R.J. Blain's Blog, page 75

The Price of Creativity

With the recent kerfuffle over Pomplamoose being straight forward and honest about their expenditures for a tour,  I am among those who are stepping up to speak out about the price of creativity.

I have always been pretty up front about the costs of my creativity and the lengths I will go to ensure my dream job–writing novels–remains a reality. Every author is different. Some choose to do their editorial all on their own, create covers on their own, and handle every aspect of their publishing process on their own.

I can’t do that. I work with Chris Howard for my cover art. (I also reserve covers sometimes up to six months in advance. I’ve had the cover for City of Clocks for over a year, waiting for the book to be ready.) I work with Rachel Desilets for the first round of my editorial process. My proofing editorial staff is currently up in the air, although I think I’ve managed to select my main proofing editor. (I sometimes hire two–I prefer having two, as editors are human and so am I.)

I also work with Brooke Johnson for cover layout and interior design for the print editions of my novels.

I do not expect these individuals to work for free. We negotiated prices we both felt were fair and conducive for a long-term relationship. It’s the same way I handled my editorial work. I could have made more money, but when I started, I really enjoyed working with other authors. I worked in editorial to pay my novel-writing expenses. It was a way for me to balance my books.

But at the end of the day, it was–and still is–an unsound financial decision for me. I chose to martyr my finances for editorial because I wanted people to have access to something I offered. I never worked for free (nor would I) but I definitely didn’t value my work at what I should have.

As an author, I am presented with a lot of choices. How much do I charge for a book? Can I profit from this story? How much do I need to invest to make this novel happen?

How can I get the funds needed to make my career a financially sound one. My writing is a business. I’m not interested in martyring my novels for exposure. I am a philanthropist, though. I love giving to people. That’s why, instead of going for an actual sale, I gave away most of my books for free for Black Friday. While I did want exposure, I wanted to give people who couldn’t afford books a chance to get them legitimately. I wanted fans as well.

It was a conscious decision and risk to give up any hope of actual sales.

This is also why I refuse to give my novels away perma free on Amazon: I value myself and my work. My novels are my lifeline, my career, and the foundation of my hopes and dreams.

This is important to me, and my creativity, my dreams, and my hopes should not be valueless.

Let me break down the reality of this situation for you. I’m an author. My job is to write books for the enjoyment of readers. Movie actors expect to get paid for entertaining you. I expect to get paid for entertaining you.

I don’t have the hopes of a movie actor. I want a living wage.

The actual living wage where I live is $24,900. (This number was gotten by speaking to low-wage friends and finding out when they considered they had a decent quality of life.)

This is approximately $12.00 per hour. Minimum wage in Quebec is $10.35.

Considering my friends and the nature of their lifestyles, it’s entirely possible someone could survive with a good quality life at minimum wage.

So, for the sake of this discussion, I will value my work at $10.35 an hour before taxes.

In the past, I have released two novels a year. However, before I divide the wage per hour against the number of novels written, there are a few considerations I need to make:

First and foremost, I need to make $10.35 an hour after my expenses for creating the novel. This needs to be money earned for the purpose of having a good quality of life.

And to anyone who thinks authors, musicians, entertainers, and anyone who works to make you happy shouldn’t enjoy a basic and good quality of life… fuck off. I deserve to have a good living wage just like every other hard working individual out there.

Rude, yes, but I am not a martyr for your entertainment. I’m not someone to be sacrificed because you don’t want to pay for moments of happiness. Authors, musicians, and entertainers shouldn’t starve because too many people want everything for cheap.

We work hard so readers can enjoy themselves. We work very hard for that.

I work full time as an author. Next year, I’m on track to release four novels. (Most of these books are partially completed.)

This is a rough estimate, but I am expecting to spend roughly $1,500 to $2,000 per novel next year. I’ll roll with $1,500 in a best-hope situation. That’s $6,000 in general expenses for next year.

If I make $10.35 an hour at full time hours (I actually work more than full time) I would earn $24,960. In total, to make the minimum wage, I would need to bring in $31,060.

I made, approximately, a third of that before expenses.

I’m hoping with four new books in the works, I can start seeing a snowball effect and start making a minimum living wage.

No, I should not have to go ‘get a real job.’ Writing is a real job. I sit down and I work hard for more hours in a week than full-time work dictates.

It’s about time people started accepting that the entertainment industry is real work.

After all, there are men and women who will pay hookers $300 an hour. Is it really so much to ask for an author to get paid $10.35 an hour? It takes most people a lot longer than an hour to read a novel.

I think the amount of time it takes to read a novel is well worth the $3.99 to $5.99 I charge for my ebooks, don’t you?

I think this nonsense about entertainers, including authors, being valued at near-to-nothing needs to stop. I don’t write for exposure.

I write to eat.

I write to live comfortably.

I write because I like it–but that doesn’t mean I should be forced to work for nothing.

No one should have to work for nothing in the hope of someday making money.

Red Flags and Publishers

It isn’t unusual for my (editorial) clients to come to me for advice on agents and publishers. Over the years, I have forged many connections with a variety of industry professionals as I considered pursing traditional publication. If I can’t find information on a publisher, I likely know someone who does know something about the group (or individual) I’m researching.

I was asked about J Ellington Ashton Press, as my client was approached by them regarding an unfinished book she is working on–a project I’m in progress of helping her develop and edit. I encourage my clients to try to push the boundaries and look for opportunities. Sometimes good things happen; an author meets another author and gets a connection to a publisher. Sometimes an author takes a project and approaches a publisher with promising results.

Sometimes my clients are simply curious and want more information.

While my job is to help them strengthen their manuscript, if I can provide a factual answer to their questions regarding other facets of the industry, I will. I want my clients to be able to make sound decisions for themselves and their novels.

My client met an author from this press who tried to recruit her for the press after discussing the book. (This, honestly, triggered a bit of a red flag for me. That’s a personal red flag, so I filed it away as a note and went about my vetting process as normal.)

As a side trip, let me explain why this is a red flag for me: Publishing houses are looking for authors all of the time. However, most of them use an agent model or a submissions call model; authors and agents go to them. However, this tends to change at places like conventions and after certain relationships have been built. There are exceptions to every rule and stereotype, but mostly authors and agents approach publishers.

Legitimate agents will approach authors, though–and sometimes from startling prestigious agencies. Once upon a time, I was approached by an agent from a very notable house in London. As I did with my client, I vetted the existence of the agent and that they were authentically a part of the agency. I was gobsmacked. It didn’t work out for us as a author/agent pairing, but such approaches do happen.

Back to the main subject.

When I’m checking out a publisher (or literary agent) for myself (or for others) there are a few criteria I look for. I check the cover quality. I click through most of the publisher’s catalog and check for sales rankings, reviews, and read samples. Depending on what I find, I’ll check for business reviews and complaints. (I did not do this last step for this publisher.)

I asked my client some questions, and here is what I found out.

Editorial: The publishing house utilizes two editors. (This is typically good.) Authors are not charged for editorial. (Also good.)

Here’s my personal issue with this press: Authors who sign with this house are, apparently, asked not to make use of beta readers or hired editors to improve their stories. (Bad. This means a writer can’t follow their process to create better books. Hiring an editor is flat-out banned, and the house grudgingly permits betas. Keyword, grudgingly.) I’m biased because I’m an editor, but I’m also biased because hiring editors is a critical part of my progress. Even if I wasn’t a self publisher, I’d probably hire before submitting to an agent. Hiring an editor who works well with me and my writing style is an integral part of how I produce a book. I need someone to ask advice, brainstorm ideas with, and run issues by as I’m working on a book.

Not all folks are like this, of course.

Cover Art: Ouch, my eyes. There were one or two decent covers, but most of them were… not. Authors are given the option to provide their own covers if they can get the artist to sign over all rights to the cover. (This is typically a good thing, as many authors can’t afford cover artists. However, I found the covers to be lacking in appeal. See more about this in the Sales section.)

Sales: Here is the real kicker. Does a publisher provide marketing and ways to improve an author’s sales? So, here is where the most research happens. I clicked a lot of their books, including ones from their top author.

Most titles ranked between 500,000 to 1,300,000 in sales ranking with Amazon. Their best author had quite a few books, but only one of his titles had 10 reviews. (The rest had fewer.) While I expect new releases to have less than 10 reviews, I have higher expectations for novels released by a publisher. The publisher should be making efforts to contact reviewers and making certain their books have good visibility. That is important for sales; it’s also important for their authors.

So, after looking at the press, I really recommended that my client decline their invitation. I have nothing against small presses; I think they open a lot of doors to authors… but I do feel authors shouldn’t be so desperate as to lose control of their novels and writing process without a high chance of it paying forward in sales and visibility with major ebook vendors.

Be aware. Don’t just jump at an offer because someone is interested in you. (It feels great having someone interested in you, I know! But make the best choice for your novel. That choice may ultimately be self publish with your own skills, but don’t just dive in because you perceive an open door.)

It could slam you in the ass–or worse, in your royalty check.

In conclusion: Could this press be viable for some people? Sure, it’s possible. However, it’s a very risky gamble, and considering that the publisher doesn’t encourage authors to improve themselves outside of their contracts, it’s a very risky proposition indeed.

On Self-Publishing: Ebook Sales versus Print Sales

One of my dear writer friends, Megan, asked me a question about self-publishing and income. She wanted to know if ebook or print sales were more profitable when publishing through Amazon.

I have no data beyond my own, so please consider this as anecdotal information. I am one individual. I do not have access to sales like a publisher does. All I can share with you is the performance of my novels.

In order for this post to work, I must first discuss the differences between print and e-book copies, particularly in the royalty department.

Ebooks are far, far more profitable. There is no contest between the two formats. Here is a list of my ebooks and their royalty rates for Amazon.com:

Winter Wolf: $4.13
Inquisitor: $2.74
Storm Without End: $2.74
The Eye of God: $2.74

Here is a list of my print versions and their royalty rates for Amazon.com:

Winter Wolf: $1.74
Inquisitor: $0.61
Storm Without End: $0.56
The Eye of God: $1.04

Here is a convenient list showing how many print copies I need to sell to stay on par with ebook sales:

Winter Wolf: 2.3 Print Copies
Inquisitor: 4.49 Print Copies
Storm Without End: 4.89 Print Copies
The Eye of God: 2.6 Print Copies

I tried to price the print copies to make them somewhat affordable for their length for those who want print versions of my titles.

Most people want ebook copies.

Here is a list of all of my print sales through Amazon.com:

Winter Wolf: 0 Sales. $0.00 Royalties.
Inquisitor: 41 Sales. $24.62 Royalties.
Storm Without End: 17 Sales. $13.22 Royalties.
The Eye of God: 3 Sales. $3.12 Royalties.

Here is the data for the past six weeks of ebook sales for Amazon.com, including number of sales and royalty figures:

Winter Wolf: 102 Copies. $404.04 Royalties.
Inquisitor: 53 Copies. 213.53 Royalties.
Storm Without End: 0 Copies. $0.00 Royalties.
The Eye of God: 0 Copies. $0.00 Royalties.

Now, something that did factor into these sales (and in some cases, the lack thereof) is the fact I did a free promotion on three of the four novels. Here’s the number of free copies given away by title:

Inquisitor: 6,332 Copies.
Storm Without End: 1,555 Copies.
The Eye of God: 388 Copies.

For my final presentation of numbers, the current week’s royalties. (No number of copies sold data, sorry–Amazon’s reporting system can be mean sometimes.)

Winter Wolf: $299.15
Inquisitor: $98.76
Storm Without End: $10.92
The Eye of God: $1.40

Because I’m unwilling to jack the price of my print novels up by $5.00+ a copy for expanded distribution, I do not have a presence in bookstores. As a self-published indie with limited budget, this is just something I have to live with. I think I’m in the same situation with many others.

I won’t stop doing print copies because I like having them–and I know fans enjoy print copies as well. However, I write my investment into formatting and print costs as a loss with no expectation to get it back. It is a luxury I can afford, because it makes me happy and it makes some of my fans happy.

That alone makes the hassle of producing a print version worthwhile for me.

Your mileage will vary.

Writing is Hard

(c) qisur (Creative Commons – Flickr)

Sometimes, I really wonder why I picked writing as a career choice. There are days where I think any career would be better, including garbage dumpster diver, tripe maker, and snow crab fisher. Let’s add septic system cleaner to the list while I’m at it, simply to make sure the list of yicky jobs is robust enough.

You can use a thesaurus to replace ‘robust’ with a few other descriptors. The less flattering, the better.

When I was working on Winter Wolf, I entertained the thought of just giving up multiple times. I was behind schedule, often due to circumstances far outside of my control. Money hasn’t been my friend this year, entirely thanks to the sewage flood in June or July or whatever the hell month ruined my finances. I try not to think of it overly much.

My pride took a huge kick when I had to ask my mother for financial help so I could go on vacation and we could keep our plans for the future intact. My mother, being who she is, was game to helping out. That’s what families do for each other.

(Friends too.)

But I kept going. Work was slow and painful, but I kept going. Every time I opened an editorial file from one of my editors, I verged on panicking because there was going to be some tragic error needing corrected!! My pride always takes a kick during the editorial phase. It is a necessary but painful step in the writing process for me. But I sit down, shut up, and fix the things my editors tell me need to be fixed. That’s an integral part of the editorial process.

It doesn’t matter how good of an editor you hire if you ignore what they tell you. There are a lot of talented editors I know that I’ll never approach because I can’t trust them. Their manners either annoy me or come across as egotistical. That doesn’t work in an editor-to-client relationship. When I accept a client for editorial, I make certain they’re aware of my sense of humor and need to be very direct in how I write my feedback and comments. I don’t sugarcoat things. I don’t tell them something is good when it is not. I give compliments when compliments are earned (thus throwing the sandwiching bad news with good news on both sides method out the window.)

This is part of why writing is so hard. Anyone can write words. But not everyone can write words, entrust their manuscript to someone, and make use of everything they’re being taught. Writing is hard–improving your writing is harder still.

I believe readers are very quick to judge authors by the words they have written. If a story doesn’t meld with their tastes, the author has gone on a personal vendetta to waste their time. It makes having writing and releasing a novel a very scary proposition sometimes.

But because it’s hard, it is worth doing. I never liked doing things the easy way, not really. If I did, I would have self-published ten years ago, producing something truly terrifying.

But I didn’t.

I wanted to get better.

And that’s when I learned writing was hard.

But just because something is hard doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile. That was one of the harder lessons I had to learn with Winter Wolf. Right up until its release day, I questioned if I should have invested so much time and heartache into the book. In truth, I still do question it. I worry constantly over those who won’t like the book and feel I have done them a personal injustice because of it.

I care about my readers and fans… and that is one of the biggest burdens of all. But it also drives me onward. Because I care about my fans and readers, I want to write even better books. And this hope is what makes writing hard–it’s hard because I make it hard, because I have great expectations for myself, and I know it will be very difficult to live up to them.

And that is why I keep going forward: writing is hard…

… but quitting is unacceptable, because I care about my readers and fans. It isn’t just about me anymore. It’s about me, my fans, my readers, and about creating a career I can live from. (Sorry, the money does matter. I like eating. I also like feeding my cats, keeping the heat in the house on, and saving up to go on a nice vacation to get away from life for a little while. I want to live because I write. I want my job to be a good part of my life, not just a way of feeding myself.)

And that’s also why writing is hard.

I care.

Writing a Functional Outline

Writing is hard. We’ve heard it before. Whether you’re a pantser or a plotter, the act of sitting down and writing a novel is difficult. It never ceases to amaze me how many people try to convince others writing a novel is easy.

I’ve published four novels. It doesn’t get easier with the next book. If anything, it becomes harder. Why? I want to write even better books. This is challenging. It’s tiring. It’s difficult. I want to tell stories readers love. That’s conceited, but there you have it. I want to reach that next level, and each time I improve, it’s never enough for me.

I want to do even better. The Eye of God was a beginner’s foray into publishing. It’s a flawed book–it’s really a flawed book. The first version had too many errors. I went back, hired yet another editor, and fixed as many of them as I could. But the book is flawed–because my writing skills hadn’t improved as much as I wanted before I published.

I had to start somewhere. It’s still my baby, but… it’s flawed. Storm Without End came next. There were, thankfully, fewer errors in this novel. But I wasn’t where I wanted to be. (I”m still not.)

Inquisitor was better than SWE. Winter Wolf is better than Inquisitor.

There are some notable differences between all four of my novels.

The Eye of God had little to no planning. Pantsed it all, including the rewrites.

Storm Without End had little planning–I knew a few important concepts of the novel through trial, error, and many rewrites, until I essentially outlined the series through more than five rewrites of the first book and the main character’s backstory. (This is inefficient as a method of writing.)

Inquisitor had basic preplanning done. Mostly, I plotted the deaths because they amused me.

Winter Wolf was fully outlined prior to drafting the rewritten version. I had written the original draft of Winter Wolf prior to ever trying an outline.

Oh, the difference an outline made.

I can already hear the pansters huffing, puffing, and snorting over this. Bear with me, pantsers. You likely do these things in your head as you write. You just don’t write them down.

(And if you aren’t, well, I invite you to consider trying it sometime and seeing how your writing changes.)

But outlines are finicky things. I’m currently helping one of my clients with her writing process; she’s inexperienced but a very hard worker. She’s cramming more into a few months than some writers ever do in a year. Because she’s working so hard, so am I–it’s very easy for me to respond to someone putting in a great deal of effort on their work. She’s treating herself very seriously, and in turn, I treat her very seriously.

(One of my other clients also falls into this exact same boat–and she is getting the same treatment, although I think she is cursing me. Actually, I think they’re both cursing me. That’s okay.)

The issue of outlining has come up with both of these wonderful writing ladies. They have both smacked into hurdles with their outlining.

At the end, the problems they both faced were the same… and it is the secret to writing a functional outline.

Most people outline for plot events not for characters. A novel is the story of people, of characters, and their lives. So, when you write an outline based on events and not on characters, the outline is likely going to result in being a glorious waste of time full of good ideas you can’t use because your characters would never do that.

Pantsers site their characters as the reason they don’t outline. They don’t know how their characters will react. And that is the absolute best reason I’ve ever heard against outlining.

Characters drive plot and story, not events. Many plotters forget this when they go to outlining, resulting in a book with wooden, boring characters. The characters have been molded to fit the circumstances of the book–they were not the circumstances of the book. The characters are always what make or break a book. This is what a character-driven book is about.

Let me tell you what a character-driven book is. Many people roll their eyes and go “Marketing lingo!!!” when they hear the term. Well, I got a news flash for you: It matters. It isn’t lingo. It is the heart and soul of a good novel.

A character-driven story is any story where the events, the emotions, the circumstances, the consequences, and very essence of a novel are driven by the decisions and personalities of all of the characters in the story. When one character says something, it matters. It changes how the story works out. It means when a character makes a decision, it matters. It changes the entire dynamic of the story.

A plot-driven story are those stories where things happen to the characters. The characters never take the front seat. They aren’t real.

Plot-driven stories are often a consequence of outlining by those who don’t know how to factor their characters into their outlines.

I outline now. Sometimes I outline in my head without bothering to write down the outline to paper, but I outline all the same. I consider my characters, who they are, what their goals are, what their motivations are, and how far they will go to accomplish something–then I take that knowledge and apply it to their actions. When I outline, I stop asking “What happens?” and start asking “Why did this happen?”

If the answer is character did this, then I feel I’m on the right track.

I can’t tell you how to write a functional outline. It’s a personal journey. All I can do is share with you how I write a functional outline.

It all begins with the main character.

Gratuitous Winter Wolf Cover

When I outlined Winter Wolf, I sat down and wrote an entire page of information on the main character, Nicole. I wrote about what she faced in her life. I wrote very little about her past–only the important tid bits that got her from Point A to Here I am Now. Armed with that, I picked something a different character needed from Nicole. I gave this person motivations, a story, and why this favor would be important to Nicole.

Starting a novel is difficult for me–almost as hard as finishing the damned thing. So, I dove in right away. I gave my character a reason she would face something she feared. (Someone she appreciates asked her to.)

Thus the first bit of her characterization was created. Nicole is a person who does things for others–and for herself as a secondary. She’s more likely to face problems she really doesn’t want to face for the sake of someone else.

I made a note of this.

My outline began and ended with characterization notes. My outline mostly consisted of characterization notes. Why did a character do this? What will drive a character through a conversation? Who is the most dominant character? How will they sway the conversations?

Why would these characters do things?

Nicole’s characterization was always focused on what she would do for others–no matter what the cost was to her. That’s Nicole.

And because of it, she ended up in a lot of crappy situations. She’s often blind to what is best for her because she’s so busy seeing what is best for others. When I wrote the outline, I had to remind myself of this.

I had to do this with all of the major characters–on and off screen. I had to track what the ‘unseen characters’ were doing so I knew how their decisions would impact the novel.

My outline wasn’t about events. It never was. It included the events… but the outline was the story of the characters. It’s a game of chess; each character is a piece. It’s up to them whether they’re a pawn or a Queen, a knight or the King. While events were important, no event happened without a character being responsible for it in some fashion.

That’s the most important thing I’ve learned about writing a functional outline: by writing for the characters, I learn who they are. By learning who they are, I’m able to write an outline they can flourish in. I gave myself a map–an accurate one–about how these characters think.

As such, my outline remained viable through the entire book.

But I will make a confession: I only used approximately half of what I had actually outlined. At 125,000 words, Winter Wolf is my longest novel. I had plenty of material to have written a 250,000 word novel. In a way, I regret I didn’t have the time to write out every little detour I took. It would have been a fun ride. I was halfway through the rewrite when I realized, while I had great fun working out these side trips, they weren’t really necessary for the book. So I cut them out.

But because I spent so much time working on the characterization in my outline, the cuts didn’t hurt me. Nicole was still Nicole, and every event, every conversation, and every bit of story was founded on who she was at her heart and soul.

And because I wrote considering her at all levels, I was able to consider how she would change over the course of the novel, becoming the type of person she needed to be to accomplish her goals.

It took me almost two weeks of effort to fully outline Winter Wolf. This was done for about six hours a day. Outlining isn’t quick when you’re considering so many elements and characters… but it made all of the difference in the world for me.

I used to be a pantser. Now I’m a plotter, because I first learned how to write characters–and then I learned to outline them.

But at the end of the day? Characters matter. That’s the entire point of an outline; to create characters who can live within the pages of your book.

A good plot helps… but good characters make a book great.

Three Novels Free until Saturday!

Happy Thanksgiving to those who are celebrating! For those who want to enjoy a good book after dinner (and have a good excuse to avoid Black Friday shopping) please feel free to download one, two, or all three of the free novels available!

If you like them, please consider purchasing a copy of Winter Wolf to support my writing. ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00N1BXDMW )

About the Books!

Storm Without End ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GI7C0QG )

Kalen’s throne is his saddle, his crown is the dirt on his brow, and his right to rule is sealed in the blood that stains his hand. Few know the truth about the one-armed Rift King, and he prefers it that way. When people get too close to him, they either betray him or die. The Rift he rules cares nothing for the weak. More often than not, even the strong fail to survive.

When he’s abducted, his disappearance threatens to destroy his home, his people, and start a hopeless and bloody war. There are many who desire his death, and few who hope for his survival. With peace in the Six Kingdoms quickly crumbling, it falls on him to try to stop the conflict swiftly taking the entire continent by storm.

But something even more terrifying than the machinations of men has returned to the lands: The skreed. They haven’t been seen for a thousand years, and even the true power of the Rift King might not be enough to save his people — and the world — from destruction.

Inquisitor ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K0SDX88 )

When Allison is asked to play Cinderella-turned-Fianceé at a Halloween ball, the last thing she expected was to be accused of murder on the same night. She has to find the killer or she’ll be put to death for the crimes she didn’t commit. To make matters worse, the victims are all werewolves.

On the short list of potential victims, Allison has to act fast, or the killer will have one more body to add to his little black book of corpses.

There’s only one problem: One of the deaths has struck too close to home, and Allison’s desire for self-preservation may transform into a quest for vengeance…

The Eye of God ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E5R8Y2A )

Blaise tries to act like a good human, but someone always manages to ruin things for him. When the Emperor’s most powerful weapon is stolen and its human vessel is kidnapped from the Arena, Blaise must choose between meddling in the affairs of mortals or remaining true to his duty.

To make matters worse, the Archbishop has betrayed the church and God by giving the Emperor the second piece of the Triad, the Heart of God. Should Blaise stand idle and leave the mortals to their own devices, the people of Erelith won’t just lose their lives: Their souls will be destroyed by a power that was never meant to fall into mortal hands.

If Blaise can find the Eye of God, he might be able to save the humans from themselves. Unfortunately, his only hope for success lies in the hands of a slave who wants nothing more than to die. If Blaise can’t save Terin and enlist his help, the Erelith Empire will fall.

Winter Wolf is out in the wilds!

My blog has resembled a bit of the arctic tundra lately; sorry about the quiet. I’ve been busy. As a special bonus from life, the universe, and everything, I was sick for the release day.

I spent most of the day asleep. Let’s ignore the fact it is 5 am, okay? I got up for a bit after dozing. I’m about to go back to dozing. (I’m pretty sure this is a confession of ‘I’m still not feeling great.)

But, onto happier things! Winter Wolf is now out in the wilds! Joyous day!

The Hunted Wizard

When Nicole dabbled in the occult, she lost it all: Her voice, her family, and her name. Now on the run from the Inquisition, she must prove to herself—and the world—that not all wizards are too dangerous to let live.

The savage murder of a bookstore employee throws Nicole into the middle of Inquisition business, like it or not. Driven by her inability to save the young man’s life, she decides to hunt the killer on her own. Using forbidden magic to investigate the past, she learns that the murderer is in fact a disease that could kill the entire werewolf race.

Forced to choose between saving lives and preserving her own, Nicole embraces the magic that sent her into exile. Without werewolves, the power of the Inquisition would dwindle, and she could live without being hunted.

Nicole’s only hope for success lies in the hands of the werewolves she hates and the Inquisition she fears, but finding someone to trust is only the beginning of her problems. There are those who want to ensure that the werewolves go extinct and that the Inquisition falls.

But, if she fails to find a cure, her family—including her twin sister—will perish…

Winter Wolf is available at major epub vendors as well as Amazon.com (Sorry, no Google play; it’s a nightmare to work with and I haven’t felt up for dealing with it.)

You can also acquire the paperback version through amazon.

Note: ePub versions probably won’t be around for sale after New Years. Maintaining epub copies is a lot of work for very, very few sales thus far.

The Secret Love-Hate Relationship with my Books

I talk about my books and writing a lot. It’s a passion. I love my job. I’ve said this over, and over, and over again–and some people even believe me! But, I’m going to talk about the secret love-hate relationship with my novels… the dirty little thoughts I don’t voice often.

Join me for a trip down memory lane. Before I begin, there are some things you may want to acquire. Here’s your list:

Bleach for your brain. Some of this shit will hurt.
A tolerance for cussing. Sorry. It’s been a long week.
Not a drink. You might spit it on your monitor. That’d be bad. Very bad.
A sense of humor. Mine’s pretty warped.
This is a really long post, crap. Bring a pillow and blanket.

I started writing in late middle school to early high school, so far as I can remember. My first actual story was about gryphons and unicorns, because I had a love affair with Mercedes Lackey’s The Black Gryphon and Meredith Ann Pierce’s Birth of the Firebringer. It was not quite fan fiction, but I didn’t know how to write a story at all, so I wrote whatever. It often involved the types of scenes I loved from these two novels, though with my own characters.

It gives me the chills thinking about how close I strayed to fan fiction. (I have nothing against fan fiction. I get a hit of the stuff once or twice a year when I need a lot of giggles. I don’t mind it–I just don’t want to write it.)

My first attempts into writing were complete and total shit… with one exception.

I wrote a story about a cockroach who survived a nuclear incident. I was in engineering class, and some kids in my class wanted to know what the fuck I was doing, so I showed them. We were all bored out of our wits, so I had a little audience as I wrote this comedy about this cockroach named Bob.

I wish I still had that fucking story. I really do. I tried recreating it a few times, but I never did manage to recapture it. Maybe it was me who changed, and I lost that spark that made the story so damned funny. Out of the mouths of babes, I guess.

I have lost all of my writing up to about twelve years ago… and I only have most of the first novel I ever completed due to a fortuitous backup. My computer, my backups, and so on were all stolen–and the day after the robbery, the backup server on the other side of the continent exploded.

Fortunately for me, I had emailed a friend with it, and they still had a copy.

Here is a very short excerpt of the beginning of the book. I’m so fucking sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I read over this, and it hurt me so bad I struggled to get past the first five words. Ouch. Just ouch. I was young, okay?! I was young and stupid!

Fortunately, I got better. Sort of.

Exhibit 1:

The dragon had to die.

Shyann was not usually vindictive, but this time the loathsome creature had gone too far. Usually, only the foolish were entrapped by the beast. These few thought themselves brave, and journeyed intentionally to the dragon’s domain. This time, however, the dragon had gone hunting. Its prize was the King’s son, Alrich. Alrich was a sweet child, of gentle nature and great beauty. Only six, the kidnapping of the child prince had sown much anger amongst the peoples of the kingdom of Kelsh.

The bitter bite of regret hit her guts like a fist and she paused in her walk towards her fate to glance behind her shoulder where the white city of Elenrune lay. She could almost see its sparkling towers that shined silver in the noon sun, and the vast walls that dominated the hill on which the fair city lay. She longed to walk those streets, though they were forbidden to her. Sixteen years ago, while she was still in the womb, her mother had betrayed the king, and kingdom. What she had done, Shyann did not know. All she knew was her mother had been held prisoner until her birth and then exiled. She had been taken and raised outside of the city by one of the guardsmen, whose wife was barren.

I’m so, so fucking sorry.

This is the novel I wrote in three days to prove I could, and I averaged between 20,000 to 30,000+ words per day to make happen. And it also serves as a true example of why quantity vs quality isn’t a thing: I wrote the same level shit even when I wrote only 500 words in a day. I wrote shitty words. Very shitty, miserable, fucking unforgivable words.

Thus started my secret hatred of my own writing. When I wrote it, it was the best thing ever–the absolute pinnacle of fantasy fiction!! Oh, I’m so fucking sorry.

The truth is, the writing sucked, the plot was even worse, and I didn’t have a clue in hell how to create a character. The novel was a much-needed lesson in suckage. Take a steaming pile of dog shit, marinade it in more dog shit, and then serve it on a silver platter–we’re getting close to my feelings about this novel.

My hatred for it grew over the years, too. But I keep it around. I hate its liver and wish to spit on its carcass, but I keep it around. This was a book of hard lessons.

I fucking sucked at writing.

For those of you who enjoy my writing now, thank you for bearing with me. If you’re a writer starting out, take a look at this. It is possible to get better. You just have to want it bad enough and be willing to work really, really hard at it. How much better you get is a mystery you’ll only solve by trying. I won’t promise you’ll be great or even good, but you won’t know your limits until you try to reach them.

I have very little love for that story, but I can’t let it go. It was a painful lesson, but one I needed. So, I give a heartfelt “fuck you!!” to that novel, along with a whispered, “thank you.”

Love and hate. Who would have thought?

Exhibit 2:

Eight or so years ago, my husband gave me a gift of a writing course I found online: An author did one of those online classes to help fledglings write a novel. She went through the process of point by point outlines, and even did some developmental editing work with her students.

I didn’t finish the course.

I did finish the novel.

          Tossed by wind and wave, the large sailing vessel Deirnalla’s Hope, careened dangerously close to the white capped cliffs of the Pelliyar Range. Thunder rumbled as Melliana fought to keep her footing on the rain slicked deck. Ignoring the stinging pelt of the rain, she used the rocking of the ship to propel herself closer to the stern and the Captain’s deck. The front of the Hope felt miles away in the midst of the storm. A rush of water broke over the ship, slamming her against the railings along with several of the sailors who desperately worked the rigging. One of the three masts groaned, the half secured sail whipping in the violent winds.

“Cut the rigging!” Clinging to the railing, she struggled to regain her footing under the heaving of the waves, “Cut it!”

The rear mast creaked, the sails billowed out to their full length. One stray line whipped dangerously overhead. A strong gust of wind rocked the ship while Meliana flung herself towards the overburdened mast. She snatched at the rigging line, grimacing as the rough, slicked rope lashed against her bare arm. Blood welled from the wound. The wet rope whipped through her clenching fingers, spraying water into her face. Hissing, she reached for the knife on her belt, stumbling against the mast as another wave rocked the vessel.

I loved writing this story. This is probably the first novel I actually fell in love with. But, it is a novel I may never actually produce. Like Exhibit 1, this story was an exercise in folly. It was one of the few stories I didn’t sit down, screaming about having to write. It went with me everywhere. I carted my laptop everywhere just so I could work on it.

But I never edited it; I couldn’t bring myself to, for whatever reason. I’m still not sure why. Like Exhibit 1, it’s a novel of mistakes–mistakes I cringe over when I think too hard about it.

It did start a trend: My love of throwing characters in difficult situations from the very first page of a story.

For that, “fuck you, book!” Damned asshole novel, starting a bad habit. I still haven’t kicked it. Probably never will. Well shit.

This story is the last novel I wrote featuring unicorns.

This story gave me hope I could become an author someday. It was the first one I took somewhat seriously.

Exhibit 3:

(c) Jo Naylor (Creative Commons License – Flickr)

You get a picture of blood and a cross. Rest in fucking pieces, Exhibit 3.

Let me explain something here: I’m not hiding the story of Exhibit 3. It’s hidden because every last copy known to man has been destroyed. It was a story I had on a laptop hard drive, a single cd, and that I only printed out once… this story crushed me. I didn’t mean to lose the story, I keep everything I write.  The cd got damaged, the laptop drive exploded, and I had burned the print out. The print out was a bitter thing for me.

It was the realization my husband would never be a real supporter of my novels. Don’t get me wrong, he supports me–financially. That’s it. We have sorted things out for a semi-happy middle ground, but I showed my husband this novel.

It was terrible. It was worse than Exhibit 2, but better than Exhibit 1–timeline wise, it was written between the two. But, since I can’t show you the text… I felt Exhibit 2 needed to come first.

I made several mistakes with Exhibit 3. First, I showed my husband at around the 30,000 word mark. He hated it. He was bluntly honest and told me it was shit.

I guess I needed to hear it, but it hurt. I hated Exhibit 3 more than any other novel I have ever written. But now I regret I do not have that story around today, simply so I could snap my fingers at it and say, “I fucking told you so you thrice-blasted piece of shit…”

It proved one thing to me: Writing was hard, and I couldn’t just wallow around in melodramatic angst and expect to get better just because I was writing…

I love writing, but I hate it too. I hate it with the burning passions of a thousand suns… and all because I can never seem to write the story to the potential in my head.

Exhibit 3 had ideas–good ideas. Fun ideas. Characters I could love… but I didn’t know how to write.

And that’s why the writing class for Exhibit 2 happened. I had to get better, and I didn’t know how to on my own. I wonder how much I would have improved if I had managed to stick with the class?

I guess I’ll never know now.

Exhibit 4:

The next novel begins the slippery slope that would eventually lead me to write Storm Without End and The Eye of God. It’s the same world, but the world began to take shape. The novel doesn’t have a name, I simply call it ‘Bion’s Epic’ because Bion is the main character’s name.

Some of you might recognize the character’s name. Those who are familiar with me from #Nanowrimo will recognize it as the start of my handle, which happens to be Bionette. Yeah, that’s right. I bitched up a male character’s name and ran around with that as my handle because my real name was taken… and the other person with my name was extremely territorial and got bitchy with another variant used. So I rolled with Bionette.

This counts as my first actual foray into epic fantasy.

     Defying the laws of nature itself, snow fell in Silverna.

As the heavy flakes hit Bion’s face they melted, leaving the faintest lines of moisture on his cheeks in their passing. When the snow thickened, the water worked into his pale blond beard, cold against his chin. Instead of the warm breezes of summer, the wind was frigid. If he had not felt the chill settling into his bones, he would not have believed the weather could be so unpleasant. Every hair stood on his arms, roused by the bumps that covered his exposed flesh. Bion shivered, but did not tear his gaze from the swirling flakes above.

When the wind blew, the flakes spiraled back towards the clouds that had birthed them before they fell once more. He never imagined that anything so fantastical could naturally occur. Had he not listened to the stories, he would have been certain it was the result of some magic he did not comprehend.

Perhaps it was.

Only an insistent nudge at Bion’s side tore his attention from the clouds above. The aging, golden mule who pulled his plow stared up at him with dark liquid eyes, her long ears pricked towards him. He murmured an apology for making her stand still in the cold. Bella was too eager to hurry, straining in her efforts to drag the raised plow across the land in the direction of her stall. Farmer Tealt would not be pleased if his pet were injured from working in the chill.

The light falling of snow had turned into a swirling maelstrom of white that obstructed his view and chilled him further. What flakes had melted on his face now froze. The snow clung to his shortly cropped beard, turning into icy spikes that irritated his face as he breathed.

Bion was not the only one who had sought shelter from the weather. Farmer Tealt, wrapped in his cloak, nodded at him with approval in his dark eyes. Snow was clumped in the farmer’s short, black hair, but melted in the warmth of the barn. The chill had not yet penetrated the wooden walls.

“Snow,” Tealt proclaimed in his gravelly voice.

Yeah, I had some bad habits… but I started trying to improve on them this novel–and I mean, really tried to improve. I started editing my novels.

Exhibit 5:

This is my first attempts at seriously editing a story.

     Bion regretted stepping out of the comforting warmth of Tealt’s home and venturing into the cold. It was too late to turn back, though he looked over his shoulder towards the farmhouse that he could no longer see through the trees and fields.

The road to the village was silent, broken only by the infrequent plops of snow falling from branches above. Ice was hidden beneath the snow, turning once smooth tracks treacherous. With every breath, plumes of white fog erupted from his nose and mouth, the frosty clouds drifting towards the slate-gray sky.

There should have been bird song, sweet melodies that were ever present in the village. There were no birds in the sky or on the branches that he could see.

Dread tightened his chest as soon as the village came into view. For the normal weather, the average home was beyond sufficient protection from rain. The structures, made of wood and with good thatch, had not withstood the fury of the snow storm. On the fringe of the village, his home had not collapsed completely, though the roof was all but gone. He stared at the building, his heart beating quicker as he realized just how much danger they had been in the previous night.

“Dear gods, have mercy,” he whispered. He hurried his pace, pushing himself through the drifts with panicked determination. He had never viewed his home as spectacular in size nor construction, but seeing it in such a state only chilled him more than the winds ever could.

To my shame, I never finished this novel. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I wrote the first 80,000 words and ground to a halt. Something needed to happen within the pages–something I wasn’t yet capable of forcing myself to write.

The last passages of the story are where I hit that wall and hated myself so much I put the story down and never returned to it. I challenged myself a lot in this novel.

I counted deaths in number of villages, and I practiced how to describe someone’s final moments through the state of their corpse. I learned how to research for a novel–I wanted facts, not just speculations. I wanted characters who changed within the pages.

I wanted to be able to kill a character because they had been cornered, and could not get themselves out–with or without help.

I couldn’t do it. Well, I did… but I stopped. I couldn’t bear myself to keep writing. I had closed a chapter on a character, and because I had, I closed the book for the entire novel.

I was never brave enough to pick it back up. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to tell this story as it needs told–and I hate myself and the story as a result.

Exhibit 6:

Enter Kalen, the character who would eventually feature in Storm Without End.

I finished this book in one month during NaNoWriMo. It was 80,000 words. It was terrible. But after several failures at writing a novel in complete, I needed to finish something. So I did something absolutely insane: I stole a plot feature from a favored anime, and I rolled with it. Actually, two plot features from two favored animes.

I really believed I would publish this novel one day… and I did.

But I kinda hate how it was a totally different book than what I set out to originally write.

From the great spire of the Academy, a single bell tolled. Kalen knew the bell, the sound was so ingrained into his memory he could never mistake it for another. Rich and deep, it reverberated through his bones until it made even his teeth ache. Its tone was so loud he easily believed that it could be heard across the entire city.

Kalen paused, slowing his stride from a hurried jog to a meandering walk to look towards the church belfry. It was a foolish gesture. All he could see from the inner corridors of the Academy of the Arts was the stucco ceiling of the hallway. He should have known better, but there was something about the echoes of the single chime that tugged at him. Stopping, he frowned up at the ceiling. Something differed about that somber tolling, but he could not figure out just what.

So distracted by the sound, he was caught completely unaware as a hand seized Kalen’s collar and yanked him into a suite. His assailant – if that is what he could call the resident prankster – was giggling quietly even as Kalen tripped and fell into the center of the magic circle that had been sketched into the floor. White traces marred the fabric of his black trousers.

Kalen groaned. Had he been paying attention, he would have avoided his cousin’s room altogether.

“Tsk,” Lenar chided as he pulled the door closed.

“What are you doing, Lenar?” Kalen sat up and rubbed at the back of his head. His ears rang from where he had hit the hardwood floor. Unlike his own dorm room, Lenar’s was shrouded in darkness. Only the light of a single flickering candle illuminated the chamber. That was an impressive feat. How his cousin had prevented the light from streaming in from the two large windows of the room was beyond his imagining.

Probably magic. It was always, always magic with Lenar.

Enter Exhibit 7… and a picture!

Exhibit 6 birthed Exhibit 7, which in turn birthed the world this cover features, the Rift. Art by Chris Howard.

I won’t go into all of the six or so variations that eventually led to Storm Without End, but you get the idea. So, an unspoken thank you to those novels–my first serious foray into editing with a goal of producing a story I wouldn’t be totally ashamed of publishing.

God, you have no idea how many tears and hours of heartache I invested in those versions. And the cussing. Just… yeah. Motherfucker!!! was a tame one in the house during those days.

Exhibit 7 was the first novel I received not one, but four requests for a full manuscript on… and one of those requests for a full almost landed me an agent. But I wasn’t quite ready yet, I guess–it didn’t work out.

I still curse at the amount of time and heartache I spent rewriting the book to that agent’s notes… But I have to thank him, too. It was a hard, necessary lesson.

But so many tears, so many tears at my failure.

Stones crunched beneath approaching feet.

Kalen tensed. Lowering his hand to his sword, he pressed against the cliff that rose high above the broad trail. The sun-baked rock warmed his back. While the red-and-yellow banded stone outcropping protected him from the worst of the wind, he regretted leaving his gauze face mask shoved in his pocket rather than tied across his nose and mouth where it could have done him some good. It was too late to fix it. By the time it was in place, he’d be found. Grit blew in his eyes, but he was left with no choice but to ignore its sting.

He sighed from a mix of resignation and disgust. There was nothing for at least a fortnight the way he had come. That left few reasons for anyone to be on the trail without a horse.

Grinding his teeth together, he shook his wrist to loosen his muscles. As always, right before meeting a potential enemy, he longed for his left arm. With it, he could have swiped his hair out of his eyes or retrieve his mask. He could have shielded his eyes from the glare of the sun.

Kalen flicked at the leather strap that held his sword in its custom sheath. It separated from the loop that secured it so that the weapon fell into his hand. His empty left sleeve fluttered in the wind. Normally, the sleeve was contained with a black chest-wrap embroidered with his Sigil. But, that was with his horses, both of which he’d sent down the trail toward the city that morning.

It had been a long time since he had to worry about whether or not the unconstrained material would hamper his ability to fight.

Enter Exhibit 8… the opening of Storm Without End.

Kalen stared down at his feet and wondered what had happened to his boots. Thick, black mud oozed between his toes.

If he had his boots, the cold, wet forest wouldn’t have bothered him quite so much. His feet tingled, promising agony if he dared to take a single step. His only arm alternated between burning and freezing. A pair of dark dots on the back of his hand marked where he’d been bitten. He remembered that much. The serpent had been red, gold, silver and black, and it had struck faster than he could react.

What had happened after he’d been bitten? He had flung the serpent away, too late to stop its venom.

That, however, had been within the Rift, where the sun heated the stone and blistered the feet of those who dared to walk without boots. Serpents didn’t thrive in forests. They basked in the sun, waiting for people foolish enough to walk the trails of the Rift without paying attention. Kalen’s mouth twisted up in a rueful grin. Shaking his head, he stared down at his feet again and wiggled his toes.

How could he have journeyed so far without his boots? The answer to where he was and how he had gotten there surely hinged on the mystery of his bare, mud-covered feet.

There are still things I hated about Storm Without End. I hated it was as short as it was. I hated that I had to cut scenes I didn’t want to cut. I hated that I had to write that one scene, which all of my beta readers screamed at me to add back in, because the book lost bits of its life with its removal–but that scene hurt me. I cried. I hated it. I hated it, but it stayed.

I hated that it wasn’t everything I dreamed it would be and more. I wanted to do better–be better. Write better. Tell a better story.

But I loved that I finished it. This was the story I really wanted to publish.

Don’t get me wrong, The Eye of God is a story I wanted to tell too, but it’s a different story–it wasn’t my baby. The Eye of God didn’t have a history of seven versions before I finally created Storm Without End.

Storm Without End represents five years of my life. Five years of failures. Then, one little happy moment of success tempered with a bitter realization… if I wanted to succeed at writing, I couldn’t dedicate five years to one title, trying over and over again to write a perfect story. A perfect story is likely never to happen in my lifetime.

I’m not putting The Eye of God on exhibit, but maybe I should. I’m still battling my inner hatred of that book… because it was a novel of mistakes. It was the first I published. There were moments I believed it would be the last, because how could I put myself through such misery again?

The Eye of God was never a happy story for me. Maybe, one day, it will be–once I bury it beneath the tragedy and victories of Royal Slaves and Genocide. It’s not an easy story to tell. I don’t enjoy the slavery or the tortures I put these characters through–a necessary evil to give them the room to grow, the room to become something so much more than they were in the pages of The Eye of God.

I definitely don’t enjoy the negative attention the novel gets because I do not soften the blows for anyone in the story. I don’t sugar coat a society where women are slaves, and the noble born women are merely slaves manacled with silk and satin instead of iron and steel.

But these women cannot fight to become who they can be, they cannot fight against their society, if their society is not honest–honest to the culture they have been born to, and the greed and evils of those who control the people.

It isn’t a story of empowered women doing great things. It isn’t a story of empowered men doing great things.

It is a story of women and men who must, somehow, empower themselves from the lowest run and become the sort of people capable of saving an entire culture from itself.

And because of this, the first novel is hard. It’s really hard.

But I wouldn’t tell it any other way, even if it insults women who believe women in fantasy literature should be powerful.

And that hurts, and I hate how it hurts… so deep within, there’s a certain amount of hatred associated with the novel–with all of my novels.

But beneath all of that hatred, love remains; a love of writing, a love of connecting with those who get what I was trying to write, and even a love of connecting with the readers who hated the story so much they have nothing but foul words and thoughts for me.

I touched them, and that’s saying a lot.

Underneath all of my love of writing and being an author, there’s a foundation built on self-doubt, self-hatred, and general disgust for myself as a human being for being capable of writing stories that challenge everything I personally believe in.

I guess there’s some truth about that one saying. You know the one about joy and loss, and not being able to experience one fully without the other.

Without the hate, I’m not sure I’d be able to fully embrace what I love about writing… and I wouldn’t be motivated to do even better. I can only hope the next novel is better.

P.S.: Fuck Winter Wolf anyway. And fuck you too, Inquisitor.

Quantity over Quality… or not?

(c) Jo Naylor (Creative Commons License – Flickr)

We’re coming up to November, where a great many people are planning on participating in NaNoWriMo. It’s the time of year where accusations of quantity over quality are thrown at leisure, with no real care who is targeted.

I’m going to kick this concept to the curb right now. This is a tough-love type of post, and I’m not going to sugar coat, butter, or add bacon to any of this.

You can have quantity and quality at the same time. So go ahead, bleed on the page, and be proud of writing 5,000, 7,000, or 10,000 words in a day.

No, I’m being serious. You can. There’s a simple math formula for this.

For the sake of this post, I’m going to confess I typically max out at around 1,000 words per hour, if I’m working with little distraction. (I can write closer to 3,000 if I’m doing direct transcription needing little edits.) I’m closer to the 500-750 range, and there are some hours I only write 200 words in an hour.

So, I’m going to use three data sets: (A) 200, (B) 500, and (C) 1,000 words per hour.

For the sake of this argument, my goal is 1,667 words for the day.

A: At a rate of 1,000 words an hour, it will take me just over an hour and a half hours to write 1,667 words.

B: At a rate of 500 words an hour, it will take me just over three and a half hours to write 1,667 words.

C: At a rate of 200 words an hour, it will take me eight and a third hours to write 1,667 words.

Same author, three different word per hour counts. Now, here’s the kicker.

People automatically assume the quality of the writing, at the 200 words per hour rate, is better than the quality of the writing at the 1,000 words per hour rate.

It’s not. (It’s actually worse, true story.)

The quality of writing does not differ between the 1,000 word rate and the 200 word rate. If anything, the quality of the 200 word rate might actually be lower, as I am distracted and am not writing as well as I could.

Quantity has absolutely no bearing over the quality of what you’re writing. Get over it, please. Thank you.

You are writing.

You have a specific writing skill at this moment in time. Don’t like it? Well, go do something about it. Take some online creative writing courses. Find one of those $40 programs to have an experienced author guide you through their method of writing a novel. Read books on writing.

In short, shut the fuck up and do something about it, if you aren’t happy with your quality. Hire an editor. Hire three editors. Get involved in critiquing and beta-reading exchanges.

Whether you’re writing 200 words per hour or 1,000 words per hour, you are the person coming up with those words. You are the indicator of your quality, no matter how much you write.

What matters is how much time you invest in your writing.

See, the thing with NaNoWriMo is this: A lot of writers who have never written before, or who only write during November, are trying to write books.

Of course the quality isn’t going to be as good. They aren’t professional authors.

It is generally accepted that many published authors target 2,000 new words per day. Yet, we’re happy with their quality. It’s not quantity over quality, not for them! Oh no, never for them.

The math is simple: How many hours you invest plus the number of words you write is your quantity.

Your quality is not going to change because you invested more hours.

Your quality is not going to improve because you invest more hours, either. I know, that sounds rather counter intuitive, but bear with me a moment: Improvement only occurs when you approach something with the intent to improve.

Your writing quality is more of a static than a variable; You are you, and you have a certain skill with the written word.

So, do not be ashamed of writing a lot of words in a day, if you’re investing more time to do it. Quantity is no indicator of quality.

(Sure, if you’re trying to bang out as many words in an hour as you can, you’ll have a little bit more editorial cleanup to do, but typos aren’t an indicator of quality.)

You’d still tell the same story, using the same style, regardless of whether or not you write 500 words an hour, 1,000 words an hour, or 3,000 words an hour. Why am I making this broad assumption?

I’ve done it, and my editors haven’t been wiser for it–though when I write slower, closer to the 200 words per minute rate, I get scolded for trying too hard. I’ll let you figure that one out for yourself, but it’s true. Slower quantity resulted in lower quality.

Next time someone tries to berate you for writing a lot of words today, remember this: You are the factor for whether they are quality words or not… and you’ll only write quality words if you practice writing with the intent to improve.

So, the next time you think 7,000 words in a 18 hour period of time is insane, remember this: That’s only 390 words an hour, and most writers can accomplish such a goal.

Here’s a tough love message for some of you: When someone is proud of the work they’ve done, shut the fuck up unless you’re congratulating them for working hard, and keep your jealousy to yourself.

Jealousy over someone investing a great deal of time doing what they love isn’t the right way to approach it. If you want their word count, sit down and fucking write.

You are you, and your quality isn’t going to be negatively impacted because you’re actually bothering to work. Almost every writer I know can manage 390 words in an hour. Most people are awake for 18 hours at a time.

If you really want to write so many words in a day, you can. If you choose to.

Quality over quantity is a bullshit mechanism trying to make productive people who want to work feel guilty for doing something others are too lazy to do. So, next time you point your finger at someone and squeal, “Quantity over quality!” remember you’re wrong.

It’s in your head, and those poisonous little thoughts should stay there. Don’t belittle others because of what you fail to do.

I used to feel that way about quantity, too…

I was a petty, jealous little bitch. For that, I’m sorry. But now I know better: Quantity and quality have very little correlation in a draft; you will always be you, and your quality is consistent with that, and will not change for the better or the worse because you decide to actually sit down and work.

But consider this: Our society doesn’t value hard workers, not really. That doesn’t give you the right to belittle someone because you’re jealous, however.

If you’re that jealous, sit down and do as they do. Write. It’s the only way to write a lot of quality words. There’s no other way to do it. Invest the time working seriously, and the words will come.

The Beauty of Failure

When I set out to write this blog post, I was going to link to a whole slew of epic fails.

… once upon a time, there was a site dedicated to some pretty epic fails. I failed to find the fails. They were… wins? Cool things? Some propaganda, but no fails.

I checked through three pages of archives.

I failed to find the fails, and the irony of this made me laugh quite a bit.

So, come journey with me on a rambling discussion on failures–and what failures birth, which is success. There is a liberal amount of cursing, so you may want to look away at some places, if that sort of thing bothers you. This applies to writing, in a certain sense, although I’ll be illustrating the point with photography rather than the written word.

Lion Fish is Displeased with RJ’s Fail.

Failure can be a beautiful thing. When it happens to us, we don’t like it… generally. I’m going to pretend those who are either masochistic or sadistic don’t exist right now. I definitely don’t like it, though I’ve been told I belong in both camps for some reason. (I’m a writer… isn’t it obvious?) There’s a certain amount of dread and anxiety I associate with failure, whether I scored poorly on a test, stubbed my toe while falling up the stairs ( a common occurrence, I assure you), or not meeting a goal I set for myself. It’s usually negative.

However, it’s merely one side of a coin. I’m a firm believer that failure can lead to really good things–if I take the time to learn from my mistakes and do something about it. It can be motivational. I don’t like the feeling of failure. It reminds me I’m not perfect (le gaspe!!!) and that I need to keep improving. Without this feeling, I don’t think I’d work nearly as hard to avoid feeling it again.

Failure is the mother of success, in my opinion, because without the bitterness of defeat, I don’t think I’d have the motivation to push myself as hard as I can.

In short, I enjoy the thrill of success, and only through failure am I able to reach that place. If everything was easy, if I never failed at anything, I don’t think I’d go nearly as far.

But failure hurts. Losing hurts. It doesn’t just hurt–it sucks a lot.

I want to draw your attention to the photograph above. It is a picture of a lion fish. I took it. It is one of seven or eight lion fish pictures I took, and the only one worth keeping–the others were blurred beyond salvation, or I got a shot of a fish ass, which didn’t interest me as a photographer. I’m sure there’s a market for fish ass, but it’s not me. I know, I’m such a prude.

If I want fish ass, I’d like caviar. It comes from a fish’s ass–but I don’t like caviar, so more fish ass for you folks!

Going back to the picture… in short, six or seven failures happened before I found one picture I wanted to keep. But because one shot didn’t work, I kept trying, until I got one I could be happy with.

I was not leaving Mandalay Bay’s Shark Reef without a picture of a lion fish. I used to have one as a pet, and it made me happy seeing them–and remembering my mother’s pet lion fish. Lion fish! Lion fish!

There’s a lesson here for me, and maybe for others, if they care. Success, even for small things like taking a photograph, isn’t guaranteed. Try, try, and try again. Sometimes, you’ll bust. Other times, you’ll get lucky and the lion fish will stare you in the camera, all pissed you’re pointing things in his face.

More importantly: Lion fish are fucking ninjas. Don’t let that spiky, hey, look at me!!! visage fool you. They’re fucking ninjas. Not only are they fucking ninjas, they will kill you. Kings of the mother fucking ocean, I tell you. Forget sharks, whales, and so on. Lion fish rule the seas.

I warned you I would ramble, didn’t I? If not, consider yourself schooled.

Sometimes success isn’t directly accompanied by failure. On the same trip I met Mr. Ninja Lion Fish, King of the Mother Fucking Ocean, I also met a bee. I stalked this bee, because he was pretty, and he was with flowers. I like bees, and I like flowers. I had my camera.

I don’t like being stung by a bee. Bee stings fucking suck. So, respect those bees, yo!

I took a single photograph and moved on. Here is the result.

This bee is not a ninja.

I have now subjected you to bee ass. You’re welcome. Because bee ass is far superior to fish ass.

There was no direct failure associated with this photograph, but because I spent so much time failing with other photographs, I had the skill I needed to capture a little bee in one shot. What? You haven’t seen failures yet? Here, let me introduce you.

To make this make sense, I’m going to showcase a ‘success’, and then I’m going to showcase a bunch of photographs I had to take to get that one success. I’m going to showcase a squirrel.

Squirrels are motherfucking ninjas, too, in case you didn’t know.

This squirrel is a hockey playing ninja, and he’s coming for you.

You may notice I put quotes around success above. That’s right, I did. Let’s look at this mother fucker hockey playing squirrel who is ready to take your face and smash it on the ice. His legs are blurry, and he’s kinda… he’s going to get you with those demon paws. You’re fucked, we’re all fucked. He must have taken lessons from the Lion Fish.

It’s not a well-composed picture… but it’s so comical I love it. Therefor, to me, it is a success. Success and failure is sometimes a personal opinion. I really like this photograph, so it is a failure.

That’s right, squirrels. Now, for an entire gallery of fail squirrels! I find there’s something wrong with pretty much every single photograph in this gallery. There’s one I was on-the-fence over, but ultimately, it didn’t make my list of favorites, so it counts as a failure.

Some of you may disagree. My failures might count as a success for someone else… and that’s a good thing. It’s a sign of progress and alteration of goals. Once upon a time, any one of these photographs would have been a success for me, but I wanted to get better than what I was, so what used to be successes became failures.

There’s a moral of the story in here somewhere, and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t have to do with photography, although I’m sure you really wanted to see pictures of ninja animals being awesome.

There are times you don’t get to decide what a failure or success is. That’s a part of life. But, you control how you approach your failures and successes.

Will your success be good enough, or will you decide you can do better?

Failure is how you learn you can do better. Success is the reward for doing better.

But the real trick is in deciding that a simple success isn’t good enough, and that there are more hills to climb. Sometimes you can’t turn failure into successes, either. Throw away the bullshit your mom and dad told you about being able to do anything. You can’t. If you’re an asthmatic person, you’re not going to be modeling the walkway wearing perfume. You’d die.

If you’re someone with average IQ, becoming a rocket scientist may not happen for you either. But that’s a failure you can learn from–just because you can’t become a rocket scientist because holy fuck those people are super smart doesn’t mean you can’t learn from them, and it doesn’t mean you can’t love rocket science.

It just means you are a hobbyist instead of career-oriented, and you can hunt for successes within your reach.

But that’s another beauty of failure: Only through failure can you learn your limitations. Limitations exist for all of us. I have lots of them, and many of them involve social awkwardness. I never did pick up on social cues very well, so I don’t get along well with as many people as I would like to. (This may be a case of trying too hard.)

The truly brave, the truly admirable… those people find those limitations through effort, work, and ultimately failure. And when they can, they surpass those limitations.

Failure hurts, but it’s a beautiful thing.