The Undiversified Writer

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Several full-time writers have been talking on their blogs about how they make a living. John Scalzi for one, Tobias Buckell for another, and Chuck Wendig for a third[1] have mentioned that they make sure they have several pots on the boil at once.

I don’t have that. It turns out that I’m much too slow a writer[2] for that. I turned in Circle of Enemies to Del Rey seven months late. That’s shameful, but luckily they were careful to set my real deadline quite a bit farther out, so I didn’t suffer the career disaster that, arguably, I should have.

And the truth is, CoE was a really difficult book to write. I don’t know if I’ve blogged about the book in this way, but it’s better than anything I’ve ever written. Briefly: Ray’s successes draw attention to him and someone strikes at him through the people he knew; he discovers that his old car-stealing crew has acquired magic–magic that may be killing them–and he has to return to L.A. to find out what’s going on. It gets deeper into the nature of magic, it reveals a bit more of the society, but most of the book is about his complicated relationship with these people who used to be his whole life. (Plus face-punching, as always).

And now I’m revising Twenty Palaces and let me tell you, revision is the sort of thing that expands to fill all the available time I have. I can write 500, 1K, 1.5K words[3] of first draft and spend the rest of my day reading or being a human being, but when I have a revision in front of me it’s all I want to work on until I’m done. How the hell would I have a second income stream (assuming I could even think of what I could be writing besides fantasy fiction) when I’m so damn slow?

[1] Three dudes. Hm. I have quite a few female authors on my LJ friends list, but I can’t recall a woman talking about this subject. Have I missed something in my little window on the internet or is this a guy thing?

[2] There’s a powerful tension between “This is how I am” and “Argue for your limitations and they’re yours” that I have to continually adjust. I’m trying to increase my productivity (and I know it can increase, because it’s better now than it used to be) while keeping my expectations realistic.

[3] Never more than that. Not unless I want to ruin the next day’s work.

Nerdscape!

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Over on Suvudu, Kevin Hearne has posted a couple of Nerdscape photos: tableaus of action figure, book, and junk food. I thought it would be fun to play along (and it’s an excellent way to get my son off the computer now that his time is up) but I’m not much for junk food. Therefore, I have substituted pain-relieving ointment, which serves as my go-to comfort item.

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Action figure Nancy Pearl shushing (and slugging) Giant Batman! An oppressed rock monster from a Power Miners set casts aside the numbing tools of its oppressors! A useless Jenga ripoff from the creators of Uno! A novel from the Song of Ice And Fire series, because of its hugeness (and also because I couldn’t find my copy of Inda–If you’re looking for more tough-minded epic fantasy in a series that actually completed, check Inda and its sequels out.)

This is my life.

Story seeds

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More stories that I’ll likely never write.

1) Christ died for the sins of humankind, but who will sacrifice himself for the sins of demonkind? Demons need a messiah of their own, someone part divine who has to save all of the damned. I’m not writing this one because I’m not Christian, and the whole messiah thing doesn’t really do it for me.

2) Same as 1) above, but with cats instead of demons.

3) Indiana Jones in the Harry Potter universe. An archaeologist investigating the historical secrets of a world where magic is real. This was my son’s idea (it was a gag to mix the two theme songs) but it would be an interesting challenge to make an “uncovering the real history” story work in a world with a fake history.

4) Another Jesus idea: Too many people are going to hell, and God is annoyed. So, Jesus decides to take an idea from his opposite side and begins arranging deals so people will sell their souls to him. Except he’s not what you’d call a salesman…

5) Two words: Mecha Dracula

6) Did you see the news article about the Facebook invitation to the 16 yo girl’s birthday party that went viral? Two hundred thousand people said they were going to attend. Of course, in the real world, the party was cancelled and the police said they would be patrolling the area to keep creeps away, but what if the party happened anyway? Would it be a murder mystery? A farce? A feel-good story of human connection?

7) I’m not entirely sure about this one, because it’s not a terrible idea, but I don’t know that I’d be able to use it ever: Wizard evangelists. I’ve sometimes heard people say that magic is just someone else’s extinct religion, but what if there was a fantasy world with many different kinds of magic? And what if the adherents of a particular type ventured out to foreign lands to convince the locals to abandon their own traditional magical styles in favor of the traveling wizards’? I think there’s a good story there (hell, maybe a whole anthology), but I’m not necessarily the one to write it.

Progress.

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Hey, is HBO premiering a new show tonight?

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I think I might have heard something about it.

Randomness for 4/15

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1) Breaking it down.

2) The Pierley/Redford Disassociative Affect Diagnostic. About as accurate as any internet personality test, but this one’s actually cool to take (and only 20 “questions”).

3) The Amazing Media Habits Of 8-18 Year Olds

4) Seven basic things this Cracked.com writer thinks you’re doing all wrong, for certain values of “you.” The only one my household didn’t know about was the brushing after meals thing.

5) Borders execs try to justify bonuses on the revenue their company will bring in someday after they get this little bankruptcy thing straightened out. God forbid their bonuses should reflect what they’ve already done, rather than what they expect to do.

6) Book reviewers, let me point out a thing that is not cool.

7) This is simply wonderful. Play with it when you can listen to sound on your computer.

Fun with Bookscan

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Did you know that Amazon.com lets authors look at the Bookscan numbers for their books? Of course you did. Did you know that Bookscan, which shows a fair portion of an author’s sales, doesn’t show them all? Probably.

But it’s still fun to look, right? Especially if you’re on deadline and have a massive amount of writing to do, and even less time than usual to do it.

Anyway, for quite a while the sales of Game of Cages and Child of Fire were going along at a steady pace. The numbers weren’t fantastic; HBO isn’t going to dump that Martin guy’s show for something made from mine, but it was steady and–best of all–not declining.

Then I did that guest stint at Charles Stross’s blog and those Bookscan numbers really jumped… for the length of time I was blogging there. After, they sloped back down.

But lately they’ve risen again, fairly steadily. I mean, the numbers are much nicer than before.

And I have no idea why. Am I being hilarious on Twitter? (all the spambots following me think so) This blog isn’t getting significantly more hits, and Google Alerts isn’t pointing me at any new reviews.

Which just goes to demonstrate that it’s true that authors don’t have a lot of control over books sale. Guest blogging did pretty well for me. This second surge? No clue. As far as I can tell, it has nothing to do with me or anything I’m doing.

That last hypothetical? That one stung a little

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Maybe it’s completely dorky of me, but I haven’t replied to any of the responses to my question about the magic jewel that would change your personality because frankly, I found it to be a little upsetting. Okay, that’s absolutely a dorky thing, but while it seemed interesting however many weeks ago I wrote it and scheduled it, when I started seeing responses (blog, LiveJournal) I got these weird… I don’t know… pangs.

I, too, would like to never forget anything I don’t want to forget! (my poor wife). I would also like to eat only when I’m hungry. I hate my own procrastination so much. That led to other things that weren’t mentioned in comments, like being wildly bored by exercise and cleaning. And so on. It was like a sudden tide of self-recrimination–which is usually fine for me, but I really wasn’t expecting it.

So of course I went to my wife. If I’m going to consider changing one major aspect of my personality, I’m going to check in with her. She may, er, have her own ideas about things I should change.

After joking that it was so hard to choose just one (har har) she settled on an umbrella change that she thought would address most of them: being disorganized. She’d want me to be more organized, not just about my living space or my cooking, but also with my time (and apartment clutter, too, I’m sure). I’m not sure how to phrase that in the context of the hypothetical, but there you go.

I think I’m going to leave self-improvement out of these for a while.

I’m not talking about that thing I want to talk about

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Not because it’s a secret, but because it’s not the sort of thing writers talk about online, and it’s faintly ridiculous to be upset about it. Also: unseemly to feel neglected by people who are friendly enough but do not owe me anything.

So I’m going to talk about ebooks instead. Lots of people talk about the disadvantages of ebooks: you can’t loan them (usually, right?), can’t resell them, they feel ephemeral, some systems don’t even let you own it outright.

But many people obviously prefer them over physical books–they certainly rhapsodize about them online. You’d think that, with readers switching in large numbers, they’d be willing to pay more for those features.

I know I know. Ebook readers have all sorts of justifications for why they think they should be paying less. I just listed a bunch two paragraphs above. Still, it’s about demand, right? What price people will pay?

This jumped out at me while reading this article. The author starts with the assumption that all these features should lead to higher price points, which is very much the opposite of the usual set of assumptions I’ve found so far.

Anyway, it’s not going to happen right away, not while readers are agitating for price reductions. At some point, though, I suspect the price of ebooks will split off from the price of paper books, and ebooks will either cost the same as they do now (or increase slightly in price) but include ads or will come with upgradeable options that cost a little extra. (“Is the plottable map in the new Rothfuss worth an extra 99 cents?”)

End obligatory useless ebook prophecy.

Hypothetically

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Another favor! Your habit of performing minor kindnesses (offering directions to a bowling alley, maybe) benefits yet another extra-dimensional sorcerer. Surprise! This time the sorcerer gives you a special stone that will change you in a very specific way.

The grateful sorcerer informs you that all you have to do is close you eyes and say “I wish that, for the rest of my life, I will never…” and then say a single thing you will never do, or never do again. It must be something you do with your mind: an emotion, an addiction, a thought, a memory, etc. You can’t say “… will never die of a heart attack” or “will never have less than a million dollars in my bank account” because those things aren’t habits, thoughts, feelings.

You mention, politely, that there is a long storytelling tradition in our world in which magical gifts such as this one always operate in such a way to harm the person using it in an unexpected way. The sorcerer laughs at this in a startled way, as though you’ve said something scandalous, then assures you that such a person would be an infamous criminal back home, and then assures you that there is nothing sneaky or underhanded about this gift. It will perform as described.

The sorcerer vanishes (to go bowling, I’m sure) leaving you with the stone. You have a chance to rid yourself, for the remainder of your life, of a particular mental quirk. Would you make the wish? What would the wish be?