Don't be Jealous

Are you stuck in the mud unable to get your writing the visibility you'd like? Do others around you seem to be have more success or even some success?

Well, don't be jealous. We are all working hard to write and create stories we will enjoy reading. If writer A succeeds while writer B does not, there are a few things to remember:

• What is and is not published is completely subjective. If your work is going nowhere this is part of the reason. To change this you need to know how to sell your work.
• Competition is fierce. I submit a story and it is rejected. Part of the reason for this is the magazine I submitted to is flooded with other work as good or better. This does not mean my story is bad, just that the other stories a better fit for that magazine. So I move on.
• Luck is factor. Some people just show up at the right place and the right time and some people don't. I usually don't. If you are not lucky then you'll need to rely on talent, skill, and persistence.
• Some people are more talented than you. And some are not. This does not mean you can't write. It does mean you need to write your best at all times. If you are going to market with a B-story and not an A-story you will only have heartache after heartache.
• Publishers do not take risks. If your story is risky to them and they feel it won't sell, you are rejected. That doesn't mean they are right, only that you may need to self-publish to have the story go out to the world.

I say these things not to discourage anyone; rather I am trying to be honest so that you understand the forces working against you. Frankly I'm surprised anything ever gets published given all this. But I also say this to remember myself why I find myself in this boat. The longer I go down this path, the harder it is for me to continue because I seem to be going nowhere. It is easy to forget what I'm up against because I don't see anything obvious working against me. But they are there nonetheless.

For me, this does not stop twinges of jealousy from flaring up. Yes, I get jealous of others. I am only human after all. That doesn't mean I wish these people ill. On the contrary, I wish them all the succeed they can earn. I just wish I was there with them going on the same journey, instead being stuck on the shore waiting for a boat to have room for me.

It also doesn't make me a bad person, flawed perhaps (and who isn't?) but not bad. Luckily I am not consumed by jealousy. That would do me no good. I have to remember to stay focused. I determine my own success or failure. Me. Not the writers who are succeeding. Not the publishers who are rejecting me. After all, if I wrote a story than was a perfect fit for a magazine or small press they'd take it in a shot. They'd be stupid not to. But my work isn't a perfect fit so I need to sell my work the best I can, self-publish, or give up.

For now, I'm trying to sell my work. Well talk about doing that next time.

Give me What I Want but You'll Have to Guess as to the Details

The current publishing process astounds me. In order to get something published, I have to guess what my target publication wants without so much as a hint from me. Or I have to write what I like is good and hope someone else agree.

In all the years I've been in the job market I've never seen anything like that except the publishing world. For most jobs, I have see an explicit job description and determine if I fit. More often than not, that works well.

But in publishing, you see a publisher wants a fantasy story so you write one and send it to them. And they reject it because by fantasy they mean a romantic fantasy or a dark urban fantasy and you wrote a story in the swords and sorcery vein.

I know that I'm suppose to read samples of what a publisher has published but that doesn't help because each story is different. If I suppose if all the stories in a magazine are dark fantasy, I have a story of heroic fantasy then I need not bother to apply. But if a small press hasn't published any epic tales doesn't that mean they won't or that they haven't received any to publish?

Seems to me there has to be a better way of submitting stories and novels. I've seen a few places use a database to be manage the content. That seems like a good way to go. But let me propose another.

Why not use the restaurant method? Get your name on a list and have the editor/publisher work through it. When they reach you, they can ask you for what they are looking for. If you've got something you sent it. If not, then they will check with you the next time through the list.

I have no idea if that approach is even workable but it might let writers and publishers develop a rapport which is sorely lacking from the current process.

Or maybe we should reverse the model. Let writers publish online somewhere private then let the editors and publishers link to us.

Or maybe I've had too much Diet Coke today. Whatever it is, there's got to be a better way.

Staying Motivated

Situation: You submit a novel and two stories for consideration. Weeks pass without a word.  How do you stay motivated?

For me, this is a motivation killer.  I find it hard to stay motivated when I have no sense if I'm making progress and in that situation I often feel adrift. How do I stay motivated when this happens to me?

Answer: Sometimes I don't. Sometimes I use the time as a break. A time to rest, recover, and recharge. And other times I push myself because my stories don't write themselves.

Sometimes I need someone else to do the prodding. This can come from anywhere, a book, an email, a blog post or any other source.

Basically it is a mind game with myself. We meet on the battlefield of my emotions. On the procrastination side are all the reasons why it is pointless to pursue a career in writing, all the obstacles in my way. I'm not a big fan working toward something if there's no reward or no hope of reward. It is easy to give up; it is much harder to keep going.

On the other side, the side of reason, are all the reasons why I started writing in the first place. The desire to entertain and share my ideas, my stories, my characters. This side is looking pretty ragged these days because they are getting blasted on the beachhead from an industry that has no interest in accepting or welcoming me as one of its own.

Not that I need anyone's approval. Well, that's not entirely true. I'm looking for an editor or publisher's approval to accept my work. One just one person to say, yes, your work is good enough. Otherwise, I get the gnawing sense that I'm deluding myself. Not a big fan of that either.

Of course, I may never find this person. God knows it took me years to find a woman to love and care about me. Likewise, it may be that the publisher who will take my work to heart does not yet exist and may not exist in my lifetime. Or if they do exist, they operate in such arena, some place I'd never think of looking, that I'll never find them.

This is an old struggle for me and one which has no resolution except to publish or perish. However, more recently I've been thinking I should use the webspace I have to post my work. Setting up a way for people to buy my stories and say "To Hell" to the publishing industry.

The only reason I don't do that is who will ever find my work that way sitting on a lone web site that no one has ever heard of or will think to look for? My goal is to share my work so unless I win the Amazing Race or Survivor or America You've Got Talent, putting my work on a personal web site is as good as flushing them down the toilet.

No, I'd need a different place, like lulu, or createspace, or smashwords to help me distribute my work. But I've not done that because I don't think self-publishing is the answer. Self-publishing says you could go the distance and get a real company to publish you.  You aren't good enough.

So I holdout for someone to come along. But until they do, doubt lingers, grows, festers.

Yes, doubt is the enemy here. If anyone reading this has a way to keep doubt away or a trick to stay motivated, let me know. I'd love to hear it. Thanks.

The Name's the Thing

One of the tasks I find hard and onerous when writing is naming minor characters. Major characters are planned, crafted, and developed almost as carefully as the story. Minor characters, however, are usually created as needed, quickly without thought. Ideally, I shouldn't do that. Ideally, each character should be as complete as every other. But who has time to do that? I don't.

So to make my job easily I sometimes use a name generator. There are many available these days. One is available at namegenerator.com.  Many more are available at http://www.seventhsanctum.com/index-name.php. If you search for "name generator" with Google, you'll find several more.

For the record, I've used namegenerator.com and usually have to click a few times to get a name I like. In other cases, I only want a first or last name because I already have the other piece I need. The other generators I've not used because they look promising. But I can't promise anything.

I have others too. Some of for my old Palm PDA; others run on my iPhone.  Most of these aren't very good and are for naming places or swords or if they generator a person's name, the options for select it are poor. For example, on iPhone apps is called npc namer. It lets you create fantasy names or names for a dwarf, roc, gnome, or elf.  Using the fantasy name option gives you names like: claa or doisaa. I have no idea if these are first names or last name. The names for the other races are equally bad. For example, elven names include sai and nnevan; dwarven names include brkra and vrukt.

The best way I've found to generate a name is to a desktop application called the GURPS Character Sheet. The purpose of the app is to let people playing GURPS (an RPG) handle all the stats of their character. As it happens, the app also lets you randomly create names for these characters. It is pretty good actually.  It is available from http://roleplayer.com/wiki/. Check it out.

Keep Your Life in Balance

Feedback on my post regarding managing your time was to get more concrete examples. I thought I did that but I'll hit the nail on the head this time and discuss my approaches to keeping my life in balance, my writing moving forward, and how I handle those curves in the road that life likes to throw at us to make sure we've not gone to sleep in the middle of the movie. (Was that a mixed metaphor? Shame on me.)

Let me start by saying I'm not expert. I do know an expert in the field however. Any one interested should pop over to bostonjobdoctor.com. A professor at Boston University owns and runs the site. Check it out if you are interested.

The next thing I should say is you need to be able to prioritize each event or task in your life. High priority items are more important that low priority items. Additionally you should assign a weight to it. A weight is how soon does a task need to be completed or how soon will an event happen. The more weight you give to something the more immediate it is.

With this understanding, let me say that the main thing that I do is group everything into categories. I do this because some things are more important than other things and some things can wait while others must be immediately attended to. What I find is certain categories of tasks has a common priority or weight. Sometimes both. So this is a convenient shorthand. Simple tasks usually get more weight and a higher priority because I can get them done and out of the way, giving me more time for the complex stuff.

One category of mine is: Things that Require Me to Leave the House: for example, food shopping, anything medical in nature, car repairs, and so on. The things that me keep me, my house, or my car going. Simple errands are in this category too. For example, when I need to drop my wife at the hair/nail salon.

Note that other types of shopping can also be in this category. But increasingly I shop online for things so these tasks less time and don't take me out of the house.

In general, these items have topic priority when they occur but there are scheduled and important or there is an immediate need.

A second category is work around the house. This includes do-it-yourself home repairs, yard work, clearing snow (why do I live in the Northeast again?) or other chores. Generally I use these tasks as breaks between writing sessions.

Note that home repairs that requires a professional (like the plumber, the carpenter, the electrician, or the cable guy) are treated more like the first category.

The next category is personal projects; things I want to do in my spare time that are not writing-related. I have many such projects and since I started focusing on writing and working on my first novel, these are regulated to the weekend or when I need to clear my mind. These items have the lowest priority and no weight at all.

I also have a category for fun and social events. These are sometimes scheduled and sometimes not. Events in this category include going to the movies, spending time with my wife, relaxing by reading or listening to music, listening to an audio book, or watching TV. The weight and priority here is not uniform, unlike the other categories.

And, of course, I have a category for my writing projects so I can prioritize and weight them.

My general rule is writing projects take top priority unless another tasks or events needs immediate attention.

This approach works fairly well for me. If you try it, let me know if it works for you.