Category Archives: Musing

You’ll Get There
avatar

Posted on by
1
English: Highland Cattle bull – Domdmull Chief...

English: Highland Cattle bull – Domdmull Chief Bull at Gateside Home Farm, Bridge of Earn, Scotland (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

An old bull and a young bull are sitting on a hill, watching a herd of cows. The young bull turns to the old bull and says, “I have an idea. Let’s run down there and screw one of those cows!” The old bull smiles, but shakes his head no. “I have a better idea,” the old bull says. “Let’s walk down and screw ‘em all.”

Look. I get it. You poured your heart and soul into your book. Maybe a few booze soaked tears, too. Probably some money you didn’t really have. Definitely a shitload of time. But you finished it and you published it.

So why aren’t you rich and famous yet? Probably your book should be selling, like, a thousand copies a month…shouldn’t it? Well if it is, congratulations, and I hate you. This isn’t for you.

This is for the rest of us that are just starting out and only have a few titles. It’s doubtful those titles are selling thousands of copies. You might not get into the thousands even if you give it away for free. Don’t worry about it.

I am not selling a lot of copies right now. That’s okay, I just started. I only have two titles out there. Yes, I get bummed when I see the Beige Bar of Death on the first of the month, but I don’t freak out. I keep writing, and I’m patient. I’m not just trying to build an audience, I’m trying to build a catalog. Two titles are better than one, and four is better than two. I don’t have any data on this, but I’m pretty sure a thousand titles would be better than five hundred.

Think of a big heavy dog sled with all your stuff and your fat ass on it. Now think of one dog out there in the harness. He’ll pull as hard as he can, but you probably won’t go anywhere. That’s your first book, pulling for all he’s worth the brave little guy. Don’t yell at him to pull harder until you get a few more dogs in the harness. Then get them all to pull together and you’ll at least go somewhere.

In the mean time, be patient. Relax. Be the old bull.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Permission to be Awesome
avatar

Posted on by
Reply

My author profile starts with the line “Eric Bahle quit his real job…”  That’s a joke, but like a lot of humor, it masks some discomfort.  I was raised with a strong work ethic, and worked for years at ‘real jobs’.  Some were good jobs, some were horrible.  Most were just…forgettable.  But they were all real jobs.  There’s nothing wrong with a real job, but the implication is if you’re not doing a ‘real’ job, whatever you are doing isn’t as responsible, valuable, or worthwhile.

Turns out that’s bullshit.

This talk from Amanda Palmer is called The Art of Asking, but it could also be called The Art of Asking and Then Giving Yourself Permission to Do Something You Love That Isn’t What Most People Call Normal, But Who Cares Because What You Do Is Awesome?  Not quite as pithy, but that’s what I took from the talk.  I don’t know where the sense that it’s selfish to not work a real job comes from, but it’s there.  Don’t get me wrong, if you have a couple of kids to feed, you’re doing the right thing by keeping your day job.  But don’t buy into the idea that following some other path, a path where you create songs, or stories, or works of art, is somehow not okay.

If you do feel that discomfort, that nagging sense that you’re acting irrational, ask yourself where it comes from.  If it’s coming from other people, ignore them.  They don’t matter.  If they don’t believe there’s value in what you do, they’re not your audience anyway.  But if it’s coming from you, a negative voice in your head, stop it.  It’s okay to write books, or make jewelry, or play music.  Give yourself permission.  Then go be awesome.  

Recharging Your Writer Battery
avatar

3
English: Tesla Coil Sparks. Português: Faíscas...

English: Tesla Coil Sparks. Português: Faíscas de Bobina de Tesla. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A few weeks back I did a promo giveaway for West of Dead.  I had to use my promo days and they fell around the holidays, so I was hoping to cash in on on all the new Kindles and Kindle Fires everyone got for Christmas.  I got around five hundred downloads.  That’s okay, but not great.  No big whoop, any time you get your work in front of people it’s a good thing.  I’ve seen increased activity on Goodreads from these promos, so I kept an eye on it after this one.

I saw a new guy mark it as to-read.  A couple days later it went to his currently reading shelf, a good sign.  The day after that it was done and he rated it four stars, an even better sign.  And he put Grinder’s Keeper on his to-read shelf.  This fellow (a young man from Ireland, you’re damn right I checked out his profile) liked my author page on FB a little later, then started following me on Twitter.  He gave Grinder’s Keeper four stars as well, and a few days later I got a tweet from him.  He had devoured (my emphasis) my stories and the Joe R Lansdale story in the ‘also-boughts’, and wanted reading recommendations.  I suggested some Robert E. Howard, and assured him I’m hard at work on the third book.  He thanked me and said he’d check out REH while he was impatiently waiting (my emphasis again, but he did make it a hash tag) for the next Caine story.

So what?

Well, for one thing that’s what people mean when they talk about engagement.  This lad lives in Ireland, but because of the internet we were able to have a nice little interaction.  Hopefully that grows into one of those true fans you hear about.  But for me that day it wasn’t about a sale.  That engagement is a two way street.  When you hit the publish now button it’s hard not to feel like you’re just scattering your story to the four winds.  I heard someone describe it as ‘chucking it over the wall’.

But hearing that someone just flat out had fun reading was a personal thrill.  A jolt even.  It always feels good when someone likes your work, but this really recharged my batteries.  I’ve been having really good writing sessions with good output.  I had that magic moment when I knew (really knew, not the pretend know you sometimes feel in the middle of a first draft) I was going to finish this damn thing.  I’m even getting ideas for other books because the storytelling juice is flowing freely.  All because of some positive feedback.

The lesson?  Be nice to your readers, for one thing.  Yes you want and need sales, but you also want to entertain people, right?  I get a rush out of reading good stories.  I get a rush out of writing good stories.  The big rush is when someone else gets a rush reading your stories.  So make sure your social media strategy is…you know…social.

Enhanced by Zemanta

How Fighting Prepared Me for Writing
avatar

4
English: Print circa 1824 of the boxer Tom Spr...

English: Print circa 1824 of the boxer Tom Spring. This image has been modified and edited by the uploader from the book cover of Tom Spring, Bare-Knuckle Champion of All England by Jon Hurley. ISBN: 0752424041. Original work is public domain by virtue of age (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sometimes when people talk to me about writing, they’re not really talking about writing.  They don’t want to know how I get story ideas, or write believable characters.  They want to know how I worked up the huevos to step into that weird publishing world.  I suppose there’s some pat answers available.  The hackneyed “just do it”, or the accurate but kinda snarky “I just don’t think about it”.  There is a little more to it though if you want to know.

I trained for several years in Krav Maga, an Israeli developed system of fighting and self-defense.  It’s a no frills system, no forms or meditation, just straight forward techniques designed to end fights quickly.  The basis of the training is drilling those moves over and over in increasingly adrenalized/physically tired states.

But then there were the fighting classes.  These were full classes dedicated to contact sparring.  They were brutal and they were awesome.  You never knew quite how a class would go.  One night might be all stand up handwork, the next might be kickboxing, another might be anything goes.  Yes, that includes groin shots.

I’ll never forget my first class because I got my ass handed to me.  There’s just no way to be prepared to fight twenty other people for an hour.  I think Mike Tyson said, “Everybody has a plan until they get hit in the face.”  There’s so much going on, so much to learn that it’s overwhelming.  So what do you do?

You get hit.  There’s no point in sugar coating it.  You’re going to get hit.  But taking a hit isn’t the end of the world.  When you realize that, you can stop worrying so much about it and concentrate on doing things that make you get hit less often.  Some of the hits you take as an author are inevitable, a bad review maybe.  Some will be on you, say a bad book cover.  Work on the ones you can and ignore the rest.

You are scared.  The fight or flight reflex is one reflex for two different outcomes.  There’s no value judgment.  Your lizard brain feels the same whether you stand and bang or un-ass the area.  Since you’re going to feel that regardless, don’t let it rule you.  Let it happen and keep moving.  I’ve only got two titles out there.  Maybe when I have ten it’ll go from sheer terror to anxious excitement when I hit the publish now button.  But there will always be some kind of nerves.

You don’t get it all the first time…or maybe even the second time.  So, don’t try.  Pick one thing to focus on per class.  You can still do everything else, but really get that one thing down.  It doesn’t have to be fancy, it could be as simple as keeping your guard up, but do it with intent.

If you know you don’t write great dialog, really focus on that.  If you want to have consistent output on your blog, focus on that.  Write a list of things you want to learn or improve.  Start at the top and give time to each one.  I don’t care if it’s a month or a day, as long as you focus on getting that one thing right.

You stay positive.  If you’re working on your guard while sparring here’s what you shouldn’t say to yourself, “Don’t drop your hands, don’t drop your hands.”  Instead you should be saying, “Keep your hands up!, Keep your hands up!”  It might sound like a small difference, unimportant.  The difference in mindset is huge, and the difference in performance is out of all proportion to the change in wording.  Learn how to stay positive even when it doesn’t seem warranted.  That can keep you going when you want to stop.

You don’t do it alone.  Not if you’re smart anyway.  I lucked out and had some truly great instructors in Krav, but it wasn’t just the teachers.  The students were all there to learn together and make each other better fighters.

I’ve written about the community out there for indie authors.  Take advantage of it.  Join some discussion groups and talk to other authors, trade war stories.  Subscribe to writing podcasts, or hell, make one of your own.  Watch the Books and Beer Hangout and get in on the Q&A.   It might be cool to be a brooding loner, but friendly folks have more fun (and get more sales).

You never stop learning.  If you go to a fight class for a year, you’ll be an entirely different fighter from when you started.  Possibly no longer recognizable.  But there will still be a ton to learn, or infinite ways to refine what you have learned.  You’ll have to learn how to fight a southpaw, or someone a foot taller than you, or how to use your footwork to take control your opponent’s reach.  It never stops.  That’s a good thing.  How would you feel if one day you realized you had it all down, there was nothing left to discover?

Enhanced by Zemanta

What Do You Do With A Broken Story?
avatar

2

Fix it of course.

It’s incredibly easy to get discouraged and panic when your story isn’t working.  When you’re say, halfway through the first draft of a novel, slogging through the second act with only a vague idea of how it ends even though you’re starting to realize that the first half is all hackneyed crap with no story value at all.

Don’t panic!  It’s okay to feel that discouragement, hell it’s a part of the process that you’re never going to get rid of.  Just don’t panic.  Don’t quit and don’t throw it away.  Finish that first draft.  Then find out what doesn’t work and fix it.  You have to develop a trust in the process, faith really.  Faith that there’s no story so broken, it can’t be fixed.  Don’t believe me?

Here’s what I like about this guy.

He’s not negative.  There’s plenty of vitriol on the net splashed on ol’ George for episodes I-III.  It may be accurate and deserved, but it’s not really constructive.  This fellow gets in his jabs at Jar Jar, and midichlorians, but they’re story concerns, not ad hominem attacks.

He’s positive.  It’s difficult to create things and put them out there.  It’s easy to be a critic.  This guy doesn’t just point out problems.  He offers solutions.  He has ideas on why elements didn’t work and why the changes would.

He’s excited.  Star Wars fans love Star Wars, that’s simple enough.  Why doesn’t George Lucas like Star Wars?  All his interviews look like an insurance fraud deposition.  You’re supposed to be creating sweeping epics and grand space adventures.  Where’s the whimsy, the excitement, or even a goddamn smile?  This guy is upbeat, animated, enthusiastic.  Everyone knows enthusiasm is contagious.

He tells a story.  Not only is he animated, but he actually tells the story.  It’s not an elevator pitch.  It has a beginning, middle, and end.  It has characters with arcs, it has overarching theme, and he tells it in a compelling and likable manner.  I, no lie, had a better time watching his version, even though it’s a twelve minute video of a guy talking, than I did in the theater watching Phantom Menace.

All the pieces are there.  This guy doesn’t claim to be telling an original story.  He says this is how he would help Lucas fix his story.  All the main elements are already there, it’s just another draft.  And here’s the thing, the changes aren’t that big.  They’re big enough that you couldn’t just recut the movie, not even with reshoots.  But I don’t think it would take many rewrites of the script to get this version.  In other words, people paid good money to watch something that wasn’t a final draft.

He’s not George Lucas.  This is not a hack on George.  Any story has to go through another set of eyes.  A set of eyes that aren’t lodged in the skull of your spouse, or mom, or even cousin.  This is true for every story, but doubly (nay triply!) true if the story isn’t working.  A fresh set of eyes isn’t as myopic as your own.  The problems may be obvious.  The solution might be obvious, you just can’t see it.  There’s also an outside chance that the story is fine, and you’re so punch-drunk you can’t see that.  That’s why there are editors, and test screenings.  These people might not always be right, but neither are you.

He doesn’t give in to hate.  Pod racing.  Ugh…just…ugh.  But this guy’s all like, “You want pod racing, George?  Fine whatever.”  I mean, the assault on the first Death Star doesn’t make much more sense than the pod race.  It’s just that we were invested in the Death Star sequence because we liked and hated all the right people by the time it happened.  The pod race…not so much.  Our guy just makes a few tweaks so the race has story value (not just plot), and lets Lucas have his (stupid, stupid) pod race.  Not everything you like is good for the story, but not everything you dislike is necessarily bad for the story.

Enhanced by Zemanta

There Are No Small Victories
avatar

Reply

I was splashing around in a social media stream this morning, and came across a post from John Ward about the idea of incrementalism.  The idea that nothing big starts big, everything starts small.  This is the old “Rome wasn’t built in a day” or “A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”.  There are a myriad of sayings along those lines, so they can tend to fade into the static of platitude (plastaticitude? yeah, that’s a word now).

The thing is it’s true.  You aren’t going to get anywhere unless you get moving.  We’ve all known someone who has great ideas or lofty goals, and never does a damn thing about it.  There’s nothing wrong with daydreaming, but if all you ever do is dream and talk, all you’ll ever have are regrets.  Do yourself a favor and go after something, really try, and you’ll never regret it.  You might not succeed.  You might go down in an epic face plant, but you had the guts to make a play.

So why do so many people find the idea so overwhelming?  Well, because it is overwhelming.  That’s why you don’t think about the big goals.  Set the big goals, write ‘em down even, but don’t obsess over those.  Break it down into smaller bits, find that one step and take it.  Then keep taking it, keep putting one foot in front of the other.  Every step becomes a small victory, and enough small victories add up to a big victory.

In September of 2011 I attended the Digital Publishing Workshop for Authors.  It was a smallish seminar by ePublish Unum.  It was a great overview of what digital publishing looked like, and went into some of the things a writer needed to think about if they wanted to take that next step.

At the time I had been writing pretty much as a hobby.  There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s a great hobby, but the itch for more had been growing in me.  I was approaching a big old fork in the road.  If I wanted to be serious about getting published, I had to stop thinking about it and get my ass moving.  That’s really the first step, deciding you want something enough to get your ass moving.

The seminar was a big second step, a little information gathering of what you’re in for.  After the seminar I went home and smoked a pipe and thought (thinking is always more productive while you’re smoking a pipe).  I knew it was something I wanted, but that’s when I decided that I wanted to do something about wanting it.  There was a lot I had to do, and a lot to learn, but sometimes the best learning is in the doing.

I dug a notecard out of a desk drawer and scrawled this on it.  “Do At Least One Thing Today to Move Closer to Publishing Your Work“.  That’s it.  That’s my mission statement.  The underlines are what I felt were most important.  I hung it up where I had to look at it.  It’s a goad when I’m slacking off, and encouragement when I’m following its orders.

It works because it’s only one thing.  Everything I do is a small victory, a success.  I try to do more than one thing a day, there’s no point in dragging your heels, but sometimes all I get is that one thing.  That thing can be damn small sometimes, but it’s something.  Small or big, they all move me forward.  Now I have two titles out, and a third one in the works.

I’m not rich or famous yet, and I may never be either, but I’m enjoying myself.  When you focus on the small steps in a big journey, you’re enjoying the journey.  Two of my sales last month were paperbacks and I jumped up and down like a maniac because that was a hundred percent increase in paperback sales over the previous month.

That’s my experience because writing’s my personal lunacy, but it applies to everything.  I don’t really care if you want to start a Dio tribute band or learn how to juggle.  Take the steps and savor the small victories.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Awesome Is As Awesome Does
avatar

Reply

Two Awesome Guys

So there I was at the local fair.  Some nice ladies had a table in the home show building and asked if I wanted to sell my books there.  Sure why not?  It was all very last minute, I just grabbed some books and taped up some flyers and started shouting ‘support your local author’.

The scheduled entertainment that day was an Elvis tribute performer.  Not an impersonator, but a tribute performer.  The stage is about 75 yards away from the home show building, and my spot was right by the big doors.  That meant I could see this guy setting up and doing his sound check.  I was a little underwhelmed at first.  It was just some dude in Dockers with a receding hair line and one of those carpal tunnel wrist braces.  He did have on those Elvisy sunglasses though.

There’s a few folks in the seats for his sound check, but most people are ignoring him at this point.  A few people where I’m at seem a little upset because he doesn’t look like Elvis.  After a bit he comes into the building and he’s got a big leather bag over one shoulder, the kind you put a suit in and fold in half.

I see him talk to somebody in the office.  He’s soft spoken so I can’t hear him, but I figure he’s looking for a place to change.  I know he has to have an Elvis suit in that bag.  The people in the office can’t really help him so he ducks into the men’s room right behind us.

I turn to the other people at the table and say, “That’s like seeing Clark Kent duck into a phone booth.”  It gets a bit of a laugh.

Am I making fun of this guy?  Maybe a little, but it’s not mean spirited.  Country fairs are already kind of weird, and adding Elvis to anything will make it a bit surreal.  But hey, I live for the surreal.

He’s in there for quite a while.  I’ve never worn a jumpsuit and I wonder if they’re hard to get into.  Those stalls aren’t very roomy in there, so yeah, probably a little tricky.  Finally he comes out and he’s in a black jumpsuit.  It’s got brass and turquoise studs all over it.  I try not to stare but I can’t help it.  He walks by, slow and calm, in fact he’s serene.  He doesn’t really look at anyone, just strolls down the grass to disappear backstage.

I sit back down and keep doing my thing.  At least a half hour goes by, maybe more.  Then I hear it.  Also sprach Zarathustra!  I stand up and go to the door so I can see.  Is this dude making his entrance to the same music they used in Space Odyssey?  You bet your ass he is.

He runs up the stairs and starts belting it out.  There’s no band, it’s more like karaoke, but he is singing himself and doing all the Elvis stuff:  hip shakes, arm rolls, thank-you-thank-you-very-muches.  He’s not calm now.  He’s going buck wild down there.

One of the nice ladies comes up and watches for a few moments.  She shakes her head and says something like, “Oh, that poor man.”

I turn to her and realize, even though we are at the exact same event, we are having completely different experiences.  Maybe she just doesn’t like Elvis.  She seems to feel sorry for the guy.  It’s a very small town and a small fair, it’s raining off and on so the crowd’s not great, a couple dozen, maybe more.  She might even be embarrassed for him and this small fair and maybe for herself for being there.  I’m not any of those things.

“You kiddin’ me?” I say.  “That guy’s down there doin’ what he loves!”

Did he look like Elvis?  Not really.  Did he sound like Elvis?  Yeah, quite a bit actually.  But who cares?  He was having a hell of time singing and gyrating.  The crowd loved him.  He went down in the audience and passed out scarves to the women.  He did Elvis doing “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond!  Tell me that’s not awesome!

I got my ass down to the stage for a couple of songs and even sang along with “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling”.  When he was passing out scarves on that one, an old guy in the back pointed to the gazebo.  The old guy’s wife was in the gazebo and wanted a scarf.  Elvis kept singing while he walked through the rain, draped the scarf around her neck, and sang a few bars on one knee before he sang his way back through the rain.  That’s awesome.

I suppose it was easier for me to see it that way.  After all, wasn’t I doing the same thing?  I have a passion for stories.  I followed that and decided to become a writer, and here I was hawking books off a table at the local fair.  What’s wrong with that?  Nothing’s wrong with it.  It’s awesome.

You know what else is awesome.  Most people are behind you, or at least glad for you.  It’s a positive feeling to see someone having fun and doing what they love.  There might be a few mutters of ‘oh, that poor man’, but they’re easy to ignore and usually drowned out by cries of ‘right on’.  One of the great things about following your passion is sharing it.  Ol’ Elvis was sharing it with everybody in earshot.  But I got to share it a bit too.

One lady asked me how I managed to get these books published.  She and her husband had about forty pages done on a book about how to be Santa.  They play Santa and Mrs. Claus every year and they’re very passionate about it.  I told her I was self-published and I would definitely get together with them and tell them what it took.  Yet more awesomeness.

So, when Elvis (who’s real name is Jim Felix and usually does bigger venues) came back into the home show building, he was calm and soft-spoken again.  He was also dripping with sweat from his performance.  I asked if I could get a picture, but he had to get changed because he was gonna go back on and do another show.  But once he came back out in a fresh Elvis jumpsuit, he graciously let my wife take our picture.  The new suit was blue and he started the late show with “Blue Suede Shoes”.

It was awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSLVXt1iKCU

 

Enhanced by Zemanta

I Don’t Want to Talk About It
avatar

Reply
English: A world war 2 operational security po...

English: A world war 2 operational security poster. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My last post was a bit of ranting about how a writer could take a minor annoyance (interruption) and pretty much freak out.  So is this post.

People love to talk about writing process, but the truth is I don’t understand mine very well.  At least not yet.  It’s a weird hybrid of rational mechanics and emotional ticks that border on superstition.  For example, I suppose I don’t need a cup of coffee (for morning writing) or a beer (for evening writing), but I can’t imagine doing it without them.  The problem occurs when non-writers (normal people) don’t understand how important those emotional parts can be.  I suppose that’s how we get a reputation for being eccentrics.

One of my big ones is that I do not want to talk about what I’m working on.  I’m terrified to talk about it in fact.  So of course it seems like that’s all anyone wants to talk about.  Now to be fair most just ask ‘how is the book going?’.  That already makes me nervous, but if I say ‘it’s going’ and they drop it, then we’re fine.  The other day though, someone actually asked ‘where are you in the book?’.  My heart almost stopped.  I wouldn’t answer and it got a little awkward.

Now I do have pretty solid reasons for not doing this.  I have a book on my shelf called Robert’s Rules of Writing by Robert Masello.  Rule 4, out of 101 rules, is “Zip the Lip”.  He says “A book is like a hydraulic engine, and the more you talk about it, the more you let out the power that’s needed to make the thing run.”  Great metaphor and he gives more reasons, but it boils down to this:  if you’re talking, you’re not writing.  All that talking actually muddies the writing.

For me the process just feels so damned delicate.  I need to get the story from my head, to the page.  As long as it’s in my head, I feel like it can get lost.  I feel like if I talk about it, it just goes out into the ether and that’s it.  If I write it, it’s on the page.  It’s permanent.  I don’t always know what my characters are going to do, or what’s even going to happen to them.  I need to find all that out while I’m writing, while I’m discovering the story.  I don’t need a bunch of other people talking and thinking about it and wearing off all the mojo.

When will I talk about it?  Well, I absolutely won’t talk about it until the story gels.  There’s a magic moment when I’ve got the beginning of the story, I’m far enough in that the story is going forward, and then somehow there’s enough word-weight that I feel like it won’t blow away.  Before that I don’t even want to tell you what it’s about.  Since I have a recurring character I can say ‘It’s a Caine story’.  But that’s it.

Past that gel point, I usually have to go a little further and there’s another moment where I think ‘hey, I can finish this’.  That moment is different for every piece and it’s always a surprise.  But there’s still all kinds of stuff that can happen from then until you type ‘the end’.  I don’t really want to say anything until I have that first draft done.

Then I won’t shut up about it.

Enhanced by Zemanta