A personal journey

An unread blog can be a beautiful thing. It's a journal... an open one. One you threw out there for everybody to see. One you really wanted people to read. But you hid it under a rock.

Yeah. Embarrassing, isn't it, when you realize you were just shouting into a void? Assembling your thoughts and praying everybody would read them, hoping nobody would? The ultimate internet experience!!

Since I started this blog I've changed. Looking back at my early posts, I barely recognize myself. Full of blind, unexamined privilege. Impervious to change. Running around thinking I had it all together.

Well, you know what? I'd like to think I'm better now than I was then.

On that note, a look at the world outside. Yeah, a look at a world where a right-wing ideologue takes the sort of action the MRAs and ditto-heads have been screaming needs to happen. A right-wing ideologue takes aim at people who want to get along with 'Islam,' the big scary monolith of invasion.

And takes aim first at the children.

Lord Almighty, sometimes I hate people.

Hate? Or maybe I've just lost faith in them.

I ought to expect more.

Guess what? When I started this blog, I would have been closer to that guy's beliefs than my current ones. Not just a little. I mean a lot. I would have railed about the PC police, about the way my country is under attack. I would have talked about, "Just Saying," now, I would have talked about the steps we should take against... against the people the terrorist was targeting.

Yeah, seriously. That is some screwed-up logic right there.

But they're the enemies, people! Can't you see that! It's so obvious! With all their wanting to be accepting and inclusive of other people! That's evil, don't you know! And the very idea! Moving someplace? Someplace with work, that enables you to have a better life, and provide for your children? Why would you do that?

The amount of sheer ridiculousness in that paragraph was all squeezed out of my head.

Which brings me around to my writing.

It's no longer enough for me to think abstractly about art and messages. These days I'm writing stuff with some bite. Words have power, and I'm turning all that power loose. I'm going to try to show the ridiculousness to people.

Lord knows I could have used some extra eyes, all those years ago.

The Void

Another shot sent out into the void... but it helps to focus me.

Okay, I've finished one of the three novels I wanted to finish this year. I'm slamming through a second one, but it's an academic exercise. Even once finished, I won't be excited by it.

What to do for a third project, before Wrimo? I'm not sure.

But I remain optimistic. I'm going to try to sell a project I haven't finished. Lots of publishers recomend this. They'd love to have more input on how you build your manuscript. They want a hand in the pot. Write the first three chapters, and have to, sir, have to!

That'll put me up to four different items out to different places. That... ought to hold me. Perhaps forever.

Salability

Every writer knows the feeling of having a manuscript out to a publisher. That nerve-wracking feeling that you're on trial. That somebody has your brain open, somewhere, and is reading it.

Take that to the power of three.

That's right, I've brought three different, very varied, exceptionally niche-worthy manuscripts to the point 0f being polished enough to send out... and they're all out.

To say I'm on pins and needles is an understatement. I'm writhing in torment and agony.

What kind of novels? An epic science fiction action novel, at roughly 250,000 words.

A not-so-epic fantasy novel.

A tragically urban pop culture/horror/gothic novel. (that one should blow your mind)

These three have everything in common, and nothing. They're united in feel, in a uniqueness of perspective. They have nothing in common in setting or even in timeline.

My pride is dwarfed only by my fear.

Nonfiction

I just bit off the biggest bite yet. I started writing something that was neither fiction, nor entirely fun. Something without parallel in my writing career.

Something new.

Something awesome.

I started writing a book that wasn't fiction. A book that wasn't fantasy, or science fiction. A book that draws out truth and wisdom and tries to show it to the whole world.

This may require a pseudonym...

This is scary. Writing fiction means making up your own rules. Don't like the ending? Write a new one. Writing nonfiction means having to figure out the way it is, and telling it that way.

Scary.

Later, an update on just how many manuscripts I've written and am currently trying to get published....

Back in Black

Nearly a year after my last post, and I pop to life. Hello AGAIN, world.

Anticlimatic.

My blog fell by the wayside while I was off having a life and dealing with other things. But it's always helped me to say out loud (or type) the things that matter; and rereading my own blog post, I remembered some of my own plots and plans and diabolical agendas.

Anyway, an update:

I've finished another novel, and I'm sending it out to a publisher soon. Yay.

I participated in another Nanowrimo, and I genre-jumped. HARD.

I became technical lead on a huge project that required time and commitment.

I brought home two adorable kitty-cats.

Sweet, eh?

Here's my plan; 2009 is the year I'll finish at least two writing projects. Possibly three. These writing projects will be sent out to different publishers. I.e., I want very badly for something I've written to be published. I'll settle for a tiny piece of the pie. I'll settle for a few hundred copies sold. But I'd like to know that what I'm doing isn't entirely crap.

Subtext; I suspect what I'm doing is crap, even though those who have read it say it isn't. I suspect most writers think this of their own work. I find it difficult to acknowledge my own strong points, and easy to find my errors and weaknesses.

Well, later this week I'll post about my most recent projects, and the impacts of sociology on my writing.

Less Art, More Commercialism?

Now I sound like a terrible Hollywood cliche, don't I? Don't do it the right way, sell it! Sell it hard!

Truthfully, that's the way to go. If you don't sell it, people don't read it, and the best art is about sharing and showing, right? Changing minds and attitudes?

Well, that's the theory, anyway.

Still, there's a fine line between art like ET, exploring the alienation of divorce, the escapism of a small boy running away from harsh reality, and art like Eragon. In a word... meaning.

If your meaningful art isn't going to sell, it doesn't matter.

And if your art that'll sell doesn't have meaning, it won't actually sell, hopefully, but even if it does... it doesn't matter either.

Great art is like Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments. That movie was the pinnacle of the Civil Rights Movement, really. Heston marched with King, you know. Not many remember it now. Heston led a boycott of Hollywood restaurants that were still discriminating.

He took Cecil B DeMille's epic and made it about racism, slavery, and bigotry. Listen to his impassioned speeches.... "What gives one man the right to own another?"

If he were another filmmaker, say one of the great message makers of our time, it would be an art film. One that would go on for about three hours, would go well at Sundance, and nobody would ever see.

But he mixed the commercialism of deMille with his own passion for the cause. That mixture did well, and may have changed minds. (I hope it did; his cause was certainly just)

That's my goal for myself. Something I can publish; something people will read; something with meaning.

Not too ambitious, huh?

I've forgotten who I sent my novel to last...

You ever get that feeling that the publishers aren't taking your novel seriously? I mean, really. That moment when you remember that your novel is in somebody's "slush pile" and you aren't really sure if you're safe to send it to another publisher? (simultaneous submissions are a good way to get yourself in trouble, kids)

Well, I'm there.

It's cool. I'm busy refining an earlier work to make it all fit together. I think I'm close to making it a more marketable piece (by bringing a conclusion to the personal half as well as the story half). And if I can get it into a marketable stage, I can send it out to another publisher and have two in the air at once.

Of course, it's not really a salable piece. I wrote it while in an overtly artistic mood. It's full of dark, noirish characters... almost a neo-noir dark fantasy, really. The main character is all masks and angles, if you get my meaning... not quite Bogey from The Maltese Falcon, and, in fact, he's kind of a deconstruction of the macho myth...

You see what I mean? And it's barely novel length, 70,000 words. Not nearly enough time to deconstruct anything! Let alone enough time to build a believable world. Or two, in this case.

So, given that it's not my most commercial piece, what should I work on? Stuff that moves me... or stuff I think I can sell?

Let's be honest with ourselves here. I work a day job. I chafe, sometimes, but I do stay ahead of the bills. But money... is a concern. I do have a mortgage. Also, if art exists only in a vacuum, unpublished, what good is it? It needs to be shared and understood and effect minds and hearts to be efficacious.

So, onward and upwards. More commercial works for me, and less artsy projects.

I'll discuss some of what that means later.