One of the biggest downsides to my recent bout of extremely-being-busy is that I don’t have time to write short stories any more.
It’s not a format that I was ever terribly skilled at. Why use 100 words when 10,000 will suffice? But that stated, I did like practicing short stories, and I really liked polishing them up for submission. Sure, only one of my shorts ever sold, but I think it was a very, very good short story (one that I plan to revisit someday as a novel, perhaps). But as much fun as they are to write (and to provide free here for all of you!), they don’t pay the bills, and I don’t think they ever will, There’s just too much uncertainty in short story publishing… most of the time the magazines that publish them take too long to rely on as a source of income. Great supplementary sources, sure, and I am positive there are people who have figured out a way to leverage short story writing into careers, but those people are much better at the format than I am.
Plus, I like writing epics. I like getting to know characters and situations and universes. I like thinking about how the technology in this universe will be different, either slightly or drastically, from the previous universes I’ve written. Can be hard to keep straight sometimes (I have so many variations on “pocket computer” at this point it’s somewhat ridiculous), but it’s a challenge I enjoy.
ANYway, hopefully the world will calm down a bit, school won’t last forever, and I can get back to writing more short stories before too much longer.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Weird Blips
I’ve mentioned it before, but I was educated as a scientist.
A crappy scientist, granted, but I studied physics for a very, very long time, and a lot of that has seeped into my life in interesting ways. I can my educated hypothesizes about almost anything, I quickly adapt to new information to replace old incorrect data, and I am always fascinated by numbers.
To that end, I tend to keep a pretty close eye on the numbers in my life. My grades, certainly (81.5% at this point), my bank account constantly (enough to pay for editing for the next three novels, although I will have to start paying for my account fees again if things don’t change), and book sales (none in the last week).
I also pay attention to the traffic on this website. It’s not usually indicative of much, although often if the website traffic trends upwards I will land a few new book sales that week. And this week there was a day with twenty times more visits than normal.
Technically, twenty-five times more than normal.
That’s a big blip! And nothing I can see that would direct that many eyeballs towards my work (I don’t think I released any podcasts, that I’m aware of, or new videos of me other than my usual Thursday “talking about board games” that I do at my paying job). It’s weird… I even checked my advertisements I’m running, but no huge traction there either (which, honestly, was a little bit of a relief… my ads are still small potatoes, but that big of a swing in numbers if I had to pay for it would be remarkably pricey!). So I am left to wonder why a whole bunch of people, or one very, very determined person I suppose, showed up out of the blue last week.
It’s a weird business, being a writer.
Anyway! On Saturday (yesterday morning) I did a presentation for some funding from my university which, if successful, will let me do some good in my community. Provide funding for a couple artists, a secure deposit on a physical space that my writers group meets at, and provide subsides to the other members of the group (I think it’s only fair that I don’t receive any of the funding myself, since that would be a conflict of interest. But being able to help other writers is a reward on its own). I’m almost positive I won’t receive it, or if I do it will be staggeringly reduced in scope, but hey, miss all the shots you don’t take.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Hitting Halfway
Getting to the halfway point in a novel is a weird feeling. It’s hard to describe, but to a large extent it can be summarized as a combination of disbelief (I’m halfway already!?) and confusion (Wait, have I covered at least half the stuff I need to cover!?).
It’s a good feeling, certainly, but still weird. Add to that the simple fact that this half of the novel took me 2.5 months to get to (way too long), and the next half has to be done in the next 2.5 weeks… yeah, weird, complicated feelings!
Oh well. In the grand scheme of things I can’t really complain.
I’ve written a proposal for funding for the writers group I (used to) run locally, and while I don’t think I’ll get the funds, it was an interesting experience to consider the impact it’s had on me and my fellow writers. I’d certainly produced more consistently with the writers group, but that was in the Beforetimes and everything was easier back then. Looking forward to getting back to a sort of normal, at least! Hopefully soon!
Speaking of, my dad received his first dose of the vaccine, and my mom is on the list for next week, so that’s good news for both of them. I’m actually pretty jealous. I’m hopeful for sometime in the summer, but at this point who actually knows… regardless, there does seem to be a light at the end of this tunnel, and that’s definitely something worth celebrating!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Keeping Up the Pace
It is worth remembering from time to time that what I’m aiming for is long term sustainable writing. I want to do this for the rest of my life… wake up, eat breakfast, exercise, write, and then at some point eat dinner and go to bed. More or less just that, forever.
I love writing. It brings me great joy and great sorrow, it’s enormously relaxing and incredibly stressful. It makes me examine things I never thought I’d examine (for example, in the last two weeks I have studied the layout and manifest of the “HMCS Haida”, a Canadian WW2 destroyer ship, at least a dozen times… I still don’t know what the majority of the crew on a ship like that actually do.
But at the same time I have to be very careful not to push myself too hard. The drive to write at all times, to consume every waking moment with writing, is strong, because I’m not making a living at this yet. At the rate I’m going, it’s going to be another 4-5 years before I do… and if I want to keep doing this for 4-5 years, or 40-50 years more likely, then I have to remember that it’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon.
Anyway. All this to say that I’m not where I want my word count to be by a long shot, but I’m going to be much better by the end of the day (and even better than that by the end of tomorrow), so I’m not going to worry about it. I’m going to focus on doing the best work I can, the best writing I can, and try not to stress too much about the little details. I’ll let you all know how that goes.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Only Two Things Are Certain
Ah, that lovely time of year when I get to crunch through taxes. My fantastic partner handles a lot of the fiddly details these days, which is nice because I was not a big fan of doing my own taxes.
I did them, of course, but yeah. Just a degree of specificity that I really struggle with. Especially if/when anything went wrong, and I had to know very specific details. Not my forte.
ANYway, this gives me an opportunity to review how my financials have been going for the last few years, and I’m pleased to report: better! That’s nice. I’ve been basically doubling my income from book sales every year (technically, more than doubling… around 2.2 times per year). The critical thing to remember here is that the numbers are so small as to be almost meaningless, but still, it gives a promising trend. At the rate I’m going, I should be able to be a full-time writer, capable of supporting myself and contributing to my partner’s expenses as well by 2026.
And that’s actually not bad! Five more years… I would struggle, but I could do that. And we’re talking a very small salary at that point, plus it doesn’t factor in expenses (specifically, each book costs me about 2 grand to have edited, which means that more books I publish the more I pay out to keep those books coming).
Regardless, that’s somewhat promising. And hopefully as my books reach a wider audience I’ll gain more Patreon supporters, because that’s probably going to be the only thing that actually lets me make a living at this for the foreseeable future.
So, positive thoughts and good news all around!
With that, I should really get back to writing this novel I want to release in a month…
Hope everyone out there is doing well!
A Nice, Quiet Sunday
It doesn’t happen very often, but occasionally I get a full day to myself.
Not “myself”-myself, since my cats and partner are still around, but I don’t have any big pressing plans, I don’t have events to attend (either virtual or in-person in the Beforetimes), and the day opens up before me like a flower spreading its petals to the sun.
I don’t know if flowers do that. I’m a physicist, not a biologist/botanist. Ask me to calculate an escape velocity for that flower, I gotcha, but anyway.
The moral of this is that today I have a full day to do more-or-less whatever I want. And of course what that means is writing. What I almost always want to do is write. I’m going to take a break in a few hours to fry up some rainbow trout and steam some veggies (tastier than it sounds, I assure you), but other than that… a whole lot of writing, occasional bouts of painting, and a lot of chilling.
Tomorrow I have a stack of reading to do (Marlowe, at this time… “Doctor Faustus”), but that’s a tomorrow problem. Today? Today I am looking forward to crushing a few thousand words and other things that I do to enjoy life as best I can.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Progress into Space Piracy
When I originally decided to start this novel, I was going to intentionally avoid too many “space pirate” parallels. For one thing, I’m not sure it’s ever been done particularly well (“Treasure Planet” is a great story, but it’s not really space piracy in a meaningful way). Piracy is a hard thing to translate into good sci-fi. I’m not saying it can’t be done, and I’m sure there are ways to do it, but a lot of the time it comes across as pretty… trope-y. And I wanted to avoid that.
However, that stated, there is a fair amount of pirate-like-activity in my story thus far, not least of which includes stealing a starship. “Commandeering”, I suppose, to use the nautical term. And as I’m continuing to write it… yeah, there is a lot of piracy, in the fantasy-esque sort of piracy. Fewer missing teeth and legs, but a fair amount of theft of property, buckling of swashes, and a love of freedom that borders on the extreme.
Anyway, I’m really enjoying the story as it is shaping up, but we’re about to hit the mid-story doldrums (ha, nautical term!), so we’ll have to see if I can maintain this inertia for the next several chapters! Fingers crossed!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
End of the Month
Well, I am not done my latest novel. By projection, I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s always a little disappointing to not finish as quickly as I would like.
That stated, I think February may be the single best month I’ve ever had for book sales, so that’s definitely a step in the right direction. Lots of books purchased through ads I’ve run (which is expensive), but also lots purchased without requiring ads (which is significantly less expensive!).
In other news, I’ve gotten a lot of stuff done around the house, I’ve continued doing pretty well in my university courses (although I also got my first “B” on an assignment… a small one, but still… since starting to study English), and overall things are going about as well as can be expected mid-pandemic.
Oh, and I installed a bidet on one of my toilets today, marking it as the most handy-man day I’ve had in the last 30 years. Hopefully I did it correctly! No leaks, at least, but that’s a pretty low-bar. We’ll see, I suppose!
Anyway, hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Salt Mines, Here I Come
I have resumed my paying job to help finance my writing again. Yesterday was my first day back in the store. It’s still not fully open, we have a maximum capacity in the building that we’re keeping a pretty close eye on, and February is usually a pretty slow time for sales regardless, but it’s still pretty stressful.
Oh well. Not much I can do about that.
Novel is still coming along well (although, as is tradition, I still hate the working title for it), and I’m hopeful to have it finished “soon” (next few weeks). I have to maintain the pace I set during my week off, but that’s okay, it’s not exactly a blistering pace to maintain. I wrote about 12,000 words over the week, and I should be aiming for 14,000 for a regular week regardless of all other considerations. More-or-less.
And classes have resumed. I have officially received my first “B” grade since I started taking English courses (only on one assignment thus far), and that didn’t feel great, but on the flipside I’m honestly not doing this for the grades, I just want to learn. Still, old habits die hard.
Okay, with that, I have about two hours that I can use to write before class starts for today, and I intend to use it! Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
A Few Quiet Days
Well, this is it. The second last day of my “vacation” before I return to full-time work and school on Tuesday.
On the one hand, I got a fair amount of writing done. Not as much as I wanted, granted, but I still have two days to work with and I may yet get to finish this novel before my time off is spent.
On the other hand, I really did have a pretty lovely time relaxing and writing. Did a lot of cooking (made some pizza from scratch that I am quite proud of), ate too much (I think I went through 4 packages of crumpets in 10 days… delicious, but definitely overkill), and overall had a nice time.
But, all good things must come to an end, I am told, and this vacation is definitely nearing the final stretch. I think I may get another few thousand words written today before I have to switch gears and finish all my course readings.
Oh, upside: I sold about a dozen books this last week. About half of those were from advertising, the other half seem to be just impulse purchases by folks, but it’s nice to see a somewhat steady stream of book purchases. I could get used to this… of course, I need about ten times that number per week for writing to be a viable full-time job for me, even considering my very humble financial responsibilities. But still a step in the right direction.
Right! Back to the novel… I’ve just laid out the heist our protagonists are going to attempt, and now I get to make everything go wrong! Always fun…
Holiday Continued!
Well, it has hit the halfway mark of my vacation. The first half was satisfying, if unproductive (I have not hit my word count for the novel, but I’m hoping to finish it today, tomorrow at the latest). Doing a fair amount of exercising, a lot of cooking and baking, and playing way more Battletech than anyone in their right mind should.
The Battletech video game, for the record, not the interesting miniatures game nor the Roleplaying Game, all of the same name. I own all of them, as a blast of nostalgia from my youth, but I’ve only played the video game. It’s great, though! Anyway, I’ve been enjoying it a lot, but it’s time to buckle down and get the novel finished.
In related news, I have also done a lot of organizing, cleaning, and re-arranging. Downside to vacationing at home, I suppose, since when we rent the cottage on Hoth I don’t get that inclination and can just focus on writing.
So! Things are going well, and I should be writing right now, and I am going to go do that!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Holiday!
Ah, finally a little time off.
I mean, I had a few days off around Xmas, but literally only a few days, and most of that was spent recovering from the exhaustion of the preceding two months. This time I have almost 10 consecutive days off (I go back to work next Tuesday), and nothing I really have to do other than write, eat, and sleep.
And boy oh boy do I intend to do all of those things in vast amounts this vacation. Plus some exercise, I suppose, if I must. Oh, and a bath! Not a shower, I have lots of those, but an honest-to-goodness bath.
Breakfasts will consist of crumpets, because I freakin’ love crumpets and I only eat them on vacation. Lunch will mostly consist of sammiches and pasta because it is fast and easy to make. Dinners… well, dinners will be all over the place, but the goal is to not order in food at any time. I may bake some bread and make some fresh pizza… maybe make a few hamburgers… nothing fancy, but it will be so nice to not be rushed in fourteen different directions every day.
Mostly, I’m looking forward to the writing, of course. My goal is to finish this first draft by Wednesday, and then get the next novel started on Friday or Saturday and to get a fair chunk of that done before heading back to work.
contented sigh
Looking forward to it. So much.
Dark Comedy
I’ll admit, I’m rarely a fan of dark comedies. There are exceptions… one might propose that my favourite novel of all time, “Good Omens” by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, is a pretty dark comedy in a lot of ways. But overall, I like my genres to be more pure. I want my comedies to be funny, my tragedies to be dark and bleak, and my science fiction to have lasers and starships and all that glorious stuff.
We’re covering a couple Medieval plays in my British Literature course, and one of them is “The York Cruxifixion” play, which is a dark comedy in many ways. The play focuses on four Soldiers (one might assume Romans, due to their work, location, and the subject matter) who are affixing Christ to the cross. It’s… not really “comedic”, but they are sort of bumbling idiots the whole time, and there is a tension between the ridiculousness of how they do their jobs and the horror of what they are actually doing.
It was an interesting (and thankfully short) read, and I can understand to some extent what the playwright was going for. Specifically, there is a part where they are attempting to fit Jesus onto the cross and they find that they measured incorrectly: here is a subtle nod to the fact that ‘one can never truly measure God, who will always be larger than your measurements.’
It was a neat read, but not subject matter I feel a particular attachment to. That stated, it was also not the worst thing I’ve read this semester, so I guess we can be thankful for that.
Right! I’m off to finish up an assignment (just a touch of editing), and then write! Going to write all the words today! And then on Sunday… I start my winter vacation! Won’t be much of a vacation this year, since we’re obviously still stuck at home, but that’s okay… just having the mental space of not having to go into my other-job and focusing on my writing will be glorious.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Blog Post about Blog Posts
Writing a blog has always been somewhat self-indulgent. The opening assumption, that people are actually interested in what I have to say about… well, anything, really… is pretty conceited. Who am I to bother shouting into the void? Or, rather, why do I think the void should bother to listen?
The short answer is that I don’t, but I do know that running a website and maintain a consistent amount of online presence is pretty critical for those of us who aren’t “traditionally” published authors (despite my hope to one day become a traditionally published author). People need to know that I’m working on stuff, otherwise they’ll go look for other stuff… or something like that, I’ve never really been that clear on the specifics.
Now, it turns out that I don’t mind writing twice weekly blog-posts. Daily might be pushing it a little, if only because I usually write these posts when I don’t have to be at work the same time (December not withstanding, since I have to work 24/7 during the holidays), since my mental state and attitude tend to be more positive. And a little bit of online positivity is nice!
But, that stated, this here website has never really generated a tonne of interest. A very, very good day will see 20 unique visitors (assuming the tracking software on Squarespace is accurate, and really, who knows?). Most days will see a few visitors. And that too is okay, because I’m legit not doing this to be famous or because I have a deep, important message that everyone on Earth needs to know about.
I just want to write. I want to be able to eat, and have someplace warm and safe to sleep, and that’s about it. And in order to do that, I have a website that lets people know both what I have done in the past, and what I am working on for the future. And that’s kinda it.
Anyway! Ramble-filled post today. I applied for funding through the university I attend (Wilfrid Laurier, in Waterloo, ON) for the writing group I run, since we haven’t had much ability (read: any) to get together in the last little while but I would like to maintain it as an important aspect of my writing. Fingers crossed for that! And other than that, I’ve secured my next editorial time-slot (my editor is now popular enough that I have to reserve her work in advance), but that isn’t until April 1st, which means the next novel should drop around late April, early May at the latest. Exciting!
Speaking of which, I should get back to that!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Miller's Tale
I’ll be honest, if you asked me what “The Miller’s Tale” was a week ago, I would’ve probably said something about a Whiter Shade of Pale and Annie Lennox (and maybe said something about A Knight’s Tale, which I am 99.9% sure has nothing to do with Chaucer, although it is a silly, fun bit of cinema).
Having now read the story… yeah, okay. It’s better than I expected, and while I still wish I didn’t have to read it in Middle English, I am a bit less bitter about that now. The story Chaucer told almost a thousand years ago (800? There’s abouts?) feels contemporary in a lot of ways. It was fun! And funny! And surprisingly egalitarian in its own way.
I have a short assignment on it due in a week, so I’ll be cranking that out in the next few days (I always like finishing assignments early and then revising… a habit from my writing of fiction, actually, since my work is usually very rough when initially formed and then refined through extensive editing). And then back to the novel!
I actually have a full week off scheduled in the middle of February (coinciding with Reading Week), and the current plan is to have the novel done by the first or second day of that, and then to dive right into writing Novel 2 for 2021! I know I need to get a head of the curve, because something will go wrong at some point, and I need some work stored for when that happens.
Anyway! Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy, and here’s to a strong and happy February!
So Much Chaucer, so Little Timecer
I’ve been working my way through The Canterbury Tales. It’s better to read than Beowulf, but the trade-off is that I’m reading it in the original Middle English, which is considerably less fun to read than Beowulf in modern English.
It makes what could be a really interesting story into a chore. I don’t know if that was the professor’s intention, of course… I suspect he just sees it as an interesting layer of flavour, much in the way most people don’t “modernize” the text of Shakespeare. But man is it sucking all the potential joy for this story out of the pages for me.
Ah well. I’m still gonna finish it, and I look forward to moving up in time (I think this is the last of the “not-modern” English we study this semester… with any luck, this will be the last not-modern English I study for my degree!).
Anyway, I should get back to it. I have a big assignment due next week that I want to get started on, and that requires finishing this story, AND I have about twenty-bazillion words I want to write for the novel… ah! So much to do, so little time!
Hope everyone out there is safe and healthy!
One Month Down, 11 To Go!
Well, it’s certainly been an interesting January thus far! Technically not over just yet, but it will be (probably!) by the time I get to writing my next post, so I figure might as well say farewell to it now.
Progress on the next novel has been slow, but not due to a lack of interest or intent. I’m not sure how many of these early chapters will actually survive into the final book, but that’s always the way it works out with my novels. The first three (or so) chapters are usually all axed, as they’re as much for me as they are for anyone else. That stated, I kind of like the opening of this novel thus far… it sees the heroic Captain Hattori landing her definitely-crashing spaceship on a remote little trading world, and also introduces the naive but capable DiSenza (still not married to that name, but that’s an easy change if I decide) and her deep love for her lazy-ass boyfriend, tied up with whether what she feels is really love or not.
I think the boyfriend’s father is a little too stereotypical at this point, but again, early days!
Anyway, progress on the novel is coming along nicely, although slower than I’d like. And, meanwhile, I’ve been reading Chaucer for the first time… I wish we were studying a translation rather than in its original “Middle English” (every time I write “Middle English”, I have to be very conscious not to write “Middle-Earth”), but that’s a minor annoyance.
I should get back to do more of my readings for this course… I can definitely finish them this weekend, but I should probably finish them sooner, since they are supposed to have been finished yesterday. Oh well.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
New Patrons!
From time to time, I manage to get another patron or two. At this stage of my career, it’s rarely more than that, and usually I lose one a year or so as well, so it all kind of works out, but at the same time it’s still a bit of a rush every time I get a new supporter.
I don’t know how to explain it. It’s kind of like a small confirmation from the universe that I am on the right path. That putting one foot in front of the other means I am heading in approximately the right direction, and that’s a really nice feeling.
Especially considering how hard many days are. A lot of my time and energy recently has been devoted to trying to make the most of some pretty awful circumstances. In the grand scheme of things I am very fortunate, but that’s not the same thing as saying that things have been easy. They are rarely easy.
Anyway, we’ve finished our analysis of Beowulf in class, and that was… interesting… I’m glad I read it, although I can’t say it really impressed me. We’re tackling Chaucer this week, and hopefully that will be a bit more enlightening… although I will say that between “Stories inspired by Beowulf” (The Hobbit) and “Stories inspired by Canterbury Tales” (Hyperion), I’m a bigger fan of Beowulf’s impact…
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
An Auspicious Day
Well, today the USA has a new president, and one that hopefully most Americans aren’t embarrassed by. That’s not to say it will magically fix all (or really, any) of the problems that America has struggled with for the last four torturous years… heck, I’ll be stunned if much of anything is fixed quickly, since that’s not usually the way a good government works. But at least it’s a positive step.
As a Canadian, this doesn’t really have a direct impact on me or more work. It does make me slightly more optimistic about the future, and that’s important to me since I tend to write optimistic sci-fi. I think much of the sci-fi that’s been produced in the last few years has been darker overall as people struggled to see a bright, hopeful future. Maybe today will be a small step towards correcting that.
Regardless, work on my next novel is coming along nicely. I’m about half as far into the story as I want, but the word count is small enough (around 6,000) that I can remedy that with one good day or writing… which I intend to do right about… now!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Ye Olde English
So I finished reading Beowulf today… or at least one translation of Beowulf (it opens with “Listen!”, which is a newer translation, replacing “Hark!”, which is equally a weird translation of “Hwat!”, which apparently nobody really knows what it specifically means).
It’s… hmm. It was neat to read, but I am left wondering if it is both the best example of a written 1,200-year-old English story, and the worst example of a 1,200-year-old English story. It diverges in topic frequently, there’s no dramatic tension, and it still bothers me that Grendel’s mother is never worthy of a name aside from “Grendel’s mother”.
But it was neat to read, and I look forward to analyzing it for the next week or so.
Oh! And I learned the old English “y” was pronounced like “th”, meaning that “Ye Olde Shoppe” signs are actually “The Olde Shoppe”… amazing! I don’t know if that’s universally true, but it is neat.
Anyway. lots of writing tomorrow. Hope everyone out there is staying healthy and safe!