David Barron's Blog, page 4

Science Fantasy Romance 2 - Deep Sleep

Deep Sleep


SF002


Available at

Amazon.com * Amazon.co.uk

Smashwords

Kobo * Sony * Diesel

Barnes & Noble

DriveThruFiction




Collected in

A Future Darkly




Blurb

A teenage psion wakes up alone on a failing colony ship. As
her memory returns, she struggles to survive and escape to the planet's
surface.




Memories

before reading

This story was my favorite—of the 'dark ones'—for a long
time, and I used it as a showpiece of sorts whenever anybody said "I want to
read something you've written!" I remember a crude drawing of the spaceship I
made, which I'd love to show you but it has perished. This is one of the few
stories I went back and rewrote, which means, as I sit down to read, I'm a
little worried my memories of the Creative story will be ruined by Mr. Editor...





Review

after reading

Whew! That's a good story. As I read, I remembered what Mr.
Editor did, which was save the story. In the first draft, the ship's computer
had been an entirely unnecessary character, its entire purpose easily edited
down to a log entry. I can see (but you can't) the brush-strokes where Mr.
Editor cleaned up Creative's sloppy timeline, smoothing out the flash-backs
while driving the survival horror plot. Oh, and he changed the ending. Good
work, Mr. Editor. This time. This story reminds me how much more
confident I've become in my Creative voice in the year or so since I wrote it,
but I'll still hold it up a showpiece for Science Fantasy Romance. 




Next Time

Director Chen Saves the Day






Thanks for reading!

feel free to commentAvailable Stories

Godby/Barron Convo 1: Speeding

The second special guest in my
ongoing series of Google DocTalks™ is my good pal Ben Godby. As you
read this, remember that we came up with all the section headings
beforehand and use that as a guide to our organizational abilities.
Enjoy!




Ben Godby of BenGodby.com is BG

David Barron of by David Barron is daB




Lit & Pulp

Pulp Lit

Literary Pulp(?) vs. Science
Fantasy Romance




David Barron:
So, we're two writers who seem to have taken two separate roads, I
to the Spell-check and Submit It highway of pulp writing—if I had that classic post to write again,
I'd title it "Spell Check and Forget It"—littered with the
half-remembered road-killed plots of the Story Before, and you to the
All My Stories Are Allegories tranquil country path of literary fiction—I'm sure you have a more
salient post in there somewhere—strewn with fallen words like so
many autumn leaves &c &c.




Ben Godby: If
I may be so asinine as to serve you up a hot dish of allegory, I feel
like I'm actually on a highway constantly fretting about which exit
I'm supposed to take. I'm also worried that someone might
overtake me on the left, or that I'll smash into some jerk hiding
in my blindspot. Just the other day I was musing about how everything
I ever write about writing seems to be nullified simply by the act of
writing about it ("The Agonies"), so
that every time I think I've hit upon an idea, a movement, a style,
a solution to
the agony that is "how will I most effectively and awesomely
self-express," I prove myself wrong a moment later. Then I was
reading some Hal Duncan post where he says you're never supposed to
admit to doubting yourself,
and I think that's a really nice idea but I am way too
self-conscious, self-obsessed, and self-loathing to do other than
doubt myself.




daB: I
think you're allowed to doubt and loathe everything you're
currently writing (or that you're sitting on), but once you've
published it you have to pretend it's the best thing you've ever
written ever. That's in the verbal contract you've made with your
readers. Presumably the more professional one becomes as a writer,
the more one has learned about believing this lie. Considering that
I'm fixing to re-read everything I wrote in 2011 for the first time
(as a final copy-edit before I do the fancy editions), I hope I can
keep a straight face.




I agree about writing about
writing. I recently read through my "The First 200 Days", my 'daily blogging' collection (because I wanted to fix the
formatting), and I make a lot of amazing pronouncements (esp. about
business!) which I find rather ridiculous now. But that's the
point. Writers think by babbling, then keeping the good stuff.
...anyways, I assume nobody reads my writing blog except me, so it's
OK.




BG:
I read your blog. I really do. Because your funny. So many blogs
totally suck. I hope my blog doesn't suck. I'm really afraid it
does, sometimes. Because, seriously, so many writers have the most
terrible blogs. How can people who are so creative have ABSOLUTELY
ZERO PERSONALITY? I don't get it. But you have personality, David.




Maybe it's the beer?




daB: ...it's
the beer.




Speeding




daB: I
like your highway allegory. I'm presumably That Guy—graduate of
the Grand Theft Auto motor school—who's just speeding along,
changing lanes on bridges, and generally being unconcerned with the
feelings of others. I write fast, now, just translating the images
that pop into my head down on the page and Never. Ever. Editing. I'm
too lazy to edit, I just want to write the next thing. If you go to
my blog there's about thirty covers for as-yet-unwritten stories
and books that "I'll get to writing". Sooner or later. In my
private archives, there are about ten stories with one great opening
paragraph written that I lost track of in order to jump to the next
story. I've been working on finishing those, now, because their
incompleteness mocks me and makes me feel like a twit.




This is why I find it so hard to
actually sit down and write a book. Short stories are more fun, and
they finish.




BG: The
advantage to speeding is that it's difficult to slow down. No,
wait; it's the opposite: it's easy to keep moving. It's easy
enough to stop completely, but "inertia is a property of matter"
and all that.




I think speeding kept me writing
for a really long time, and even though I no longer drink and
narrativize (harr harr), when I hit a "groove" or a "swing,"
what's effectively happening is that I'm hitting a top speed,
covering huge distance in short amounts of time. People never talk
about how they suddenly got into their rhythm and started writing
incredibly slowly, you know? We're always trying to get to top
speed and stay there as long as possible.




daB: You've
got to drink and write, it's your duty as a Creative. My current
elixir of choice is coffee spiked liberally with the nearest
available Kentucky bourbon. Keeps the brain going, and punches Mr.
Editor in the face
with the fist of alcohol. Once the story is done, I can edit and
publish (yaknow, the Boring
part) sans
coffee.




BG: Indeed.
A glass of wine always makes me more accepting of the first thing I
write. OBVIOUSLY IT'S BECAUSE IT MAKES ME A BETTER WRITER THE FIRST
TIME. (Man, I... I am just obsessed with caps sometimes.) That said,
lately I've been writing more slowly. I actually wrote a book by
hand. Now, I'm going a little too fast to type it up, so that's a
problem, but... slowing down—shifting into lower gear, if I may
continue being a punhole—is what allowed me to write a complete
manuscript with which there was nothing really grandly wrong.
Speeding may actually be counteractive to writing books, because
there's a lot of potholes you might just fly over, and... alright,
I'm sick of the analogy, but the point is: sometimes speeding
leaves things to be desired in the quality of road. And readers don't
speed: they read. Problem in point.




At the moment I'm turning a
leaf—at least temporarily—to get really nitty and gritty and try
sentence-level editing. Hal Duncan, again, managed to really inspire
me here: he's put up a couple posts lately about sentence-level and
paragraph-level editing that really drew my attention. Normally, I
don't get excited about editing—usually, when the word "editing"
is tossed about, I vomit nervously and soil myself—but Hal makes it
sound sort of like a swashbuckling adventure. He also made it really
clear how good editing can make a good manuscript great. So, yeah:
tryin' new things. Just so long as, like you said, those things
fulfill the prime directive of fun.




daB: I
especially liked Hal Duncan's "How to Write a Point of View"
post, from that series. What I've been trying to do, recently, is
to write "cleaner". That is to say, master the English language
to the point where my sentences don't need to be rewritten. I love
the story of Harlan Ellison bringing a typewriter into a bookshop and
pounding out a short story, then putting it into an envelope and
selling it. That's the kind of writer I want to be...and the kind
of speaker I want to be, but one step at a time.




Weird vs. Direct




daB: [your?]
Weird Fiction vs. [my?] "Direct" Fiction. For instance, I can't
understand a single thing China Miéville (cf: rejectamentalist manifesto)
has ever written.




BG: Come
now, David. You must read the latest Miéville. Why, it's
absolutely débonair.




daB: All
I'm saying is that I want an umlaut in my name. Dävid Ällen
Bärron.
Then I'll be popular...er...I mean "literary".




BG: You
mentioned earlier that I seem to have taken the path of the literati.
Ignoring for the moment that I am a pretentious, self-aggrandizing
punhole, I would dispute this on various grounds.




I think one of the biggest things
standing in the way of more people enjoying more types of literature
is that word, that word right there, literature.
Actually,
there's a word that's way, way worse: it's the worse literary
fiction. Uh,
excuse me, but WTF is literary fiction? It's a non-thing. One
cannot write
literature. One
might try, but only The Future—whether in science-fictional terms or
not—can bestow that honour. I guess the problem is really that
people think of it as a noun, "literature," whereas we are better
served by deeming things "literary," i.e., "well-written."
Thus: Anything can be literary. Also, "literary fiction" is a
terrible genre, because it is full of contemporary realist claptrap.




daB: True.
I, agent provocateur, mostly said that just to spur the conversation.
But when I say Literary, I do mean a genre. "Literature", to my
thinking, is different, as you say: being the future selecting the
best bits of the past. Literary, though, is a niftier genre name for
'realistic contemporary'. Although you're allowed to have weird
dreams in there, apparently. I myself have been boning up (oi,
every word-choice of mine reveals my lack of literary spirit...) on
Literary books because I'm currently committing—under the pen
name David Allen Barron, sans umlauts—Literary Fiction, in the
form of "Scalawag", set in Jacksonville, FL. Writing it makes me
brain hurt sometimes, but only because it's really long. I did
manage to stick a LASER in one scene. That always seems to relieve
the pressure, even if it's just a community college laser.




My twin theories of literature are
that I read everything, so long as it's good, and stories are more
important than pretty words...but I like pretty sentences.




BG: Hal
Duncan again: "Style is not a fucking patina." But, then,
sometimes, it can be a game-changer. I just finished Michael Cisco's
"The Great Lover," and it is heavily style-based, but it's not
really a normal novel. Sometimes, you've got to play with style,
just to see what can be done. And to crap all over people's
expectations.




Re: Einstein: "Insanity is
Doing the Same Thing Over and Over Again and Expecting a Different
Result:" Re: Writing: Are We Fucking Insane Dudes Or What?!... Or
Is It Just Me?!

(this a general title for the
"motivational paradox" or "the art of self-immolation"
whatever we call it)




daB: But...but...writing
is pretty much the only relaxing thing I do.




BG: Yeah,
I don't know if writing is "relaxing" per se, but I have
trouble relaxing if I don't write. I'm pretty much addicted to
writing. If I don't get a daily fix, there's trouble. I'll
start stories and abandon them, I'm unpredictable, I'm ornery
when I haven't written... I mean, I'm a junkie.




I never really thought writing
would get like that for me, either. I have a lot of friends who are
Creative-types: musicians, photographers, film-makers. They're
always telling me I have to "just let it happen" when I try to
explain to them the desperation of my creative process. But it's
impossible for me to just let things happen, because things don't
happen on their own. I have to implicate myself. I have to overcome
the desire to just play videogames. And that's not so hard to
overcome, because like I said, I'm a junkie: I can't help but
write. I've built up dependency. Writing is a demon that is
invested in me, and even if I do it wrong—even if it hurts—I have
to keep going.




Good
talk!




BREAKING NEWS! Ben Godby's short story The Tower of the Golden Eye has just been published in the latest OG's Speculative Fiction (Issue 35). Pick it up and enjoy this "Victorian-era, Franco-Prusso-Egyptian Communard steampunk alternate-history"! (I sure did!)




I'm still too lazy to write my
own blog posts, so if you're a writer and/or small publisher and
you want to have a Convo with me (or Jeff or Ben, for that matter)
hit me up on Twitter where I exist as DavidalBarron,
or shoot me an e-mail at DavidalBarron
[at] gmail [dot] com !




Thanks for reading!

-daB

feel
free to commentAvailable Stories

Science Fantasy Romance 1 - Preemptive Mercy

Preemptive Mercy


SF001


Available at

Amazon.com * Amazon.co.uk

Smashwords

Kobo * Sony * Diesel

Barnes & Noble

DriveThruFiction




Collected in

A Future Darkly




Blurb

A father fights to save his daughter from a gruesome fate on
an alien world.




Memories

before reading

This story just appeared one day while I was rolling around
my house in a rolling chair, so I popped open my netbook and wrote it. I
remember it was like a song or an epic poem, flowing out of my brain and on the
page. The copy was clean and required only spell-checking. I also remember that
this was the first absolute "Creative voice" story I ever wrote, with
surprising—and disturbing—results.




Review

after reading

The first thought is: I really like the ending, and the
opening paragraph pops along. I use the word crypt-crèches, which is classy. I
think it's atmospheric—but the writer has the atmosphere in his head, so he
can't judge—and worth the time.




Next Week

Deep Sleep









Thanks for reading!

feel free to commentAvailable Stories

in which I read my own writing

I recently blasted through a whole bunch of publishing work.





First Reader

I copy-edited, made new covers and reformatted all my Science Fiction stories (as collected in A Future Darkly and More of the Sun) from 2011, 19 total. It took 8 hours, so, 25 minutes per story. Not a bad shakedown test of my eBook Formatting Workflow, if I say so myself.



As part of this, I had to read them all again, so I figured I might as well make that useful. I wrote little Memories and Reviews of all of them, and I'll post them once a week for, if you've been following along at home, nineteen weeks. I'll call it Science Fantasy Romance Sunday.



All of them are good! Which is a relief, since I published them with that expectation.



By the time they run through, I'll have reformatted the Fantasy and Romance stories, so that'll be another pile.



In other news, I'm on DriveThruFiction now, with pretty PDF versions of those stories. You should do it too, because they have a cool system.



Thanks for reading!


-daB
feel free to commentAvailable Stories

Small Publisher Organization

I was recently reviewing my 2011 writing output so that I
could reformat it to reflect what I've learned, and I discovered that I'm an
unorganized idiot. I also realize that my fellow small publishers, while not
idiots, may also be ridiculously unorganized. Not to mention the aspiring small
publishers who, theoretically at least, follow this blog. (There's a lot of
traffic, and I'm pretty sure it's not all pornography.) So, now that I've done
the muddle-through, I've systemized for your benefit the organization I (under
the auspices of H2NH ePub et al) am and have been using in 2012.

GRAPHIC!








Presumably, you've already done all the Business of Publishing
stuff, so make a folder titled "Example ePub", then set up all these folders. I
hope it's not too complicated, but here's a guide:




Top

Ads

Banner ads, book trailers and catalogues.

ARC PDF

Convenient access to all your prepared ARCs, for immediate
e-mailing upon request.

Templates

Word and HTML templates, for the busy publisher.

Workflow

Checklists, macros, and miscellaneous time-savers.

Imprint

Your sexy publishing logo, in small and large size.




Author Name

Each pen name, or the names of fellow authors you're
assisting. You can do everything yourself, but what with all the labor-saving
templates and macros I've made, I'd be happy to format your story up for Amazon,
Smashwords and B&N (e.g. MOBI, DOC, and EPUB) for a cool fifty bucks, if
you provide me with cover art (or don't mind me using a generic text-heavy cover),
and have already made a publisher account. Books and collections extra because
I hate Smashwords formatting. Oh, and you're not allowed to complain too much,
as it's only $50. (See blog footer for other suggested cover art and formatting
services.)




000Current Project

This is the only part of the folder that's allowed to be
disorganized. Toss in all the chapter TXT,
draft DOC, versions of documents in editing, up-to-current EPUBs you like -
even some preliminary cover art/illustrations. Once the book is done, it'll all
go into a neat little folder and you won't have to hunt for it. If the book
doesn't get finished and you want a new current project, you get to make an
official 'in-progress' DOC or RTF file and put it in a Book folder for when you
get back to it. Don't let those pile up, though, or you'll forget the
characters.




Stories

This is where organization really pays off. You'll probably
write a thousand short stories (5,000,000 words!) in your career, so you'd
better get organized, or your estate will curse you forever. You can't expect
filial piety if you didn't do the basic ground-work.

You should probably subdivide your stories by year written,
unless you're writing more than 999 stories a year, in which case you should be
making enough to hire a secretary and a minimal staff to organize all that, and
you shouldn't listen to me because I want to learn from you (I'm sure it's
possible, I just want to observe your technique!)

Title

001, 002, 003, 004, 005…c'mon.

Packs, Bundles and Collections

You should be collecting your stories. That's just basic.
There's two kinds of short story customers: one sees a great short story blurb
and says "Wow, that's pretty neat!" and buys it. The other sees a great short
story blurb and clicks on the author name to buy a collection. Cater to both. I
use a simple system of "Packs and Bundles" to do the initial collecting, then I
get fancy with Collections.

Five Pack

It doesn't have to be five stories, but it should be at
least 15,000 words.

Ten Bundle

Again, exactly ten stories is optional, but it should be at
least two five packs, or 30,000 words.

Collection

Get fancy, choose a theme, select the stories for it, and
get some great cover art. This is your short story showpiece, and will stand
for all time as testament to your greatness. Anywhere from fifteen to thirty
stories will do you, but I'd personally shoot for 60,000 words, here.

Price List.txt collects all the word counts and prices
of the stories, so you don't have to check.




Book

Individual books in here, bulking up each folder to The 13
Files. Do not, under any circumstances, add anything else into these. You'll
just get confused, and feel dumb. If the inspiration takes you, clear out
Current Project and use that as your brain-dump until you're ready to organize
each book.




Series

Put all the books in the series in here, then put the cover
art all in one place for your own convenience. Otherwise, each individual
folder is the same as an individual book.




The 13 Files

Every single title folder shall have these (and only these)
files, non-negotiable. Of course, if you use Photoshop, replace the GIMP file below with that. I just use GIMP because I'm on a 12" netbook and wouldn't be able to take advantage of Photoshop's many features.

See H2NH ePub Workflow for details.

A FocusWriter

01 "Title.txt"
(plain text)

02 "Title.rtf"
(edited copy, with italics)

B GIMP 

03 "Title.xcf"
(raw)

04 "Title(cover).jpg"
(final eBook cover)

C Microsoft Word 2007

05 "Title.doc"
(Master, with styles)

06 "TitleDOC.doc"
(Meatgrinder-ready)

(Smashwords to Kobo, Diesel, Apple, Sony et al)

07 "TitlePDF.doc"
(PDF backup)

08 "Title –
Author.pdf" (PDF)

(DriveThruFiction; ARC)

09 "TitleHTML.doc"
(with )

D jEdit

10 "Title"
(for entities)

11 "Title.html"
(clean HTML)

E calibre

12 "Title –
Author.epub" (checked EPUB)

(B&N et al)

13 "Title –
Author.mobi" (checked MOBI)

(Amazon)




Backup

.zip the folder up, once a week, and store it in four places:

1. In the 'Example ePub
Backup' folder on your computer's second hard drive.

2. On an external hard drive.

3. On a thumb drive in a drawer in your house.

4. Somewhere else secure, but that is not your house.




Write more

If all these folders are empty at the end of a year, you'll
feel like a twit.




Good to go, but talk to me later, when I've done some
Print-on-Demand.

daB

feel free to comment

Available Stories

Our Forever Is Certain

in which a lede is buried

The time has come, as it often does, for self-reflection, and introduction. So, let me tell you about myself, and I'll use small words. Or, at least, small words for me. Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm

Smart

I'm very smart. But! Smart, by itself, is not an advantage. It just means I can't turn off my brain by myself during the boring parts of life, and O! So many parts of life are boring. What being smart means, and has meant for my whole life up until now, is that I've had to find ways to amuse myself above and beyond the simple pleasure of just existing. This is remarkably difficult, and I have, in the past, cheated and simulated the goal with beer and other ultimately unsatisfying forms of intoxication.
Clever

I'm very clever. But! Clever, by itself, just means that I've read more than you, and have a better memory, chock-full of everything I've read, so I have a big pool of sources to steal from, when I'm being a wit. O! And I am a wit. I'm the life of the duller sorts of party, the type where everybody talks instead of dancing. I can't dance, since I'm clever, and know that a clever person dancing is rather letting the side down.  
Genius

I am a genius. But! Genius just means I have the right sort of mental illness, the kind that focuses me into a convenient and profitable specialty without entirely preventing me from functioning in society, so long as nobody asks too many questions. Combined with cleverness and smarts, I have to say that it makes me, while at times insufferable, also rather happy, and, for a given definition of circular, a well-rounded individual.
Engaged

Smart, clever, genius, or otherwise, what I, individual, actually am—as of today—is engaged, so I'll try not to mess it up too much. Having stumbled into happiness by pure chance, I intend to hold on tight with both hands and travel as far as I can go.

The Speech

Jirawan, I know that the world is uncertain, the economy is uncertain, life is uncertain; That is, that The Future is uncertain - but I also know that my love is certain, your love is certain; That is, that True Love is certain - and if I love you, and you love me? Our Forever is Certain. You are my property, and I will use you as I like…forever and a day, and you can never run away; Not from me, David.

I love you.

-daB

feel free to comment
Available Stories

Ambrose/Barron Convo 1: Wearing the Writer Hat

This is the second part of a recent Google DocTalk™ with my publishing pal Jeff Ambrose, and we had a broad conversation about this Writing thing we do. We decided to split it up into two "hats", writer and publisher. Last week? "Wearing the Publisher Hat" This week: "Wearing the Writer Hat". You'll be able to find the conversation on both of our sites.





Jeff Ambrose of The Window In The Basement is JA


David Barron of by David Barron is daB







"Wearing the Writer Hat"







David Barron: ...yaknow, Ambrose Barron would be a really fun
pen name. He writes Civil War Westerns and smokes a lot.







Jeff Ambrose: Do you know a lot about the Civil War?







daB: I've dabbled. As a political scientist, it's my duty
to know about the birth throes of the Modern Era. (That sounds much
more exciting than what it looks like in academic papers.) It
wouldn't have to be about the battlefield exclusively.







JA: This is why Ken Burns is such a blessing … though I've
heard his documentary on the Civil War is slanted at times. But then,
all histories are slanted, if they're worth anything. Who
wants just a list of dates and facts? Good historians offer opinions.







daB: All description is opinion. That's what writers have to
believe or they're screwed.







Attitude







JA: Since we've been talking a lot about what "beginners"
should know, I think it's important to emphasize again where
one gets ones information. One reason why I don't talk too much, if
at all, about the business side of writing is that I don't
know enough. I struggled with writing for over 10 years before I
finally got into the groove, and 2012 makes my twelfth anniversary of
trying to make a go at it, and my second anniversary of Getting
Serious. So I have no problem talking about writing or telling
beginning writers (i.e., writer with less experience than I) what
they should or shouldn't be doing. Again, this isn't in terms of
business or even craft. It's attitude. What attitude should
a writer have. What kind of work ethic should they cultivate.







And yet, it amazes me how many writers look to their peers for
advice (I don't look to my peers, and I don't expect my peers to
look to me!). That's silly. I want to be a long-term professional
writer … so I look to my peers how to do that? I have to
say, if you're doing that, you're beyond crazy. You're an
idiot. Here's the rule of thumb: If you want to be a long-term
writer, look to long term writers for cues of how to think and
act, of which attitudes to cultivate, of which ones to get rid of.







daB: The standard mantra If you want to learn the business,
find a few successful people and do what they're doing. Then:
innovate. If you want to learn something, find somebody who knows how
to do it and do that until you've figured it out, then make it
yours. It works for writing, of course: Read a Lot, Talk a Lot, then
Practice by...Just Writing. For business, it's even easier. Learn
Business, by Watching and Doing.







My "First 200 Days" was all about how I got into that Mindset of Writing (and
Publishing), and the only clear lesson throughout is "Copy, then
Create". ...obviously the thing to copy here is not 'intellectual
property' but rather 'best practices'.








Copying To Create







JA: I agree! And you have to make it yours, too. But how? By
copying first. That's the only way. One of my 2012 writing goals is
to get serious about studying the craft in different ways. One way to
do this is to copy out passages you like, passages that strike you as
supremely well written. Dean Wesley Smith equates this to letting
their words flow through your fingers in order to learn both by
analysis and intuitively. Now here's the thing. Dean says to copy
out in Standard
Manuscript
Format .
He says it a lot, too. Why is this important? I'm not sure, but I
think it has to do with seeing words in the rawest form, without the
pretty font, without the bookish formatting. At any rate, I've
decided that this year I'm writing using Standard Manuscript
Format. I'm copying Dean's method to a T, no exception. And I
suspect that by doing what he does, I'll not only learn how to
write better (because of all that copying I'll be doing) but I'll
also understand, in part, why he thinks Standard Format is the
way to go. Once I understand that, I'll be free to make it
my own.







Now that I said it, I wonder if I'm just too OCD.







daB: Could be, could be... But I'll sum it up, I think. It's
to 'demystify' the process, taking the formatting and spellcraft
and sticking the words in Courier New, just like yours. Except
written better. Writers aren't Wizards, they just Work Harder.







Workshops







daB: I know you're going to one of those workshops [for
short stories?], and I think that's an excellent idea, especially
for 'journeyman' writers (digression: well. The categories are a
little loose. I'll give my hand rule: 10 books = journeyman; 100
short stories = journeyman) I haven't done it for the simple reason
that I've had the Pacific Ocean between me and America for 27
months, but I'll certainly do one of these things at some point in
the next two years. That's hard-earned practice, intense story,
character voice, plotting, what-have-you practice, and overseen by
Experts.









JA: The workshop I'm attending is the Character Voice &
Setting workshop, a pure craft workshop through and through, and from
what I've learned from past attendees, you write around 30,000
words that week, a few short stories as well as a bunch of exercises,
I think. For me, I'm going for two reasons. First, to learn the
skills it teaches. I did choose that workshop, after all. And
second, from what I can tell from his blog, from what others have
said, and a few private email conversations, Dean and I think the
same way, beginning from an analytical standpoint. That's great for
me, because I have to figure out a way to take the analysis and make
it intuitive, part of the creative process. My hope, beyond learning
character voice and setting, is to learn how to about learning the
craft of writing. Workshops take time and money, so you have to
really suck the marrow out of them when you can attend. You have to
learn how to fish, so to speak, and not just eat that which is given
to you. Needless to say, I'm thrilled about going to this
workshop.







Career







JA: Regarding "journeyman" status, for me it's a million
words. That was John D. MacDonald's mark, and Ray Bradbury said you
have to write a million words before you hit the "foothills of good
writing." I have no idea how much I wrote between 2000 and May
2010, which was when I Got Serious About Writing, but I estimated
about 500,000 words over those ten years. If that's true, then I'm
at 1,230,000 words overall. If I don't count those first ten years,
I have 270,000 words to go to hit the million word mark. That'll
come sometime this year.







daB: Both good, of course, I just prefer to measure by
'titles'. 1 book/10 stories; beginner , 10 books / 100 stories ;
journeyman , 100 books, 1000 stories ; Expert. It's metric!
Considering how few people write even 1 book (or, for that matter,
one story) the pecking order of competence isn't that hard to
figure out. Before I started my blog, I had 1,000,000 trunked words,
masses of plot holes and spelling errors (the stories of some of
which I have salvaged, of course, which is fine.) I don't really
track my word count, except on a 'work' basis, billable hours
(Have I written X,000 words today? 800 words this hour?) Not really
on a yearly basis. I want "at least 4 books a year (i.e. 1 a
quarter) and at least 52 stories (i.e. 1 a week)"







JA: Tracking word count on a yearly basis is just the
outgrowth of tracking word count on a daily basis. I have a
spreadsheet in Numbers (Mac's version of Excel), and the tracking
keeps me honest. I can see which days I wrote, how much, and I also
have a track record of how I'm doing month-by-month. Which is nice,
in case I want to set up a goal, such as, Break my monthly record,
or what not.







Word Count vs. Projects







JA: Recently, however, I've become wary of my obsession with
word counts. The most recent story I wrote took a big turn I didn't
expect, and once I realized the ending, I had to go back through the
story and add/change what needed to be added/changed in order to make
the ending work. I cycled through the story twice -- once to make the
changes, and a second time to make sure it all worked like I should
-- before I wrote the ending. Took me two days. Didn't get too many
words written. I freaked a little, then thought, What the hell?
The goal is to write stories , not put words on
paper. So I decided to back off a little on word count this year.
I cut my yearly word count down to something more reasonable. Even
though I'm still tracking daily and month words (I do want to know
just how much I write this year), my real focus is on projects: at
least 4 novels, 20 short stories, and 2 nonfiction works (and that
may change, cutting out short fiction altogether, focusing only on
novels). And that's conservative, and based largely in part that I
have no idea how long my novels will be, or how long they'll take
to write. 2012 is the Year of the Novel for me. I'm set on learning
how to write a fricking novel. Short fiction, for me, will happen
between novels and when I have a house full of kids this summer.







daB: I agree on needing to learn how to write a novel. Most of
my books thus far have been 'long short stories', but when I
read, say, a John Grisham or, for that matter, a Stephen King...they
don't feel like that. So, I just need to let it roll, let myself be
free, and let the characters do their thing, until they stop doing
their thing.







Oh, and I just did the math on 4 novels and 52 stories, and it says
500,000 words. (60,000*4)+(5,000*52) This should teach me not to do
math. (I'm going to now ignore that number forever and just
write)







Writing Novels







JA: I must have started anywhere between 10 and 15 novels over
the years, but have finished only 2. I haven't published any. It
hit me today that my problem has been trying to write a long
novel in the beginning. I mean, we learn by writing short fiction,
right? Why not learn to write novels by writing short novels, around
40,000 to 50,000 words? Why set out to write 100,000 words novels,
especially in this New World of Publishing, when you don't have to
write that long? So even though my goal is 4 novels, I hope to write
5 or 6 -- maybe even 7 -- short novels. We'll see.







daB: My very favorite story length is 20,000 words, almost
exactly. I call it a Davidku. It's long enough for about five
characters, but it only takes 2-3 hours to read. Which is the length
of time I usually have for reading, unless I'm on a bus.







But, I think the secret of writing a 100,000 word novel is to not
write a 100,000 word novel. That is...make some characters, decide a
setting and let them roam and see how far they get. Then kill them
off one by one, with bathos. I assume one of my novels this year will
explode in this sense, and others will be stitched together
'mini-series' of three connected 20k stories. They'll all be
priced at $4.99, so who cares?







JA: True enough. Getting my mind around the freedom of length
has been a difficult adjustment for me. For so long, a short story
was 7,500 words, about 30 pages. So when I'm writing a short story,
as I near the 7000-word mark, I can feel myself tighten a little,
thinking I need to end it. Short fiction length in this New World is
far more fluid than before. Likewise with novels. I have to stop
thinking a novel is a 400-page beast. It's not. And you're right,
the best way to write a 100k-word novel is to not try to write
something that long. Just gotta learn to let the story go where it
will.






Good talk! 






I don't want this to be the last Convo I do, because I'm too lazy to write my own blog posts now. If you want to have a Convo with me (or Jeff) and have indie published some stuff, hit me up on Twitter where I exist as DavidalBarron, or shoot me an e-mail at DavidalBarron [at] gmail [dot] com !


-daB
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Ambrose/Barron Convo 1: Wearing The Publisher Hat

I recently settled into a Google Doc with my publishing pal Jeff Ambrose, and we had a broad conversation about this Writer thing. We decided to split it up into two "hats", writer and publisher. This week? "Wearing the Publisher Hat". You'll be able to find the conversation on both of our sites.




Introductions!

Jeff
Ambrose of The Window In The Basement is JA

David
Barron of by David Barron is daB

 present

"Wearing
the Publisher Hat"



David Barron: We're both successful
businessmen, I of H2NH ePub, you of Dark Elms Press.



Jeff Ambrose: Yep, that's right. Dark
Elms Press. But after a major overhaul of things, I'm now blogging at a place I
call "The Window In The Basement," which is just about writing.



daB: Which is a good example
of two different approaches. I'm just hanging out on my Blogger blog, because
I'm too lazy to maintain a bunch of places.





Starting
Up



JA: Yeah, but here's the
thing -- you started your blog as a writer's site, and it still is a
writer's site. When I started Dark Elms Press, I made a major mistake: I tried
to combine my author sites with my publisher's site with a writing blog. That
doesn't work. Then, back in March or April of 2010, I started the "Jeff
Ambrose" site. All was fine until I started using pen names. The more I wrote
under different names, the more I realized I needed other sites … or, that how
I organized in the first place it was fundamentally screwed up. So really, the
last few weeks I've been trying to correct mistakes, multiplying web sites like
loaves and fishes.



The lesson in all of this for anyone setting out to be an indie writer:
Keep your publishing site, author(s) site(s), and writing blog (if you have
one) separate from the beginning … or at least as much as you can.



daB: Yeah. There's one Dean
Wesley Smith article that lays it out, "Think Like a  Publisher: The Early Decisions", and it's perfect. I made a Do This post "Indie Ploy" as well, and it boils down to, start simple, but efficient. Obviously, my first
50 stories/titles were a melange...no, that's a weasel word...were 'terrible'.
In the sense of being muddled-through, but they were Educational. I just
finished my first short story for 2012, and I sat down at my computer and
formatted it in 10 minutes, and it looks better than anything I published in
the first two quarters. And, production costs? Well, I pay myself $100/hr,
so...$10.



Speaking of which, I think the most important thing an indie writer can
do, ever is pay himself. That would have reduced our 'publisher vs writer'
problems right there, starting with a clear vision of exactly how much money
we'll need to at least break even. And, it'll help us understand why we
should behave like a publishing professional.





Learn
in Public



JA: Wow, you just said a
hell of a lot of good things, but I think the most important point you made you
left unsaid -- and that's that one has to be willing to learn in public.
I mean, as a new indie writer, there's only so much you can do at the
beginning, when you don't really know what the heck you're doing … or how it'll
turn out. But maybe that's not true for every writer. Me, I'm an intuitive
creative type. I hardly know where a story is going, much less what my next
project is. I'm not really sure how much I could've planned the publishing side
of things too far in advance … and yet, as I say that, I remember thinking very
early on that I wanted to write under two pen names. But there's little point
in rehashing all of that here. The real point is that the entire process is one
of learning, and if one isn't willing to learn in public, one can't engage in
this business. That's the nature of it.



It's much like your point about your first 50 stories. You only got to
where you are now, with the most recent story, by formatting the first 50,
figuring out by trial and error what works, and what doesn't. And yet, I read
your first Alan collection long before you learned "good" formatting, and I
didn't find it distracting the least bit. But that's me.



I suppose the point is that, for the one setting out in this business,
one must accept three truths. First, you must realize that you can't know
everything from the get-go. Second, you must be willing to make something of a
fool of yourself in front of others, because that will happen. And third, you
mush have the energy to keep learning from wherever you can.



daB: Taking off from the
third point, it's also important to figure out who is a responsible source of
business information. I will now make a sweeping statement, drawn from a
disastrous month, nobody on KindleBoards (et al) is a responsible source of
business information. I will in fact make a less sweeping, but equally
harsh statement: Nobody with fewer than 10 published books is a responsible
source of business of writing information, and same goes for eBusiness of
writing. Now: a caveat: You should follow loads of muddle-through folk, (like,
say, myself...) because they provide commentary and best practices (i.e. Don't
Do This!) on the responsible business advice of professionals.



Changing gears, you mentioned that the First Edition formatting (you can
read that as "done in Word", instead of by html) of the Alan stories collection
wasn't distracting for you, the reader. I'm sure that was true for most of my
readers, but the fact is that it took me at least 10 times as long to format
that thing in Word for Smashwords, Amazon, et cetera as it did when I'd paid my
dues with the next fifty titles. Even formatting one of those stories
took forever (and often Mr. Meatgrinder would eat it and spit it out.) Now,
though, I can maintain a good 'publishing to writing' ratio.





Knowing
"Enough"



daB: That is to say. I work
20 hours a week, I'm a part-time Indie. I write 18 hours, and I 'publish' for 2
hours. Before those 'first 50',
I wrote 10 hours, and 'publish' 10 hours (and that includes research!). Do I
think it was worth it? Heck yeah! ...but there comes a point where it's
diminishing returns. On that third point...there's a time when you Know
Enough. You don't Know Everything, but it's time to stop researching
and Just Write.



JA: I don't know if I'd say
it quite like that, David, in terms of "knowing enough." The problem, as I see
it, is that when you think you "know enough" you can be tempted to sit back,
put your feet up, and say, "I'm done."



I do, however, understand your point, and it's this: You can't let your
lack of knowledge get in the way of actually working. There's a point when you
know enough to get started. There's a point when you know enough to know it's
time to researching other options for publishing (switching from Word to
Scrivener for publishing needs, in my case). Long time ago, I used to listen to the
self-help guru Anthony Robbins on a regular basis, and he said a few things
that have always stuck with me. One of this was this: No one needs to
understand how electricity works in order to use a light switch. We can't let
our lack of knowledge hold us back.



daB: Agreed, of course. I
should add "For Now", I Know Enough For Now, not forever. I'll use formatting
as the easy example because it has the most logical progression. Sure, I didn't
know at the start how to create an EPUB file from scratch (I'm still not esp.
confident, but let it ride), but I found the Word 'export to HTML' button and
then stuck the results into the Kindle Previewer until it worked for the "First
Electronic Edition", then for the "Second Electronic Edition" I boned up on
xml, with the help of people like Guido Henkel and, then, Paul Salvette,
until I had my own workflow. Finally, not quite satisfied, I picked up Paul
Salvette's excellent guide,
learned a lot of crunchy XML things, and now I can say that I'm on the "2.5th
Electronic Edition".(ordinal fail) And? That's Enough For Now. Once I have
about 10 books, I'll learn some more, go back and reformat them all at once,
and call it the 3rd Electronic Edition, it'll be beautiful. For now? I can
format a book in 20 minutes and it looks great (albeit a little minimal)





Short
Fiction



JA: I still remember when I
started indie publishing a year ago. I had no idea what the heck I was doing.
Just learning as I went. Like you, I spent a long time on formatting, cover
art, blurbbing, uploading -- what have you. But over time, the more I did it,
the faster I got. Now, I have a basic work flow, and keeping this work flow
"well oiled" is one of the reasons I continue writing short fiction. I don't
want to lose the skills. This is one reason why I think for the new indie
writer, a year of short fiction is the way to go. You just learn a hell of a
lot writing and publishing short fiction. Not to mention the thick skin you
develop.



daB: I agree. I would say to
anybody who wants to start this that you should really focus on short fiction.
There's three very simple reasons: 1.) It's quick! You finish a lot of titles,
and you put them up. One a week. 2.) Multi-skills Practice, it's a full
exercise routine, blurbs, covers, formatting...oh, right, and writing.
3.) Making collections teaches you more about formatting than making a book,
and about introductions, blurbs...and it's fun, too.  Solid
practice.



JA: Also, if you're
writing/publishing a story a week, you can't get hung up on anything.
You just have to write, finish, publish. You just have to say, it's done, I'm
moving on, it'll live or die, and I'm not looking back. I've seen, in my
limited experience, writers nitpicking words in a blurb -- as if a word
or two is going to make or break their book!





Blurbs



daB: With blurbs, that sort
of mindset can be helpful at the start. But it shouldn't take more time to
write the blurb than it took to write the First Line of the story.



JA: My own take on blurbs,
especially for short fiction, is that the should be about 30 words long. I skim
long blurbs, and if they're too long, I just skip them. What I try to do in a
blurb is write a sentence that shows a character with a problem and the twist a
story will take. Sometimes, that's not possible -- especially with short
fiction, which can lack a conventional plot -- but that's my goal when I sit
down. Don't know if I always hit it, but I try.



daB: Really, at this point,
esp. with Amazon's easy preview, the first line of the story often serves as a
sufficient hook. (I mean, it's what you do for editors, right?) I often just
end up with a blurb appearing as I'm about to format the book and need to enter
the metadata. It's not so difficult. Read a lot of movie taglines, and do that.
(It'll be better than a lot of the eBook blurbs I see from monied publishers.)
The story will out. I mean, the blurb for "Swift Invasion" is The aliens were completely unprepared for one
completely prepared human. So was Humanity. A science fiction short story. ...but
it's still one of my best-selling stories, because (I suspect) it's enough to
draw the reader to the preview, which is tight.



JA: Movie taglines are a
great way to learn how to write blurbs. Get on Netflix and spend an hour
analyzing them. Also, if I'm really stuck on a blurb (which is often the case),
I'll hop on over to Smashwords and read all of Dean Wesley Smith's and Kristine
Kathryn Rusch's blurbs, just for inspiration. But I try not to spend too long
on them.





Paying
Yourself



JA: Going back to something
we said earlier -- about when to know you know enough -- there's another danger
we indie writers have to watch our for, and that's perfectionism. You can't get
caught up in that! Just recently, I spent four hours trying to come up
with a title and cover for a story. Four hours! That's a huge waste of time.
And when I look at it in terms of what my time is wroth -- $50 an hour, say --
I'll have to sell 500 copies of that story in order to earn back that time.



daB: Agree, agree. Which goes
back to 'paying yourself'. You have to ask: "Would I pay somebody else $250 to
do this?" The answer, in this case, ...no. Titles can be changed. That's the
joy of Electronic. It's pretty easy to make a new edition. (Don't use that as a
crutch, but embrace the convenience!)



JA: So, what happened on the
Kindleboards? Never been on myself.



daB: Well, if you're a
regular reader of Dean Wesley Smith's blog, you can probably imagine. Mostly
useless comments, Wild Mass Guessing,
and bull - boasting about sales numbers and dramatic business proclamations
('publishers will go bankrupt', 'Amazon will eat our young!') Waste of time,
mindset break. You don't need to be doing that.


Abrupt? Just wait until
Next Week: "Wearing the Writer's Hat"!




If you want to have a Convo with me (or Jeff) and have indie published some stuff, hit me up on Twitter where I exist as DavidalBarron, or shoot me an e-mail at DavidalBarron [at] gmail [dot] com !



-daB

feel free to commentAvailable Stories

Happy Birthday! 2012

Happy Birthday, me! This is going to be a short post because I'm busy.



I think 2012 is the year when I've finally bundled all my neuroses into an easy-to-manage package.




The Eternal Balance of Confidence and Bravado

Any constant reader of this blog can probably gather that I'm either confident or bravadous. Well, I'm both, and it's this massive overconfidence that is the thing that keeps me stable, no matter how ridiculous Life gets, and how much DRAMA (a small amount, in all cases) is laid on, as the too-sweet icing of the cake of life.




But, this year, I'm finally leaning toward Confidence, now that I've got me—by practice, effort, and research—some solid skills in Writing, Life, and, of course: 


"Biz-niss..."


Rapid-Cycling Bipolar I

Last year was the first year I was officially diagnosed (by a DOCTOR!?!) with this zany mental illness.




It's not the fun kind of bipolar disorder that you can show off at parties. It's more the kind you try to avoid showing off at parties, and usually fail. Fortunately, I'm already strange enough that nobody notices.


...but, it is kinda fun. The downsides mostly involve not paying attention to money management, never being completely sure what day of the week it is, and being a terrible driver. Oh, and lucid batshit insane dreams, but that's more of a mixed bag.



Half the fun of being a writer is you spend a lot of time alone, wrassling with demons. I don't have all that many demons, so I mostly wrassle with myself. I'm a much tougher opponent.




Two Beers In My Refrigerator Challenge


I forgot to take a picture!

The gist of this one is that, for health reasons (read: The War On Pudge), I don't really want to drink at home, even with friends, so I'm going to leave two beers (~1.5L, i.e. my personal 'social drunk' limit) in my refrigerator as a kind of permanent challenge. It's hard to pick up beer on the way home when you've already got some in the refrigerator, and it's hard to drink the LAST TWO BEERS (gasp). We'll see how it goes. I'll make a countdown timer, once I figure out how. I'll still be imbibing at restaurants, bars and parties, when society demands my presence. As it often does.



Speaking of a demanding presence:


Sex!


Gosh, OK.

She's not a blonde, natural or otherwise, but let's not pick at artistic license in the circumstances.



-dab

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New Year's Resolutions 2012

Another year is lurking in the background, waiting to pounce upon us and devour our souls in the night. ...possibly. For this year, 2012, I have a lot of great resolutions for myself. You can consult the Five-Year Plan, for the things that'll certainly happen, but these are the Goals. The One-Year Goals, if you will. All the folk call them resolutions, though.



Let's review:

Old Year's Resolutions 2010

New Year's Resolutions 2011

Success Rate:

I've still got that girlfriend, so I'll be sure to keep her happy.

I still don't have a Kindle.

I did, indeed, write like the wind. A rather languid, breezy wind, but a wind nonetheless.

I'm in slightly better shape now, and I use the Internet slightly less.

Prognosis: Negative. (Which is, of course, good.)



Here, in no particular order, are the 2012 resolutions:



Drink Wine

Beer's too easy, esp. this low-alcohol but delicious Thai beer (cf. Singha). I figure if I celebrate every Saturday with a $20 bottle of red wine as opposed to a $20 box of twelve bottles of beer over the course of a week, I'll be in better shape, mentally and physically. Perhaps some mixture of those two items, using linear programming to determine optimal configuration. I don't know. I'm never drunk in Thailand, I just don't want to get gout. That'd be...embarrassing.



Never Volunteer For Anything Again

In case you hadn't figured it out by now, I've been in Thailand these last twenty-seven months as a Peace Corps Volunteer. That's the first and last I'll mention it on this blog, but I have to say (1) I recommend it and (2) I've done my time. Henceforth I am a Man of Business, and I think I can save the world a lot more effectively if I have a Lot of Money, rather than, say...not.



Dave Frost will be taking charge of any further political and economic discussions along those lines, so don't ask me. (He'll be writing an MBA blog, even.)



Eat Less, Better

It turns out I really, really like fish, to the exclusion of just about every other food, and my health has massively improved since I became a de facto pescatarian. I doubt I'll make it official, but I will avoid non-food obsessively, and eat for taste. Damn you, Michael Pollan, and your stupid consciousness-raising. Now I've turned into a 'picky eater'. If you're confused, just consult Food Rules.



Oh, and

Also Less Coffee

oog



Apatheism

Not going to make a big deal of this, but as of 2012, I'm going to act as if religion doesn't exist. For those of you who practice personal religion, that won't make a big difference. Those with a political religion will need to take note. Here's a handy guideline: If your proposition depends on religious belief, it is no longer admissible in my court of evidence for argument, and I will shut it down/delete/ignore it with all due haste.



This is purely for my Creative mental health...and also I'm bored with the discussion. I'm too lazy to be an Atheist. Just leave me alone. I've got so many other interests that I can afford to be rather dull on one topic.



I will continue to make my regular contributions to the ACLU so that everybody—at least in America—can argue out in the open, and if your religious-affiliated charity/NGO has stripped all mention of religion out of its primary charitable goal (I've worked with loads of NGOs, I can assess), I'll contribute to that too.



Don't Be Isolated

Living in the jungle for two years has given me an appreciable window on my mental health, and it turns out I like to have lots of people around to absorb my Creati-Babble. Facebook and blogs just doesn't cut it. I'm going to cut a swathe through whatever social scene I can find.



Play a "Sport"

I've been using Fitocracy (follow me!) for a while now, and it's been super-helpful. I hate the gym, so it would seem the best way for me to get in shape is to pick up a sport, and a pick-up sport at that. Maximum one piece of equipment, so basketball, soccer, 'ultimate frisbee', whathaveyou. More on that as it develops.



Play more Settlers of Catan

Pretty self-explanatory, really. I like human contact, and trading, and board games, all in convenient 30-minute increments. Let's make it happen, people.



Write Lots of Short Stories

In 2012, I'm going to compulsively write a lot of short stories and put them up everywhere. I've pretty much determined that I love writing short stories most of all, and it's an Exercise in Focus. They'll all be entered as part of the (H2NH Stories 2012) series, then split up into collections (with real cover art) by fives and fifteens (for eBooks) and thirties (for POD). Fun!







Fifty of these stories will be under the auspices of Write1Sub1 "Reloaded", but as you can see from my cover art template, I'm anticipating triple digits. You'll be able to follow the progress via the page I'll set up, accessible by clicking on the cover art template in the side-bar. That's the challenge, people.



-daB

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