Melanie Edmonds's Blog, page 31

Priorities

Sometimes I feel like the ‘S’ in this picture: striving to be focussed but not quite there.
(Picture by Nina Matthews Photography)

Working, living, writing: how it all hangs together.

Today, I want to talk a little bit about how the focus of my life has shifted over the years, particularly with relation to writing.

You may be familiar with the phrase ‘work-life balance’, but it took me a long time to really figure out what that meant; specifically, what it meant to me.

I’m naturally a hard worker. If I’m given something to work on, I’ll pick it up, run with it, fix it, and give back what I was asked to produce, with whatever improvements made sense at the time. So when I’m performing my job, I instinctively throw myself into it completely. I care. I worry. I try to fix everything and achieve the goal is set before me, whatever it is and whatever it takes. I want to do a good job, and I put all of my energy and attention into it.

When your job is what you want to do with your life, this is a good state to be in. But when it’s not, then things get complicated, and sometimes difficult. Happiness is an elusive fish to catch.

After I graduated from uni, my focus was all about finding a job so I could support myself, hopefully in a career that could see me through for a while. I wasn’t sure what that career should be (for some reason, I couldn’t find any job adverts for ‘novelist’, which was what I really wanted to do, so I had to look for alternatives), and it took several years for me to find my way to technical writing. But I threw myself into every job I got, because that’s what I do.

When I started that search for a job path, fresh out of a creative writing degree, I was also burned out with my own writing. Between that, my natural inclination towards getting stuck into a job, and the need to sort my life out, I wound up taking something of a break from writing (I fell into online RP as a stop-gap, but that’s a story for another time).

The problem with that break from writing was that I didn’t realise that I was on a break. It wasn’t a conscious decision; I was busy with everything else that was going on and the creative side fell by the wayside. I was writing a little (RP stuff, other minor little bits), and it wasn’t until I stopped to think about it that it hit me: I hadn’t worked on a novel for a long time. Years. And when you’re working full-time and snatching whatever scraps of time you can with your friends online, there aren’t many opportunities to stop and reflect on the big picture of your life, let alone make big changes.

I found myself getting frustrated. My dream of seeing my name on someone else’s bookshelf still niggled at me but I wasn’t getting any closer to it, mostly because I wasn’t really trying. I was so busy working and scraping by with everything else in my life that there wasn’t room in my schedule, energy reserves, or mental capacity to really try to do it. By this point, I had been diagnosed with CFS and was struggling to manage even the essentials to get by. There just wasn’t time or space to pause, catch my breath, and figure it all out (where’s a TARDIS when you need one?).

I didn’t really get the chance to reassess the shape of my life until I moved to Australia. It’s not so much the country itself; more, it was the disconnect from my previous life. I left behind my job, my friends, and a timezone that made online RP easy. I had to start over. It turns out that that was exactly what I needed (hindsight is a wonderful thing).

I remember talking about the differences in working cultures between countries with my dad after I got to Oz, and that elusive work-life balance thing came up. I didn’t really get it, but then he said something else and it clicked into place: “You can work to live or live to work, but you can’t do both.”

I think I had been trying to do both for a long time, and that caused me many problems. Trying to be equally invested in my work and my life outside work is hard. The two things interfere with each other; my mental energy was split between the two and I struggled to keep both afloat. When push came to shove, I put my job first, even though the job wasn’t what I really enjoyed. I was obligated; it was what I ‘should’ be doing. It wasn’t a recipe for a rewarding life.

Once I could see it, I knew that I had to make a choice.

It’s a question of focus and priorities. Everyone has to work to get by (well, most of us do), but which was most important to me? Where should my energy be? I was literally setting myself up in a new place and a new life, and it was the perfect time to reflect, redirect, and refocus myself.

At heart, I am a writer. I like my work as a technical writer (and I’m dedicated when I’m at work), but fiction is where my love is. Stories are what make my days bright. So when it comes to making that choice between working to live or living to work, I do the former. I work (hard) to have what I need so I can have the things that are really important to me: my family, my friends, and my writing. Work is a means, not the end; living with the loves in my life is my goal.

This was an important realisation for me. It meant that I looked hard at my life and the things I was doing with my time. It meant that I made a lot of changes, most of them within myself. My day-job became a tool and I started to fight to make time for writing my own stuff again.

The change in the relative importance of my work has been the hardest part of this for me. It’s not a switch you can flip. Sometimes, I have to remind myself that it’s the stuff that happens outside of work that matters most to me. It has taken a long time for me to adjust my attitude towards my job – if you were reading this blog last year, you will have seen how stressed my day-job made me – and it’s still a work in progress. I’m getting there slowly, and finding a healthier place to live where I’m not torn apart by competing concerns.

The process of disconnecting emotionally from my job has been good for me in many ways, including my health and (ironically) my job performance. My days are no longer a constant battle. I don’t let work issues drag down my mood so much any more. I’m more positive in general; the process of refocussing my energies has opened up benefits all over.

My job is still important to me. In order to do all those things that matter most to me – writing and taking care of my family – I need to eat and pay bills, which means I have to work. And that’s okay! It’s all about keeping it in perspective. When it comes to those times when I’m struggling to do everything, when something has to give, I have different criteria to help me decide what I should do. I can’t afford to sacrifice my job, but how I fit it into the rest of my life does alter. For example, taking time off to do something that’s good for me is a tactic I can use (and have done!).

I posted recently about how much I’m struggling at the moment to do the writing I want to do. It used to be that when my health was pulling me down, it was my hobbies that suffered; as long as I could work, I was okay. That’s not good enough any more. Writing may be a hobby, but it’s important enough that I have to look for an answer other than sacrificing it. I’m frustrated because it’s important to me and I know how unhappy I’ll be if I can’t do it any more.

So I look for options. I look at everything and line it all up to see what I can sacrifice. Priorities are important.

So those things that I listed in my plan for this year? Pared back. That Kickstarter campaign that I am in the middle of building? On hold. The re-release of Apocalypse Blog ebooks? Put to the bottom of my list of things to do. Weekend activities and outings? Reduced to a bare minimum so I can rest.

I’m still working full-time. I still intend to write Starwalker as often and as well as I can. I am trying a couple of things to resolve my energy issues. The other stuff will catch up when I’m doing better.

I work to live, and I live to write. I’m sorry that it took me so long to figure this out, but now that I have, there’s no looking back.

Amazon: enemy of the short story

Is this the first nail in the short story coffin?
(Picture by Cayusa)

I came across a post recently about Amazon cracking down on short Kindle ebooks. It seems that they are asking authors of ebooks less than 2,500 words to expand or remove their work. Here’s a copy of the email that was sent to one writer:

Hello,

During a quality assurance review of your KDP catalog we have found that the following book(s) are extremely short and may create a poor reading experience and do not meet our content quality expectations:

(Name of Short)

In the best interest of Kindle customers, we remove titles from sale that may create a poor customer experience. Content that is less than 2,500 words is often disappointing to our customers and does not provide an enjoyable reading experience.

We ask that you fix the above book(s), as well as all of your catalog’s affected books, with additional content that is both unique and related to your book. Once you have ensured your book(s) would create a good customer experience, re-submit them for publishing within 5 business days. If your books have not been corrected by that time, they will be removed from sale in the Kindle Store. If the updates require more time, please unpublish your books.

(original source)

My first reaction is one of exasperation and disgust. This is an arbitrary and stupid ruling; short stories under 2,500 are perfectly valid, so why crack down on them?

However, it’s not as simple a subject as it first appears. The comments on both of the links above are interesting. Let’s break it down into who seems to be making the comments (paraphrased by me; my comments in italics):

Readers:

Good, it’ll stop people from publishing chapters and releasing them as ebooks. (Wait, who is doing this? Why? See next.)
It’ll stop people from publishing serials they never finish and charging people for each episode/chapter. (First, I’m surprised that authors would serialise this way – there are services out there that are designed specifically for serials, and KDP isn’t one of them. Second, this measure won’t stop that. 2,500 words is not a maximum length for a chapter; I know many serial writers who post more than that per episode/chapter, and I frequently go over that limit on my own serial (which is not published this way). Also, no-one is forced to buy installments, so is serialisation through KDP really the problem here? (Note: serial != series.))
I can’t filter out short books from search results. (This is something Amazon needs to fix; it’s a failing in the store, not the products on its shelves.)
A trilogy isn’t a collection of 3 ‘books’ that are under 20 pages each. (I agree, but this minimum length isn’t going to change people trying to do this.)
It’ll stop authors releasing each short story individually, and then collecting them together into a cheap anthology at the end, ripping off customers. (Releasing individual books/stories and then releasing an omnibus or anthology for cheaper than the individual parts is a long-standing sales technique, and unlikely to change. If it bothers you, then wait for the collection at the end.)
Short stories under 2,500 words are valid, and longer than some magazines publish (and pay for).
Page counts for ebooks are not always present and their reliability is questionable. I don’t know what I’m buying. (Again, Amazon needs to fix their store. This annoys me, too!)


Writers:

Self-publishing has revitalised the short-story genre, but now they’re stopping it.
I’ve had good sales and reviews with my short stories.
I only ever release anthologies because I think selling individual stories will annoy readers.
Having a bigger library (more books) is better for an author’s sales than a small library. (This has been stated in many sources of advice on self-publishing, too.)
There is a short story category available in Amazon, so authors can already classify their books appropriately. (But apparently it’s not being used properly, or it’s not obvious enough to customers.)
Amazon is going after porn/erotica.
Yay, Amazon is going for quality. (Quantity does not equal quality! Should authors add fluff to short stories to bump it over the wordcount line? Should they add in extra filler around the story (acknowledgements, etc), so that it looks longer than it is? How is that going to improve the quality of the product or customer satisfaction?)
It will unclutter the marketplace, which is full of 2,000-word books people spit out. (Better search results and store mechanics would also help with this.)
Other forms will also be affected: poems, articles, in-depth product reviews.
I’ve never had an objection to the length from readers.
I hope they don’t apply this to children’s books.

Phew, that’s a lot of opinions (and I only looked at the first page of comments on each post). But each of them have their points, and we have to boil it down further before we can get to what’s really going on here.

What is the problem that Amazon is looking to solve? A poor customer experience. From the morass above, this seems to be caused by:

Customers unable to predict what they are buying. What they end up with is not what they expected, and this makes them angry and upset.
Customers unable to find the kind of ebook they’re looking for. If they buy anything at all, what they end up with is probably not what they wanted, which has the same effect as the point above.
Ebooks not being complete stories, but parts of stories or individual chapters.

Amazon is attempting to fix these problems by restricting the wordcount of the content and claiming it is for ‘quality’. I said it above and I’ll say it again: quantity does not equal quality, so having quantity as your yardstick is automatically a flawed measure.

None of the responses I have read have gone into the quality of the product. The biggest problems seem to be about reader expectations and ebook searchability. Basically, the packaging and presentation of the ebooks in the store, rather than the actual content. Amazon is both the publisher (they’re going after authors who have published through KDP) and store in this case, so their responsibility is twofold.

Here’s what I think Amazon should be doing:

Make purchases more predictable. Customers are not getting what they expected, and that’s a labelling issue. There are several ways Amazon could tackle this:

Add wordcounts to ebook listings. This is the simplest and most straightforward thing they can do. They already have access to this information (otherwise they couldn’t target short books on a wordcount basis); all they need to do is display it on the ebook listing in an obvious way. Take a look at Smashwords’s store for a good example of how to do this.
Categorise ebooks according to length. This could be as simple as having wordcount bands and attaching it to the listing as a label, so customers could easily distinguish between short stories, novellas, novels, epics, and collections. Obviously, this would only apply to fiction, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Add the ability to mark a book as a collection, rather than a standalone story.


Improve searchability. Customers must be able to find the sorts of things that they’re looking for. If they want epics only, they should be able to search for that. Search results should also include all the pertinent information a customer needs to locate the right result for them, which includes length.
Get rid of page counts on ebooks. They’re meaningless and backwards, and usually incorrect. Apparently they’re also missing in many cases.

Here’s what I think Amazon shouldn’t be doing:

Cracking down on wordcounts. This is a completely artibrary measure that is more likely to have adverse effects to the ebooks on sale, because:

Authors are being encouraged to pad out their short books with additional material. This means that they’ll add random content to get over the wordcount line and not extend the story itself, which means that the core customer issue isn’t addressed at all (they’re still getting a very short story for their money). Or, worse, it means that they’ll pad the story out, and reduce the quality of the story the customer is buying.
Authors may choose to release only collections instead. This reduces the number of overall offerings, and will negatively impact sales.


Demanding ‘complete stories only’. I was of two minds about this, but the more I think about it, the more I think a measure like this wouldn’t be feasible. There are a couple of ways I think this would be detrimental:

Completeness is very subjective and therefore very hard to police. How would you distinguish between legitimate parts of a series of stories and parts of stories? One reader’s satisfying ending is not the same as another’s. Authors will always claim the story is finished. I can feel the arguments brewing already.
Authors would be encouraged to hide serialised works to avoid being rejected as an incomplete story. This negatively impacts customer predictability, as again they’ll end up with something other than what they had expected to buy. Customer happiness will go down, not up.

But Amazon aren’t the only ones who can affect this matter, and I think that’s important to recognise. There are also things that authors should be doing:

Label your ebooks clearly. Amazon’s information is insufficient? Then add the pertinent stuff to the listing yourself. Help your readers by making your ebooks as straightforward and predictable as possible (as a purchase, not as a plot!). The next time I add or update a listing on KDP, I’ll be putting wordcounts into the product description.
Label your ebooks honestly. Readers do not like being misled or lied to. I don’t care if you think that tricking someone into buying your book is awesome, because hey look, more money for you; you will piss off the readers and then Amazon will go and do something stupid. Like come down on wordcounts.
If you’re releasing a serial, be obvious about it. Very similar to the honesty point above. Readers will get pissed off if they expect a complete story and are forced to shell out more money because you’ve only actually given them a part of it. Again, if you annoy the customers, you risk forcing Amazon to crack down on serials and cut off this avenue for you entirely. Alternatively, use a serial service, like Kindle Serials, Jukepop Serials, or Tuesday Serial.

Authors, I think we all need to step up and help in this situation. Not by writing longer stories or padding things out to appease Amazon’s arbitrary ruling, but by keeping our audience in mind. And I think we all need to remember that even if we give customers the information they need, they won’t necessarily read it. A good friend of mine publishes dark adult humour with cutesy covers, with obvious warnings that it is full of swearing and not a children’s book in the description, and she still gets reviews that say ‘omg, so much swearing!’ and ‘I was horrified when my child read this!’. But let’s try to reduce the chance of this happening.

Because when ebooks first became established on the scene, I was witness to the rush of enthusiasm that came over writers. Part of its beauty is that size doesn’t matter: the freedom from the contraints of physical print meant that there was no minimum length to make the cost viable, and no maximum before the book became too unwieldy or physically impossible. You can publish a one-page poem or a 1,000-word short story, or a million-word epic, and it’s all the same in the electronic world. Making money (and even a living) from short stories and poetry suddenly became viable, when it was very difficult before.

This is why the restriction by Amazon makes me shake my head and roll my eyes. They’re moving backwards. They’re missing part of the awesomeness of ebooks, when what they should be doing is capturing it and showing it to the readers who want to spend their money on it. As a result, everyone loses out: Amazon, authors, and their customers.

Let’s try for something better, people.

Fighting the spiral

Watching life zoom by
(picture by Norma Desmond)

For the second time in a month, I’ve had to delay Starwalker posts. Not by one week, but by two.

I hate it. I hate missing deadlines, I hate letting my readers down, and I hate the way I’m sliding into being one of those unreliable writers who can’t keep to her own schedule. I don’t want to be That Writer.

It’s not because I’m worried about losing audience or what people might think of me. My readers are wonderful, and their messages of patience and understanding lighten the load from me. I am more grateful for them than I can say. The hardest person on me is me, and I know that.

It’s because I’m better than that. Being reliable is a part of who I am. Being a writer who puts her work out there is a big part of my life. I can do better than that.

Except lately, I haven’t. I have stared at the Starwalker post that’s two weeks overdue now, over and over, and it’s still not done. There are several reasons:

It’s an action scene, which is hard, and I’m still working out the logistics of what exactly needs to happen.
Things at home went sideways last week when my brother got some bad news (nothing dire, but not ‘good’ either), and now my mother is flying over to the UK to help him and his little ones out.
My health has been getting worse over the past few weeks.

I could probably deal with any one of those on its own. Number 1 is something that I can usually handle without too much problem; I work my way through it, rewrite it two or three times (sometimes from scratch), and generally beat it with a stick until it looks like something I like. However, it requires some focus and attention to achieve, and that has been lacking lately.

Number 2 came out of left field for us, and has meant a lot of stuff to organise and think about around my home life. My mum flies out tomorrow, and it’s going to take the weekend (and possibly some of next week) to iron out the pattern of my life while she’s away. She’s probably going to be with my brother and his family for the next year (a few months at minimum), so my dad and I need to work out a sustainable schedule.

This was complicated recently by the cam belt in my dad’s car going ‘spang’ and taking the entire engine out, which means we’re currently sharing a (my) car. It’s not a problem we can’t work around, but it means that I’m less flexible and mobile than I used to be. It’s another mental overhead to add to the pile.

Problem number 3 is the thing that makes all this worse. I’ve had some tests done into the digestive issues I have, and I have a list of conditions (which I won’t go into) and medications to take. So far, I’m seeing varying success, but it’s going to be a few weeks before I see any real improvements. So plugging on there.

On top of that (and possibly related), the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is getting worse. I can usually push past it and do what I need to do, but not in the last few weeks. It is a weight that is pressing on me more and more, chipping away at the edges of what I can do in any one day. I am struggling more and more to write during my daily commute to work; in the mornings, I tend to doze and try to charge up before I get to the office. It has been getting steadily harder to summon up the mental energy to be creative. Over the past couple of weeks, I have been too drained to even write on the way home (and I am usually my most alert towards the end of the day).

I haven’t really talked a lot about what the fatigue is like. I’ve talked about the impact that it has, but that’s not quite the same. Maybe I’m more aware of it now, because the physical symptoms are cropping up again (I was mostly free of them for the past couple of years or so). It makes my whole body heavy and hard work to move, as if the world is treacle that I have to push myself through. It gives me exhaustion headaches that work their way down my neck to my shoulders and back, and knot up all the muscles. They can last for a day or more, through the night, even waking me up in the middle of it (there’s nothing more annoying than being woken out of a deep sleep by an exhaustion headache). I ache randomly, or tingle all over. Sometimes I feel dizzy and weak, or tremble. Sometimes, my heart will beat weirdly, or I’ll get random chest pains (it hasn’t got that bad lately, thank goodness).

The worst part for me are the mental impacts (I tend to be able to push through the physical stuff, at least as far as being productive and writing goes). My short-term memory is the first to suffer (I wind up writing a lot of notes to myself). My mood can be affected: when I’m around people, I can get silly and irreverent (I’m hilarious when I’m exhausted), and I’m generally more emotionally reactive to things when I’m tired. My attention span suffers, thoughts bouncing from subject to subject. It’s probably related to the memory issue, as I attempt to check that I haven’t forgotten anything important. Usually, I am most productive when I multi-task and bouncing between things works well for me, but when I’m exhausted, my work becomes fragmented and I struggle to focus well on anything. It’s an effort to finish things (I’ll probably save the draft of this post and wander off several times before getting close to finishing it).

It also becomes hard to be creative. I’ll want to, but getting into that zone is much harder. Right now, summoning up the energy to create the right mood and produce good words is just beyond me. I could force it if I had to, but that never goes well. Some days, it’s borderline and if I push myself, I can do it and it’s fine. Lately, most days, it’s just not going to happen. It’s hard to explain it. Sometimes it’s just the wrong mood for me (trying to do a high-energy scene like the current space battles is particularly challenging), and other times I just don’t have the mental space. It gets hard to step away from the distractions of my life; my brain bounces too often back to real-world stuff and I lose the train of what I was writing.

I’ve heard writing fiction as renting space in your readers’ brains. Well, first you need to create that space in your own brain, build it up and live it in, before you can push it out to the world. With CFS playing up, it’s lucky if I have a shoebox in there to spare, and having a cluttered life brings it down to a coffee tin.

Life with CFS is a game of weathering the ups and downs of your energy. It’s about balancing what I want to do today with how much it will cost me over the next several days. For those who’ve heard of it, the spoons metaphor is an apt one. Lately, there have been more downs than ups, and my general energy level has been low. I’ve had less spoons to play with.

I’ve had chronic conditions my whole life, and I hate when they restrict what I can do so much that they rule my life. We all have things that we have to deal with and work around every day, to do what we want and need to do. That’s fine. But I despise when the condition tries to take over and takes away my ability to live my life.

Let me be clear about one thing: I’m not depressed about it. I have never been depressed about it, even when I can barely get off the couch or stand up without going dizzy. Even when I’m so tired that I can barely think straight and it’s all I can do to put one foot in front of the other to get to the nearest bed/couch/chair. Even when I hurt so much I want to cry but don’t because my headache is bad enough, thanks very much.

I’m annoyed and frustrated. I work hard to support my family and make myself a comfortable place to lay my bones down at the end of the day. I’ve got dreams that I fight to work towards. I don’t need this shit making it all harder, and yet here it is. I take a break to try to catch my breath, but it’s not enough any more. I never truly get back up on my feet before I slide down again.

This is where the spiral comes in, and this is the part that frustrates me the most. I do less to try to rest up, but can never reach that previous level of energy, so try doing less again, and then less some more, until I wind up scraping by, sacrificing everything but the bare minimum of what I need to do to earn a living and eat. I’m not there yet, but I have been down that slope before and I don’t want to be there again.

It’s true that I’m doing more these days. I’m pushing myself harder and reaching for more things. I have a lot of balls in the air, juggling like crazy. Maybe I have finally reached that level of ‘too much’ and I need to cut back – okay, I’ll do that. Maybe it is time for something to give. But lately, I have cut back on everything, even wound up taking sick days off work to rest up because I simply couldn’t function well enough to be at work, and it’s still not enough.

Truth is, maybe I’m a little scared, too. I don’t want to lose everything I’ve worked so hard for over the past five years, building the life I have here in Australia. The friends I spend time with, the writing I do, the communities I’m involved with, the events I organise… I love it all, but all of it together is too much right now.

I think it’s time for a change. Nothing major – certainly not as drastic as shifting country – but it’s time to look hard at the factors in my life and see what I can change to make it work. It’s probably time to go back to the CFS specialist I was seeing for a while (though I’m not sure I can afford that at the moment). I need to re-evaluate the priorities of the things around me, and figure out how to do what I want to do in my heart. It’s hard, because I want to do everything, but sometimes reality just gets in the way.

I’m still slipping down this spiral and I don’t know the answer yet. But I’m damned if I’m going to let it swallow up all the good things in my life. Time to change the tempo and see if I can’t hammer my life into the shape I want it to be, one way or another.

Wish me luck. It’s probably going to get harder before it gets better.

Writers’ Asylum: Post-mortem

 

The Writers Asylum may be crazy, but let’s keep an open mind about it anyway.

The Writers’ Asylum has been and gone. I’m still recovering – how about you?

It was a wonderful day. It got off to a rushed start for me, mostly due to traffic, but I got there in time and was sitting down and set up with five minutes to spare. Just enough time to chat to those who were there, ready for the kick-off.

There were a handful of people sitting in the in-person event by the time 10:30 rolled around – five or six of us. They got to hear my halting intro, which was an approximation of the prologue post that went up here on the blog. (Public speaking has never been my forte, but I think I managed to not make a tit of myself.) The intro was much quicker than I had anticipated, which left us with twenty-five minutes to order coffee and get distracted by random conversations.

It’s okay, I had my phone set up to warn me when the challenge time was getting close, with a variety of loud, annoying noises.

I was more worried about the turnout, though. Six people is nice, but it’s not much for an event that took me weeks to organise. I knew of a couple of people were taking part online (and there may have been more, stealthily stalking the challenge posts), however, I had hoped for a decent amount of obvious interest in the Asylum. I’d had so many people say that they loved the idea and couldn’t wait to do it, and many drop out at the last minute, so I was preparing myself for disappointment.

Luckily, that last bit wasn’t necessary. By the time 11:00am rolled around and the first challenge was rising up, there were a solid dozen people at the table. By the end of the first challenge, there were sixteen people spread over two big tables, all typing away. A bunch of that number were new faces, which was awesome (I always love it when I get to meet new people who love writing!). So, in the end, a great turnout.

The day went pretty much like clockwork. I dropped everyone into the deep end with a sexy challenge up first, and drove them through emotional turmoil for the rest of the day. Ahahahaha.

I was unsure about the goal of 1,000 words, but people seemed to hit it fairly comfortably within the hour. We had time to order food and other stimulating refreshments, and it all ticked over as I had hoped it would.

Score for me!

What I found really interesting was how different the atmosphere was compared to our usual write-ins. We were sitting in the same place, at the same time, in roughly the same setup as we usually did, but the Asylum wasn’t the casual ‘get together with writers who sometimes write and hey look at this cool thing I found on the internet and ooo let’s talk about ’ that usually happens. Once I’d done giving the challenge (I read out the prompts that went up here on the blog), a busy silence fell on the table. Keys whispered and clicked. Comments and questions were few and far between. The hush was infectious.

It was a long day, and we were all pretty wrung out by the end of it. Six challenges is a lot, and I saved the hardest for last (comedy is reported to be the hardest to write, after all). I got lots of feedback at the end, which was wonderful, and most of it positive. Seems like everyone who came would love to do it again. (One person asked me if I did this every month. I laughed and restrained myself from saying ‘HELL NO are you insane?’. I am, however, grateful to know that people enjoyed it and want more!)

Overall, I think it was a success and I’m delighted. This was an experiment for me, and I’m so happy that it worked out. But we can’t leave it there! Now I need to know more.

These are my thoughts about the day, but what I’d really like is more from the participants. Will you help me make another Asylum happen? To do that, I’d like to know:

What did you think of the day?
What did you think of the goal of 1,000 words?
Was 6 challenges too much? What would be an ideal number for a single day for you? (I’ve had ’4 with a lunch break’ suggested, but am open to options.)
What did you think of the prompts? Were they specific enough? Too specific?
Did you write something unexpected?
Which challenge was hardest for you?
Which challenge did you find the easiest?
Which challenge was your favourite?
This Asylum was intended to be across a broad range of topics, styles, and genres. Should it always be broad, or would ‘themed’ Asylums be worth trying? What kinds of themes?
Any other suggestions?

All feedback gratefully received. If you prefer, feel free to email your thoughts to me, or just comment here on the blog.

Thanks so much to everyone who took part. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Onwards, to the next thing!

Writers’ Asylum: Epilogue

And the door closes on our day of insanity. What will it open for you tomorrow?
(Picture by thechannelc)

Congratulations!

You’ve made it to the end. You’ve spent time in the Asylum and survived to make it out the other side, stumbling, head wringing, eyes bleary, hands sore.

So how do you think you did? Did you surprise yourself after all? Did you write something for each challenge? Did you get to 1,000 words for any of them? Which one was easiest for you? Which one was the hardest? Did you write something you’ve never tried before? Did you learn anything new?

Did you have fun?

I hope the answer to the last question is ‘yes’, at least. I hope you’ve got a brain brimful of ideas and new perspectives. Maybe even some material you can use somewhere. I hope you will take something of value away from today.

Thank you for joining us. I’d love to know what you thought of the day: of the setup, the challenges, and anything else that comes to mind about the Asylum. Most of all, I’d love to know if you’d do it again.

You are released. May the madness continue, in whatever form pleases you.

Writers’ Asylum: Challenge #6

Think about a character who likes to make other people laugh, who plays with our sense of the ridiculous. This person isn’t necessarily a stand-up comedian: it is someone who can be relied upon to lighten the mood of a gathering; the group’s joker.

Who is this person? Male or female? How old are they? What sort of people are they friends with? Who does this person spend a lot of time with, and why?

Now think about what’s behind their use of humour. Why do they use it so much? Is it a defensive tactic? Do they use it to deflect attention, break uncomfortable tension, or diffuse situations? Is it simply a sense of fun? Is it used to attract attention to themselves, make them the centre of any gathering? Is there something dark behind it? Are they simply seeking to please others by making them smile?

What kind of situations keep them quiet and make them restrain the inner comedian? What sets them off and joking? Do they obey a sense of appropriateness or flout all social conventions? Are they ever cruel? Where are their personal boundaries?

What kinds of things tickle this character’s sense of humour? What kinds of jokes do they tell or make? How do they make others laugh? Is it all about in-jokes with friends or can anyone join in?

The title of this challenge is Comedy. Put this person into a situation where they can’t resist trying to make others laugh and let them run with it. Be funny and make your audience laugh right along with them.

Writers’ Asylum: Challenge #5

It’s night-time. You’re in a remote place, inside a big, abandoned building. What kind of building is it?

It’s old, decaying. There’s power, enough to run the few remaining light bulbs, though they flicker unreliably. Any paint or wallpaper is peeling.

What is it like in there? Are there wooden floors that flex and creak under your weight, is it squeaky linoleum, or pitted concrete with puddles from leaks in the roof? Are the window panes cracked glass that could be described as ‘crazed’ or do the frames gape emptily? Is there furniture or equipment around you, or has it been cleared out?

What brought you into this place? An accident, a prank, a lure, your job? Why are you here alone? Are you confident as you move around here? Trepidatious? Blasé? Cautious?

You hear a noise. You’re sure that it came from within the building but you can’t see what made it. Do you try to investigate? You hear it again, closer this time.

The lights go out, plunging you into darkness. If you check, there’s no power any more, not even to the electrical devices you’re carrying. Your phone won’t turn on. There’s no light from outside to speak of.

You’re suddenly aware of all of the tiny noises inside the building, amplified by the dark. There’s a faint shuffling noise that sounds like it’s in the room with you. You feel a brush of warm air, like something is breathing close to you.

What do you do?

Your eyes start to adjust to the dark. You begin to see shapes again. Movement catches your eye. Something rushes towards you and a flash of light shows you its face.

The title of this challenge is Fear. Scare us. Tell us the story of the building and what you find there – or don’t find.

Writers’ Asylum: Challenge #4

Imagine a cityscape. Choose any world, but preferably one you’ve never written in before. What era are we in? What kind of city? It can be anything: an alien city of gravity-defying structures; a medieval hamlet of dirty, cobbled streets and wattle-and-daub walls; a cluster of skyscrapers and headlights.

Is it tall? Sprawling? Crammed onto an island? Dull or shining? What kind of climate does it live in? Is it flat and level? What geological features does it compete with: mountain slopes; the moving water of a river or the sea; encroaching swampland; earthquakes and shifting?

Is it a busy city? Does it sleep at night? What are its distinguishing features? Is it well lit, day or night? What is the chief characteristic of its people?

In this cityscape of yours, there are two parties moving very quickly: one fleeing and one chasing. Their hearts are pounding and they’re both very intent. Are they on foot? In vehicles? On mounts? A mixture? What parts of the cityscape does their chase take them over or through? What do they use on the way? What do they avoid? Why? Is there collateral damage in their wake or do they leave the city’s surface unruffled by their passing?

Who are these two rushing parties? What is their goal? Do they share the same one, or do they have opposing aims? Why is the one in front running, and why is the one behind chasing? Are their hearts in it? Are they both recklessly focussed on their goal? What are they willing to do to get away or catch up?

Rewind to the beginning of their journey. What started them off?

The title of this challenge is Chase. Describe their journey across the city. Make it fast and exciting, and don’t stop until someone wins or everyone loses.

Writers’ Asylum: Challenge #3

Picture an adult. Male or female? Single or married? How does he or she spend most days: a job, a profession, a career, or something else? What is this person’s favourite hobby?

Now picture someone in this character’s life; a person who is very important to them. It might be a lover, a child, a parent, a sibling, or a best friend. This doesn’t have to be the only person that the character loves but love is involved, whether anyone has admitted it or not. It can be any kind of love: it’s a deep attachment. Who is this person? They have had trials through the years, and they are still close and connected. What makes the bond between them so strong? Is the person aware of your character’s feelings? Is the character aware?

Today, something awful happens. This person is ripped from your character’s life, with no warning and quite irrevocably. They are not simply out of sight: your character will never see or hear from this person again. It is not a happy ending to anyone’s story. It happens right in front of your character and he or she is unable to stop it. What happened to take this person away? It might be an accident, a mistake, or something more sinister. Does your character try to intervene? Why isn’t he or she successful?

Where is your character when it’s over?

The title of this challenge is Loss. Start from the moment it’s all over and tell us how he or she reacts. Avoid cliché and melodrama. This is the story of what happens after your character’s heart has been ripped out.

Writers’ Asylum: Challenge #2

I want you to picture an ordinary man with an ordinary job. I want you to give him a name.

Where does he work? What does he do for a living? Does he get along with his co-workers? How does he feel about his work? What do people at his work think about him? How does he dress for his job?

Now I want you to take him home. There are pictures of his family on the wall. Who is in the pictures? How old are the photos? Where are those people right now? Are they still in his life? Are they in the house right now? What is the first thing he does when he gets home from work?

You have an idea of his usual day. Now, something is going terribly wrong for him. Something shatters his world in a way that he is not prepared to handle in a healthy way. Something inside him snaps and the focus of his rage is his workplace. What has happened to him? What is driving him to such rage? Is it one thing, or a confluence of many factors? What is the thing that turns bend to break?

He goes to get a weapon. What is it? Where is it? It is one he has on hand? Is it the first thing he comes across? Does he take the time to go and buy one, to prepare himself for what he needs to do? What does it look like, feel like? Has he used it or something like it before, for any purpose?

He takes that weapon and walks into his workplace, intending to use it. Does he have a target in mind? Does it matter to him? Who is the first person he comes across and what does he do?

The title of this challenge is Massacre. Tell this man’s story from the point of view of the weapon he takes to work that day.