Mike Jansen's Blog: The Chronicler - Posts Tagged "publishing"
Choice and Balance
I've postponed writing this piece for some time. Why? For all the reasons mentioned below:
There's more to writing than just putting words on paper (or in your text-editor). Any author will tell you that. There's editing, cover design, all the little administrative details, social media, participation in forums and groups as well as literary contests. It requires life-balance, it requires a plan. You need to know what your goals are and what investments and/or sacrifices you need to make to achieve your goals.
During 2012 I noticed that I was changing some of my writing goals (yes, sometimes you have to become aware of internal thought processes and motivations.) Where I started out writing most of my stuff in Dutch and perhaps later translating them to English, I started to write stuff up in English immediately. There were several reasons for that. Some stories just work better in English. The market is much, much bigger and yes, the competition is fierce, much fiercer than in The Netherlands. And because of the variety in markets and the various levels of challenge, I can pick and choose where to send my work, for either slow or fast feedback on my writing. Frankly, that appeals to me, a lot. I did participate in a Dutch competition that worked with multiple feedback rounds, allowing you to enhance and update your manuscript in between rounds. For me a novel experience, but one that I intend to repeat.
So where does that leave me now? Most of my stories are now original English. Whenever I need something for a Dutch contest and if within the scope of the contest rules, I translate one of those stories and submit them. Same for magazines or anthologies. Does it make my Dutch work better? Yes, it does. Because the stories I've written in English have gone through one or more editing and feedback rounds, allowing me to polish my work to a bigger extent than previously.
Of course that is all subject to the amount of time I have available for my writing endeavors. Family has been and still is rather time intensive and work is picking up something fierce as well. It means my writing has to be terse, compact and to the point, no time for lengthy descriptions or deep digging philosophies. It forces me to experiment with symbolism and memes and their subconscious influences on our reading and understanding of texts. My first real attempt at that was my story 'Master Pricklylegs' (published in "Songs for the Raven" by JWK Fiction and soon in Dutch in an issue of "Wonderwaan"), after having experimented with bits and pieces in various other stories in different recent anthologies. The effect is a short story, typically between 2000 and 5000 words that I can write fairly fast, yet reads like it contains much, much more because of cultural references, mythologies and the various twists I weave into the storyline.
But I've also been looking back at the material I've been producing, both in English and Dutch, trying to decide what to translate and what not. For some reason there's been quite a few Dutch magazines and anthology publications recently, in which I obviously wanted to be present, so more translation work than actual writing going on there. And Smashwords needed some updating as well. And I've been asked to create an English anthology of a lot of my stories, which means I need to translate some material from Dutch to English.
Like I said in the beginning of this piece, I need to find a balance between writing new material, translations, online book presence and all the rest and sometimes rebalances are in order. That may hinder some endeavors, it may improve some, but in the end it makes me more efficient and all-round as an author. I think that's a good thing.
And now you also know why this piece is in English, not in Dutch, as were the previous pieces.
There's more to writing than just putting words on paper (or in your text-editor). Any author will tell you that. There's editing, cover design, all the little administrative details, social media, participation in forums and groups as well as literary contests. It requires life-balance, it requires a plan. You need to know what your goals are and what investments and/or sacrifices you need to make to achieve your goals.
During 2012 I noticed that I was changing some of my writing goals (yes, sometimes you have to become aware of internal thought processes and motivations.) Where I started out writing most of my stuff in Dutch and perhaps later translating them to English, I started to write stuff up in English immediately. There were several reasons for that. Some stories just work better in English. The market is much, much bigger and yes, the competition is fierce, much fiercer than in The Netherlands. And because of the variety in markets and the various levels of challenge, I can pick and choose where to send my work, for either slow or fast feedback on my writing. Frankly, that appeals to me, a lot. I did participate in a Dutch competition that worked with multiple feedback rounds, allowing you to enhance and update your manuscript in between rounds. For me a novel experience, but one that I intend to repeat.
So where does that leave me now? Most of my stories are now original English. Whenever I need something for a Dutch contest and if within the scope of the contest rules, I translate one of those stories and submit them. Same for magazines or anthologies. Does it make my Dutch work better? Yes, it does. Because the stories I've written in English have gone through one or more editing and feedback rounds, allowing me to polish my work to a bigger extent than previously.
Of course that is all subject to the amount of time I have available for my writing endeavors. Family has been and still is rather time intensive and work is picking up something fierce as well. It means my writing has to be terse, compact and to the point, no time for lengthy descriptions or deep digging philosophies. It forces me to experiment with symbolism and memes and their subconscious influences on our reading and understanding of texts. My first real attempt at that was my story 'Master Pricklylegs' (published in "Songs for the Raven" by JWK Fiction and soon in Dutch in an issue of "Wonderwaan"), after having experimented with bits and pieces in various other stories in different recent anthologies. The effect is a short story, typically between 2000 and 5000 words that I can write fairly fast, yet reads like it contains much, much more because of cultural references, mythologies and the various twists I weave into the storyline.
But I've also been looking back at the material I've been producing, both in English and Dutch, trying to decide what to translate and what not. For some reason there's been quite a few Dutch magazines and anthology publications recently, in which I obviously wanted to be present, so more translation work than actual writing going on there. And Smashwords needed some updating as well. And I've been asked to create an English anthology of a lot of my stories, which means I need to translate some material from Dutch to English.
Like I said in the beginning of this piece, I need to find a balance between writing new material, translations, online book presence and all the rest and sometimes rebalances are in order. That may hinder some endeavors, it may improve some, but in the end it makes me more efficient and all-round as an author. I think that's a good thing.
And now you also know why this piece is in English, not in Dutch, as were the previous pieces.
The Chronicler
My spot for providing information on forthcoming publications of the Cranborn novels, other books and/or anthologies.
- Mike Jansen's profile
- 155 followers
