The Zombies Can Have Me First

I'm ashamed of people. Wide scathing statement I know. That's okay, that's why it's my blog. What's making me ashamed today? This new, well new-ish anyway, movement for people to expect entire books to be written for an insanely low amount of money. I'm not anti-epublishing, I'm really not, I think it has vastly changed the marketplace, but not completely for the worst. I have multiple projects in the works at the moment some of them written specifically to be self published, but what I am against is this asinine view by penny-pinching jobbernowls who think that 200 dollars is a reasonable rate for a full, if not overly long novel based around the frolicsome events of their oh so interesting lives.

Really? If it's so interesting why don't you write it yourself?

Oh, because it takes time, or you don't know how?
Well, I guess that's why you need someone who went to school, or spent countless hours studying to do the job for you, understandable. Wait. Doesn't that mean you need a professional? Someone who knows what they are doing? Yes? Oh, Okay. But you want to pay what? Fifty dollars for a full novel, with extremely stringent guidelines and PERFECT grammar. Oh. Well, I, Um.

It just makes me sad, and ashamed. Writers have to live and eat in this insanely expensive world too. Sure there are some that can churn out something that they'd accept in a short(for book writing) amount of time, but why should they for that amount of money. Then, half the time when they get the product it is so far below the standard they'd expected they don't bother to pay the writer who probably out of desperation to feed themselves or family took such a low amount to begin with, then they are out the time.

Obviously I have no intentions of taking that little of a sum for writing, well anything that would take even half as long as what they are asking. The problem then? Other writers are. It's allowing the market to become flooded with these types of requests, and that's bad for all of us. However, I don't really blame them, jobs are getting harder and harder to land, even for those with far more experience than I have.

Sigh, it would be nice, once in a while if the corporations, non-writers, marketing specialists, and so forth would remember that just because I usually enjoy my job, doesn't mean that I don't have to feed my family too, can you imagine if you asked them to provide you with their services for a tenth of a pennies worth what they normally would make?

To be fair, this was written after a long day of searching for open jobs and stumbling over some of the most idiotic requests I've seen so far.

Letters, Words, Pages

So many things have changed since I started this blog, and then proceeded to neglect it into becoming some meaningless blip in cyberspace. I won't now, and likely never will begin to explain what happened between then and now. I will simply say that I've traveled from the west coast to the east coast, and back again, and I am accordingly changed. So now, I attempt to pick up the puzzle of letters, find a place for them within the words, transform those words into cohesive sentences, and from there move on.

I've stopped doing most web content writing, I take the occasional freelance job if it's something I think I'll enjoy. For a long time I stopped writing altogether, unsure if I had any stories left to tell.

As I sit here mulling over the hundreds of files, with starts, stutters, and moments of brilliance coupled with moments of unadulterated trash I can still see the promise of something to come.

So for now I'll consider this my, perhaps last, attempt at doing what I think I am supposed to do. This time however, I will not quit until things are finished, regardless of how long they take. I will summon up the courage, squash the fearful little girl voice that keeps screaming you can't, and submit things, knowing that rejection is just a part of the process and that even the best authors have rejection letters. I will stop worrying about what comes out as long as something does, letters into words, words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into pages.

What I will also do, is read more and worry less that I am going to somehow against my own will and intellect accidentally copy someone's style or ideas. I will read whatever I happen to want even if it is in the same field or genre I'm working in at the time.

--Goodnight. 

Remembering Where You Put The Stories

I used to be the kind of writer, who was really, annoying to any other writer around me. They’d ask how I came up with lines, why I chose the words I did. How’d you come up with that idea? Where do you find your inspiration? My answer would be “It’s just there.” I never felt like I made stories up, so much as they came to me, or I tripped over them and ever so elegantly face planted right into the middle of what would become my idea of the perfect story.

Looking back, at every one of those stories, there is the smallest fragment, like a shard of glass, which comes directly from my personal life. I think most writers will tell you the same thing, we bleed a little of ourselves into each creation.

It’s those little shards that the stories grew from; shattering into a thousand little sparkling pieces of reflection.   

I’m a fairly, private person. I don’t wear my life on my sleeve, or tell it to strangers in the street. Well, not in the way the crying girl at the supermarket will. However, the last two years have been filled with events leaving me pushing myself away from those fragments those personal moments. So I still had, the skills I’d learned, and the craft, voice and style that I’d developed over the years, but the stories were gone.

Slowly, painfully, they’re starting to come back. They are starting to grow again. I’ll walk by a conversation in the store, and there will be a story in the one overheard moment between arguing couples.

The stories never left, they’ve been there, waiting for me to be ready to start telling them again, to start listening again.

So my take on writers block, has a lot to do with the way we live our lives. How much time is spent doing what you “dreamed” about when you were a kid, with all these marvelous ways to communicate with one another, we’ve gotten lost in a sea of other peoples stories, and distanced ourselves, for personal reasons, and for other reasons from the things we know.

For now, for me at least, it’s going to come down to write what you know.

I’ve dusted off the journals, and dug through the notebooks, to find some of those long forgotten fragments and shards of me.

Taking A Leap

Sometimes, you just have to jump. As cliché as it sounds, and as difficult as it might be, sometimes jumping is what it takes. So I did. I leapt off into the void.

I found out that I could be a successful freelance writer if that’s what I wanted to do with my life. However, ethical, physical, and personal reasons dictated that it really wasn’t what I wanted to do. I still plan to freelance, but I am, done with daunting useless web writing. The SEO world is filled with nonsense, and ethically challenging positions that I don’t want to be part of. I think that the internet is a wonderful place, for the world to share, communicate and open up new and interesting markets for businesses. But I no longer want to be a part of the group that floods the internet with SEO based content that is about as useful as a used tissue. I no longer want to promote things I don’t believe in, and I don’t want to try and sell something that I feel is wrong.

So I’m jumping ship, and swimming back to the land that I know.

I’ll blog, I’ll write articles, real ones, with purpose, and I’ll return to fiction. I’ll stop abusing my poor fingers before they decide to quit. After all, what good is a writer without her fingers? They really were on the verge of full scale mutiny. I’ll learn to enjoy mornings like this when it’s raining and I can sit on my porch with my laptop and ponder the world in ways that it could be, or might become. Imagine all green leaves suddenly turning to shades of purple and the ruckus it would cause the scientific community.

So now that I’ve jumped, I hope I can figure out how to swim.

Reaching Limits

WARNING: This is going to get a little bit rant-ish.

Every human on this planet has limits, some people reach them quickly, and aren’t quiet about it. Others, well, take me for example, we’re slow to find that breaking point, we’ll tolerate more than we should, and when it’s enough, it’s bloody-well enough.

That’s how I’m feeling, that it’s enough. That it’s actually gone past enough months and months ago. Now I know, I am doing what I said I would, and that means I’m getting paid to write. However, there are a few things that potential freelance writers out there should be aware of about this new world of freelance writing. First, it isn’t a blasted fairy tale. Nope, no fairy godmother to sprinkle dust over your fingers when they are so swollen you aren’t sure you can type anymore. No witch to cast a spell and make that pile of deadlines slow down. Sorry if I’m bursting your bubble here, but think more in terms of feeling like you’re chained to your desk, typing all the time, and if you’re lucky you’re getting paid third world wages.

Second, clients are harsh. I could go on forever about the social implications of the something for next to nothing generations, but suffice it to say it’s a big problem in the writing world. You know it’s bad when fiction magazines are paying more for short story content (yes it is a harder market to get into) than the business advertizing world.

When I start doing the math, I really want to act like a two year old, stomp my feet and throw a full-blown tantrum. For example, I just finished the second part of a large project. Overall, the project added up to being 25,000+ words. That’s almost half a novel. In all I made .007 cents per word.

So, why haven’t I quit. Well, there are a few reasons. I like money. We all like money right? I have a hard time saying no to money now, even though I think I’m actually losing the potential of money later on. I have two wonderful, but, basically special needs kids. They are fully functional, and smart, and funny, and sometimes great to be around. However, they have issues, and these are the kind of issues that a normal after school care facility, and traditional baby-sitters are prepared to deal with, so I have to be flexible. I have to be available. If these reasons weren’t enough, top that off with the fact that I’m suffer from a bit, well maybe more than a bit of social phobia, and I’m really not traditional work force material.

So I keep doing it, but I am frustrated, and angry, that the world of freelance writing can’t seem to understand that writers work hard, and that we deserve reasonable compensation.

End of rant!

On the positive side I’m about 75% done with the outline for my newest fiction project. A young adult series. Outlining is something I’ve spent years avoiding, feeling that it stifled my creativity, boy do I feel dumb now. Now that I’m outlining, it’s a thousand times easier to pick up and put down what I’m working on, without having to spend two hours trying to figure out where I was going with a conversation, or a scene.

Pressure, Pressure, Give Me More Pressure

What is it about deadlines and due dates that make the writerly part of my brain function like it’s supposed to? For example, when I was in school writing was always about seeing how far I could push the deadline.

I knew I had papers due weeks in advance sometimes, yet, I always worked better when I waited until the last moment. Yes, it meant staying up most of the night. Yes, it meant stress. Yes, it meant driving myself to the brink of sanity and clawing my way back over the edge. But, something about that worked for me.

So, as I sit here rotting on the east coast. (Sorry to any east coast readers, however, I’m just a west coast, coffee on every corner, rainy night’s kind of girl.) I find myself struggling. I think part of the struggle is an utter lack of deadlines.

I know, I can hear you now. “Make your own deadlines.” That sounds great, but it doesn’t work. Not even a little. It just makes me feel worse, because it doesn’t add the pressure, no one but me will know that I’ve missed it, and then I just get to feel guilty and wonder why it didn’t help.

I haven’t found a good solution to this problem; I don’t think there is one until real deadlines come into play. So instead, the goal is to, just do as much work, as possible each day. Write, write, and write some more.

However, this time, my writing for the week is focused on outlining. I’ve never fully outlined any project I’ve worked on. I’ve balked at the whole outlining process from the time I was old enough to learn about it, but for once I’m going to sit down and outline the whole project from start to finish. Chapter by chapter, then scene by scene. Perhaps knowing where I’m going will in fact help me get there.

Things I’ve learned While Writing Everything But Fiction

A touch of inspiration from this fall. Somehow, I think this tree might have a story to tell.

I may have, perhaps, plausibly even, been avoiding this blog for a while, because it makes me feel guilty about not producing fiction.

Well, I’m over that, and I’m starting to write what I love again. However, in ways and times that I didn’t know, I would.

I’ve not been avoiding my keyboard during the break from fiction writing, instead, I’ve probably written ten or fifteen books worth of content on this and that, for different projects. So yes, I’ve been writing for a living, just not the type of writing I want to do forever. I’m not quitting my freelancing gig, I mean come on, I am paid to write…and until the fun writing starts to pay, that’s what I plan to keep doing. That being said, I’m going to stop neglecting my poor blog. I’m also going to stop putting my fiction on the back burner and letting everything else take over. The theme for me for April is going to be finding balance. Ha, in a world that is so off kilter that should be fun right?

I’ve learned a lot, some good some bad, some things that make me question everything I read on the internet, but I’ve enjoyed it. I’ve learned that I can write over twenty thousand words in a day if I want.

At that rate, I could go above the Nanowrimo goal in three days. Yeah, I said three days. Insane. I know.

Now the test comes, can I apply everything I’ve learned, the rate at which I write, to fiction? No, probably not.

I wish. It would make life so much easier if I could just churn out content, turn off the inner editor, and accept that this is the story my characters are trying to tell. Naw, that’d be too darn easy.

So I’ve come to believe that as a writer, I’m destined to fight with myself on a constant basis. More importantly, I’ve come to realize that I’m okay with that, and that in some ways that’s probably what makes my fiction interesting. So for now, I’m getting started again, and accepting that it’s a frustrating, challenging process, and trying to force myself to just work through it.