January 20, 2010
fitness, goals, writing
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I’ve been reviewing my work Screw Skinny, Get Fit and I realize that I’ve been messing around on this project for too long. I need a big, huge deadline that’ll embarrass me if I don’t meet it to get my lazy butt in gear about this thing.
So, here’s the deal.
I’m going to be offering ScrewSkinny for sale in PDF or PRC (that means you can read it on a Kindle, or in Mobipocket) starting April 1, 2010. I haven’t set a price yet, but it’s going to be under $10. If I get another big contract, I’m just gonna have to give up some knitting time. This is gonna happen no matter who else wants my literary excellence.
This book is not for the athlete. It’s for someone who is sedentary who wants to build or maintain health and fitness. If you have an active, outdoor lifestyle, you’re all good and don’t need this. It’s for someone who’d rather knit or play WoW. Yes, there is a strong geek focus.
I discuss levels of ability, including handicaps of various sorts, and explain why The Perfect Workout is nonsense.
December 3, 2009
Freelancing, teaching, writing
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I gave a talk on Search Engine Optimization and Content Management Systems at Lebanon College yesterday. Yeah, I know, the topic was a little too broad for an hour’s lecture. But it was a decent overview. 
greendalek said that it got his students excited and engaged for the rest of the class, so I think I did okay. I’m glad I brought my computer, though. I’d brought the Powerpoint presentation on a memory stick, and I found that the software on the drive interfered with the computer at the school seeing the files on the drive, confound it. So we just plugged my netbook into the projector and I did the lecture from that.
If anyone was wondering about Powerpoint presentations and netbooks, I can say that mine (minimal animation, no animated media and no sound) did just fine for the talk. I think I want a wireless slide advance thingie (how’s that for a technical term?) for the next time I do a lecture. I prefer to stand in the front of the class.
It makes me more comfortable for the social networking class. Most of the teach I’ve done has been exercise-based. While I’ll have several exercises in the class, it’s going to be mostly lecture-based, and I was wondering how I’d do for lecturing without talking people through physical exercises.
It’s funny how perspective can change. I used to marvel at people who could speak “spontaneously” and fluidly on topics. I ran across a comment once in Double Star by Robert A. Heinlein that sounding spontaneous is often a matter of careful preparation. That’s so true. I kept track of how long I spent prepping for that talk. I spent just shy of eight hours for a one hour talk — and that was on a subject I knew pretty well. Now, if I give the talk again, it’s unlikely that I’ll spend more than an hour and a half or so reviewing and tweaking.
Still, it was fun. I find that I almost always learn more about a subject just from researching for lectures. *chuckles* and looking at this pile of books on various elements of social networking and online interaction at my elbow, I expect I’ll experience the same thing in my class come January.
November 24, 2009
Freelancing, writing
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I’m on a bus traveling down to the airport to catch a plane home. I have a lot on my mind about the trip, and to distract myself, I’ve been working.
I often joke my office is my purse. Okay, that’s not really a joke. I’ve been reading a book to get ideas for a course I’m developing, checking my email (the bus has wi-fi) and generally just doing a lot of the things I ordinarily do as part of my morning’s work.
I’d gotten a netbook with an eye to the fact I travel a few times a year and wanted something not too expensive and easily portable. So far, I’m liking travelling with a netbook. The good battery and the compact machine make it nice for crowded travel. The fact that it’s light to carry and fits in a purse doesn’t hurt, either.
I think my next “big” computer is going to be a desktop I’ll sync with my netbook. The desktop will deliver lots of computing power cheap, for when I need that. Then I can do 90% of my work on my portable machine. As a writer whose work is often web-based, I just don’t need the computing power you’d require for video editing or high-end gaming.
November 21, 2009
Freelancing, writing
2 Comments
A certain very popular publishing company of women’s romance novels has decided to offer a new line of vanity publishing. This link goes to Writers Beware, which might give you a clue to my opinion on the matter. You pay to get your novel published and possibly edited if you’re paying at the higher tier. No, you don’t have the full force of the marketing department behind the book. Neither are you going to be able to count on the big chains stocking the book.
Vanity publishing has been around a long time. As a business model, it’s great for the publisher. The author almost never breaks even.
I’m fine with a business turning a profit, what with being a small business owner and a greedy capitalist meeself, and all. What I’m against is an unethical product that preys on emotional weakness, which this vanity publishing scam does.
I had an interesting epiphany in a Border’s a couple of weeks ago. I’m a very small-time writer. I do technical writing, SEO-type stuff… Any fiction writer who manages to make a living at it would probably call me a bottom feeder, and fair enough. But, this perspective does give me a “marketing mind” in a way that the stereotype of the writer from the coffee shop might not have. It got me to thinking in the YA section of that store. There was a Twilight display with books and merchandise and another dedicated to Harry Potter. I started looking at the newer titles in the section. Right now the trend in YA is dark fantasy and stuff with a Goth feel.
“This is all just product,” I thought, as I was looking around. Product follows trend in the entertainment world, and fiction is most certainly the entertainment business.
I think we’re trained that there’s something holy or elevated about books. In a way that’s true. The printing press spread ideas in a way that had been impossible before. The fact that a book is an expression of a human mind is pretty damn awesome. But not every thought we think is necessarily a priceless diamond. Often it’s just a drop of water. It’s when it’s taken in a wave that the water becomes an impressive force.
We’re also trained to think there’s something holy or elevated about art for art’s sake. Does art have value? Yes. Again, art is an expression of what is not only uniquely human about us, but is often a deep expression of the times in which we live, the joys we celebrate and the pain we mourn. But just because it is an expression of our mind doesn’t mean that art always expresses well.
We have always had to look for gems amongst the garbage when it comes to actual art. That’s not new. Dickens was a hack to the Victorians, remember. So was Shakespeare. Do we remember all the playwrights from the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries? Of course not. Have you ever read some random fiction from Victorian times? Some of it was pretty awful. Most of it was “mix as before” that the publishers hoped would make them a pile of money.
The problem is that this vanity publishing scheme is not going to give writers who otherwise had no chance a real chance at publishing a novel. Unless you’re really great at selling, you’ll never recoup your production costs, much less your time costs of writing the damn thing in the first place! If you’re really great at selling, you have a better chance at the traditional method of publication, where you’ll be paid more anyway. This, like all vanity publishing, preys on people with a handful of dreams and a hatful of ignorance.
Addendum: L’esprit d’escalier gives an excellent analysis of why this business model sucks. As Ms. Brown so eloquently puts it, “Writers sign the back of the check!”
November 4, 2009
writing
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Cranky introvert that I am, I can get tired of staring at the same walls sometimes at home.
I decided to treat myself to a workday at a coffee shop. My office is a netbook, so I can do that with the greatest of ease. The change of venue was enough to get me happy and excited about bidding, which was great. I got my day’s quota of work done in a lot less time than it usually takes. Forcing yourself to get your work done before your battery runs out is a great motivation even if you have ample battery power.
As I was wrapping up and treating myself to a couple of sessions of working on some material for which I have no direct client, I ran across a LiveJournal entry from another writer who has a hard time considering writing fiction “real work”.
I get that. I have a hell of a time forcing myself to work on StoneFlower and Screwskinny if I am not meeting my income quota for the month. Never mind that if I get the damn things done I’m looking at a month’s income or so from advances. Fiction doesn’t pay what work for hire until you’re at least a midlist writer — a classification of writer that’s swiftly disappearing anyway. Screwskinny likely has more marketing tie-ins than merely the book, so we’re looking at a lot more money — if it sells.
Notice the language I was using in talking about working on my self-assigned projects. I was “treating myself”. Indulging. That’s nonsense, of course. I’m writer. I mean, it’s my job, not my hobby. Yes, the money comes quicker from the directly-paying gigs, and I do need to take them on to pay rent. Money-wise, they’re important.
Career-wise? It’s the writer who has the guts and self-discipline on spec that manages to get her stuff in the bookstores. So the fiction and the other self-directed projects are very important to my career.
I’ve been asked to develop a specific course that I’ll be teaching in January. Will I have a hard time working on that? Nope! That’ll be directly to a specific project for which I’ll be paid, both as a writer and a computer instructor. I’ll feel virtuous every time I open that file, take notes, do interviews, or wander around the house delivering the pretend lecture1. I have a client already there for it.
I think this is part of why breaking into writing books can be so hard, especially fiction. Disciplining oneself to write and take that writing seriously when you have no idea in the world whether or not you’ll be paid for it can be hard when you have a million things demanding your attention, or when you’re looking at your bank account. Once you’ve sold your first book, you might very well get an advance on the strength of an outline. Once you know you’re going to be paid, buddy, you have no problem at all calling it work.
1By the time I am in front of a class with a new course, I’ve taught it about four times. Then it gets blown all to hell because the students ask questions and have difficulties I’d never anticipated. Nature of the beast.
October 1, 2009
knitting, writing
No Comments
I had a really nice morning this morning.
I’d been drying up, writer-wise. When that happens, a change of scene is often a good idea for me, so I took my netbook (have I mentioned I love it?) to the coffee shop, got a big ole plain cup of coffee and wrote for several hours on Screw Skinny, Get Fit. God, that felt good.
I notice I get a lot more writing done when there’s no wireless (the place is a t-mobile hotspot but I didn’t want to pay for that). I may disable wireless during writing hours and draw more serious boundaries between research time and writing time.
I also did some necessary shopping before I came home and found a cheap winter coat, which I desperately needed.
Shopping was a funny experience today because I wore a sweater I’d made a couple of years ago for the first time this year. It’s a gray sweater with dark purple ljus (those dots you see on Nordic sweaters), and a modified We Call Them Pirates pattern around the yoke. It’s one of those subtle things where you don’t realize the pattern is skulls and crossbones at first. It has become a fairly popular design among the hip knitter set. (Usually the only thing hip about me is the ampleness of my slacks…)
Why would this sweater make shopping a funny experience? Well, the internet-connected knitters come out of the woodwork to comment on it. First in the coffee shop, I was asked if I made the sweater, as the pattern looked familiar. I said that yes, I’d shamelessly stolen the chart from Hello Yarn. Then, when I went into a department store next to the coffee shop, two twenty-something sales people and three older ladies all commented on the sweater, the pattern and asked if I’d used Elizabeth Zimmerman’s Seamless Yoke Sweater as the template for the actual sweater design (I had). One of the older ladies expressed delight that “youngsters had taken up knitting” (at 40, I’m not sure I count as a youngster, but anyway…) and that she liked seeing people knit unique creations.
September 22, 2009
Freelancing, writing
2 Comments
I have wanted a truly portable computer since I was about 12. When laptops got lighter than ten pounds, I used to fantasize about getting one, but didn’t for a long time until the price on a mid-grade laptop dropped to what I was spending on a desktop.
I was in my late thirties before I finally sucked it up and bought a laptop. Now the one I bought was okay, really, for its time. But it weighs about six and a half pounds, has a crappy battery (an hour if I am very lucky) and it runs hot enough that I really can’t use it without an external notebook cooler. I can use it on an airplane, but I don’t like to. I do use it on the train, but I’m lugging at least ten pounds worth of material and taking it out to use is a bit of a production.
That laptop is starting to show the Blue Screen of Death at about weekly intervals, which means it’s about to go to that Great Computer in the Sky in the next few months. I want to hold off on getting a new laptop for several reasons, and have been in Serious Gadget Lust for a netbook since I first saw one. Because of the gadget lust, I didn’t trust my justification for getting a cheap machine that is not a true replacement for a full-powered laptop.
When I got accused by the World’s Worst Overthinker of overthinking the matter (I think I bored him to tears analyzing it out loud), I just went ahead and bought the damn thing — an Acer AspireOne. It’s the cheapest netbook on the market.
This is what I have been waiting for all my life. I can put the freaking thing in my purse. I get more than three hours on a battery. How much more I don’t know. It’s 3:35 and counting right now and I still have half power left. I can reasonably take this to the park and write. I wouldn’t have to be a contortionist to get it out of an overstuffed bag on an airplane. I don’t have to lug around the heavy notebook cooler. I don’t need something that can run World of Warcraft. I need something that can handle writing a book. I need something that can read a financial spreadsheet. I need something that I can use on the Internet to get email and bid on jobs.
Oh, and I’m writing this piece right now on it
July 9, 2009
writing
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I don’t like sitcoms in general. It’s not that I’ve no sense of humor at all. I do. It’s very small, harsh and (as one friend put it) sanguine.
But another reason I generally don’t like sitcoms is that they’re weak, very weak, on what I go to almost any art for.
Tell me a story.
No matter what else, I need a story to engage my mind and emotions. My tastes in this are pretty child-like. When I want a story, I want interesting characters, a good guy, a bad guy, a concrete problem for the good guy to solve, a bad guy who has a real motivation for thwarting the good guy, and if the story is long, I want a certain development and learning in at least the main character over a period of time. Ideally, the lessons the main character learns should be those lessons that contribute to him solving the problem.
I loved the first movie Highlander. I hated the rest of the franchise with a bitter passion. The story had been told and it was just capitalizing on a franchise. (Obviously my tastes in this sort of thing aren’t common, or it wouldn’t have made the money it did).
I don’t watch television because in general TV shows are not set up to have a concrete story arch. You have to leave it open for them to continue potentially indefinitely. Of course, there are exceptions. Many Doctor Who episodes work around this pretty well, with several episodes telling a discrete story. Avatar: The Last Airbender did a brilliant job with the storytelling, but it did have a definite end. (Notice that a lot of the stuff I like is written for children). If that were the norm for television, I’d have TV, I really would.
I liked The Incredible Hulk TV series pretty well. It also was very strong on storytelling. Thing is, a series of short stories under a single premise does have its limits.
It’s not that I don’t ever like series, or a series of stories set around a single character or premise. I’m a Sherlock Holmes fan, and I really enjoyed the Callahans stories. I have to admit that I lost a bit of interest after Callahan’s Secret, even though I really did love the characters. I’ve read every single Discworld novel and short story so far published. I’ve read all the books Heinlein ever published. But out of the thousands of books I have read in my life, getting into a series is the exception rather than the rule. Mists of Avalon was amazing. All the tie-ins? Blegh.
I hate movie sequels as a rule, unless it was a story told over several movies.
I know from a marketing perspective, the success of the Discworld Series, the Star Trek franchise and many, many other series that have generated a fandom cause producers and publishers to look for The Next Big Franchise. It’s where the money is. I understand that.
But my inner three year old is plumped down on a pillow with a frown and a pout saying, “Tell me a story!“
December 20, 2008
writing
2 Comments
For all that I’m a compulsive reader, you could hardly call me a lover of “great literature”. Oh sure, I like Shakespeare, but understanding that mode of English was hardly a leap. My church gave out Bibles to its first graders when I was a kid and we got the King James Version1. So we were educated in Late Tudor/Early Stewart English from nearly babyhood.
But when I look at the books that really hit me between the eyes, that move me and that make me think/feel on a deeper level, they’re generally not considered “great literature”. Stranger in a Strange Land, the later Discworld novels, American Gods, Shogun, The Lord of the Rings... We’re talkin’ pop literature here.
And yet I’m so culturally (or perhaps emotionally) backwards and dense that this stuff does move me deeply. I find the climax of Wintersmith — a kid’s book, can move me to tears2.
I often struggle with the fact that my fiction isn’t very good. Sometimes I wonder if it is my taste in books. I wanna move people like I am moved by some works. I know of one person who admitted he cried at the end of Stranger in a Strange Land and have never known anyone who has spoken of Terry Prachett as doing anything other than be funny. Sure, Prachett is funny, but his best work3 isn’t a comic piece even if it does have humorous bits. It’s why I like him. He’s funny, but his stuff generally has a point.
Russian novels (sorry Prof. Barnstead) leave me clammy. The Brontë sisters? No. Oh, I like Dickens well enough. Mark Twain is amazing. But “serious literature”? Not so much. They don’t move me. They don’t inspire me. They don’t make me want to reach beyond myself.
But I like that stuff to be candy-coated, too. Inspirational literature as a genre makes me shudder. Mostly, I think, it’s because I can’t relate to the characters. I get John Blackthorne just fine. Granny Weatherwax or Sam Vimes and their personal struggles with themselves? Oh my goodness do I grok them!
I just don’t connect with what’s generally accepted as “great literature”. I wanna be told a story, be affected with pity and terror. I want something that moves me, even if it’s not all that highbrow.
1In spite of its translation faults, I still favor the KJV when reading the Bible. Early training, I expect, but it just
sounds better.
2The last scene does, too, but that was meant for the Pratchett fans who are parents and would catch the power of that metaphor, I think.
3Nation, his latest. It’s really fantastic.
November 6, 2008
Freelancing, writing
No Comments
I was talking about writing recently and had someone comment that she wanted to be a writer because she “hated sales”.
*blink*
Free advice to aspiring professional writers:
First, you must learn to write well. The way to do this is really simple. You sit down and write every single day without exception. Write something every single day. It doesn’t have to be great. It doesn’t have to be profound. But you must practice your craft every single day with no exceptions at all. If you’ve never read Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh, do. That’ll give you the general idea. Get used to getting your thoughts out in text form. Get used to trying to get the rhythm of your thoughts across in words. Get used to plot, get used to pacing. For heaven’s sake, learn appropriate spelling, grammar and punctuation.
Second, you must learn to sell. I know a lot of you are thinking that’s what an agent is for. That’s not entirely the truth. Yes, indeed, if you get a book contract, you want someone to help you out and make sure you’re not getting screwed. Chances are almost nil that the book contract will happen without knowing how to sell. Oh, the publicity articles about the Cinderella stories never mention it. It makes a poor story. It’s much more exciting to read about luck than hard work.
Learning to sell isn’t about learning to be Leisure Suit Larry. We have a skeezy image of sales and marketing these days that doesn’t really fit with the reality of making it work. It’s about finding out what a potential client needs, then giving them that. It’s about making contacts, meeting people, hanging out and just getting to know what people need. If it becomes about putting one over on someone, you’re really doing it wrong. You have to have something of genuine value to deliver.
Neil Gaiman is a good example of what I’m talking about. I cannot imagine someone less like Leisure Suit Larry and the general salesman stereotype. He’s astoundingly successful, and that’s amazing. He started by learning to write really well. Holy mackerel, can that man tell a story! He’s just plain an excellent writer.
If you take a look at his career, however, you’ll notice he didn’t hole himself up, just write and then leave it at that. No, he got out and met people, he made contacts, he made friends. Anyone I’ve talked to that has met him at a con or signing has nothing but nice things to say about him. When I talk about learning to sell, that’s what I mean. You can be cyncial about it, but you know, you don’t have to be. And sometimes it really works better if you’re not.
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