Selling Babies

A guest post by novelist P.R. Johnson

You’ve finally finished your novel. Good for you. It’s only taken X amount of years and Y amount of re-writes. You’re an amateur writer; it’s not as if you’re relying on this novel, your baby, to earn your daily bread. You know it’s unlikely to be published the traditional way, but that’s OK – you’re pleased you can avoid those king-making submissions editors. You’ve reconciled yourself that for your baby to see light, you’ll have to self-publish. And again, that’s OK – the thought of YOU being in control is alluring.

You’ve proof-read your novel countless times and designed a nice book cover. You’ve successfully opened an account with Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), and you’ve got your head round formatting. A click of a mouse button and there she is: your novel, the cherished fruit of your labour, a genuine product for people to buy with genuine money. Congratulations on the new arrival.

Now all you need do is shout from the rooftops so people may come and pay respects. Ah, I knew there’d be a catch. It might turn out that you’re a terrible salesman. Maybe you don’t want your friends and family to read the book to avoid any possible embarrassment. Perhaps that’s why you wrote under a pseudonym: so people would not lay blame at your door. Maybe, despite your best efforts, the novel is drivel and deserves not to be read. But without that critical feedback, a truly unbiased opinion, you don’t know either way. You need to be a certain type of cretin to laud a product when you have no idea of its worth. A bit like a parent at a child beauty pageant.

So, you put your marketing on hold. You tell yourself that positive feedback will be the catalyst to fuel the inner salesman. Until, of course, you realise that a self-published novel will not sell without some encouraging reviews. And books that do not sell will receive no reviews at all, positive or negative. The circle of life is caught in a temporal loop.

It seems as though you’re stuck, just you and your damned baby. You love her, undeniably, and accept she might not be the prettiest infant in the world (some babies are downright ugly). All you need is for one random stranger, one honest soul, to look into the pram and smile: ‘Aye, that’s a bonny wee lass you have there.’

My name is (or isn’t) P R Johnson. You can find my novel ‘Life In Parks’ here:

Life In Parks eBook: P R Johnson:Amazon.com: Kindle Store
or, for U.K. readers, here: 

Life In Parks eBook: P R Johnson: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Or else you can follow me on Twitter.

Dazed and confused

Austin is having its post-holiday pre-spring just now.

Pre-spring is a lot like winter, being as how it's still miserably cold and all, with the key difference that a few early-bird trees have started to bloom, most notably the cedar trees. As best I can tell, pretty much everyone is allergic to cedar trees.

So the air is filled with pollen, wafting off the Central Texas hills, and my head is filled with a fog that four cups of coffee and two sudafeds refuse to clear.

And that is my excuse for using my lunch break to write a blog post when I should be novelizing. Actually, I should be journalism-izing, as I’ve got two stories to write, fairly lengthy ones, too, but I cleaned house and can’t figure out where I put my notebook. Also there’s no deadline on them. I don't know how anyone can be productive without a deadline. So the Awful Space Opera is Plan B. 

And pointless blog posts about allergies is Plan C. 

There’s not really much to say about allergies, is there?

Is there some particular reason why everyone is allergic to something these days? Didn’t allergies used to be sort of rare? Or did people just not complain as much?

And… okay, this topic is played out. Happy New Year, everyone.

I’m also allergic to dust mites.

My Process

The following occurred while attempting to crank out another chapter of the Awful Space Opera. I thought it might interest you. And by 'you' I mean 'the 48 robots that visit my site every day, plus one bored person from Twitter.' 

Behold, the writer at work:

I wonder if I can somehow meet my word count goal for today by writing about how I don't want to write today? And incorporating it into the story. This might be identical to the strategy of the roughly 80,000 writers who have written stories that begin with a writer sitting around and being discontented about something—writing, not writing, money, no money, spouse, lack of spouse, etc. etc. etc.

And I always want to shoot those people, except for the one who wrote Sunset Boulevard, because he turns himself into a male whore and gets murdered at the end. If you are going to be so self-obsessed that your every project turns autobiographical, that's the way to do it.

Hey look—that was a hundred and twenty words. Anyway, I really am going to follow through with this plan. I don't care if it's after three; I will write 3,000 words before I leave at five.

(No, finishing my word count after I get home is not an option. Work is something you do at work, dummy. Not home.)

(What do you mean they don't pay me to write 3,000 words of my Awful Space Opera before five? They pay me to sit at a desk and look alert and professional. It's the same thing.)

(Well, no, I am not looking alert and professional. I’m looking like I’m about to fall out of this chair and there’s a distinct possibility that  anyone who walks through the door can see down my shirt. I’d check, but that would involve lifting my weight off of my elbow.)

Haha—now it’s almost three hundred words. Only 2,700 to go!

But seriously—I’m going to work on the Awful Space Opera, and today’s episode is going to be pretty darn autobiographical. Lessee, here goes:

Nell awoke with a start. (See, this is why I keep telling you people the Awful Space Opera is Awful. If I write nonfiction, like the above, even if it’s mainly focused on me being paid to write a terrible novel while being too lazy to prevent official visitors from looking down my shirt, it’s fine. I mean, no one’s going to offer me a Nobel Prize, but as writing goes, I’m okay. As long as I stick to essays, freelance article queries which will be retroactively rejected, blog posts, etc. Switch to fiction, and, as you can see, I cannot write five words without three of them being clichés. "Awoke"? Who says that? "A start"? I’m not even going to dignify that one with a response.)

"Nell awoke with a start." Ahem. Now comes more words.

Yaa—look! Almost five hundred!

Which is beside the point.

"Nell awoke with a start." Ummm….

Badal and Donan were still arguing about planetary research, but Donan was starting to tire. He really was still pretty ill. Nell still didn't like him, but now had to suffer the additional unpleasantness of feeling guilty about it. You really can’t hate someone who’s almost been mauled to death by giant rats. It’s not done.

Nell kept drifting off to sleep at the most inconvenient times. There didn’t seem to be any help for it [see what I mean?—ed.], other than giving up his nightly vigils [eaaaarrghh, seriously woman!], and that he just wasn’t willing to do.

But the exhaustion was taking a toll on his health. He had been fighting a cold all week, and now, as his eye caught the last rays of the sun through the window, he felt the shooting pain of the beginning stages of a migraine. [I read somewhere, just the other day, someone's advice on writing—no, wait, it was this lecture I went to Monday night, no wonder I’m so tired, and they were saying you know, it's nonsense, having to use the active voice all the time, you've got to incorporate the passive for balance. That’s totally right of course. Or it was. I just used up the entire world's supply of acceptable use of passive voice in that last sentence, and now there's none left for the rest of you to use. Ever again.]

Of course, he could avoid the migraine by not being greedy and refusing to take an unpaid sick day to get over his cold by taking a nap, but he was sick of being a temp who doesn't get sick days didn't want to be reprimanded when he was supposed to be keeping an eye on Donan, even though Badal was there, [ed. note—I realize I've said repeatedly that this book is awful, but I would like to point out that this febile attempt is more awful than most. Is that really how you spell febile?Haha—not even close.

I need a day off like a fish needs an underwater bicycle that has a propeller and electrocutes sharks.]

Eight hundred words! And it's not even four o'clock!

Ummmm….

It's impossible to get any kind of work flow going when people keep interrupting you to discuss the likelihood that the crazy chick who keeps calling will actually show up in person or to ask is this where the undergrad research meeting is being held (it's not) or drop off the agenda for the invention awards ceremony on Tuesday.

Do I need to date stamp and log the agenda for the invention awards ceremony on Tuesday? Apparently yes.

"Nell looked back on better days—days before the Osomnion was destroyed, days when the most stressful decision before him was whether or not to date-stamp and log a duplicate astrometeorological report, or just through it in the trash. [Yes, I did just write "through" instead of "throw." My head hurts.] He could hardly believe he had once longed for adventures, for the opportunity to explore unknown planets, to learn about alien cultures, to meet new friends and influence people.

Not really sure where that sentence was going.

Hey look—wait for it, wait for it…

Wait for it…

Keep waiting…

Just a little bit longer…

ONE THOUSAND WORDS.

And it’s three minutes to till four.

Should I explain why I’m insisting on writing three thousand words today? Perhaps I should.

See, it’s like this: I used to write articles for my student newspaper in college. It was awful.

My basic journalistic process went like this: Receive assignment on Monday. Is that how you spell receive? Hey, I got that one!

So, yeah—Receive assignment on Monday. Procrastinate. Procrastinate some more. Focus on classes, which were easy, compared to journalism. Procrastinate.

Finish last class on Friday afternoon, return to dorm, buy horrible donut sticks from snack machine—as encouragement—then go sit in the dorm lounge with a phone and a notebook, and procrastinate a little bit more.

Call source. (My sources were nearly always available on a Friday afternoon. This is because Jesus loves me more than you.) Ask questions, take notes. Hang up phone, wonder why a nutjob with an irrational phobia of making phone calls would ever choose to pursue a career as a journalist.

Go upstairs. Turn on computer. Stare at screen for two hours. Write, painstakingly, approximately three words a minute, until notes have turned into five hundred words. Go back and write lede.

Hand in story ten minutes after deadline.

This process remained the same after college, as I attempted to build a pathetic portfolio of dreadful freelance articles written for my hometown paper for free. I frequently questioned my life choices. I seemed to loathe my chosen profession.

Then, after fiddling around and being terrible at other things—childcare, education, office management—I was mysteriously offered a job at a newspaper, based on my pathetic portfolio, and I accepted. I started out by coming in early and staying late, and working through lunch, and taking no breaks, but I got all my stories done. I discovered, fairly quickly, that when I had way more assignments to complete than I had time my telephone phobia faded. Apparently there’s something to that old "face your fears" nonsense.

And, after about four months, I suddenly had no trouble writing my stories. Once I finished the interviews and had all the notes I needed, writing a news article became easy-peasy. The only thing that slowed me down was my typing speed, and that got better too. I started coming in late, and leaving early, and surfing the internet a lot in between.

Fast forward to today. Actually, not today—something more like two months ago. A young friend was complaining about the workload in her journalism classes. I, wanting to become a patronizing elderly nag as soon as possible, if not sooner, told her that if she felt that way, she should actually start trying to write even more each day than what was required. Because that's the only thing to break the metaphorical sound barrier between being a journalism student and being an assembly-line-style newspaper hack, which is, of course, her ultimate dream.

And I tried to calculate the average of how much I was putting out each day before I hit my stride as just such a hack, and I think it was about three thousand words a day. And I remembered that when I'm writing fiction, even now, even 125,594 words into Ye Olde Awful Space Opera, it's just torment, like, practically physical pain.

And I had an epiphany. (Did I ever tell you I was almost named Epiphany? No? Maybe some other time)

The epiphany was this: If I can just write three thousand words of fiction every day, maybe I can get over that hump again—maybe, just maybe, it will become easy.

This contradicts everything ever said by every successful writer ever. But I'm trying to do it anyway.

Maybe it will be different for me. Maybe I, and only I, can make it easy.

One thousand five hundred words.

Dagnabbit.

Resurrection Man

I should bring someone back from the dead.

Yep, I’m totally bringing someone back from the dead. No idea who yet. But I have killed off a lot of characters, so I do have options. 

Suddenly, this writing thing seems a lot less dull.

See, what I can do is, I can have like everyone get captured by the bad guys, and then it’s like, whoa, all is totally lost. And then—bam! Someone you haven’t heard from in months is back! And he/she/it is here to totally save the day!

And you’re all like, Whoa. Major plot twist. I did not see that coming.

Shhhh…

Enough serious writing stuff. Cracked has identified six real-life superheroes!

Yes yes yes, this article is over a year old, but I didn't see it until now, therefore it's news.

Presenting... Electric Man! Or, that sounds like he gives off electricity—ElectroImmuno Man!*

"Everybody's reaction to electricity is a little different; it's influenced by everything from how thick you are, to how moist your skin is, to other changes in body chemistry. Xiangang appears to be an outlier on the high end of the scale. According to testing, he has a resistance seven to eight times greater than the average human being, which grants him the ability to handle live wires without safety equipment, though, again, it behooves us to ask why in the hell he'd want to."

But wait, there's more! The Human Ice Cube! Marathon, the Eternal Runner! The true Last Samurai, who brings a sword to a gunfight, and wins!

Before you ask, I rigorously fact-checked the dude slicing a speeding bullet BB in half by googling "Isao Machii hoax." He's clean. 

Read the whole thing.




*Marvel executives, leave a comment & I'll put you in touch with my agent.

Expectations vs. that other thing

It’s funny, how nothing ever matches your expectations. You go somewhere new; the things you expect to love are boring and the things you expect to hate are okay. You start a new job, and realize you like the humdrum bits better than the big exciting projects.

When I first started writing, I had this odd idea that dialogue would be easy—I carry on conversations all the time, how hard could writing them be? Descriptive prose, now that would be hard. 

How could you possibly really and truly convey the jagged, black latticework of bare wintery twigs against a sunset? (As ‘jagged, black latticework,’ apparently.) How could you explain that a character’s face was somehow ugly and beautiful at the same time? 

A picture is worth a thousand words—do I need at least a thousand words to set every scene?

Well, as it turns out, dialogue, even to someone who babbles compulsively, is hard. It comes out wooden, dry, and not remotely like what any real person has ever actually said. Describing the scene is easy. Which is good, because when you decide to set your story on an imaginary world, you do really need to flesh out what it looks like. I can always slash it down to something concise in draft three.

Plus, if I keep rambling on about the color of the ducks (dark brown, with pink wings), I may eventually figure out what the people ought to be saying.

Stuck

So—for the past few weeks, I’ve been stuck.

(And also, from your perspective, absent. But never mind about that. I’m back now.)

The villain of the piece, the guy I threw in at the beginning just to make everything go wrong, the one whose motivation and personality were supposed to just come together over time—well, he didn’t.

I’ve tried switching to other projects, which is, as you all know, my go-to problem solver. I’ve tried making up random stuff—after all, the Awful Space Opera was born out of making up random stuff, so it should continue to grow that way, right? But somehow it doesn’t. It’s like trying to turn stem cells into a new eyeball instead of a new person. It should work in theory…

I’ve tried distracting myself with blogging. I’ve tried taking breaks.

Really long breaks.

Do I need more coffee? No, this cup’s still half full.

Maybe I should make more for after I finish it though.

And I should eat something.

But nothing has helped. So now, all I do every day is re-read my draft, skimming quickly over the awful villain’s bits and gnashing my teeth. Maybe his motivation is that he wanted to write a great novel and couldn’t, so he just started killing people and taking over the world instead.

Alternately, he could feel like a misunderstood loner. Or maybe it’s something something something Corporate Greed.

Ah well. It will all sort itself out.