Fonts - Worth It Or Not?

When I wrote Salvation Day, I knew the overall mood of the story would be important.  Conveying the fear and the despair, as well as a certain level of purity in certain parts, would be key to making the reader really feel the story.  Therefore, in addition to the text descriptions, I decided to use a few different fonts to try and set the scene.  I did this a little bit in Akeldama as well, but as I continue to write, I wonder if trying to do the different fonts is worth it.

Don’t get me wrong – I think it enhances the mood.  However, it’s also time-consuming.  Going back and making sure the fonts match and are in the right place takes a lot of attention to detail.  Additionally, it can be expensive since book formatters charge extra for using different fonts(ie, anything not standard).  There are also some fonts that the formatters simply don’t have, so checking in advance is necessary unless you want to spend a lot of effort only to find that you can’t get it into the book readers will see.  That means you need to know in advance, and I don’t always know.  In the last sentence, I didn’t even know I was going to use italics until I wrote the words, so planning out font usage in advance can be tricky.

Cost, time, and availability – these factor into writing, so is the effect created from using the fonts worth the things that come with it?  Or can description work as well?  I really don’t know.  What do you think?

Backing Up

In the olden days, writers used this contraption many of you have likely never encountered outside of a museum – a typewriter.  The writer would insert a sheet of paper and type away, seeing the physical proof of a story coming to life.  However, since then, mankind has done lots of stuff(developed the internet, sent probes to Mars, invented fire, etc).  Progress has made the typewriter a relic, and while that has some good pieces to it, it has also led to one VERY LARGE pitfall – losing work, sometimes months of it, if the data gets corrupted and the writer maintained no backup(or a backup near where they had the original data).

Losing this amount of effort can be soul-crushing.  I’ve actually seen writer weep when they figured out they’d lost a year’s worth of work.  That means, paranoid as I am, that I work hard to make sure I don’t hit that trap.  I save my work everywhere – my hard drive, a thumb drive, send copies to my primary email, send copies to my secondary email, etc.  This may seem like overkill, but it ensures that if something bad happens, I lose only a little bit as long as I was backing up on a regular basis.

This is necessary in the modern age.  Don’t get caught thinking you have everything in hand, only to get a virus or see a boulder fall on your house and crush your computer, and thus lose weeks to months to years of work.  Much like you may never need home insurance, you may never need this level of backup, but if you ever do need it, you’ll be thankful you invested the effort.

Advantageous Release

Writing is obviously an art, but there are business aspects that are also part of that art.  Yes, we want to reduce as much uncertainty as we can, but we can’t eliminate it all, which is why we have to divine certain parts to take best advantage of them.  One part of that art is in finding the most advantageous time to release.

I know there are certain times of the year in which book releases tend to do better.  Some say that releases should take place in February since people have settled down from Christmas.  Others say that releasing in October is best because people can buy your work gift for Christmas.  Summer pops up because people are going on vacations and like to read on those vacations, but others point to people being burned out(especially kids) from school.

It takes a discerning eye and a bit of luck to catch the market just right for your particular book.  My bestseller to sate, Schism, got released just as the 2020 political conventions were kicking off since I wanted to take advantage of partisan tensions.  I might release a horror novel around the middle of October, or a science fiction book at the beginning of March so people can take it on spring break.  I’ve had some successes with this approach, just like I’ve had some challenges getting the timing right.  What has your experience been, both as a writer a as a reader?

New Novels Or Sequels?

Now that I’ve got a few novels under my belt, the biggest dilemma I encounter in my next writing project is whether to write a new story or continue a series I’m already engaged in.

I have several new story ideas I would like to get out – a different take on the “master alien race” theme, a sci-fi/fantasy mashup, and a whole new direction on apocalyptic fiction.  I think each of these stories are interesting and could generate interest from the audience.  However, I also have at least two stories that need a sequel(Salvation Day and Akeldama), and I know the basics of how these are supposed to flow.  I’ve even started a few pages.

It can create a type of paralysis to be stuck between these two worlds.  On one hand, readers have asked about when the next chapter in these two novels will be out, so they’re invested in the characters.  On the other hand, although I love both of these novels, neither has sold very well, so searching out my next big seller, ala Schism, may be a better use of my time.

Of course, I could solve all of this easily is I simply wrote faster…

Overcoming Bad Work

If you’ve written…well…at all, you’ve written something bad.  Even the most prolific, world-famous authors have crap on their resumes.  Being bad is part of the process.  It’s what you do with “bad” that can make the difference.

In the olden days where traditional publishing companies guarded all the doors and were holding all the keys, “bad work usually stayed in house.  It was either extensively rewritten through the house’s editing process, or it was outright rejected.  Either way, it didn’t see the light of day(or at least for the best authors).

This is where the explosion of the indie market can be detrimental.  Since we’re all usually fans of our own work, especially in the immediate aftermath of finishing, we don’t usually recognize the “bad” in ourselves, so we tend to publish it.  That certainly gets us to market more quickly, but it can also generate a poor reputation before we get the chance to hone our craft into better writing.

First impressions are important.  For example, if I’ve had a good experience at a restaurant, I’ll give it another chance if I later have a bad experience.  However, if I have a poor first experience, I’m unlikely to go back without a great deal of prodding.  Most of the audience is the same way – if you give them crap right off the bat, they will assume all of your stuff, even your later stuff, is crap.

If you write something that stinks, the first, most obvious step is to not publish it.  I have a couple of stinkers, and they won’t see the bookshelf until after massive rewrites.  But sometimes we get caught in the afterglow of finished writing and publish anyway.  If you find yourself with crap out in the world, try to pull it bac.  Unpublish it.  Down the road, once you’ve had success, those few people with your original crap will have collector’s items.

But if you can’t do this, at least don’t publish more crap, especially not quickly.  Pull back and wait to publish something new.  Aside from the objectivity you’ll have more of during a more fresh look, you won’t get the public rolling their eyes and thinking, Oh God, not this schmuck again.  Give the audience time to get over your garbage.  Then blow them away with your next book.  However, you have to blow them away, since although you might get a second chance, you won’t get a third.  And even if your writing improves, no one will buy your stuff to see how much improvement has occurred.

Bad To Better

I’ve always thought I was a good writer.  Since I was a young boy, I felt I had a better grasp on the craft than the average person.  Unfortunately, what I’ve discovered over time is that the average person sucks at writing, so measuring against that kind of standard is a fool’s errand.  Moreover, my understanding of what constitutes “good” has evolved considerably in the last two decades.

It has been said that it takes approximately 10,000 hours to master a craft.  I’ve spent a good amount of time(although I don’t know if I’ve gotten to that number yet, I’m close), and it has helped me understand how much working on that craft, even through awful times you don’t recognize, is essential to shaping talent and skill.

I say “awful times you don’t recognize” because as decent as I think I am now, I also once thought I was good and now see how badly I sucked.  Going back to my first full length novel, On Freedom’s Wings, I cringe at how bad it was.  The idea – humanity trying to reassert itself in a galaxy it set on fire – had promise, but not only did I write it mostly as a Star Trek knock-off, the dialogue and action are bad.  I mean real bad.  Cringy bad.  I’m embarrassed by it now, even more so that I gave it to others to read and glowed in their praise.  Being removed from that work by more than 2 years, I now get just how nice they were being in trying to spare my feelings.  Probably a good thing my 25 year old self couldn’t give it to my 45 year old self, for my older self would’ve crushed my younger self.

Work.  Work, work, work.  Write a lot.  Give it to others and force them to give you honest feedback, both on how well or poorly it’s written, and on how to improve it(or if it can be improved; some writing simply needs to be destroyed so you can start over).  Without that, you will never get better, and while some you give your work to may be nice, that doesn’t mean they’ll pay for it.

In Extremis

I recently wrote a post about writers who like to preach.  I know several, and I think they get off more on being controversial and self-righteous than they do on selling books.  No, not everyone who I know that both writes and has powerful opinions, but several.  Either way, it makes things interesting when I get accused of associating with extremists.

The funniest part is that if you peruse my associations on the blogroll(to the right of the screen), you’ll see “extremists” from every end of the spectrum.  For every Jon delArroz, there’s a Hugh Howey.  For those as outspoken as Sarah Hoyt, there are equally outspoken folks like Joe Peacock.

So what do these “extremists” all have in common?  They’re all really good writers.  In their set – some have tried branching out from what they do well, and the results are rarely pretty – they’ve kept me engaged and entertained.  Although I know a few would see associations on the other side of the fence as OMG THE WORST PEOPLE IMAGINABLE, none of them are Nazis or serial killers or cannibals.  They each hold strong opinions on what they think of the world, but nothing outside of what reasonable people would consider the mainstream.  And they write really well.

Barring some Jeffrey Dahmer type asking for your association, give people a wide berth on their views.  That’s not to say I haven’t run across some, from both sides of the aisle, that I had to ditch when it turned out they weren’t just opinionated, but true extremists, but those have been rare(rare enough where it has happened exactly twice – one from the far right and one from the far left).  However, if we limit our reading and writing associations too much, we can’t find writing that truly challenges us.  Plus, strongly opinionated people are usually the best writers because they can translate that passion to a great story.  And great stories are what we really want, aren’t they?

Ignore Self-Righteous Censors

Folks, wokeness and super-sensitivity is killing the book world(and lots of other ones).  Instead of letting folks write and then seeing if the market can sort the wheat from the chafe, we have a bunch of self-righteous woke-scolds trying to act as gatekeepers to determine who can even write, and what stories can be told.

Today’s bunch of bullshit comes courtesy of London-based writer Sunny Singh, who has promulgated a checklist for writers to use to determine if they should be writing something.  Let’s take a look at this nonsense a piece at a time, shall we?

1.  Why do you want to write this?  What is your motivation?
Okay, not horrible.  Hopefully all writers are trying to determine their motivation and why the story needs to be told.  She gets a pass on this one.

2.  What is your personal emotional, psychological, ethical investment in writing it?
Maybe this goes back to question #1 regarding motivation, but then why ask it?  Seems a bit redundant.  However, it’s the “ethical” investment that started me worrying her real motivation.

3.  Can someone else tell this story better?  Is it someone else’s story to tell?
This is where she starts to go off the rails.  If someone cold write it better, they would have.  They are at least welcome to try.  But I started writing it because I felt I could do it better than anyone else, and no one else was doing so.  If I felt someone could have written it better, I’d have contacted them and given them the idea.  As to “someone else’s story,” you don’t own an idea or story like you do a nugget of gold.  With rare ethical exceptions, the story you envision is your story.

4.  What does YOUR telling of the story do?  Does it replicate prior violence, oppression/injustice?  Does it provide a new understanding or insight?
NEWS FLASH – oppression or injustice forms the basis of most stories since it gives the heroes something to overcome.  Or was she talking about promulgation of a worldview that somehow “oppresses” people.  Sorry, but words are just words; they don’t oppress anything.  As to replicating violence, a story full of people growing flowers would be incredibly boring.

5.  What is your power balance/imbalance as a writer to the subject matter?
WTF?  I’m not an overseer forcing others to read my work.  My power balance or imbalance is I want to tell a story, and readers will judge if it’s good or not.  If anything, the reader has al the power, for they determine my success.  I am not concerned at all about societal perceptions of power balances before I figure out wat to write.

6.  Finally should you write/publish this at all? As with most ethical questions, the key is not can one, but should one?
No matter what you think, I’m not writing the Satanic Bible.  These are words.  Nothing more.  Either read them or don’t, but stop scolding people because you don’t feel they have the proper background or skin color to write something.

 

This is someone who wants only right-think to be published, and if you don’t do it her way, she will wag her finger at you and shame you for not being woke enough in her opinion.  She can fuck right off with that.  I will write whatever I damn well please, and the audience can figure out if they want t buy it/read it or not.

 

Sheesh…

Writing As Preaching

I come today, my friends, to tell you how to live.  I want to impart a set of values I know you will fully embrace, mostly because you likely already agree with me.  There are new social values that are in breaking with the past, which are controversial(and scorned by many), that are divisive, but which I know my browbeating will convince you and the rest of the masses.  Can I get an amen!

Does the previous paragraph sound like lots of fun to plow through?  Does it draw you in to want to read hours upon end?  If not, join the rest of the audience.  Most of us, when we read for fun, like to…have fun.  We don’t care to be preached to, yet I’ve run across more and more writers trying to do just that.  And it’s very irritating.  Very.  Irritating.

Unfortunately, so many writers looking to make a mark don’t get this.  They want to preach at us in their stories, making the sermon more important than the story.  Look, I get that we all have strong feelings on lots of issues, but there are forums for that.  And if you want to write about social or economic justice, go right ahead.  Have fun.  There will be an audience for it.  However, that’s a separate genre from science fiction or fantasy or romance.  Sure, there are points one can make through writing, but a good writer knows how to do it subtly rather than beating everyone over the head with it.

If you want your character to be from some subgroup of society, or dealing with a grand societal issue, make it an organic part of the story.  Have that characteristic be part of character development, or have the issue be part of setting the scene, but don’t make it the focal point, no matter how good it may make you feel, because that’s the point readers will either a) focus more on your message rather than your story, or b) put your work down in disgust because being preached to wasn’t why they picked up your book.

Again, if you want to preach, fine, but understand how limiting you are being to your audience.  In our polarized world, most folks don’t care to be preached at, especially by those they disagree with on a political or religious level.  They get angry, and maybe you wanted that, but they not only won’t buy your next book, but they’ll likely start flame wars(if you’re lucky, just on Amazon reviews), which will further alienate potential readers.  Maybe that’s what you wanted, but I know that I prefer for lots of folks to want to read my work.  Along those lines, also understand that many of those who may share your views on whatever social issue you cling to will not be fans of the genre, so that readership potential will continue to narrow.  It may make you feel good, but you’ll be feeling it by yourself(or in a limited crowd).

Desperately Seeking Contracts

Despite the freedom of indie publishing, there still exists an undercurrent within the indie community that seeks the validation of a traditional publishing contract.  Look, I get it – we all want validation, and getting it from those running the bigger system can make you feel great.  However, I feel that that’s just what the traditional publishing world is counting on to draw folks into a dying medium…or at least a diminished one.

Obviously, it has only been diminished because the gatekeepers have been bypassed.  Thirty years ago, there was nothing of quality or distribution to indie publishing.  However, with the explosion of digital marketplaces, anyone can publish a high-quality looking book(that can be both good and bad).  So the biggest obstacle, marketing, is really the only thing in the way.  And traditional publishers rely on newbie authors to market themselves while they reserve larger efforts on their part for more established/proven authors.

But there have been indie authors who have found success.  Andy Weir and EL James took indie novels to the heights of fame, and traditional publishing drew them in with promises of greater success(and success with that success, truth be told).  I don’t know that either The Martian or FiftyShades of Grey would’ve had movies made if they’d stayed in the indie world, so it paid off in those instances.  The traditional world has greater contacts with Hollywood and distribution channels than the indie world.  What I wonder is if it’s worth it.

Although there is the occasional The Martian or Fifty Shades of Grey, there are also numerous novels that didn’t find that success, but now they’re tethered to the traditional world(at least for that novel…and sometimes the next couple).  So they’ve sacrificed that freedom.  My advice would be to get the promises in writing first, despite a perception of a weaker bargaining position.  However, you still have freedom until you sign that contract, so use that leverage as long as you can.  And don’t be afraid to walk away.

Class Warfare

There’s a split in the writing community.  No, not between writers and publishers, or authors and the audience, but between indie writers and traditionally published writers.  These groups trend towards hating each other, and the warfare between the groups is unlikely to end anytime soon.

Let’s stipulate up front that best-selling traditionally published authors, like Stephen King or JK Rowling, pay very little attention to this war.  They’re at the top of the heap, and like Bahumut in D&D, they’re above the fray of such everyday, mundane matter.  The same cannot be said of those at the top of the indie world since there’s always a chip-on-the-shoulder mentality for that crowd, even if they’re accepted in the mainstream(Andy Weir, EL James, etc).

But most writers aren’t in either stratum, so they turn their fire on each other.  Indie writers tend to view traditionally published writers as lost sheep, slaves to their publishing masters and desperate to say or do anything that will keep themselves in the good graces of their publishing betters.  Traditionally published writers, on the other hand, tend to view their indie siblings as if they’re dunces who simply weren’t talented enough to break through to the traditional world.  After all, if the indie writer was any good, they’d have a traditional publishing contract, right?

This, of course, distracts from the overall purpose of selling books to readers who will enjoy them.  If it’s about exposure, most writers, from both worlds, never get the kind of exposure the cream of the crop gets.  Indie writers view themselves as that undrafted NFL player that makes the team through sheer grit, and traditionally published writers view themselves as Olympians who put in years of work and believe they deserve the inside lane.

What would be nice would be if we could simply come together as writers and swap techniques and ideas without resorting to a form of class warfare.  However, I’m not sure that’s possible given the animosity and condescension that exists between the groups.

Bring Out Your Dead!

I came across a recent article griping about how there’s no room for new authors because all these old dead writers are taking up space on shelves.  You know…folks like Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Edgar Allen Poe.  Dammit, shouldn’t they just let these folks die already?  I mean, c’mon man, there are lots of folks out there writing stuff the public wants to read, like Pregnesia, Moon People, and Dazzle!

I get how frustrating it is to break through the public stream of consciousness and make a name for yourself, but I wonder if it has occurred to anyone that these dead authors are still making a splash is because their work was really good.  Their stories continue to transcend time and draw audiences despite the writers not being around any longer.

Of course we’d all like it if book stores could make room for new and exciting authors, but the time period for those new writers to make their mark is small, and if your writing is shit, then you’ll be the first replaced when yet another new writer comes along(it’s not like there’s a dearth of us).  And trust me – you’re not as good as you think you are.  You’re also nowhere near as good as those old dead people.

We all think our writing is awesome, but with some objectiveness, and time, we can gain perspective.  I was enamored of my first novel, OnFreedom’s Wings, thinking it to be the greatest contribution to science fiction since Rendezvous With Rama.  With a more practiced eye, I can now see just how bad it is, and how it would likely have destroyed my writing career just as it got started.  It required some self-awareness to know how much it still needed, and a great deal of practice to get better.  And I still need to get better.

Of course, you can’t wait forever.  I know, I know – I’m contradicting myself now by trying to introduce some nuance, but there comes a point at which you have to jump into the deep end.  You may capture the public; you may not.  However, you’re not going to displace the classics from folks who have long since proven they’re great writers.  What you’re going to have to do is prove you belong alongside them, and hopefully you’ll one day be one of those folks others are griping about not getting out of the way.

Hasty Release

I try to write all of my posts a month in advance.  Sure, I’ll disrupt that if there’s breaking news, but I try to stay ahead by writing well in advance.

That doesn’t mean I don’t find myself still falling behind.  This new month(September) is an example.  I wrote down the occasional blog idea on my trusty notepad, trusting I’d get enough topics and get everything done in advance.  I then looked up and half the month was gone.  It has caused something of a scramble as I tried to find new ideas and write the posts before the clock expired.  I think I’ll make it, but it’s going to be tight.

Life gets in the way, so suffer not idle time.  I can’t count the times I’ve almost said, “fuck it” and decided to publish less than on schedule.  But that might disappoint both of my regular readers, and the last thing I want to do is disappoint you.  :-P