I started The Truth of Rock and Roll shortly after my first wife told me we were through.
Continue reading “On The Truth of Rock and Roll – Part 1: The Inspiration”
Category: Writing Theory
Am I Doing This Right?
You Want a Social Life, With Friends
You want a social life, with friends.
A passionate love life and as well
To work hard every day.
What’s true is of these three you may have two
And two can pay you dividends
But never may have three.
There isn’t time enough, my friends–
Though dawn begins, yet midnight ends–
To find the time to have love, work, and friends.
Michelangelo had feeling
For Vittoria and the Ceiling
But did he go to parties at day’s end?
Homer nightly went to banquets
Wrote all day but had no lockets
Bright with pictures of his Girl.
I know one who loves and parties
And has done so since his thirties
But writes hardly anything at all.
—by Kenneth Koch
Continue reading “Am I Doing This Right?”
Difficult Decisions
As the title suggests, I’m struggling with two difficult decisions.
First: All of my books and stories are currently enrolled in Kindle Select, which is to say they’re exclusive to Amazon. The upside to this are the promotional tools available and, more importantly, the option to enroll in Kindle Unlimited. I recently took a look at my account, and saw that almost half of my income from my ebooks – such as it is – is from pages read on Kindle Unlimited. The downside is that they’re exclusive to Amazon. Amazon is 75-85% of the ebook market, but still, I personally know people who don’t have access to Kindle for one reason or another. So my choice was between maximizing the use I got out of the single largest market for ebooks, or trying to have as broad a base as possible by publishing in as many venues as possible. Until recently, that choice was actually pretty easy, since the one site I knew of that allowed me to publish to multiple platforms in a semi-efficient manner, Smashwords, is a serious pain in the neck. Formatting a document to publish there involves working through a 100+-page style instruction manual, or hiring someone to do it for you. But now a friend has introduced me to Draft2Digital, which publishes in multiple platforms and formats (including Kindle), but allows you to simply upload a Word document and then handles the formatting for you. That made the decision harder. Now that one is as easily accomplished as the other, do I go for the broadest possible base, or most effective use of the platform that “only” covers 75-85% of the market?
Second: I am currently working on an urban fantasy novel called City of Dreams, which is set in the same setting as Dreams of the Boardwalk. City of Dreams is going to be a full-length novel, not a novella like Boardwalk, and I’m already about 200 pages in. Would it be foolish of me to start posting excerpts and chapters on this site? How about the entire first draft, chapter by chapter and excerpt be excerpt? On the one hand, it’s publicity and proofreading all in one, and I always work better and faster when I know there are people waiting to read my work. On the other, am I losing potential buyers of the finished product if I let them read even the first draft?
On a related note, I have the beginnings of a slasher novel that could go up chapter-by-chapter in the grindhouse. Anyone interested in seeing that?
And the third isn’t a decision so much as something I’m just worried about. I’ve recently come into a bit of money, and I’ve decided to use it to promote my writing. The thing is, I’m not sure what the most effective use of that money would be. I would very much like to turn my writing into a side-hustle worthy of the name (a career is too much to hope for), and the worst thing that could happen is to spend all that money and find myself no better off than I was before…unless it’s for the money to slowly dribble away on bills and little things and accomplish nothing at all.
Advice on any of the above would be welcome.
The One Rose Trilogy, Matriarchy and Following Your Own Rules
(This review was first published on April 1, 2014, on my old blog. The articles it refers to will appear here eventually, but this one had to go up now in response to this tumblr post.)
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post that used the Left Behind novels as a worst-case example for remaining consistent to the rules you establish in your story (as they are the worst-case example for so many things). In the same post, I included what I consider to be a good example of remaining consistent to the rules you establish: the One Rose trilogy by Gail Dayton.
Having had a bit of time to think about it, it seems that the positive example and advice for internal consistency deserves a bit more attention, as does the One Rose Trilogy itself.
Continue reading “The One Rose Trilogy, Matriarchy and Following Your Own Rules”
Spotlighted Link: Slacktivist
I’ve been following Fred Clark’s blog, Slacktivist, for a very long time. Back to the Typepad Days, as other long-running Slacktivites might say. Nearly fourteen years now, almost since the very beginning of Fred’s famous deconstruction of the Left Behind books.
I chose Fred Clark to be my first Spotlighted Link, and the first link on my Links page, for three reasons:
- Fred’s Left Behind posts may be the best “What Not To Do” primer for writers on the Internet. The Left Behind series is, as Fred himself says, “Instructively Bad”, and seeing their many flaws dissected (complete with suggestions as to how it could have been done better and even fix-fic in the comments) has aided the development of my own writing a great deal.
- Fred grew up in the White Christian Evangelical subculture, and remains a member to this day, though he is known in that subculture as “controversial” (which, if you were a reader of Fred’s work, you would know means “heretical”). Reading Fred gives you an intimate view into this subculture, with all its traditions and shibboleths. If you’re an American, you may think you know them. You don’t.
- Last but not least, Fred has been a tremendous inspiration to me personally. His compassion and hunger for justice, and his writings on those topics, have given me both desire and directions to be a better person. His post LB: The Rise of the Anti-Huck (a post from his Left Behind critique) is probably the best example I can offer, as he analyzes the greatest moment of Salvation and triumph of love over The Rules in American fiction…and contrasts it with the “heroes” of Left Behind.
Check it out! Before you go, check out my brand new Links page.
By the way, as we say in pretty much every thread on Slacktivist, Fred has a Patreon. Support the artist.
And while you’re at it, consider picking up some of Fred’s books, which collect his blog posts.
There’s
…which discusses his opinions on Creationism (spoiler: not only bad science, but bad religion).
And of course, there’s what you really came for: the two-volume The Anti-Christ Handbook, which collects his columns on the first book of the Left Behind series.
“It’s about believing in yourself.”
I saw the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line for the first time last night. It was a powerful movie, but there was one scene in particular that stuck with me:
If I could, I’d put a recording of that speech in my alarm clock.
Every artist, in every medium, has a responsibility to tell their truth in their work. Maybe it will sell, maybe it won’t. In the end, we have no choice, because nothing else will work. You can’t tell someone else’s truth and make anyone else believe it.
Found Stories: The Meat Loaf Album Covers
This story was originally published on my old blog on February 19, 2013. I include it here partly because I think it’s an interesting meditation on creativity, inspiration and the process of writing…and partly because I really like it and want to share it with a new audience.
As I say on my About page, I’ve always loved the Stories. But here’s the thing about the Stories: they don’t stop. Call it a blessing, call it a curse – I can look at the most unlikely thing and build a story out of it. For example, I’ve built an entire mythos out of Meat Loaf album covers. It’s true. Let me show you what I mean:
Continue reading “Found Stories: The Meat Loaf Album Covers”
Got a good story in the works…
…but I’ve had to start over three times.
Frustrating. Very frustrating. I hate almost nothing more than losing time. But what else are you gonna do? Nothing ever gets accomplished without persistence.