It always shocks me how much faster time seems to go these days. Back in my youth, many, many years ago, days often seemed to last forever. I could happily spend an entire day playing with LEGO, building and tearing apart and building again. Come up with little stories for each ship and castle, inventing battles and heroics and villainous actions for hours at a time.
These days if I’m not careful when I sit down I might lose an entire evening.
Oh well. There are upsides to getting older as well, no question, but the pace of life is pretty ridiculous. And this weekend is going to be nuts… I signed up for a course about editing speculative fiction (like mine!) to see if I can get better at editing my first drafts into better second drafts to reduce editing costs.
My editor is great, for the record, and I’ve always been super pleased with her work, but at the same time editing is the number 1 cost for all my books. Reducing that cost would have a dramatic impact on making my self-publishing life easier.
So that’s something to look forward to! And who knows, maybe somewhere in there with the online course and my big paper that’s due on Monday and all my course readings I can actually find a few minutes to write. That’d be nice!
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Happy Turkey-Day!
Here in Canada, it is the Thanksgiving Day weekend. I think this is basically one of the few specifically-Canadian holidays, in the sense that Thanksgiving Day happens in other nations (not many, but some), but rarely on the same weekend as we hold it. Probably something to do with colder climates meaning an earlier end-of-season celebration back when farming framed most celebrations.
My parents came to visit yesterday, and correspondingly I spent basically the entire day cooking. Made a pot roast, a chicken, mashed potatoes, vegetables… mom brought brussel sprouts (I’m weird, I like sprouts) and a tiramisu for dessert, and I made coffee.
It was nice. It was almost normal… almost. Our renovated kitchen is operational but not yet fully re-incorporated… we’re slowly moving stuff back into the kitchen or tossing it out over time, rather than doing it all at once. But even aside from that, it was nice to see my parents for a few hours without us arguing.
Well, we argued a little. But that’s kinda just what my family does. We get together, and we argue.
Anyway, that was an entire day including setup, cooking, and cleaning afterwards. And then today we continued the cleanup (did I mention I cooked a lot?), and now that I’m finally finished with that nonsense I can get back to writing. Huzzah!
If you happen to be seeing family this weekend, I hope your interactions with them is awesome… and if you aren’t so good with your family, just know that’s okay too, and you are loved and respected.
Stay safe and healthy, everyone.
A Weird Sort of Normal
Much about the last 19 months is weird, and very little of it is “normal” for many definitions of the word. But with that aside, a recent trend has become sort of normal…
It is now normal for me to sell one or two books a day. That’s usual. There are blips where I will sell 3-4, and occasionally a day that I don’t sell a single book, but those are exceptions. And this is nice, and weird, and now… normal.
A good month, like August was, will have me selling an average of 2-3 books a day. And that’s definitely nice, but due to advertising expenses it wasn’t sustainable at that level. And I’ve said it before but it bears repeating: this is pretty close to what I need somewhat consistently in order to write full-time… about 10x these numbers and I’d be set. Or, more likely, a few months of really good sales and then back down to these sorts of numbers the rest of the time would do me just fine.
But there is still that part of my brain that struggles with this concept. Right now, today, somebody who has no idea who I am as a person is going to buy one of my books. If my reviews are to be believed, chances are pretty good they’re going to like it. That’s really kinda neat.
Anyway, I have a week off class for “Fall Reading Week” (a nice addition to the university schedule), so I can focus on a major assignment in a few weeks and, also, so I can focus on my writing! That’s going to be nice. I really want to get this novel done… it’s a fun story, but it’s starting to wear me down a little.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Lazy Sundays
I can’t say I’ve had a really relaxing day in… years, probably. I’m always working.
I mean, it comes with the territory. I want to be a writer, therefore I write. And that means any day that I’m not at the game store earning enough money for food and editing costs, I’m writing. Or at school… learning to write better. The end result is never really having a day off.
Heck, when I was in Japan a little over a year ago, I was writing there too. Every day I had to get at least a few thousand words done, in the mornings or in the evenings, between trips to gorgeous castles or hikes up mountains or taking a bullet train across the country. Always writing, always thinking about writing, always editing.
It’s exhausting, as you can imagine. I look forward to the day that I can focus on the writing and not pump so much time and energy into the rest of the stuff I have to do to fuel my writing currently. Hopefully another year or so, because gosh am I tired.
Anyway, I shouldn’t complain. I have shelter, food, and two jobs, only one of which costs me money. Things could be much, much worse. And I’m making slow progress on the novel, so that’s nice as well… not as nice as if it were swift progress, but you can’t have everything it seems, so I’ll take slow progress.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Cold Coffee and The Meaning of Life
I can’t say there is a thread that really connects those two things… I just happen to be drinking cold coffee, as I often do, and am thinking about the meaning of life.
School is interesting, in an abstract sort of way, but it continues to drive home how desperately I want to write full-time. Which is good, in a way, since that is what I am working towards, but that old phrase “Obstacles are what you see when you take your eyes off the destination” feels very true many times.
I also have never liked that saying (not seeing a obstacle doesn’t stop you from hitting it!). But anyway.
I suppose I can’t really complain that much. There are a few significant stressors in my life, but everything else is going kinda close to how I want it. I just need way more time.
Maybe I’ll go pour myself a bit more cold coffee, and start on the novel again. My readings for this week were pretty short, so I should have some time.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Mid-Story Blues
I really like starting novels.
I really, really enjoy the feeling of those first few chapters where I am getting to grips with the characters and their world, and how everything clicks together. Even if I end up cutting those first few chapters (which, almost inevitably, I do), that process is really satisfying.
But when I get to around the middle, it can be difficult to keep going. The initial inertia is gone, and the finale is still nowhere in sight… but soldier on we must, because you can’t get to the end without going through the middle.
But the temptation, my friends, the temptation to stop this novel right now and start a new one… oh, it is strong. I had a glimmer of an idea, a foundation for a new story, a group of characters I would love to get to grips with but having to wait until this novel is finished… that’s gonna be tough!
Who knows, I may change novels. At the very least I am going to jot down the seeds that have occurred to me already, so when I come back to this idea it won’t be from scratch.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Aristotle, Aristotle
I’ll admit I don’t think I’ve ever read Aristotle before. I’m familiar with the name, of course, and I have read a lot of things that reference him and his works, but this is the first time I’m actually reading Aristotle.
Well, an English translation of Aristotle. My ancient Greek is… non-existent. But still! Pretty close. And satisfying in its own way.
It’s a slog, though. A lot of backtracking and No True Scotsman-ing in the piece I’m reading (“Poetics”). Stuff like “Tragedy does this because Comedy doesn’t, and Comedy does that because otherwise it would be a Tragedy”, but somebody had to lay the groundwork, I suppose.
It’s an interesting enough read. I’m about half done, and then I have to read a few pages of Horace (who I have never heard of before) for class ridiculously early on Monday. So trying to get it finished today.
But then nothing else after visiting my parents for a few hours, so I may actually get more writing done! The dream lives on, one day at a time…
Hop everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Halfway!
As I sit here and write, September is half over. On the one hand, that’s really fast (as I believe I pointed out last week!). On the other hand, that means there is still half of the month to go, and that’s not too bad!
My course is going well, considering that this was the first week of class… professor seems engaging and interesting, material isn’t as dry as I was worried it would be. Heavy stuff, and we’re starting with Poetics by Aristotle, so no hand-holding, but that’s okay. The little I’ve read so far seems interesting in an abstract sort of way.
As for the novel, it’s not quite halfway finished, but close. I’m still planning on finishing the first draft by the end of the month, although I’m also going to try and give more time to the editing process this time around. We’ll see if that results in a better finished product, or just a slower one.
Hope everyone other there is staying safe and healthy!
Holy Snakes September is Fast!
September, slow down! I have so much I need and want to accomplish and you’re already almost half over!
Gosh, the days blur by. Work has resumed its usual flow (which is nice, in its own way), and writing continues to consume most of the time I am not at my other job (as it should). My first class is tomorrow at far-too-early-o’clock, but that’s fine… I’m making it harder on myself by choosing to bike since I continue to want more exercise in my life but additionally have no extra time.
Aside: trying to be healthy is expensive and time consuming. I mean, everything these days is, but health in particular is doubly so. Anyway.
I am looking forward to going back to class. It’s been over a year since I’ve had in-person courses, and that’s always been the best part of university. I can’t say I’m super excited about this course (Literary Theory), but who knows, maybe it will be my new favourite English course? Stranger things have happened.
Regardless, with time running down, I should get back to writing. Oh, and hey, if you live in Canada and you haven’t voted yet in the Federal election, you should go do that! My partner and I plan on going today!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
A Little Bit of Imposter Syndrome
I mean, it probably happens to most of us, right? That feeling that we don’t really… deserve… whatever it is we’re doing?
I don’t feel like I deserve to be a writer. Which, fair ‘nuff, I’m not really yet. I mean, I am a writer, but I’m not paid to be a writer. I actually pay a great deal of money every year to be a writer. It is shockingly expensive to try and do a thing.
But I still feel it, in my chest sometimes. Like… a weight. Something sitting on me and whispering that I’m not good enough. That I’ll never be good enough, and that I should stop trying and maybe just go have a nap that lasts fifty years.
It would certainly be cheaper.
Oh well. I guess the trick is to not let the bastards grind you down, if I may quote Atwood out of context. It would be easier, sure, but I’m not looking for what is easiest. All I want is to be… content, I guess. I don’t need riches, I don’t need fame, I don’t need fancy cars or a big house, I just need a tiny, stable income and time to write.
This shouldn’t be so difficult. And yet.
Anyway. This too shall pass, and I know of no better way of dealing with these kinds of feelings than writing. Put all this… weight, I guess… into my work, and hope that it means something to somebody.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Brunch
When I was younger and lived in the “big city” (Toronto, Ontario, between about 2006 and 2012), I really loved brunch.
There were a bunch of places my partner and I would go to, sometimes with friends, sometimes just the two of us. One place in particular, just down the street from our first apartment in the city, was a lovely greasy-spoon diner with the most delightful staff. It was small and friendly, just a wonderful little place to get a good bite to eat. There was also a fantastic BBQ restaurant that we found later that did a spectacular chicken-and-waffle brunch once a week. Used to be lined up around the street to get into that place… and then there was a small boutique hotel downtown that did a fabulously expensive but truly extravagant brunch that we went to a few times.
Yesterday we had a couple over for brunch at our home. Our kitchen is still non-functional, so I ordered in food, but it was a nice little afternoon of chatting, eating, and a few games. Made me miss those heady days of a decade ago when we would do that every week (despite definitely not being able to afford it!).
Gah, that reminds me I need to pay for my tuition… so long, money. I hardly knew ye.
Anyway! Brunch. I really like breakfast food, and the opportunity to eat more of it and with people I really like? A rare joy in these troubled times.
Speaking of which, I should get back to my novel. The protagonists are just starting to realize the depth of the trouble their world is in, and how they can work together against it… but one hero may be having second thoughts… gosh, I love my work!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Jpop and Ethiopian Food
A weird combination, I admit, but I suppose this is one of the advantages of living in modern times. Listening to indie Japanese rock (I’m normally a fan of bubbly pop music, but I’ll admit these are pretty good) while smelling a full order of Ethiopian food with the amazing sour bread they serve with their meals.
Times are hard, no question, and I have a sneaking suspicion that things are going to get much, much worse in the aftermath of the upcoming election, but for now… this is okay. Kinda nice, almost.
I have a monthly update to write for Patreon which will have to wait until tomorrow, but I did make some progress on the novel today. Tweaks, little polishing steps, rather than my usual massive bounding leaps for this novel, but that’s okay!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
A Little Light Rain
The game store I work at was hit pretty hard by some heavy, heavy rains last night (I imagine nothing compared to what they’re getting down in the Southern States right now). There was some pretty substantial flooding, and as a result they are closed for a few days.
On the one hand, hopefully the insurance will cover the damages (or at least most of the damages), and most of the stock was well above the water line.
On the other hand, it’s nice to have a couple days I can focus on doing my stuff without having to worry about what’s going on at my other job. Especially because it’s kind of the end of summer, and I’m definitely behind in my writing. So a few days I can just pour into that… that’ll be nice.
Also, I got to watch the magnificent Sandra Oh in “The Chair”, a short series about an English Department chair at an American university, and it was lovely and clever and super, super depressing for anyone who is currently enrolled in an English programme… like me! Huzzah.
Oh well. I do still recommend it, although I think it has issues.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Not Finished Yet
I mean, that’s actually unfair. I’m not finished by a fair margin… I was really hoping to get this novel done in August, but life, as it often does, had other plans.
Hmmm. Ugly sentence. But I’m gonna leave it! That’s my prerogative as a writer! To leave ugly sentences here such that there are none in my novels.
That’s the way it works, right? Cosmic balance and all that?
Anyway. Today I’m going to try and push through the speed bump I’ve hit for this chapter and just get more words on the page. I can fix most problems in editing, but only if I actually write the silly thing. So my goal today is get to the halfway point of my first draft (usually around 35-40k words), and worry about making it pretty later. For now, just words.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
A Little Competition
I play a lot of games. Tabletop games, that is, although I have played a fair number of digital games in the past. But today I went and played a tournament game (Star Wars Legion, in case anyone is curious), and did mediocre.
Thoroughly middle-of-the-pack. Decidedly average. It was nice to be at a tournament again (12 players total), but I had forgotten how exhausting it is to be out in public socially.
But I had fun! It’s a silly game, hard to take super serious, and it was a small, friendly event that nobody was taking super serious, so it was quite nice. A little change of pace, as it were, and definitely a nice change from having to work at the game store on a Saturday… although, ironically, I was at a different game store on my day off. C’est dommage.
That’s it for now! Back to the novel!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Slowing the Pace?
I have managed to finish my English course for the summer, and now have a glorious two weeks before I return to classes.
Granted, I’m still working full-time and writing every moment I can, but at least I don’t have school on top of those!
However, some of the feedback I’ve received recently suggests that maybe I should slow the frantic pace of my book releases a bit. They’ve made some rather compelling arguments. I’m going to think on it while I continue to plug away at the current novel (the cyberpunk heist story I’m working on)… it’s about 10K words done, which is significantly less than I wanted but, as we all know, 2021 hasn’t been a great year for anything and especially rough for creative projects.
But, not to fear, there will still be at least one more novel before the end of the year, and maybe I’ll push this one through at my current pace and then spend more time and energy on the next one… we’ll see! We’ll see.
Either way, a big thank you to everyone for your continued support, and I’m still going to be producing as much quality content as I can… but maybe a little less of it at a higher quality? I dunno! We’ll see! Exciting times!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Good Feedback
About a week back, a very thoughtful reader sent me an email with some incredibly insightful feedback. They had just finished Caitlyn Morcos, Interplanetary Marshal Service, and wanted to know if I was open to hearing about their experience with the book.
Yes. A thousand times yes.
So they sent along a list of stuff they liked, and stuff they thought needed work for my future projects. It was extremely kind, and I really appreciate them taking the time to give me their thoughts. A lot of writing is just kinda throwing stories out into the world and hoping that people enjoy them, so getting thoughtful, intelligent feedback is worth more than gold.
One of the big things they mentioned that I want to touch on briefly is that they’re not exactly sure who my intended audience is. A lot of Morcos is almost YA in tone: jokes, blushing deputies, kidding around. But then a fair amount of it is very dark, tackling serious issues and there is a significant amount of death and pain.
The short answer is ‘I don’t really know’. I write the kind of stories that I love to read and watch… witty banter, fast action, but not super serious or with “a message” baked in. Not that there is nothing wrong with super serious sci-fi! Some of it is great! But it’s not the kind of sci-fi that I love. So who is Morcos for? People who are like me, I guess, who find real-life stressful and depressing and are looking for an escape full of heroes that get to be heroic and villains that may be evil, but still have a moral compass they think is good.
Anyway, I really appreciated the feedback, and a lot of it is going to change some of what I do. One of the harder ones to work with was his suggestion to slow down my writing process… to focus on fewer books a year and pour more time and energy into them. It’s good advice, but it directly contradicts other advice I’ve received which basically boils down to “write as many books as you can at good quality so people know you produce consistent work.” I guess there’s a balance point in there somewhere, and I just have to find it.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Compare and Contrast
Over the last few years (I’ve now been a part-time English student for three years, more-or-less), I have had to “Compare and contrast” an awful lot. Compare these two books. Contrast these two authors. Compare and contrast these two poems.
So much comparing! So much contrasting!
My final exam for this course is, unsurprisingly, an essay about comparing and contrasting. And that’s fine, I don’t mind doing that one more time (this semester). My least favourite part of essays are always the Works Cited requirements. Having to find a particular passage or quotation from a book I read once is a slog… especially if I need multiple relevant quotations. And I don’t think there’s a good way to work around that… if you find the quotations first, you have to adjust the content of the essay to the quotes, but if you write the essay first it can be impossible to find appropriate quotations (especially if you, like me, don’t precisely remember what you’ve read, just approximations!). Oh well. My essays tend to be graded very favourably, so I can’t complain!
I should get to it. It’s a slog, but it’s an important one, and it needs time to be edited and adjusted as I write.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Home Alone!
Well, here’s something that hasn’t happened in a VERY long time. I have the whole house to myself!
My partner works as a book keeper (accounting), and took about a month off to handle some stressful home/work/life changes that have been going on. Today is their first day going back to their office (in as safe a manner as possible, and with the blessings of the boss to figure out a good “Work from Home” vs “Work from the Office” division that works for her). But that means I have all day to myself! Glee!
I mean, I love my partner, and I love spending time with her. But it is way, way easier to get writing done when I’m not being gently pulled in different directions for various tasks. And I am going to get so much writing done today!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Missed Wednesday!
Hey, none of us are perfect… I missed my update on Wednesday! In my defence, I had a huge assignment due for my course (the last thing due aside from the final essay, due in 10 days… I will probably start that tomorrow).
Thankfully, not much happened this week, so you haven’t really missed anything. And I did well on that assignment (technically, I did perfect, but I don’t think I quite deserve that grade… but I’m not going to complain).
Oh, and I sold 10 paperbacks in one day this week (may have been Wednesday, actually). Which is a record! It doesn’t quite double the number of paperbacks I’ve ever sold, but it comes awfully close…
I look forward to the day that a day where I sold 10 copies of a book isn’t even worth noting. But I am not there yet, and it is really nice to see. If only I could get those kind of numbers consistently… ah well! One of these days!
Alright, I’m going to get back to making dinner, and I’ll be back in a few days with an update on Sunday or Monday!
I hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!