Matthew Wayne Selznick's Blog, page 10

Hello, New Visitors!

Hey, there, you! There’s a 90% chance that you’ve never been to my little home on the web. Nice to see you here!

I am Matthew Wayne Selznick, author and creator. I own a mansion and a yacht. (That last sentence: Not really. But if you get that reference, leave a note in the comments… we’re on our way to being fast friends.)

In addition to writing short stories and novels in a variety of storyworlds, I’m available to consult or collaborate on your creative project. I’ve helped independent and New York Times bestselling authors, small businesses, non-profits, and even folks like Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen make, sell, or market their works. No client is too large or too small if the work is compelling. I bet I can help you, too!

If you’re a first time visitor this month, it could be because you’ve read my guest blog posts or heard my voice on a podcast. Here’s where I’ve been lately:

Interviewed on the Get Published podcast
Panelist on the SpecFicMedia Consumption video podcast
Guest post on Scott Roche’s Author Blog
Co-hosting a panel discussion on transmedia on the Roundtable Dialogues podcast

If you’re a blogger, video show host, or podcaster looking for a creator with experience, opinions, and oh yes, stuff to sell, I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks for coming around! Please consider subscribing to the free email newsletter before you leave — I periodically send out exclusive content, tips fun and useful stuff I find on the web, word on neat things people in my online community are up to, and offers and discounts on my own books, short stories, products, and services. The volume of messages is usually pretty light, and of course I don’t sell, rent, lease, trade, or otherwise distribute your email address to anyone else.

Also, you can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Amazon.com, LinkedIn, and YouTube… check out my social media policy for more information!

And if you’re interested in the very latest thing I have planned, please visit Selznick Serials and get on the wait list there. Or don’t you want free serial fiction delivered to you every week?

Welcome!

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August Social Media Sabbatical

I’ve been on Twitter since March 27, 2007. I’m one of the first .19% of all users.

I’ve been on Facebook since June 1st, 2007. I don’t how many people were there with me then. A few.

I’ve been doing social media, personally and professionally, for more than six years, four months.

Non.

Stop.

For the month of August, 2013, I’m taking a break from Twitter and Facebook… and Google+, and MySpace, and LinkedIn, Skype, and every other social network. I’m on social media sabbatical. The only reason you’ll see me on any of those sites is in a professional capacity, either promoting my creative endeavors or as part of work for clients.

Just for fun, I’m also deleting all the RSS feeds I currently follow. It’s mostly noise and repetition, anyway! I will continue listening to podcasts; I’m about a month behind on those and there’s greater variety.

I’ll still post periodically on this blog and do guest posts and podcast appearances elsewhere.

Need to get hold of me in the month of August? There are ways. As for the social networks… I’ll see you on September first!

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Me, Elsewhere: Second Half of July, 2013

Time once again to let you know about some appearances I’ve made in support of Pilgrimage — A Novel of the Sovereign Era and Walk Like a Stranger: Passing Through Home on websites other than this one…

Interview And Giveaway At Readmill

Readmill is a new(ish) app (iOS only at this time) to facilitate discussion and community among ebook readers. I was invited to be interviewed for the Readmill blog, and to make things interesting, Readmill is also giving away fifteen epub ebook copies of my first book, Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era! The giveaway ends some time on July 26, 2013, and the site seems to be based in Germany, so I’m not sure if that’s their July 26 or yours… so hurry! Click through to read the interview and enter the giveaway, and as always, please comment on the post if you would like to ask any follow-up questions!

Interview By Author Tim Flanagan

I had the honor of being interviewed via email by speculative fiction author Tim Flanagan, and that interview is now live on his website. I get to rant about social media, building a community, writer’s block and a bunch of other stuff… please swing by and give it a read, and be sure to comment on the post on Tim’s site if you have a follow-up question for me!

A Guest Post At Luv2Write2

Debbi Cracovia of the Luv2Write2 blog invited me to contribute a guest post. I wrote all about how you can “Build A Storyworld and Build A Career.” It’s my take on one of my favorite subjects, the writer as authorpreneur and creative franchise manager. I’d love your thoughts on the subject — please comment on the post at Luv2Write2!

Don’t Forget The ENnie Nomination!

A reminder: the worldbuilding anthology that includes my essay, “History For Story’s Sake,” Eighth Day Genesis, is in the running to win an ENnie Award at this year’s big Gen Con role-playing game convention… and the ENnie is a people’s choice award, so that means YOU can vote to see Eighth Day Genesis take the award!

Please visit the publisher’s site for links to get your own sampler from Eighth Day Genesis (including my essay) and learn how to vote. It’s easy! But you have to act before July 31, 2013!

Thanks, in advance, for your support!

And please do click over to the generous websites where I’ve been interviewed and guest posted recently… show them some love! Thanks!

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Get A Free Sample of An ENnie Nominated Anthology And Vote!

Update! Voting is open July 22, 2013 through July 31, 2013. Click here to get your free sample of Eighth Day Genesis and vote for the anthology to win a Best RPG Related Product ENnie at this year’s Gen Con!

Last June, I was honored to have an essay of mine, “History for Story’s Sake,” included in Eighth Day Genesis: A Worldbuilding Codex for Writers and Creatives from Alliteration Ink. The book was nominated for an Origins award earlier this year, and right now, it’s up for an ENnie Award!

What Is The ENnie Award?

Think of the ENnie Award as the “people’s choice” award for excellence in the role-playing-game industry. The nominees are selected by a judging panel, but the winners are selected by the gaming public. In other words: the public. That’s you, dear reader!

The awards will be presented at GenCon Indy on August 16, 2013. Voting on the winners is open to the public (that’s you!) starting July 22, 2013.

Get A Free Sample of Eighth Day Genesis

Go to Alliteration Ink and sign up for your free sample from Eighth Day Genesis, featuring three essays from the anthology… including mine!

And if you think this gamer and writer worldbuilding aid is worth an ENnie Award for Best RPG Related Product, stay tuned to vote beginning July 22!

Get your free sample of Eighth Day Genesis right now… and thanks!

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Get A Free Sample of An ENnie Nominated Anthology Featuring… Me!

Last June, I was honored to have an essay of mine, “History for Story’s Sake,” included in Eighth Day Genesis: A Worldbuilding Codex for Writers and Creatives from Alliteration Ink. The book was nominated for an Origins award earlier this year, and right now, it’s up for an ENnie Award!

What Is The ENnie Award?

Think of the ENnie Award as the “people’s choice” award for excellence in the role-playing-game industry. The nominees are selected by a judging panel, but the winners are selected by the gaming public. In other words: the public. That’s you, dear reader!

The awards will be presented at GenCon Indy on August 16, 2013. Voting on the winners is open to the public (that’s you!) starting July 22, 2013.

Get A Free Sample of Eighth Day Genesis

Go to Alliteration Ink and sign up for your free sample from Eighth Day Genesis, featuring three essays from the anthology… including mine!

And if you think this gamer and writer worldbuilding aid is worth an ENnie Award for Best RPG Related Product, stay tuned to vote beginning July 22!

Get your free sample of Eighth Day Genesis right now… and thanks!

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Me, Elsewhere: First Half of July, 2013

I’m gradually ramping up the amount and frequency of intentional and directed promotion efforts on behalf of Pilgrimage — A Novel of the Sovereign Era, The Charters Duology, and Walk Like A Stranger: Passing Through Home. Periodically, I’ll post updates here so, if you like, you can go and listen to the interview, read the review, and so on.

Guest Blog Post Promotion For Scarlett Van Dijk

I wrote a guest blog post for Australian young adult writer Scarlett Van Dijk. The title says it all: More Than Words: Why Writers Needn’t Sweat Word Count. It was a nice opportunity for me to expound on one of my favorite writing-related topics and hopefully give (especially new) writers a different perspective… all the while pointing a handful of folks toward my site and my own works.

Check it out, and if it moves you, please comment on the post over at Scarlett’s site!

Interview on The Dead Robots’ Society

My fifth appearance on this long-running podcast for writers and the readers who love them was, as always, a really fun time. In and around discussing Pilgrimage — A Novel of the Sovereign Era, I got to explore what it’s like to revisit older work, issues of verisimilitude, the writer’s responsibility to their community, the nature of art, and the like. Give a listen to the discussion over at The Dead Robots’ Society website, and please join in the conversation by leaving your comments there!

Pilgrimage In The Wild

I’ve begun shipping autographed paperback copies of Pilgrimage — A Novel of the Sovereign Era to the patrons of its Kickstarter campaign and, happily, some of the recipients have posted photos of their new books. It makes me happy! Here’s a selection:

Cover artist Neal Von Flue shows off his handywork!

Chrispian Burks placed his copy in the middle of the action (figures)!

Patron Scott Pond’s new copies of Brave Men Run and Pilgrimage!

J. C. Hutchins had a great mail day, including his framed Pilgrimage manuscript page and autographed paperback!

James Melzer continues a long history of above-and-beyond support!

Pretty nifty!

Watch this space for more…

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More Than Words: Why Writers Needn’t Sweat Word Count

What’s the most common bit of advice you’ll hear experienced writers give folks who’ve come more recently to the craft? Probably a variation of the following:

“Write every day. Put your butt in the chair and write. If you don’t write every day, you’re not a real writer.”

There’s a related bit of shorthand wisdom out there, granted Natural Law status after appearing in Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, that seems to shore up the preceding advice:

“It takes a 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery in any field.”

You might have seen that put another way:

“Your first million words are crap.”

Given all that, it’s easy to see why writers might put it all together and decide word count is something they should carefully track.

After all, we want to be “real” writers. We want to say we’ve blown past that million-word mark. And don’t forget the handy (if increasingly outmoded) industry-standardized word quotas for various story forms and genres. “Where am I in my work in progress? Well, I’ve written 30,000 words, and Writer’s Digest says…”

The obsession with wordcount has given rise to things like “Write or Die,” the magic spreadsheet, and the one million words in a year challenge. And that’s all great… these are tools that encourage community, solidarity, and maybe friendly competition among writers. There’s something to be said for that.

In practice, though, tracking word count is among the least important metrics in measuring your progress, either for your current work or for your career.

Writing Is More Than Adding Words To A Manuscript

You know that time spent butt-in-chair (well, I work standing up, but you get the idea), hands-on-keyboard, adding words to a manuscript?

At MWS Media, that’s called “typing.”

It’s certainly one of the things writers do to finish a work, but it’s hardly the only thing. Depending on your preferred process, it might even be the least important thing.

Think about all the other things you do that go toward completing a work of creative writing:

Research
Brainstorming
Character development
Outlining / planning
Editing

Every minute you spend doing any of the above steals dozens of words from your eventual million.

And yet.

All of the above, in one form or another, goes into your work as surely as do words on the page.

So why don’t we measure the time spent on those things? Why don’t we assign the same value to an hour of hard, deep thinking as we do an hour of typing two thousand words?

All word count tells us is your rough typing speed. That and the ability to make a martini will get you in the secretarial pool at Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Congratulations.

Don’t Just Count The Count

Mark this well:

If you spend dedicated time and energy pursuing the completion of a written work, you are a writer. So long as the effort eventually results in a completed work, the time spent on that effort is time you are writing.

Count hours. Count the effort. Count the number of works you finish and ship. You shouldn’t care if you actually add thousands of words to the manuscript every single day, or if you haven’t typed a word in a week. If you spent that week working on the piece, you spent it as a writer.

But What About Tracking My Work In Progress?

Isn’t word count a good way to discern how far along you are in your work?

Maybe. If you’re writing to a specific word count goal (for example, your editor told you they want a 90,000 word novel), then sure, you need to know where you are. It’s worth mentioning that if you’re 50,000 words in and you haven’t reached the middle of act two, you have a bigger problem than reaching your word count… but yeah, word count can be a useful yardstick for certain things.

Personally, when I’m working on larger works like my recently completed second novel, I prefer scene count, but getting into that risks a digression that is better suited to its own post.

The point I want you to take away from this is: Do not judge your progress (or lack thereof) on word count alone.

Celebrate The Entire Process

I’d love to see writers celebrating their writing activity by touting something other than word count. Things like:

Time spent brainstorming
Number of character sketches completed
Pages edited
Scenes or beats outlined
Locations researched
Calories burned (some say it’s 100 per hour spent writing… your mileage may vary!)

If you’re on Twitter, tell the world what you’ve accomplished as a writer other than words typed. Use the hashtag #notjustwordcount so everyone else can be inspired by your example! And be sure to say “hey” to me there… I’m @mwsmedia!

BIO:

Matthew Wayne Selznick is an author and creator living in Long Beach, California. His most recent book is Pilgrimage — A Novel of the Sovereign Era, the latest in his Sovereign Era storyworld and the conclusion of the Charters Duology begun in Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era. Learn more about his works, subscribe to his mailing list, and get the latest on his new serial fiction by subscription project at http://localhost/bu_mattselznick.com.

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Selznick Serials: A Home For “Walk Like A Stranger”

I’ve been working pretty steadily on the pre-writing phase of my upcoming serial fiction-by-subscription offering, Walk Like A Stranger: Passing Through Home. Mostly this means pacing a lot and staring into space, with some periodic mumbling, but trust me, it’s quality work.

Even though the right side of my brain is chugging along sussing out the first fifty-two installment story arc, I’ve given my left brain a little time at the wheel, too. It came up with a nice, little, simple web site to host Walk Like A Stranger: Passing Through Home: Selznick Serials.

What Is Selznick Serials?

Well, it started as a domain name I registered four years ago because I had a feeling that, one day, I’d like to revisit the serial fiction format I first played with way back in 1998 when I launched one of the very first web episodic fiction sites (and a shared world, to boot!), Sovereign Serials. (Yes, the storyworld featured in Brave Men Run, Pilgrimage and other works is fifteen years old!)

These days, serial fiction’s “starting to happen,” as the Lemonheads might sing. Amazon’s doing it. Plympton’s trying to gain traction (and its subsidiary, DailyLit, had been at it a while now, sort of.) Some newspapers — where the medium began — are testing the waters again.

You told me I should do it, too, when you voted for Walk Like A Stranger: Passing Through Home.

And I got to thinking: I could create a distinct website for Walk Like A Stranger… but my own personal playbook stresses the importance of creating personal franchises, and here was an opportunity to do so.

So Selznick Serials is my umbrella brand for serial fiction-by-subscription delivered via e-mail, and http://selznickserials.com is the hub.

Do I Have More Serials Planned?

At the moment, no. I am focused on launching Walk Like A Stranger: Passing Through Home, and for the foreseeable future, that’s the only serial in the Selznick Serials stable.

But!

If Walk Like A Stranger: Passing Through Home does well, not only will I do a second fifty-two installment “season,” there’s no reason not to add another title — written by me or another writer.

Time will tell. Meanwhile…

Please Sign Up With Selznick Serials!

Get on the Selznick Serials email subscriber news list to be informed the moment Walk Like A Stranger: Passing Through Home is available!

Thanks!

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Clearing The Runway So The Plan Can Take Off

A neat desk and a clean(er) office.

I’ve been in that “too busy to stay organized” trap for a couple of months. As I’ve been creatively transitioning from Pilgrimage to Walk Like A Stranger: Passing Through Home in the last few weeks, the clutter and dust and chaos started to bring me down. I found it difficult to work in my office and think productively at my desk.

So I spent some time on Sunday shredding paper, dusting shelves, breaking down boxes, filing, and the like.

And now that the physical clutter is cleared, the environment is much more conducive to playing with this:

Fifty two cards for fifty two installments

That’s the fifty two beat cards — which will approximately translate to fifty two weekly installments — of my upcoming serial fiction-by-subscription offering, Walk Like A Stranger: Passing Through Home, taped to two of my office closet doors.

That Looks Like Some Kind Of Plan

Yep! I’m a planner. I work out every beat of my stories before I type a single word of manuscript. What you see above is four acts of 13 beats each, with nine essential milestone beats exactly where they need to be, plus a few key beats in the final act.

Walk Like A Stranger: Passing Through Home will, hopefully, continue indefinitely. At the very least, though, the first arc will consist of fifty two parts. I’d be a fool to just start writing and hope that everything ends up fitting into fifty two roughly thousand-word pieces. Even if I did manage to pull that off, the end result would fall far short of the level of quality I could achieve planning the whole thing ahead of time.

And this principle doesn’t just apply to constrained things like a serial. I think pre-planning a story — working out every beat and every scene from beginning to end, sketching the mosaic before a single piece of glass is cut, and following the tried-and-true patterns found in nearly every powerful work of Western fiction — is the most effective and efficient way to craft the best possible fiction one can create.

…

Writers, that’s your cue to fill the comments with your diatribes on the eternal planner v. pantser debate.

…

Actually, I’m kidding. Because it’s not a question of whether you create your best possible story by detailed, thoughtful planning before you type the first letter of your manuscript, or if you create it through an iterative, torturous progression of multiple edited and re-written drafts. If your story fires on all cylinders, chances are it has those same nine essential milestones I’ve placed on my closet doors.

…

And that’s your cue to debate the validity of deliberately adhering to story structure when creating fiction..!

…

Actually, it doesn’t matter if you think it’s a valid strategy or a stifling constraint. Again, if your story is a good one, you’re gonna hit those marks whether you deliberately plan it or not. But you’ll get there so much faster if you do!

Anyway.

My office is clean. The runway is clear of obstruction, and the guideposts… fifty two unlined index and nine milestone markers… are in place. Time to fly!

Postscript On Story Structure

Want to learn more about the nigh-immutable laws of story structure? A great breakdown can be found in “Story Engineering” by Larry Brooks. While I’ve been aware of these principles for years, I’d never effectively executed on them until I read this book. Highly recommended.

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A Special Thank You From A Reader

This made my month:

Huge thanks to Peter R. Ellis! I hope you love the books, Peter, and thank you for being a patron, too!

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