Reading unfinished work, knowing the end

HERE IS A NEW INDIE MARKETING QUESTION:

I’m pondering whether the reason many people don’t try a trilogy is because it isn’t finished.

I’m exploring a concept that would provide the reader with story protection, and get the writer a safe space to write and some moral support.

Suppose you:

1. were considering reading something long, like Game of Thrones
2. liked the first book in the story trilogy (or at least the beginning in the Look Inside! feature on Amazon)
3. were worried the author might check out before finishing, leaving you forever curious about how the story ends – and whether it makes sense
4. knew there is a planned end, and you think you will probably be happy with it (the prologue gives hints)
5. knew the author is slow, but patient and dedicated, and will finish if is it at al physically possible to her
6. knew the author was extremely good at following a plan/outline/rough draft – so the story itself is finished, but the execution (the actual words) hasn’t happened yet
7. wanted to read it now
8. were willing to take a chance on an ebook version that could be regularly updated as the final draft slowly dribbles out, one scene/chapter at a time
9. MOST IMPORTANTLY, had the rough draft included in your current ebook so if the author doesn’t make it, you still know how the story ENDS.

Then, would you buy it now, to get what is already there, and wait for the notification that the next update was available and download the whole again from Amazon?

In other words, buy unpolished work full price so as to get the polished pieces (plus the end) faster than waiting for the whole?

Just curious.

It would be very different from a subscription service, or a planned serial, because you would HAVE the end.

You’d have to decide if you WANTED to read that extremely rough version of the end, or just have it in case the author couldn’t finish it. You should choose NOT to read it; the rest of the story in rough format would be your insurance.

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The intent of this post is to start a discussion about whether such a model would work to finish the planned Pride’s Children trilogy in a total of around a half-million words.

I haven’t seen it before, but this is indie, folks, and we can do anything we want.

Amazon already allows writers to update their manuscripts.

 

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Is the gift worth your LIFE?

ONLY IF YOU HAVE TO

I wake up angry too many days.

Then I spend time getting myself at least back to neutral, because I live with other people, and it isn’t fair to them to have to put up with me in that mood, unless I have no other choice, and we already know I have a choice, because I have used that choice successfully every day for many years now: figure out how to, today, and get over yourself.

Every day I berate myself

Because I don’t get to work sooner.

I sit at my computer, and end up checking out whether anything has changed in the world since I forced myself to go to bed last night. Now that we have online subscriptions to the Washington Post and The New York Times, I do a quick flip through the headlined new articles, to see if anything needs my attention.

I remember the comic (xkcd, I believe) about how someone can’t go to bed because the internet is broken.

I know it’s partly physical: for some reason probably related to illness, the brain comes on slowly, and usually doesn’t really focus on anything mentally challenging until after first nap. That baffles me, and scares me, because I have to drag myself into that first nap, too, always convinced before I do so that it won’t help, that if I could just force myself through, block the internet, START working I would now be fine for the rest of the day, and I’d get everything done which never gets done.

Every day I test out my mental speed by doing hard sudokus: under about 6:30 minutes, I can probably do something useful with a small effort; over that, and I can’t usually write, and, worse, make mistakes of epic proportions (luckily Scrivener has snapshots and I do backups erratically but so far successfully). Those scare me – when it takes you a month to write a scene exactly the way you want it, and you think you have deleted it, well, it’s not a pretty feeling.

Nothing helps until somehow

The process starts up by itself, if it’s going to that day.

Many days it doesn’t – and I am helpless to understand why. Because it seems that other, equally stressed days, work.

I laugh when I see people suggest taking days off: it takes me so long to get back to where I was when I’m forced by Life to do something else for a few days that I am pretty sure I won’t make it back to writing ever.

My brain is on instructions to at least try every day, and, indeed, I have no idea what I’d do with a day taken off deliberately from writing.

Back to the ‘gift’ I’m writing about

And that gift IS writing.

Not that I have any choice in the matter, it seems, but the writing, as it is now, is the result of who I’ve become.

And that’s the question: if I had to choose, and I had the Hobson’s choice of writing what I do and being sick, or neither, would I value what I’m writing enough to choose illness if that were its price?

Is one single story – if that’s all I manage – worth a life?

Is LoTR worth Tolkien’s life, GWTW Margaret Mitchell’s? And why classify myself with them (and neither was ill). What about ‘Barbie Takes Manhattan’? Or ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary’? Or ‘Harry the Cat’?

The choice is an illusion

I have children and a husband – they come first.

And, as soon as they don’t need me this instant, I try again to focus.

I took my nap, am more awake (though sudoku still says well over 7 min.), and I come back to the same question: is this worth writing? Is it worth my life? I’m not sure what the answer is, but it certainly is what I want to do with my life, with the energy I get, with the time I spend/waste every day.

I didn’t make this choice – it chose me. Somehow. Like the other gifts in my life, I’ve found myself nose deep in the pool whether I liked it or not.

By standing on tiptoe, I manage not to drown. And then another day comes, and another task, and I find myself, on the good days, inside my head walking Kary and Andrew through an exchange, planning exactly how Bianca will take the next step, knowing what is coming, but not exactly how the words will play out yet.

And wishing I could speed it up.

What did you get for Christmas?

The same old thing.

I don’t want a pony.

But I want this. And if this is the price, yes, bring it on.

Hope you got what you wanted.

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Is the artist in the way of the art?

IS THE WRITER’S APPEARANCE A DETRIMENT TO HER OWN WRITING SUCCESS?

When I was growing up, books had plain covers (no representative art), and the only means of interaction between reader and writer were the words on the page.

I usually skipped things like Forewords, and if I read the author’s bio, it was a quick pass, more destined to reinforce his name than anything else, so if I liked the work I could find more by him.

To this day, I have no idea what Robert Heinlein looked like, and only know what Asimov looked like because he was a bit of a media hound (and I had him confused with Einstein, which would have tickled his fancy. I think.).

There are statues of Marcus Aurelius, in stone or bronze, I assume – never even thought to look.

Modern digital life has changed all that

It is almost annoying when an author goes to a great deal of trouble not to let readers know what she looks like.

I prefer actual current photographs for avatars.

It is a problem for those with multiple pen names.

And I wonder just how much it influences the readers, especially in some genres.

Should Romance writers be pretty?

Humans who have sight are very visual creatures. It is estimated (somewhere) that 80% of our energy goes to dealing with visual input.

We react negatively to ugly things – after millenia of evolution that correlated ugly things with things that were often bad for us, such as rotted animals or toxic snakes.

Other things, such as the thickness of the ankles of young women in countries where sunlight was insufficient part of the year – which is an indication of ricketts, a disease which might also have affected her other bones, and make her more likely to have problems in childbirth, have gotten folded into our standards of beauty: thick ankles = not attractive.

I notice the way authors present themselves (check out Kristin Hannah’s Amazon author page) – and wonder how much that affects her sales (she’s gorgeous, and that’s a great photo). Wonder how any others can compete.

Do readers wonder if any of what’s in the stories is based on experience?

What about opinionated authors?

What do you think of authors whose claim to fame includes a very solid amount of in-your-face-ness? Are you more likely to read their books?

I loved Rudyard Kipling stories; reading about his attitudes has put a bit of a damper on reading his books, and would make me think hard about gifting them to a grandchild if I had one.

I make judgments about people based on their appearance

All the time.

I also immediately catch myself at it now, and look at those judgments dispassionately to see how much might be true. I have managed to change my own opinions quite a bit by a continued practice, and no longer automatically make some judgments which used to bother me a lot because they were so automatic, and couldn’t possibly be true.

But I’m wondering if, in the race for sales, those who look good have an unfair advantage. Again.

At least in getting started in the race.

Choose how you present yourself online

Not suggesting this should change, but I can’t quite stop making those automatic judgments about the photos that people choose to represent themselves with on their author page. Or avatar. Or book cover.

The good thing is that it is usually just at a few places, say Amazon, FB, your blog, and they don’t get to see what you look like first thing in the morning.

I need to work on that.

Do you ever think about how you are influenced by what you ‘know’ about an author?

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE in suport of CDC

HERE ARE THE WORDS THE CDC HAVE BEEN FORBIDDEN TO USE:

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VULNERABLE
ENTITLEMENT
DIVERSITY
TRANSGENDER
FETUS
EVIDENCE-BASED
SCIENCE-BASED

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I’m sure my real scientific colleagues, the ones with PhDs and MSs and BSs and technician certificates and experience who have been doing science at the CDC before this miserable year, will find appropriate ways to get around Big Brother.

But they shouldn’t have to.

Yes, I know. Some of it is silly jargon, and sometimes overused, and God knows we scientists are nowhere near perfect.

But we CARE about our fellow humans, even the ones who… and we want them to be as happy, and especially healthy, as possible. And make their own adult choices about the number of children they can care for.

This above kind of nonsense wastes time, doesn’t produce anything, and is downright stupid as well as authoritarian and totalitarian and [insert your favorite here].

Meanwhile, it is my civic duty to make sure these words get their regular workout, so they are ready to serve when sanity returns.

Which it must, eventually.

While I’m at it:

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CONGRATULATIONS TO THE GOOD FOLK OF

ALABAMA

and the men and women who drove voters to the polls and got their friends and neighbors to register, and forced their fear down just long enough. Each American gets ONE vote, regardless of income or social standing.

Thank you, Founding Fathers. And those who have added the rest of us to the rolls of voters with the constitutional amendments and Supreme Court decisions.

May Doug Jones serve ALL the people of ALABAMA, who will be better off.

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And my usual gratitude to Stencil for the ability to produce images for posts.

Forgive me for yelling.

Do introvert readers keep books secret?

ARE EXTROVERTS MORE LIKELY TO PROMOTE FAVORITE BOOKS?

I belong to several online writer groups, as well as having a circuit of favorite blogs and bloggers, and I can’t believe it took me this long to ask myself this question: do extroverted writers have a major edge when it comes to promotion?

I see people who happily post about their first book, and how they’re hoping that all their ‘peeps’ and advanced street team will be telling everyone to ignore the flaws in their work read their wonderful work.

Maybe some of them are really young.

But it’s more likely that they’re just enthusiastic and love to share.

Does intro/extroversion affect what and how you read?

I didn’t know many readers who were not adults, and not so many of those, when I was growing up. The adults tended to read popular paperbacks, things like The Agony and the Ecstasy or Perry Mason mysteries or even The Thorn Birds, but they also managed to lead normal lives, and didn’t hide books or hide from contact with humans because they were reading.

TV wasn’t so great back then (in the sense of volume), so reading – books and magazines – was one of those uses of time which came under the rubric of ‘entertainment.’ At least in my family.

But I don’t remember reading being something I shared with classmates, and I didn’t see others girls at my school sitting around with books at recess.

You couldn’t have stopped me – I figured it came pre-loaded in my brain, along with a lot of other inconvenient stuff that made me odd.

Does it affect how you share about books?

Having had some experience telling other people about books I liked, and having them blow me off, I’ve been wondering whether it is part of the introvert personality to want to keep things for myself.

And to not want to go to bat for a particular book because who am I to tell other people what to read?

I thought all writers would be introverts

Something about spending time by yourself making up imaginary friends.

But it isn’t at all true.

Having been part of the online indie writing community for the past five years, and read thousands of comments, and contributed my fair share, I finally realized just a couple of days ago that no, we are not all the same happy little introverts, writing away in our little enclaves.

And that some of the writers who claim lots of success are out there shouting from the rooftops about the marvels they have concocted for your delectation.

Whether they have or not.

Squeaky wheel premise? The belief that most people who buy an inexpensive book, especially those who don’t get around to reading it quickly, won’t bother returning it if they don’t like their purchase?

The extroverts just go out and do it themselves.

We’re hiding in the woodwork

Hoping to be discovered by somebody else who will be interested in telling the world for us.

I have to ponder this a while. Figuring it out was startling.

And there are likely to be a significant number of introverts in amongst the readers out there, and possibly some of them are wondering why all the books they see advertised and promoted seem a bit off, for them, because not only would they never act that way, but they would never want to act that way.

I enjoyed Red Sonya, but never in a hundred different lifetimes would I have had any interest in becoming her and wielding my way through the world with a sword.

And we only got Tolkien by accident. He was going to keep it all to himself.

So the problem is double-pronged

Extroverts get in the way between introverts and their potential readers at both ends:

Introvert reader << Extrovert reader << Extrovert writer << Introvert writer,

with all the noise being in the middle.

We need a kind of stealth marketing that bypasses the hullaballoo in between.

I think, after you get over all that, the introvert readers are probably the most loyal out there. And I think they may mention what they like once or twice, but they are constitutionally incapable of being pushy about it, so ‘their’ books don’t get the kind of recommendations, in volume, than the process that propels extrovert books and writers to the tops of the charts.

But that’s just me.

They also have very high standards – because they’re not distracted by the noise.

Whaddaya think?

Making do with everything you’ve got

TODAY IS MY DAY

And I wasn’t even aware of it until I read one of my favorite bloggers, Dave Hingsburger, talking, as he does most days about a little story of people with a disability running into ‘normals.’

My random thoughts about my day

Even in one of my favorite tales, H. G. Wells’ The Time Machine, which I’ve talked about before, in a highly dysfunctional future society which manages to continue working somehow, and where characteristics have split into the industrious but subterranean Morlocks (who keep the world working but look like trolls), and the fragile beautiful Eloi (who basically do nothing useful but tug at the Traveller’s sympathies because they are scared), there are no disabled people.

Who we are

We get ignored a lot. But worse than that, we get looked down on. We get blamed for sucking up resources and money.

Periodically someone suggests just getting rid of us all (this is called eugenics: from Wikipedia, ‘a set of beliefs and practices that aims at improving the genetic quality of a human population’).

Please do try to remember that Dr. Stephen Hawking is disabled.

We are everyone else

Do please also try to remember that humans are fragile, and each of us is one second from not being at all, and one second from becoming one of the despised disabled – and in need of all those services they considered too costly before one of them needed them.

We want to work if we can

Some of us can. Some of us try to support ourselves by our own labors (I’m not in that category; I supported myself because I had disability insurance, something everyone should consider as it is 5 times more likely to become disabled than to die during the ‘working years’).

Some of us can’t. Luck of the draw. Chaos theory and an automobile heading toward us one inch to the right (ask novelist Stephen King; or better still, read the end of On Writing, where he has detailed how a careless driver nearly removed him from your list of best-selling authors).

Some disabled people are capable of producing great work; some are capable of producing a different kind and level of work. But most of us take longer, sometimes a great deal longer, to produce that work. Slow brains or bodies make it a lot harder.

Personally, I think those who keep trying anyway – against the disdain and rudeness and downright hatred they might encounter in public spaces (yeah, that kid with Down Syndrome clearing your table at the mall is, how lovely, a target for teens who think they are somehow responsible for their own wonderfulness), are demonstrating how important it is for us as humans to contribute to our society if we can.

And yes, I’m one of those, so it does sound like I’m tooting my own horn, but today is my day, so I may be permitted a small ‘beep.’

And, of course, we are your brothers, sisters, parents, children, neighbors…

Who of us does not know someone in this category?

And which of us gets through life without?

Please celebrate with me.

We’re not different. So would the world kindly stop treating us that way?

And, if it pleases you, buy our work. It might even be created to much higher standards than you think (hence the title of this post) because it costs everything we have. Yes, you are permitted to make me go viral if you like my fiction, and yes, I am working very hard (and incredibly slowly so as to keep to those standards) on Pride’s Children: NETHERWORLD.

Those who can support themselves by working would really like to do that. And those who can’t will be supported by our taxes, too. I’m good with that.

Please ignore the slightly old-fashioned tone: I have been reading Miss Manners.

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INTERNATIONAL DAY OF PERSONS WITH DISABILITIES

Sunday, December 3, 2017

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