Internet – Page 5 – Teel McClanahan

Cheating, Death – chapter 11

Only one chapter, again, today. Still on track to finish the book this week, but it’s slower than I’d expected. I think most of the resistance I’m running into at this point comes from something I’ve had trouble with for as long as I can recall: I know the story. I know the story, so it’s harder to write the story.

When I just sit down and write, when I don’t know what’s coming next or where things are headed or even, in some cases, anything about what I’m going to write at all, it often flows quite freely. Even with the Untrue Tales… where I know the basic character/story/universe arcs as well as I know my own past, I don’t know how it’s all going to come together on the page, and it comes pretty easily. With Forget What You Can’t Remember, the most difficult parts to write came after I’d realized how it was all going to come together at the end, because then I had to push these characters through those situations and lead them to be at the right places at the right times … and that’s less like watching the story unfold as it is hammering cold iron into shackles. And it’s always felt less like creative expression to me and more like work.

I’ve been doing somewhat better with this book than I expected, considering I’d had the bulk of the story outlined months ahead of time. In fact, the parts of the story I knew the best, toward the beginning, were some of the easiest to write. This may have had to do with the extent to which they were unconstrained; I knew what had to happen, and I knew what the last scenes of the book would be, but everything in between was unknown. And until I’d reached the middle of the book, I didn’t even know how long it was going to be or how much more time/space/words/chapters I’d have available to get Melvin and Stacy and Frances to where they needed to be, when they needed to be there.

It was after that I slowed down, I guess. After I’d more thoroughly outlined the remainder of the book. After I’d created a bit more of a financial plan for the book. Something vital happened in chapter 11, and getting everyone and everything in place for it has been a challenge. Then, writing it was a challenge. Now I’ve only got two chapters left: Chapter 12, in which I have to get everyone in place for chapter 13, in which Melvin has one more important place in the story to be, and Stacy’s final fate (in this book) is revealed. I expect the core of chapter 13 to be technically exacting, but easy to write; this is my favorite moment, the brilliant thing that makes me love the book (and that I think will lead many to despise it/me). I expect the vignette that closes out the novel to be reasonably easy to write and, in case I haven’t mentioned it, I plan to write a new short story to include in a 2nd Edition of More Lost Memories that expands on something that happens in that vignette. ((Actually, I plan to write two more stories for MLM; one based on that something in ch.13, one written from a zombie’s POV in the Denver outbreak.))

Ooh. I’ve just had an idea about the length of Cheating, Death. I could add a 2nd appendix which includes all these blog posts. (I’m already planning on writing an “Appendix Z – About the Zombies” where I detail what the zombies are and are not in my book. ie: they are dumb and slow, they don’t use tools or language, and they are spread by infection/bites, so the uninfected dead are just dead, and no one is coming up out of graves (Contrary to the cover image. Hah!)) They seem like they might be an interesting/relevant addition to the book. I’ll look them over and consider it when I get to doing the layout. Tell me what you think of the idea, in the comments.

Go read Cheating, Death now.

Problems of Perception

At the latest Art Walk, for the first time, I had some chapbooks/mini-books to sell at a lower price point than I normally have product at. I had two different, complete, individual short stories put together as 32pp & 44pp mini-books. I printed up 50 copies of each, signed & numbered them, and set the price at $2 apiece. The primary motivating factor here was to try to make sales to all the people who implied they wanted to buy one of my books but that they didn’t have the $13 or $14 required or a credit card (I totally take credit cards). I thought, perhaps incorrectly, that some of those people would have at least a couple dollars with them. I only moved 5 mini-books at the Art Walk.

The fact that people didn’t have (or lied about not having) $2 to buy a short story isn’t what struck me the most about the experience that night. Instead it was this: People assumed they were free.

Now, I could have used a color and/or cardstock cover to clarify that they weren’t simply photocopied brochures or flyers, though I suspect there may still have been some people who assumed they were free. A lot of people picked the mini-books up, looked them over, and managed to ignore the price marked on it in 70pt type. Over and over again. They grabbed, they looked, we discussed what it was, and they moved to walk off without even considering that a product at a vendor booth might have a price.

I thought this was bad enough, then when the crowd had thickened a bit later in the evening, it got worse. People started grabbing the mini-books and moving to walk off with them without so much as slowing down or asking what it was they were grabbing. Upon final inventory Saturday morning I confirmed that I’d caught everyone who’d tried to walk off with an unpaid copy, but the experience further illuminated some problems with perception I’ve been having pretty consistently with my business.

Another aspect of the problem that also manifested itself last Friday at the Art Walk comes across in the oft-voiced assumption that the art I’m showing is prints (as opposed to the handmade originals they all actually are). I’d thought this might be related to my relatively-affordable prices, so this month I didn’t post any prices. More people than ever asked whether my art was prints before (or without) asking about pricing. I know that some of the other artists at the art walk offer both prints and originals, and that some even offer prints exclusively. I just wonder what is driving this assumption about my work.

In thinking about this problem, it occurred to me that it might have something to do with the precise nature of my recent work, and of how carefully I’ve worked to produce clean, crisp, bold intersections and interactions of color fields. That some of my recent work is so well-crafted that it appears to have been created in (or cleaned up in) a computer and then printed out. That the sharp edges I create with my hand-carved tape-stencils are clearly not created with manual brush strokes. I really don’t know what it is, I can only guess, and these are what I’ve come up with in the last few days.

The other possibility is that people are projecting on to the work what they want from it. That they don’t believe they can afford original artwork, so project the idea that the art they want is available as an affordable print. That they can’t afford a couple of bucks for a chapbook, so they project the idea that they’re free.

Other perception problems I’ve had potential customers express: People who have been to my websites (modernevil.com, wretchedcreature.com) and who honestly are not aware that they can buy my books and/or art online (or in some cases, that they’re available for sale at all). People who have my business card (and/or are looking at one of my websites) and don’t know my address, phone number, or email address to contact me. (Literally: My name, address, phone number, and email address are on every single page of both of my business sites.) People who have purchased an handmade original piece of art from me, given it away to someone else, and come back to buy another copy of the same thing for themselves – sincerely believing that what they bought was a mass-produced (or at least multiply produced) item.

I don’t know what to do about these perception problems. Putting “all artwork original” on a sign at my Art Walk booth and on wretchedcreature.com doesn’t seem to have helped to communicate that I’m not merely selling prints. Offering prints isn’t the answer, either. Not only do I not like the idea of it, preferring each piece to be handmade and unique, but I’ve also looked into it and found the costs to be prohibitive. I’d have to at least double the prices on all my art, probably up to double the normal prices (ie: quadruple or more the current prices), or some of the prints would actually be more expensive -just to print- than the prices I’m asking for the originals. I’ve been thinking of changing my prices, but downward, not upward. I want my art to be selling briskly more than I want individual pieces to be gaining value.

Feel free to chime in with your own thoughts on these quirks of perception; I mostly just don’t understand them. Book pricing, perception of value of the printed word, perception of value of chapbooks, these are a separate discussion I’d meant to get to earlier today, but haven’t yet made time to. Perhaps tomorrow. I thought I needed a nap 5 hours ago; by now I need a full night’s sleep. Good night.

Cheating, Death – chapters 8 & 9

Go read Cheating, Death now.

Chapter 8 took me a long time. Writing it involved a lot of procrastination. I first sat down to write it at least an hour before midnight, Sept. 29/30 – and immediately spent an hour and a half re-writing the end of chapter 7. (If you read the version that’s been on Smashwords since 9/29, which ends with Chapter 7, be sure you re-read the end of 7; I turned 2 paragraphs into a 900-word vignette.) Then I stopped for food, watched a movie, and otherwise procrastinated & stalled, writing only ~600 words in the next 6 hours. By 10PM on the 30th, having had only 3 hours of sleep, I’d read dozens of articles about Google Wave, started a blog post on Self Publishing, posted an episode of the Modern Evil Podcast, and only managed to get about 1500 words of chapter 8 written. Then stayed up until almost 3AM on the 1st, adding only a couple of paragraphs in the next 5 hours.

Why was I procrastinating so much? In a tweet I put it this way: “It feels like I’ve been avoiding an actual argument with someone I care about, rather than an argument between 2 of my characters in a book.” – If that’s not clear, I’m saying that I had become emotionally involved with the characters in my book, and I was avoiding writing the argument in a way similar to how one might attempt to avoid an argument they knew was coming with someone they care about in their real life. But the argument was important. I’m not sure I’ve got it right, either; I’ve been avoiding re-reading it in the same way I was avoiding writing it.

October 2nd I didn’t get any writing done. I tried a couple of times, wrote a sentence or two at most, but it was a struggle. And then it was the Art Walk, downtown. And then it was the weekend (spending time with my wife seems to supplant getting work done – I realized recently that this probably represents an unconscious but real prioritization where my wife & my marriage are more important to me than my work/art/writing, which seems like a reasonable prioritization), and then… well, then last night I woke up at 11PM and … after checking my emails and eating breakfast and a watching an episode of Dexter, at around 3AM I was ready to get to work. Monday morning, as it were. In about an hour and a half, I wrote the final ~750 words of chapter 8, and updated it on Smashwords.

Ouch, that was a long one. One hour shy of six days between updates, after having taken only five and a half days to write the first 7 chapters (over half of the book!). Then, I spent the rest of today writing chapter 9. Twelve hours is a lot better than six days, though it’s nowhere near as fast as I wrote the first half of the book. There was plenty of stopping to think instead of writing right through. It was a struggle. It even required a change of venue (I wrote the 2nd half of chapter 9 at the library).

But Stacy is back in the picture for a while, now. It’s a lot easier to write when there’s more than one living person present in the scene. Heck, even one living person and some specific zombies is easier to write than one person and a nonspecific zombie infestation they’re effectively avoiding significant contact with. I’m trying to keep this book from getting to be too introspective. I mean, it’s still introspeculative fiction, but leaning toward action and somewhat away from contemplation. With Stacy in all the remaining chapters (in one way or another), I’m thinking they’ll flow somewhat smoother.

If sleep goes okay tonight and I’m able to concentrate tomorrow, I should be able to finish at least chapters 10 & 11. Maybe more, if I’m really on a roll. Still on track for 13 chapters. Maybe I’ll hit the end of the first draft by Wednesday afternoon. That would be nice. If you haven’t started reading, yet, the first four chapters are still free, or you can buy access to the full text (including all future updates and the final eBook edition), currently priced at $2.99. Remember, the price you pay is all you need to pay, so the sooner you buy in, the better for you. Feel free to wait & buy the paperback from me, currently estimated to be ~$10. 😉

Go read Cheating, Death now.

Cheating, Death – chapter 5

Go read Cheating, Death now.

Chapter 5 took me a little longer to write than the others. This has something to do with the weekend; I actually took some time off to play Beatles Rock Band (my birthday gift) and to spend time with my wife. It also has something to do with money. F_cking money.

There’s a bit of a story about this story, you see. I’ve been thinking about writing this book for quite some time. At some point, many moons ago, I realized what the story was, and who it was about. I wrote a quick pseudo-outline of the basic story… well, actually I just made some notes about it in the mind-mapping software I’ve been using on my iPhone (Headspace – worth a look; I went from the free version to the paid version, its icon moved to my first page and, this week, to my ‘dock’ – I use it that much), but the character arcs were all there. Then I spent several months reading popular modern zombie fiction, as ‘research’. Now I’m actually writing the thing.

After a few relatively easy-to-write chapters, I started looking forward. Wondering what the next chapter was supposed to encompass. Thinking about length. How long a book did I want, how many chapters (at their current, relatively stable, length) would I need for that, and so on. And it occurred to me this weekend that … the story I have to tell isn’t of traditional “book length.” Not without a lot of padding and filler and … and I don’t know what. Actually, going by my outline, my mind map, my initial notes, if I’d just written the rest of it without thinking about structure at all, it’d probably be over in twenty thousand words. And I’d probably have missed some of the story. And it would be almost unpublishable as anything but the eBook it already is.

I stressed out, for a while, thinking about money, about what length book people expect, and how writing a shorter book would impact sales. About how if the book were short enough, maybe I could price it at $10 and I could make a lot more impulse sales than I do at $13 and $14. About my current trade discount of 50%, which effectively sets my cover price for me, and is based on the idea of being palatable to book stores. About giving up on the ridiculous idea that book stores will ever stock my books, about reducing the trade discount to 20%-30%, which will keep it listed online at Amazon/bn.com & give me more pricing flexibility (& potentially more profit per copy sold). About rethinking the premises on which I make decisions for my publishing company, looking at what my current realities are, and looking to the future & potential of storytelling in all its forms.

Then, finally, I ended up where I’d started. Which is that I run my own publishing company so that I can write the books I want to write, the way I want to write them. So that I can tell the stories I have in me to tell, in whatever way is best for each story, and then put it out there as though the industry has no business telling me how and how-not to be. Because they don’t. All they know is what’s made money for them recently. Which isn’t the point, for me. Realizing which, I spent some time working on writing a closer-to-proper outline (on paper, but moreso in Headspace) of the story the way it wants to be told and the way I want to present it.

I’m open to following Cheating, Death wherever it takes me, so if things here or there go longer along the way, so be it. But with the basic structure of the story laid out, it looks like 13 chapters total. With the average chapter length I’ve been finding so far, it looks like about 33k words total. The paper book for a story that long will probably be around 124pp, which I can sell for $10. (I have 2 poetry collections available that are this size, already.) Which makes the final (estimated) eBook price $4.99, the current eBook price $0.99, with an expected $0.50 increase with each additional chapter. So go get Cheating, Death now for $0.99 and read it as I write it. Or wait until it’s done, pay $4.99 for the eBook or $10 for the paperback.

Hmm… I think it’s early enough yet that I’ll try to write Chapter 6 before I go to bed. I’m right in the heart of the emotional center of the book, right now. This is Act II, chapters 5-8, where Melvin is confronted by his wife about his cheating, before things really start to go downhill.

Go read Cheating, Death now.

Cheating, Death – chapter 4

Go read Cheating, Death now.

Chatper 4 is the longest, yet, clocking in at over 3500 words. (And without any zombies!) If you’ve been reading along you’ve probably noticed that structurally I’m writing each chapter in two parts: First a brief scene someplace Melvin Spall (my main character) isn’t, then a longer scene featuring Melvin’s misadventures in the zombie outbreak – which relates directly to the other scene of the chapter. With chapter 4, the initial scene is over a thousand words and, while it somewhat mirrors scenes we’ve already been through in the book (the family being woken in the early morning to evacuate), it also shows the danger of keeping secrets. Secrets that, by the end of the chapter, end up putting a lot of people’s lives in danger.

I spent a lot of time working on this chapter (relatively), which is usually a sign that I’m forcing it rather than following the flow – and usually results in a lower quality of writing. I would especially appreciate any feedback or criticism (preferably constructive) on chapter 4, for this reason. Having worked so hard on it, I might not be able to see what’s wrong with it, right now.

Also, chapter 4 pushes the length of the book-so-far over 10k words (Smashwords estimates 10,853 words right now, though that includes the copyright page & foreward – Scrivener says it’s 10,295 words when I just select the contents of the chapters themselves), so while I’m currently leaving the eBook at “name your own price” on Smashwords, as soon as I (write and) upload chapter 5 I’ll bump it to $0.99. I’ll try to get the sample% to still give you the first four full chapters, but from then on you’ll have to pay to read it as I finish it. If you’ve downloaded a sample without signing up for a Smashwords account, now is the time to sign up.

Remember, once you’ve paid for it you don’t have to pay for it again, and you have access to all future updates. Of course, I do welcome your money, so feel free to pay $100 rather than $0 when you “name your own price” at Smashwords:

Go read Cheating, Death now.