Category: Journal

trick v. treat

I saw some tweets today, some people making comments about their preference re: tricks and re: treats.  It’s Halloween-time, it’s understandable, and it occurred to me that this says something about people.  About what sort of person they are.

Actually, at first it directed me to think about the fact that, as a child and as a youth, I was never exposed to the culture and reality of Halloween “tricks” – for me, and as far as I knew, the repeated phrase “trick or treat” was just part of the Halloween ritual.  Especially as a child, I never thought about the meaning of the words – I just said what I was expected to say, when I was expected to say it, and was rewarded with candy.  Later, as an adult, and only through cultural context and never through personal experience, I became aware that for other people, Halloween isn’t (just) about dressing up in a silly costume and practicing communism with candy – it’s about pranks, tricks, vandalism, et cetera.  None of which has ever seemed like a good idea, or fun, to me.

Thinking about this today, and about the people who were saying that they’d always preferred tricks to treats, on Halloween, I saw immediately that it corresponded directly to the sort of people I don’t like.  Inconsiderate people, assholes, people who think of themselves first and often others not-at-all.  People for whom saying “trick or treat” taught them that it was morally and socially acceptable to extort what you want from people with threats of violence and vandalism and harassment.  Who were probably taught, if not by their parents then by other youths of the same ilk, that it’s wholly appropriate to act out (and break the law) if, on 10/31, you ask a homeowner for candy and aren’t satisfied by the result.

I was taught to obey the law.  To me, Halloween is about sharing, and community-building.  When I first heard about people going to neighborhoods other than their own for “better candy”… even as a youth, I knew better – that’s clearly exploitation of the modern urban isolationist lack-of-community.  Admittedly, I’m not much good at community myself, these days.  I also don’t like wearing costumes, at all.  And I mostly don’t like to participate in holidays.  But that’s personal preference – and so is, I guess, having respect for other people, for their property, and for the law.

To me, one of the ideas of Halloween is that even though not everyone wants to or is able to participate (some houses stay dark and/or have no candy), there’s more than enough candy to go around.  Everyone takes home a bag full of a wide variety of treats, and everyone gets to see all the different and interesting costumes and the happy families, and to connect with the people in their neighborhood.  There’s no need to follow through on the ritually-threatened “tricks” to act out against non-participants; you’re going to have a good time and get candy without them.  Obviously, this requires a critical mass of participants – but that’s why it’s supposed to be about the community!  If you lived in a neighborhood where most of the people didn’t want to participate, and you were part of a community with those people, you would know it, and vice versa.

Communist activities like Halloween work only when there is a community of people who are connected to one another – isolationism and self-interest run contrariwise to them.  Being community-minded leads to a harmonious event where everyone has a good time and is rewarded.  Being self-interested and having a disregard for community leads to tricks, pranks, vandalism, and retaliation, which would only lead those being attacked for not participating toward further isolation from the community that attacked them.

I think this post changed tracks, somewhere. Thinking in words again, I guess.

undisciplined, unfocused, distractible

I have a reasonably long attention span, I don’t suffer from anything like what gets diagnosed as ADD/ADHD, but I do find myself having trouble focusing on one thing for very long.  Not minutes, not hours, but … usually after a few days or weeks, I have trouble staying focused and interested on working on the same thing.

Right now it’s this book, Cheating, Death.  I started thinking about what I wanted to do with my next novel about four months ago, and had its initial outline done by mid-July. Then I spent two and a half months reading modern, popular, and recommended zombie novels until I was on the verge of being so sick of zombies I couldn’t have written Cheating, Death.  At which time, in the middle of reading one of the books, I just stopped reading and began writing.  And I’ve spent the last 5 weeks working on it.  In a conversation with my brother earlier tonight, I estimated that I’m on roughly the ninth or tenth pass through the full text of the book, between writing it, editing it, copyediting, hand-coding the kindle version, recording the audiobook, and now editing the audiobook.

It’s no wonder I’m having trouble maintaining interest in editing the audiobook.  (Have you tried reading the same book 9+ times in a month?)  If I’d been able to sit still and work through the edits, hour after hour, I should have been able to finish the first pass through the entire audiobook in (at most) two days, finishing today.  Alas, I’m not quite halfway through with the main edits, I’ve barely begun the work of marketing the book, and I’m nearly fed up with it.  I want to work on anything else.

I want to work on my next book.  I’ve been brainstorming & worldbuilding for the next book and have come up with at least one more (longer, more complex) novel in addition to that which will be set in the same universe.  I lost a couple of nights recently in looking toward what I’d like to accomplish in the next five years.  I spent several hours with my brother tonight developing (from scratch) the basics of a video game we want to develop.  I’m able to work on each of these other ideas & projects for hours at a time over multiple days; it’s not a moment-to-moment shifting from project to project, it’s an urge to work on anything other than Cheating, Death, right now.

I am aware that other authors work on a single book for months, often for years, before ever considering submitting it for publication – and that’s before professional editors start working with them on it, a process that typically stretches on for a year or two before the book reaches the market.  I am aware of it.  It’s just not something I do.  I’m undisciplined, unfocused.  I have trouble working on a single project (a book, an audiobook, learning a language) for more than a few weeks.  I have trouble working on a single image (a painting, a website design) for more than a few days.  I have trouble working on a single blog post for more than a few hours.

On the other hand, I’m intense. I’ve written several novels in about two weeks each, and I wrote one of them in under 3 days.  I’ve won NaNoWriMo four times.  Cheating, Death is the second novel I’ve gone from first word to finished-paperback-book-for-sale with in under a month.  I usually take a website redesign from zero to done in less than two days.  When I’m working passionately, I dive in completely, forsaking sleep, the normal bounds of time, and press on diligently until I’ve exhausted either the idea or my interest in it – and then, like I’m certainly going to do with the Cheating, Death audiobook, I usually continue working on things in which my interest has waned, at least until that phase of my work is complete.  Even my sense of responsibility (& stubbornness) is intense; I remain dedicated to completing the work, and doing so to the best of my ability, in spite of even intense apathy.

I’ve just spent nearly four hours working on this post, and I’ve had a headache for almost half that.  I ought to be sleeping.  Not just because I’ve been awake so long, but also so I can wake in the morning and dedicate tomorrow to working (at least a few hours) on editing that audiobook.  To marketing it.  To getting it from being just a book I wrote to something people are actually reading and listening to.  Hopefully the acetaminophen I took a little while ago will take effect soon; I’m not sure how easily I’ll be able to sleep with this headache.

independence in words is not seen as equal

This will probably be a bit of a ramble.  I haven’t fully thought this out, though I’ve been thinking in this area of thought for some time, now.  I may write a more coherent post/essay on this or a similar subject in the future.  This is … well, this is me writing my thoughts out on my online journal.  It’s part of how I work through thoughts & feelings, sometimes, and you either already know that or you’re new here.

There exists a great disparity between the creation of literature/books (and perceptions thereof) and the creation of other forms of art.  One key aspect of this difference is in the concept of independence, and it is brought into clearer focus in the idea of the editor.  In writing, there is a commonly held belief that all writing needs to be edited – and not just edited, but that it needs to be edited by someone who is not the author, and preferably by someone whose whole job is to be a professional editor.  This belief extends outward to create the impression in many minds that all writing which has not been filtered and perfected by professional editors is bad writing.  ie: only books published by a major publisher are worth reading.  That is the extreme view (though also the widest-held view in the profession), and there are a lot of hangers-on; that professional copy-editors, typesetters, cover designers, web designers, publicists, et cetera all need to have a hand in forming a worthy book.  The author cannot, independently, create something worth reading; this reads to me as a loss of authorship.  (See also: authority)

Other forms of art do not (exclusively) hold such strange beliefs.  If a musician creates a work of art independently, it is not pre-judged and cast aside without being listened to.  If a Mozart or a Beethoven, a Trent Reznor or a Moby sits alone by themselves and carefully crafts the exact piece of music they -as the artist/author/creator- want to craft, that’s acceptable.  The independent, unsigned musician playing all their own songs a live, local gig is a much-loved creator who gets respect from music-lovers.  (And if/when they get signed and get an editor/producer to help them “polish” their sound, it’s common for their existing fans to complain! To say that editing the music took away the best of it.)  When a painter or a sculptor is the sole creator of a work of visual art, that’s the expected and normal course of action.  If an independent filmmaker is the writer/director/producer/editor/star, it’s impressive and may actually help sell the film.  All these arts are judged on the artwork itself – we listen to the music, we look at the art, we watch the film.

Yet with writing, the independent author’s creation is judged without being read, more often than not.   The author is told “…a book really needs an editor’s collaboration, no matter how good the writer is.”  (That’s just the quote/link I have today – I see comments like these go by every day on Twitter.)  That no one should ever Self-Publish, that independent publishing is a joke, that all self-published books are crap.  There is a rash of book reviews going around the internet right now, wherein self-published books are “reviewed” negatively without even being read.  The reviewers aren’t even stating something like “this book was so bad I only read the first 30 pages, and here’s what I think of them,” they’re writing the reviews as though the whole book had been read.  In one case last week there was one where the “reviewer” didn’t even have a copy of the book!  They were reviewing it based on the marketing blurb & publisher info!  Even self-publishing advocates start from the basis of “every book needs professional editing” and will gladly point you in the direction of editors-for-hire.  Most of the people I’ve heard from who proudly stand behind independent publishing say the same things.  It’s endemic.

Why does such an inequality exist?  Why are independent music, independent visual artists et cetera seen so differently from independent authors?  Why isn’t there a balance?  Professionally edited/produced/polished/marketed music is able to live alongside a flourishing independent music scene.  Graphic designers and professional illustrators are able to co-exist in the world with independent visual artists.  Why do publishers, writers, and even a lot of readers maintain that they cannot suffer independent authorship to exist?  Why, in fact, isn’t it cherished and encouraged by the most discerning readers?

In music: the masses like the pop music and the heavily-produced music, and the audiophiles and people who care about music the most prefer independent, local, and live music.  In visual art: the masses are swayed by a well-designed ad and a slick website, and art critics and collectors pay attention to independent artists whose work pushes the limits of understanding.  In film: the big audiences turn out to see the dozen big, dumb blockbuster action flicks and a dozen cookie-cutter horror flicks a year, and the discerning cinephiles support a landscape of hundreds of independent films every year.  In writing: only the slick, heavily-edited books with mass-market appeal are worth reading, and the most avid readers and book buyers seem to agree with that sentiment. Huh? What?

Me?  I’m an independent creator.  I create visual art.  I create books.  I create websites.  I create podcasts.  I create music.  I create short films.  I create sculptural furniture.  I do it all myself.  I am the author of my art.  It isn’t for everyone, it isn’t meant to be – I’m not creating lowest-common-denominator/homogeneous work for mass consumption, I’m creating independent/original work for the discerning mind.

I just don’t understand why that’s okay with 9/10ths of what I create, but not with my writing.

Cheating, Death – unboxing the paperbacks

Wow. I didn’t intend for it to work out exactly that way, but it looks like Cheating, Death went from word one to paperback book in my hand in exactly a month. On September 23rd I started writing, and today (October 23rd) I received my initial shipment of paperback copies. I blogged about writing it as I wrote it, a chapter or two at a time (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7, 8 & 9, 10, 11, 12, 13), and about a few other things, in between. I actually finished writing the first draft on October 8th, only 15 days after beginning it. I edited it, copyedited it, and had a couple of people beta-read it, designed the cover, and then submitted it to Lightning Source (my printer) on October 13th, they “approved” it on October 16th, then they printed my order of 52 copies, shipping it Monday, October 19th. Since I selected the cheapest shipping method, UPS Ground, it took all week to get here. So, from first word to finished book in 15 days, to edited book in another 5 (which is when it was available as an eBook, via Smashwords and on the Kindle, for $4.99), and now it’s available for order directly from me (yes, and from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, et cetera) in paperback for $9.99. I’ve already recorded the audiobook (though it needs to be edited and mixed into 3 different versions), and will be podcasting it as soon as my current audiobook is done, beginning 11/13.

But now to the unboxing. I ordered 52 copies. Why 52 copies? I don’t know. I’m crazy. Or… Well, I got a nice discount per copy by ordering more than 50, and 52 was the most I could order for less than $150 (including shipping). Yes, they cost roughly $3 each, to me. So when you buy from me for $10, I get $7 per copy. If you buy from someone other than me, I get $2.42 per copy sold. ($9.99 x 50% wholesale discount = $4.99 – $2.57 print charge = $2.42) Please, buy from me, and if you don’t buy from me, buy from a local independent book store (they can order it, just give them the ISBN: 978-1-934516-05-8). Anyway, I ordered 52 copies which is less than a single case, so here’s the box they sent me (click any image to see it larger):

And here’s the book, in my hands, and front and back (see full cover) side-by-side:

And here’s what 52 copies looks like, on my bed:

Now, one of those is already addressed to the Library of Congress, and I’m giving 5 away via Goodreads. Anyone who pre-ordered a copy from modernevil.com, I’ll ship out this weekend. Have you ordered your copy, yet?

Ooh, or are you a book blogger interested in reviewing a zombie novel? I can send you a free PDF of the book (or give you a Smashwords coupon, if you have a preferred eReading format) immediately, and if you’re interested, will also send out free paperbacks to bloggers who want them. I haven’t nailed down a plan or limit for this yet, so if you’re interested, or know a book blog/blogger I should contact, please let me know. Post a comment or send an email to teel@modernevil.com.

Emotional Over-Eating

I suppose sitting down with a pad of paper & a pen to try to plan what to work on this week and ending up eating an entire chicken by myself qualifies as emotional over-eating. I wish I didn’t care so much about the money-making potential of my work. Fear, stress, and anxiety bubbling up from my trying to go from creating the books & art I want, to earning the money from it that we need.