Inspiration for Calamities

Inspired by Mia Zabrisky's Shudderville series, I'm collecting some old photographs to serve as writing prompts for a horror story I've begun. Opening excerpt is here, and below is another picture that prompted the creative juices to flow.

Elwood and Hazel Dell looked out over Lake Arthur...

...and waited for the explosions.

While you wait for me to finish my novella (you are waiting, aren't you?), check out Mia's collection of her first 8 episodes of Shudderville, called Wish. 

Ban Scarcity Thinking

Scarcity thinking assumes a zero sum game, one where someone wins and someone loses because there is not enough to go around. In other words, there's only so much pie out there - so get all you can, can all you get, and poison the rest. Not a mutually beneficent philosophy.

But more than that, it's not true. There is an abundance of resources (God's dynamis is limitless, wouldn't you say?) and creation is bursting with new and more. This applies to writers as well. Rachelle Gardner, in a recent post, encourages writers to "let go of scarcity thinking." She offers this quote by way of explanation:

The first prevailing myth of scarcity is that there’s not enough. There’s not enough to go around. Everyone can’t make it. Somebody’s going to be left out. There are way too many people. There’s not enough food. There’s not enough water. There’s not enough air. There’s not enough time. There’s not enough money.

There’s not enough becomes the reason we do work that brings us down or the reason we do things to each other that we’re not proud of. There’s not enough generates a fear that drives us to make sure that we’re not the person, or our loved ones aren’t the people, who get crushed, marginalized, or left out. [Lynne Twist, The Soul of Money, p. 49]

So scarcity thinking is not only untrue and unkind, it's unworthy of our consideration. Instead, we writers (anyone, actually) need to operate out of an abundance mentality. Or, as Rachel points out in her post, we should have an "enough" mentality - that is, we are good enough as persons - confident in ourselves - and so we don't need to compete with others for supposedly limited resources. Either way, there is more than enough to go around. So go forth and create something new, something more.

End message to self.

Quote From "The Fiction Factory"

The Fiction Factory by William Wallace Cook is a 1912 book on the experiences of a part-time writer going full-time. And how he did it was to crank out story after story. The subtitle says a lot.

Being the Experience of a Writer Who, for Twenty-Two Years, 

Has Kept a Story-Mill Grinding Successfully

Some great insight here - especially on how "the masses" mostly just want good, clean storytelling and that successful writers are entertainers and shouldn't be embarrassed by that fact. Some things never change. Here's a quote: 

The tale that moves breathlessly but logically, that is built incident upon incident to a telling climax with the frankly avowed purpose to entertain, that has no questionable leanings or immoral affiliations--such a tale speeds innocently an idle hour, diverts pleasantly the harassed mind, freshens our zeal for the duties of life, and occasionally leaves us with higher ideals.

Yeah. That. That's the type of story I want to write.

Branding Stories Via Cover Art

Thanks to the healthy competition of my fellow LOOW silo writers (League of Original Woolwrites ;) and a better (not an expert, but coming along) understanding of genre, sales trends, Amazon categories, visual/thumbnail displays, etc., I've decided to focus on a certain direction with my new covers for my silo saga.

I'm actually one who wants to see on the cover jacket something from the book I'm reading. An illustration, perhaps, of a scene or critical theme within the novel. But the reality of impulse buys and what appeals to the eye in this day of click-through browsing tells me covers have to speak to a "type" more than anything else. (Besides, most print books today have covers that have practically nothing to do with the story inside!)

So with that in mind, I'm pulling out the stops! I'm going for a very particular post-apocalyptic and dystopic feel with this series. And thanks to a graphic designer I found via the Kindle Boards (yes, I lurk there, but can't keep up with hardly any of the sometimes very helpful discussions), I feel I have a beginning of a "brand" that works. Does it work for you? :) Let me know.

Now one question I tossed back and forth is whether to change the title of my first story to simply "Petition." One reason is that one word titles work well in identifying a story online. And Part Three of this series is "Silence." Another point someone made is that a vocal set of SF readers are irrationally anti-Christian (my phrase), and so having "prayer" in the title might work against me. 

But I'm thinking I'll keep the original, 1) because it is the theme of the story, 2) it evokes a "last hope" desperation that fits this cover perfectly, and 3) when I beta-tested the two titles side by side with my middle and high schoolers, they all said go with "The Last Prayer." I asked them why and most said they didn't know what petition meant! Sigh. But I got to thinking, I bet a bunch of adults don't know that word either, so if this story gets on a YA list somewhere, then at least readers will know what the title means! 

Writing Myths I Believe

I was going to go into an in-depth account of why I haven't written much these past few weeks, but no matter how eloquently I tried formulating my excuses...that's what they were. However, I did conclude something new. My excuses (why offer more than one when any ol' one will do?) are based on myths I believe about writing. And what's cool is that another writer has already confessed to some of the very same ones I subscribe to. So instead of me reinventing fire, let me just copy and paste some thoughts from Jeff Ambrose and say: ditto.

(BTW Jeff's comments are based on the gleanings from Dean Wesley Smith's recent series of blog posts about his experience of writing a 70k word novel in 10 days. Read the comments especially for all kinds of myths we writers buy into.)

1. The writing of a novel should be slow — no quicker than 1,000 words a day. Where did this myth come from? Beats me. But think about it: If an average-sized novel is about 90,000 words, 1,000 words a day means you’d write four novels a year. Is four novels a year a lot? For some people … and apparently for me, too … on some level. But if takes me about an hour to write 1,000 words — and it does — that means I’m only putting an hour of writing into my day. That would be very good if I had a 50-hour-a-week job. But I don’t. I’m an at-home dad, and I have at least four to five hours a day to give to writing. But I only have that much time if I think about my writing schedule in a different way. This leads me to my second myth.

2. All writing must be done in a large chunk of time. Read Dean’s post, and you see that he writes in what I call “sessions.” Thirty minutes here, sixty minutes there. How have I thought about writing? Not like that. If I didn’t have at leas 90 minutes in a row free, I didn’t write. This is one reason why I don’t write on weekends. A house full of people means I generally don’t have 90 minutes in a row free. But if I think about writing in short sessions, I bet I could get in at least 250 words on Saturdays and Sundays. Probably more.

3. A novel is an event. This is a myth Dean touched on in his Killing the Sacred Cows series, but I never understood it until this past week. On of my biggest problems with novels is that I see them as events — something that needs to be planned, organized, structured, written slowly, rewritten extensively. Never realized this myth was still with me, but it is.

4. Novels need to be rewritten. This falls into the “novel is an event” category. The novel is so important, I need to work on it and work on it until it’s perfect. Umm … no, I don’t. Fact: A novel is just a long story. Fact: I’m a horrible judge of my stories, long or short. Fact: There’s no such thing as a perfect story or novel. Other than needing to have a plan, I don’t need to do anything more with a novel than what I need to do with a short story: write it, layer in any plot elements that come up in the writing, then give it to my wife. I don’t need to reread it to see if it makes sense. My wife can do that, and I can address those issues.

5. A novel must be outlined. Yes, this is a myth I’ve held on to for a while … but what I’m finding is that I need some kind of outline. The difference? The myth says that, unless you’re as good as Stephen King, all novels must be outlined. That’s not true at all. However, I might need to outline my novels. I have a stack of unfinished novels and a stack of finished novels. What separates them? All the finished novels began with a very basic outline. And what I’m learning writing my current novel, for which I have an outline, is this: I don’t need much more than a bullet-point list of events.

Thanks, Jeff, for allowing me to steal your salient points. And again: ditto.

Another Friday Cat Post

Charlie is fully recovered. Here's what he did during his convalescence.

Oh, to recover like a cat.

April Numbers

Promised you an update for The Last Prayer, my silo story inspired by Hugh Howey's world of Wool.

During April I sold 750 (653 in USA, 78 UK, 10 DE, 8 CAN, 1 IT) at 99 cents each. Amazon pays a 35% royalty at that price, so you can do the math. But 30 of those sales were "borrows" from Amazon Prime Members and those actually pay more. So let's round up to about $300 in April. Plus I sold 21 of my other titles.

Some learnings.

1) The real story on Amazon is not the million sales/million dollar self-published break-out author. Although I'd sign up for that seminar, the real story is that tens of thousands of writers are making extra money to pay bills, saving for vacation/retirement, replacing that part-time job stocking shelves at midnight (been there), and even quitting their day job to write full time on a "normal" income.

2) For about a month I was selling an average of 21 books a day, so enough to pay for my daily coffee and danish. That put me in the Top 10'ish in the SF short story category in the Kindle store. I'm now sitting at about #30, so sales are down. This leads me to conclude that a second release (a "part 2") is key to continued sales/interest as the numbers start to decline. Two or three of the other silo writers have their 2nd installment out and they are still in the Top 10. So lesson learned.

3) Although I sold 21 of my other titles, I need more recognizable series ("branded" books) available for binge readers and others interested in "more by this author." Now my mesoamerican fantasy novella, Ulemet and the Jaguar God, sold 17, more than it has in the past. And one reason for that, I believe, is that I included the first chapter in the back of The Last Prayer. But TLP readers are SF fans, so I have the wrong teaser at the back...if I had an SF series to plug, I'd be better off.

3) Finding a niche or wave of interest and putting the book in the right category is critical as well. I freely admit I'm riding the coattails of Howey's blockbuster...with his blessing! That's been a boon for all us silo writers; Howey has us on his "fan fic page" and supports our efforts. Of course, a story/series won't last unless it's well written, so maybe the fact that I'm slipping in the polls is an indication of that!

4) Which leads to another point. Stories have to be compelling. I think readers want a good story well told - and will pay good money for something they enjoy. The 99 cent book is an impulse/throw-away purchase. If the book sucks, oh well. But to maintain fans, stories have to zing. And if books are up past 20k words (TLP was about 7k) then the new price point seems to be about $2.99 - and many readers don't mind paying that price for a good read. Plus, Amazon pays 70% royalty at that price...which gets me re-working the math...750 sales...hmm...more coffee...

At any rate, thanks for reading. As always, I appreciate your interest.

An Early Unpublished Work

Red Things

There are red foxes,

and there are red boxes,

there are red trees,

and there are red bees,

there are red cars,

ane there are red jars,

now you see, it can be,

ryhmes and chyhmes.

Lyndon James P.

First, thanks go to my sister for saving this, ahem, early masterpiece and then relinquishing the original after 40 years and sending it to me recently, mounted and framed, a wonderful surprise. A see-how-far-you've-come surprise. What fun!

Now some observations: I don't know if I've come that very far, actually. lol. In fact, I recognize some stylistic tendencies that I employ even now. Like the repetition of color, the generous use of couplets, the occasional misspelled word, and the intentional use of a pen name. Genius at such an early age. Or not.