Don Draper Would Punch You In The Face If He Heard You Talk Like That

I have a book coming out. I’m trying not to be obnoxious about it, but this blog is about my life as a writer. And right now that life is consumed by my novel. I’m self-publishing, and those of you who’ve gone that route know what it’s like to realize just how much you have to do to get a book ready for primetime, so to speak, and then wake up the next morning and realize there’s about a hundred more things you have to do that you hadn’t even though of. So forgive me if I keep bringing it up.

This week’s anxiety-sponsored ramblings revolve around everyone’s favorite part of the writing process: marketing.* Is there anyone out there who got into writing with the lifelong dream of platform building and putting together a market strategy? If there are, God bless you, but for me, it’s been the most stressful part of the process. I’ve been mulling over the options: a grassroots blog-based campaign, a subtle “coming-soon” style buzz-builder, maybe even hiring a professional. Right now, I’m considering possibly the most revolutionary of all marketing strategies:

Not marketing at all.

Why do we do this? Writing, I mean. What’s the drive, the endgame? Is it the money? There’s lots of easier and quicker ways to make money. Is it to be read? Maybe. But why? Is it because a book isn’t really complete until someone reads it, or is it so people can tell you how great you are? I’ll be honest: I’d love to hear people tell me how great I am while cashing checks with more zeros than the Republican primary field. But is that what drives me? No.

Somewhere in the universe, there’s at least one person who’s going to buy my book (or borrow it, or pirate it, whatever) and who’s going to fall madly in love with it. I’m not saying it’s great; she may be the only person in the world who even likes it, who even buys a copy, but for whatever reason, she’ll love it. That’s who I’m writing for.**

I don’t need a glossy ad campaign or a marketing strategy design to penetrate every last corner of the web. If this elusive reader exists, and I’m sure she*** does, then the book’ll find her, or she’ll find it. She might even feel she “discovered” it.

And that’s fine by me.

*seriously, where’s that sarcasm font?

**this sentence is so blatantly incorrect, I know, but the alternative is, “That’s for whom I’m writing.” And who wants to read that shit?

*** or ‘he’. Just trying to keep it simple.

I Want a Blog, Just Like the Blog…

So I changed things around. Again. I’m trying to capture a professional look for my blog while still keeping it personal and unique. I don’t know if I’ve achieved that, but I’m satisfied with the look for now. I look at other people’s blog’s and I think there’s some ”make my blog awesome” button that I’m missing. Maybe it’s just because it’s mine, and I don’t have an objective eye. Maybe my contempt only comes from my familiarity as Mr. Clemens might have suggested. At any rate, no matter what I do with my blog, I’ll never be completely satisfied. I’ll never be able to view it as an objective observer and say, “Man, dude knows what he’s doing.” In short, I’ll always feel it’s not quite good enough.

 

Sanguine Musings 1.0

 

Have you figured out yet that this really isn’t about my blog at all?

All the above is true: I’ll really do feel design-wise my blog doesn’t quite cut it. But I don’t care about that. Yeah, I do my best to make it the best, but what matters is the content, and I’m generally satisfied with that. What the real issue is, is that the top paragraph sums up exactly the way I feel about my novel.

I read pretty much any type of book: classics, nonfiction, genre novels, self-pubs, even books off the supermarket checkout racks. Some are really good, and some are…well, not. But they all have something in common, whether paper or plastic, whether published by Smashwords or Simon and Schuster: they’re all professional.

And then there’s mine.

Don’t me wrong. I’m not saying book is crap. I’m going line by line with a red marker, and then I’m passing it on to a professional, so it’ll be as clean as it can possibly be. All the plot holes are gone. The characters are alive, at least to me, and the action seems to flow pretty well. In short, it’s a novel. And a professional one, at that.

I just find it hard to view it that way.

Maybe it’s just me. I haven’t had a lot of feedback, probably not as much as I should have, anyway, so I’m kind of flying blind a little. Maybe it doesn’t even matter. My book is either good or it isn’t. More likely, it’s both. Some people will like it and some won’t, that’s just the way it is. In short, I’m satisfied with it. I always though that if I could get amnesia and read one time without any previous knowledge of it, that would help a lot.*

Well, in a few months I’ll know exactly what people think about it.

In the meantime, I’ll keep looking for the “make my book awesome” button.

*I don’t really want amnesia.

Watch Out, He’s Got a Binder!

I’m kicking it old school* these days.  After months of fits and starts trying to work through the final edit of my MS on my laptop, I decided to print it out and tackle it the old fashioned way. I’ve got my red pen and my rainbow of highlighters, and I’ve been tearing through paragraphs like a machete-wielding psychopath at an abandoned summer camp.

This is the final stretch for me: I’ve decided to self-publish, and I’ve targeted early 2012 for release. Is my book good enough? I don’t know, but it’s been complete for nearly two years now. Since then I’ve cut out nearly a quarter of the text, changed names, races, concepts, eliminated characters, and pretty done everything I can to squeeze as much life out of every paragraph and every sentence as possible.

Now it’s ready for the world, no matter how much I might want to lock it in an airtight case and bury it under seven miles of concrete. It’s a book; it needs to be read.

Is it good? Again, I don’t know. I like it, but I’m biased. It’s hard impossible to read it at this point with anything close to objectivity, and despite what people say, it’s pretty damn hard to find objective readers, too. It’s not so much that putting out a bad book worries me, it’s that I haven’t done everything I can tell the story of Thea, Talus and everyone else in the most effective way possible.

So that’s why I dusted of the old binder** as well as any marketing ability I might have tucked away in the dark recesses of my brain. I’m going to publish. On my own, no less. Very soon, I’ll even have a date set. No going back.

My book might suck, or it might be good but completely ignored. But If I don’t risk those things, it’ll sit in a file collecting virtual dust until it disappears, never having seen the world. I don’t want that to happen.

It kind of feels like jumping out of a plane. I know because I’ve done that, too.

I think this is scarier.

*kids still say that, don’t they?

**three rings to rule them all.

NaNo Seconds

I took part in NaNo last year. For those of you unfamiliar, that’s National Novel Writing Month. It’s an event that encourages people to write an entire novel in a month. November, specifically. As I said, I participated last year. Didn’t finish, sadly. I had been looking forward to it this year, the plan being to get every bit of preliminary out of the way around summer and let the story gestate through early fall, so when November came around, my novel would hit the ground running.

Not only did none of that happen, but I’ve been wondering if a writing career is still the path I want to follow. Despite that, I’ve decided I’m still going to take part this year. I love the process, especially the early stages of creation. Of creating characters so bold and vivid that eventually they tell you what to do.

I think it would be good for me: a specific goal, and a deadline so tight I have to focus most of my attention on it. Also, I’ll know going in that failure is an option, at least by NaNo’s measure of success. The process is what’s important; victory is not a word count, but a reawakening of my passion for putting the world that exists only inside my head into those strange, jagged patterns called words.

So I’m jumping in, and if the water’s too cold, I’ll jump back out. Most of all, though, there’s no pressure. What I get done, I get done. And as we all know, it’s never about quantity; it’s about quality.

So wish me luck, and...um…got any ideas?

In Which the Author Attempts to Turn a Football Rant into a Post about Writing

If you follow football, or for that matter, if you’ve ever seen any commercial, ever, you know who Peyton Manning is. For those that don’t, he’s the quarterback of the Indianapolis Colts, which also happens to be my favorite sports team. Manning is one of those rare athletes who came out of college with high expectations and managed to not only meet them, but completely blow them away. He’s won the league MVP award four times. No one else has ever won it more than twice. He belongs in conversations with the likes of Johnny Unitas, Dan Marino, and Joe Montana. Or to put it another way: they belong in conversations with him. In short, he’s arguably the best quarterback to ever play the game.

And he’s hurt.

Manning, who in thirteen previous seasons had never missed a start and had only missed one snap due to injury,* is out probably for the season due to complications following neck surgery in the off-season. No problem, right? He’s just one guy, right? How important can he be?

Um…

The Colts are currently 0-5 and last week blew a seventeen-point lead at home. They haven’t shown any signs of improvement, either. In fact, sadly, they’re probably already playing the best football they can.

So what happened, and what does this have to do with writing?

Well, Manning is clearly the protagonist of this team, and he’s also not only their most valuable player, but his worth has never been more evident. His very presence turns mediocre players into Pro-Bowlers, and Pro-Bowlers into future Hall of Famers, even on defense. He compensates for shortcomings and hides weaknesses. His will and force of character pervades the entire team and turns a 6-10 ball club into perennial Super Bowl contenders.

And that’s what your Main Character has to do.

Your MC is your novel’s MVP. It doesn’t matter how strong your prose is or how fantastic your plot is, or even the originality of the concept, if your MC is dull, generic, or clichéd, he’ll drag your whole MS down with him. On the other hand, a strong MC can turn a pedestrian tale into an enduring classic. Think about your favorite books, the ones you truly adore. What made you fall in love with them? The plot? The sentence construction? Or were they peopled with lively, original, three-dimensional characters so real you could almost have a conversation with them?

Stories are the life blood of humanity; they truly separate us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Yet without a Don Quixote, a Holden Caulfield, or an Odysseus, without a living, breathing person to root for (or against), the plot is just a bunch of things that happen.

Who is the MVP of your novel? If it’s not the MC, who is it and why?

*a broken jaw(!)

Sanguine Musings: Year One, or How to Succeed in Blogging without Really Trying

Today is my one year Blogiversary (yeah, knew that squiggly red line was coming). October 1, 2010 saw my very first post. Of course, no one else saw it; I had no followers save my family members who I made follow me to prime the pump, so to speak. I’ve written several posts about how I’ve been a lone wolf or solitary witch. Without any formal schooling or apprenticeship, my only real knowledge of the industry came from writing books and websites. But that by itself did little good. So I hit blogosphere. I started with agent blogs, and then went after their followers: fellow writers, aspiring or otherwise. Soon I had a blogroll chock full of helpful hints, peeks into the publishing world, and just plain moral support.

So here it is: twelve months, 86 posts, and 678 comments* later. I’m up to 258 followers now – an astronomical number to me back then - and I appreciate and admire every last one of you, even though I don’t comment or reply nearly as much as I should. In fact, I haven’t done much of anything with this blog lately. There’s been speculation among my board of directors (consisting mostly of my cats and a partially eaten Boba Fett) that maybe Sanguine Musings won’t see a second birthday. I hope that’s not the case, but really, my heart’s not been in it lately. But S. M. is my baby; I want it to succeed. My biggest fear, though, is that if it does disappear, no one will notice.

Anyway, now that I’m done peeing all over my own birthday cake, here it is: my very first post as was. Hopefully, you’ll think it sucks, which of course means I’m getting better, not worse.

Or, I just still suck.

* and 72 footnotes

FIRST CONTACT

Yesterday, after six months revising and nearly three years writing my novel and over a decade before that of failed attempts, aborted story ideas, and general foot-dragging, I finally took my first baby steps into the business end of the book world. No I’m not published yet not by a mile, but for the first time, I interacted (sort of) with an honest-to-goodness literary agent and a tiny piece of the literary world. It may not seem like anything to those actively immersed in the world. To me, however, Publication* is now no longer a mythical city on a hill, but an obtainable, albeit challenging, reality.

I’ve spent the last ten years working on an ambulance. Wonderful people, but not exactly the literati. It’s been difficult just finding people to read my manuscript, finding like-minded souls to muse about the peculiar life of a writer, particularly an unpublished one. I work a crazy amount of hours, and of course there are no writing groups in my immediate area. My friends are all paramedics, EMTs, and firefighters; it would be tough starting a reading group, much less one for writers. Therefore, like the solitary witch, I write without a coven; I edit with only an inkling of feedback. And as I put the finishing touches on my manuscript and prepare with trembling hand to send that first query letter into the world, I do it alone.

Which was why this seminar was so important. To hear from an agent in her own words exactly what she’s looking for, to have her address my questions and even look at my pitch proposal gave everything weight; it made it all real. I can get Published; it’s hard work and could take years, but I know it’s possible. There are people like me, no experience, no background in publishing, that every day are selling their manuscript, or finding that perfect agent who’s passionate about their work. I’m in the game now. It’s the fourth quarter, I’m down by three touchdowns, and my offensive line has snuck off to Applebee’s, but I’m in the game.

As I get older, so much about life seems to involve endings. This, however, is a beginning, and a big one. And beginnings are so much better.

Waking Up From Your Lifelong Dream

I haven’t written anything in a while.  No big shocker there; the lion’s share of my writing “career” has been filled with long chunks of not-writing, sometimes measured in weeks, sometimes in years.  Generally I’ll get on a tear and write a ton in a short amount of time, then piss away my gains with a month or two of inactivity.  That’s always worked for me.  I’ve never been a do-the-same-thing-at-the-same-time-everyday type, but not for lack of trying.  Binge and purge, so to speak.  That’s my way.

That’s not to say, though, that those spurts of inactivity are completely wasted.  I’ll mull over projects, think my way through a tough patch, even cast the film version of the book that hasn’t even found its way out of chapter one.  Most of all, though, I lament.  And admonish.  And urge: I have to write, I have to write, I have to write.  And then I do.  And if I may say so, the stuff that gets written is all the better for having waited.  The point is, though, in the same way scientists suggest the vacuum of space is actually teeming with activity, the empty spaces between productive writing sessions are usually anything but a cold, silent vacuum.

Until now.

Over the last few months, I haven’t given a whole lot of thought to my writing, except a generic, “I really need to write something”.  I hate say this, but I just haven’t been that into it lately.  A big reason behind that is my new job, and the inherent stresses involved there.  I’ve been busy, but there’s more to it than that.  My blog used to push out all my other responsibilities, but now I find myself there less and less.  I’ve always procrastinated in my writing, but much of that was about getting the words right, not about lack of interest.  If I didn’t always have a story on the page, I always had one in my head.  And if all else failed, I usually found time to at least worry about writing if not actually do it.

Until now.

So what’s changed?  I don’t now, maybe nothing.  Maybe this is an advanced, mutated form of writer’s block, attacking not only my ability to write, but my desire as well.  Maybe I’ll get over it once my life’s settled down.  Or maybe I’m too settled down.  I’m happier and more content than I’ve ever been.  Maybe that’s the problem: maybe the drive’s gone away.

Do I still want to write?  Hell yeah.  Do I need to?  I thought I did, but now I don’t know.  The real question is: to be successful, not necessarily in monetary terms, but truly successful, on the page, do you need to need to?

I don’t know.