Category: Navel Gazing

My Branding Motto

I see lots of Twitter discussions and blog entries on the importance of social networking and branding for writers. I have my share of sites (just look at my sidebar), and have given some thought to what my “brand” might be (or should be), so I certainly don’t knock the idea.  

Yes, publishing’s moving. Yes, a writer (any artist, really) should be online somehow. But, how much time and energy do I spend doing this?  Where do I spend it?  More importantly, what about the writing?  Makes me wonder if I have to be Don Draper to figure this all out.

Alan DeNiro (author of one of my favorite short story collections, Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead) has also tried to ponder these mysteries, partially spurred on by a presentation at SXSWi, at which the assertion was made that…

An author is no longer an individual working in a room alone, but the leader of an online “tribe” of followers –- the people who comprise the author’s audience. Several example kept coming up, wine guy Gary Vaynerchuck, author of Crush It!, business guru Seth Godin; and Kroszer’s favorite example, The Pioneer Woman, who “could organize a tour on her own without the help of a publisher.” The consensus, from another panel –- “Scoring a Tech Book Deal” was that a potential author needed a minimum of 5,000 Twitter followers.

Now, I have no intention of being John the Baptist in sackcloth and ashes, crying out in the wilderness.  I’m not going to rail about art vs. commerce.  I’m just saying that as I look at my “writers” list on Twitter and the Google Friendconnect bloggers I’m following on the sidebar–which accounts for only a third of the writer blogs I follow on my RSS feed reader–I see exactly the tribalism that’s being talked about.  Book and story reviewing, writers of every level interviewing other writers of every level, guest blogging, group blogging — and I honestly have no idea where I fit in yet.

Until I figure it out, though, I feel I’m doing two things absolutely right…

  • I’m writing what I want to write, and I’m putting it out there.
  • I’m connecting with “the right people.”

Mystery Science Theater 3000‘s Joel Hodgson said his crew was never worried if not everyone would get their arcane references, because “the right people will get it.”  Who are “the right people?”

First, I’ll talk about how I collect them. I collect them the way I collect comic books after the 90s when people realized they just didn’t need 8 variant covers of the same damn first issue of every book with an X in the title.  I invest in the books I want to read.  The ones that interest me.  Same with the folks I follow on any given social network I belong to.  I follow them ‘cos I want to.  Because they pique my curiousity, or enthrall me with their points of view, or they’re doing exactly what I want to be doing, the way I hope to do it.  And, I strive to be equally interesting to them.  And I accomplish this by putting myself out there, and responding the best I can to what these people put out there.

I read an interview with–well, I forget if it was Ricky Gervais or Eddie Izzard.  To paraphrase my favorite bit of that interview, I’d rather be 1000 people’s favorite writer than 10,000 people’s 10th favorite writer.  The way I see it, my chances of accomplishing that are better when I develop–okay, a tribe–of people who “get” me.

i.e. “The right people.”

I guess you could say my branding strategy so far can be best summed up in the poem “Motto” by Langston Hughes…

I play it cool
And dig all jive
That’s the reason
I stay alive.
My motto,
as I live and learn,
         is:
Dig and be dug
In return.

Now, I did say “so far.”  So, tell me — am I missing anything?  What else should I be considering?  I want to hear especially from my peeps that have blogged about this in the past (don’t make me go back through all the Read items in Google Reader, pleeeease?).  Am I thinking too hard about all this?  Or not hard enough?

Educate me.

Hail to the King, Baby

Two songs and two thoughts went through my mind as I sat in this chair, getting this picture taken at a local winery.

I’ve got to keep my image while suspended on a throne
That looks out upon a kingdom filled with people all unknown
Who imagine I’m not human and my heart is made of stone
And I’ve never had no problems and my toliet’s trimmed with gold

Spencer Davis Group, “I’m a Man”

What that idiotic smirk on my face doesn’t show is the inner realization that if those lyrics resonated with even the smallest part of me, then I have only myself to blame.  If I do portray this image, it’s because I’ve developed a Game Face.  I wondered if the Game Face may be part of some psychological defense mechanism that may or may not be needed anymore.  I wondered if maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance that my life might be better off without it.

But then, I remembered the words to another song…

I was the king of the world
I had every thing thrown at me,
That the judge and jury could hurl
I was the man of the hour
I would claw and scratch my way up,
To the very top of the tower

-Toto, “King of the World”

Then I realized there were reasons I was the way I am.  No, I haven’t been severely traumatized or anything, at least no more so than your average Joe.  But somewhere along the way, I decided the Game Face became a handy tool for helping me get back up whenever I was knocked down.  I decided that maybe it was the price of doing business in life.  I decided that it wasn’t making me hard or calloused in the way people don’t like – the way that makes you slow, closed-off, and numb.  I decided that it made me stronger – like a fighter who’s not only conditioned to take a hit and get back up, but is willing to step back into the ring and tell the next chump (read: bit of disappointment) who wants a piece, “Come get some.”

I decided it’s good to be the king.

Tough Love

Been awhile since I’ve attended the literary vivisection that is my biweekly critique group with something to read.  This week, I brought in a 996-word flash fiction piece, written to a story prompt I found online–sorry, but due to the rules of the forum, I can’t post the prompt here.

Anyway, here’s what the gang had to say…

FTW!

  • I was unsatisfied with the working title I gave the story, but at least one reader thought it fit just fine.
  • As usual, at least one reader called my story “intriguing.”
  • People liked my description of “bad college behavior,” especially in regard to one peculiar substance.

StoryFail

  • That certain peculiar substance didn’t click as much for a couple of readers as much as for the rest.  They understood how I used it; just didn’t resonate, it seemed.
  • Only one reader out of eight seemed completely satisfied with how I ended the piece.  Most, even those who understood the implications, still thought the ending could’ve been “stronger” or “more clever.”

A short critique for a short piece.  Sometimes, though, I don’t feel I deserve the praise I sometimes get for my flash.  Flash seems to cover a multitude of sins, where my writing is concerned.  It makes sense–the more I write, the more that can go wrong.  But sometimes, I feel like the success–or lack thereof–of my longer pieces is more representative of my current abilities. Oh, well…

Getting Things Done, For Longer Than I’ve Been Alive

Jim Lehrer, host of the PBS NewsHour (formerly known as, among other things, The MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour) for over 35 years, is one of my biggest writing influences. During his long and storied career in journalism, he’s written and published nineteen novels. This makes him one of my writing heroes, despite the fact that I haven’t read word one of his books.

So what makes him my influence? He wrote those books while he was anchoring, reporting in, and producing award-winning news shows. And he’s not some Johnny-Come-Lately who decided to “follow his real dream” once he got the NewsHour gig and after getting a bit of fame behind him. His first novel Viva, Max! was published in 1966, seven years before he teamed up with Robert MacNeil, at the beginning of a career that would garner him numerous awards for excellence in journalism.

Do a thought experiment with me. Lehrer’s books get fair-to-middlin’ reviews but let’s assume–purely for the sake of argument–that each and every one of his novels is utter crap (Again, I don’t know this, because I haven’t read any of them). Imagine how much work it would take to produce and publish nineteen bad novels, and you’ll see why I’m impressed.

In short, he’s a guy who gets his writing done, and in the interviews I’ve seen over the years in which he talks about his fiction, he gets it done anywhere and everywhere he can, every day.

I’ve met writers who hold down day jobs and/or are parents (some, of kids with special needs), and/or who are adult caregivers, and/or who are dealing with their own or someone else’s medical/mental/emotional problems. And I look at these folks, and at Jim Lehrer, and ask myself, “What the fuck excuse do I have?”

Does it make you ask the same?

How Don Is About to Get His Groove Back

As I slogged through my horrendous backlog of Google Reader items last week, I read one of the best writing-related posts I’d ever seen from io9.com entitled “12 Secrets to Being a Super-Prolific Short-Story Writer.” I actually know some of these…

  1. Know how your story ends before you begin it.
  2. Don’t just write the same story over and over again, or you’ll bore yourself.
  3. Start crude, then work on refining.
  4. Have a bunch of stories on the back burner, and keep rotating.
  5. Don’t be afraid to stare at the blank screen for a few hours.
  6. Write a bunch of stories in a shared world.
  7. Some stories are just the turning point in the story, not the whole story from beginning to end.
  8. Try creating a character study, or a collection of potent images, instead of just a series of plot twists.
  9. If you’re getting bogged down in a particular story, you probably haven’t found what it’s about yet.
  10. Try an exercise, like rewriting a well-known story from a different viewpoint.
  11. Don’t be afraid to take crazy risks.
  12. Write for different markets.

It’s no secret to anyone that I’m weeks overdue on delivering my Four Horsemen Contest story, for a number of reasons I won’t go into here. But every inch of the teeth-pulling progress I’ve made on the damn thing thus far was made by re-learning these two pieces of advice.

5) Don’t be afraid to stare at the blank screen for a few hours. Sometimes you gotta spend some time chewing over the turning point in your story. Sometimes the ending you thought was so crystal clear when you started out has turned mushy. Sometimes you have to throw out a thousand words of perfectly good story because it rang false and didn’t feel like the direction the story should be going in. There’s no substitute, on occasion, for sitting and sweating it out. Think about the characters, and what they’re actually thinking and feeling in the situation you’ve set up. Think about the themes you’ve established and what sort of resolution they’re leading to. Take the time to visualize the right ending for this story, or put it aside…

I’ve seriously forgotten how to just sit and sweat it out. I’d sit and get frustrated that nothing was coming. I’d make myself scribble some words down. Then I’d hit the backspace key and delete. Then I’d hit Ctrl-Z and put it all back. Rinse and repeat.

It’s a life issue, really. I’ve never had any trouble bleeding, sweating, or crying to keep my momentum going. I’ve had stuff knock me down, and I’ve had to get back up. But when something just stalls? When I’m working and working, and I’m just spinning my wheels? That’s often when I want to give up.

But I’m getting better.

9) If you’re getting bogged down in a particular story, you probably haven’t found what it’s about yet. This is sort of an extension of tip #5, I guess. Maybe you’re trying to make your characters care about what you want them to care about, instead of what it makes sense for them to care about. Maybe you’re focusing on a supporting character, while your main character is wandering around just outside the frame. Maybe the real theme or idea of your story is something you’ve only touched on in passing. The power of storytelling is so great, that when you find what your story is actually about, you may feel it propelling you forward with its unstoppable logic. The characters will be motivated to move forward, the mysteries will feel more and more urgent until someone solves them, and the underlying themes will get clearer and clearer until they form into some kind of potent image. That’s the idea, anyway.

And, I’m almost there.

Part of the problem (and no, I don’t really count the hell my work life has been the past few weeks) is that my writing process has moved soooo far away from starting with an idea. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with “First contact with mutual attraction between the species.” But I had a hell of a time starting with that because that idea, in itself, said nothing to me at first. Given the right germ of a scene, maybe a character interaction or a piece of dialogue, that idea might’ve occurred to me.

But, I’m not bitching! It took a bit of struggle, but I’ve actually found something resembling a theme, related to the “First contact with mutual attraction between the species” idea, that I can sink my teeth into, based on the characters and situations that have already presented themselves in the puke draft. And that’s what I’ve been working on, trying to hammer it into shape in the Forge of Vulcan (i.e. my netbook).

Yep, I can feel my groove coming back, slowly but surely.

Up a Slipstream Without a Paddle

Because I’m perpetually behind on my blog-reading, I only just found out that the proprietor of Lobster and Canary is going to attend Arisia at Cambridge, MA, the largest sf/f convention in New England.

The items on L&C’s particular schedule are of particular interest…

  • Non-Standard Fantasy
  • The Undefended Borders of SF
  • Interstitial Fiction: Dancing Between Genres
  • Inherent Darkness of Fairy Tales
  • The City as Character
  • Myth and Folklore in Fantasy

Of course, Daniel is scheduled to read as well, but I wanted to focus on the panels listed (I assume they’re panels).

(Oh, and yes, Calista — I now regret not coming and will plan to come out next year.) 🙂

Anyway, picture the sort of fiction that comes to mind when you hear those topics–love it or hate it–and you’ll have a good idea of the sort of stuff I aim to write. Aim, and still fall quite short of the mark. Still, unless the “please feel free to send us more” is part of certain markets’ form rejections, I remain hopeful. In any case, it brought to mind a conversation I had yesterday which dislodged a memory of a blog post from writer Steven Barnes…

You should read ten times as much as you intend to write. Want to write 1000 words a day? Read 10,000 words. Furthermore, this reading should be BETTER than your current ability, and BETTER than your intended goal, if possible. Want to write comic books? Read pulp fiction. Write pulp fiction? Read popular fiction. Write popular fiction, read bestsellers. Write bestsellers? Read classics.

And you want to write classics? Well…pick your grandparents very carefully.

I’ve internalized this advice to the point where it actually took me a second to remember where it came from. But it begs the question, what do I read that’s “better” than my intended goal if I want to write what I say I want to write?

Now, I’ve done or am doing most of the “required reading” — Feeling Very Strange, Interfictions and Interfictions 2, Conjunctions 39 and 52, Tin House 33, The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, (edited to add:) Trampoline, and most of the individual short story collections published by Small Beer Press, and others. But there are times when I feel like I’m being shown how to do the breaststroke before being taught how to properly do a front crawl. Don’t know where the swimming analogy came from, but it’s as good as any.

And I guess the main reason I’m thinking about all of this–assuming it’s not a symptom of the Andromeda Strain I’ve been fighting off the past few days–is that I seem to be feeling a bit of existential angst about my writing. I don’t even care about, Will this pay off in the end, or not? I care more about, Am I doing this right or just spinning my wheels? Are my goals reasonable? What am I doing as a writer?

Also, Who the hell am I as a writer, anyway?

Motion in Poetry

Last Sunday night, I attended a poetry workshop by the current Broome County (NY) Poet Laureate, Andrei Guruianu at Buffalo St. Books. He did a reading from a few of his collections, including his latest, and nothing was sacred anymore, and then guided willing attendees through an exercise.

Guruianu did a brief lecture on poetic elements, which was very useful. Up until now, I had no criteria for judging any piece of poetry other than, “I know what I like.” And Guruianu’s words about the elements of what he considers to be good poetry gave me at least one way to evaluate the poetry I read from now on. To him, the best poetry uses words to depict an environment or invoke images that are concrete, significant, meaningful, and which resist the mind’s tendency to go off on tangents and lean toward abstractions.

Afterward, I went back through the five or six books that I laughingly call my “poetry library” and I’ll be damned if I didn’t go back to the ones listed as my favorites and found just that. Not one poem about “war” or “time” or “space” or “that girl who broke my heart.” Poems on those sorts of topics, yes. But not about the abstract concepts.

And of course, I went back through what I laughingly call the “poems” I’ve written thus far. Now, I knew most of them sucked, but now I know at least one reason why! And the few (well, one… okay two or three) that “worked,” did so because they generally had more concrete elements.

So, to answer the questions that are undoubtedly on your mind…

  1. Yes–I’d like to write more poetry. Maybe see if I can salvage the stuff I’ve written so far. Maybe write something like the work I heard at the poetry panel I attended at Astronomicon 11.
  2. No–I’m not posting any of it here. Maybe at Fictionaut, but even then probably not for public consumption. Because I care for you all, far too much. Maybe once I’ve learned a few more things.

“Too Many Voices”

I like song lyrics. Sometimes, they get me thinking and then I like to dissect those thoughts like the Zapruder film.

I don’t wanna wait
For our lives to be over.
Will it be yes, or will it be
Sorry?

Let me tell you something about my Muse, the little shit.

My relationship to it is best expressed on the Tumblr I use as a notebook of the things I feed it. I call it the place…

Where I strap my muse to a chair like Alex in A Clockwork Orange, pin its eyes open, and force-feed its brain until it does what it’s fucking told.

Yes, I brainwash my Muse, typically by waterboarding it every so often. Not too much, though. Like Nice Guy Eddie says in Reservoir Dogs, “If you fucking beat this prick long enough, he’ll tell you he started the goddamn Chicago fire, now that don’t necessarily make it fucking so!”

Some might say that’s harsh. I know there are folks who feed and care for and cradle their precious Muse. They are not wrong to do so. And if it works for them, I’m very glad! But call me as delusional as the folks who think the “enhanced interrogation” techniques at Gitmo actually work–I’ll be damned if they don’t work on my Muse, at least as well as cradling it ever did!

I’ve made a lot of progress with my Muse over the past few years. It does need a bit of “encouraging” every now and again, but it seems to be spitting out ideas when I want them, and a lot of times, even when I don’t want them! The important thing though is that I do not wait for my Muse to give it up before I write. That’d be stupid.

As Octavia Butler noted, “…habit is more dependable than inspiration.” I’ve learned that ideas really are a dime a dozen and that what my Muse will not do most times is form those ideas into actual stories for me. Once in awhile, maybe. But the hard truth is, my little bastard of a Muse really doesn’t care if I finish my stories or not! No, that’s squarely up to me, and the only way that’s done is by sitting down day after day and writing, with my Muse’s waterboard right next to me, pouring and writing, whether it gives me reliable and actionable intel or not!

Because I absolutely do not want to be one of those writers who bitches and moans about being uninspired and who get no writing done because of it.

Any Given Sunday

I was drunk enough to agree, but not drunk enough to deny remembering I agree. Leave it to Mercedes to strike at exactly the right time! She wanted a throw down with the loser to re-enact one of my fantasies: to be Jesus, serenaded by Yvonne Elliman, complete with jazz hands:

But that wasn’t enough. Oh, no. The more, the merrier, we said, so we invited Harley and Jason.

Yes, we Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are going to be engaged in mortal combat, with a theme chosen by a neutral party, one Boudreau Freret.

The Theme: A sci-fi/fantasy short story describing, “The first contact of two species with a mutual attraction betwixt them.”

Story Deadline: We have until February 1, 2010 to come up with an original story based on the theme, to be simultaneously submitted to a SFWA-approved market.

The Stakes: First person to be published in the chosen market wins.

The losers will video themselves performing a song of the winner’s choice (“Everything’s Alright” in my case), complete with jazz hands!!

These are all worthy adversaries. I don’t underestimate a single one of them. I’ve read their words. We’re all at various stages of our writing careers, and yet a contest like this–well hell, a lot of publishing in general–has an “any given Sunday” feel to it. It could very well be me on video, jazz-handing along to someone else’s tune.

This is going to be a first. I’ve never written to avoid humiliation before! 🙂

###

Edited to add: Harley’s and Mercedes’ understandably skewed opinions on the matter.

“We must set brand new goals/ We must not lose control…”*


(This is from my new planner–nifty, huh?)

Like just about every other writer’s blog out there, this is where I get to talk some about my 2010 writing goals.

This is mostly brainstorming, really. It’s thinking at what’s known in the GTD-world as “horizons of focus.” Specifically, the things I’d like to see for my writing future at the “30,000 foot level” (i.e. 12-14 months from now).

1
I’d like to network better. In 2009, I made some strides in connecting with other writers (online and in person) and with other artists. Playwrights, poets, filmmakers, and musicians. But I passed up a lot of opportunities, too. I was shoulder to shoulder with Joyce Carol Oates for a split second, but said nothing, not even when she was signing. Legendary comic book writers from the 70s & 80s come through this town once or twice a year. One of them even lives here, and I haven’t introduced myself to him.

The reason is my dread of the thought of being that over-eager writer who gets told by a seasoned master, “Go away kid, you bother me.” Time for me to get over that. And I’m going to at Readercon 21!

2
I need to get my lit/flash fiction back on track. This is sort of related to the networking goal. Between here and Twitter, I need to make time to get back into Fictionaut and Zoetrope. I briefly connected with some writers whose work I idolized before I focused on genre stuff, but lost touch. Plus, I learned so much there from the critiques I got from my flash pieces. I was kinda dumb to let that slip away, but you know what? My accounts are still active, and it’s never too late, right?

3
12 is the magic number. That’s one story per month, written, submitted and kept in circulation. If none of them sell by next December, fine. But they will be in circulation.

4
I need to move a bunch of back-burner non-fiction projects up to the front. I confess, stubbornness is part of what motivates this goal. I’m irked that I haven’t been able to repeat my McSweeney’s success of five years ago–though I admit, my efforts have been lackadaisical at best. But it’s not just humor I’m interested in.

I’ve mentioned my “seekrit #wip” on Twitter. It’s secret because–again, this is a pride thing related to my networking fears, I think–the whole thing could be a wash at any time, and I dread the thought of answering questions like, “Hey, what happened with that [seekrit #wip]?” with “Eh, nothing.”

Suffice it to say that it’s going to be a researched non-fiction work, and if I can pull this off, it would be quite the feather in my geek cap.

Okay, I think my brain is sufficiently dumped. Maybe today I can actually do something about some of these.

*The title’s from here, btw…