photo credit: s myer

[Pre(r)amble: This post is pretty much all over the place. I've tried to distil the main points/questions as I go along, but it's not exactly a complete, ordered thought process. Consider yourself warned. ;)]

I have been

writing now for very nearly seven years. The real figure is obviously a lot longer than that–my Mum’s carefully maintained boxes would testify to support this fact–but I’ve been using writing as my main form of creative expression for seven years. In that time I’ve had some hits with publications and more than enough misses to counterbalance them. I’ve met people whose writing I don’t think I’ll ever stop loving, and people whom I consider to be great friends even though I have never met them.

Bloody hell, so far this is reading like a eulogy. Let me start again.

Lately I’ve been thinking about my writing. More specifically I’ve been thinking about my writing in the context of my main pursuit, that of science. As has been pointed out by me elsewhere, I’ve just finished my PhD in chemistry, and so the time has come (the Walrus said) to talk of many things. Or at least think about them obsessively until I feel obliged to externalise them in a blog post.
The things I’ve been thinking about are things like where my writing will fit in my future career, how I’m going to balance work and life and writing, whether I want to continue to take writing ‘seriously’ or relax my expectations of myself; y’know, all that fun stuff. So I guess that’s what this blog post is going to be about: thinking about and planning how I might continue my hobby without killing myself doing it.

The fun factor

Hobbies are meant to be fun. Challenging, but fun. I think it is safe to say that following the path to becoming a respected, known writer in Australia doesn’t always tick those boxes. And the main offender is the submission cycle. I joked to a friend the other day that we had to start a support group for people who were submitting just to stop us all from getting too depressed (The Subcommittee, a Facebook group that I reckon is the best thing to come out of my writing this year). There’s the fretting over drafts, the imagining of intended audiences, the guessing at when a rejection email will come back. Of course there are good aspects as well, the most noteable of which is the coveted acceptance.

But for a person whose career isn’t determined from his publication record (well, at least not his literary one–scientific publication is another matter entirely), why should I go through that stress? Why should I be placing that pressure on myself? I’ve found that over the last couple of years, writing has stopped being about fun and play and more like work. I want to change that. Which I think is a nice place to wrap this part up and pop out my first conclusion:

1) I want writing to be fun again. Or if not fun, exactly, then at least for it not to feel like work.

Audience

Okay, so I want writing to be fun. But I also want my writing to be read. Because as much as I love playing with myself (ahem–purely in a metaphorical sense), I get a lot out of interacting with readers and other writers. But then I have to ask myself: who is my audience, and how does that audience change the way I write? Well, I want to get my stories out there and read by people whose opinions I respect. In other words, those people whom I have read and whose work I admire, or whom I have met and think are ace, or both! And I’m not sure that submitting to literary journals really does that. Sure, I might nab a few new readers; not a bad outcome. But do I really care if Jane or John Critic think my story is cool? Not really. It’s flattering, for sure, but on the other hand if someone I knew and was into came up to me and told me they liked my work, I’d be over the fucking moon! So. Second conclusion:

2) Having my contemporaries (and more specifically, people who I know and respect) reading and enjoying my work is more important to me than praise from an unknown.

Distribution

Speaking of journals has reminded me of another line of thinking, concerning their readership and their reach. The main question being how many of my contemporaries read literary journals? For at least the last year or two, I am the only person I know who subscribes to Meanjin. I have also heard through the grapevine of the absolutely dismal figures for subscribers to both the Westerly and, to a certain extent given its age, the Southerly. I dare say those figures don’t even compare on the same scale to the numbers of people that read the online components of literary journals (in the sense that the online compenents probably get hundreds of visitors per day). In the absence of hard statistical data, I’m unable to make any concrete assertions, but if we are evaluating distribution purely on the number of people that read your work, then online means must be considered suprior. Similarly they are more advantageous in the terms of my second conclusion, in that I can guarantee that more of my contemporaries are reading thins online than they are in journals that they subscribe to. Of course, there is always the factor of quality assurance in Australian literary journals. Australian journals produce absolutely top notch stuff in both design and content. Every single journal I subscribe to (of which there are many) is a joy to read. But couched in the context of a non-professional writer who just wants to share his stories, there isn’t much to persuade me against posting stories on Facebook rather than submitting them to a journal.

I’ve been dabbling in online distribution in various forms for quite a while now. And by ‘online distribution’, I mean posting my writing on an art website (deviantART) and maintaining this here blog. Not the most professional of options, but then that kind of fits with the theme of this post. Nevertheless, there’s some surprising statistics to be had from looking at it. On the deviantART side of things, I’ve accumulated a bunch of friends and followers who read and comment on my work, and have influenced me in a profoundly positive way. The pieces that have been featured as a ‘daily deviation’ (a daily showcase of artwork and writing that community volunteers think is worth featuring) have accrued almost 26,000 views between them. While this doesn’t mean that 26,000 people have read things that I have written–only around 800 of those actually responded with a comment–it is still a heck of a lot of people to be looking, however briefly, at my writing.

(I should hastily note at this stage that I am not looking to burn bridges. It’s highly likely that I will continue to submit stories and articles to journals for publication, but I won’t be putting pressure on myself to do so. Editors please don’t hate me.)

What does all that mean? In a sentence:

3) I’m equally keen on seeing my work in print or digital, but seeming as though digital has already resulted in my stories being read by a bunch of people, I’m leaning that way as a first destination.

Conclusions

Alright, so after all that, maybe I can come to some kind of conclusion as to what might be the shape of future writerly self. Now what the heck were my points again? Oh right:

1) I want writing to be fun again. Or if not fun, exactly, then at least for it not to feel like work.

2) Having my contemporaries (and more specifically, people who I know and respect) reading and enjoying my work is more important to me than praise from an unknown.

3) I’m equally keen on seeing my work in print or digital, but seeming as though digital has already resulted in my stories being read by a bunch of people, I’m leaning that way as a first destination.

So what does the combination of these point towards in terms of what I’ll be doing with my writing in the future? Here I think I’ll switch to bullets, since they’re easier to think in:

• Maintain a formal distribution space for stories that I think are publication quality. This could be a well-designed website, or choosing a platform such as Smashwords or Amazon Singles to put together some 99c wonderpackages.
• Share these stories with friends and followers via deviantART and places like Twitter. Given my glacial writing pace, I don’t think there’s any risk of spamming people.
• Continue to send some stories off to more traditional markets such as journals and competitions when I feel that they fit, but don’t put any pressure on myself to accumulate publication credits.

Keep in mind that this should all be considered with the fact that I hope to start a career in science research in the new year. This will effectively (discounting the four mind-numbing months at my temp job) be the first time I work a full-time 9-5 job. So time will become even more of a premium, and I want to be ready for that. I don’t want to burn myself out and end up hating writing. I also don’t want to neglect the other important things in my life (i.e. Louise, friends, exercise, etc.). But as you can see, devoting this amount of time to roundabout thinking to how I’m going to make sure I don’t kill my writing hobby shows how much it means to me. I think that for folks such as myself who are looking to keep up a creative output while working, it’s important to have some kind of idea about how to go about it.

Anyway, if you’ve made it this far thanks for sticking it through. If you had any comments with regards to anything I’ve said here I’d love to hear it. I’m still a little up in the air, so any advice would be really appreciated.

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photo credit: ….Tim

After compiling that

submissions list the other day, I found myself in the middle of a very entertaining, and ultimately challenging, Twitter conversation with @LaurieSteed and @TiggyJohnson, whose Twitter usernames aren’t so obscure that you wouldn’t know they are writer/editor extraordinaires Laurie Steed and Tiggy Johnson. As a result, I have now been entered into a three-way challenge with Tiggy and Laurie, the aims of which are to submit five (5) pieces of writing to a variety of venues.

***UPDATE***

The Sub-date challenge (or the Subcommittee, as it has been re-dubbed) has grown so large and been so successful that a fair few of the members are a bit anxious about having their submission goals up here. The publishing industry is notoriously fickle, so on the off-chance that someone finds the organisation of a group intended to support and encourage submission of great literature to great literature journals, I’ve agreed to take them down.

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photo credit: maistora

You may have

heard the news that REDGroup Australia, owners of Borders and Angus&Robertson bookstores has gone into voluntary administration. That is, they’re broke. There are quite a few angles to view this development from, but the one most seem to have taken is that of the book store as a physical place no longer being valid in the modern market. Borders’ capitulation is the first, bass note struck in the death knell of all book stores everywhere.

I respectfully disagree.

The book store as a physical place to make reams and reams of money from is, for sure, almost certainly dying. There’s no way that places such as Borders can continue to make the kind of profits that they built their empires on while online marketplaces such as Amazon, Book Depository, etc. are busy refining how close to the bone they can cut their profit margins and maximise selling volume. The average age of consumers in Australia is lowering, and with it (no offence, Mum) technological proficiency is rising. We know how to order books online. We know how to scout out good deals, and the idea of brand loyalty to a big chain book store is a concept so foreign as to have been conceived in the Amazonian (hah) wilderness.

However, brand loyalty to an independently-owned, locally-staffed, lovingly-curated book store with far more modest expectations of profit is not unknown to us tech-savvy youngsters*. I’ve commented about this previously over at Spike, the Meanjin blog (read the article and then scroll to the comments), and I believe the same thing now as I did then: if independent book stores continue to focus on providing a service that big chain book stores cannot — i.e. the addition of value through the experience of having your tastes known and catered to** — then they will be fine. Hell, they may even find space to flourish after the big chain companies have all bitten the dust or moved online. And almost certainly they’ll have to do something extra to make themselves attractive. Cafe book stores, or pub book stores, or music venue book stores, or creative writing class book stores, or community improvement book stores. Who knows? It’s exciting to think of the opportunities.

Guy Rundle over at Crikey has taken the long view, questioning what the shift to online options means for the future of society. Will we eventually approach some pseudo-dystopian future where physical store fronts are a thing of the past, and the seduction of the window shopper can no longer be relied on to generate revenue? Well, no. Will big chains continue to find it difficult to maintain a physical presence in the fact of online pressures? Almost certainly. But that’s because the solid ground that they have been built on is shifting, and cracks are appearing through which the weedy growth of independent booksellers can sprout. As John Birmingham states in his round-up of the issue, e-books will destroy the large chains. But there’s an opportunity over the next 5-10 years for communities –real, honest-to-goodness communities, not forced bullshit — to be built around a shared, art-gallery-esque experience. Think of a library crossed with your favourite literary journal. That’s basically what I’m getting at here.

Maybe I’m being optimistic. Probably. What do you think?

—

*Man, that was a lot of adverbs and hyphens. Are all of those correctly used? I can never tell.

**That’s a horrible way of saying ‘Knowing the owner and being able to talk shop and he/she knowing your tastes well enough that they have a list in their head of all the latest books that you will enjoy.’

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photo credit: victor_nuno

I’ve had some

time to mull over the response that the post previous to this one received, including some comments that I thought raised new points, so I thought I’d add a couple of additional ideas that had occurred to me since posting it.

Writer-publisher

Mark Welker raised two important issues in his comment: the perceived negative effect that self-publishing is having on the furtherance of new creative discussions, and the necessity in separating writer and publicist. With regards to the former, Mark says:

But I wonder why there’s so much focus on the product over the process. Seems like we’re falling over ourselves to get people to buy and read our words – and not as much concerned with whether what we are writing is actually contributing to some creative discussion. There seems so many echoes of the same impulse.

This is a difficult one to assess on a purely quantitative level, and I’m not sure how much it has to do with self-publishing. The way I see it, new writers almost always imitate the writing that has gone before them to some extent. And in fact, it could be said that editors of journals and publishing firms alike encourage this, what with needing to pander to a kind of literary fashion in order to sell units. Truly new writing is a rare thing, and it often takes either a work of pure genius or a very brave editor to see it through to the publication stage. If we assume that a lot of self-publication is coming from emerging or recently-emerged writers, this would account for the common perception that a lot of what is being released is trying to reinvent the wheel; whether that wheel is popular-genre-shaped, GAN-shaped, or otherwise. But along with enabling these legions of imitators, self-publication also enables truly new writing to bypass the (again, perceived) timidity of market-ruled editors and be released into the wild far faster than it might have in the traditional cycle of literary fashion. When viewed as a method of disseminating new ideas and ways of writing rather than making a buck, self-publishing suddenly becomes a whole lot more important. Of course, an experimental novel or collection still faces the same problems getting noticed as outlined in my initial post, so whether we’ll see any noticeable acceleration in literary movement occurrence remains to be seen.

Moving onto the separation of writer and publicist. There’s a bit of a divide when considering this question, but in my opinion if you are going it alone, you need to separate your writer-self and your publicist-self. At least during the act of creation. A writer-publicist is not the same thing as singer-songwriter; there’s no synergy between the two. My justification for this is that the constant reference to some imagined press-release will stifle your writing and lead your stories down the path of remaining pleasing to an imagined audience. While I do think that stories should be written for an audience — even if that audience is yourself — I don’t think that writing for an advertisement is a healthy thing (and I’ve blogged about this previously). Some gurus will tell you otherwise, insisting that the only stories worth writing are ones that can be sold, but that’s their prerogative. And this is my blog, so bugger them. Once your story is written, edited, and polished to a high shine, then you can think of ways to push it on the public. Until then, write the story the way it wants to be written.

Filtrate

Another thing that I missed out on discussing was a point raised in the previously-linked blog by Alan Baxter:

There’s one simple difference – all the fiction I’ve made available to read here is previously published somewhere (with a couple of exceptions that I’ll talk about in a minute). Some of it is older stuff published in non-paying markets, but it’s still stuff I’m proud of. Other stories are published in better markets and the links here are directly to sites where the story can be found. The point is that it made it past an editor, so I’ve got unbiased, third party confirmation that it’s worth a read.

Essentially, Alan is using publication in journals and e-zines as a way of filtering what writing he shows to readers. By showing that the writing he is putting up has been vetted by an external third party, it adds a legitimacy to the writing which might encourage visitors to his website to spend a bit of time reading his fiction. This is a relatively common way to go about things, used by a whole bunch of indie and emerging writers all over the place, including my meagre offerings at my ‘About’ page. But in terms of self-publishing, it offers yet another method of getting quality work out there.

In my experience, most publications only claim first publication rights, whether electronic or print, and possibly the right to reprint in a future anthology. So there’s nothing stopping you from gathering up the stories that you have had previously published and binding them together in a collection, with the tag-line of ‘Published stories: 20XX – 20XY’. In other words, use the taste and reputation of editors to provide a filter to the very best examples of your work. They use you to fill pages, so why not use them to select pieces? Obviously this whole argument operates on the assumption that you have a collection of stories that have appeared in journals whose previous content/editors you respect. Obtaining such a portfolio of work can be a years-long endeavour. But it absolutely guarantees that you have a bunch of tight stories ready to bind up and sell.

Anyway, I’m going to wrap it up there, as I’d like to avoid this site turning into one of those ubiquitous writer’s advice blogs. I’ll be back to more regular (read: boring personal crap) content next time, I swear. As always, feel free to chime in with any reactions.

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photo credit: gruntzooki

I’ve been seeing

a lot of conversation going on lately about self-publishing and how it relates to emerging writers. This is a topic that I’m quite interested in, having both considered the possibility of self-publishing and applied the term ‘emerging’ to myself and my writing. So I thought I’d take a moment and explore my own thoughts surrounding the subject and give some advice on how to make the best of the current scene.

Broadly speaking, I’m in favour of self-publishing as a thing. As far as I’m concerned, the more options an artist has to distribute their art, the better. And writers have produced some of my most favouritest art ever. Print-on-demand services are great, in that they are putting the power to publish in the hands of people who have the willingness to do so. Not to mention the fact that they are more environmentally friendly, as there are no pallets full of returns to be pulped. The great advantage of the open-armed nature of the self-publishing market is that anyone with a bit of tech-savvy can release a book. This fact is also cited as its great disadvantage, in that there is no filter of taste to keep the good, solid examples in and let the slush flow through. And those that cite this disadvantage have a point: there is already a lot of slush out in the wild. I’m not going to argue the fact that there is, statistically, more crap writing than good writing in the self-publishing world. It’s self-evident. To prove it to yourself, just spend more than five seconds trawling the Kindle boards or Smashwords. Not only that, but the average self-published book would hardly be called profitable, and more often than not a self-published book does not even come close to earning out the number of loving hours poured into it. So what’s the reason behind this lack of quality? Why don’t good self-published books earn out? And what can emerging writers do to keep from falling into the same traps?

Quality assurance

When looking at the self-publishing industry, analysts often cite other indie industries as examples of how self-propelled creative arts can work. Industries such as the short film or music industries, where a self-funded project can often lead to big deals for indie darlings. But there’s a difference between these industries and self-publishing, and it has to do with skill. Any person with a basic education can successfully perform the physical act of writing. A person with a masters in literature can certainly do it, but primary school kids can too. There is no threshold of time spent practising to complete the physical, pen-to-paper (or fingertip-to-keyboard) act of writing. It’s not like the music industry, where you need to spend a lot of time getting to the point where you can play even one song properly. Or the film industry, where the price of access to quality equipment can mean that only those dedicated to the craft get allocated time to use it. The beauty of writing is that it doesn’t have any of those in-built thresholds. And of course, that’s one of the best things about writing and language; anyone can do it, using just about any material on hand that can make a mark on another. It’s much like the visual fine arts in that regard.

Of course, with fine arts, it’s very easy to identify talent. Often an artist can easily measure themselves against the physical world that they are trying to represent. And with the extremely high standard of visual literacy demanded by our modern world, even the average Jean can tell you whether they like your amateur efforts and how you might improve them. But with writing, it’s quite difficult to get the kind of feedback loop that might enable an emerging writer to grow. After all, how often have you seen writers posting work online with a preamble saying that their friend/family member had said it was really good? The combination of the ease with which writing can be physically performed and a lack of access to honest feedback means that quite often, pieces of writing are self-published without any kind of quality control; the kind of quality control that traditional publishing routes more or less represent. Of course, there is some quality control in self-publishing in the form of the hivemind of readers that rate titles they read (or which their friends tell them to rate), but it’s not exactly as precise as an editor with years of experience.

Earning out

So that’s my intepretation of the ‘why’ behind the lack of quality. The earning out part is a bit less complicated, but interesting to talk about. Intuitively, we all know why a lot of people won’t be making any more money on their self-published book  than their day job earns them in an hour, and it’s to do with signal-to-noise ratios. When you release your shiny new e-book , it drops into a huge reserve of similar books that haven’t sold any copies. And trying to lift it out of that reserve is a bloody difficult thing to do. It’s the reason why people hire and pay the wages for marketers and promoters–getting enough signal attached to your book to boost it out of the noise and into the public eye. But in self-publishing market, you haven’t got a salary to give a marketer, you’ve just got yourself. And not everyone can sell themselves. It’s a hard thing to do, both in a technical sense and a personal sense. Technically speaking, a writer has to have the Internet savvy to build a social network without coming off as a spammer. That takes care and patience, but I’d say it’s achievable by most who grew up with the Internet. But on a personal level, you have to have the confidence in your writing ability to see the whole thing through. You have to have faith that your book isn’t like the millions of other slush pile wannabes. Yours is the real deal, and here’s reasons a), b), and c) why the reader should buy it.

Achieving both of those things without skittering to the wayside is hard, and some players start with an advantage. In an interview talking about his successful experiment with self-publishing, Lee Goldberg (author of the Mr. Monk series of books) talks about a ‘gold rush mentality’ regarding e-books at the moment. The seductive narratives of the few fortunate people who have been able to make a living selling e-books have lead to ‘…thousands of authors who will be lucky if they can give away ten books-a-month at 99 cents each’. That’s because they don’t have the networking skills (read: publicist) or the core fan-base that an already-established author has. Getting those famed 1,000 true fans is an uphill battle, and it’s certainly not guaranteed. Garnering enough momentum and five-star reviews is very often a game of chance, and the conditions that a self-published writer needs to fulfil on any given day to become an Internet phenomenon are as difficult to predict as the Melbourne weather. But there are a few things that I believe are essential to giving at least a bit of weight to the die.

Emergent behaviour

So what can emerging writers do to avoid falling into a sea of anonymity? There have been quite a few articles discussing this lately, the reading of which prompted me to write this post. First up was Benjamin Solah’s post mourning a lack of sales of his self-published e-book, Sanity Juxtaposed. There were a few choice quotes from the comments, but the one that was picked up by Alan Baxter in his constructive post and which I think represents the first point that I want to make is this one made by Jason Fischer:

My two cents is this: trunk stories belong in your trunk. You either take them apart and make them good enough to sell, or you leave them there.

The problem with Ben’s e-book was that it was, as stated in its description, not his best work. It was bits and pieces that he had written but not polished, pieces that were unpublished and languishing on his hard-drive before they were put in the collection. The temptation for emerging writers to have something with their name on it out there for people to buy and read is one that is rooted in the issues of validation and insecurity (which I’ve covered in a previous post). But that yearning for validation sometimes ends up rushing the writer into releasing work that isn’t exemplary of their best ability. As Lee Goldberg puts it, just because you can publish for free with a mouse-click doesn’t mean that you should. There’s another angle to this argument, in that sometimes writers will reserve their best writing for querying traditional publishing avenues, and use the electronic route to release the stuff they aren’t as proud of. This is based on the misguided preconception that e-books and self-published works are inherently worth less than getting print on paper through a traditional publisher*. All of which brings me to my first recommendation for emerging writers looking to self-publish: if you are going to self-publish, make it your best work. This is also known in the programming community as ‘garbage in, garbage out’. If you release a piece of writing that isn’t up to standard, don’t be surprised when no-one wants to buy it. The definition of ‘up to standard’ may vary between groups, but I’d recommend at least a few redrafts and an edit by someone whose writing you respect.

So that’s the first thing, only release good writing. Not exactly rocket surgery. The second bit of advice comes from the desk of a guy named Chuck Wendig, whose to-the-point missive entitled ‘Why Your Self-Published Book May Suck A Bag Of Dicks‘ (and its follow-up) cuts very close to the bone. In it, he extols the virtues of good book cover design, well written book descriptions and synopses, getting someone (anyone) to edit your book, and making sure your sample excerpt gives the best possible hook to potential readers. In other words, professionalism in the presentation of your product to customers. That’s right, your piece of finely-wrought prose is a product. I’m going to say it again, in bold, just to be sure. Your writing is a product. If you are taking the self-publishing route, you absolutely cannot afford to kid yourself about this. There is no reason why your writing, no matter how amazing it is, should rise to the top of the slush pile. There is no buoyancy ascribed to it based on its artistic merit. A lamentable fact, but a fact nonetheless. So it makes sense to polish the presentation of your product as much, if not more, than the polishing of your writing. Anything less is shooting yourself in the foot before trying to run a marathon. Publishers know this, that’s why they spend millions of dollars on expensive ad campaigns to get booksellers on board with their latest best seller. It’s why they’ve started investing in book trailers, and why they invite managers of book stores to expensive, canapé-fuelled slide shows of their latest catalogues. So find yourself a designer who can create an eye-catching cover, a PR person who can find the best combination of wow-words to convince a stranger to click through to the sample, and polish that excerpt until it can’t stand its own glow. And if you can’t find family or friends who can fill those roles for a carton, be prepared to spend some money. People can, will, and do judge books by their cover.

Exception handling

Of course, there are exceptions to these bits of advice, just like there are exceptions to any rule. If you’re writing something because it’s fun and ridiculous and you just want a few of your friends to be amused by it, hell, don’t let me stop you throwing it out on the Interwoobles. That kind of writing can be awesome and light and breezy and completely separate from the writing you look to publish. Just take a peek at my ‘Unpublications‘ page. Seriously, go look at it, I finally figured out how to put up a recording there. Those are examples of passion projects. They were fun little pieces that I enjoyed writing, but would never, ever find a place in the current Australian journal landscape**. Alternatively, if you’re writing a cookbook for members of your family as a novel (hah) Christmas present, you probably don’t give a shit about sales ranks.

A final disclaimer, now that I’m done. I’ve never self-published anything of mine. But what I have done is watched a lot of people make the attempt, some successfully and some not successfully. And I think I’ve learned enough to be able to make a decent attempt if I ever decided to. I guess that means you should take everything I’ve said with a hearty pinch of salt, but it’s the Internet and you really should have been doing that anyway.

Anyway, that’s enough from me. If you have any comments or thoughts about stuff I’ve missed, please feel free to comment. I’d particularly like to hear the perspectives of people who have gone through with the whole thing and can tell me how applicable (or not) my advice is.

—

*This is nonsense, you and I know that. Words are worth exactly how much they are worth, regardless of the medium they are presented through.

**The tragedy of which is a topic for another post, perhaps.

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