Solitaire

Writing Journal: Or, Akamu tries to sort through his thoughts by writing, like he always does. May amuse the curious. Probably redundant. For my entertainment primarily. You've been warned. Or if you're a writer, newer than me, stopping in may be helpful, otherwise probably not, as I'm rather new.

I'm thinking about the still not-quite finished fiction project i'm working on, and though I want to finish it, I'm not sure if I'm going to improve upon it very much in doing so. I desperately want to move on to other things. I'm also rethinking the whole creative commons thing.

Not because I want money so much as because I want to see if my stuff's good enough for publication, and also, as something Holly Lisle pointed out about free fiction versus paid for fiction (she was talking about short fiction)-It's been through several readers before it's even considered for publication. People who generally know the difference between good and bad. Free fiction, on the other hand, doesn't HAVE those constraints, as liberating as it is to write it, shunts you into a category that probably rarely exhibits high quality (though there's no reason why it couldn't) and has a lot of lower quality stuff thrown about. Long story short, I posted my fiction online, and got like zero response or views from strangers. Kinda annoying, but I realize a large deal of this has to do with the zero quality control, which is what you're really paying for when you buy fiction-there's literally so many authors and writers of short and long fiction out there that it's not hard to find it for free-in fact, some authors'll go to the extent of pushing their first book, after publication, online for free (there's enough of these to get lost in series starters alone for months).

As for what the real difference is between creative commons work and publication? With genre fiction, there's word limits and ranges, and sometimes editors have pet peeves (usually legitimate sounding ones from the lists many of them provide), and other constraints; on top of that, there's the hassle of submitting and tracking a submission that has probably a 99% chance of getting rejected.

I'm thinking that my rate-1500 words a day, at about 500 an hour more or less (don't ask me how, but I always seem to come up with this rate and I quit when I hit or pass my quota), is ridiculously fast for writing, considering how long novels take to be made. That is, your standard author whips out a novel or two a year, tops, whereas at my rate, that's like a rough draft in two to three months, and (judging by how long it took to revise/rewrite parts of that first story-i.e., two days)-like 3-4 novels written. In a year. And I tried, but I don't know how to slow down (it took me a year or two to get up to this pace, and I wasn't going for speed writing when I got started at all; it's more like I broke out of my shell than anything else). And it's the rate Ray Bradbury suggests everyone strive for-in fact, dead center of the range he suggests-and at that, I got there by accident.

I have not, however, and will not, reach that five-year mark he says that reaches mastery until I'm 28, being very, very new at this. And judging by the response I got on DA to my work, it's not at masterpiece level or anything approaching that.

Which means, I think, there's something to be said for more planning, prewriting, outlining, and research, and more work thrown into revision and rewrites, if I can't slow down the initial writing pace, and maybe it needs more than two drafts. I'm going to devote at least some part of today after I wake up (I'm snowed in-those of you in colder climates will not understand how six to eight inches is "Snowed In", but in Virginia, snow is so rare we're not prepared for it at all, and there's exactly a quarter inch of ice covering my entire street right now-and my car's dead!)-I'm experiencing the joys of insomnia again; slept for like two hours, over a span of maybe four, gave up and got up again-anyway, after I wake up, some of today will be devoted to reading what authors have to say about how much research they do and how many rewrites. On short and long fiction.

I'm guessing what I'm going to find is that if I don't so much slow down as shoot for a novel-length project every six months or so, I'll wind up with something of much higher quality. And better researched. I recently looked at my series's world, and despite all the talk I did of worldbuilding, that's generally where I DO hit a writer's block nowadays, so it wasn't fleshed out all that well and it looked something like the dreaded D&D bubble gum world I was trying to avoid (minus dwarves, hobbits, and elves).

Something else of interest is this: http://hollylisle.com/fm/Articles/feature10.html . It covers three categories of writers.
1. Professional & Competent
2. Excellent & Surprising
3. Impossibly Good

Any of those three can make a living at it. Being a megalomaniac and overachiever, I'm trying to make my way to number three. I'm right now confident I can make my way to number one-with a lot of time and continual work invested.

Anyway, it's odd, I don't really like everything Lisle has to say-or I didn't before-but as I've progressed somewhat skill/craft/whatever -wise, some of what she has to say makes more and more sense. I only started one of her novels, oddly enough, and never finished it; I'm thinking of doing so.

Off to sleepland if I can make it there.

Right now i'm reading old pulp fiction, Robert E. Howard's, to be specific. It's interesting to say the least, and kinda sad; despite being a kind of commercial author, his stuff is good, at least the Conan stories. That, and it practically invented fantasy; I'm pretty sure he wrote his Kull tales well before Tolkien had finished The Hobbit (Kull sort of morphed into Conan). His other stuff looks terribly pulpy. But it's surprising how good the Conan stuff is, considering Howard only worked about a dozen years before shooting himself, which is very depressing to me for some reason...

I haven't seen, since early childhood, the movies, or any of the other stuff that I've heard is garbage that spawned from the series, but at the very least, the short stories are quite interesting. I'd never seen a fantasy short story before I picked up the collection book, and the format of it led to the Warbringer/The Long Road stories that I'm supposed to be editing right now. I started out writing them out of order, but eventually I realized it wasn't working and I would have to start from the beginning, work my way to the midpoint, and then go from there.

I will say i'm glad I read the Tolkien works as a child, as opposed to Howard's works.

Anyway...here's some linky link links.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_E._Howard#The_birth_of_Sword_and_Sorcery
http://www.conan.com/
http://hyboria.xoth.net/history/hyborian_age.htm

The last link you actually can't find easily, I found it months ago, before the MMORPG exploded onto the net and took over the search engine results. A closer look at it reveals it to be the D20 pen and paper RPG site (roleplaying game (MMORPG is "Mass-Multiplayer Online Role playing game) for those of you who weren't raised on video games and such). But the link enclosed there is Howard's essay on the world Conan lived in.

I still don't have enough frigging (wow, I didn't know spell check would accept "Frigging" as a correctly spelled word) money to get a decent book on getting started freelancing, though i've spotted a few on the net that come highly rated. However, I was reading an article on it, and apparently it's half marketing and half writing. I don't really know how I feel about marketing myself four hours a day and writing nonfiction another four before going over to the fiction grind, but I guess that's just how the world works now. It sounds like an extraordinary waste of time.

I also read that full-time freelancers can drag in anywhere from 12K to six digits. I'm guessing the average is closer to minimum wage or so, or just a bit above it. It seems like you would need to attain a degree of fame, enough to merit having an agent, to be able to live really comfortably doing JUST writing, which doesn't sound like a lot of fun for someone just trying to make a living off of it.

Who knows. So far i've switched tactics in my job hunt to actually putting myself in a position to talk to managers, etc.; I found an hourly employment site that's pretty comprehensive, snagajob.com, and basically just pick up addresses from it, drive out there, and grab a paper application. Previously I'd just fill out applications online, but someone pointed out that that was the worst way to go about getting hired anywhere that's kinda hourly. I thought about it for a bit and realized he was right; an employer can say EOE and advertise all day and just sit on hundreds of applications forever and ever and nobody will ever be the wiser. Actually, I remember looking at the screen that I wasn't supposed to look at when I got my last job; seven people had already submitted online applications, yet I got the job (granted, I had previous experience in the same store, but still). Corporate culture is a strange thing...

Naturally I discovered that my radiator was leaking coolant today, so instead of getting out of debt the first thing i'm going to have to do is probably buy a new car when I get employed (it's got...a lot of problems...a leaking radiator is just one of many things). Then I can work on my debt, then I can get out of this basement, then maybe I can work on getting a decent career somewhere. All of this is, of course, up in the air thanks to the financial crisis however. But it is a depression.

On the current project i'm working on, i've finished the rough draft. Woohoo. Now i've got a few problems ahead of me:

1. I don't know what to work on next. And I have several ideas situated in semi-built fantasy worlds that i'd ideally like to put into stories. Two of these have partially or entirely fleshed out plot lines. There's also the option of using the world of the short story series with simply different characters, and another story.
2. I'm done with the plot. I still need to remake my main character, and more detailed; detail the world some more; research desert and other appropriate biomes, as needed for the world; research survivalism a bit, especially desert survival; and so on. Then I need to add appropriate amounts of said newfound information into the story, in other words, do so without turning the story into a textbook on deserts and survivalism.
3. I still need to edit and revise the entire thing after that, including bulking up some stories, possibly, and definetely cutting some stories down to size.
4. I'm considering putting the stories together into a novel format...maybe. Somewhere as I was writing it I did come up with an over-arching plot for the series that connects some of the stories together. At the same time I don't want to do this because it hampers my flexibility (cramming it all into a novel and trying to get it published, for instance, would require abiding by publications' standards. the same applies to submitting the stories to magazines, which don't really serialize short stories any more.)

Anyway, I'm definetely feeling 'blocked' right now, but at least it hasn't happened mid-story.

In other news i'm still jobless. I'm going to try a fast food place and other restaurants tommorow morning (and watch my pay jump down to $6.55/hour; wheee). Once I start getting a regular paycheck i'm going to seriously look into freelance writing (fiction and non-fiction) to supplement my income.

Not much is different. I'm pretty much as sane as I was before, well, I lost my mind. If not more sane, truth be told. The symptoms are almost all gone. I'm more like a neurotic at worst than say, something slipping down the ladder into schizophrenia.

Now, my eyesight is another story. I haven't been drawing or painting, largely because I need to do so from life, and a recent eye exam revealed 20/80 vision in my right eye and 20/100 in my left (and astigmatism-sort of a double vision effect that creates a halo around things sometimes). My last eye exam, years ago, had me at 20/20 in both eyes. I think they fell victim to endless reading, writing, and artmaking, personally; anyway, I get glasses in a few days from now to a week or two. At which point I don't get to procrastinate anymore. I've needed them a long time, and i'm happy to be getting them...

My writing seems to have lost steam, and I've started working on a different project entirely; I'm burnt out on the old one, and i'll probably pick it up again on sunday or something, but it needs a rest. Anyway, the second's made for a more interesting world, and i'm spending more time on developing characters than I did before.

Apart from that, I'm STILL out of a job despite sending my resume everywhere. The economy's not a lot of fun when you're one of the people in the jobless camp. It's only been about a month since I hurt my back, but it's not been a pleasant month. I mean, i'm living in luxury despite it all, but I'd rather be on my own and working some day job, and later, working and on my own. Whenever I get into a better financial situation, i'm going to seriously consider picking up some quick education in a trade or something marketable. Otherwise my choices seem to be freeloader/homeless. Getting a four year degree sounds like a terrible ordeal at this point, not to mention entirely unaffordable, and finding work where they'll train you is totally impossible. Why train someone when there's plenty of trained people out of work...

I've started lifting weights again; despite back pain, it's not that pain you get from DAMAGE, which is a lot different, and I know the difference from plenty of experience; I have to, unfortunately, start at real low weight-like 30 lb. deadlifts-and work my way back up to where i'm strong enough to work out with the weight I used to throw around. Assuming I quit smoking soon, I should be in excellent health in a few months. But that's a big assumption so far. Anyway, I'm taking it very slowly, and probably doing exactly what they'd have me doing in physical therapy. The major downside to all of this is that, until my back is stronger than average again, I have to pass up fairly lucrative warehouse work in favor of trying to get a desk job-and again, they don't want anyone without experience. Anywhere, unless you're taking a sales position (which I have scruples against, and lack the appropriate personality for; I know I couldn't sell water to someone dying of thirst), they don't train or take entry level people just about. It's odd, because I know people with degrees in the same boat-yet i'm constantly seeing work I could easily do with a little training that requires a degree-that, i'm pretty sure in one case, a friend who recently graduated-won't do, because it's not in his field. He's about to learn the hard way something I figured out early, that only the CIA really picks up poli/sci and international relations type degrees. Naturally, like me, he's politically and morally opposed to working for scum, so he's basically going to continue selling cell phones for a long, long time. But then again, i've heard it's bad no matter what your training or degree is, unless say, you've got a medical degree. I'd go back and get one if I could, but math and something about cutting people open makes me really really not want to.

Ideally, I just want enough to scrape by with a small place of my own, something in the range of 30K some day, but that's a ways away. Right now i'll be lucky to get a job doing dishes somewhere.