost over, raising chickens--you can sort of start to see how life can just get away from you. I know, I know: "preaching to the choir" you say, but understand that adulthood hit me like a train this year. My thought was basically: "27 years old is, for all intents and purposes, thirty, which is, for all intents and purposes, the old 40, which is, for all intents and purposes, middle age, which is basically preparation for retirement, which is pretty much a short rest stop on the high-speed highway to death.
And the baby cries.
Everyone says they haven't accomplished X by the age of Y, where X = something they assumed would've happened 5 years before the age of Y, and Y = the value in years of the person's life span on the date this sentence was spoken. In my case, X = "become a famous actor and published author," and Y = "27."
And the baby cries.
Unreasonable, you say? I never thought so. I was always a pretty lucky fellow, and moderately talented to boot, so I thought breaking into the creative field would be cake. Suffice to say, without a solid plan, you can very easily find half a decade going by in practically no time at all. Not to rag on the institution of marriage, but Y also happens to = 5 years since the age at which my beautiful bride and I were wed. In August we will celebrate our 5th anniversary, which puts us in a minority, but that's sort of an issue for another discussion. Marriage has been a great adventure, and one certainly worth taking (as has parenthood), but financial struggling, health problems and overall busyness have led to more or less a stymieing of my creative drive.
I used to be a dreamer, in other words.
Don't get me wrong (again), I still dream, but those dreams now seem even farther beyond reach than they did when I was a wide-eyed 17-year-old with nothing but a future. A full decade later, I have accomplished a great many things, but try telling that to my expectations. I have, in a sense, traded some dreams for others. For example, I always figured I'd be married, but I never once thought I'd be married this well. My wife and I have had no major and only a few minor marital problems--minor being things like my habit of gaming a bit too much and her habit of over-scrutinizing my habits. We love and support one another, and she not only begrudgingly accepts the fact that I simply have to write and have to make movies, she openly embraces it and encourages, nay, insists upon me advancing and excelling in my chosen career. I could ask for nothing more in a spouse.
I was just about to say that the baby was finally asleep, but that would be a lie.
So, what is today's nugget of wisdom? Well, I've tried to formulate an essay encompassing what it feels like to be a 27-year-old man going through an early, mini-midlife crisis, to touch upon the unsettling nature of the state of the world, and to sum up everything in a hopeful and open-ended conclusion, but as you can see I've invariably failed. Life is about compromise. For instance, I broke down and bought a box of shotgun shells after having it in mind for a long time now to bag my first turkey with my 34 lb. recurve bow. I'm hoping the option of extending my kill range by another fifty yards will help alleviate the stress of failing to bag a gobbler back in the fall. Ironically, I'm less worried about zombies now, too.
For starters, life seems to get more and more complicated by the minute. For instance, as I sit and write this, I've just put a screaming baby to bed with her bottle, and I'm counting down the minutes until she drops the thing and resumes her general fussiness, and my one shot at concentrating for the next three-hour period will be shot. And in the time it took me to write that sentence, its prophetic words have already come true.
Sigh...
Add to that all the concerns which linger in the cockles of my mind--war, money problems, thieves (someone stole my trashcan. My trashcan, for Pete's sake!), zombies, turkey-hunting season being almost over, raising chickens--you can sort of start to see how life can just get away from you. I know, I know: "preaching to the choir" you say, but understand that adulthood hit me like a train this year. My thought was basically: "27 years old is, for all intents and purposes, thirty, which is, for all intents and purposes, the old 40, which is, for all intents and purposes, middle age, which is basically preparation for retirement, which is pretty much a short rest stop on the high-speed highway to death.
And the baby cries.
Everyone says they haven't accomplished X by the age of Y, where X = something they assumed would've happened 5 years before the age of Y, and Y = the value in years of the person's life span on the date this sentence was spoken. In my case, X = "become a famous actor and published author," and Y = "27."
And the baby cries.
Unreasonable, you say? I never thought so. I was always a pretty lucky fellow, and moderately talented to boot, so I thought breaking into the creative field would be cake. Suffice to say, without a solid plan, you can very easily find half a decade going by in practically no time at all. Not to rag on the institution of marriage, but Y also happens to = 5 years since the age at which my beautiful bride and I were wed. In August we will celebrate our 5th anniversary, which puts us in a minority, but that's sort of an issue for another discussion. Marriage has been a great adventure, and one certainly worth taking (as has parenthood), but financial struggling, health problems and overall busyness have led to more or less a stymieing of my creative drive.
I used to be a dreamer, in other words.
Don't get me wrong (again), I still dream, but those dreams now seem even farther beyond reach than they did when I was a wide-eyed 17-year-old with nothing but a future. A full decade later, I have accomplished a great many things, but try telling that to my expectations. I have, in a sense, traded some dreams for others. For example, I always figured I'd be married, but I never once thought I'd be married this well. My wife and I have had no major and only a few minor marital problems--minor being things like my habit of gaming a bit too much and her habit of over-scrutinizing my habits. We love and support one another, and she not only begrudgingly accepts the fact that I simply have to write and have to make movies, she openly embraces it and encourages, nay, insists upon me advancing and excelling in my chosen career. I could ask for nothing more in a spouse.
I was just about to say that the baby was finally asleep, but that would be a lie.
So, what is today's nugget of wisdom? Well, I've tried to formulate an essay encompassing what it feels like to be a 27-year-old man going through an early, mini-midlife crisis, to touch upon the unsettling nature of the state of the world, and to sum up everything in a hopeful and open-ended conclusion, but as you can see I've invariably failed. Life is about compromise. For instance, I broke down and bought a box of shotgun shells after having it in mind for a long time now to bag my first turkey with my 34 lb. recurve bow. I'm hoping the option of extending my kill range by another fifty yards will help alleviate the stress of failing to bag a gobbler back in the fall. Ironically, I'm less worried about zombies now, too.
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