As part of my English degree I have to study a lot of British Literature. Almost done now, but the last of these courses is “Later Victorian Literature”, and nothing says Later Victorian Literature quite as much as Imperialist propaganda.
We’ve talked about the almost-unbelievably racist Kipling already, and we are now tackling “She” by H. Rider Haggard, and gosh is it hard to read. Not that it’s intrinsically badly-written… it’s a very old-style of novel, but it’s a legitimately old novel, so it comes by that rightly. But wow is it ever racist and misogynistic. Just casually throwing around shade at everyone who isn’t white, descriptions of “cruel” features, discussions of the frailty of women and their stupidity…
Now, let it be said here that my novels aren’t perfect. There are definitely some questionable decisions I’ve made, and I have certainly written a few sexist characters. I don’t think I’ve ever been Imperialist in any of my novels, since I tend to believe very deeply that Imperialism (and monarchies as a more general rule) are always bad, but I may have had moments of colonialism that sneaked in when I wasn’t paying enough attention… Canada has some very troubling colonial roots, and as a child of this country it has bled into my perspective occasionally.
But I certainly hope nobody will ever look at my work the same way I’m looking at Haggard’s. Wow it’s bad.
Anyway. I have to finish the last half of this awful, brutal novel, and then I get to work on two massive term papers due in a week or so, and after all that… maybe I’ll get to do something remotely fun? Probably not, but a man can hope.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Put on a Happy Face
Well, things are certainly different than they were a few years ago. By this time in 2020, it was becoming apparent that the pandemic wasn’t just going to go away on its own, and the Canadian government was starting to take its first, hesitant steps towards mandates to protect the population.
By the following week I told my boss I would be self-isolating, since that was recommended. He took it pretty well, all things considered, and there followed the second most productive period of my writing career.
It looks like the provincial government is going to remove the mask mandates in the next couple weeks, and while this fills me with an impending sense of doom (4 of my coworkers have had COVID in the last 3 months, and that’s with the mandates still in place!), there isn’t a lot I can do about it. My editing costs still far outstrip my income from writing (by orders of magnitude, actually), and my university education is still almost entirely self-financed, which means I have to keep working if I want to do the things I love, like write and learn about how to write better.
So why worry? Might as well do my best to embrace this, and hope that we all come out the other side a little kinder and wiser. And who knows, a lot can still change in two weeks… maybe the downwards trend in cases will continue, and things will in fact get far better than things currently suggest they will get. It would be nice to stop worrying all the time (I worry all the time).
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Academic Papers
If the last four-and-something years have taught me anything, it’s that I’m really very good at writing academic papers.
I don’t enjoy it, I often don’t see the point of it, but apparently I am very, very good at it.
I am diving into another one this weekend. It’s for a course I have in writing narratives for video games, and I’m pretty excited about it. It is letting me approach a medium I love (games) from a position that I don’t normally care much about (academic analysis). Today is going to be devoted to picking a specific topic and thesis, and starting to lay out the groundwork for finding academic sources to back up whatever it is I’m going to say.
There is a temptation to continue on this track because then someday I might be considered an academic source… but I don’t think I’m wealthy enough or devoted enough to poverty to pursue the years and years of abuse the academic system heaps on people. Besides, all I’ve ever really wanted is a humble life where I can write books in peace… I don’t think the academic path allows that for decades, if ever.
Anyway. Those are my weekend plans.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Consistent Sales
It’s neat to see that most weeks I get a pretty consistent number of sales. That number is too small, sure, but it’s there, and that’s pretty amazing and comforting, honestly.
It also pushes me to write more, because if I get this number of sales with 7 novels, I can get twice as many sales if I had 14 novels! Hopefully the progression is better than linear, because I don’t know how long it would take me to write 70 novels (approximately 15 years), but it’s too long.
In other news, February was a total wash for writing. I think I got maybe 5k words done on the novel? I think March will be better, honestly, because things are kinda looking up, or at least a bit calmer. There is hope on the wind, right behind the terrifying “Will this result in the end of humanity” elements marching around Europe right now. It’s a scary time for everyone, but more so for a lot of people further east than me, and my heart goes out to them.
Anyway, that’s enough waxing poetic about the state of the world… hopefully we’ll all still be here in a few months to welcome a brighter, more optimistic summer? That would be nice.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Group Projects Suck
I’m sure I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, but I hate group projects. I never much cared for them at work, and I certainly have always hated them at school.
The problem, I have learned, is that people suck.
Joking aside, it’s mostly a question of work style: I want to get everything done as soon as humanly possible to both not have it on my mind, and to give me as much time as possible in case things go sideways… because things always go sideways. Most people would rather leave the work until the last possible moment, and if I’m being charitable, I can say it’s probably because they just have other priorities. I get that, it’s fine… but it often means that I end up doing everything anyways, and so it’s not a “group project” , it’s a solo project that’s bigger, longer, and other people get credit for.
But whatever. It’s fine! As long as it gets done, that’s all that matters. There’s a saying somewhere about “Imagine how much we could get accomplished if nobody cared who got credit and just did the work!”, and that holds kinda true. I don’t really care who gets credit, this is just a 3rd year course I’m probably never going to think about again, I just need to get the work done.
So, on that note, I’m going to go and do the last part of a project that 5 other students are supposed to be working on, but none of them will. Yay.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Correlation is not Causation
A few weeks back I had to reduce the advertising budget for my novels through Amazon (which, at this point, is 99.9% of my advertising budget). I reduced everything by more-or-less half… and my sales, likewise, have reduced by about the same percentage.
Now, that' doesn’t mean it’s a 1-to-1 correlation between ads and sales. It certainly suggests it to a certain amount, but there are plenty of reasons to expect a downturn in sales in February after some pretty consistent numbers in December. But still, nice to see that there is a connection at least.
Additional bonus: if I can figure out the price-sale ratio at some point, I may actually make some money off selling my books. Maybe! Nice to think that it’s possible.
But for now, today is my last day off for Reading Week before I have to go back to work, so I have actual readings to accomplish, and I’m gonna do that.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
A Few Days Off
“Days Off” is such a misnomer in my life. I never have days off… well, very, very rarely at least. Any time I’m not working one job, I’m working a different job, or studying. A day where I don’t have obligations and work hovering over my shoulder is a rare, rare thing.
But this weekend is a little longer than usual due to “Family Day” on Monday and me taking Tuesday off and Wednesday being part of reading week, so I theoretically have 4 contiguous days where I don’t have to do anything.
I will spend it doing the readings for my courses, starting some long-lead-time assignments, and writing… but that’s okay. All of those things are important, and I’m sure eventually I’ll actually have a day to do with what I want…
Right?
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Sonnets and Close Reading
My midterm for “Late Victorian Literature” (one of my 2 or 3 last classes before I graduate) involves reading a lot of Victorian sonnets and then doing close readings of them.
For those of you who are unaware, a “close reading” basically consists of reading a piece of work and then thinking every possible connection, every allusion and reference and possible interpretation the writer mentions or hints at, and then putting all that down on paper. Yes, the author said that the grass is green, but what did they mean by that statement? Is it a reference to Eden, or perhaps to the the grass always being greener elsewhere? Does it mean that it is springtime, or perhaps full summer? Has it rained recently… and so on, and so forth, ad infinitum.
It’s fine. I’ve never struggled with being able to put down a lot of thoughts about any particular topic, and while Late Victorian sonnets may not be my favourite literary genre, the ones we are reading are at least tangentially interesting.
Anyway, I should get back to writing that midterm… it’s due later today, and I only have a few hours to finish up before I head into school.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Oops!
Knew I forgot something… funny how time can slip by if you’re not paying attention to it, and in this case my Sunday-Monday post was the casualty.
Not that it matters a whole lot. This blog is mostly for my own edification… a monument to my time and struggle attempting to be a full-time author, as all of you know. Will I keep it going after I succeed at that task? Yes, absolutely, but the focus of it will have to become more… well, focused. But that’s some time away yet, especially if I can’t finish this novel (which, honestly, is proving a struggle).
In an unrelated aside, I was considering moving… not leaving Canada, although that thought has occurred more and more frequently. I think I’m staying in the country for family… my parents both live in Southern Ontario, and as much as we’ve had a rough relationship, I owe it to them to be nearby in case they need help. But moving up further north (although still in Ontario) is on the table in a way I wouldn’t have dreamed of ten years ago. I just want a nice place to live where I can write and not be constantly stressed out by other work or school or whatever.
Anyway. School is going well, the presentation last week went very well, which was nice.
Argh, I just remembered I have a midterm due tomorrow… arrrrgggghhh… right, I should get that started.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Presentations
This Friday, February 11th, I will be giving a brief talk on ethics and Wordle.
Yes, you read that correctly. The basic thrust of the talk is going to be the interface of Emmanuel Levinas and his theory that all morality is the result of seeing a human face, and that Wordle’s staggering (albeit almost certainly temporary) popularity is because it visibly and easily quantizes suffering through those little green and yellow blocks as you play.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about… actually, I’m impressed. It has swept across the English-speaking world like wildfire, to the point that I’m seeing Wordle grids on Facebook, on Twitter… it’s basically everywhere. And recently sold for a lot of money (good on the designer), so there’s that too.
But I also think this is a very, very temporary sort of popularity. The… fidget-spinners of 2022, or the “What Does the Fox Say” or any other of countless thousands of brief sparks of something incredible that fade as quickly as they appear.
Anyway, I’ve procrastinated on writing that presentation, leaving it to the metaphorical “last minute.” Which is unlike me, but work has been hard and school has been hard, so finding time to do more school just hasn’t been a priority until now…
Although I will probably study for my midterm (later today) first. And then write the presentation… probably.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Reduced Advertising Budgets
Ah, business.
Don’t get me wrong: I get that part of being a writer is the business of being a writer. I get that it comes with the territory and you can’t really avoid it (although I suspect that the very successful ones do manage to avoid it to a large extent).
But I don’t have to like it. And I don’t.
Last week I was hit with an advertising charge for my work. That’s normally fine, but it was almost the same size as the charge I was hit with the week before that… and I just couldn’t afford it. On average, my book sales for a month cover about two weeks of running ads… and normally that’s a loss I can absorb because I’m still a new writer and I’m moving small-potatoes worth of units. But paying literally twice that amount…
Anyway. Moral of the story is that I’ve had to reduce my ad budget by a sharp margin, all the while Ye Olde Amazon is saying that I should be increasing it. I understand their justification, even if we step back from the “We want to make more money so you should pay us more money” position: the number of times my ads show up to people is definitely limited by their budget. But that will have to wait until I have more money I can spend on ads, which I currently do not.
Fun.
Oh well. Hopefully enough people are leaving 4-and-5 star reviews that a few more people will see my work, and at this point that’s basically all I can ask for. Maybe someday I will have a proper ad budget… but it is not this day!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Ocean's Eleven with Power Armour
I recently read an article over on John Scalzi’s blog. This is unusual for me… I really like Scalzi’s work, as I think everyone who knows me is aware, but I don’t often read any blogs by writers. I couldn’t say exactly why, but they aren’t entertaining to me (he said while writing just such a blog).
Writing here, for me, is part of the job. This comes with the territory, and since it’s writing I don’t mind that bit. And reading also comes with the territory, but I normally focus on reading that’s relevant specifically to my genre (hence me sitting down and crushing through all the Chamber’s “Wayfarer” series last month). Anyway, I digress.
I was reading Scalzi’s blog, which a guest author had written. And the guest author mentioned in a throw-away comment that their next work was, and I quote, “Ocean’s Eleven with Power Armour” (they probably spelled it “armor” because they’re American, but again, digression). And that made me instantly a little sad and took a lot of the wind out of my sails for this last week.
The story I’m working on right now is much more “Ocean’s Eleven with cyberpunk” than power armour, but it’s close. And I know that it’s not about having super unique ideas, but rather telling whatever ideas you have in the best way… great stories are retold countless times. It’s not the idea, but the execution that matters.
But I was still sad. And a little demoralized. I’ll get over it (I mean, the novel still needs to get written!), but maybe that’s why I don’t read other author’s blogs…
Anyway! Just a blip. I’ll be back at it later today after my classes!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
A Slow Week
I try to be consistent with my writing. School gets in the way occasionally, and the other job I have to work to pay for my editing and advertising costs definitely gets in the way a lot, but most weeks I can pretty consistently write for at least three or four days.
Last week was not one of those weeks. I think I wrote about 500 words the entire week for my novel… sure, a few hundred more on a presentation I have in a week, but that doesn’t really count. It’s a weird feeling, seeing time slipping by but, at the same moment, not having the drive or energy to actually get words on the page. I have an hour or two today that I’ll get some work done after visiting my parents for the first time in six months or so… hopefully that goes okay and I can return to the novel refreshed and with some energy!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Intentionally Bad Business
I know I've mentioned this before, but my book sales do not, in any way, cover the costs of publishing the books. Moreover, they don’t cover the costs of the ongoing advertising of the books.
It’s starting to get a little closer. My advertising budget has a pretty hard upper limit due to financial issues, and I’m hitting that limit every month, which means that I’m consistently advertising as much as I can (as many people are seeing the ads as is mathematically possible). The flipside is that book sales are slowly ticking upwards, so even with a constant number of ad views, I’m selling more books.
Not enough to cover costs, as we said, but that’s okay. At this stage of my career, I’m really happy to just get my work into people’s hands… without starving or going bankrupt, of course, which is where that strict upper limit comes into play.
Still, it’s a weird feeling, being intentionally bad at business in this way. I know I can’t maintain it, and I know it’s actually digging me into a deeper hole that I will eventually still have to crawl out of. But hopefully it’s slowly getting me closer to my goal of being a full-time writer? I hope? Reviews of my work continue to land in the 4-star (out of 5) range, so that’s a positive sign!
But you know what would be even better than maxed-out ad budgets? Publishing more books! I should get back to that, right about now!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
A Walk in the Cold
Decided to go for a walk at the Mountsberg Conservation area nearby. It’s a nice little park on its own, but significantly it is also the home of a bird rehabilitation centre (technically called the Raptor Centre, not to be confused with an arena for a Toronto-based basketball team). The birds are simultaneously very cute and incredibly deadly… the eagles have wingspan bigger than most people (myself included!), and the Golden Hawks are capable of hunting deer.
Deer! By a bird! It’s huge!
Anyway, it was a nice little walk, an opportunity to reconnect with a small piece of nature and to see some animals that don’t mind the cold too much (although it was quite cold). Got a few pretty pictures, but mostly just tried to be in the moment and say hello to some feathered dinosaurs.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
That Escalated Quickly
I have a myriad of artistic pursuits. Most of them I don’t expect or want to make money from… for example, as much as I love playing guitar, I doubt I will ever try to make a cent off it (there was a brief period about a decade ago when I thought about pursuing it to make a little money on the side, but I quickly realized that I got into the game about three decades too late to ever be more than competent).
In posting some of my painting work in an online forum where other artists gather, I mentioned in passing that I like painting, but would only do it for money for a ridiculous sum, since it is a very slow process for myself and I value my time. Another artist spoke up and said that by valuing my work at all, I was doing myself a disservice.
This quickly devolved into the standard “art is for passion, work is for money” argument that is pretty typical for artists and non-artists alike. If you enjoy something, you should do it regardless of whether there is money. If you’re doing something for money you shouldn’t expect to enjoy it.
It’s not a position I’ve ever really agreed with. I think it’s perfectly reasonable to expect to be paid for something you’re passionate about, and it is equally okay to not want to be paid for something you are passionate about. A lot of people in the writing group I used to run didn’t want to make a living off of writing, and that was great! And a lot of others, myself included, totally do, and that’s fine too! But I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that pursuing one doesn’t automatically exclude the other.
The other artist… did not take this perspective well. I guess a lot of people take their perspective on art very seriously, and so didn’t appreciate a different perspective?
Well, lessons learnt. Learned? Argh, I hate that one. Anyway. I learned something about that particular artist and their perspective, at least.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Green-eyed Monsters
I’m a pretty level-headed guy most of the time. I’m not perfect, but I’m a big proponent of a rising tide lifting all boats and all that, and I tend to be pretty steady in my lack of professional jealousy.
There are exceptions, of course. Nobody is perfect. And I tend to get a little eye-twitchy when I think of some people who definitely, absolutely do not deserve the fame or success they have because they’re horrible people, but even in those cases I can usually shrug and just say que sera sera.
Recently I had a bout of jealousy. It didn’t last long, and I don’t think I let it infect my behaviours or words at the time. But it was a weird sensation, to watch somebody so much younger and more talented than I am and to feel in the pit of my stomach that I would never reach the heights that this youth would.
Now? A day later, I can smile and shrug and wish them all the best with an open heart. I do really hope they achieve those heights I will only dream of. Them being wildly successful won’t have an impact on my success, on my life, in any measurable way. But there was that one moment… ah well. Only human at the end of the day, I suppose. And the secret isn’t trying to never feel something, be it anger, jealousy, or sadness. It’s to accept that these are temporary, and move on.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
Professional Help
One of the most important things I think I have learned in my life is that nobody can do everything. Even people who think they can… perhaps especially people who think they can… can’t. There are specialists and talented people in every field, and a big part of being a good writer is recognizing what I can do really well (write!) and what I can’t (cover art, editing, etc…), and then pay people to do what they’re good at so I can do what I’m good at.
I reached out for some business help to the university I’m currently attending, which is convenient because they have numerous full-time staff who’s job it is to help people like me be better at what we do. As my graduation date looms (gosh does it ever), I’m realize that I should do my best to get the most of the resources the university offers me. After all, I am paying for it already. My first meeting involved a lot of walking through the kind of steps I already do in order to make this writing thing successful, and the first actionable element the counselor gave was to think about how I approach Patreon.
It’s a fair point. I am eternally grateful to my patrons, but I don’t give them as much as some writers do. Partially because I almost never have time (any spare moments I do have are always filled as quickly as possible with writing, after all!), but I think it should be something I schedule to do. I have a schedule to write blog posts twice a week, I could probably schedule a Patreon-exclusive thing once a month or so… worth thinking about, at least!
Anyway, that’s where I’m at. I have another meeting “soon” (date as of yet TBD), which hopefully will give me more useful insight, but it was nice to talk about the business end of my writing career with someone who specializes in this kinda thing.
As a quick aside: I’m going to try and make enchiladas in salsa verde for dinner tonight. I blame Adam Ragusea. Hopefully it turns out okay!
Hope everyone is staying safe and healthy!
Last Night I Read
Last night, after a long, exhausting day, I decided to start the final book in the “Wayfarer Series” by Becky Chambers.
I’ve been a fan of Chambers’s work since I read Long Way to a Small Angry Planet a few years back, and picked up the rest of the series a few months ago. None of the other books quite hit the highs of that first one (which, admittedly, is more of a collection of short stories in many ways), but gosh The Galaxy and the Ground Within is good.
It’s so good, in fact, that I finished it this morning at 2:30am after reading non-stop since I started it. Sure, I’m a little tired today (who needs sleep?), but what a wonderful book. And what a touching, smart, elegant conclusion to the series which, admittedly again, I never really thought was a series. The books have almost no common elements aside from a few references to characters in the first book. Chambers didn’t write a series so much as she wrote in the same universe four times.
But, to be crystal clear, this is in no way a complaint. I loved these books. Each of them was intelligent and thoughtful in exactly the way my science fiction isn’t. Chambers spent time with each character, fleshing them out, and crafting a universe that not only coherently holds, but also feels “real” in a delightful way.
They were delicious. And I am both completely satisfied with them and immensely saddened to know that I won’t be going back to visit with them again.
Ah well. All good things and all that. Scalzi has a new novel coming out this year, so I have something to look forward to, and I’m polishing off a few more course textbooks and some puff reading at work (Blackstone Fortress Ascension by Hicks is my current lunchtime reading material), but before long I’m going to have to try and find some new sci-fi to read!
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!
The Regular Schedule
So I’m back at school, and I’m back at my job that pays for my school and writing (well, most of it at least… some of it is paid through Patreon supporters, who are amazing people, thank you all). This means I have specific days and times that I have available to write.
I’ve also started working out again most days (my goal is 6 days a week, but it’s going to take at least a few weeks to get up to that because gosh is my body sore every time I do a workout these days!), and I still have guitar lessons weekly. So… basically what I’m saying is… busy.
Back in the old days, I somehow managed to be both busy and still accomplish other stuff at times. Not often, granted, but I used to go to the gym five or six times a week, and that chewed up hours every day, and resulted in me being utterly exhausted by the time I got home. These days I work out for about an hour in the morning, but I’m doing it in my house, which speeds up a lot of the process.
Moral of the story is that I’m a busy, busy guy most of the time. Still managing to write four or five times a week, which is pretty good. Would like to be able to do more, but at the end of the day it’s more about what you do with what you have, more than anything else, I think.
Or I hope, at least.
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!