On Writing – Page 36 – Welcome to Bridgetown

Visiting Schenectady

September 29, 2015September 29, 2015 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

People ask me where I get my ideas. I always tell them, “Schenectady.” They look at me with confusion and I say, “Yeah, there’s this ‘idea service’ in Schenectady and every week like clockwork they send me a fresh six-pack of ideas for 25 bucks.” Every time I say that at a college lecture there’s always some schmuck who comes up to me and wants the address of the service. – Harlan Ellison

Sometimes I’m so bogged down by long-term projects (such as the Mendaihu Universe completion and self-publication) that I end up wondering if I’m going to ever come up with another original idea again. My focus is so strong on the task at hand that I fear I’m letting a bunch of future ideas pass me by.

This is yet another silly writer fear, of course. And I fall for it every damn time.

In reality, have I come up with any new ideas? Well, as a matter of fact I have! There’s the MU-related storyline that takes place in current time rather than in the future; there’s the family band storyline idea I toyed around with earlier this year for my daily 750 Words. And I still find myself waking up in the morning, remembering snippets of odd dreams and thinking ooh, that would make a good story! And I have a “job jar” here in Spare Oom where I’ve dropped scraps of paper for passing snippets of ideas in case I’m hungry for something to write. So it’s not as if the idea well is dry. I’m just not paying attention to it at that moment.

Speaking of 750 Words, I recently chose to return to that site for daily practice words, as I’m finding myself with a bit of extra time to do so again. As mentioned before, I’ve used that site as my mental playground for new ideas. Some last for a couple hundred words, while others are ongoing. Some are detailed ideas, while others are just wordplay (such as my exercise of writing a story only using dialogue and no tags or prose). I have no idea what I’m going to write until I log in and start typing away, and for the next 750 words or so I just let myself riff on an idea. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but that doesn’t matter.

The fact that I’m writing, even if it’s just for mental exercise, is good enough for me. The ideas are still there…they’re just tucked away, waiting for me to bring them front and center.

Feeling Twitchy

September 23, 2015September 23, 2015 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

The problem with going through a major editing/revision/release process is that it eats up quite a lot of time I set aside for my writing. It leaves precious little time for any new work unless I sneak some time in during the day. [Which I’m doing right now…this post is being written in the slow moments of my Day Job.]

This makes me twitchy. I want to write something new, but deadlines loom. I don’t mind the editing/revising part of the job, but the longer it takes, the more I have that itch to pick up a notebook and start working on a new project. Not out of avoiding the revision process, but that I start feeling rusty. I feel the need to write new words somewhere, anywhere. My personal journal entries (which I write during my midmorning break) are getting more verbose, and I’ve been blogging like a fiend lately. My brain is clogged with Future Plans for When I’m Caught Up. I’ve got ideas for the Inktober art meme. I have a few stories simmering and a new MU story in stasis.

I believe it’s time for me to get creative with my writing time again.

So many words, so little time!

Writing Religion in Genre

September 21, 2015September 21, 2015 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

Religion can be a very tricky thing to write about in Fantasy and Science Fiction. It has to be done reasonably well and for good reason. It also has to have at most a strong backbone for which to base part (or all) of the plot or a character’s makeup. The writer should not want to overtly use the religion’s place in the story as a soapbox, either, because readers will pick up on that right away. Nor do you want to pick and choose the ideas of well-known established religions and use them without understanding at least some of its already-established rules and tenets.

In creating the ‘spirituality’ of the Mendaihu Universe — I call it such because it’s not so much an established religion as it is a spiritual state of being — I had to create a belief system that had to follow specific rules. The First Rule, as it were, was balance. I had to work within the confines of a yin-yang system, where the Mendaihu and the Shenaihu were not so much mortal enemies as they were parts of a whole. When one takes action, the other one must respond in kind. This alone propels the action in A Division of Souls and drives the plot of all three books in the trilogy; when Nehalé Usarai performs the Awakening ritual in the first chapter, the Shenaihu must respond, and do so fivefold. This will set off even more responding actions from the Mendaihu again, and so on.

This is often where the savior comes in; the character whose life is lived outside of this cycle, who must put a stop to it before both sides utterly destroy each other. In the trilogy, this is the One of All Sacred. He or she is not exactly an established deity (in the Mendaihu Universe, that is the Goddess of All That Is), but an outside player of a religious stature who is tasked with returning everything back into a peaceful balance. The savior often has a somewhat clearer mind than many of the other characters; they’re not wound up in some kind of emotional tailspin or blinded by distraction. [This can often be their own distraction — their distance from the situation sometimes causes them not to fully understand it.] The savior’s own story arc is thus not only to Make Things Right Again, but to spiritually ascend in their own way.

What kind of religions have you seen in genre fiction that fascinate you? If you’ve created your own, how have you worked out the rules?

All Kinds of Time

September 10, 2015September 12, 2015 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

[One of the best songs about football, hands down.]

The problem with Football Season is that it gives me one more reason to be distracted from my writerly duties. Not that I need more distractions…I already have the music, the social media, the Day Job, and everything else! Still, it’s a pleasurable distraction; as with music, I have it on in the background while I’m working on something else, glancing up at the screen every now and again when someone scores or executes a brilliant play.

Time can be tricky, especially when you’re attempting to balance the finite amount we’re allotted with the infinite number of things you want to use it for. I dedicate eight hours a day to my Day Job (I try to avoid overtime, and for the most part it’s never needed anyway), but during my breaks, I will sneak a few writing things in. During my 9:30am break, I’ll sit on the loveseat across the room and write an entry in my daily personal journal. During lunch I’ll read my writing magazines. During the afternoon break I’ll catch up on emails and whatnot. And on the rare occasion that I have a slow day, I may even work on a blog post. After we both log off, we head to the YMCA and work out on the treadmills for a bit, and have dinner soon after. This gives me a few hours at the end of each day, purely dedicated to my writing.

As said, the tricky part is what I should be working on, and when.

The thing about being a writer is that you most likely have about three or four different projects going on at the same time, each at various levels of completion. My current status involves the following: A Division of Souls is out in the world (yes, even at Amazon now — the physical copies are coming soon!), I’m currently working on the final edit of The Persistence of Memories, I’m writing the new Mendaihu Universe novel longhand, I’m carving out weekend time to pick Walk in Silence up again, and I have a few other fiction and non-fiction projects simmering on low heat in the back of my brain. And that doesn’t include my daily personal journal, weekly blog posting, popping up on social media now and again, and other non-writing things such as guitar noodling and songwriting. And there are things that keep getting put on hold, such as doing the daily 750 Words, my artwork and the Drunken Owl music recording project. So much to do, so little time.

See, this is why I have the whiteboard schedule. I haven’t been following it as of late due to the massive editing sessions for the Bridgetown Trilogy, and I think that’s a fair enough reason for putting everything on hold as of late. I don’t mind, because releasing the trilogy myself demands a lot of time and dedication, and I’m not about to do any of it half-assed. But now that the Big Release date has come and gone and that I’m letting it slow-simmer a bit while I figure out different ways to have fun with its promotion, I find myself with a bit more time on my hands. Which means my week or so of relaxation and mucking about online must come to a close. It’s time to refocus and dedicate the time that I have to what I want to get done.

Still, that’s not to say I’m not about to miss out on watching some football this season! I may be busy, but I’m not about to let that get in the way of having fun as well!

On Doing It DIY

August 28, 2015 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

il_fullxfull_451737889_mjqu — *Courtesy of Etsy*

Back when I first started taking my writing seriously — I mean, as in thinking “Hey, I kinda like doing this, I could see myself doing it professionally” and setting out a goal to actually finish a full novel, way back before I actually knew how to do it — was in the mid to late 80s when I was in my mid-teens. Out of that came the Infamous War Book (basically a Red Dawn pastiche), which took me three years to finish, in between false starts, obsessive planning, revisions, homework, and hanging out with friends. On the one hand it was kind of expected I’d be a writer, considering my dad was a local reporter and historian, and well known in the area; many adults would not have been surprised if I followed in his footsteps. On the other hand, though, I was following a path I didn’t think any other kids my age would have followed. I knew a handful of kids who wrote stories alongside me, but I think their interest was more on what many nowadays would consider the fanfic level. A fun thing to do as a hobby, but their career paths lay elsewhere.

Around the same time, I’d discovered college radio (which I still go on about to this day, as you can tell from my other blog). After years of listening to commercial radio and being fed a cross section of classic rock and pop hits, the college radio thing hit me like a revelation: you don’t have to be commercial, you know. I was completely drawn to the DIY aspect of it all; they weren’t exactly writing and recording music for the fame, they were writing and recording because they wanted to. And I had a real respect for that. It was a real inspiration on multiple levels for me, from my clothes to the way I thought and acted. It also inspired my writing quite a bit — in the latter half of the IWN, you can really see a change to a much darker mood and style. I may not have been the leather-and-mohawk punk; I was more the Morrissey, hiding in my bedroom with my books and my music and writing the most brilliant things. I eventually grew out of the self-important lifestyle, but the thirst for creativity remained.

I was thinking about this the other day while listening to an 80’s-themed radio show (on a college radio station, natch). In the late 80s I had a huge burst of creativity that lasted from about 1987 to when I graduated in 1989. Having finished the IWN I quickly wrote a silly little screenplay (basically a John Hughes pastiche), taught myself how to play bass, started a band with a few friends and wrote many of the lyrics, started writing another novel and other small bits and pieces, and started writing a LOT of poetry. I knew a lot of it was going to be crap, and I totally understood that if I was going to release any of it, it would need a hell of a lot of revision and rewrites. But the most important thing was that I had a goal: I was going to get these things out into the wild, one way or another. My life’s career was going to be as a writer! The major goal was to try to get my writing released by a major publisher, but barring that, I could always go indie. I came to know about vanity publishers, small independents and print-on-demand, thanks to years of studying Writer’s Market and seeing all kinds of punk zines in record stores.

The decision to go DIY for the Mendaihu Universe stories was always there, it was just that I wanted to try my hand at the pros first. One of the reasons for that was to learn and understand how it works on that end of the business. I wanted to see what they accepted and how it went from manuscript to printed book. I’d even submitted it to a small number of agents and publishers over the years. But after finishing the trilogy and a few years of further revising and rewriting, I knew I was at the point that they were ready (or closer to that point than ever before), but did not feel that I wanted to spend even more years trying to sell it to an agent or a publisher. It was high time to put them out there before I ended up over-revising and ruining them. Going DIY meant that I was going to do a good chunk of the “backstage” work myself, and I was up for it.

I’m lucky in that this is a perfect time for it. There are legitimate self-publishing companies out there like Smashwords and BookBaby and CreateSpace, who do all the technical bits and bobs while you focus on the creative end of things. You can hire a cover artist (or buy a stock photo and fiddle with it on Photoshop if you have the ability and the inclination). You can hire an editor. You can even find a few authors you can hire to critique your work. And with the help of social media and the internet, you can even give yourself a bit of promotion. The only prerequisite is that you have an understanding of what you want and how you want to get there.

*Not gonna lie, seeing this still makes me giddy.*

Every step so far for me has been DIY, from the story, to the editing (with the help of a few beta readers and a partial critique from a pro), to the cover, to the formatting and uploading to Smashwords, all the way up to this blog. Hell, even my picture in the About the Author link here was done using my nice camera set on a timer and a slight touch-up on Photoshop. The promotion will be a little trickier, because I’m still trying to find what works, but I’m taking the Indiana Jones approach on it (“I dunno, I’m just making it up as I go”) and remaining aware of any potential avenues that might pop up. It’s definitely been an interesting couple of months, but I’m having a hell of a fun time with it. I’m almost tempted to make this my primary avenue for my writing.

I’m certain that’s the alternageek in me saying that, reveling in the nonconformity of it all.

On Writing: Entr’acte

August 24, 2015 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. When a writer purposely decides to take time off and not write, it definitely feels weird. On the one hand you’re enjoying some mental time off, watching movies or catching up on tv shows, or reading that book you put aside a few months previous, or maybe even just goofing off on the internet for hours at a time. On the other hand, you’re itching to get back to work as soon as possible and work on that next project.

So what have I been doing all week? I mean, aside from goofing off on the internets?

A lot of offline stuff, really. Cleaning the apartment. Doing some shopping. Practicing a bit of guitar playing. Continuing on my daily personal journal. In short, living life outside the Next Book. I even skipped out on updating this blog. Okay, I may have browsed over at Shutterstock to decide on my next cover, but no real work was done. I purposely gave myself a week off to unwind from that crazy five-week blitz of line editing and doing all the backstage work for A Division of Souls, before I jumped in on the probably-longer blitz of line editing and backstage work for The Persistence of Memories. [And there’s also the fact that I will need to continue paying attention to the release of ADoS so I can figure out various ways to promote it.]

It’s not to say I never take an evening off…I definitely have, here and there. A day where I’m feeling under the weather, or just had a shitty day at the Day Job, or whatever. I’m not chained to the writing, I’ve just turned it into a healthy addiction. When I first wrote TPoM back in 2002-3, I was dedicating two hours daily (including weekends, when I’d dedicate more) to writing at least a thousand pages a day. The words just flowed, I was in a good frame of mind, and I wasn’t about to let that pass me by. But I did take a few days off here and there, either to sickness or personal plans, or just plain wanting to take a day off and read comics instead. Sure, it felt odd, but I wasn’t feeling guilty about it.

That said…I’m going to be jumping back into the fire tomorrow. TPoM is nagging at me to be edited (this current version clocks in at 180k words, so I’m sure there’s going to be some serious deletion going on). Added to the ADoS promotion, the cover art, this blog, the Day Job, and maybe even other non-Mendaihu Universe related writing work, I’m going to be a busy little worker bee for the next few months.

Wish me luck!

Adventures in Self-Publishing: Waiting for the Drop Date

August 18, 2015August 18, 2015 Jon Chaisson2 Comments

The waiting is the hardest part... — *The waiting is the hardest part…*

On the plus side, I am ecstatic that I was able to get this all done well under deadline — and almost a full week early at that. I can calm my nerves a bit, catch my breath. Maybe pick up some of the other minor projects that fell by the wayside. Relax, play a few games of FreeCell, goof off with my mp3 collection for a bit.

Or, y’know, I can spend my time figuring out how the heck I’m going to promote the book. There’s always that. I’ve already made a few strides on that.

Or start working on the Final Edit and cover for The Persistence of Memories. It’s a toss-up.

Seriously, right now I feel guilty for taking a break. I’ve put so much energy and time into getting ADoS out on time that I’m not quite sure what to do with myself. Part of me is still wound up and wants to jump headlong into editing the next book (which probably won’t be available for at least a few months at most anyway). There’s also the voice in the back of my head quietly reminding me that I still have to continue work on the new Mendaihu book, because it ain’t gonna finish itself. And lastly, there’s the voice of reason humbly requesting that I take a break for once in my damn life an not feel guilty about it.

And lastly, I have fifteen days before the drop date of 3 September, in which I have to resist temptation to edit the book even more, even though technically it’s out of my hands now.

All I can really do is wait at this point.

[NOTE: For those playing along, yes, I would totally want Fleur & Manu, the directors of this video, to direct the film version of the book.]

Adventures in Self-Publishing: The Myth of the One Chance for Success

August 13, 2015 Jon Chaisson2 Comments

One of the things I’ve been thinking about during this self-publishing project is that time-honored maxim, ‘You only have one chance to make a first impression.’ Okay, that might be true if you’re trying to, y’know, impress someone on the spot. A potential date, a possible future boss, the audience watching your first stage performance. It also sounds like you need to do it right the first time, or it’s going to be black mark on your cv and you’ll forever be labeled a hack.

I agree with that maxim when it refers to getting your book out there (especially your first one)…to an extent. I agree when it pertains to making sure you’re providing the best work you’ve ever done. No ‘there-I-fixed-it’ kludge editing, no relying blindly on spellcheck, no half-assed cover thrown together in a five minutes, and especially no ‘meh, they won’t notice’ rookie mistakes. On that level, you want your book to be the most professional thing you’ve ever done to that date.

On the other hand, I’ve come to think that, even if my book is the best thing I’ve done, and that I’ve cleaned it up, spitshined it, formatted it, taken the steps to promote it, gave it a fifteen-point inspection and even rotated the tires, and led the call for all and sundry to come and bask in its awesomeness (or at least beg everyone buy the damn thing), I still might hear crickets upon the book’s arrival.

In this case, I still don’t think it’s necessarily true that I’ve spoiled that One Chance.

See, with my music obsession, I have a particular affinity for sleeper hits. The ones that might not be a big hit right out of the gate, but still manage to attract a decent following. The ones that the mainstream might not pay attention to right away, but will eventually. Like Loveless or Fantastic Planet or The La’s or any one of those brilliant albums that took a long time to show up on everyone’s Best Ever lists. They may have been minor hits at the time, but they didn’t get too far, at least not right away. They had to grow on people.

This is how I’ve been looking at getting A Division of Souls out to the masses, really. The most important thing, at least for me, is to get it out there first. I’ve not done too much promotion as of yet, other than tweeting pictures and emailing links whenever I see it in the wild. [The giddiness hasn’t abated, I admit.] Reason being, I’m about sixty pages away from finishing the final edit, plus I’m going to need to format it as well before I can upload. But once it’s up, it’s up and it’s live. And I’m going to need to promote it at that point.

Which begs the question: how to promote it?

Well, that’s the tricky part. And I’ll be going into that in future posts, once I get to that level. I’m still figuring it out right now.

Point being, part of the trick here is to avoid promoting it by making a huge pre-release scene over multiple platforms, like it’s a big Hollywood film. I know from personal experience that no one likes to have a product jammed down their throats, even if it is something they’ve been waiting a long time for. I’m taking the quieter route: magazine reviews, word of mouth, reader contact, freebies, consistent blogging, and so on. And a little further down the line, perhaps sitting in on a panel or two at a convention, limited release of physical copies, and so on. It’ll be a much longer route to take, of course, but in the end it should pay off because I’d be keeping the book visible for a longer amount of time.

At that point I’ll make a good first impression on a new reader, even if it takes a while. I’m in for the long haul.

If you would like to be one of the first to say “I was into his stuff before it was cool,” by all means! Here’s some linkage for you!
Barnes & Noble (Nook)
Smashwords
Kobo
Good Reads

I’ll of course add more as I find them. [Apparently I need to jump a few hurdles in order to have it available on Kindle…more on that when I get to that point.]

And One Giant Leap…

July 20, 2015July 20, 2015 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

First mock-up cover, thanks to Shutterstock and a half hour on PicMonkey. — *First mock-up cover, with help from a Shutterstock sample and a half hour on PicMonkey. NOT THE FINAL VERSION.*

Small steps. That’s what writing novels has been about for me. On the surface it may look like I’m one big mess of contradictions: deep focus on ideas but extremely haphazard drafts; some really tight writing balanced out with a handful of ‘screw it, I’ll fix it later’ placeholders; things that pretty much every writer needs to go through. We create a hell of a lot more than what ends up in the final version, and a lot of it does tend to be directionless wriggling, trying to figure out where the hell we want the story to go. A lot of small steps. Missteps, steps into slippery mud, and blind kicks into the air, with the hopes that the end result is instead a well-choreographed saunter down a red carpet, fans cheering at the sidelines.

And one giant leap, making the decision to publish.

Last week, I made the decision that I was going to work with one of the indie self-publishers and finally release the Bridgetown Trilogy into the big bad world.

This past week I’ve begun preparing myself for an early September drop date. Starting one final line edit of A Division of Souls, making various business decisions, starting a detailed spreadsheet for the accounting…and everything else that goes into releasing a book on one’s own. I’m even making my own covers, with the help and feedback from others.

The one thing I did not expect during this process? I’m enjoying the hell out of it.

The research into what publishing services would work for me? The images I’d want for the covers? What kind of expenses I’d be expecting to shoulder? That is, the business side of all of this? I’m really enjoying this part of it. Never thought I’d admit that. Certainly back in my early writing days, I was that writer who was all about the creative spark and saw the economic side of it as the death knell to creativity. [Thankfully I got rid of that mindset right quick.] Now? I’m finding the ‘behind-the-scenes’ work just as fascinating as the writing.

I think it’s because I’ve made myself see it similar to the music business, of which I have a decent basic knowledge and a keen interest. Bands rarely if ever go into the studio and slap down a perfect and complete album straight out. There’s a lot of working parts, a lot of outtakes, presales boosting, word of mouth and other bits and bobs that may not be obvious to the passive listener, but are quite important to the end result. Writing and publishing is very similar in that respect. I’m fascinated not just by the creative process, but the amount of work it takes to make it professional level, making all the pieces fit perfectly. I’ve not only been actively participating in all the levels, but I’m learning from them.

Am I going to be blogging about it as I go? Of course I am!

This is the part of the business not many writers and blog readers get to see…and more often than not, this is also part of the business that writers tend to want to ignore (often for good and legitimate reasons). In the process I hope these upcoming posts will also help others who are thinking of following a similar path.

So yeah. Here we go. One Giant Leap.

On Writing: Mental Playgrounds

July 9, 2015 Jon ChaissonLeave a comment

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been utilizing the daily word website 750 Words off and on over the last few years, and using it as a sort of ‘mental playground’ where I can have fun playing with ideas that happen to pop into my head. In short, it’s a simple site where you log on and crank out at least 750 words for the day. It doesn’t matter what it is…poetry, prose, automatic writing, it doesn’t judge as long as you hit the goal. It’s a perfect place if you have trouble getting yourself started, but it’s also a great place for training yourself to write something without Editor Brain (or Revision Brain, for that matter) getting in the way. I’ve used it for both, and it’s definitely helped get the writing juices flowing.

Now? I use it as a testing ground for new ideas. I’ve come up with at least three solid novel ideas this way, which will become future projects a little further down the road. A half hour’s riffing on an idea really can go a long way, and with a few weeks’ worth of consistent work, one can have the makings of a complete outline, or at least a very rough draft.

Lately, I’ve been using it to try out different ideas for this new Mendaihu Universe story. The first few chapters of any new project often end up sounding very disjointed and lacking continuity, and it’s very obvious that I’m still trying to figure out where the hell I’m going with it. [Case in point, during my transcription from longhand to Word document yesterday, I noticed a scene starting midday, but changing to evening within a page.] Which is fine, considering the first draft is always the roughest, but at some point before I get too far, I have to lay some ground rules. I have to say, okay — enough floundering, time to give this story meaning and direction.

This is where the 750 can come in handy for me: it’s what I call the outtake reel. I’ll come up with a specific scene and riff on it, see how it fits in the context of the overall story, if it’s true to the characters, and above all, if the idea will be useful down the line. Sometimes it’ll work, sometimes it won’t. It won’t be the final take, but it’ll at least give me something to shoot for. And with this week’s exercises, I found myself rewriting the same scene that I’d come up with way back in 1993 for the first Vigil outtake, only updated and with different characters. I hadn’t planned on using the scene ever again, but it seemed to fit so naturally here that I ran with it. It’ll most likely be somewhere in Act 2 of this current book. In the process, it also clarified a number of plot ideas I’d had for this project, so I won’t be floundering nearly as much anymore.

Having a mental playground for your novel ideas is always a good thing. You may have to train yourself (like I did) to realize that these are only rehearsals and rough outtakes and not part of the final version, but the outcome of these exercises is almost always fruitful. By letting your characters run around freely, you end up learning a bit more about them, and in the process you’ll know how they’ll react within the scenes you place them in. By letting yourself riff on an idea that may or may not even be a part of the current story, you might even come up with a much clearer idea of what you do need to work on.

You don’t necessarily need a site like 750 Words; it might be an ‘outtake’ document on your PC, a dedicated notebook, or a handful of scrap paper. Whatever works for you. Like I said, this is the rehearsal stage…it’s where you work out the idea, get rid of the stuff that doesn’t work, and work on strengthening the stuff that does. And above all, it’s where you have fun with it, with Editor and Revision Brains off having a cocktail somewhere else.