B.E. Sanderson's Blog, page 28

Why Am I Still Doing This?

There comes a point in every writer's journey where they have to ask themselves the question 'Why am I still doing this?'

It may simply be a lull in their writing gumption.  If it's early enough in their career, it could be because they've been ground up and spit out by the query machine.  Later, it may be due to a lack of sales.  Or anywhere along the journey, it could be caused by life harshing all over the place. 

Usually, it's a fleeting feeling and soon passes.  They ask themselves the question and, whatever the answer, they get over it and move on.  Sometimes it takes months to get over.  Occasionally, the feeling sticks and the answer is that the writer stops writing altogether.

I've seen it happen.  I've seen perfectly good writers get chewed up so bad they quit and their awesome words never grace a page again.  =o(

Over the past 15 years, I've asked myself the question on numerous occasions.  (Okay, maybe I wasn't asking the question too much there during the writing of my first book, but definitely by fall of 2004 when the rejections started rolling in, I was asking myself the question on a regular basis.)   And while I'm still not quite sure of the answer of why I'm still doing this, I get over it and move on.  Time and time again.

Which leads me to ask the question 'Why am I still doing this?' where 'this' refers not to writing but to continuing to ask myself the damn question.  And brings up the big question in the back of my mind 'why haven't I quit yet?'

I mean, how long can one shoot oneself in the forehead with a BB gun?  I guess if you do it long enough, the pain stops registering.  Because after 15 years, I'm still writing.  And after 4 years and 13 books worth of self-publishing with nothing much to show for it, I haven't given up on it. 

I think the actual answer to all such questions is that I'm stubborn*. 

It would be so much easier to lay down my pen and say I've had enough.  And maybe that's what this drought has been all about.  Taking a break and trying to rejuvenate so I don't get to the point where I lay it all down for good and get a job selling feed to the local ranchers.

But if that's what this is, then I should probably, at some point in the near future, get off my dead ass and write.  And if not, then maybe I should have that conversation with myself and decide once and for all if this is going to continue. 

Or if I'm going to have to get used to saying 'You want whole corn or corn chops?'


*Which brings to mind a quite from the animated movie The Thief and the Cobbler ** - "Never say die, but very frequently say 'ouch'."
** If you haven't seen this, it's a hoot.

I Also Write Books

Monday I was checking out at the Wallyworld and chatting with the cashier as I often do, when she says something to the effect of 'that's exactly how I dress on my day off'. 

First off, let's be clear.  I wear sweatpants to the Wallyworld.  I wear sweatpants everywhere for the most part.  Unless it's summer, then I'm wearing shorts.  It's this writer's standard uniform.  I'm all about comfort, baby. 

But this isn't a post about the uniform...

I told the woman it wasn't my day off and that I work from home.  And that, in fact, I had work to do as soon as I got home.  When she asked what I did, I told her...

spreadsheets.

And then as an afterthought, I told her I also write books.

She got a little excited then, so I rummaged in my purse for a bookmark to hand her.  Did the softshoe over the genres I write and encouraged her to check out my work.  On the drive home, I thought about all the things I could've told her about my books and my writing.  Sure, I didn't have much time because by then she was done ringing up my stuff and someone was behind me in line.  But I could've done more.

And then my brain went to the fact that when asked what I do for a living, my first answer was spreadsheets.  Yeah, well, spreadsheets does pay better.  And right now, I'm devoting more time to working spreadsheets than I am to working on anything even remotely writerly.

In fact, I spend more time whining about not writing than anything remotely writerly.  Gotta be loads of fun for my readers.  Sorry about that, folks.  But it is what it is.  Right now, I do spreadsheets.  And I also write books. 

Or I wrote books.  And I will again, if I ever manage to pull my head out of my as... armpit.

Choosing the Right Genres (or Not Cheesing Off Your Readers)

If you read my Reading Wrap-up this past Saturday, you'll see I DNF'd (did not finish) a book because it wasn't what it promised to be.  It was hyped as a historical suspense/thriller, and while there was some jumping back and forth between now and the mid-nineteenth century, neither aspect of the book was especially suspenseful or thrilling.

Oh, sure, the author dropped a body at the beginning.  I think the body drop was in the past part, but it wasn't clear.  Anyway, a body drop is a good way to start out a suspense or a thriller.  But they didn't follow that with anything to tie the body into the story.  Not for the reader anyway.  Maybe to the author - who knows what lies ahead - the ties were perfectly clear.  To this reader, though, it was all muddied up.

Like I said, a body is discovered almost immediately, then I read further waiting for some sort of tie-in.  I figured it was this one gal who is mentioned in both the past scenes and the present scenes.  Then I read far enough to a present scene were they introduce the woman's granddaughter, so it couldn't be her...

Unless, and this seriously just occurred to me, the opening scene was in the present and NOT in the past as I had assumed.

And see, this is what I'm talking about...  As a writer, you cannot leave those things unclear to your readers.  Because once they get confused about stuff like that, they will shut your book and never open it again.  (Or do what I did and scroll to the end so my Kindle sees it as 'read' and filters it out.)

But that's not the only thing that made me put the book away.  If you're going to market a book as a certain genre, it has to meet the main characteristics of that genre.  In the case of a suspense, it has to be suspenseful.  And if you call it a thriller, it has to be thrilling.  I know, duh, right?   If you call it both, you better knock my freakin' socks off.  And if you call it historical, it better be set in the past in its entirety.  But maybe that last part is just me. 

Anyway, it'd be like my calling any of my books romances.  And if I did that, my readers would be seriously disappointed.  There is very little romance, if any, in my books.  I do not want to cheese readers off that way.

That ought to be the first rule of publishing - do not cheese readers off.  Not if you can help it, anyway.  I mean, you're going to cheese some people off no matter what you do, but that's a topic for another day.

So, yeah, pay attention to how you market your books.  Get the genre right.  If you're on the fence about whether your book is this genre or that, pick the strongest one and run with it.  That's why I try to market Project Hermes as a political suspense.  Okay, sometimes I say political thriller, but calling it a thriller makes my uncomfortable because while it's suspenseful, I don't think it's especially thrilling.  Either way, I haven't marketed it as a medical thriller or a technothriller or what have you.  It has elements of those, too, but they're less prominent.  It's the political aspect that shines the brightest, I think. 

And that's my two cents on that.  What say you?

Work Ethic and Attitude

Peter Grant has an interesting post over at The Mad Genius Club this morning - Is talent useless in isolation?  - wherein he talks about talent and work ethic and posts a list of ten things that require no talent at all.  (Since I have no rights to the graphic, you'll have to go there to see it.)

Personally, I think the list can probably be shortened to two things - work ethic and attitude.  Those pretty much covers all the other things.

Being on Time?  Work Ethic.  Effort?  Work Ethic.  Doing Extra?  Work Ethic.

Energy?  Attitude.  Passion?  Attitude.

I think Being Prepared is both Work Ethic and Attitude.  

Anyway...

One needs Work Ethic and Attitude (a positive one... not just an attitude, which too many people have these days), to succeed at anything.  Want to write a book?  Set your ass down and write it without getting distracted or taking for freakin' ever and that's WE.  And if you're positive about the process, you'll get it done.

This year, I'm failing on pretty much all counts.  My Work Ethic and my Attitude are both tanking.  Not sure how to get past that.  I could probably ramp up the WE if the A wasn't so bad.  And I'd probably have a better A if the WE was chugging along.  Vicious circle.

How does one get both?  Well, if you don't already have them, you might be in trouble.  If the building blocks weren't already there, it's a long row to hoe.  If you had them and then lost them?  I suspect, in my case, it's going to be a 'fake it 'til you make it' thing.  I need to fake the attitude, so I can get the work ethic on track, and then maybe the attitude will fall in line.

And I have to fake it, because as long as the sales stink, so does the attitude.  Woohoo, I'm working on another book that won't sell!  Umm, yah.  So, I need to be like Woohoo!  I'm working on a book!  Lucky number 14!  You go, girl!  :waves pompoms: and that sort of thing, even when I'm totally not feeling it.

And once the attitude is in line, maybe the passion will come back.  And the energy.  And then I can put forth the effort and be prepared and all the other things needed to be successful.

Let's see if we can't put that plan in place this weekend and get some editing done again.  I still don't have the funds to begin the publishing process with this puppy, but I can have it ready for when things fall into place financially.  (As long as my editor hasn't completely washed her hands of my lazy ass by then.) 

Here's hoping I have better things to tell you on Monday. 

Writing Speculative Fiction

I started out this morning doing a post about what originally drew me to write speculative fiction - specifically about a dystopian future where something somewhere along the way has gone horribly wrong and the characters have to surmount those obstacles to thrive and survive on their way to possibly correcting whatever went wrong. 

But I'm really not sure why. 

I know I've read a boatload of the genre.  When I was way younger, I read Anthem, Farhenheit 451, Brave New World, 1984... The big ones, of course.  (Some people would think of them as 'the old ones'.)  And a bunch of others I can't remember the titles to.  I've read some of the newer ones, too - The Hunger Games Trilogy, Divergent... along with a few others I also can't remember the names of. 

I've written three in the genre.  Blink of an I was the first.  Unequal was the third.  The second may never see the light of day.  I love it, but the thought of it being out in the world scares me.  :shrug:

They're meaty books, but I like to think they're quick reads.  I know when when someone picks one up in the Kindle Unlimited program, they're usually through the book in 24-48 hours.  A reader started Blink on Sunday and finished in the wee hours of Monday morning.  Always nice to see that kind of turnaround. 

I hope they make people think.  If not, I hope readers are entertained.  I mean, the books have message in them, but the primary goal of this writer is to entertain.  If you think about something along the way, awesome.  If not, that's okay, too.

Anyway, Blink of an I is on sale this week in the US and the UK.  I'd really appreciate it if you pick up a copy, leave a review, tell your friends, etc. 

You Got Message in My Fiction

Sort of like the old Reese's Peanut Butter Cup commercials where the characters proclaimed 'You got chocolate in my peanut butter!" and "You got peanut butter in my chocolate!", I was reading along in a pretty good book recently and found message in my fiction.

Oh, in this case, it was a message I appreciated, but I think it was laid on a little thick.  And in some places, laid on thick enough that the message overwhelmed the fiction.  (Which is why Reese's has worked very hard to achieve just the right balance in their PB cups.  Not too much PB and not too much chocolate.  Yum.) 

Which got me to wondering if perhaps I might have done the same thing to my readers on occasion.  I mean, I try not to be heavy handed with the message, but in books like Blink of an I and Unequal, there are places where I laid it on thicker than I would've with, say, Sleeping Ugly.

At one point in Unequal, my editor noted that a passage sounded very similar to a passage in Blink.  And after some mental debate, I left it as it was.   The stories are different, but the general message is the same - freedom, individualism, with a 'lemme explain something crucial here'... as in 'this is what will happen later if we follow a certain course today'.

Anyway, I think message in the fiction is okay if the reader is open to the message and you're not beating them over the head with it constantly.  If they're not open or you've overdone it, they'll stop reading the book when it pushes their notions.  And even if they are open, if it's something they already agree with and understand, they'll flip past to get back to the story - which is what I ended up doing in the recent read.

But there has to be a story to get back to.  If it's all message and no story, it all falls apart.  Which is where, I think, some books end up and why I flinch away from most 'critically acclaimed' books.  Those seem to be more about the message than the fiction.  Too much PB and not enough chocolate, or vice versa.

Jus' sayin'.

Oh, and just a quick heads-up - Blink of an I will be on sale starting tomorrow.  99c/99p for a week.  If you haven't snagged a copy, this might be the time to do so.

Cover Change... Again.

In an effort to try and boost sales for Blink of an I , I've changed the cover.  Again.  As you may have guessed, I have no clue when it comes to covers (or anything else marketing related) for dystopian... err, futuristic suspense... err, speculative fiction... err, whatever.

Anyway, here's the latest...
Let's see how that grabs people, eh? Of course, I thought the first few covers would grab people, so what do I know?

I'm hoping to set up either a sale or a freebie for next week (because my KDP thingie renews on the 15th and it's use it or lose it).  I'll let ya know.  A lot will depend on how fast Amazon gets this cover out there to people.  They say 72 hours.  We'll see.

All a gal can do is try, right?

The Burning Drive to Write

I'm thinking about writing again.  Both in the 'once more I am thinking about creating a story' and the 'I will set my ass down and write once more' ways.

The old urge to write is peeking its head above the surface of my general malaise.  I find myself thinking about stories again.  How to proceed with Cinder Ugly mostly.  I think I need to rewrite the end of Ugly and the Beast before I can really get rolling on CU, but the thoughts are there.  (The way UstB is now, I could easily end the series there, so I need to come up with something that lends itself to a third book.)

I don't think I have the urge to write some of you have, though.  It's not a burning need where if I stopped writing entirely I'd wither up and die or anything.  I wrote stuff when I was young and then I stopped because life was in the way.  I wrote some stuff when I was in my twenties.  Then I stopped because reasons and once those reasons went away, life intruded again.  I didn't write again until I was 33, when Fear Itself leapt into my head and refused to leave.  Still, if I hadn't had the encouragement of Hubs, I probably would've let life intrude again and FI would've become yet another partially finished novel gathering e-dust on my harddrive.

Nowadays, it's less an urge to write than a business thing.  I have readers waiting for more books.  Book sales increase with the release of another book - especially if they're in a series.  If I want to please readers and sell books, I have to put additional books out there.  Which means I have to write. 

I'd like to have the urge some of you have.  The Burning Drive to Write.  To wake up in the morning thinking about writing and be unable to move forward without putting new words on the page.  Oh, I'm not saying I never have those days, but I suspect they're fewer and farther between than a lot of other writers.  Which sometimes gives me a sad. 

It'd be nice to have The Burning Drive to Write.  Hell, it would be nice to have a burning drive to do anything.  But I guess I'm not a burning drive kind of gal.  I'm a simmer kind of gal, I guess.  :shrug:  I get an urge, but it's more a 'it'll get done when it gets done' than 'I have to do this NOW' kind of thing.

What about you?  Do you have The Burning Drive to Write?  A burning drive for anything?  Talk to me about it.

What Makes You Take a Chance on a Book?

What is it that makes you download a book by an author you've never heard of?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately.  From a writer standpoint, I'm trying to figure out why people buy or don't buy my books.  Is it the title?  The cover?  The blurb?  What mysterious thing is driving sales or driving them away?

Let's take Unequal for example.  Sales of that book have been incredibly slow.  Every time I hand someone a postcard for Unequal, they ooh and aah over the cover image.  So, in that case, it probably isn't that.  I think the blurb sounds interesting and like something I'd want to investigate further, but that's probably just me.  I hand out these postcards and the oohing and aahing commences, but then I tell them the genre and their eyes glaze over.  Dystopian might not be the target genre for people around here.  Perhaps it's not the target genre for most anywhere.  But I suspected that going in.  Dystopian isn't everyone's cup of coffee.

As a reader, I've been thinking about what makes me download certain books over others.  The cover grabs my attention, for one.  Then I read the blurb.  Then I read more about the author and some of the reviews and if everything lines up just right, I snag the book.

Except there's more to it than that because I've set certain constraints.  Right now, it pretty much has to be free.  And there's the 'new to me and underappreciated' thing.  If I'm picking up a new-to-me author, the book has to have less than 50 reviews.  More than that, 90% of the time I walk on by.  Weird, I know, but that's where I'm at right now. 

And the cover doesn't always have to grab my attention in a good way.  I recently downloaded a book that's cover was...  well, let's just say it kind of creeps me out and it's not a creepy sort of book.  In that case, the title grabbed me and the blurb held me.  But the cover did what it needed to do.  It made me stop scrolling to read more.

So, here I am putting it out to all of you.  What makes you stop and take a chance on a untried book/author?

A Nothing Update

Sorry I missed posting Wednesday, but I had nothing.  And I'd hoped to be able to talk about something today, but it didn't happen.

What I had hoped for was to have this phase of the editing done before today.  Ummm... Yah.  I am like 89% of the way through the manuscript, which is more progress than I've made in weeks... errr, months... but not quite where I wanted to be. 

On the upside, this manuscript isn't nearly as terrible as I'd feared.  There's a bunch to do, but nothing insurmountable. 

I should have the last bits of this part done today or by the end of the weekend at the latest.  Then I'll have to input those edits.  Then I'll do another read through and make more notes, input those, etc.  Then I'll probably have to set it aside until I've amassed enough scratch to pay my editor. 

The hope is that while I'm setting this aside, I'll be able to write the next book.  And that once I have editing funds available, I'll be able to shoot both books through the system, so they can release within a month of each other.  But you know what they say... wish in one hand...

Anyway, I have my fingers crossed, but I can't give anyone any firm dates about anything at this time. 

Sorry I didn't have anything better to give you as far as an update goes. 

What have you got going on in your lives?