Tag Archives: work-life balance

Drew Year’s Resolutions

This year I’ve learned some hard lessons about publishing, book promotion, and blogging. I’ve honed in on my problems and come up with some solutions for 2019.

PROBLEM: My novel isn’t going crazy viral

A blog is not the best promotion vehicle for a novel (even if I write a dozen novel-centric articles). Most of my readers come for writing advice or nerd culture commentary. My book He Has Many Names delves deep into both of those themes, but it’s billed as fiction. I have a pretty good following but my novel-centric posts get the least amount of engagement. I think that might be because readers see them as a kind of Sponsored Content.

That and shifting my blog from squeaky-clean writing advice to horror-centric content means I’ve had to rebuild my following.

SOLUTION: Consider the audience

There’s a way for writers to get more eyes on their page without resorting to click-bait-meme-dump-listicles.

As much as I love sharing short stories, satire, and monster dating profiles, I need to offer something useful too.

I want to get back into giving writing advice, but in a way that differs from what I’ve done before. My new criteria will ask the following questions:

  • Can I offer technical insight into the subject rather than simply define it in my own words?
  • Can I approach the subject within a three act story so that it’s more memorable for readers?
  • Can I draw from my personal failures to better inform new writers?
  • Will the subject spark a debate or is it too safe?

PROBLEM: Winter’s impact on my creativity

Every year Minnesota winters beat the shit out of me emotionally. It gets dark at 4pm and cabin fever can get nauseating. Yet, every summer I forget the toll the cold takes and I assume my creative energy will power through the seasons. I’m always surprised when it doesn’t. Doing the same thing and expecting different results is not the definition of insanity (that’s more of a stock phrase for hack writers on TV). Still, it feels like in this instance it applies to me.

SOLUTION: Schedule posts out in advance

Smart bloggers write a ton of evergreen content (timeless articles) that they tease out throughout the year. They schedule posts and social media links months in advance. This gives them a buffer to chime in on current events or the latest pop culture conversation.

Smart Internet personalities spend this extra time introducing themselves to strangers via guest blogs, podcast appearances, and public readings.

This winter I’ve had the energy to just post links on Reddit. Next year I’ve got to do better than that.

PROBLEM: The holidays are a horrible time to promote a book

It’s easy to fill a spreadsheet with book promotion strategies. It’s hard to implement them when you work customer service through the holiday season.

Right now I work for a company who would very much like their acronym to stand for: United Problem Solvers, even though they deliver packages.

As Amazon rises to utter world domination the holiday seasons has become overwhelming. People with boxes up to their eyeballs line up out our door and at the front counter they haggle over every dollar. In the back parcels are stacked through the ceiling tiles, and at the packing table the staff are multitasking through their meals.

I come home, take a moment to pet my cat, and wake up on the floor a few hours later. I’m drained, no fun to be around, and in no condition to reach out to podcasters to talk about my fiction.

My book He Has Many Names is a horror story, which is why my publisher (Clash Books) released it around Halloween. Anticipating the promotion cycle I tried to dial my work schedule back, then three people quit and suddenly I was senior staff.

Suddenly every customer shouting, “What do you mean I have to pay for packaging? Amazon said it would be free.” Are syphoning my book promotion energy away from me.

SOLUTION: Honestly, I’m still looking for one

An author at my level has to be their own agent, their own influencer, and their own street team. They have to pull double shifts daily. I have to anticipate crunch cycles if I’m ever to master my work/writing balance.

I think this means I need to take a more active role in scheduling around my creative energy. That means focusing on simple attainable goals for the remainder of the winter and big lofty goals for the spring and the summer.

PROBLEM: My creative career feels like it’s running in place

It’s harder to vie for readers’ attention than ever before. They have the collected history of mass media in their pockets now. Genre authors have to scratch a very particular itch. For years it’s felt like each new endeavor was just another scheme. That needs to change.

SOLUTION:Devout more time to the planning stage

I used to be so afraid of writer’s block that I wouldn’t take time to think about promotion. I was afraid the well of inspiration would run dry if I stopped pumping. I’ve been doing this for over a decade and the ideas haven’t faded. I need to assure myself that the stories will still be there if I pause long enough to sell them.

I need to submit to more themed collections, put more unpublished offerings on Amazon, and offer more incentives for readers willing to review them.

CONCLUSION

Getting a writing career going is like trying to become a professional lottery winner. The odds aren’t in anyone’s favor.

That’s why my New Years Resolutions are short-term incremental goals.

What are your writing resolutions? Anything on my list make yours? Anything on your list that ought to be on mine? Let me know in the comments.

•••

Meet Noelle, a Hollywood transplant that’s been subsisting on instant ramen and false hope. She’s on the verge of moving back into her mother’s trailer when her agent convinces her to take a meeting at the Oralia Hotel. Enchanted by the art deco atmosphere Noelle signs a contract without reading the fine print.

Now she has one month to pen a novel sequestered in a fantasy suite where a hack writer claims he had an unholy encounter. With whom you ask? Well, he has many names: Louis Cypher, Bill Z. Bub, Kel Diablo. The Devil.

Noelle is skeptical, until she’s awoken by a shadow figure with a taste for souls.

Desperate to make it Noelle stays on, shifting the focus of her story to these encounters. Her investigations take her through the forth wall and back again until she’s blurred the line between reality and what’s written. Is there a Satanic conspiracy, is it a desperate author’s insanity, or something else entirely?

Pick up HE HAS MANY NAMES today!

In Art We Trust: Writing for more than money

Ever been asked why you write if there’s no money in it?

In Art We Trust

A Writer’s Intervention

There is such a thing as a stupid question. I get asked the same one all the time.

“Why waste your time writing fiction? Don’t you know there’s no money in it anymore?”

There’s no mockery in this well-wisher’s tone, only concern. They ask with all the sincerity of, “Can’t you see, you’re drinking is killing you?”

The well-wisher holds an impromptu intervention challenging my life decisions. They put me through the Socratic method, pulling apart my reasons like Russian dolls, dismissing every one that could be open to interpretation. They keep looking for a motivation they can understand.

“Why not take all the skills you learned building your author’s platform and go into marketing?”

The well-wisher thinks the move from writing narratives to writing copy is a vertical transition, that coming up with a story and a content strategy are the exact same thing, that dialogue written for dramas and advertisements are equally engaging.

They see writing across genres as a diversity of brand voice. They see putting in your 2k a day as a clear workflow. They see editing as back end development.

They think that intensely personal memoirs and top ten lists are created equally, that the words are interchangeable, that all writing should have the same goal: get the reader to open their hearts by way of their billfold.

If your thought cloud doesn’t have a dollar sign on it, the well-wisher brushes it away. Having pursued financial incentives long enough, they forgot why people do things for any other reason. They only understand you if you’re trying to get paid, laid, or famous.

Conjuring up a smile, I rub my hands together. “Yeah but, there’s this story I have to tell…” I give them my pitch like my dignity depends on it. When their eyes roll, I warp my story to fit their sightline.

The well-wisher gives my life’s work a wishy-washy hand gesture. “Tell it in your free time. Trust me, I know people who’ve been published. They’re dirt poor. The printed word has no future.”

Their anecdote about a small publisher releasing a book with no promotion has become the best case scenario they tell everyone. They warn me about going down the same road, for they have found the dead end.

I try to tell them that they found a dead end, that their are brand new avenues for authors to pursue.

Shaking their head, they give that look that’s both a smile and a frown. Signing their tab, they calculate for tip. “If you ever want to eat again, you need to apply this talent of yours to digital content creation.”

I see flashes of headlines on a thumbnail grid, over pictures of movie stars, kittens, and kids. They’re all some variation of “AND YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.” Feeling ill, my inner punk persona wants to bubble to the service. I want to Hulk out, flip the table, and quote Bill Hicks. Instead, I just sit there and take it. In the absence of a rebuttal, the well-wisher believes my argument has been defeated.

Inspiration

Childish Things

When it comes to finger painting, parents nurture their children’s creativity. When the time comes to purchase an easel, they suggest an alternate activity.

I imagine this reaction transcends artistic mediums. The well-wishers of the world see your sketchpads and think you’re hoarding. They hear your demo tape and think it’s a cry for help. They watch your monologue and wonder why you’re talking to yourself.

The well-wishers want to help with your recovery, and the first step is to figure how to fit your artistic pursuits into a job with a suit. Do you like to draw? Get a job in design. Do you make music? Get a job writing jingles for commercials. Do you like to act? Get in front of a white backdrop and shill.

It’s not about living your dream, it’s about defining your brand. It’s not about getting your message out there, it’s about establishing a presence. It’s not about inspiring people, it’s about making sales.

To them, the highest form of human communication is a dollar exchanging hands.

When I was young, it was easier to get away with doing things just to do them. While I thought I was bringing something to life, the well-wishers thought I was killing time. It didn’t matter if I was writing pros or playing Super Mario, I was being quiet and I wasn’t breaking anything. When the well-wishers saw a division of labor between my art and homework, they saw cause for concern. When I was filling notebooks with poems while my peers filled out college applications, the well-wishers confronted me about my addictions. The time had come to put away childish things.

When I went off on my own, my actions suddenly required an explanation.

Roommates would ask, “Why are you smashing frozen vegetables in the bath tub?”

Prying my hammer out of the bunch of celery, I hit the pause button on my cassette recorder. “Because I needed something that sounds like bones snapping.”

Bystanders would ask, “Why do you keep stopping every few steps to set up your tripod in the middle of the sidewalk?”

Taking a snapshot, I glanced up from the viewfinder. “I’m making a stop-motion music video by walking the length of Hennepin Avenue.”

Park patrons would ask, “Why does your football have a power screwdriver sticking out the back?”

Mounting the contraption beneath my telephoto lens, I flicked the switch, letting the ball spin. “So I can show the world what a groin hit looks like from the football’s point of view.”

I got accustomed to their look of confusion.

Creativity

My Relationship with Money

At family gatherings, I let the well-wishers define my blogging as some form of training. On Thanksgiving, they went around the table giving suggestions.

“You like movies, right? You could write reviews for a living.”

“You like giving advice, have you looked into life coaching?”

“You like technology, I just saw an ad looking for someone to write code for smartphone apps.”

I rub my forehead, “‘Write’ is a verb with many meanings, literature and programming languages are not the same thing.”

Any time I mention I’ve had a successful article they point out the black hole at the end of my rainbow.

“Now if there was only a way you could turn that into a paycheck.”

Money and I are spending some time apart. We were never madly in love. I was never rolling in it. It played hard to get and I got tired of pursuing it. It didn’t leave me broke, we’re just on a break. Of course my parents don’t understand. They thought we were good for each other, but really I’m just no good with it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d love for things to work out between us. I’d love to write a novel that woos the riches out of the world. I’d love for my debut to dispense with all my debts, for release date riches to release me from rent, for premiere profits to payback my parents.

I just can’t have money be the focus in my writing room. It makes a terrible muse. It never has an original idea. The unfamiliar scares it. Its notes suggest I change my story to resemble a young adult film franchise. Money talks, it prattles on and on.

Money can be sweet when it wants to. It’s always so much more attractive in someone else’s embrace. It’s hard to call its suitors “sellouts” with a straight face. Every writer wants love. Every writer wants to get paid.

Revelations

Why Write, if not for the Money?

Because my mind is a frontier worth exploring, a genome worth mapping, a record of all my findings. I need to show my evidence, to externalize my emotions, to share my experience with someone, with everyone. It would be such a shame for this vision to go to waste, for this spark to fade before anyone can see it, for this brainstorm to run down the gutter into a puddle of pipe dreams.

Inspiration is my incentive. Creativity is my currency. Revelations are my restitution.

I do this because I have a hypothesis to test, a hunch to lay to rest, an experiment in artistic inventiveness. Every canvas comes with its own discovery, every study piques my curiosity, and every brush stroke an epiphany.

Brainchildren are my benefactors. Daydreams are my directors. Ideas are my investors.

I do this because I enjoy experiencing the fruits of my labor as I’m tending to them. In this result driven world, sometimes the process is the payment. Sometimes mastering a new medium feels like an accomplishment, even if I don’t show it to anyone.

The world needs disruptive innovators if it’s ever going to change. Franchises have turned into dynasties with simultaneous sequels, reboots, and spinoffs veering into their own realities. Hollywood keeps trying to sell our old action figures back to us. Actors who’ve played the same role are stepping on each others toes. I want to put my disgust to use.

I do this because I’m not satisfied with the offerings on the billboard, bestseller, or box office list. I don’t hear myself in their lyrics. I don’t find myself on their pages. I don’t see myself on their screens. I imagine I’m not the only one looking for something worth relating to. Something that took the words right out of our mouths, said what we all were thinking, and told it like it was.

I will pursue my foolish endeavor, until I’m wise for my efforts. I will write until I’ve written the book I’ve been waiting to read. Life is short. Art is long. Writing is telepathy, and my thoughts will be my legacy.

Why do I do what I do, if not for money? If you still have to ask, then you’ll never know.

Art is long