My muse is five inches tall . . . An Edgar Allan Poe action figure, complete with removable raven, sits next to my writing computer. He’s helped me from time to time with some sticky story problems. He’s also warned me about the dangers of alcoholism. (You can own your own!)
It’s funny how you have to keep relearning the same lessons. Like if you stay up late, you’ll be tired in the morning. Like making sure to check the laundry carefully before putting it in the dryer, so you don’t end up shrinking some of your wife’s clothes. Or like making sure you meet your writing quota for the day before you allow yourself to do the things you like to do for pleasure.
All right, that one might not apply to everyone, but it definitely applies to me. I’ve written about it before, but the idea of pages before play always does wonders for me. Whenever I feel my productivity slipping, I reinforce this rule — no Internet, no pleasure reading, and absolutely no television before I hit my thousand words for the day — and the ship gets righted.
In writing-related news, steady progress is being made on the new novel, the copyedits for Water Balloon Boys have been turned in, and I’m waiting for word on the two new books my agent is marketing. Ah, yes, waiting. The constant friend of the professional writer. The solution? Write so much you don’t have time to think about it.
There’s an article in the recent issue of Time magazine (available online) on the state of publishing that’s well worth a read:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1873122-1,00.html
“Self-publishing has gone from being the last resort of the desperate and talentless to something more like out-of-town tryouts for theater or the farm system in baseball.”
For myself, I think self-publishing is losing a lot of it’s stigma. I still think it’s better to go the traditional NY publishing route if you can — established publishers are going to be much better at getting your books into the hands of readers than writers, which is, after all, what they are paid to do — but I don’t fault any writer for going this route. What I do fault people for is thinking that there is some sort of conspiracy involved if the “the gatekeepers” won’t publish your book. For most writers, if you can’t get the traditional publishers involved, it’s because A) your book isn’t good enough or B) it isn’t marketable enough. There are exceptions, and the article mentions some recent notable ones, but for the most part, traditional publishers do a pretty good job at vetting books. There’s a reason 99.9% of self-published books don’t sell more than a couple dozen copies. They just plain stink.
That’s okay. All writers stink in the beginning. The same goes for musicians, painters, comedians, and brain surgeons. Thankfully, we don’t let brain surgeons “self-publish” — meaning, get out there on the stage before they’re ready, but writers are not in the same boat. You want to publish before you’re ready, before you’ve put in your million words of practice? Fine. Let the market be the judge. You might be pleasantly surprised — that is, if you’re part of the .01%.
That said, I do think publishing is changing. I don’t see the traditional model going away (although it is adapting, using new forms of technology). But I wouldn’t be surprised if in ten years the majority of even professional fiction writers are doing a mix of traditional publishing and self-publishing. What about that book you published ten years ago that’s out of print? What about that novella that no NY publisher will touch? What about a story collection? There are lots of reasons even writers regularly being published by major publishers might self-publish.
It’s funny, in a way. Self-publishing has gotten the rap of being “vanity publishing,” because so many people go that route because they just want to see their work in print, regardless of quality. And in many ways, because it’s become so easy to do so (check out Lulu.com, for example), that’s what it’s become. But for many professional fiction writers, it seems that vanity is exactly what’s holding them back from using self-publishing as a supplement to the traditional route. Will that change? I think so. I think it already has.
It’s a new year, and it looks like it’s going to be a busy one here in the Carter household. With four of us living here now, the place has been starting to feel a little small. After lots of agonizing, we decided to do a major remodel of our current house rather than move. We love our neighborhood and just couldn’t find anything we liked enough to go through the painful process of selling our house and moving into a new one — plus the crummy real estate market makes that prospect iffy at best anyway.
Of course, in a few months we’ll be going through the painful process of remodeling both bathrooms, adding a new master suite, and expanding the family room, but it’s going to be a wonderful house to raise a family in when we’re done. It will also involve living with my mother for two months while the contractor does his thing. These two facts have made many people question our sanity, but I think it’s going to work out all right. Mom’s excited about having us live with her for a while, anyway. Hope she still feels that way after we’ve been in her house for a month.
It’s funny. I can’t say that when I moved back to my hometown after college that I envisioned staying here for the bulk of my adult life, but unless something unexpected happens, it’s turning out that way. It’s not so bad, though. In all my travels, I’ve seen some pretty nifty places, but I haven’t yet found somewhere I’d rather live than Oregon. Now, if I could eventually get a second house on a lake somewhere in Oregon, that would be about perfect, but we’ll have to wait on that one.
On the writing front, nothing new to share for now, but I have a gut sense this could end up being a big year. The agent’s going to market with not one, but two new books, so I have my fingers crossed. Meanwhile, I’m starting a new novel that’s got me pretty intimidated — one of those books that I’m not quite sure I can pull off yet. But I’m pressing forward anyway. That’s the only way you can grow as a writer, after all. You push yourself to do new and challenging things.
Of course, that’s a good recipe for growing as a human being, too.