December 3, 2013

What I've learned:

• I wasn't sure if writing original fiction would stop me from writing fanfic. My inspiration tends to stick to one story until it's complete, and it doesn't seem to care if that story is original or fanfic. As always, though, if I don't have the majority of the plot thought out, or if the premise itself isn't compelling enough, I don't want to write it and I put it off and work on something else.
• Formatting and publishing electronically is fairly easy with the software I have.
• Formatting and publishing through CreateSpace is a bit trickier, but still fairly easy.
• I have absolutely no idea how to market myself and no confidence in my product, and publishing all by itself using free tools is definitely not the same thing as marketing. I feel rather like I knitted a poor excuse for a scarf, using ugly wool and the wrong size needles and a total lack of skill, and then had the audacity to put it on a low, dusty shelf in a lonely corner of a consignment store. Where it has sat, unpurchased, for quite some time.
• I've been going through moderate to severe bouts of depression since I published Firebirds. Even pulling up the page to view my awful to nonexistent sales numbers is enough to make me feel sick and sad.

So:

• I don't think I'm going to stop attempting original fiction, but the only original story I have going right now is the next book in the Unbroken series.
• I might continue with that series (since it does sell), but I don't know if I'll publish anything else.
• I receive feedback and appreciation when I write fanfic. I receive little to no money and feedback only when I request it, on original fiction. I'm rewarded more by writing fanfic and receiving no payment for it, than writing original fiction.
• I'm disappointed, even though I acknowledge that marketing might help improve my sales numbers. I just don't know how, and I don't have any money to put into it. I'm also just as convinced that marketing would be a waste of time, even if it were free, because I don't feel like my writing is any good.

Dwelling on it is just going to make me upset. I didn't want to lie in this journal, though, so I'll be honest about all of it. This experiment didn't go the way I wanted. I didn't want worldwide fame and fortune; I didn't want to be the next E.L. James or J.K. Rowling. But I've failed at this. I'm deeply appreciative to the people who bought or downloaded the books, and I'm grateful to the people who read the books before I published them, for their feedback and encouragement. Apparently though, somewhere along the way, my self-worth has been tied up in this, and it wasn't high to begin with.

I'm not going to monitor my sales anymore through the dashboard, because there's no point and it only upsets me. I'm just going to let this go and try to find something that doesn't make me feel like this does. That might involve continuing to write, but not publishing anymore. I just don't know.

August 11, 2013

Just finished the first novel I'm planning on publishing via both Kindle and Amazon CreateSpace print-on-demand, and sent it out to my beta-readers.

I'm kind of excited about that process, but intimidated by all the choices. Covers, for instance. Cover art feels a lot more important for a print book. And choosing the font, spacing, how the page numbers will be listed, how chapter intros will be formatted... so many choices! I have a feeling it will take an entire weekend to plan and finish. On a positive note, I don't think I need a separate ISBN.

July 24, 2013

I had such plans for this summer. The time has gone by so quickly.

I had an interesting conversation last week, too. The book I'm currently writing... well, so far it's not fitting neatly into the usual genre conventions as I understand them. I'd like to hope it will find an audience, but I'm also wondering how big that audience is.

But then, maybe five people are meant to read it, and maybe those five people will find it.

Writing with the intention of publishing is a little different from writing and then deciding to publish. I know that I will publish what I'm working on right now, if I'm able to complete it to my satisfaction. But I haven't done the thing that scares me. I haven't studied bestsellers on the Amazon charts and broken down the books into a sort of algebraic equation, tried to follow it, and hoped that the end result would be enough money to help me retire in my mid-thirties. There is a difference between art and commercial art. No one's begging me to publish my books. No matter how long I write, I can't shake the feeling that if I were to stop writing, no tears would be shed over it. Oh, my unfinished fanfic series stories might be granted an unofficial ending by other authors, possibly... but otherwise, it's a little comforting to think that I could safely vanish beneath the surface, unmourned.

My mental state might be informing my writing a bit more than I should want, but for this story, I think that probably works.

Once I have it finished, I'll post the beginning, because I think readers will know fairly quickly whether they're interested and will want to read the rest or not.

And now I'm going to try to get a bit more done before I go to bed... although the book I'm currently reading is really absorbing my attention.

July 13, 2013

I'm close to finishing my rewrite of a 16,000-word segment of the story. That's just under 30 single-spaced pages on my word processing document. The current version is just over 36,000 words.

I'll be so happy once I've finished rewriting that segment so I can start on the part that I haven't been able to write yet.

July 5, 2013

I came up with an idea over a year ago. I wrote the first scene of the current incarnation a little less than a month ago. A story needs a good catch or hook, and I like the catch for it.

It's at 25k words right now, most of which has been done over the past week. I have a name for it. I even have possible covers for it.

I don't think it's going to be that much longer, but a part of me wants to get it finished before I post any of it for feedback... even though that's a hell of a lot to read in one sitting. For a piece of fanfiction it is, anyway. As a paper book, that's less than 100 print pages. Pshhh. Novella!

I have another idea I want to work on... and yet I just can't stop working on this one. Any time I have to write, I'm working on it. I didn't outline it, either. It's just happening. And it's been pretty clearly influenced by all the Mary Balogh historical romance novels I've read, just in the present. With less-tight pants and fewer (read: no) horses.

So far, anyway.

May 21, 2013

I was asked on a survey last week whether I'm a published author, and I replied with "No."

Technically, in the weakest possible sense, I'm not. I'm writing under a pen name. Very few people I see in my daily life know that I've made ebooks available. For 95% of them, if I even identify myself as a writer (which does occasionally happen), when asked what I write, I respond with "Not very well." Oddly enough, in my public persona, the person who would be most closely identified as "me" to anyone else, I imagine that "I" would write terrible dramatic poetry, and the rare short-short story, in awful purple prose.

I have written a grand total of probably ten poems since I clawed my way out of my teenage angst phase, and I love to focus on form instead of content. I wrote a sonnet last year because I could, and published it in a small magazine; note I didn't even say "submitted it to," because there was very little in the way of a submission process. I handed it to the editors and said "If you don't want to take it, that's okay."

I seem to have developed some sort of preemptory knee-jerk reflex to dismiss my own writing as awful. I don't know when this began, and I think maybe I need to work on that. I'll put on an outfit that I like and not give a damn what anyone else thinks of it, as long as I like it. I'll refer to watching something on Lifetime Movie Network without a qualm. And yet, when it comes to my writing, when I allow people to see it, I end up apologizing before they read the first word: "I'm sorry, it's really not very good." I suppose I'm waiting for them to say, "You're right—it isn't."

Half the time I believe that apology is a lie. Half the time I think, "No, I'm very proud of what you're about to read. It represents a lot of time and energy I spent, and even if it isn't to your personal taste, I hope you enjoy it in some way."

The other half of the time, I think, "This is me being Ed Wood. This is totally me being Ed Wood. Anyone who has ever said anything nice about anything I've written was just trying to save my feelings. Secretly they all hate it. Why am I trying? Virtually any author is so much better."

But I don't honestly believe that every single positive review and piece of feedback I've received was just a total lie. Not honestly. So this is, at its heart, a self-esteem issue.

I'm supposed to be a cheerleader for my books. If I (electronically) hand a book to someone I've never met with an apology in my voice and a cringe on my face, that isn't going to sell anyone anything. "Well, if you have no faith in this, why should I bother even giving it a chance?" they might think. "I have a thousand other things I could be doing."

Would that there were some pill I could take that would temporarily give me self-confidence—without inebriation, anyway. I'd need a clear head for this, after all.

This makes me think that—right now, anyway—I'm not the best person to be writing the product description for my books. I only know what made me write it, and that was because I had these people running around in my head, or a vision of a green sash in moonlight and fingertips drifting along a rough stone wall, and I felt compelled to write it down, and then share it with the internet at large. When I read back over the stories, I see those things again, and a part of me wonders what the stories do to other people. Why are they appealing? What makes you go back and read it again, and if you wanted to convince someone else to read it, what would you say?

Hmm. All good things to consider while I'm on vacation.

Hooray!

People have bought my books! This makes me very happy. :)

It's kind of interesting, though, that I feel the same happiness I do when I see sales, as when someone leaves feedback on one of my free (fanfic) stories. I think it's because I still feel like I'm testing here. My first series was to see if I could do it.

Now, though... now I want to post more books. I'm only going to do one other originally-fanfic story, though. After that, it will be new stuff. I think I'm ready for that.

It's scary, honestly. I feel incredibly out of my depth when it comes to publicity and promotion, although I did decide to make the first book of my series free on Amazon over Memorial Day weekend, just to see what happens. Much like I felt the first time I posted a story online and a reader took the time to comment on it, I just feel amazed. I'm not sure what made anyone read my stories before, but I'm grateful to those who have, and I hope they got something positive out of them as a result.

settings

I used to write in Palatino, 12 point, 1.5 spacing, 0.2" first-line indent. I used Microsoft Word 5.0 on a Mac Plus, then ClarisWorks on an SE/30, then AppleWorks on the Quadra.

Now I write in Georgia, 12 point, single spacing, 0.25" first-line indent. I use Pages, despite its hilarious lack of html conversion capability. If I'm unable to use my home computer, I write in some equivalent of Notepad or Wordpad, and use as many of the settings above as I can.

When I open a fresh document, I have to change the settings to match my preferred style, or I feel like I can't write. It's weird.

I also continually edit while I'm writing, which means sometimes when I write the last sentence, it's done; sometimes I go over the whole thing and find a paragraph or two I need to redo, or a few sentences that need to be tweaked. If it's not flowing, though, I'll often delete the entire scene or whatever I need to, to get back to where it was good and build from there.

I write on the couch in my living room, often with my dog snoring beside me, as I'm doing right now; I write until I'm aware that my thoughts are no longer coherent, and then I go to bed. Or I drink some more caffeine and power through it.

Tonight, though, I have to get to bed. Work tomorrow.

fanfiction is weird.

I say that as someone who adores and loves and writes fanfiction.

You see, fanfiction fulfills a particular function: it corrects something. Maybe a scene of a television show cut off before a character announced some life-shattering news and it thus happened off-camera. The solution? Write fanfic explaining what happened, or find someone else who did and read theirs. The scene fades to black after a couple tumbles into bed but you want more? Write or read fanfic. Two characters never meet but you imagine they would have had amazing chemistry? Write or read fanfic. A show ends after two amazing seasons, but you wish you knew what had happened after? Write or read fanfic. (Or contribute to a Kickstarter campaign, for some lucky fandoms.)

In some (many) fandoms, fanfic isn't limited to canon pairings. If a couple's arc played out perfectly on screen or in canon in the fans' opinions, the fandom in general* feels less desire to read or write fanfic about that particular pairing.

*I'm aware that "general" is incredibly reductive, and of course specific cases may be different.

The Nancy Drew fandom is technically over eighty years old—the fandom itself, not the members, though I'm sure some elderly people would describe themselves as Nancy Drew fans. The canon pairing in the fandom is Nancy Drew/Ned Nickerson.

Fandom, according to my research (which may be a bit biased), actually prefers Nancy/Ned as the canon pairing.

The majority of the fanfic, however, is Nancy Drew/Frank Hardy.

Why does this matter? Partially because I hate that pairing, partially because a lot of people looking for fanfiction favor that pairing. This means that when I publish a story on a site like Fanfiction.net, few people are even looking for it, since it focuses on the nonpreferred Nancy/Ned pairing; few people read it; and fewer people comment on it. Granted, those who do read it are generally glad it exists, and I'm grateful for their readership.

I feel discouraged, though, when I see other stories on the site with many, many more reviews and hits. Sometimes I read one story, just to see what's going on... and it hasn't been spellchecked or edited, the content is abysmal, and some characterization is entirely incorrect. That depresses me more. What am I doing wrong? I wonder.

If I really wanted to make an experiment out of this, I would write a Nancy/Frank piece and see if that's the problem. I hate that idea, though. Nancy/Ned is the pairing I love, and writing Nancy/Frank would be like bashing nursery alphabet blocks together in a flaily manner. I wouldn't enjoy it, not at all. It would make me feel dirty. I understand how foolish that sounds, but it's true.

I have been very appreciative of the readers I do have, though, and when they tell me that they love my work or that I should consider professional writing, it really does make me happy. I just feel a little nervous about it, though. But I'll be able to tell soon enough, I suppose. And if my original writing doesn't sell, well, at least I tried.

pay as you go

I've been a fanfiction author for quite a while now. Technically since I was a pre-teen, I guess, although I definitely haven't published anything I wrote before the age of probably eighteen or so. (My first story, what I can recall of it—it is lost somewhere in the attic, I think/hope—was hilariously bad. I can't imagine how much it would make me cringe to read it now.) I'm used to being "paid" in comments/feedback, and sometimes on FFN I'm paid with follows/favorites instead of comments, and sometimes on AO3 I'm paid with kudos/bookmarks instead of comments.

And because I love that form of payment so much, I try to reciprocate. If I take the time to read a story, I try to leave a comment, but sometimes it's very hard to know what to say. "That was great!" sounds so trite. "Awesome story!" Again, is there any way to be less original? "You fucking rock!" Hmm. Sounds almost stalker-esque, eh. So I'm sad to say that sometimes I have indeed paid with kudos instead of words.

Professional authors, though, are paid in money instead of comments or verbal appreciation from the readers, generally. But the money doesn't come after the book is read; instead, it comes before. And then, of course, a person might buy another book in the series to show appreciation for that first book, or as a gift to someone else... so in a way, that's appreciation. Kind of.

However, now that I'm thinking about publishing, and possibly getting paid for my work for the first time, I'm falling back on what others have discovered or are saying about digital publishing. But I wonder... if I gave my ebook to someone without asking that person to pay up front, and said, after she (or he? Are men real?) finished reading it, "So, how much would you pay for the experience you just had?" I wonder what would happen. After all, I pay a set amount of money for concert tickets, movie tickets, actual books themselves, and hope to be entertained at least equally. But what is five dollars' worth of entertainment? What about fifty? What about a hundred? What about that concert where I paid for a right-smack-in-front-of-the-stage pit area ticket and was only able to stay for four songs because I became incredibly sick? Bands don't pro-rate, and I'm not exactly saying they should.

And sometimes I pay $10 for a DVD that I think is easily worth $20, because I know how much I love it and how much it will continue to entertain me. (Anchorman? Yep.) On the other hand, no matter how much I enjoy watching Chopped, I still think paying $3 per episode to watch it via iTunes is ridiculous.

What about other people who have been reading my work for free all this time? I'm thinking about offering a coupon to them once I have ebooks available for sale, as a way to show my appreciation. After all, they didn't have to read what I wrote. They still don't. But they have, and I'm very grateful.

April 26, 2013 - counting chickens

Because I like to worry about things well ahead of time (or not at all), I did research today on paying taxes on royalties received from book self-publishing. (It looks like I'll be able to file my taxes using cheap tax prep software the way I always have, which is nice.) Then I did research on metadata. (I'm wondering how many terms or words I can put into metadata - and I wonder how hilarious that's going to get. Does anyone even search Amazon for "painplay"? Is "erotica with plot" even a thing yet, or is that considered "hardcore romance"?)

Now I'm really trying to tell myself not to a) convert the other book I have written, which I talked about in the last post, or b) start on an idea that has suddenly become very exciting. I've figured out how it starts, but I don't know where it will go after that. I think I had better have at least a vague game plan before I start, though, or else I feel it will ramble or get otherwise out of control.

Confession: I don't have much confidence in my own writing abilities, but I do love to write. I also write the kind of things I would like to read. Considering some of the topics I've written about, I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Oh, I wish I didn't have a weekend full of non-writing work in front of me.