J.M. Sloderbeck's Blog

Having Trouble Writing

“Every writer I know has trouble writing.” — Joseph Heller

You know the last time I updated this thing?

Yeah, a long time ago. I’ve certainly thought about it, to be sure. You never really forget a project you start writing, whether it’s a blog, a book, or anything else for that matter. It’s impossible to really forget about the unfinished stories or “the ones that got away.” I’ve got finished stories that I haven’t looked at in years; once they were done and saved, I haven’t looked them in months or even years.

But this blog? Those unfinished novels? The shorts I’m working on now? They crawl into your head, settle down at the base of your skull and start to dig. And they dig. And they dig. Either you purge yourself of them, or you commit yourself to a very, very long future of realizing that you might overlook them from time to time, but you’ll never really forget about them.

So what else? I’m not that much of an e-book author these days: all of the ideas and dreams about an independent future have withered and died on the hillside, for better or worse. Finding representation hasn’t been much better, either. I’m among those countless thousands  or millions of  the “unpublished author” — nobody gives a damn about us, and we keep playing the Agent Lottery and keep striking out.

Can I be annoyed at the proclivity of romance and urban fantasy I see being published these days? Some of these people couldn’t write a fortune cookie’s worth of interesting content, but it’s what’s selling, so they get to feel accomplished and the rest of us linger in Querying Hell.

I’m still writing. I’m still hoping. I’m still despairing.

And the world keeps on spinnin’.

Keep On Trying

You can’t try to do things. You must simply do them. — Ray Bradbury

I would make a wager that this is the Facebook Generation — social media is huge right now, and between the aforementioned Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and more, there are a myriad of ways to connect with new contacts and to reconnect with old friends once thought left and gone by the wayside.

It’s been my good fortune to reconnect with an old friend who I knew from more than a decade ago, someone who I grew close to as a friend and a co-writer from the very beginning of my “apprenticeship,” when I first knew I wanted to write, that I had to write. It became a part of me, something very dear and special.

But while some paths merge, others diverge, and my own personal love and desire to write fiction is something I’ve fostered and maintained over the years. My friend has moved on, gotten married, has a wonderful family and has what I hope is a great life for her and the ones she loves. On a whim in response to a Facebook status update, I suggested she try writing again — it’s how we met, after all, and it’s still something I seriously intent to break into. Why not suggest that?

Her reply, while not hostile in any way, seemed almost sad when I read it. “I haven’t written any fiction in years.” With those words there seemed, to me, to be an air of resignation — after getting off of the wagon and focusing on professional or educational writing, what was the point in writing fiction again?

I can’t say whether my friend will reconsider her words in the future. For my part, I hope she does — it’s been a very long time since we did any writing together, but she was good then, and I think she had potential just as we all do, or did. I’m a much better writer now than I was those 10 or 15 or almost 20 years ago, but only repeated failures and constantly honing my craft has led to any improvement at all.

Many of the books I’ve finished were downright unprintable, let alone being better for anything other than kindling. Neverend was good, but could have been better. One More Such Victory is better than Neverend, and with any luck, the next book will be better than O.M.S.V. is now. Only by continuing to try and try and fail and keep on trying will I continue to progress, just as anyone else will in their chosen field.

I wish my friend well. By all accounts she seems very happy, and she deserves to be. I hope that her writing, in whatever form it takes, is the best it can be.

But I’m still sad to know that I’ll never get to see Alicia Dragonwing take flight again.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll need a moment of silence before I get back to work.

In Hopes of a Victory

Finishing a book is just like you took a child out in the yard and shot it. — Truman Capote

Writing can be a nasty business sometimes. I’ve been so busy with it lately that I haven’t taken the time to update this blog in over a month. That’ll show how far I’ve fallen from daily updates and all of the grand ideas that brought me here. Blogging in a vacuum is a hefty exercise, but I have to hope that it’ll be worth it someday.

I’ve finally finished the draft of One More Such Victory, the latest book I’ve had time to work on. My Swordbearer books are back at the drawing board and coming along slowly, but they’re stewing and developing into something better than what they were before — that’s what I keep telling myself, anyway.

I’m an unwilling participant on the agent-querying wagon again, brought about by a promise made that I would devote some time to finding an agent for this book. I e-published Neverend because I felt it was never going to find an agent who could appreciate the realities of what it was as a book, and now it’s out there for anyone to find — in the coming weeks it’ll be expanding from Amazon to all of the major book retailers. That ship has sailed, and I’m glad to see it off.

To be honest, OMSV was always intended to be one of my “grown-up stories,” the ones that I tried to publish the old fashioned way, while the “younger stuff” like my Swordbearer books were always intended for the e-book route. I’m still sticking to that plan while waiting to see just what comes of my querying. I promised two hard, steady months of sending letter after letter, mostly knowing that none of them would amount to anything. I’ve done the agent hunt and gotten all the way to the final hurdle (sending out a full book to an interested agent) before bad luck made me strike out. Finding an agent is like playing the lottery: plenty of people do it, and 99.9% of them strike out.

I’m doing this in the interest of a promise, but also for the reason anybody who’s lost any sort of contest (or lottery, to harp on my own example) keeps playing — you always keep hoping that the “next time” you play, the “next time” you put down time and effort and money on it, the “next time” that you’re willing to hope, it’ll actually happen. I’ve wanted to “grow up and write books” for almost 20 years now, and while I’ve managed to make that a reality, an agent would still put me worlds ahead of where I’m at now.

I’m moving forward in the hopes of bigger and better things. It’s my hope that OMSV will make that a reality. If not … there’s always e-books again, right?

Conflict

The greatest rules of dramatic writing are conflict, conflict and conflict. — James Frey

I wonder if including a quote by James Frey about writing is like asking Milli Vanilli about making music. It's a good quote though — even a broken clock is right every once in awhile.

A friend of mine is pondering taking the plunge from thinking about writing a book to actually writing it. I'm talking her into it slowly, as the story-writing thing can be daunting for a first timer. You don't go diving off cliffs your first day of swimming, and you don't tackle a whole book in one sitting.

The subject of conflict came up, something every good story needs. A story without conflict is like a wedding without guests: it's just a sad, pathetic affair that feels hollow and empty. I'm speaking from experience here, so trust me on this one.

One quote I recall on the subject goes something like this: "A couple sitting down to a picnic when they're invaded by an army of ants isn't conflict. A couple sitting down to a picnic when the man's wife shows up — now THAT'S conflict." In essence, just putting an obstacle or impediment in the way of your characters isn't conflict, it's just something to be overcome. You have to threaten or shake up your characters in some primal, real fashion that threatens them or something they believe in.

Readers won't care if you write a story with nothing to make them want to sympathize and cheer either for the characters or whoever's impeding them. I cannot stress this too strongly: YOUR READER IS DARING YOU TO BORE THEM WITH YOUR BOOK. Once you do that, they'll close it and never bother with reading your writing ever again, and they will happily tell everyone they know just what they thought about your story, too.

Any thoughts on creating conflict? Share them. And remember to put that extra edge into your own storytelling — your characters, and readers, will thank you for it.

Keeping the Home Fires Burning

Writing is the hardest way to earn a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators. — Olin Miller

45 spam posts. That's how much the bots love this place. Sigh.

I'm maintaining this blog simply because I must. I've tried and given up on numerous ones before this, mostly because my personality doesn't inspire me to make daily updates on this thing when all I'm doing is talking to myself. I'm certain that some statistic out there shows what a percentage it actually is of people who write a blog that gets little to no traffic — these people, like myself, have become a part of the great "Echo Chamber of the Internet."

But I'm keeping on with it anyhow. I don't write daily posts anymore, mostly because I'm busy trying to meet that deadline I've set for myself and to get a book finished by the end of the month. If the end of March isn't feasible, the end of April almost certainly will be, and then I still have eight months to finish another two or three books. I haven't given up on that goal, my own writing woes aside.

Neverend has been finished for awhile, with its last edits done and a print version now available  for purchase. A few curious readers have taken a nibble, but again, Neverend was never about making a lot of money. It is what it is. I may have a sequel or two in mind for it, and hopefully it'll start attracting attention that way. The book is also out for review at several places, one post-edit, one not. I expect the latter to hit me for that, unfortunately, but there's nothing for it. Just keep your head down and move on.

The next book I'll be finishing should be done soon. You can view the cover over at the "Hire Me!" link at the top of the page. I'm excited for it, mostly because of the total change of pace, voice, and audience that it should attract, I hope. Neverend was a story about childhood; this upcoming story is very much for adults.

That's it for the update. There'll be more later, as always. If you've found me or stumbled across my blog somewhere, welcome. Hopefully you'll be back soon.

Hopefully I'll find an audience that wants to come back with you.

Why?

Any man who keeps writing is not a failure. He may not be a great writer, but if he applies the old-fashioned virtues of hard, constant labor, he'll eventually make some kind of career for himself as a writer. — Ray Bradbury

It's almost 5 o'clock in the morning when I write this. Given the amount of traffic this place has been getting lately, even the spam-bots are tired of sticking around. Will anybody read this? Eventually, some day — I can only hope so, at any rate.

I'm writing this because I need to write it. I'm losing sleep because I'm caught up in the fervor of creation, of sitting and applying myself while I watch my imagination come alive. I'm just one voice in a choir of millions — tens or even hundreds of millions, maybe — who has a story to tell and who doesn't know how to get the voices to go away.

Plenty of people make a good, successful living for themselves in any myriad number of ways that have nothing to do with creating or imagining a thing. They're drivers, accountants, stockbrokers or entrepreneurs — they make their money through hard work, sacrifice, and at the end of the day they go to bed without having to hear voices in their head or imagine the same bit of dialogue or a scene that's played in their heads a hundred times that day.

Do writers find themselves so lucky? Let alone the fact making a career out of using their imagination, they put all of the time and effort at the beginning, pouring their heart and soul up on a word processor or across a written page, focusing all of their time and attention on a story that 99% of people might never even see. It's a depressing, thankless end for all of their hard work.

So why do they do it? Why do we open a vein and bleed all over a page just for a chance to tell a story — OUR story, the one that only WE can tell? Why go through all of that effort, most of it painful, impoverishing, and completely thankless, just for a chance to entertain or enlighten an audience that might never thank us or take the 60 seconds it might cost them just to tell us if they enjoyed it or not?

… why do we do it?

Why?

Being Productive

Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you're doomed. — Ray Bradbury

The name of the game is "productivity." Ultimately that's what everything comes down to — how much work can you produce or how much copy can you push out that's presentable? I'll admit to struggling with being productive lately while getting wrapped up in editing duties and otherwise handling a bit of being under the weather, but otherwise I'm doing my best with the time I've got. Everybody only gets 24 hours in a day, and I don't manage very well when I'm trying to fill up all 24 of them without sleep.

I've talked plenty about struggling with what direction to take and what story or book to focus on. I'm still mostly pleased by Neverend's sales knowing that it's not going to be a money-maker right now. I've read in numerous places where some writers decry $0.99 books as being "too cheap," while others sing the praises of starting a series (and Neverend IS a series … I think) with $0.99 for the first book in order to rope in more readers.

In the meantime, I've got new projects staring me full in the face and unfinished stories crying for attention like a newborn that's been left in their crib for way too long. I'm finding myself bouncing from book to book or story to story like I'm never happy finishing one before starting on another. It's ironic that I picked a Bradbury quote today. If memory serves, it was him or another of those 20th Century literary giants (Asimov, maybe) who — again, according to my memory of the story — had several typewriters set up in his home office, each of them poised somewhere in the middle of a certain book. Anytime he had a few minutes to spare, he'd sit down in any random chair and keep the story going, no matter which story he sat down to.

I'll resist the temptation to tell myself to buy more computers to help my writing career out — I can't afford a luxury like that. Yet.

I'll figure out which one of these particular rabbit holes I'm supposed to dive down next, and I've got several unfinished stories staring me right in the face, so one of them might win that particular contest by default. It IS frustrating to always find yourself becoming your own worst enemy, at least when it comes to getting work done.

Mountains of Sand

When I examine myself and my methods of thought I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing knowledge. — Albert Einstein

I have been steadily climbing a mountain of sand lately.

Have you ever tried climbing a sand dune lately? It's doable, sure, but you start to notice as you go that your weight pulls you down; your feet sink into the loose sand, and before long not only are you expelling the energy you need to climb, you're ALSO forced to pull that weight up and out of the sand that's pulling you down. It's twice the effort for the same amount of distance, and it can tire you out before long.

Writing fantasy is like that sometimes. If you take an everyday setting, something modern with its own established rules and laws of physics, you're limited by what you (and your reader, most likely) already know, but those limitations can be very freeing, actually. When you're making up an entirely new set of laws of what your imaginary culture does or doesn't have, you can find yourself having to double back and change things on the fly, which requires a LOT of backtracking and editing after the fact. You're still traveling the same distance, as it were, but you're putting in two or three or even four times the amount of effort for the same amount of storytelling.

Now this effort can — and usually is — worth the trouble because of what you end up with. J.K. Rowling is said to have worked eight years (!!) on her Harry Potter books. Obviously it was worth the effort; I doubt anybody would argue with Ms. Rowling's success now. It had to be rough going for awhile, though, given the stories floating out there about how she was on welfare or government assistance during her initial writing foray.

For myself, I keep finding myself filling in some plot holes only to uncover more. The effort I'm spending now to plug up these holes will be worth it when the job is done, but it still feels like such a HUGE effort that it's hard to keep myself on the straight and narrow right now. I want to cheat, to take the easy way out and not bother with trying to get it right the first time. I'm too much of a perfectionist to let that laziness trip me up, but you have no idea how tempting it is right now.

How about you? Are you tired of climbing sand dunes? Or can the stress of the journey be its own reward, especially given how rewarding it'll feel when you reach the top?

Moving the Goalposts

The pen is the tongue of the mind. — Miguel de Cervantes

Be careful about what can happen when you start sharing your goals with the people you care about — they might just start suggesting you try for even bigger goals instead.

The idea behind Swordbearer's Light started off life as a crazy idea about trying to mold fantasy storytelling with super hero character traits — what if Superman and his ilk were running around in some kind of fantasy setting instead of the usual comic book fare? I happen to like comics as an art form and some aspects of their character building, even if I do think their storytelling chops leave a lot to be desired. I don't know if ANYONE takes a comic book character's death seriously anymore, unless nobody liked that character to begin with.

Over time, my idea shifted and changed into something that was more intended for an adult market versus one for young adults. It was longer, more grandiose, and sped along for 60,000 words or so until I ran straight into a war narrative I didn't want, along with realizing later that my main villain got pushed on-stage way too early. So I tucked the book away, kept the interesting bits and pieces for good measure, and worked on something else.

Fast forward to about a month ago. Neverend is finally out for sale, I'm hitting the e-publishing piñata for all its worth, and my little story about magic swords starts poking around in my brain, looking for a spare air-hole. I decide, both on a whim and as a challenge, to come up with something for the YA market that I can write and release to the market as soon as it's done, instead of having to shop the thing around like I'm used to. I start writing ideas down, keep what sounds good and toss what isn't, the usual. It's a good story, but unrefined and in need of more editing time (which I didn't realize until later).

And that's when the current incarnation of Light's world and universe comes into focus. It's bigger than I expected — way bigger — and by the time I'm done I've spent 36 hours on this puppy and I'm beginning to doubt that I can make it work. I tell my girlfriend about my concerns and wait for her to verify my suspicions that, yes, I've bitten off more than I need to chew.

But here's the crazy thing — she doesn't. She tells me to shoot high and to go higher still. This is a HUGE amount of storytelling, more than I've ever attempted before, and she had the audacity — or foresight, perhaps — to tell me to go through with it. Madness, I tell you!

Which brings us to yesterday. I doubt anyone's noticed, but I took my sample of Light down from where I'd proudly displayed it at the top of this blog. For one reason, I've done some necessary editing and tightened up the first chapter as always happens during these book-writing sessions. The other reason is that she suggested that I have all of my ducks in a proverbial row before I start pushing these books out — I need more than one book finished at a time before publishing it and starting on the next one.

It'll be a hard road, but something about making my goal even HARDER is invigorating somehow. I'm looking forward to seeing what I can accomplish on this series. How about you — made any writing goals lately that you've had to change later on to tell a better story?

Another Kind of Echo

Opportunity dances with those who are already on the dance floor. — H. Jackson Brown Jr.

I like to weave back and forth between fantasy writing as a genre, and the subject of writing as a whole. Of course, this is a personal blog too — I'm a person, and I'm blogging, so that only fits, right? It's my hope that in the future as I get more of my stories out and people realize they can come here for an open dialogue — as opposed to my current habit of chasing all the spambots around with a chainsaw — that I'll be able to show more exclusive bits and pieces. I don't have to worry (yet?) about exclusivity, about what I can and can't release to the viewing public, and I don't have to worry about any legal wrangling about what I want to share with anyone who wants to see it.

But the fact of the matter is that for right now, this blog is still in "echo mode" — I shout off what I want to tell to the rest of the Internet, and for the most part it flows out and fades away, lost and forgotten into the ether. I've had some very nice people willing to stop by and drop a comment or two, which of course gives me all sorts of thrills, but for now those are the exception, not the rule. If I'm in this game for the long haul, it means staying patient and waiting for things to develop organically … or not at all, maybe. Who knows?

Have you ever written anything just for the sake of writing it, without knowing who (or if anyone at all) would see it?