Christopher J.H. Jones's Blog, page 6

Confidence, and The Loss Thereof

Confidence is a tricky thing. It’s hard to even know what it is, except within oneself. When you have it, you think things are going to work out well, and you push a little harder, take a few more risks, look forward to the next challenge. When you don’t, you hold back, defend, and try not to rock the boat.

Some people seem to have unlimited confidence, never seeming to get rattled. Others are thin, fragile, and the smallest thing will leave them unsure.

It seems that I should be confident, with all the good things happening, and yet I wake up every morning just positive that no one will ever publish a word I write. The only antidote I’ve ever found is to keep going.

A few tidbits, as we move into July:

I have a new website for educational stuff, aliasmrc.com. The email there is mrc at aliasmrc.com. All the classes I teach, all the information about where I’m going to be and when will be on that site, and the class links above will increasingly point to that target.
Yesterday finished off another 50,000 word month. I’ve done that eight months in a row.
July is Camp NaNoWriMo, which is essentially a fancy excuse to have a bunch of authors crank out another pile of words. Since I’ve managed 50k every month since Halloween, I’m confident I can do it again (there’s that word “confidence” again, but I actually am confident about that). I’m in Tiana Smith’s “cabin”–she’s got a good group of writers there, and it should be fun to work with them.
Patreon continues well. I love writing on that platform, and I’m constantly humbled by the generosity of my patrons. There will be a big push here shortly to get more of them, with lots of freebies and giveaways. Watch this space for more.

This week is my 47th birthday. It’s always a time of nostalgia and a little bit of wistful sadness. I want to live to be 200, so this isn’t even yet the end of the first 25% of my life, but it feels like much more than that. I fear that I shall find I have wasted my life wishing I had more of it to spend.

Confidence. Today it eludes me. But there will be a tomorrow.

Some Things Lost

I needed a name. Really, that was all.

I’m a writer. I need names. Names are the raw material of stories. No names, no story (some exceptions will apply). So where do the names come from?

Like a lot of writers, I keep a list of names I want to use in stories. I’m not using Casparus Abbett or Virgil Argus Mantooth as the name of the guy at the bagel stand, though. He isn’t important enough. I need something vaguely middle-eastern, male. Where do I get that name?

Time was, I’d pull out a phone book.

Hahaha. Not happening today. Vintage phone books sell on EBay for $50. There really isn’t a way to just pull out one of those books and browse.

It’s not just phone books. Other reference material is like this, too. I used to spend hours poring over encyclopedias, leafing from one page to the next, not by subject, but by alphabet. I learned fascinating and varied things that way. Dictionaries, as well, same idea. When I’d go to look something up, I’d get to learn twelve other words that just happened to catch my eye on the way to the word I wanted. Thesauruses, too. Serendipity is sacrificed on the altar of specificity.

Yes, it’s faster to go to wikipedia and find out that Sir Isaac Newton was poisoned by mercury, but no one is getting distracted by two pages of colorful newts the section before. Have we lost something?

I still use a Roget’s Thesaurus, and I love it. I have seven paper dictionaries in my writing space (and two other thesauruses).

And incidentally, the place to go for names is apparently the . I still think the Manhattan phone book would be more fun. And varied. This one only has 50,000 surnames. At this rate, I’ll run through them in a couple of years. Do you have a source you like to use?

Making Stories

I’m at LDStorymakers today, as I have been for three days now. I’ll have a longer post on this later, when I have more time to write about it, but I can’t even…people. Oh, my. PEOPLE.

Ever walk into a room and say, “Holy wow, this is a room full of my very own tribe!” That’s what LDStorymakers does for me. There are a couple thousand people here that are at least a great deal like me, and some of them so much like me that it feels like talking to slimmer, more interesting versions of myself.

My head is exploding with ideas and story possibilities. Those are going to show up here on my Patreon page, and fairly quickly. I just finished a story during David Farland’s class that you’re going to hate. As in HATE.

But a couple things that I need to say right now. One, I came to this conference a couple years ago and felt so much that I wanted to be one of these people, but was mostly just pretending. I stopped writing for a year. This time, I AM one of these people. I’m good enough to be here. I’m doing the work. I belong. Better – much more better – my stories belong.

Two, I spent two days before I came here at a mortgage conference. The experience is so completely different for me it’s hard to describe it. I couldn’t wait to get out of that one. I can’t stand that this one will come to an end.

The thing I am meant to do is this thing (and teaching is a part of this thing, indissoluble and almost indistinguishable).

One year. It will take one more year. But I’m going to make it.

It is May

Note: this post does not refer to the novella It is May, a historical romance/adventure set in the last days of the Roman Empire, due out this summer in a collection of stories around the theme of Faith.

Guess what I have on my calendar today?

Nothing.

Guess what’s on it for tomorrow.

Nothing.

I do have a Rotary Club lunch on Wednesday. Otherwise, guess what’s on the calendar that day?

That’s right. And the day after, and the day after that.

It is May, and I am not working.

Of course, in the absolute sense, this isn’t so. I’ll be writing 1700 words a day or so, as I have every day since November. I’ll be editing the really massive amount of literary production I’ve created since around this time last year: four novels completed, one more about a week away; five novellas, seventeen short stories. I will be creating lesson plans for the fall, when I’ll be teaching the heaviest class load of my life, and doing the research to support those lesson plans.

Aaaaaand…

Reading. Taking walks. Singing music for the fun of it. Memorizing poetry. Digging in my garden. Driving my kids some of the innumerable places they have to go.

I thought this over back in January, looking at a lengthy period through the first third of the year when I was, essentially, going to be working three full-time jobs. The mortgage business was in flux, and needing serious attention. I had school to teach at two different schools, and for three of those weeks (last week, for instance) at three different ones. Along with that, I was attempting the launch of my Patreon site and becoming a working writer, with obligations to produce at least two quality shorts a month. Then there was an enhanced commitment to spiritual devotion, including thirty minutes in the scriptures every day, and a major role in a community theater production, and a new choir that I had joined that had three concerts in the first four months of the year. If I could handle all that, I would surely need some kind of a break along about May.

I’ve been at this mortgage stuff as my main career for thirteen years now; with City First for seven. The way I operate – not anyone’s fault but mine – I am essentially never off duty. When my clients need me, or my team, I’m there. I call back, nights, weekends, holidays, all the time. I have turned my phone off less than five times in the last ten years (it has run out of battery a few more than that). Again, not anyone’s fault but mine, but that is the way I feel maximizes my strengths as a mortgage guy. It’s also exhausting, even when I am not essentially holding down three part-time-plus jobs along with it.

I’m exhausted.

It’s time to take a rest.

That’s what this month is about. I am, as you may know, a huge fan of the Sabbath, and I mean in the traditional sense. I do not work for money on Sundays. When I write, I write explicitly religious stories with strong elements of faith and devotion. The concept of the Sabbath, and its close relative the sabbatical (note the shared linguistic root), is millennia old. It made sense then, and it makes even more sense in the modern age, though we so rarely make time for it. I am committed to do so.

There will be more writing this month. There will be less phone, text, and Facebook. More reading: I have, next to my bed, fifteen books that I’m going to read this month, everything from a biography of Hatshepsut to a book on physics. I’m three hours into it, and already I can’t believe how much calmer and less rushed I feel.

The month has plenty in it. I’ll be publishing two shorts to Patreon, attending two conferences, and going for four days to Oregon with my wife alone – something we’ve done just once in the last ten years. I’ve got a fishing trip planned with my son. I’ve done a lot of this before.

But this time, my phone will be off.

A Word on POV

More or less the first choice a writer has to make when he begins a story is deciding who is talking. This is called the point of view.

First person is fairly simple. The narrator is “I”. These stories have an immediacy, putting the reader almost in place as the main character herself. The downside of this is that as a first-person narrator, the storyteller can’t know what anyone else is thinking. It’s a stylistic choice that has implications for the path of the story. You can’t, for instance, kill the main character. You also can’t do the George R.R. Martin (Game of Thrones) thing, where you have chapter after chapter narrated by a different character.

Third person is the other viable option, but here there are several flavors of third person. You can use limited, in which the reader can only see through the eyes of the main character. You can use limited multiple, in which the pair of eyes changes from character to character. You can use limited omniscient, where the reader sees not only what happens, but hears the thoughts of the character telling the action. Or you can use full omniscient, where the reader gets to hear everyone’s thoughts.

I like first person. Most of my favorite stories are first person narration. I’ve written in all of the above, though, and not all of them worked for me, but most of them did. Each choice directs the story in ways that have to be understood and maximized for the story to work. Fairy tales are third person (limited) omniscient. That’s just how those work (here’s one of mine). Urban fantasy works really well as first person present tense (though it can be done a lot of different ways).

But there are experimental kinds of POV as well. I’ve heard of some stories written in second person (You went into the store, etc.). I haven’t tried one, and don’t think I will. I have done a third person limited unattached, however, where there isn’t a main character, and all you get is dialogue. That’s difficult, but has interesting possibilities.

My most recent paid story, Redundant, uses a POV I’ve not tried before, and have never seen done. There is an “I” narrator, so it looks like first person, as in this passage:

Now, I know how this hand is played. I loved and lost, you know, so I’m well aware that the game spooks easy in this town. I turn back to the bar, just on an angle, so that I can’t see her at all, and I hold up a fiver to the barkeep and say “And I’ll get it.” He looks at me, because it isn’t like that’s a regular occurrence, and then shrugs and takes the money. Still I don’t turn, I’m just drinking mine, which I’m glad is a Jim Beam on the rocks instead of the martini that would make me look like all the other suits just off from work. I can’t see her at all. The fellow that nudged me is just staring at me like wings have sprouted out my back.

But the story is not first person. This section is all a quotation, all someone speaking. The speaker is the main character, but the narrator is not him, but his webcam. You can see this most clearly in this passage:

Knock. Knockknock. Click.

“John, you have a second?”

“Peter, for you, of course.”

Click.

“Wow, you have to shut the door for this?”

“Yes, John, I’m afraid I do. Everyone in the building knows that redundancies are coming Friday. I don’t know how they know-“

“That keeps happening. It’s very frustrating. Do you think I should look into it?”

“Well…sure, if you think…but nobody has ever been able to find out…nevertheless, it’s causing problems in my department. Very little work has been done today. I have had only four reports submitted from my group. Have you seen similar falloff?”

“Honestly, no, Peter. My reports are normal volume so far.”

“How do you do it? Your department runs so smoothly. They don’t know you’re firing a third of them?”

“Half. Or just under. It’s breaking my heart. I suspect they know, but our policy here is open, forthright communication at all times. My door is open. If they have concerns, they come to me and we address them together, in mutual collaboration.”

Sigh. “That’s very commendable. My department does not work like that. Do you have a book to recommend, or a seminar? I think I’m out of ideas since the last teambuilding exercise didn’t go over very well.”

“The bakesale?”

As a reader, you only get to see what the webcam sees, and nothing else. If the main character doesn’t talk, there’s no narration, no clues to what’s happening. It’s very tricky to write, and frankly I’m not certain it worked. But I wanted to try it, because writing dialogue is my favorite, and writing without tags is challenging and fun.

I’ve written six novels and forty/fifty short stories, and I’m still learning how to do this. I’ll never stop, I don’t think.

Monday Update: Yeah, I Made It!

Checking in on a few things:

Lent: It went very well, giving up sugar. I learned a great deal about myself, my ability to resist temptation (even serious, practically impossible temptation, like a bowl of cookie dough that I was assigned to brew up), and what happens with me physically if I restrict myself. I didn’t lose a lot of weight, only a couple of pounds, and I didn’t feel dramatically better. But I did feel like it was good for me both physically and psychologically, and I intend to continue seriously restricting sugar in the future.

Patreon: the first of the paid stories went live on Friday last, and paid me $350. The first day, I got 14 patrons, and things petered out after that, but they picked up again right before the launch of the story, and I’m sitting at 24 patrons now and $358 per story, with a secondary pay (second story of the month) at $192, which means that if I release two stories a month, I will get about $5000 a year. For short stories, that’s not bad at all. I still do not have a stranger as a patron, but I do have one patron that I haven’t seen in 28 years, so I’m thinking that’s pretty close.

I am a working writer. I get paid, and paid consistently, for writing.

The story I released is called Cheating Death, and it’s a novella about a half-Choctaw woman named Sara Elizabeth Twopenny Rogers, who is forced to go to work for Death himself, hunting down people who’ve “cheated death.” It’s pretty bad, as jobs go, but she’s good at it, until her latest partner gets in the way, and their assignment makes things even worse. Still, how bad can things get when you’re already dead?

It’s a universe and a set of characters I think has legs. I’m writing another short about Sara right now.

I have also been editing (first pass) The Vortigern Jack, and I have edits back on Stolen Away, from multiple sources. Since I’ve never gotten to that point with any other story, I don’t quite know how to proceed. I will, though.

What I desperately need is a cover art designer. I need someone to build covers for all this material I’m writing. I’ve tried a couple of individuals, but none of them have panned out.

Writing progress: I have written two hundred fifty thousand words in the last five months, almost exactly. I have written every day for a hundred days, and a little bit more. I average about 1700 words a day, and have done for five months. I always meet the 50,000 monthly target, although it is always a struggle and it has been especially difficult the last two months.

Keeping to this schedule, though, makes writing enough stories to keep the conveyor belt moving on the Patreon work a simple matter. I like doing it. I like being able to make myself write every day and write 50,000 words a month. It’s enough to allow me to be a serious working writer. Integrating editing is the next challenge, but it’s the last one. If I can master it, I will become a true working novelist, not just a working writer.

 

Professional! I’m a Pro!

I think I’m using the term correctly. I mean, I write, and write for money, and I do it often and now I do it on a predictable, measurable basis.

Even if not, right away, a very lucrative one.

Today I went pro using Patreon, a very interesting attempt to bring back the patron model of creative work. Once, and for a very long time, creative types were supported by patrons, people that paid them for their work (and got to demand that they did work). The best example you can see in modern cinema is the film Amadeus, where the court of Joseph II of Austria-Hungary had more than one composer, among them the exceptionally talented Wolfgang Mozart. Joseph paid him to compose for the court. It was a jewel in his crown, something he could show off to others.

Now you, too, can show off your court, by becoming a patron of creative types trying to make a living in the cruel, benighted world.

I write, and I write quite a bit. I’ve written five full novels (and almost, almost a sixth) and about thirty-five short stories, among hundreds of essays and blog posts and what have you. It takes ridiculous amounts of precious time to do it. I would – I have – done it for free, but I don’t really want to. I want to do it for money, because I believe that what I write is worth money.

Perhaps I am wrong. If I am, I’m about to find out.

Won’t you consider going to my Patreon page and at least seeing if what there is there is worth something to you? As little as $1 a month makes a very large difference to a bunch of decent people. One of them being me.

Thanks!

Update: As of ten minutes post-launch, I hit my first fundraising goal. I’m grateful to my sisters. I’m pretty confident it was them.

Being that this is just a gathering of us, I’m going to lay out a couple of odd hopes I have for this.

One, I hope to hit my third milestone (Route 66) in less than a month.

Two, in the first two weeks, I hope to have one person back my work whom I do not know.

Three, in the first six months, I hope to have 50 patrons.

We shall see.

Have an Adventure? Well, Maybe.

I read a Facebook post today (from one of my junior friends) that said “Why live if you’re not LIVING? Go out and have an adventure!”

As someone that has just finished his fifth novel, his thirty-third short story, performing in his fifth play in five years, teaches at three different schools as an educational privateer, has three jobs and eight children and is working furiously on a speech he has to give at the American Choral Directors’ Association Trade Secrets conference this summer, you might expect me to concur. I’ve sung for the Pope, in Rome, after surviving a terrorist attack two days before. I’ve met presidents and prophets, defied the Soviet empire behind the Iron Curtain, run a presidential campaign. I get paid to sing opera. I speak HUNGARIAN, for crying out loud.

But.

The greatest joy of my life is twenty-five years of marriage to Jeanette. My proudest achievement is fifteen years of hard (and mostly excruciatingly dull) work as a loan officer and branch manager. What makes me most satisfied with my life is that whatever I’ve committed to – most of them pretty obscure – I show up on time, prepared, and do the best I can.

This is the adventure of my life, not the paragraph above it. We do, in our extraordinarily rich society, talk a lot about having adventures and following our muses and generally being “passionate” about stuff, but I’m a lot more interested in and respectful of those that quietly do their work, do it well, and don’t think much about themselves. I’m happiest not when I’m contemplating a novel launch or singing opera, but when I’m sitting on my couch rubbing my wife’s back, watching a silly movie with my children.

Most of the world’s work is done by those we’ve never heard of. They come, they do their jobs, and they go. The reason I can teach history is that there are hard-working women and men that built a school. The reason I can go on stage as the Great and Powerful Oz is that my wife has dinner and driving covered, and dozens of people are handling everything from mics to lighting to costumes to props to tickets and concessions and a partridge in a pear tree. Every adventure I have had depended heavily on hundreds of others doing a job for which they get little credit and (often) less money. In the end, I think their labor is worth every bit as much as the kind we see in the headlines, and maybe more. The Red Baron is an amazing guy, but you know, his mechanic must have been something, too. Every day. For years.

The adventure of your life, should you desire to have one, shouldn’t it be woven into your life, into everything you do? By all means, have an adventure. Better yet – make an adventure out of what you’re doing now.

It’s a lot more satisfying that way. And a great deal cheaper.

I’m Going Pro.

Monday, as a matter of fact. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, and doing what I think are the things you do if you’re serious about being a professional, and it’s time to take the leap from the lion’s head and prove my worth.

More in this, and many other spaces, on Monday.

Back to the Future: Where Publishing (and Artistry in General) is Going

Lent is going very well, thanks for asking. One of the things that self-abnegation is supposed to do for you is make you mindful of the thing you’re giving up, so you can appreciate it more, or at least notice what a big role it plays in your life. Sugar plays a moderate role in my life. I don’t drink soda pop, but I do eat cookies and especially cookie dough fairly often, and I like my ice cream. I notice that I can’t eat those things, and I’m happy to be reminded of how often I do, and how much I enjoy it when I can. Lent is a success already, because of that.

But that isn’t why I’m writing this. As you are surely aware, both of you that read this regularly, I’m a writer and a relatively prolific one. I average 50,000 words a month, every month, so that’s a fair-sized novel six times a year. I also write short stories in profusion, and finding a market for those has been somewhat problematic. Yes, I could certainly put them up on Amazon with the several hundred thousand competitors, and see what happens. I may do that one day. I am not, however, going to do it right now, because I think there are better models out there.

I teach history to high-schoolers, too, which thing you may not know. We’re studying the 19th century right now, which is the point in the art world where some composing began being done on a market basis instead of a patronage one. This I will explain.

If you were, say, Mozart, you made a living writing for the Archduke of Austria. He paid you, housed you, fed you, and in return, you wrote things for him. That’s a patronage model. Those works were, frequently, performed in big opera houses, with lots of attendees, but the work itself belonged to the man who paid for it (except there was no such thing as copyright, so “owning” is a bit more complicated than I’m making it sound, but just go with it for now). There was often fierce competition for the services of the best composers and musicians and painters, etc. among the royal houses of Europe, who were the ones that could afford it.

In the 19th century, there was a move away from the patronage model, as the royal houses were faced with wave on wave of revolution. Composers began to do more work on spec, getting paid by the gig and by the reception of the piece, rather than paid by someone who wanted direct, immediate access to the artist. This is the model that’s existed not quite all the way to right now. Yes, there are label and movie house and publisher contracts, some of them mimicking the patron model (usually without the corresponding benefits to the artist), but none of them really analogous. Artists made deals with these corporations not so the corporations could enjoy their music, but so they could distribute it to make money for themselves (something Maria Therese would have abhorred).

A few years ago – really, just a few – the Internet made distribution almost as easy for a single independent artist as for a big label (record, publisher, whatever). It became possible for a solo artist to take his work directly to the buyers and skip the label contract. Self-publishing was born. Now, the legacy model (that’s what we call it in publishing) is not dead. It’s still around, and in some places still fairly robust. There are still behemoth record labels, and movie studios (whose deals with theaters and distribution companies make indie moviemaking more problematic), and publishers, but many fewer than there once were. Some forecast their total annihilation. I don’t go that far. They’ll always be around, I think. But the game is changing, and I’m not talking about self-publishing. There’s another wave coming, and it will take us back to the future.

Lots is made by economists and (especially) politicians about income inequality. Without weighing in on the merits of the research itself, let me just point out from the standpoint of the 99% that my life may be getting worse on a relative income scale, but it’s getting better every second on an acquirable goods basis. What that means is that whereas in 1950 a rich man would have better food, better cars, better housing, better entertainment and travel options, better access to information, better pretty-much-everything than I would, in 2015 Mitt Romney and I drive similar cars, live in housing of similar quality (his is bigger, but not palatially so), eat similar food, and listen to exactly the same music, read the same books in the same quantities, read the same news and get the same movies, television shows, and sporting events. He cannot have better information access than I do. All the money on earth couldn’t buy more of these things than I have (okay, but only really, really marginally). We have, as an American society, reached the point of diminishing returns in practically every consumable good. There is functionally so little difference between Mitt Romney and me in terms of what we can and do consume on a daily basis that there is no useful distinction.

NOTE: I’m not commenting on the millions that don’t have enough to eat or a decent place to live. There are such people, and I belong to more than one organization that does much to attempt to alleviate their misery. I also do not comment on conditions outside the US (more specifically, the computerized world), which resemble those in the US in the 19th century much more closely. I’m aware of these things, and do not believe they bear on the thesis of this essay.

These things being so, two things then become likely, in my opinion. One, as the marginal utility of my money declines, I’ll be looking for things to do with it that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to, like supporting Kickstarter potato salad projects (no, actually, I didn’t; it’s just an example, but I think a good one). Two, the really rich are not going to be very happy about schmoes like me being able to wear the same clothes and listen to the same music and read the same books.

The latter first: one of the historic hallmarks of rich people is that they have to have stars upon thars. It’s not enough to have more money and security; other people have to know that they have more. Flaunting it is a major component of snobby riches. Eating expensive – and disgusting – food is necessary, so that people like me can be made jealous because we can’t. That’s getting harder and harder to do. I have close friends that seriously contemplate buying Teslas and going to Mars. Not people you’d think of as rich, either. So how does a swell separate himself from the great mass of the unwashed?

Glad you asked. Big houses, for sure, but that’s not working all that well anymore. I already have more house than I can keep clean, and I have eight kids. I don’t want a bigger house. You can only eat so many calories (eating fewer calories is now a sign of the rich). My gym has the same equipment in it that theirs does, so they do crossfit. But anyone crazy enough can do that. If you happen to be really rich, and you’re looking for a way to differentiate, I have one for you.

Reinstitute the patronage model.

There are plenty of places to do this, but one of the best is a site called Patreon, where you can, with your boundless wealth, lock Mozart up so that he’s only playing for you. You can actually have music, art, literature, what have you that no one else can get. Exclusive. All yours. No need to share unless you want.

Yes, the hoi polloi can support these artists, too, but your money can buy you access we don’t get. Right now, it will mostly get you just earlier access than everyone else, but think bigger. You could have Pentatonix make a video for you, and only you. You could have Hugh Howey or Lindsay Buroker write you a novel, that only has one copy, and it’s on your shelf. You see the possibilities.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the wave of the future. When we get to a completely post-consumer society – and we are far closer than most people think – the only differentiators are going to be access to creativity. And we’ll be back to Mozart, only this time everyone will have enough to eat and doctors that wash their hands, so that’s going to be better right there.

As we go, I’ll be chronicling how some of these things work, from the inside, as I try them out. Not being a rich man (remember the eight kids?), I won’t be locking up Peter Hollens to just come sing his tracks for me, but I’ll be showing how the patronage model, and variations on the model like Kickstarter and Pubslush and Peertracks, etc. work for the hardworking but as-yet-undiscovered craftsman, often using myself as the guinea pig.

Curious? Yeah. Me too.

P.S. If you want to be a groundbreaker in the new model of creative endeavor, you couldn’t do better than supporting this project (see adorable picture). It’s all the good things I talk about above, and would make some deserving kids very happy.

P.P.S. In case this didn’t come through above, I actually think the patronage model will be fantastic for new artists.