Hi All! Just a heads-up that I'm posting at Unicorn Bell this week, so if you have time, please do stop by to say hi!
Misha
XoXo
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Monday, October 27, 2014
I should have known I can't stay away...
If you've been asking me lately if I'd join in with NaNoWriMo this year, the answer was a most emphatic no.
But here's the thing.
As I mentioned before, I kicked back from really writing anything this month.
Which means my muse is now kicking my butt. I really really want to write again. And since it's a few days from NaNo, I might as well sign up.
Now, I'm not stupid. I know that the odds of me winning is next to nothing. But that hardly matters. It's the writing that's the thing for me. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to try and write every day, and then just see how far I get.
Because really, there's one more rough draft I really want to finish this year. NaNo might just be what I need to get it done.
Anyone else joining NaNo against their better instincts?
Before I go, I just want to give a shout-out to my blogging buddy C.D. Coffelt:
Mage Revealed
Book
Two of The Magic Withheld series
Struck with enough malevolent Spirit to turn him into a
raving beast of a man, Bert Reese fights to remain human. Alone, he walks a
slender path between sanity and madness. Then, an unlikely source enters his
life to help—one of the now-hated mages.
But Ashleigh is different and calms his butchered senses. Her
fierce nature is the only rock that stands between him and the crevasse that is
beast. In all ways, she walks beside him toward a new beginning. But at the end
of their journey lies the one who used Spirit against him. Questions arise; did
Tiarra, head of the Imperium, lose her magic, die, or simply give way to the
new order? Or, like a spider, does she wait for a mage to blunder into her web?
Forced on him without a care for his humanity, Bert is the
mage who should not exist, born with a different kind of magic.
And the gates of Hell are no match for the magic he wields.
Author C.D. Coffelt’s world of magic started in Wilder Mage with the words “The earthquake wasn’t his fault. Not this
time.” It continues in Mage Revealed,
the second book of the three-part series. Watch the book trailer on YouTube.
Excerpt
from Mage Revealed
Energy slithered
around him, encased him and…
Bonded.
All the elements
slammed into him at once filling him like a bursting dam, sloshing into a
maelstrom of Fire, Earth, Air, Water, and Spirit. Magic filled him, cascaded
into every pore of his skin until there was nothing left that was of his
essence.
He raised his
arms. “I am a wizard,” he said.
His words echoed,
like the roll of a bass drum in an empty coliseum.
From his
fingertips, fluid lightning forked and shot into the empty sky. A violent
whirlwind as tall as he wanted it to be caught up a whirl of leaves. A roar of
Fire sprang from the palms of his hands, crowned his head. And Spirit, the
silvery element waited for his command, to charge into any foray he so chose.
He turned to the
panting women, frozen in the grip of panic and fright.
“I am a wizard,”
he said again.
C.D. Coffelt
lives outside Skidmore, Missouri with a bemused husband and way too many cats.
She is a member of the Missouri Writers Guild. But despite that bit of
conventionality, she adores all things fantasy with a special love for urban
and epic.
With a passion for good
writing and Doritos as companions, locating Middle-Earth on a dusty road in
rural Missouri wasn’t difficult. All it took was a little Magic, hours of
reading, and an overactive imagination.
She blogs as Huntress on www.spiritcalled.blogspot.com, Facebook, Twitter, and her writer’s critique
site, www.unicornbell.blogspot.com.
Find her books at Amazon
and Barnesand Noble.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
I knew I'd use my economics studies at some point: My Perspective on Paul Krugman's Article and Amazon's Announcement
Today I read this article by Paul Krugman. He's one of the giants in Economics. One of the rock-stars, so to speak. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2008.
A market condition under which all prices reflect all market information. Since I'm not writing an academic article, I'm just going to come out and say that this is the fair market condition. Every supplier knows what their clients want, and how much they're willing to pay for it. Each client knows what each supplier in the market for a specific product sells, what prices the suppliers are selling at and which product's price will match his/her specific value for the product.
At a specific price, all books will be sold to everyone who wants that book. There will be no surplus or deficits in books. This price, known as the equilibrium price, is where the most books are sold to the most people.
The increase/decrease in quantities isn't related to price on a one-to-one basis. Let's assume that a book costs $2. If a book price could increase with one dollar, a publisher would most probably produce more than one book extra. If a book price decreases by a dollar, readers will probably buy more than one book extra.
And, believe it or not, economics still interests me, so when his name popped up on my Facebook Timeline and I saw that he'd written about the whole Amazon/Hachette dispute, I immediately clicked over to read.
My response can be summed up as follows:
"We are not amused."
Now before I launch into why, I must warn you that this is going to dig into economics a bit, but I'll be trying my best to keep things jargon-free or at least to explain things so we're all on the same page. This will be a long post (because I could take all week to write about this but don't want to), but I do hope at least some of you will bear with me.
First, let me define a few things (although I will be simplifying things so as to hopefully not bore everyone):
Market Efficiency:
A market condition under which all prices reflect all market information. Since I'm not writing an academic article, I'm just going to come out and say that this is the fair market condition. Every supplier knows what their clients want, and how much they're willing to pay for it. Each client knows what each supplier in the market for a specific product sells, what prices the suppliers are selling at and which product's price will match his/her specific value for the product.
Today's product up for discussion: Books.
In an efficient market, prices are determined by supply and demand. Supply and demand are both determined by price and quantity. So for every dollar price increase, suppliers are willing to produce more units of a product. Clients, on the other hand, buy more for every dollar price decrease.
Equilibrium Price:
At a specific price, all books will be sold to everyone who wants that book. There will be no surplus or deficits in books. This price, known as the equilibrium price, is where the most books are sold to the most people.
If you increase the market price, more books are produced, but fewer people are willing to buy them. (Which results in say... paperbacks being pulped. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)
If you decrease the price, more people will want the books (come on, don't tell me you wouldn't buy five books if a shop declared a half-price sale on everything), but fewer people will be willing to publish, because the profit might not be high enough.
Which brings me to Amazon's Announcement on what its dispute with Hachette is about:
Price Elasticity:
The increase/decrease in quantities isn't related to price on a one-to-one basis. Let's assume that a book costs $2. If a book price could increase with one dollar, a publisher would most probably produce more than one book extra. If a book price decreases by a dollar, readers will probably buy more than one book extra.
Ever walk into a shop to buy one book, only to find that everything is marked down to half price? Will you only walk out with two books? I wouldn't. I'd probably walk out with as many as I can carry/afford.
This is what Amazon is blaming the dispute on. They (quite correctly, in my opinion) surmise that more people will buy books at a slightly cheaper price, which will result in everyone on the supply side making more money. This basically comes down to the argument that it's better to sell a thousand items at $1 each, than one item at $100.
"But," one might say, "if the equilibrium price has been reached, messing with it will result in either the supplier or the client losing."
Here's the thing, though: We've never reached the equilibrium price in the first place, because the publishing market isn't efficient. But I'm still getting to that point.
Middlemen:
Because I think you need a bit of a rest from reading, and because this guy explains middlemen and what they do in a market better than I do, I'm going to ask you to watch this.
To link this back to my argument: Middlemen are proof that the real world is, well, real and my nice ideal of an efficient market isn't all that realistic.
See in the real world, book suppliers don't have access to their clients. (I.E. Readers) And the clients have no way to actually know all the awesome and amazing books that are out there to read. Middlemen's jobs are to bring books to the readers and readers to the books. They then charge a price for this service, paid for by either the client, the supplier, or some combination of both.
But this is where I'm going to rock your world. It's also where my main problem with Krugman's article comes in.
Krugman sees Amazon as a monopsony (a buyer that buys so many products from a supplier that it can in fact determine the price at which it buys from the supplier, most often to the supplier's detriment.) This, I think we can all agree to be true, to an extent.
Amazon is a middleman. It connects the publisher to the readers, by creating a place where a huge amount of readers go to buy books. Because so many readers buy through Amazon, Amazon is now in a position to charge more for its service, and Amazon wants to make books cheaper while Hachette doesn't. Which, from Hachette's point of view, is to Hachette's detriment. (An yes, I can admit that they're not wrong.)
However, Krugman has basically made a big mistake by saying the following: "By putting the squeeze on publishers, Amazon is ultimately hurting authors and readers. "
My problem with this comes down to a fact that everyone seems to forget:
The publisher isn't the supplier. The author is. The publisher is yet another middleman.
A middleman who's out to increase market efficiency to everyone's advantage.
...
You hear that sound? Like distant thunder? Yep, that's the sound of disillusioned authors everywhere laughing.
Why? Let's look at some market realities, shall we?
A buyer that has so much market power that it can influence the market price. This is because it can threaten to stop buying from a given suppler if he/she/it doesn't lower prices.
Pretty much since the first printing press was invented, people who've wanted to be widely read wanted to be published. After all, the more copies of something exists, the more people have a chance to read them. As time went on, publishers started gathering readers as well. People liked reading high-quality books and if a publisher was known for producing those, people kept buying from them.
Which is a dream come true for any writer. Not only does the writer now have a chance to see his works printed in volume, but there are actually people who want to read them.
However, there are many writers, and only a select few publishing houses with access to nice, big readerships. Readerships who would not read something unless it was, let's say... printed by the writer him/herself.
This resulted in publishing houses being able to cherry pick what they thought would satisfy their readers' wants/needs. Then, these few publishing houses became fewer. Some picked the wrong cherries. Others melted together into fewer, bigger publishing houses with more market power.
Who lost here?
The author. Industry standard at the moment is 25% royalties. Which means that they are paying 75% of profits from books they wrote for covers, editing, printing and distribution. They actually make less, because there's a third middleman, the agents, which our big publishers force on writers. ("If you don't have an agent, we ain't even looking at your book.")
The publishing houses offering bigger loyalties don't have enough market power to actually be of much use to a writer. Yes, it's getting the book published. But read? Not so much. And besides, these guys aren't the ones Amazon has a problem with. Because most of them already seem to understand the value of selling books for cheaper. Especially e-books.
Ah. Yes. E-books. See Amazon wants publishers to decrease prices on e-books. Not all books. e-books. Where there is no technical cost to carrying copies. Because there are no copies to carry. No printing costs. No warehousing. No transport. And yet big publishing houses usually charge more for them than physical books, and give writers the industry standard of: 25% royalties.
Yep. The same amount as for print books. But the expenses are less.
Which means that basically, big publishers created market ineffiency in order to benefit themselves.
But wait. There's more.
A market condition where the market or industry is dominated by a small number of sellers. These sellers have market power to influence buyer activity and price, since it's easy for a few companies to band together and collude to fix prices.
So big publishing charges 75% of a book's net price for covers, editing, printing and distribution. Marketing? Weeeeeeeelll.... No. See they put all their money together, and then decide who to spend their marketing budgets on. They choose which books gets displays in stores. They choose which books gets placement at airports and other premium selling spots. They choose which book gets the big mural at underground train stations in London and which ones get advertised in big readership magazines.
In other words: These companies influence which books get seen by their readership. Which means that the readership thinks they're seeing everything out there to buy, but really, they don't.
On top of this, the publishing house artificially inflates the price as described above. (Google Agency Model.) Or even worse, the big publishing houses collude.
So what this means is that publishing houses actively withhold information from their readers through manipulating which books the reader is aware of, and further adds to this by not charging the equilibrium price. In fact, they're not even trying.
This results in readers losing, and either buying fewer books or not buying any books, because they don't see anything that appeals to them. And because they're less likely to find something where the price matches the reader's perceived value for the book.
Who loses here? Actually... everyone. Readers lose for the reasons stated above. Writers lose because the potential amount of books sold isn't realized, which means they're not making the money they could have. (Even Lee Child and James Patterson.) Amazon loses for the same reason, because they can charge selling costs on fewer sales. And so do the publishing houses.
Why then, would publishing houses continue to act to their own detriment?
First, I want to say that I don't for a moment think that Amazon is the guardian angel to all writers everywhere. I know that they're motivated by their need for greater profit, not for some particular goodwill toward writers.
However, Amazon has been leveling the playing field between publishers and writers. They've collected a huge amount of readers to themselves. And then basically gave writers free direct access to those readers. This in itself has brought about a huge and long over-due innovation in the publishing industry.
Yes, the traditional industry is still cherry picking, but those who didn't get picked simply went to Amazon and got published anyway. And Amazon, through their use of algorithms, keywords and search engines made it possible for readers to be more likely to find the book they want to read, even if they never knew it existed. They're creating ways for authors to at least try to get books before their readers. Something that cannot be underestimated, but that publishers aren't at all that keen on. You see that bit where Krugman talks about Amazon being able to kill the buzz for a book?
Publishing houses have done this through spending one book's income on another's marketing, and then blaming the author of the former for not writing a good enough book and then all but destroying that author's career. And for good measure, holding onto the book rights forever, just in case the author wanted to sell it elsewhere and actually make money with it.
Before, authors had to sigh and say "oh well." Now, they don't. Now, they can buy their own covers. They can find their own editors (who often free-lance with big publishers as well). They can hire their own PR firms. And they can publish both e-copies and paperbacks on their own terms.
Amazon brought in print-on-demand, which means that only the amount of paper books that are wanted at a specific price need be printed.
Which means that publishing houses, once in a position of supreme bargaining power, aren't actually as necessary to writers to be published and seen.
Which means that more and more people aren't even interested in being traditionally published any more.
Which in turn means that publishing houses are clinging more to their industry standard royalty rates. They thereby "maximize" (and I use this term loosely) their profits by taking their own profit and most of the value taken from readers and writers, while delivering less and less of the benefit they might have had before. Marketing money? Gone to cover over-heads. Huge advances to help author cash-flows as they write the next one? All but gone, or otherwise part of a punitive system where authors who don't even get marketed, get dumped and made out to be bad writers if they don't earn out their advances. Editors? Still there, but I can find quite a lot of them by googling. What's more, writers can hire more and more of them as publishing houses lay them off to lower overheads.
I've been watching what's going on for a while, and what I've seen and experienced have turned me off traditional publishing. However, from what I've written above, I want to point out the following:
Elephant #1
No matter how many times Paul Krugman and other traditionally published writers might call Amazon wrong, it doesn't make Big Publishing Right.
Elephant #2
Amazon isn't the cancer destroying the publishing industry. The publishing industry's unwillingness to innovate is.
Elephant #3
The sooner publishing houses realize that writers now have more bargaining power and act accordingly, the sooner everyone wins.
Elephant #4
There will be a point where no one will be willing to pay 75% of a net book price for what will basically amount to the old publishing world's diminishing prestige and validation that no longer means anything to the readers.
Elephant #5
No one wants Amazon to be the only connection between writers and readers, but it's obviously happening.
Elephant #6
Amazon is starting their own publishing imprints. These imprints offer services AND higher royalty rates. If publishing houses want to survive, they should stop blaming Amazon and start competing with them.
Elephant #7
Competition between Amazon and Publishing houses benefit everyone. Amazon will get those lower e-book prices. Writers get more sales. Readers buy books they want for prices they want and those publishing houses who are able to efficiently do their jobs while turning a profit will survive. Unlike the current ones who refuse to budge off their own business models. Those are doomed to fail thanks to the vicious cycle they refuse to get out of.
Elephant #8
The sooner writers realize that they should start pushing more to call the shots, the better for all of us. Assuming that big publishing dies. Amazon will be alone to shove us around. Alone, we'll be easily shoved. Together, on the other hand... Honestly, I'd prefer a perfect market, but given that we could end up with Amazon as a full-blown monopoly, we need to figure out how to balance market power.
Because:
Elephant #9
Amazon isn't writers' big savior. But then, neither are publishing houses. Clearly.
To those of you who actually read to the end. Thanks so much for reading! Let me know in the comments if you have any thoughts/questions.
See in the real world, book suppliers don't have access to their clients. (I.E. Readers) And the clients have no way to actually know all the awesome and amazing books that are out there to read. Middlemen's jobs are to bring books to the readers and readers to the books. They then charge a price for this service, paid for by either the client, the supplier, or some combination of both.
But this is where I'm going to rock your world. It's also where my main problem with Krugman's article comes in.
Krugman sees Amazon as a monopsony (a buyer that buys so many products from a supplier that it can in fact determine the price at which it buys from the supplier, most often to the supplier's detriment.) This, I think we can all agree to be true, to an extent.
Amazon is a middleman. It connects the publisher to the readers, by creating a place where a huge amount of readers go to buy books. Because so many readers buy through Amazon, Amazon is now in a position to charge more for its service, and Amazon wants to make books cheaper while Hachette doesn't. Which, from Hachette's point of view, is to Hachette's detriment. (An yes, I can admit that they're not wrong.)
However, Krugman has basically made a big mistake by saying the following: "By putting the squeeze on publishers, Amazon is ultimately hurting authors and readers. "
My problem with this comes down to a fact that everyone seems to forget:
The publisher isn't the supplier. The author is. The publisher is yet another middleman.
A middleman who's out to increase market efficiency to everyone's advantage.
...
You hear that sound? Like distant thunder? Yep, that's the sound of disillusioned authors everywhere laughing.
Why? Let's look at some market realities, shall we?
Monopsonist:
A buyer that has so much market power that it can influence the market price. This is because it can threaten to stop buying from a given suppler if he/she/it doesn't lower prices.
Pretty much since the first printing press was invented, people who've wanted to be widely read wanted to be published. After all, the more copies of something exists, the more people have a chance to read them. As time went on, publishers started gathering readers as well. People liked reading high-quality books and if a publisher was known for producing those, people kept buying from them.
Which is a dream come true for any writer. Not only does the writer now have a chance to see his works printed in volume, but there are actually people who want to read them.
However, there are many writers, and only a select few publishing houses with access to nice, big readerships. Readerships who would not read something unless it was, let's say... printed by the writer him/herself.
This resulted in publishing houses being able to cherry pick what they thought would satisfy their readers' wants/needs. Then, these few publishing houses became fewer. Some picked the wrong cherries. Others melted together into fewer, bigger publishing houses with more market power.
Who lost here?
The author. Industry standard at the moment is 25% royalties. Which means that they are paying 75% of profits from books they wrote for covers, editing, printing and distribution. They actually make less, because there's a third middleman, the agents, which our big publishers force on writers. ("If you don't have an agent, we ain't even looking at your book.")
The publishing houses offering bigger loyalties don't have enough market power to actually be of much use to a writer. Yes, it's getting the book published. But read? Not so much. And besides, these guys aren't the ones Amazon has a problem with. Because most of them already seem to understand the value of selling books for cheaper. Especially e-books.
Ah. Yes. E-books. See Amazon wants publishers to decrease prices on e-books. Not all books. e-books. Where there is no technical cost to carrying copies. Because there are no copies to carry. No printing costs. No warehousing. No transport. And yet big publishing houses usually charge more for them than physical books, and give writers the industry standard of: 25% royalties.
Yep. The same amount as for print books. But the expenses are less.
Which means that basically, big publishers created market ineffiency in order to benefit themselves.
But wait. There's more.
Oligopoly:
A market condition where the market or industry is dominated by a small number of sellers. These sellers have market power to influence buyer activity and price, since it's easy for a few companies to band together and collude to fix prices.
So big publishing charges 75% of a book's net price for covers, editing, printing and distribution. Marketing? Weeeeeeeelll.... No. See they put all their money together, and then decide who to spend their marketing budgets on. They choose which books gets displays in stores. They choose which books gets placement at airports and other premium selling spots. They choose which book gets the big mural at underground train stations in London and which ones get advertised in big readership magazines.
In other words: These companies influence which books get seen by their readership. Which means that the readership thinks they're seeing everything out there to buy, but really, they don't.
On top of this, the publishing house artificially inflates the price as described above. (Google Agency Model.) Or even worse, the big publishing houses collude.
So what this means is that publishing houses actively withhold information from their readers through manipulating which books the reader is aware of, and further adds to this by not charging the equilibrium price. In fact, they're not even trying.
This results in readers losing, and either buying fewer books or not buying any books, because they don't see anything that appeals to them. And because they're less likely to find something where the price matches the reader's perceived value for the book.
Who loses here? Actually... everyone. Readers lose for the reasons stated above. Writers lose because the potential amount of books sold isn't realized, which means they're not making the money they could have. (Even Lee Child and James Patterson.) Amazon loses for the same reason, because they can charge selling costs on fewer sales. And so do the publishing houses.
Why then, would publishing houses continue to act to their own detriment?
A move toward market efficiency and why this is unattractive to Hachette and publishers like it.
First, I want to say that I don't for a moment think that Amazon is the guardian angel to all writers everywhere. I know that they're motivated by their need for greater profit, not for some particular goodwill toward writers.
However, Amazon has been leveling the playing field between publishers and writers. They've collected a huge amount of readers to themselves. And then basically gave writers free direct access to those readers. This in itself has brought about a huge and long over-due innovation in the publishing industry.
Yes, the traditional industry is still cherry picking, but those who didn't get picked simply went to Amazon and got published anyway. And Amazon, through their use of algorithms, keywords and search engines made it possible for readers to be more likely to find the book they want to read, even if they never knew it existed. They're creating ways for authors to at least try to get books before their readers. Something that cannot be underestimated, but that publishers aren't at all that keen on. You see that bit where Krugman talks about Amazon being able to kill the buzz for a book?
Publishing houses have done this through spending one book's income on another's marketing, and then blaming the author of the former for not writing a good enough book and then all but destroying that author's career. And for good measure, holding onto the book rights forever, just in case the author wanted to sell it elsewhere and actually make money with it.
Before, authors had to sigh and say "oh well." Now, they don't. Now, they can buy their own covers. They can find their own editors (who often free-lance with big publishers as well). They can hire their own PR firms. And they can publish both e-copies and paperbacks on their own terms.
Amazon brought in print-on-demand, which means that only the amount of paper books that are wanted at a specific price need be printed.
Which means that publishing houses, once in a position of supreme bargaining power, aren't actually as necessary to writers to be published and seen.
Which means that more and more people aren't even interested in being traditionally published any more.
Which in turn means that publishing houses are clinging more to their industry standard royalty rates. They thereby "maximize" (and I use this term loosely) their profits by taking their own profit and most of the value taken from readers and writers, while delivering less and less of the benefit they might have had before. Marketing money? Gone to cover over-heads. Huge advances to help author cash-flows as they write the next one? All but gone, or otherwise part of a punitive system where authors who don't even get marketed, get dumped and made out to be bad writers if they don't earn out their advances. Editors? Still there, but I can find quite a lot of them by googling. What's more, writers can hire more and more of them as publishing houses lay them off to lower overheads.
My point and the elephants in the room.
I've been watching what's going on for a while, and what I've seen and experienced have turned me off traditional publishing. However, from what I've written above, I want to point out the following:
Elephant #1
No matter how many times Paul Krugman and other traditionally published writers might call Amazon wrong, it doesn't make Big Publishing Right.
Elephant #2
Amazon isn't the cancer destroying the publishing industry. The publishing industry's unwillingness to innovate is.
Elephant #3
The sooner publishing houses realize that writers now have more bargaining power and act accordingly, the sooner everyone wins.
Elephant #4
There will be a point where no one will be willing to pay 75% of a net book price for what will basically amount to the old publishing world's diminishing prestige and validation that no longer means anything to the readers.
Elephant #5
No one wants Amazon to be the only connection between writers and readers, but it's obviously happening.
Elephant #6
Amazon is starting their own publishing imprints. These imprints offer services AND higher royalty rates. If publishing houses want to survive, they should stop blaming Amazon and start competing with them.
Elephant #7
Competition between Amazon and Publishing houses benefit everyone. Amazon will get those lower e-book prices. Writers get more sales. Readers buy books they want for prices they want and those publishing houses who are able to efficiently do their jobs while turning a profit will survive. Unlike the current ones who refuse to budge off their own business models. Those are doomed to fail thanks to the vicious cycle they refuse to get out of.
Elephant #8
The sooner writers realize that they should start pushing more to call the shots, the better for all of us. Assuming that big publishing dies. Amazon will be alone to shove us around. Alone, we'll be easily shoved. Together, on the other hand... Honestly, I'd prefer a perfect market, but given that we could end up with Amazon as a full-blown monopoly, we need to figure out how to balance market power.
Because:
Elephant #9
Amazon isn't writers' big savior. But then, neither are publishing houses. Clearly.
To those of you who actually read to the end. Thanks so much for reading! Let me know in the comments if you have any thoughts/questions.
Tuesday, October 14, 2014
Ponderings
First, I just want to send out a quick thank you to everyone who've stopped by to leave me some advice!
I've decided to call Wo6C3 done for now.
On making this decision, I'd thought that I'd just launch into another of my many active projects to get that done too. The thing is, I really just don't feel like it at the moment.
I'm guessing it's a combination of my work hours and my life once again taking a turn towards chaos, but right now, the urge to write just isn't there.
For a moment, I thought I'd go into a blind screaming panic, but then put some thought into it.
Sure, I have a ton of stuff I want to do, but my main goals for this year are currently out of my hands (while I wait for cover designers, betas, editors etc. to get back to me.) So it's not like I can do anything else.
And honestly I'm just not in the mood to burn myself out. For some reason, I thought that last year, which was awesome, would go into an awesome 2014 if I just kept grafting away on the same momentum.
You know what happens when an "unstoppable" ball hits an immovable wall?
BOOOOOOOOM!!!!!!
So yes, to say the least, I have not enjoyed 2014. I've kept hoping that things would turn around, but shoe biz (which is still awesome) aside, there has been about ten months of near continual suckage for me to deal with.
Almost everything that made 2013 a great year has been either ruined or destroyed.
What's left is now quivering as the last three months of the year rolls towards it. There are two exceptions: The first is that my awesome family is largely intact and I'm praying that this continues. The second is that my love for writing gave me an escape whenever I needed it.
However, if I force myself to write, writing is no longer an escape. It becomes a responsibility. Right now, I just can't deal with that. So I'm just... not going to.
What I am doing is to critique some awesome books, and to read other awesome books. And then if I feel like writing, I'm going to write.
Yes, I know I have goals. I have everything planned out in a timeline. But right now, I'm not going to worry about how to get everything done on time. Next year can seriously take care of itself, but for now, I have to do everything I can to get through 2014 in one piece.
Honestly, now is a really good time for a turnaround. That's the hope I'm holding on to now. It would just be beyond wonderful if everything could get sorted out just in time for 2015 to start on good note.
How are you doing?
Friday, October 10, 2014
Of two minds
As some of you know, I'm currently drafting the sequel to The Heir's Choice. The weird thing about it is that I sorta think it's done.
But I'm not sure.
See, my rough drafts are done as soon as I feel I have enough information mapped out in my head to rewrite the whole thing to my computer. This rewritten draft will be the draft that I edit.
Unfortunately, the completion of my rough drafts always creep up on me. I can't say something like "Only five chapters to go and I'm done." Instead, I'll be writing along happily, only to realize that I don't have to write any more of the story. At least, not yet.
I've been getting a hunch for two days now that I'm at the end of this draft. And today, this hunch crystallized in my brain into "Yup. This is done."
Thing is, this happened much sooner than expected. Almost exactly 20k words in. Okay granted, this is the second time I rough drafted this story. So maybe my brain's feeling like I rehashed some stuff that I can use in the rewrite. Which means that yes, I probably do know everything I need to in order to write out the whole thing.
But therein lies the rub. Probably.
I have a ton of aspects to the story left unexplored. I know they're there. I know that I haven't really figured out how everything fits together. Which means that there's a very real possibility that I might want to start rewriting early next year, only to discover that no, the story wasn't as done as I thought. Something like that happening could be catastrophic to my plans.
That said, my gut and my muse says that this is done. That I can turn what I have between the two drafts into a plot and (more importantly) a story.
But at the same time, I just can't help wondering if my muse doesn't want to move on just because she's working to a schedule.
Advice? Anyone?
But I'm not sure.
See, my rough drafts are done as soon as I feel I have enough information mapped out in my head to rewrite the whole thing to my computer. This rewritten draft will be the draft that I edit.
Unfortunately, the completion of my rough drafts always creep up on me. I can't say something like "Only five chapters to go and I'm done." Instead, I'll be writing along happily, only to realize that I don't have to write any more of the story. At least, not yet.
I've been getting a hunch for two days now that I'm at the end of this draft. And today, this hunch crystallized in my brain into "Yup. This is done."
Thing is, this happened much sooner than expected. Almost exactly 20k words in. Okay granted, this is the second time I rough drafted this story. So maybe my brain's feeling like I rehashed some stuff that I can use in the rewrite. Which means that yes, I probably do know everything I need to in order to write out the whole thing.
But therein lies the rub. Probably.
I have a ton of aspects to the story left unexplored. I know they're there. I know that I haven't really figured out how everything fits together. Which means that there's a very real possibility that I might want to start rewriting early next year, only to discover that no, the story wasn't as done as I thought. Something like that happening could be catastrophic to my plans.
That said, my gut and my muse says that this is done. That I can turn what I have between the two drafts into a plot and (more importantly) a story.
But at the same time, I just can't help wondering if my muse doesn't want to move on just because she's working to a schedule.
Advice? Anyone?
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
And for today, something deep, but beautifully written.
Hi all. I was going to blog about something else entirely, but this caught my eye and I thought I should share.
Basically, this is about trolls and bullies, written and spoken by a guy who had been bullied himself. But basically, I think this is one of the best written pieces on the subject that I've seen/heard in a while. In fact to me, it has a stark sort of beauty that moves me to think.
So give it a watch and maybe share. Heaven knows, I think more people aught to hear this.
Basically, this is about trolls and bullies, written and spoken by a guy who had been bullied himself. But basically, I think this is one of the best written pieces on the subject that I've seen/heard in a while. In fact to me, it has a stark sort of beauty that moves me to think.
So give it a watch and maybe share. Heaven knows, I think more people aught to hear this.
Saturday, October 4, 2014
Friday, October 3, 2014
If there's no new post by Monday, my house probably burned down.
It's funny how lately, my insecurities have nothing to do with writing. Well, actually, it sort of makes sense. I've been pulling 18 hour days for three days out of four until Thursday. Went to sleep at 9, imagining the bliss of being able to write, or read or SOMETHING NOT RELATED TO SHOES starting at 5 a.m.
Boy. Did I get my wish.
At 3 a.m. this morning, we got a phone call that there's a wildfire coming down the mountain, straight at us because of the wind direction. Which means that I'm going to pull a 20 hour day or worse, waiting to hear if we have to evacuate.
To put that in perspective, it's 4 p.m. and I've been awake for thirteen hours.
Right now, I'm sitting in my room, wondering if I'll still have any of the things in it by tomorrow morning.
That sorta puts things in perspective for you. Right now, the biggest material things of personal value to me is my laptop and my MANY notebooks containing first drafts to all of my stories. However given that space is limited, I know I'll be leaving the laptop behind if the evacuation order comes. Luckily for me, the whole computer is backed up because I'm sort of obsessive about it.
No. First things first, I'm loading up the pets. Then my notebooks, cellphone, tablet, medication and our family's important documents. And that's it.
No clothes. None of the various arty things I've created. None of the antiques passed down to us through about 10 generations. None of the many things that sit next to me right now. The signs of my life. The projects I'm still to get to. My VAST collection of oil paints. My and my mother's HUGE collection of books (over 20 thousand of them reside in our attic). My swords. My perfume collection.
Nothing.
I'm not going to lie. Right now, it feels like I'm sitting at the edge of an abyss. Where the hand pushing me in might bypass us and I'll breathe a sigh of relief. At which point I'll probably laugh at all the melodrama in this post.
Or, the fire will keep coming.
So yeah. Please pray that it doesn't. And if I'm not back by Monday to let you know I'm fine, keep praying, because that means my laptop and internet connection burned down along with the house.
But you know what? It's worth it. We know that we might have to sacrifice the house in order to save our lives, as well as the lives of others. Because the one thing I keep remembering is this:
Yes, there are memories connected to the things I might lose, but it's nothing compared to losing the people I share those memories with. And while eyeing the abyss is terrifying, it's still better than thinking that one of my loved-ones was lost protecting mere things.
I'd rather have the people and animals I loved, than this house, or anything in it.
But the point is that if the fire does reach us, our lives will be changed forever. And that terrifies me. But even as I write that, I realize that the threat alone has changed my life already.
For the better.
Before I post this: I might be insanely busy, so to keep track of what's happening, please follow me on twitter (@MishaMFB), google plus (Misha Gericke) or Facebook (Misha Gericke). Or else, if you're REALLY worried, mail me at mishagericke(AT)gmail(DOT)com. I'll do my best to keep everyone updated via social media.
Boy. Did I get my wish.
At 3 a.m. this morning, we got a phone call that there's a wildfire coming down the mountain, straight at us because of the wind direction. Which means that I'm going to pull a 20 hour day or worse, waiting to hear if we have to evacuate.
To put that in perspective, it's 4 p.m. and I've been awake for thirteen hours.
Right now, I'm sitting in my room, wondering if I'll still have any of the things in it by tomorrow morning.
That sorta puts things in perspective for you. Right now, the biggest material things of personal value to me is my laptop and my MANY notebooks containing first drafts to all of my stories. However given that space is limited, I know I'll be leaving the laptop behind if the evacuation order comes. Luckily for me, the whole computer is backed up because I'm sort of obsessive about it.
No. First things first, I'm loading up the pets. Then my notebooks, cellphone, tablet, medication and our family's important documents. And that's it.
No clothes. None of the various arty things I've created. None of the antiques passed down to us through about 10 generations. None of the many things that sit next to me right now. The signs of my life. The projects I'm still to get to. My VAST collection of oil paints. My and my mother's HUGE collection of books (over 20 thousand of them reside in our attic). My swords. My perfume collection.
Nothing.
I'm not going to lie. Right now, it feels like I'm sitting at the edge of an abyss. Where the hand pushing me in might bypass us and I'll breathe a sigh of relief. At which point I'll probably laugh at all the melodrama in this post.
Or, the fire will keep coming.
So yeah. Please pray that it doesn't. And if I'm not back by Monday to let you know I'm fine, keep praying, because that means my laptop and internet connection burned down along with the house.
But you know what? It's worth it. We know that we might have to sacrifice the house in order to save our lives, as well as the lives of others. Because the one thing I keep remembering is this:
Yes, there are memories connected to the things I might lose, but it's nothing compared to losing the people I share those memories with. And while eyeing the abyss is terrifying, it's still better than thinking that one of my loved-ones was lost protecting mere things.
I'd rather have the people and animals I loved, than this house, or anything in it.
But the point is that if the fire does reach us, our lives will be changed forever. And that terrifies me. But even as I write that, I realize that the threat alone has changed my life already.
For the better.
Before I post this: I might be insanely busy, so to keep track of what's happening, please follow me on twitter (@MishaMFB), google plus (Misha Gericke) or Facebook (Misha Gericke). Or else, if you're REALLY worried, mail me at mishagericke(AT)gmail(DOT)com. I'll do my best to keep everyone updated via social media.
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