RDF/RSS Feed
Atom Feed
Sep 01
Strategic Writing
Posted: under Craft, Editing, Life beyond writing, Marketing, Revisions, the writing life.
Tags: Contents September 1st, 2023
Since early 2001, I have been the only earning member of our family. Luckily for me, the timing coincided with the largest advance I’ve ever received. But a writer’s income depends on continued writing–even with books already out earning royalties, they eventually slide down the publisher’s priority list as their sales drop. Gaps in publishing lead to sagging income and when it sags enough, the writer starts burning through savings, if they’re lucky enough and canny enough to have them. Or, as I did, have a relative who leaves them something more substantial than “dinner out after the funeral” or debts, which is what many are left with. My last full-size book came out in 2018, five years ago. Five years in publishing is easily the average employment time for editors in some companies, and being out of the mix for five years is…not great. If the Horngard novel sells to someone, it still would not be out until 2025, most likely. That’s 7 years without a release. I’m well down the staircase. Which is way better than it could be.
The good response to Deeds of Youth and going to ArmadilloCon gave me enough confidence to break out of the concussion + Covid inertia I’d also struggled with, and join an online writing group on Discord (for which I purchased an actual webcam and microphone because I could not remember the password for the laptop…I wasn’t using it enough.) The online writing group does the usual “read stuff, discuss the stuff,” thing, which I used to find very helpful with my first-readers, but my original first-readers are now (but for one, who’s in that writing group and got me into it) older, have health and/or vision problems, and just can’t respond quickly. It took a few weeks, but this past week the group sank its collective teeth into the new shorter piece, “Final Honors.” I should mention that nobody else in the group is writing anything like what I write, even those nominally within the umbrella of SF/F. I like that. It’s a check on whether what I write might be attractive to people who aren’t already fans, or even reading in the genre. The comments I got were very, very valuable in helping me consider the revision of that story…and the Horngard novel. Editors are always looking, in series/same universe works, for the possibility (or not) of introducing new readers to that body of work. I’ve never been that great at it in fantasy, though I’ve been successful (to a point) with SF.
As well as the question (from several) “Are you considering this for appeal to your current fans or people unfamiliar with your work?” one bold person asked “Are you looking to make money, or just write for yourself and friends?” I think I blinked about four times, processing that. Because I do write for myself, always have even when making money at it…AND I depend on an income because I like to eat (maybe too much) and so does my family including two horses. The consensus of the group was that the short story needed considerable work to make it accessible to readers not familiar with my work (and pointing out things I hadn’t thought of as lacking–which is good to know–like making clear which unfamiliar names are people and which are cities) and then a lack of consensus on the story’s possible appropriate length. At the end of the discussion, I was full of new ideas, new insights, which is the best possible outcome of having your work looked at. More than one person, more than one viewpoint coming out of a different readership. Story is Story, but there are places where SF/F demands more of readers than most other genres, and if you want to expand the total readership of the genre, as well as your own work, you need to provide clues as well as handholds.
Hence this post, because I’ve spend several days looking back at recent work, finding the same gaps and rough spots as in “Final Honors” in the other stories, in terms of making the work more accessible, and those gaps and rough spots would be a serious barrier to acceptance of the Horngard novel even within genre. Eyes wide open here. So what to do about it, given the limited writing time enforced by eyesight, health, probably length of life? Like many writers, I have a perfectly functional (?) *practical* brain alongside WriterBrain’s wild talent for running off in the wilderness and coming home with big game in the form of books. Practical Brain is in large part shaped by my mother’s Engineer Brain and it is willing to look firmly at numbers, probabilities, stress points, failure analysis…all that stuff. So the challenge is “1. How to write what will satisfy me when it’s done..2. .satisfy my existing fans when it’s done…and 3. at least not repel (and preferably attract) new readers. I want to write within Paksworld for awhile, both long and short, because the Plot Daemon’s successor generates better plot there. I know that background best, I’m able to stay “in character” there best. And I want stories that are true to Paksworld, not “other.” I’m reasonably sure that existing Paksworld fans will be happy with those, though if I can get back to the earlier “tighter” writing, they’d probably like that better, and they never did seem to like anything fluffy or too lightweight. Keep the depth of place and character. And those fans–you readers among them–won’t want boring infodump in the service of bringing in new readers. Insert all necessary handrails on the stairways, and light switches in the deep levels, to give new readers a fair chance of following a story. The group I’m in can definitely help me with that, by telling me what they stumbled on, where they felt lost, etc.
So I’ve gone in and consulted WriterBrain, who was chomping at the bit to get back to writing itself, explained that we were going to have to revisit several stories and re-vision them, and so far (not having actually started) WriterBrain is willing to do that, as long as it doesn’t mean “just cutting.” And WriterBrain would like more input from the critics. OK. That can be arranged, every Tuesday evening. There is a danger that this group’s ability to be “the outsiders” to my work may decay with constant exposure to it, but since they prefer to chomp down on what are to me *minute* amounts per person per week (very practical, but for a LOOOONNNGGG form writer like me, 1500 words isn’t even a day’s work, let alone a week’s) that probably won’t happen for several years. And–despite grumbling over the need (self-created) to get the webcam and the microphone…wow is the image and sound quality better. The friend who rescued me back in May from the tech collapse and office chaos told me which to buy. They’re not built into the computer–they’re completely separate and stored elsewhere when not in use because I’ve heard about what happens if you have a live cam on your computer all the time–eventually you forget it’s live, with unfortunate world wide exposure you didn’t want.
Now that I’ve written down what the plan is, I can go back to throwing ingredients into the bowl without measuring, stir them up with whatever implement is handy, and bake until the kitchen smells “right”. WriterBrain is happy with that. PracticalBrain would like a flowchart and blueprint, *with* dimensions, thank you, but is muttering only softly when I say “You’re a consultant, not the designer. We’ll get back to you.” PracticalBrain, who sounds like my mother, never gives up completely. It’s WriterBrain who if really upset goes off in a huff for days.
See you later. I’m opening WriterBrain’s gate.
