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Hello!
Whew. Finally time to write. I owe the blog a long explanatory post, after – let me check – two and a half months (!?!) of short updates.
Part of the issue has been overwhelm. There are so many new people here (Welcome!). It made me self-conscious. At the beginning, writing to a few folks was easy. I knew most of you IRL (waves hi!). Then the blog grew. Writing to few hundred could be intimidating, but mostly I didn’t think about it. Now that numbers have exploded, it feels as if I am standing in my pajamas in the front of an auditorium. What should I say? What do they want to hear? Finally, I decide to ignore all of it and write to the same folks who have been with me all along. This is the blog, Life of an Author. I talk about the mechanics of writing and living the writing life, with the occasional cat photo. What would the Internet be without cat pictures? But I digress.
In addition, part of the issue has been time. I have been stunningly busy with promotional activities for my latest book. I mean that literally. Stunned. I look around and think Wait? What? How is this my life? I’ve published books before. I’ve done promo tours before. Granted they tended to be local or regional, but I have done them. Podcasts. Books signings. I’ve been on panels at conventions. I am familiar with what the modern publishing landscape requires of authors.
Or I thought I was familiar with what the the modern publishing landscape requires of authors. Turns out there is a whole other level for a book that takes off. Suddenly I’m getting national tours! Yes, I was a theater kid, why do you ask? My agent has had to turn down requests. I’ve been on television. Twice! It’s been amazing. And thrilling. And, as I said, stunning.
How did we get here?
For the record, and for anyone who is new around here, I wanted to recap the relationship between the blog and the book. I talked about it a little in the epilogue in the book. Here’s the full story.
As it says on my About page & in the first post, I was told that authors needed a media presence. So, here I am. I couldn’t see myself doing videos, but I can make words. So I started a blog. You may have noticed that I don’t talk about the content of my work in progress. Some writers love to hash things out beforehand. I am definitely in the keep-it-to-yourself camp. That left the mechanics of the writing life. That was hard to come up with content at first. My books may be interesting, but my day-to-day schedule is not, since it is mostly sitting in front of a screen wiggling my fingers. Sometimes I go elsewhere and wiggle my fingers there. Not the stuff of gripping narrative.
Although my books weren’t the stuff of gripping narrative either. I’ll get to that.
I started to have fun. A few hundred words on what I had been doing lately. Who doesn’t like to talk about themselves? I could type away without worrying about character development, or what I had named that town two chapters back. Just, Hi, this is me stepping out from behind my keyboard.
I also start to get fascinated with the how of it all. How did writers develop their ideas? How did I develop my ideas? I was able to place a few articles on the subject with writing magazines. Felt good to get back to my non-fiction roots.
I started the blog as my first book was being ushered into print. Kept at it through my second book. It’s all back there. Copy edits. Contracts. Conventions. I took Scalzi’s advice and tried to be transparent about money. Bottom line, I’m making a good living. I also have a spouse with a steady job and health insurance.
And then my agent started shopping book three. The reception was … nice. The people were nice about it. I was told the book was nice. The money offered was nice. It was a festival of niceness.
I flew to Chicago for a requested face-to-face with my agent. Apparently, there are some things you just can’t say thorough the ether. She told me there were three roads in front of me, some under my control, some not. One, keep cranking out the books I had been writing and have a nice – there’s that word again – comfy career. Two, keep cranking out the books I had been writing and watch my career slowly tank. Nobody had said anything specific, nothing she could point to but she felt that interest was fading. People taking longer to get back to her. Other people not responding at all. Just a little for this book. Maybe more for the next. Or she could be wrong and everything would work out. She admitted she had nothing to point to, it was more of a feeling that she couldn’t shake.
Nor could she point to anything specific in the books. My word usage was clever but not pretentious. My plots were tight. I hit all the technical marks. It was floundering on artistic merit. Too calm to be action; too exciting to be cosy.
She challenged me to do something different. She would continue to work on selling this book, while I worked on the next one, which I should be doing anyway.
So I went home. There was whining and moaning. There was self-doubt. Waves of self doubt. Gales of November waves of self doubt. I thought of myself as a writer. Was I some sort of vanilla hack cranking out – her words – books? I cared about my characters. I worked hard on those totally average books.
While moping, I didn’t write, not even the blog. What was I going to say? Waaah, my agent thinks I’m mediocre? News flash, most of us are mediocre. By definition, the majority of us are average. That’s what average means. But anyway. I didn’t think it was fair to pin this on her, at least publicly. Until now.
So what could I do that was different? That was special? That was my own unique gift to the world?
I.
Had.
No.
Idea.
Enter the first poll.
I finally dragged myself back the keyboard. I appealed to blog readers for help. I wrote a post that said that I was stuck in a huge rut and would they give me hand. I had picked three characters and assigned each one a number. I had picked three settings and assigned each one a letter. I set up a simple poll that asked two questions. Pick a number and pick a letter. I didn’t explain the options. Just asked them to pick.
The result was an out-of-work clown on a space station. It was insane. It was clearly never going to be a book or a short story. So I just started typing. It was a hoot. To let folks know how the poll went, I posted a plot summary and a few scenes. The unedited version was way too chaotic for public consumption. That was the point. It shook me loose. Got me going.
I tried a few more. Since I had no way to compensate each person for their time, I promised a donation to charity for each person who responded to the poll. I always listed the charity, so people had a choice. It worked well as an exercise. I even wrote a post to that effect and recommended other bloggers try it for themselves.
One of the exercises eventually grew into the base for the new book. I kept going with the polls. I tried to vary the questions to keep the polls interesting. I might ask if a character should turn left or right. Or ask people chose among a selection of colors. That’s were Alex’s yellow hat came from.
I always included at least one wild card outlier. Sometimes they were picked up, sometimes they weren’t. I tried to be true to the results, even if I thought the answers were wrong or weird.
On at least one occasion, the result was outright impossible. Y’all wanted Alex to be a parent. I don’t have kids. I can’t write a main character who has a entire section of their life closed to me. But I wanted to be responsive. The whole point was to do new things. I thought about this for over week. I decided that maybe there were nieces and nephews for whom they had some sort of emotional and/or legal ties. As if waiting for her cue, Alex’s sister, Beryl, and her kids stepped onto the stage. I can’t imagine the book without them.
On another occasion, the timing was wrong. Being true to the poll results would have given away too much of the ending too soon.
But mostly, I tried to do as the power of the poll commanded.
When I sent the manuscript to my editor, she responded the next day. Her entire email was an exclamation point.
No polls this time. A heartfelt thank you to every reader who has joined me on this adventure. Your gift to me has been, well, stunning.
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Afterword
Websites of the outside world. The Mary Sue.
Blog ticking along. Didn’t have anything to say for State of the Blog. [Archives]
Decided to use the opportunity as a chance to practice more fiction. While I will happily admit that the result is 100% wish fulfillment, it was a hoot to write. I had more, but I was out of time and figured 1,500+ words (!) was enough to get the idea across.
Previous Semi-Related Posts
[Rage Anthem, A Fictional Author Interview]
[Blog As Literary Device, A Consideration of Fiction Techniques]
Onwards!
Katherine
