While I’m waiting on that, I’m up to my ears in historical research, dipping into all kinds of interesting stuff, figuring out what I want to keep, what will change and how that will impact the course of my alternative universe.  Kid.  Candystore.  SO FUN.

I’m on the Chapter 14 lecture for my new class.  There are only 15 total, so I’ll finish WRITING lectures at the end of next week.  Then I get to start recording them.  Joy.

Last night I tested organic (or at least grass fed no hormone) beef.  And it’s the crap that’s in regular beef I’m apparently sensitive to.  No swelling or inflammation or feeling like I’d been hit by a truck.  Which makes me wonder if I’ve developed a sensitivity, or if there’s a lot more crap in beef now than there was even a few years ago.  I’m still kind of scarred by watching Food, Inc. and some other documentaries on the commercial food industry.  But anyway, it does mean I can still have beef, it’ll just have to be a rare thing since it’s so SO expensive.

So also in the world of writing, Amazon is monetizing fanfiction.  I…don’t quite know what I think about this yet.  First off, this isn’t opening the doors willy nilly to anything.  They’ve acquired rights to particular worlds from particular companies (including stuff like Vampire Diaries, Pretty Little Liars, and others).  From an author’s standpoint, nobody is going to be stealing your world and darlings without your permission (unless you’re traditionally published and your publisher decides this is a good idea and doesn’t care what you the author think).

The bigger concern from an authorial standpoint is competition.  This will be particularly salient to those of us in the self published category.  It means we have to work even harder to get Mary Jane to spend her limited discretionary income checking out OUR work, when she could go over here and get a story she knows she’ll probably love because she’s a rabid VD fan (aside–this abbreviation bugs me as it also stands for venereal diseases, which given the way they’ve taken that franchise, is not entirely inappropriate).  Of course, there’s also nothing stopping us from writing some kind of fan fic that’s awesome and pulling those people in as potential new fans of our original work.

On a broader scale, one of my long term big problems with fan fiction has been the absolute crap quality of most of it.  You have to DIG to find the gems, the well written stuff.  And I have neither the time nor patience to do that.  For the free stuff, I can’t really trust ratings because people tend to have different quality criteria for that.  Will that change with a paid format?  I would expect at least SOME standards to go up given people are having to spend money on it, but I’m not sure.  I mean, the 50 shades franchise books have an average of 4 stars or higher and I know they fall into the crap prose category, so…

I have mixed feelings about fan fiction as an author.  On the one hand, I always wonder why people would waste their time and talents writing about someone else’s characters instead of creating their own.  I have a zillion and a half ideas and have no intention of wasting my time on somebody else’s characters.  For my own part, I’m also divided on how I might feel about somebody playing in my sandbox.  On the one hand, if somebody loved my world enough to want to play in it like that, that’s amazingly flattering.  On the other, it’s mine, MY PRECIOUS.  I’m so small potatoes, I have no concerns that anyone would ACTUALLY want to do this, so it’s entirely a theoretical argument at present.

Apparently there is a thing where for all the fan fic sold, the world owner does get a percentage of the sale.  Which is kind of cool.  It’s a sort of…passive income stream, which is not to be underestimated in this changing publishing world.  The writer gets a bigger percentage of the pie (which makes some sense, I suppose, as they did the writing of that particular piece).

There’s a lot of concern, a lot of talk going on about this in the Twittersphere this morning.  It will be very interesting to see how this plays out.

See, this new project makes use of an alternative history.  Which means I have to go research the ACTUAL history that I’m messing with to know what I’m messing with.  So I’m picking and choosing what looks interesting or relevant, deciding what will stay the same, what will change, what I need to do deeper research on.  And my brain, it is ESPLODING with ideas.  I keep bulleting off emails to Susan and Claire “and then I’m gonna do THIS!” and getting back grins and “hee!”s and “THIS SOUNDS LIKE FUN” because, yo, it really really is.

Susan made the observation this morning that I seem to be a lot more comfortable (and having more fun) with taking this stuff and manipulating it to my purposes than I was with DOTH.  And she’s right.  I’m kind of mulling over why that might be.

I often have something “real” or that comes from existing lore that inspires what I write.  It’s the sexy lure of that “What if…?” that fuels a great deal of my inspiration.  And it’s part of why I stopped trying to write classic romantic suspense, because with the truly “real”, I worry about “getting it right”.  There’s more freedom in the paranormal and fantasy realms.

And for some reason, with DOTH, I felt much more…bound by the existing lore.  Which is nuts, considering that the lore is inconsistent and sketchy in a lot of ways.  And maybe it’s that I tried to research as I went, doing the worldbuilding around the story rather than building the story around the world.  I felt a really strong urge to just DIVE RIGHT IN, and I did.  To the detriment of the final product.

The toolkit is intended to help with that.  To show me the pieces I generally need.  Which I can usually work on some while writing other projects, but also something that gives me a very visible and measurable achievement of OH I DID STUFF in a way that prior versions of plotting didn’t (which is why I sometimes dove in without sufficient planning–because not writing felt like not getting anything accomplished).  But this really isn’t meant to be a post about plotting.

I guess I’m wondering this morning, how we make that call of “I want to take this thing here, and put my personal spin on it.”  Why are some things easier to MAKE that choice for than others?  Is it a personal thing?  A genre expectations thing?  An “I’m going to do something DIFFERENT, damn it” thing?  Inquiring minds want to know.

It is no mistake that Snoopy is dancing with bunnies because that’s exactly what my brain is doing right now.  During the last several months, I’ve been attacked NUMEROUS times by various and sundry plot bunnies.  Mostly novel projects.  A few short stories.   I had a plan for how things would go next.

1) Send Riven off to CPs for feedback (done).

2) While it was getting critiqued, begin work deepening all the outlines for the various short stories I briefly plotted.  See, we are beginning the hell months at work.  We have SO MUCH GOING ON at primary EDJ with one project, another grant got funded (Yay, we all still have jobs!) and we’ll be hitting the ground running with that in July as soon as present crazy is over, and I’m still finishing up development of my new class to teach for fall for secondary EDJ.  It doesn’t make sense to work on anything long or complicated.  I figured I’d write a few short stories for release and be plotting out my next long project to start come August (which, due to said intensive planning, should go faster and smoother than DOTH did).

Except.

Someone woke me up.  A very loquacious someone who was spilling out details of her story so fast, I couldn’t get to the pen and notebook on my bedside table fast enough to scribble it all down.  I’d forgotten what this was like.  Because the last time someone woke me up, it was Elodie, and I got Red out of the deal.  The easiest book I’ve ever written.  A book that was simply open vein, insert quill, take dictation.   I haven’t had that since Red, probably because of that whole stint I took turning myself into a machine instead of a writer.

I’ll take this as a sign that I’m back on the right path creatively.  Not going to make any assumptions that this book will be as easy as Red.  There’s necessary worldbuilding–lots of it–that needs to be done.  Some historical research.  An alternate history to write.  It’s a lot more up front work than Red was (and, let’s face it, Red was a very simple  and straightforward kind of story, set in our world, where the only huge decisions were what the origin of the curse was).  But I am SO FLIPPING EXCITED about this book.

Sela’s (Sela is the shero) been trailing me around all week, talking non-stop.   I have created a toolkit for the book, a playlist in Spotify, a seekrit Pinterest board for inspiration, have done spreads on my shero and hero, both general personality stuff and character arc. All while trying to tell her, “Girl, I really have to finish this other book first.  If you’ll stop waving that gun at me, really, I can get this out the door and give you my full attention.”  Finally, she did.

So that’s it.  That’s the great derailing of my sensible summer plans.  I won’t be writing short stories (well, I might try to squeeze in one).  I won’t actually even be writing any of the books that I thought I’d be writing next.  I’m wholeheartedly embracing this rabid bunny and making it my own, crazy bulging eyes, pixie stick-ridden nose twitch, and all.  It’s big, full length, and complicated.

And I can’t wait.

As for Riven, as soon as I get that back from CPs, I’ll have a better handle on how long revisions will take.  At present, I have -13 Faith in my ability to judge the quality of my own work, so I truly don’t know whether this will be a simple week’s worth of smoothing and tweaking, or if it will be something longer.  I am trying not to think about what The Pink Hammer or the Green Gobsmacker might do to my book baby.  The Hammer at least looked at it around the midpoint, so I am pretty sure it isn’t anywhere near the mess that DOTH was.  Anyway, once it is back, I shall make revisions and then, THEN, dear, wonderful, patient readers, I shall release it into the world!  That’s right, this is a self publishing project.  It came out a weird length (planned as a long novella, ended up a short novel at 55k), and I wrote it to go with a cover I commissioned more than 2 years ago for a book that ended up NOT fitting the arc I created in the Mirus world (and let me tell you, that’s a challenge–thinking up a NEW story to go with the imagery and title of an already existing cover…).  Anyway, I hope y’all end up loving Ian and Marley as much as I did.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I just heard the cocking of a musket behind me.  Sela says break time is over it’s time to get to work.

First up, David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech, which offers up a valuable lesson to us all about how THE WORLD DOES NOT REVOLVE AROUND US, and we contribute to our own misery by thinking that it does, and how we have a choice to make in how we view the world.  Anyway, go watch it, it’s awesome.

Second, the latest thought provoking post by Justine Musk that really hits on why so much of what I read just doesn’t work for me–it doesn’t GO THERE.  Worth reading the whole thing (it’s pretty short), but the part that really gelled for me was this:

Origin means the point at which something comes into existence: the source. To write in an original voice means to write from your source. Every story in the world has been told a million times…except when filtered through the prism of your perspective, your experiences and talent and worldview, grounded in the details of your private landscape. To write this way, original and fierce, means to show yourself, and not the glossy and practiced persona but the creature who lives behind that.

It means to throw down.

Be original.  Throw down.

Have a great weekend!

Oh I am SUPER excited about this.  I really enjoyed the first season of Once Upon A Time, and this looks like it takes a lot of the kinds of things I loved from that show (before I got bored with it) and ups the ante with worldbuilding and a LOVE STORY.

EXCITED!

Given I’m staring this remaining end sequence/fight scene stuff for Riven in the face, I’m barricading myself in my metaphorical office because it’s like the zombie plot bunny apocalypse up in here, and I’m the only remaining brain for them to eat.

BACK!  BACK, I SAY!  WAIT YOUR TURN, DAMN YOU!  BANG!

My present end sequence conundrum is a great example of how vague concepts aren’t enough when writing a book.  It works much better to have a clear picture of your ending, what you’re building toward, so that you know, you know, HOW THE GOOD GUYS WIN.  I have a particular problem with this, as I like to pit heroes and sheroes against epic baddies with impossible odds.

So I’m low on the new prose word count this week so far as I am still trying to figure out the details.  I WILL figure it out.  :glares at book:

How’s everybody else doing this week?

Anyway, one of the things we were talking about is how so many pantsers believe that if you outline it first, you can’t change anything.  Which is silly.  Just because we plot something, doesn’t mean we don’t get new and better ideas as we get into the writing.  I’ve replotted the last half of Riven at least twice, the last quarter maybe four times based on new insights I had while writing the rest of it.  But some people feel constrained by such a plan and have a hard time changing things once something is written down.  For them, I guess, the outline is like Quikcrete.

I don’t think I can ever go back to being a straight pantser, writing with no plan, no ending in mind, no specific direction but where my muse takes me.  But I realized, in the course of this conversation, that I still DO my own version of pantsing.  I just do it in outline form rather than drafting.  My general process these days is to start out with what I think are my major plot points.  And then I start filling in the gaps between them with bullet points of what I think will happen (or sometimes summary paragraphs, depending on what mood I’m in).  I’m usually not thinking about character arc or the myriad of other craft components that might go into making up those individual acts.  Once I have those plot points, my brain feels free to spew out a sequence of events.  And then there’s an outline.  And then I think about it and realize, oh this other thing will make for a better plot point here, and then I go back to the drawing board and start cutting and adding and changing.  I think my YA bunny has been through 3 versions already.  THIS is where I pants now.  I spew out these plot threads and follow them, see where they go–I just do it in an abbreviated form, without taking all that time to follow IN the draft.

I doubt any true pantser will look at what I just said and actually AGREE that it’s a sort of pantsing, but it works for me, in my own head.

And coincidentally, Chuck Wendig did a 25 Things post this morning about outlining.  Worth a read.

Turns out the data bears that out.

Earlier this week, Mark Coker released the data he collected at RT in Chicago last year where in he conducted a widespread survey analyzing indie ebook sales.  He shared the results at this year’s RT in Kansas City.   The whole post is well worth a read if you’re in self publishing at all (or considering getting into it).  But the relevant section to this discussion is this:

2.  Viva Long Form Reading:  Longer Books Sell Better
For the second year running, we found definitive evidence that ebook readers – voting with their Dollars, Euros, Pounds, Krone, Krona and Koruna – overwhelmingly prefer longer books over shorter books.

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The top 100 bestselling Smashwords books averaged 115,000 words.  When we examined the word counts of books in other sales rank bands, we found the lower the word count, the lower the sales.

Now consider how authors can use this finding, combined with the knowledge of the power curve, to make smarter publishing decisions, and to avoid poor decisions.  Often, we’ll see an authors with a single full-length novel break the novel into chunks to create a series of novellas, or worse – they’ll try to serialize it as dozens of short pieces.  When you consider that readers overwhelmingly prefer longer works, and you consider that bestselling titles sell exponentially more copies, reach more readers and earn more money than the non-bestsellers, you can understand how some authors might be undermining their book’s true potential.

~Mark Coker, emphasis mine

That’s certainly food for thought.  I can’t fathom breaking up something that is truly intended to be a novel into chunks of novella. And breaking it up into dozens of short pieces, say, by chapter or some other subchunk seems likewise kind of foolish. But I have to wonder if such things are failing entirely because people want to read longer stuff, OR if its because each chunk (however long it is), isn’t a complete story unto itself.  If you take a longer work and just artificially break it into smaller works, then of course you’re going to have dangling plot devices and incomplete stories.   I think you have to plan each novella (or whatever chunk it is) as its own stand alone, self contained chunk that adheres to all the expectations of story structure in order to pull that off.  Each chunk would need to be its own self contained episode, like a TV show, wherein you have the rise and fall of plot arc and at least some kind of satisfactory resolution to the episode, while still leaving plot threads (essentially a series or season arc) to follow up on in future episodes, in order to avoid pissing readers off.  I’d wager that few people trying this serial thing actually DO IT that way.

Other factors that definitely support the data is that if people get something short that isn’t complete and they don’t realize what they’re buying isn’t complete, they get pissed.  It doesn’t matter whether you take out a virtual billboard on your book listing, explaining that THIS IS A NOVELLA or THIS IS A SHORT STORY (or THIS IS AN OMNIBUS OF X, Y, and Z), a huge percentage of people don’t bother to actually READ the description.  And then they get angry because they feel bamboozled.  I’ve got my fair share of reviews in which people were snippy because the book was “too short” (um, because it was a NOVELLA).  So under that circumstance, yes, I absolutely agree that people seem to respond better to longer works.  The traditional publishing industry has conditioned them to expect a certain length, and while epublishing has allowed for the resurgence of shorter form fiction like short stories and novellas, most audiences still aren’t expecting that.

I’d still wager that serialization of work in progress on a site like Wattpad are something different.  You’re not paying, for one.  And the entire site is built around the idea that stories are being told in segments, so users go into it with the understanding of what they’re getting.  There have been a number of people who have successfully used this method to build an audience.  What I would like to know is how much of that audience translates from free, serialized content on a site like that into paying customers who go track down the rest of our work.  Time will tell.

So, thoughts?  I’d love to hear what the rest of you think about the data, the concept, etc.