Stealing a March (From a Legacy Agent)

The following is a comment I put on a blog called The Portfolio Javelin - http://www.portfolioimprint.com/2011/08/the-myth-of-self-publishing/ followed by a reply, and my rebuttal. Such as it is. I thought my elegant prose worth preserving over here as well.

 

Many of the other replies posted by Wendy Keller feed into the myths about self-publishing digitally - the tsunami of crap, gatekeeper argument, books as produce, and so on that have been debunked endlessly by  Joe Konrath and Dean Wesley Smith. I highly recommend reading the whole article and all the comments, just to get a feel for both sides of the coin.

 

Silver Bowen August 5, 2011 at 9:10 pm

I just put up my very first –ever– ebook, a fantasy novelette. It took me about 6 hours, start to finish, and cost zero dollars. Unless you count the monthly fee I pay to my internet provider, in which case it cost approximately one dollar and ten cents. Granted, if it had been a full novel, it might have taken an hour longer to get the formatting done. In the interests of full disclosure, I’m also not counting the time I spent writing and editing. I did everything myself, of course. My own cover, content editing, copy editing, formatting, and conversion. I expect the process to be significantly smoother and faster next time, and the time after that, and so on. It wasn’t easy, but it certainly wasn’t incredibly time consuming. And it really doesn’t get cheaper than free. So, on at least two of the foundational points of this article, you couldn’t be more wrong if you tried. The fundamentals rules of publishing have changed, and changed so radically that many, including you, are apparently incapable of even grokking the changes.

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Wendy Keller August 17, 2011 at 12:28 pm

Let’s see…hmmm… I checked out your 99 cent book on Amazon. Looks like you have no sales and no reviews at all. That’s success?

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Silver Bowen August 18, 2011 at 9:56 pm

Wendy Keller, Maybe you missed that part at the very beginning of my comment where I mentioned that I just put the book out? As in it went live on Amazon a little more than a week ago? I didn’t expect much in the first month, or several for that matter. I have gotten 59 downloads on Smashwords so far, where the book is posted for free. Go me. The thing is, buzz out of the gate isn’t relevant in digital publishing. It’s nice, sure. Doesn’t hurt one bit. Sales are always a good thing. But ebooks are forever. Forever is a long time to find an audience. Being an independent publisher, even if I only publish me, is a new business for me. Business take time to establish and grow. Judging my success by the first two weeks is a little bit premature, financial or otherwise. For me, as a new author, success is having my work available to be read, with no compromises in control over content or rights. I wouldn’t be anywhere near that with a legacy publisher, or an agent. I would be depending on people other than the reader (my customer) to decide whether my work was fit to be read. Depending on employees and distributors to determine the fate of my product. No thanks (not without big bags of money involved, which isn’t going to happen.) But thanks for checking out my –first– book, anyway. Perhaps now you might address my actual points rather than engaging in ad hominem attacks on my credibility?

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Stealing a March

One more encouraging idea about talent, or ability, or whatever – Future talent cannot be measured by current talent. Personal progress cannot be predicted. Talent equals effort multiplied by an unknown quantity of time (a unit I like to call a mysterion.)

Some people suck at something for years, then all the sudden something clicks. Or they go from “just okay” to “wow” in a few short months, halfway through their career. The phenomenon of plateauing for a while and then making rapid progress is really common.

Every time I find myself busting my butt at something, and feeling like I’m not getting anywhere, beating my head against a wall, and maybe I’m just no good at whatever it is I’m doing, I try to keep this in mind and take heart. Progress is a complex, chaotic, unpredictable thing, nobody knows which tap is the last one that brings the wall down.

I recently posted this as a comment on Dean Wesley Smith's blog, about the myth of talent - http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=5143

I liked what I wrote so much I'm reposting it here. Because I wanted to share this priceless nugget a little more widely (actually, Dean gets about a billion hits for every one of mine.) Also, it is long enough to qualify as a daily blog pots, under my ill-defined rule-set (read: I'm making it up as I go along.)

This is what's known as stealing a march. That's military history type talk for one upping the opposition while they sleep. Google it, I'll wait. It may not really actually apply here, but it sounds neat.

Storytelling Vs Writing

Writing is important. Not writing in general. Quality writing in terms of style, prose craft, and so on. If your writing is stilted, overly verbose and flowery, or otherwise distracting, it doesn't matter how good your story is, the reader will quit on you. And heavens help the writer with bad grammar (fiction grammar, not academic grammar) or spelling.

But, good writing will only get you so far. You have to have a good story. You have to have the storytelling skills to keep the reader invested in that story. Writing style is only the very first barrier to entry for a reader.

I ran across a statement by Dean Wesley Smith several months ago, one he repeats many times in his "Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing" series (required reading, IMHO.) He says that most new writers are concerned with sentence by sentence writing, rather than story writing (any errors/paraphrasing are mine.)

I have been turning this statement over in my head for months, trying to understand it. I felt sure that I, as a new writer, was likely committing this offense. But I couldn't understand how, or how to move past it. How else could one possibly write, other than sentence by sentence?

It's taken two things to illuminate this issue for me. Firstly, the idea vs story concept I picked up form Bob Mayer. That idea in itself has radically changed my writing process. The huge number of words I've written in the last four months has also helped tremendously (about 100,000 or so.) Basically, I've gotten to where I am much faster imaginationally (yes, that's a word. It is now, anyway.)

It took me weeks to write my first story. I could probably (have, I think) write a better story now in an afternoon. Not that I am trumpeting my own horn, or claiming that the stories I write now are great (they are, of course), but they are miles ahead of what I was writing when I started.

I am developing a faculty to see my stories in much broader swaths than I could when I started. And I see now where the particulars often don't matter, as long as they convey the essential story information. It's not the words, it's the content. words are just a container for story.

A humble note - I'm sure (I really really hope) I'll continue to grow as a writer, and understand storytelling and writing better. I hope my current understanding seems as limited to future me as my past me's understanding seems to present me. Phew.

Quality Isn't Related To Conditions

To explain the title - The quality of your writing is in no way related to how you feel as you write. This includes mental states like stress, physical states like illness, even emotional states like heartbreak. Note that this doesn't mean your state won't affect the tone of your writing, as it often does, merely the quality.

I first read this theory in Dean Wesley Smith's series "Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing." If you haven't read that series, do so, including the comments. It will take a bit of time, but be well worth it in regards to furthering your writerly education.

Back to the matter at hand. I have not felt well lately. I've had a cold that has dragged on for nearly a week, as well as family matters dogging me emotionally. Yet I managed to complete a fairly light-hearted and enjoyable short story for last weeks day of challenge, and another one this week. I've done some writing over the last two weeks besides these stories, but not a whole lot.

If I were to believe that my sickness and general sense of lethargy would preclude my being able to write engaging prose, neither of the two recent stories would have been written. The fact that both turned out well, and are at least as good as anything else I've written, proves the matter. Quality of writing is independent of the circumstances of that writing.

So next time you feel to tired, sick, or emotional to write, do it anyway. Force the words out, one letter at a time if you have to. You may be pleasantly surprised by the quality of your output.