Biff Mitchell's Blog: Writing Hurts Like Hell, page 17
February 24, 2020
72 Days of Serialized Hell: PART 4
(New to The Weekly Man? Click here: https://biffmitchell.com/the-weekly-man
Getting people to do things in the 21st Century, especially getting them to read a novel in short episodes over a 72 day period, is just short of miraculous…unless you have a budget of millions of dollars, celebrity endorsements, friends in global media and your picture in the living rooms of every household in the world…just for the sake of having your picture.
I did not have, never have had and never will have any of these. My only claim to fame is having the world’s most boring entry on Wikipedia. Apparently, doctors recommend it for patients with insomnia.
And remember, this is something I was giving away free.
But, years ago, I wrote a book called eMarketing Tools for Writers and it was a bestseller in the business section at Fictionwise (at that time, the world’s largest distributer of ebooks) for over a year.
I wasn’t a complete stranger to marketing, and marketing was what I needed to get my picture in the living rooms of…
…sorry…phased out for a moment. What I had to do was market the project starting well before the first episode saw the glorious questionability of the internet.
I re-read my marketing book and was kind of pleased at how well it was written even though just about everything was out of date and most of the links didn’t work, victims of tenuous web life.
The single most maddening problem was that the novel was free, available in episodes online and nobody had ever heard of Biff Mitchell. (OK…so that’s two things.) Almost everywhere you can market books they want a link to where you can buy them, generally this is Amazon. I thought: Jeez, I’m screwed.
All I had was an ISBN.
Friends and co-workers implored me to turn it into a podcast. Like I needed a whole new tech-nology learning curve. I was loosing hair that I didn’t have anymore just working with the tech-nologies I was already using.
I’ll keep the marketing part simple because it really deserves an entire book documenting all the things I did wrong in sprite of re-reading my best-selling book on marketing.
I wrote a media release. This is pretty much a waste of time unless you want to spend a fortune trying to penetrate an audience that, for the most part, doesn’t really exist in the realm of free online book announcements. Also, most of the free and low cost media release sites I mentioned in the marketing book were no longer free and no longer low cost.
I created a Facebook page for the novel and invited all two of my FB friends to like it. Astonish-ingly, over a hundred strangers liked it. I also joined a few writers FB groups.
Which brings to an aside on sites for writers…they’re mostly a waste of time for marketing your books unless the book is specifically for writers. Almost all the other writers are there to sell their own books and they don’t give a damn about your book. Check it out. Do a search for writers’ sites and take a look. What you’re going to see are splashy covers and links to where you can buy their books. Some will invite you to read chapters or short stories and get back to them, but they’re not the least bit interested in your book. Now, this isn’t a criticism of online writers’ groups. Some of them are actually great resources for writers. But don’t waste your time market-ing your books on them. Save those efforts for READERS’ websites…those places where people who’re looking for books and, if they’re interested your book, might actually buy it.
Of course, in my case, I was giving something away free but that doesn’t make a difference. They’re not there to read anyone else’s books. You’re better off blogging about your book or about topics related to your book (with links to your books, of course) on places like Goodreads.
OK, so I had a Facebook page, my already existing writer’s page, plus the novel’s blog site and a website page where the novel was actually published.
Months before the release date, I started posting announcements…really pushing the “nothing is as it seems” theme. Because the novel relies on the reader not knowing exactly what’s happening until almost halfway through, I couldn’t say much about the actual story. For this, I had to rely on a PDF that people could download with brief descriptions of the characters written in such a way as to generate interest in the character as apposed to the story. I’m not sure if this worked, but I’m not sure if it didn’t work. But that’s what I was stuck with.
I posted announcements on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pinterest and Reddit. The first announcement on Reddit brought nearly 200 hits on the blog and requests to send notices to in-dividuals once the serialization started.
Things were looking good. But I had a feeling that I needed something more. I pondered this. And pondered. I pondered until I almost pondered my mind to death and, just as my head was about to die, the pondering paid off.
I needed to give people incentives other than the novel (which I couldn’t talk too much about) to get them to go to the blog. This initiated a brief spell of further pondering which didn’t hurt my head much because I was pondering a new topic.
It came to me in a brilliant flash of realization…something I hadn’t experienced since the first time I turned 29. I had already created a bunch of those incentives. They were part of a writing workshop I taught through the University of New Brunswick for just over a decade and from my writing over the last 150 years (while still maintaining my age of 29).
I had resources for writers and readers. All I had to do was turn them into downloadable PDFs. For writers and aspiring writers I had mini workshops (complete with exercises) on revising a novel, writing a novel, finding a publisher, writing difficult subjects like sex, violence and humor. For readers, I had short stories. The most popular was the one on writing a novel. I guessing those were readers who had dreams of someday writing a novel and I hope that some of them are doing that as I write this.
Everything was ready to go. I was ready to go. I was optimistic and looking forward to publish-ing the world’s first free daily serialized coffee break novel.
Little did I know.
To be continued…
Click here to read the October Project blog.
https://biffmitchell.wordpress.com/20...
Silence says it all
https://biffmitchell.wordpress.com/
Getting people to do things in the 21st Century, especially getting them to read a novel in short episodes over a 72 day period, is just short of miraculous…unless you have a budget of millions of dollars, celebrity endorsements, friends in global media and your picture in the living rooms of every household in the world…just for the sake of having your picture.
I did not have, never have had and never will have any of these. My only claim to fame is having the world’s most boring entry on Wikipedia. Apparently, doctors recommend it for patients with insomnia.
And remember, this is something I was giving away free.
But, years ago, I wrote a book called eMarketing Tools for Writers and it was a bestseller in the business section at Fictionwise (at that time, the world’s largest distributer of ebooks) for over a year.
I wasn’t a complete stranger to marketing, and marketing was what I needed to get my picture in the living rooms of…
…sorry…phased out for a moment. What I had to do was market the project starting well before the first episode saw the glorious questionability of the internet.
I re-read my marketing book and was kind of pleased at how well it was written even though just about everything was out of date and most of the links didn’t work, victims of tenuous web life.
The single most maddening problem was that the novel was free, available in episodes online and nobody had ever heard of Biff Mitchell. (OK…so that’s two things.) Almost everywhere you can market books they want a link to where you can buy them, generally this is Amazon. I thought: Jeez, I’m screwed.
All I had was an ISBN.
Friends and co-workers implored me to turn it into a podcast. Like I needed a whole new tech-nology learning curve. I was loosing hair that I didn’t have anymore just working with the tech-nologies I was already using.
I’ll keep the marketing part simple because it really deserves an entire book documenting all the things I did wrong in sprite of re-reading my best-selling book on marketing.
I wrote a media release. This is pretty much a waste of time unless you want to spend a fortune trying to penetrate an audience that, for the most part, doesn’t really exist in the realm of free online book announcements. Also, most of the free and low cost media release sites I mentioned in the marketing book were no longer free and no longer low cost.
I created a Facebook page for the novel and invited all two of my FB friends to like it. Astonish-ingly, over a hundred strangers liked it. I also joined a few writers FB groups.
Which brings to an aside on sites for writers…they’re mostly a waste of time for marketing your books unless the book is specifically for writers. Almost all the other writers are there to sell their own books and they don’t give a damn about your book. Check it out. Do a search for writers’ sites and take a look. What you’re going to see are splashy covers and links to where you can buy their books. Some will invite you to read chapters or short stories and get back to them, but they’re not the least bit interested in your book. Now, this isn’t a criticism of online writers’ groups. Some of them are actually great resources for writers. But don’t waste your time market-ing your books on them. Save those efforts for READERS’ websites…those places where people who’re looking for books and, if they’re interested your book, might actually buy it.
Of course, in my case, I was giving something away free but that doesn’t make a difference. They’re not there to read anyone else’s books. You’re better off blogging about your book or about topics related to your book (with links to your books, of course) on places like Goodreads.
OK, so I had a Facebook page, my already existing writer’s page, plus the novel’s blog site and a website page where the novel was actually published.
Months before the release date, I started posting announcements…really pushing the “nothing is as it seems” theme. Because the novel relies on the reader not knowing exactly what’s happening until almost halfway through, I couldn’t say much about the actual story. For this, I had to rely on a PDF that people could download with brief descriptions of the characters written in such a way as to generate interest in the character as apposed to the story. I’m not sure if this worked, but I’m not sure if it didn’t work. But that’s what I was stuck with.
I posted announcements on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Pinterest and Reddit. The first announcement on Reddit brought nearly 200 hits on the blog and requests to send notices to in-dividuals once the serialization started.
Things were looking good. But I had a feeling that I needed something more. I pondered this. And pondered. I pondered until I almost pondered my mind to death and, just as my head was about to die, the pondering paid off.
I needed to give people incentives other than the novel (which I couldn’t talk too much about) to get them to go to the blog. This initiated a brief spell of further pondering which didn’t hurt my head much because I was pondering a new topic.
It came to me in a brilliant flash of realization…something I hadn’t experienced since the first time I turned 29. I had already created a bunch of those incentives. They were part of a writing workshop I taught through the University of New Brunswick for just over a decade and from my writing over the last 150 years (while still maintaining my age of 29).
I had resources for writers and readers. All I had to do was turn them into downloadable PDFs. For writers and aspiring writers I had mini workshops (complete with exercises) on revising a novel, writing a novel, finding a publisher, writing difficult subjects like sex, violence and humor. For readers, I had short stories. The most popular was the one on writing a novel. I guessing those were readers who had dreams of someday writing a novel and I hope that some of them are doing that as I write this.
Everything was ready to go. I was ready to go. I was optimistic and looking forward to publish-ing the world’s first free daily serialized coffee break novel.
Little did I know.
To be continued…
Click here to read the October Project blog.
https://biffmitchell.wordpress.com/20...
Silence says it all
https://biffmitchell.wordpress.com/
February 21, 2020
72 Days of Serialized Hell: PART 3
Blogging the world’s first daily serialized coffee break novel is no small feat. It takes months of planning and preparation. It takes groaning and swearing and long periods of staring at walls with your mind blissfully blanked out. But it had to be done.
After dividing the novel, The Weekly Man, into 72 coffee break sized episodes, I set up a schedule in my daily planner. The serialization would begin on September 7 and run every day until November 18…72 days, including weekends.
Now, you might say something like, “Biff, you bearded buffoon, people don’t go to work on the weekends, not the ones who have coffee breaks. They sit at their desks five days a week and do important things deserving of a coffee break. On weekends they do unimportant things that don’t earn them a coffee break.
I was getting death threats from extreme know-it-alls on an hourly basis…and I hadn’t even started the serialization. My final solution: Start working seven days a week, slackers!
Or they could just take unearned coffee breaks on Saturday and Sunday.
It’s the way the book unfolds…from Monday to Sunday. Each of those days was a logical episode. If you ever decide to read it, you’ll see why.
That done, it was time to do other things, like figure out how to publish the novel. I published the 31 day photo project on my personal blog, Silence Says It All, but this was an entire novel, deserving of its own platform. So I settled on a blog just for the novel and decided to call it The Weekly Man, which seemed more manageable than The World’s First Free Daily Serialized Coffee Break Novel.
I started testing it well before September 3 and discovered that the blog would support just one font, unless I wanted to get into a shit pile of technical stuff. Nothing drives me crazy faster than technical stuff. The problem here was all the emails in the story, lots of them, were Arial 10. And the rest was Times Roman 12 except for one really weird email font used by one really weird character.
I spent days under my bed, drinking wine, crying, worrying, complaining about my lot in life until I came up with an idea. (Yes, I have ideas.) I decided to publish the novel somewhere where the fonts would unfold faultlessly. That turned out be my website, biffmitchell.com. So I went back to testing, posting and reviewing, and seeking perfection. But perfection didn’t come. I ran into more technical problems.
But then, I thought about my original idea for the novel. I was going to do it every day for 72 days, like the 31 day photo project. It had to be on my blog. So I did screen cuts of every email, all 345,253,346 of them. Well, maybe less. I turned them into jpegs that could be inserted into the post wherever they appeared. Given that there were no more than five or six emails in any one post, I figured this would be manageable.
And then I tested it on my phone. The blog wasn’t going to work, at least not on phones. Back to my website with a new idea: Convert the episodes into PDFs and put them on my website as cell phone friendly downloads. Of course, that meant creating 72 PDFs and 72 button graphics for people to click on to get the PDFs.
The horrifying truth was becoming apparent: I would have to publish everyday on both platforms: my blog and my website. This was becoming complicated and I was spending increasingly more days and nights under my bed, running out of wine. But I still had over a month to prepare, so I ventured out from under the bed more frequently.
Next came the cover art. No novel is complete without a cover, even if it’s not actually published with several hundred pages of words between the front and back. I needed a header image on the blog and website, something visual that would grab people’s eyes and permeate their brains with a dire need to read the novel.
There’s a park in the novel that plays a key symbolic role. I figured the entrance to the park would make a great graphic but I didn’t have any photos of park entrances that matched the idea and to tell the truth, I couldn’t settle on any one type of entrance. I worried about this until my hair fell out. About an hour later, I was looking at pictures that I’d taken during my last trip to Cuba and I came across one that practically screamed to be a cover photo. Plus, wonder of wonders, it was at least loosely connected to the novel…very loosely…but connected.
There was something about this image that reflected the mood of the novel and it was easily resized and cropped for any number of graphical needs, like thumbnail buttons and page headers.
So…I had a cover graphic and a novel. What I needed now was a hook, something that would make people say: “Hey! What the hell is going on here? I need to investigate!” Something like that.
The best way to do this is to grab the potential reader’s sense of mystery. I asked myself, “Is there a mystery in The Weekly Man? And the answer was…yes…and more than one…and they could all be summed up with a phrase everybody in the entire world already knows: Nothing is as it seems.
And nothing in The Weekly Man is as it seems.
The only question now was: If you build the world’s first daily serialized coffee shop novel, will they come and read it?
To be continued…
Click here to read The Weekly Man
https://theweeklyman.com
Click here to read the October Project blog.
https://biffmitchell.wordpress.com/20...
Silence says it all https://biffmitchell.wordpress.com/
After dividing the novel, The Weekly Man, into 72 coffee break sized episodes, I set up a schedule in my daily planner. The serialization would begin on September 7 and run every day until November 18…72 days, including weekends.
Now, you might say something like, “Biff, you bearded buffoon, people don’t go to work on the weekends, not the ones who have coffee breaks. They sit at their desks five days a week and do important things deserving of a coffee break. On weekends they do unimportant things that don’t earn them a coffee break.
I was getting death threats from extreme know-it-alls on an hourly basis…and I hadn’t even started the serialization. My final solution: Start working seven days a week, slackers!
Or they could just take unearned coffee breaks on Saturday and Sunday.
It’s the way the book unfolds…from Monday to Sunday. Each of those days was a logical episode. If you ever decide to read it, you’ll see why.
That done, it was time to do other things, like figure out how to publish the novel. I published the 31 day photo project on my personal blog, Silence Says It All, but this was an entire novel, deserving of its own platform. So I settled on a blog just for the novel and decided to call it The Weekly Man, which seemed more manageable than The World’s First Free Daily Serialized Coffee Break Novel.
I started testing it well before September 3 and discovered that the blog would support just one font, unless I wanted to get into a shit pile of technical stuff. Nothing drives me crazy faster than technical stuff. The problem here was all the emails in the story, lots of them, were Arial 10. And the rest was Times Roman 12 except for one really weird email font used by one really weird character.
I spent days under my bed, drinking wine, crying, worrying, complaining about my lot in life until I came up with an idea. (Yes, I have ideas.) I decided to publish the novel somewhere where the fonts would unfold faultlessly. That turned out be my website, biffmitchell.com. So I went back to testing, posting and reviewing, and seeking perfection. But perfection didn’t come. I ran into more technical problems.
But then, I thought about my original idea for the novel. I was going to do it every day for 72 days, like the 31 day photo project. It had to be on my blog. So I did screen cuts of every email, all 345,253,346 of them. Well, maybe less. I turned them into jpegs that could be inserted into the post wherever they appeared. Given that there were no more than five or six emails in any one post, I figured this would be manageable.
And then I tested it on my phone. The blog wasn’t going to work, at least not on phones. Back to my website with a new idea: Convert the episodes into PDFs and put them on my website as cell phone friendly downloads. Of course, that meant creating 72 PDFs and 72 button graphics for people to click on to get the PDFs.
The horrifying truth was becoming apparent: I would have to publish everyday on both platforms: my blog and my website. This was becoming complicated and I was spending increasingly more days and nights under my bed, running out of wine. But I still had over a month to prepare, so I ventured out from under the bed more frequently.
Next came the cover art. No novel is complete without a cover, even if it’s not actually published with several hundred pages of words between the front and back. I needed a header image on the blog and website, something visual that would grab people’s eyes and permeate their brains with a dire need to read the novel.
There’s a park in the novel that plays a key symbolic role. I figured the entrance to the park would make a great graphic but I didn’t have any photos of park entrances that matched the idea and to tell the truth, I couldn’t settle on any one type of entrance. I worried about this until my hair fell out. About an hour later, I was looking at pictures that I’d taken during my last trip to Cuba and I came across one that practically screamed to be a cover photo. Plus, wonder of wonders, it was at least loosely connected to the novel…very loosely…but connected.
There was something about this image that reflected the mood of the novel and it was easily resized and cropped for any number of graphical needs, like thumbnail buttons and page headers.
So…I had a cover graphic and a novel. What I needed now was a hook, something that would make people say: “Hey! What the hell is going on here? I need to investigate!” Something like that.
The best way to do this is to grab the potential reader’s sense of mystery. I asked myself, “Is there a mystery in The Weekly Man? And the answer was…yes…and more than one…and they could all be summed up with a phrase everybody in the entire world already knows: Nothing is as it seems.
And nothing in The Weekly Man is as it seems.
The only question now was: If you build the world’s first daily serialized coffee shop novel, will they come and read it?
To be continued…
Click here to read The Weekly Man
https://theweeklyman.com
Click here to read the October Project blog.
https://biffmitchell.wordpress.com/20...
Silence says it all https://biffmitchell.wordpress.com/
February 19, 2020
72 Days of Serialized Hell: PART 2
I’ve written five novels, several novellas, tons of short stories, a few poems and hundreds of blog postings and articles in coffee shops. I have this thing about coffee: I love it. It gets my brain perking and gives me a sense of boldness with words and phrases that I don’t get when I write at home. I love everything coffee…including the morning coffee break, especially when I was working in government and the morning coffee break was practically in my job description.
In most places the morning coffee break is around 15 minutes of freedom from the grind…and this just happened to occur to me one evening while I sat in my favorite coffee shop playing with words. I’m not sure how many layers of inspiration, realization and revelation my mind raced through before I reached the horrifying conclusion that it was time for me to test my sanity as I had done in 2014 with a 31 day project that almost drove me nuts.
I quickly Googled a few things and came to another conclusion: no one had ever written the world’s first free daily serialized coffee break novel. No one. I was going to be the first. My eyes glazed over at the thought of eternal greatness, being remembered forever for something to do with coffee. And coffee breaks.
Of course, this is how I remember the occasion. I might disagree with myself at a later date.
So…there I was with an idea, a much hated novel (see Part 1) and a horrifying conclusion: I was going to do it all over again but, this time, for as many days as it would take me to serialize a novel.
Now, about the novel. I can’t say much because it’s a sort of mystery/family story/magical realism/humor/etc story that would fall flat on its face if you knew too much before reading it. Let’s just say that it’s about seven people who unknowingly share a stunning secret, something that will change their lives forever. But you don’t find out what it is until about halfway into the story…and then things get really weird.
Given the number of main characters, I decided to create a character profile PDF in case readers became confused and disoriented navigating their way through so many lead characters during their 15 minutes of reading. You can see it here: https://biffmitchell.files.wordpress....
And now for the horrifying part: the novel naturally broke into 72 episodes. I shriveled inside. I barely survived 31 days…how was I going to make it through 72 days? I felt a deep pit in my stomach, a pit ending in a tight ball of existential fear. But, damn it, I was going to give the world its first free daily serialized coffee break novel, whether it drove me crazy or not.
Continued….
Click here to read The Weekly Man
https://theweeklyman.com
Click here to read the October Project blog.
https://biffmitchell.wordpress.com/20...
Silence says it all
Include a link to the blog https://biffmitchell.wordpress.com/
In most places the morning coffee break is around 15 minutes of freedom from the grind…and this just happened to occur to me one evening while I sat in my favorite coffee shop playing with words. I’m not sure how many layers of inspiration, realization and revelation my mind raced through before I reached the horrifying conclusion that it was time for me to test my sanity as I had done in 2014 with a 31 day project that almost drove me nuts.
I quickly Googled a few things and came to another conclusion: no one had ever written the world’s first free daily serialized coffee break novel. No one. I was going to be the first. My eyes glazed over at the thought of eternal greatness, being remembered forever for something to do with coffee. And coffee breaks.
Of course, this is how I remember the occasion. I might disagree with myself at a later date.
So…there I was with an idea, a much hated novel (see Part 1) and a horrifying conclusion: I was going to do it all over again but, this time, for as many days as it would take me to serialize a novel.
Now, about the novel. I can’t say much because it’s a sort of mystery/family story/magical realism/humor/etc story that would fall flat on its face if you knew too much before reading it. Let’s just say that it’s about seven people who unknowingly share a stunning secret, something that will change their lives forever. But you don’t find out what it is until about halfway into the story…and then things get really weird.
Given the number of main characters, I decided to create a character profile PDF in case readers became confused and disoriented navigating their way through so many lead characters during their 15 minutes of reading. You can see it here: https://biffmitchell.files.wordpress....
And now for the horrifying part: the novel naturally broke into 72 episodes. I shriveled inside. I barely survived 31 days…how was I going to make it through 72 days? I felt a deep pit in my stomach, a pit ending in a tight ball of existential fear. But, damn it, I was going to give the world its first free daily serialized coffee break novel, whether it drove me crazy or not.
Continued….
Click here to read The Weekly Man
https://theweeklyman.com
Click here to read the October Project blog.
https://biffmitchell.wordpress.com/20...
Silence says it all
Include a link to the blog https://biffmitchell.wordpress.com/
February 17, 2020
72 Days of Serialized Hell: Part 1
In the Fall of 2014 I I came close to driving myself insane with a personal project: for the entire month of October, I posted a photograph that I took that day along with some writing about the image or something inspired by the image. I had to post them on my blog (Silence Says It All) before midnight every day for 31 days.
After 31 days, I swore I’d never do anything like that again.
It didn’t seem like such a bad idea at first…one picture and some writing. I’m a writer and a photographer. What could go wrong?
Other than a few technical glitches that were easily remedied, it wasn’t so much a matter of what could go wrong as it was a matter of when the hell is this going to end?
Here’s the thing; I work a full time job five days a week, I teach writing workshops one evening a week and I almost always have some time-consuming project going on (like an exhibition opening with one more artists’ collectives). What really hit was the full time job. It limited me to evenings and weekends to get the images and sometimes those images were almost impossible to get. That month, I traveled more than in years. I drove to wilderness places outside town and down country roads to rivers and lakes and parks and walkways around the city and begged friends to pose so that I could write something about them.
Getting those images every day for 31 days turned out to be a lot trickier than I thought. There was the travel, taking the picture (up to an hour if I had to walk a lot), processing the picture in Lightroom, writing something (usually a few paragraphs) and putting it all into the blog and clicking Publish…sometimes, seconds before midnight. Weekends weren’t so bad; weekdays could be a bitch, especially if I was tired or if it was raining or…
Anyways, I was jubilant as hell when the month was over. I’d captured some of my best images ever and though the writing (not even proof read some days) wasn’t the best, some of it was actually worth the bandwidth it’s stored on.
I thought I’d feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment but all I felt was glad it was over and I would never do anything like it again.
And along came 2019.
I had a novel that took over ten years to write. It had been rejected with extreme prejudice and death threats by over 200 agents. Admitted, I took a few years off from the novel to study photography and I was working on a few other projects at the same time. And I’m guessing most of the agents stopped reading when they saw the word “noticed” repeated twice on the first page…a typo I didn’t notice but the kind of thing an agent sees and thinks, And that’s about as far as I read this. Always get someone else to read your first 30 pages. Always.
I’d just finished writing another one (revising that one now) and I was about a third into still another one when I thought Holy mackerel, I should do something with that novel I wrote a few years ago…the one that hordes of agents hated.
OK…so it might not have happened exactly that way. In fact, I have no idea how it happened, but I was suddenly outside myself, watching myself dividing the novel into parts that could be read in five to ten minutes. Enough to read during a coffee break. I was screaming at myself, “What the hell are you doing!”
I couldn’t believe it. I was doing it all over again. Only this time, it wasn’t a 31 day project…it was 72 days and it was called The Weekly Man: The World’s First Free Daily Serialized Coffee Break Novel.
To be continued…
You can read The Weekly Man blog here:
https://theweeklyman.com/
After 31 days, I swore I’d never do anything like that again.
It didn’t seem like such a bad idea at first…one picture and some writing. I’m a writer and a photographer. What could go wrong?
Other than a few technical glitches that were easily remedied, it wasn’t so much a matter of what could go wrong as it was a matter of when the hell is this going to end?
Here’s the thing; I work a full time job five days a week, I teach writing workshops one evening a week and I almost always have some time-consuming project going on (like an exhibition opening with one more artists’ collectives). What really hit was the full time job. It limited me to evenings and weekends to get the images and sometimes those images were almost impossible to get. That month, I traveled more than in years. I drove to wilderness places outside town and down country roads to rivers and lakes and parks and walkways around the city and begged friends to pose so that I could write something about them.
Getting those images every day for 31 days turned out to be a lot trickier than I thought. There was the travel, taking the picture (up to an hour if I had to walk a lot), processing the picture in Lightroom, writing something (usually a few paragraphs) and putting it all into the blog and clicking Publish…sometimes, seconds before midnight. Weekends weren’t so bad; weekdays could be a bitch, especially if I was tired or if it was raining or…
Anyways, I was jubilant as hell when the month was over. I’d captured some of my best images ever and though the writing (not even proof read some days) wasn’t the best, some of it was actually worth the bandwidth it’s stored on.
I thought I’d feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment but all I felt was glad it was over and I would never do anything like it again.
And along came 2019.
I had a novel that took over ten years to write. It had been rejected with extreme prejudice and death threats by over 200 agents. Admitted, I took a few years off from the novel to study photography and I was working on a few other projects at the same time. And I’m guessing most of the agents stopped reading when they saw the word “noticed” repeated twice on the first page…a typo I didn’t notice but the kind of thing an agent sees and thinks, And that’s about as far as I read this. Always get someone else to read your first 30 pages. Always.
I’d just finished writing another one (revising that one now) and I was about a third into still another one when I thought Holy mackerel, I should do something with that novel I wrote a few years ago…the one that hordes of agents hated.
OK…so it might not have happened exactly that way. In fact, I have no idea how it happened, but I was suddenly outside myself, watching myself dividing the novel into parts that could be read in five to ten minutes. Enough to read during a coffee break. I was screaming at myself, “What the hell are you doing!”
I couldn’t believe it. I was doing it all over again. Only this time, it wasn’t a 31 day project…it was 72 days and it was called The Weekly Man: The World’s First Free Daily Serialized Coffee Break Novel.
To be continued…
You can read The Weekly Man blog here:
https://theweeklyman.com/
January 22, 2020
The Weekly Man Presents
It’s been over two months since I completed serializing The Weekly Man: The World’s First Free Daily Serialized Coffee Break Novel and after spending 72 days, every day, including weekends, upwards of three hours posting and marketing the novel…being at the mercy of the daily technology hurdle and building my life around the serialization, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ll never do anything like this again.
At least not for 72 days. I think that was the biggest mistake: it went on for too long. It became a draining process after the first month. I’m sure that the daily announcements for new episodes started to look like spam in social media outlets. They started to feel like spam to me.
I’m working on a series of articles inspired by those 72 days of joy and hell and at the same time, I’m working on a print and ebook version of the novel. One thing I learned is that you can never finish re-writing a novel. But I’ll get into that in one of the articles. The print version is turning out to be almost a full re-write but it should be on sale sometime this summer or fall.
I’m going to leave the free one up, both the blog (https://theweeklyman.com) and smart phone (https://biffmitchell.com/the-weekly-man) versions, for those who don’t mind scrolling up and down a blog or opening 72 separate PDFs.
And to top it all off, I'm starting a newsletter to keep people informed, throw a few contests and give stuff away. That should be ready early to mid-spring.
In the meantime, get through winter as best you can and remember…somewhere on this planet, at this exact moment, a warm wind is caressing the fronds of a palm tree.
At least not for 72 days. I think that was the biggest mistake: it went on for too long. It became a draining process after the first month. I’m sure that the daily announcements for new episodes started to look like spam in social media outlets. They started to feel like spam to me.
I’m working on a series of articles inspired by those 72 days of joy and hell and at the same time, I’m working on a print and ebook version of the novel. One thing I learned is that you can never finish re-writing a novel. But I’ll get into that in one of the articles. The print version is turning out to be almost a full re-write but it should be on sale sometime this summer or fall.
I’m going to leave the free one up, both the blog (https://theweeklyman.com) and smart phone (https://biffmitchell.com/the-weekly-man) versions, for those who don’t mind scrolling up and down a blog or opening 72 separate PDFs.
And to top it all off, I'm starting a newsletter to keep people informed, throw a few contests and give stuff away. That should be ready early to mid-spring.
In the meantime, get through winter as best you can and remember…somewhere on this planet, at this exact moment, a warm wind is caressing the fronds of a palm tree.
December 3, 2019
Getting Published in 2011
Yes, much has changed in the publishing world since 2011. But the basic concepts of finding a home for your writing haven’t changed; in fact, the opportunities today are greater than at any time since the invention of the printing press.
There’s a sort of writer’s find-a-publisher kit at the end of this document. The kit contains examples of queries for both fiction and non-fiction and a table that you can use to track the agents you contact. You can easily adapt the to publishers. The important thing is to do your research and don’t put anyone on that list that you know won’t be interested in you novel, book of poetry or short stories, or how-to book.
If you choose the self-publishing route, you’ll need to hire an editor. If you can’t afford one, at least get one or two friends to read your book and offer their insights. By the time you finish your book, you’re too used to it to be objective….and observant…enough to see some really big bloopers and mistakes that you’ll miss but others will see.
You can download the workshop here: https://theweeklymancom.files.wordpre....
There’s a sort of writer’s find-a-publisher kit at the end of this document. The kit contains examples of queries for both fiction and non-fiction and a table that you can use to track the agents you contact. You can easily adapt the to publishers. The important thing is to do your research and don’t put anyone on that list that you know won’t be interested in you novel, book of poetry or short stories, or how-to book.
If you choose the self-publishing route, you’ll need to hire an editor. If you can’t afford one, at least get one or two friends to read your book and offer their insights. By the time you finish your book, you’re too used to it to be objective….and observant…enough to see some really big bloopers and mistakes that you’ll miss but others will see.
You can download the workshop here: https://theweeklymancom.files.wordpre....
November 27, 2019
Still Time to Read The Weekly Man Free
It’s been a week since I posted the last episode of The Weekly Man…seventy-two all together over a period of two and a half months. It was tough. It was sometimes a royal pain in the butt, especially when one of more of the technologies ran amok and I tried to tear hairs out of my bald scalp.
But it’s done and every episode was posted before midnight each day…ready for your next day coffee break.
: )
Isn’t it just so damn cool when something turns out the way you dreamed it would be? Even if it costs your social life and sanity…things that I’d already lost anyway.
: )
I’m going to leave both the blog (https://theweeklyman.com/) and smartphone (https://biffmitchell.com/welcome-to-t...) versions up for a while to give people a chance to finish reading them. If you have a lot of catching up to do, though, that might be a problem: opening 72 PDFs for the phone version and scrolling up and down the blog version and reading in such an unnatural manner as to cause irreversible brain damage.
On the other hand, you might want to wait until early to mid-2020 for the print version. It won’t be free, but it’ll be easier on your head. And it will include a massive re-write. Check back here for details as they unfold.
I’ll also be starting a newsletter. I don’t want to start a newsletter, but some of my friends are insisting that I do, or they’ll unfriend me on Facebook. Others are sending death threats. At first, they wanted me to start a podcast. 🙂 Yeah, I’ll get right on that. I can barely use my phone.
But, I have a membership at Mailchimp and I hope to have the first edition of the newsletter out before Christmas.
And finally, I’ve started the story dump for the sequel to The Weekly Man. This one’s going to be really weird.
I promise.
But it’s done and every episode was posted before midnight each day…ready for your next day coffee break.
: )
Isn’t it just so damn cool when something turns out the way you dreamed it would be? Even if it costs your social life and sanity…things that I’d already lost anyway.
: )
I’m going to leave both the blog (https://theweeklyman.com/) and smartphone (https://biffmitchell.com/welcome-to-t...) versions up for a while to give people a chance to finish reading them. If you have a lot of catching up to do, though, that might be a problem: opening 72 PDFs for the phone version and scrolling up and down the blog version and reading in such an unnatural manner as to cause irreversible brain damage.
On the other hand, you might want to wait until early to mid-2020 for the print version. It won’t be free, but it’ll be easier on your head. And it will include a massive re-write. Check back here for details as they unfold.
I’ll also be starting a newsletter. I don’t want to start a newsletter, but some of my friends are insisting that I do, or they’ll unfriend me on Facebook. Others are sending death threats. At first, they wanted me to start a podcast. 🙂 Yeah, I’ll get right on that. I can barely use my phone.
But, I have a membership at Mailchimp and I hope to have the first edition of the newsletter out before Christmas.
And finally, I’ve started the story dump for the sequel to The Weekly Man. This one’s going to be really weird.
I promise.
October 4, 2019
When the Characters Take Over and You Miss Sunday Coffee Break
I’m not sure if I’ve written about how I create characters yet, but here goes for, hopefully, the first time…and maybe the tenth.
I started my first novel with three characters and no story. No plot. No idea where any of it was going because I had nothing that was going. I had two men and one woman. I had a rough idea of what they looked like, though their looks changed a little as their characters evolved.
For months, I did character studies, wrote about their dreams, their likes and dislikes, how they dressed in the morning, what they ate and what would make them vomit. I put them in conversations with the other characters and with people I created just to have conversations with them. I got into showers with them. I had sex with them and became them having sex with others. I had conversations with them on the bus and over coffee. But mostly, I went into their minds and memories and created back stories for them.
Back stories are significant snippets from a person’s past, things the experienced that changed the course of their lives, kept them on course, or changed the lives of the people around them.
Backstories are almost always intense, interesting scenes in which important, character-shaping things happen. For instance, what does the skinny ten year old do when he sees the school bully heading toward him with a malicious smile draped on his jaw?
Does he run? Does he stay? Does he cry? Does he fight back? Does he give up and suffer a few minutes of humiliation?
Whatever he does, it’s going to travel with him. If he runs, he’ll likely run again and again. If he stays and fights, he’ll likely never take shit from others. Back story moments define our lives and make us who we are.
I spent months writing back stories for the three main characters and for the minor characters and, as I wrote them, the plot for the novel unfolded in their stories.
I’ve always respected what my characters have to say about their fates and the paths they take through the novel. I let them lead the way and I never question their decisions.
And this was a long, roundabout way to say that there will be no episode of The Weekly Man this Sunday because that’s not the way the characters told their story. However, Jack will be back on Monday (just as weird as ever) and the story as a whole will be taking a sprint into the world of crazy.
Maybe you could read one of the free short stories here: https://biffmitchell.com/the-weekly-man.
In any event, have a great weekend and may all your coffee breaks be magic.
I started my first novel with three characters and no story. No plot. No idea where any of it was going because I had nothing that was going. I had two men and one woman. I had a rough idea of what they looked like, though their looks changed a little as their characters evolved.
For months, I did character studies, wrote about their dreams, their likes and dislikes, how they dressed in the morning, what they ate and what would make them vomit. I put them in conversations with the other characters and with people I created just to have conversations with them. I got into showers with them. I had sex with them and became them having sex with others. I had conversations with them on the bus and over coffee. But mostly, I went into their minds and memories and created back stories for them.
Back stories are significant snippets from a person’s past, things the experienced that changed the course of their lives, kept them on course, or changed the lives of the people around them.
Backstories are almost always intense, interesting scenes in which important, character-shaping things happen. For instance, what does the skinny ten year old do when he sees the school bully heading toward him with a malicious smile draped on his jaw?
Does he run? Does he stay? Does he cry? Does he fight back? Does he give up and suffer a few minutes of humiliation?
Whatever he does, it’s going to travel with him. If he runs, he’ll likely run again and again. If he stays and fights, he’ll likely never take shit from others. Back story moments define our lives and make us who we are.
I spent months writing back stories for the three main characters and for the minor characters and, as I wrote them, the plot for the novel unfolded in their stories.
I’ve always respected what my characters have to say about their fates and the paths they take through the novel. I let them lead the way and I never question their decisions.
And this was a long, roundabout way to say that there will be no episode of The Weekly Man this Sunday because that’s not the way the characters told their story. However, Jack will be back on Monday (just as weird as ever) and the story as a whole will be taking a sprint into the world of crazy.
Maybe you could read one of the free short stories here: https://biffmitchell.com/the-weekly-man.
In any event, have a great weekend and may all your coffee breaks be magic.
September 16, 2019
The Weekly Man's First Fake Interview
Mr. World News: So, Biff, how did the first week of your free daily serialized coffee break novel go?
Biff: It went well, Mr. News. I only lost half my usual readers.
Mr. World News: Half? That’s horrible.
Biff: Tell me about it. Now I have just one reader.
Mr. World News: And what are your plans now?
Biff: I’m going to get that reader back. I may have to send money…or maybe I could just learn how to write. That can’t be too hard.
Mr. World News: No, uh, that should be…(looks at schedule)…you are Biff Mitchell, right?
Biff: Did you want the evil one or the nice one?
Mr. World News: (looking confused) I was hoping for the…uh…nice one, I guess.
Biff: Great. That would be me. Are you one of my readers? Are you the one who stopped reading?
Mr. World News: (looking uncomfortable, about ready to run) Um…back to the first week. What was that first week like, Biff?
Biff: (gets faraway look in eyes) Let me see. It was…hell. Pure hell. It rained every day. I posted a bad link and one of my readers (the one that stayed) sent me a death threat with a graphic description of what will happen to me if I screw up again. MS Word caused massive format changes of an evil manner in WordPress. My iMac died just when I needed it the most and needs a few hundred dollars worth of repairs, but I have a MacBook, so the posts went on. Other than pure bloody hell…things went well.
Mr. World News: (eyes glazed) It…it sounds like…an interesting first week.
Biff: And there are only 9 more weeks to go. I think I’ll jump off a bridge tonight.
Mr. World News: (looking around to ensure there are no bridges close by) Is it true that you have two versions of the novel?
Biff: Yep. It looks fine on my blog if you’re on a desktop or laptop (https://theweeklyman.com/). But it looks like crap on a phone. I know this for certain. I saw it on my iPhone and immediately sent myself a death threat. So I put together a cell phone friendly site (https://biffmitchell.com/welcome-to-t...).
Mr. World News: It certainly sounds like a lot of work, Biff. How do you manage it?
Biff: Awakeness
Mr. World News: Awakeness?
Biff: Yes, I wake up each day and do things.
Mr. World News: Um…uh…yes. That’s very interesting, Biff. Good wholesome advice. (hands Biff the microphone and runs over a hill and into the setting sun)
Biff: (looking at mike in hand) I wonder…was he that other reader?
(NOTE: You can start reading The Weekly Man at any time. All the episodes published so far are at the welcome screen. https://biffmitchell.com/welcome-to-t...)
Biff: It went well, Mr. News. I only lost half my usual readers.
Mr. World News: Half? That’s horrible.
Biff: Tell me about it. Now I have just one reader.
Mr. World News: And what are your plans now?
Biff: I’m going to get that reader back. I may have to send money…or maybe I could just learn how to write. That can’t be too hard.
Mr. World News: No, uh, that should be…(looks at schedule)…you are Biff Mitchell, right?
Biff: Did you want the evil one or the nice one?
Mr. World News: (looking confused) I was hoping for the…uh…nice one, I guess.
Biff: Great. That would be me. Are you one of my readers? Are you the one who stopped reading?
Mr. World News: (looking uncomfortable, about ready to run) Um…back to the first week. What was that first week like, Biff?
Biff: (gets faraway look in eyes) Let me see. It was…hell. Pure hell. It rained every day. I posted a bad link and one of my readers (the one that stayed) sent me a death threat with a graphic description of what will happen to me if I screw up again. MS Word caused massive format changes of an evil manner in WordPress. My iMac died just when I needed it the most and needs a few hundred dollars worth of repairs, but I have a MacBook, so the posts went on. Other than pure bloody hell…things went well.
Mr. World News: (eyes glazed) It…it sounds like…an interesting first week.
Biff: And there are only 9 more weeks to go. I think I’ll jump off a bridge tonight.
Mr. World News: (looking around to ensure there are no bridges close by) Is it true that you have two versions of the novel?
Biff: Yep. It looks fine on my blog if you’re on a desktop or laptop (https://theweeklyman.com/). But it looks like crap on a phone. I know this for certain. I saw it on my iPhone and immediately sent myself a death threat. So I put together a cell phone friendly site (https://biffmitchell.com/welcome-to-t...).
Mr. World News: It certainly sounds like a lot of work, Biff. How do you manage it?
Biff: Awakeness
Mr. World News: Awakeness?
Biff: Yes, I wake up each day and do things.
Mr. World News: Um…uh…yes. That’s very interesting, Biff. Good wholesome advice. (hands Biff the microphone and runs over a hill and into the setting sun)
Biff: (looking at mike in hand) I wonder…was he that other reader?
(NOTE: You can start reading The Weekly Man at any time. All the episodes published so far are at the welcome screen. https://biffmitchell.com/welcome-to-t...)
September 11, 2019
Never Bored with the Boards
It was one hell of a busy summer. I finished a novel and gave up on another one (for now, anyway). I put together a game and marketing plan for the world’s first free daily serialized coffee break novel (seriously, Google it). The novel is currently running on my parallel blog, www.theweeklyman.com .
I also, visited Fundy Park for the first time with my bestie, Stephanie, and will definitely be going back. I discovered a lake I’d been wanting to see for years along with my friend, Nanook of the Nashwaak.
I also put together my first solo exhibition featuring my macro photography and board drawings. I did 37 boards last winter and lost over 20 pounds. They were addicting to the point that I would start right in on them as soon as I got home from work and forget abut things like eating and making a lunch for the next day.
I did the actual drawing at home but took the boards into the studio to paint and varnish them.
I’ve visited the studios of many of my artist friends and it always fascinates me to see their works in progress and then see them on display with all the messiness of creation left behind. I think this is what many skeptics fail to see when they look at a painting and say something stupid like, “A few dollars for paper and a few dollars for paint…and you sell it for ten times what it’s worth.”
Bastards.
I hate these people with a passion. I’d like them all to work for me for free for one year. You know, doing whatever they’re good at and not being paid for it. Or being paid a couple of dollars an hour. On the other hand, these are most likely to be people who don’t do so well on their jobs because they’re not smart and they talk too much. Maybe I don’t want them working for me and just messing everything up.
So, with that aside put aside, seeing the work in progress gives you a true sense of the intense focus and commitment that goes into creating art. I’ve seen artists on the verge of collapsing from hunger and fatigue because they had a deadline for an exhibition and they’ve gone for days without sleep and they’ve survived on coffee and air.
And this isn’t always a matter of the artists not preparing properly. Often, it’s because the gallery or other venue has changed the rules, the dates, the physical venue or whatever. Or, preparing for the exhibit leads the artist into new areas and the temptation to add some of the new stuff to the exhibit. Fortunately, most galleries don’t allow this, or there’d be a lot more crazy artists jumping out of windows and off bridges.
For me, working on the boards was one of the most fulfilling and mystical experiences of my life. I believe that where there was life, there will always be life. Life is energy and wherever that energy has existed, there will always be some remnant of it…like when you cut down a tree, the tree’s life energy doesn’t just disappear…patches of it inundate the wood like shadows of the tree’s memories, and you can feel that energy in the boards even after they’re cut into useable sizes from the tree.
Before I start drawing on the board, I spend some time getting a feel for its life energy, and that’s what directs the tip of my gel pen to bring out the board’s story.
And the stories are never boring.
I also, visited Fundy Park for the first time with my bestie, Stephanie, and will definitely be going back. I discovered a lake I’d been wanting to see for years along with my friend, Nanook of the Nashwaak.
I also put together my first solo exhibition featuring my macro photography and board drawings. I did 37 boards last winter and lost over 20 pounds. They were addicting to the point that I would start right in on them as soon as I got home from work and forget abut things like eating and making a lunch for the next day.
I did the actual drawing at home but took the boards into the studio to paint and varnish them.
I’ve visited the studios of many of my artist friends and it always fascinates me to see their works in progress and then see them on display with all the messiness of creation left behind. I think this is what many skeptics fail to see when they look at a painting and say something stupid like, “A few dollars for paper and a few dollars for paint…and you sell it for ten times what it’s worth.”
Bastards.
I hate these people with a passion. I’d like them all to work for me for free for one year. You know, doing whatever they’re good at and not being paid for it. Or being paid a couple of dollars an hour. On the other hand, these are most likely to be people who don’t do so well on their jobs because they’re not smart and they talk too much. Maybe I don’t want them working for me and just messing everything up.
So, with that aside put aside, seeing the work in progress gives you a true sense of the intense focus and commitment that goes into creating art. I’ve seen artists on the verge of collapsing from hunger and fatigue because they had a deadline for an exhibition and they’ve gone for days without sleep and they’ve survived on coffee and air.
And this isn’t always a matter of the artists not preparing properly. Often, it’s because the gallery or other venue has changed the rules, the dates, the physical venue or whatever. Or, preparing for the exhibit leads the artist into new areas and the temptation to add some of the new stuff to the exhibit. Fortunately, most galleries don’t allow this, or there’d be a lot more crazy artists jumping out of windows and off bridges.
For me, working on the boards was one of the most fulfilling and mystical experiences of my life. I believe that where there was life, there will always be life. Life is energy and wherever that energy has existed, there will always be some remnant of it…like when you cut down a tree, the tree’s life energy doesn’t just disappear…patches of it inundate the wood like shadows of the tree’s memories, and you can feel that energy in the boards even after they’re cut into useable sizes from the tree.
Before I start drawing on the board, I spend some time getting a feel for its life energy, and that’s what directs the tip of my gel pen to bring out the board’s story.
And the stories are never boring.
Writing Hurts Like Hell
Writing Hurts Like Hell is a workshop taught by Biff Mitchell for a decade through the University of New Brunswick's College of Extended Learning. Held mostly off-campus in coffee shops, bars, studios
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